Annie is still at my side and glances between us curiously. I get the sense she knows Gloria better than I do.
‘Can we have a word?’ Gloria adds. ‘There’s a pub down the road and they’re putting on a buffet. Perhaps there?’
It feels so British, like this is our national catchphrase. Forget ‘tally-ho, old chap’, it’s ‘they’re putting on a buffet’.
I glance between Gloria and Annie, jammed in the obvious tension between them.
‘Sure,’ I reply, ‘but I don’t have a way back to the station. Annie drove me here and—’
‘Oh, I can give you a lift,’ Gloria says dismissively.
I don’t particularly want to bail on Annie, but Gloria mentioned money and I know I need to hear what she has to say. When I turn to Annie, she’s already set.
‘It’s fine,’ she says. ‘We can catch up another time. I’ll text you later or tomorrow.’
There’s yet another moment in which it feels like I’m missing something. Gloria and Annie eye each other for a withering second and then Annie waves goodbye. We do the air-kiss thing that nobody does in real life and then she strides away.
‘So…’ Gloria says conspiratorially, ‘shall we talk money?’
Chapter Nineteen
It is seemingly a well-known fact that nothing pays tribute to victims more than getting lashed in their honour.
The Thirsty Fox is one of those stone-brick postcard pubs that I suspect only exists in Britain. It’s next to a stream and a neat humpback bridge but otherwise surrounded by vast swathes of green. Chuck in a red phone-box next to a black cab and American tourists would be throwing their money at it.
A fire is crackling at the back of the function room and the walls are decked out with landscape prints of various countryside scenes. Almost everyone from the church is here mingling with one another, but I’m off to the side, in a booth by myself, feeling invisible. I’m ready to move on from all this but many aren’t. Who am I to judge?
Considering how little I eat and how much I worry about money, a free buffet should be right up my alley – but I can do little other than pick at the bite-size sausage rolls and triangular cheese and pickle sandwiches.
I’ve been at the pub for twenty minutes, but, almost as soon as Gloria pulled into the car park, her phone rang. She told me she’d catch me up – and that was the last I saw of her. There’s a part of me that wonders if I’ve been dumped and I’m now going to have to actually talk to people before finding my way back to the train station.
I’ve got half a sausage roll in my mouth when Gloria suddenly appears once more, clutching a phone in each hand.
‘Do you want to sit outside?’ she asks, in a tone that makes it very clear it’s what she wants to do. ‘It’s not that cold.’
She’s my lift back to the station and I feel a certain obligation, so I trail her out and we find a spot on the picnic tables in the beer garden.
‘You wanted to talk about money…?’ I say, hoping she’ll get on with it.
Gloria looks up and tugs an errant strand of hair away from her eyes. ‘Did you get anything when your husband died?’ she asks.
I’ve never been a fan of talking around a subject – but Gloria’s bluntness still feels like a physical smack.
‘Ben wasn’t my husband,’ I reply.
A momentary frown etches across Gloria’s face and then, as quickly as it arrived, it’s gone. ‘Oh, of course.’
I’m confused for a second, thinking she’s going to add something – but then I realise she’s still waiting for an answer. The directness is unnerving.
‘I didn’t get anything,’ I say. She nods along but doesn’t reply. ‘Why are you asking?’ I add.
‘No reason,’ she says.
I stare at her, but she’s now busy flicking at one of her shiny black fingernails.
‘There must be a reason,’ I say. ‘You brought me here and wanted to talk about money. Now you say there’s no reason…’
Gloria looks up and I feel like I’m back at school. The cool kids are playing the we-know-something-you-don’t-know game.
‘I’m not sure if I should say…’
I press back into the wooden chair and stare at her. It’s then that Melanie appears on the other side of the fence surrounding the beer garden. She’s holding a phone to her ear with one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other. She angles slightly and there’s a moment in which we see one another. Her eyes narrow as she continues to talk to whoever’s on the other end of the line and then she turns her back to me. It’s right that she’s here, of course – she lost two sons – but it feels as if she’s everywhere I turn.
