‘What happened?’
‘One of the neighbours called,’ said Laramie, ‘they thought Mickey was in trouble. I came over and found her on the front step, a pile of vomit on one side, a bottle of Merlot on the other.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Nothing I haven’t seen before.’
‘Can I visit? Or maybe I could talk with her on the phone? There’s something I want to ask her about, it’s kind of urgent.’
Laramie was firm.
‘She can’t see or talk to anyone, not for a while.’
Hannah wished her well, told her to shout if she could help in any way and hung up. She felt at more of a loss than ever. About John, about Jem, but mostly Mickey. Everything seemed to be disintegrating, dissolving into tiny pieces.
A click and Aisling shot out the front door, pulling her massage table in its bag on wheels behind her. Wearing leggings and a T-shirt branded with the purple and orange RUB logo of the physiotherapy clinic she worked at, she’d fixed her curls into a pair of French braids and tamed the escapee strands at her temples with a complex arrangement of slides and clips.
‘Sorry I’m late.’ She bumped the table down the steps. ‘He wanted a bit extra on his rhomboids.’ She gave Hannah a hug. ‘We best walk fast, I’ve got a pinched nerve on the Vale of Health in fifteen minutes.’ She charged toward the cut that led to the Heath. ‘So, how is life with the convict?’
Aisling had yet to come to the house. Hannah wasn’t sure if she was scared to see Jem up close or if there was something else keeping her away.
‘Odd,’ said Hannah, wondering where to start. She broke into a half-run, trying to keep up, and gave her a summary of everything that had happened in the last few days. Marzipan Rain, the strange warning call, how John had been trying to track down a man who was later rumoured to have killed a police officer. Finally, she told her about her call with Laramie just now, how Mickey had been admitted to rehab.
‘There’s a chance Jem’s telling the truth,’ said Hannah once she was done. Then she said the words she’d been wanting to voice for a while. ‘Ash, what if they arrested the wrong guy?’
Aisling’s eyes widened.
‘He murdered John in cold blood. They have his fingerprints, they have him on CCTV.’ Hannah was taken aback by her friend’s anger, the force of it. ‘What other possible explanation could there be?’
They emerged onto the Heath and Aisling surged forward, tackling the slope at speed. The grass stretched for miles, dogs tearing across the open ground like pinballs. Hannah had lived and walked here for years but coming upon the vast stretch of space and sky never failed to surprise her. Living in the city, she wasn’t used to being able to look off into any real distance, and it always took a moment for her eye muscles to adjust.
‘That night, before John left the bar,’ she said when they’d reached the top of the incline. ‘Jem said it sounded like he was talking to a woman.’ Lolloping hills spread out before them, the grass tufty and yellowed. ‘That he was on his way to meet her.’ She grabbed her pendant – holding the stone grounded her – and held it in front of her like a compass.
Aisling frowned.
‘I’m late.’
She picked up the pace and they soon reached a pocket of woodland. The trees were filled with the luminous green parakeets that populated this part of London, but the prolonged summer had left the birds sluggish and the wood was silent.
‘I worry about you.’ Hannah gestured at Aisling’s table. ‘Rubbing naked strangers.’
The ground was rougher here, the stones pushing up through the baked mud like a reptile’s back.
‘Think of it as Uber, but for injured shoulders,’ Aisling said, her face growing red with exertion. ‘They book me through the app and so all their details are registered online.’ They broached a particularly bumpy bit of ground and the table wobbled, almost tipping over onto its side. Aisling stopped to right it, her breath ragged. ‘Plus, there are the things I do on the app to keep myself safe. I use my soap star name so they can’t stalk me on social media.’
‘Your what?’
‘Stacey Tweed. My soap star name. It’s your middle name plus the name of the first street you ever lived on.’
Again, the terrain changed. One side of the path was now dense with undergrowth, trees and brambles, the other dropped away to a muddy ravine.
‘You could always come back to making cakes. God knows I could use the help.’ Aisling’s dreams of becoming a zoologist had not panned out. After trying and failing to get on a degree course, she had ended up working at the Vulture Preservation Society as a press assistant and topping up her paltry salary with evening and weekend work assisting Hannah. Even now she loved to regale people with carrion facts and could often be found at parties dazzling some unsuspecting guest with the story of how antibiotic use in cattle almost wiped out the Indian vulture population. But then eighteen months ago, Aisling had decided she’d had enough of vultures and red velvet cupcakes and retrained as a masseuse.