I blink back to Gloria, trying to push away the thoughts of Melanie. ‘Why me?’ I ask.
‘Sorry?’ Gloria replies.
‘Why are you asking me if I got any money after Ben died?’
‘I’ve been asking the others, too. You were a little more difficult to get hold of. I didn’t have your number or email address.’
It occurs to me that she got my number from somewhere, seeing as she called me. There’s a short silence, which I break: ‘I still don’t understand why you’re asking.’
Gloria weighs me up but doesn’t say anything.
As I feel for my bag, a thought suddenly occurs.
‘Did somebody give you money?’ I ask.
She reaches for her own bag – a knock-off designer monstrosity, inside which could fit most of what I own. I picture an envelope stuffed with cash in there. She bites her lip, glances sideways and then says: ‘I’ve got to go.’
In a flash, she’s on her feet, hurrying towards the car park. It’s only as she disappears from sight that I remember she’s supposed to be taking me back to the train station. I trail after her but only arrive in time to see her car exiting the gate at the far end. A few stray stones fizz backwards under the wheels and then she’s gone. I watch for a few seconds, unsure what’s transpired. She wanted to talk to me and then, from nowhere, she was running off.
When I turn around, Melanie is at the corner of the pub, still talking into her phone. I pretend I’ve not seen her and head inside. I feel like a wedding crasher as I mooch around the small groups of people who are deep in conversation. The atmosphere is different than at the church now the alcohol is taking hold. There are laughs and smiles and the morbidness has lifted.
I walk around, doing the closed-mouth smile and nod thing, hoping somebody might welcome me into their circle and that I can bum a lift. Perhaps surprisingly, it is Elaine who catches my eye. She’s still immaculate in her all-black suit and standing tall at the back of the room, where the large double doors overlook the moors beyond.
‘How have you been?’ she asks.
‘Oh, y’know…’ I reply, which is standard for this sort of thing. Nobody argues with this type of banality, even though it means nothing.
Elaine looks over her shoulder and then quickly back to me. I’m not sure she listened to my reply. ‘Can you see the bloke over by the bushes?’ she asks.
I stare beyond her, out past the fence of the beer garden towards the green on the far side, close to the stream.
‘Do you know him?’ she adds.
There’s a bit of a distance, but the shape is distinctive enough. There’s a large man in wellington boots and an olive-green fleece, standing with his hands in his pockets. He has some sort of dodgy comb-over but mutton chops that curve around into a beard.
‘I’ve never seen him before,’ I reply.
Elaine makes a hrm sound. ‘No one knows him,’ she says. ‘But he was hanging around at the church and now he’s here.’ She turns and the two of us stand side by side watching as the man stares back towards the pub.
‘I didn’t see him at the service,’ I say.
‘He was over by the cars as we were coming out,’ she replies.
‘He could be some sort of photographer…?’
‘Where’s his camera?’
She has me there. If he i
s from the media, there are people here who’d be happy to talk.
Perhaps sensing he’s being watched, the man takes a tentative step towards the bridge. He clambers up over the fence, turns to look at the pub once more and then continues over the arch. After a few seconds, he is swallowed by the shadows of the trees.
‘I get the sense,’ Elaine says, ‘that we’ve not seen the last of whoever that was.’
Chapter Twenty
It’s not long before the endless, meaningless small talk becomes too much. I ask the barman to order me a taxi and then pay in cash for the driver to take me to the train station. It’s money from the envelope, of course.
By the time I’m almost home and hurrying along the street towards Hamilton House, it’s almost four p.m. The sky is already starting to look gloomy. Nick is on his way out of the front door but stops when he sees me.
‘Did you hear about Jade?’ he asks, breathlessly. He doesn’t wait for a reply, before continuing: ‘It’s shocking, isn’t it? I cried most of last night.’
‘I don’t know what to make of it,’ I reply – which is largely true.
‘It makes you think, doesn’t it?’ he adds, which is word for word what Karen said.
I agree that it makes people think and then he starts to pass me before stopping once more. ‘How’s Billy?’ he asks.
‘He was fine when I took him for a walk this morning.’
Nick winces slightly. ‘Judge has been a bit down for the past day or so. He’s sleeping a lot and only eating little bits. He’s stopped begging for food, which shows how poorly he is. I wondered if he might have picked up something from Billy, or vice versa?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t think so. I’ll keep an eye on Billy and let you know if I see anything.’
He nods along and mutters the word ‘vet’. I pat him on the arm and say I’m sure it’ll all be fine – then he disappears off to wherever he was going.
When I get into the apartment, I head straight for Billy, who is lying in his own bed. He raises his head and looks at me with tired eyes. His new squeaky toy is drizzled with doggy saliva, next to his nose. At least one of us has been having fun today…
I pet his head and he rolls onto his side.
‘You all right, mate?’ I ask him.
He laps my hand gently and, though everything is fine on the surface, I get the sense that something isn’t quite okay. Billy rarely sleeps in his own bed and prefers, essentially, literally anything else. It could be that Nick has put the idea of illness in my mind and that I’m reading too much into his general sleepiness.
I continue to smooth his fur until he closes his eyes and then I empty the envelope of cash onto the table. I count it three times over until I’m certain of the amount. I sit and stare at the piles, trying to work out what’s happened because, somehow, I’ve blown through very close to £1,000 of someone else’s money in four days. There is the obvious stuff in front of me – the laptop, the shoes, and then… what? I gave Vicky some money for rent. Little things here and there.
Is this what it’s like to be rich? Money spends itself simply because it’s there?
When I barely had anything, I’d budget to every last penny and knew what everything cost. Now, in no time at all, it’s as if I’ve forgotten all that.
I have got to stop spending. I have no job and, wherever this money came from, it has got to last me until I figure out something else.
My buzzing phone is a welcome distraction: a text from Harry.
Hey! Just checking we’re still on for later? Looking forward to it! X
It takes me a few seconds to remember what he’s on about. With the memorial, the news of Jade, the money in Karen’s drawer and my own firing, things have passed me by. I scroll up and see our previous messages. I invited him over for seven. He’s bringing dessert and, possibly, wine – despite our joking about ‘wine people’ at The Garden Café. That means I’m supposed to provide a meal, even though there’s barely anything in the flat. I type out a reply, asking if we can do another time and hover a thumb over ‘send’.
There’s an M&S Food down the road that does pre-packed cooking bundles. Everything is ready for the oven and, voila, even the worst of cooks can pull off an apparently gourmet meal in an hour or so. I’ve never bought a single thing from that shop, largely because everything is more expensive than at Crosstown. Shopping there is a class thing, not a necessity. That’s what I tell myself, but I’m taunted by the stacks of cash still on the table.
I’m immediately going against the pledge I made myself barely minutes before. The bundle of food will be more expensive than individual items – and there would be cheaper places to stock up. It’s unnecessary spending, more waste. More money gone. One more step to oblivion.
I delete my first attempt at a reply and send a different response instead.
Deffo! See you then!
It’s not who I am. ‘Deffo’? What’s wrong with me? His reply doesn’t take long:
Fab! Am bringing chocolate volcano cakes!
I’m not sure if we’re going to get along, after all. Not only is he mad for exclamation marks but he’s drawn me into it. I tap out a wimpy ‘OK’ – no punctuation – and then turn to Billy. He’s still in his bed, watching me through half-closed eyelids.
‘Are you going to clean up or do I have to do it?’ I ask him.
He yawns and then puts his head down.
‘Fine,’ I reply. ‘I’ll do it.’