‘I’ve got so much on,’ said Hannah, ‘I could do with another pair of—’ She was cut off by a man sprinting across the path in front of them. Wearing a suit and tie, he passed by so fast and close his elbow almost clipped Aisling’s shoulder.
‘Where is he off to in such a hurry?’ But no sooner had she recovered when three women appeared from the same section of undergrowth and, after scanning the horizon, set off down the ravine at speed in pursuit of the man. The women all had slender Barre-core toned bodies clad in leggings with sheer panels across the calf and thigh.
‘What,’ said Aisling, putting her hands on her hips, ‘was that?’
‘Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem good.’ Hannah made to go but Aisling remained where she was.
The man was zooming toward a cluster of trees at the bottom of the ravine. A streak of grey, every few seconds he turned his head, checking on the women’s progress. He reached the copse and disappeared inside, the women following soon after.
‘He seemed terrified.’ Aisling checked her watch, torn between wanting to find out what was going on and getting to her next client on time.
Aisling had a tendency to get involved. Over the years, Hannah had seen her step in and break up a street fight, talk someone out of throwing themselves in front of a tube and rugby-tackle a mugger trying to make off with a stolen handbag.
‘Aisling, no,’ Hannah said. But she was already gone, hurtling down the slope toward the trees, her massage table abandoned where it stood.
Hannah stayed where she was, hoping Aisling would change her mind, but when she too was swallowed by the undergrowth, she hid the massage table in a bush and skidded off down the slope to find her. After picking her way through a mass of holly and bramble, she came out onto the edge of a small clearing. There were more green parakeets here. They dozed in clusters, garish in the trees.
Hannah saw Aisling first. Standing off to the right, she was staring at something. Hannah followed her gaze and saw the man, prostrate on the floor, his head rucked against a tree root. In his early thirties, he had a smooth pink head circled by severely cropped hair, and beneath his glasses were dark, pebble eyes. His nose twitched, as though he was resisting a sneeze, and Hannah was put in mind of a dormouse emerging from hibernation.
Two of the Barre-core women were holding him down, one on each arm. Skeletal oak leaves clung to their leggings’ sheer panels.
‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ said Aisling. ‘But you need to let him go.’
The women ignored her and the one who wasn’t holding the man down reached into a canvas Hampstead Butcher tote and pulled out a black device that looked like a walkie-talkie. She pressed a button and a bright blue worm danced in the dip at the top.
A taser.
She approached the man from the side. ‘This is none of your business.’
‘You’re not seriously going to use that?’ said Aisling.
The woman kneeled on the floor and the man swung hi
s pelvis up in the air and kicked his legs wildly. His toe caught her on the chin and she shrank back.
‘You can’t just assault someone in broad daylight.’
‘This isn’t assault,’ said the woman. She straddled the man’s ankles, pinning his legs with her body weight, and began moving the taser toward his groin. ‘We’re teaching him a lesson.’
‘If he’s done something wrong you should go to the police.’
‘What and have him as my new housemate?’ A hollow laugh. ‘No thanks.’
She turned on the taser and the man moved his face to the side. His glasses fell into the dirt.
‘Let him go.’
Aisling got out her phone and started taking pictures. The shutter sound gave the woman pause. She turned round. Aisling waited until she had her full attention, then brought up her keypad and dialled 999. She showed the woman the screen, her finger poised over the green call button.
‘Let him go or I’ll tell the police.’
The woman looked to the other two, asking for guidance.
‘Even if she calls them,’ said one, ‘it’s not like he’s going to press charges.’
‘You really want to take that risk?’ said Aisling, her finger still over the button.
They held him captive a few moments more and then, after a last glance at Aisling and her phone, released their grip. The man scrambled sideward.
‘You’re making a mistake.’ The woman replaced the taser in her bag and went to rejoin her pack. ‘He’ll do it again and when he does it’ll be your fault.’
‘Do what?’
But they were already retreating, picking their way through the bushes from which they had come.
Aisling collected the man’s glasses from the ground and went to help him to his feet. His suit was covered in dirt.