There is a knock on my door at precisely seven o’clock. I make sure all the M&S packaging is crammed down to the bottom of the kitchen bin, cover it with a piece of kitchen roll and then check myself over in the mirror to ensure I don’t look like a complete bag lady.
That done, I open the door to see Harry leaning against the frame as if he’s on the poster of a terrible romcom.
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ he says.
I look him up and down. ‘Jeans and a jacket again? Don’t you own anything else?’
He laughs as he comes in, pecking me on one cheek. It happens so quickly that I don’t have time to decide whether or not it’s fine. He crosses to the kitchen and puts two large carrier bags down on the counter, then crouches and turns towards Billy.
‘So you’re the cute little thing I’ve heard so much about.’
Billy raises his head and opens his eyes wider, then pulls himself up and out of his bed. He crosses a few steps to Harry and sniffs his hand. Harry rubs behind his ears, but Billy’s seen enough. He turns his tail and shuffles back to his bed.
Harry stands. ‘Does this mean he doesn’t like me?’
‘I think it means he’s indifferent to you.’
The two eye each other and then Harry spins back and opens up the bag on the counter. He doesn’t appear to have a problem with my meagre flat. ‘I didn’t know what you liked to drink,’ he says. ‘I got a bottle of red, one of white; miniatures of vodka, whisky, gin and rum; plus a four-pack of ale.’
I look at his unveiled haul and then at him. ‘Are you trying to get me drunk?’
He mock slams a fist on the counter. ‘Damn! You’ve figured me out.’ He straightens himself and then adds: ‘I figured we can have whatever you want and then there’ll be plenty left for next time…’
There’s a twinkle in his eye, but I don’t take the bait. The grin is fixed anyway as he carefully removes two small ceramic pots covered with foil.
‘These are the volcano cakes,’ he says. ‘My gran’s recipe. They only need to be warmed in the oven.’
‘Everyone wants to be a Bake-Off contestant nowadays.’
He laughs: ‘Better than an X Factor wannabe.’
Before we can get any further, the cooker starts to beep, so I shoo Harry out of the kitchen area and unload everything from the oven. There aren’t many places to sit in the flat, largely because there’s so little room, but I do have a fold-down dining table courtesy of the previous tenant. With a clean tablecloth and cutlery, it almost looks as if I don’
t live in a one-room dive.
It’s not long before I’ve served everything up, using the only two plates I own, with my only pair of knives and forks. Harry doesn’t need to know that.
I usually eat on the sofa and Billy would be pacing, looking for scraps or hand-outs. Perhaps it’s the table that’s confusing him, but he remains in his bed, half-asleep. Not even an early-evening firework outside does anything other than make him raise an ear.
We start to eat and Harry only needs one bite to tell me my cooking is fabulous. I offer him a sideways raised eyebrow to let him know I’m not that easily complimented. Besides, it’s not as if I did much myself.
‘Nice place you have here,’ he adds next.
‘You don’t have to say that,’ I reply. ‘What’s yours like?’
He brushes it off with a shrug. ‘It’s an apartment. It is what it is.’
The flat is small enough that the cabinet by the television is within reaching distance. Harry stretches across and picks up one of the photos.
‘Is this you?’ he asks, pointing to a grinning little girl sandwiched between two proud parents.
‘It was after a school play one year,’ I reply. ‘It’s one of my earliest memories. I think I was about six.’
He nods and returns the photo and I can sense him looking around the room for others. Possibly for ones of Ben. I talked about him so much before that it would be no wonder if Harry thinks I’m still somewhat obsessed. Not that I have loads, but everything from the past few years is on my phone anyway.
We continue eating, but it’s suddenly awkward. I try to think of the things I might chat to Karen about, but everything is natural with us. These silences don’t exist. Harry must feel it too, because he glances up from the plate and smiles weakly.
A Face in the Crowd: An absolutely unputdownable psychological thriller Page 12