‘Thank you,’ he said, brushing himself down.
‘Here.’ Aisling offered him her phone. ‘Report them.’
‘I don’t want any trouble.’ He shook Aisling’s hand. ‘Thank you again though, really.’
His nose twitched one last time and then he sneezed, a long drawn-out staccato.
Before Aisling could say anything more he jogged off in the opposite direction to the three women, and after pushing through the foliage, he was gone.
Hannah took Aisling’s hand and went to lead them both back up the ravine.
A cloud appeared, obscuring the sun. The sudden drop in temperature woke the parakeets from their stupor. The wood rang out with a thousand squawks. An alarum.
It sounded like people screaming.
Jem
I’m woken by the smell of coffee and toast. I turn onto my back and my cheek grazes the wall. I’m normally up and about before Hannah comes downstairs but the last few nights have taken their toll. I’ve slept in.
I slide out from under the bed, grab my red and white baseball cap from the pillow and put it on top of the cupboard.
Hannah places a tray through the hatch.
‘Breakfast.’
‘Thanks.’ I take it to my table and sit. I’m tired but I feel good, hopeful. I’m making progress.
Hannah settles in a dining chair and, after pricking her finger, she blots the blood against a thin test strip and slots it in the meter.
‘Looks like another lovely day,’ I say, nodding at the sky.
She looks at me carefully, breathes out, then purses her lips. It’s like she can’t decide how to reply, like she wants to say something, or ask something, but she’s worried about making a mistake.
The machine beeps with the result. She checks the number, gives herself a shot of insulin and reaches for her toast.
I realise she’s in her pyjamas. Until now she’s always been showered and dressed before she makes an appearance. The pyjamas are too big for her and the sleeves hang low over her wrists. I wonder if she prefers them like this or if they once belonged to her husband.
We eat in silence, Hannah working her way through a pile of post. She opens and discards the first two letters but the third envelope gives her pause. She reads it through twice, her face creased into a frown, then she tuts and shoves the piece of paper back into the envelope and down into her handbag on the floor.
Alina was right, she is attractive, but not in the bland girl-next-door way she described. Her reddish brown eyes are fierce, her blond hair startling. It’s the kind of beauty that seems to hail from another time or another world.
She pours herself a second coffee and holds the cafetière in the air, asking if I want more. I put my mug through the bars and she comes over and tops me up. Our movements are slow and lazy, the morning light soft, the horizon a smear of yellow and pink.
‘How do your family feel?’ she says, gesturing at the cell. ‘About you being here?’
I pause, trying to work out how best to answer.
‘I don’t have any,’ I say, ‘not anymore.’
‘Oh.’ She considers this. ‘Your visitor. She’s your girlfriend?’
‘An old mate.’ I smile. ‘I’m single.’
‘Oh, right, I thought . . .’
‘Afraid not.’
The radio murmurs in the background, the news giving way to an old pop song. The opening bars are full of yearning for a first love and a summer long ago and, hearing them, Hannah comes to.
‘It must be boring,’ she says, her voice louder than before. She’s brisk, businesslike. ‘I know you have your books but . . .’ She looks around, searching for ideas. ‘I could move the TV down?’
‘Radio and books are more than fine.’ She thinks we’re done but just as she turns to sit I speak. ‘Although . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Maybe one night, if you’re not busy, we could play a board game?’
She frowns for a second, before grinning.
‘A board game?’
‘Yahtzee,’ I say, dead serious.
Her eyes widen, her glee growing as she absorbs my request. She shakes her head.
‘But I have to warn you,’ I say, posturing. ‘I’m good.’
‘Yahtzee?’ she says, still delighting in the unlikely nature of my request.
‘The fun game that makes thinking fun!’ I say reciting the catchphrase printed on the outside of every box.
She shakes her head and, chuckling, returns her attention to her toast.
I look at the fridge magnets, the letters fixed into the last words John arranged before he died. Even from here I can see their tops are furred with the dust, their edges grimy.
It’s strange to think Hannah and I might grow older together.
Twenty years.
I’ve been so focused on the task at hand that I haven’t let myself think about what that means. How my prime – the time when I should be getting married and having kids – is going to be spent here, in this cage.
Finished with her breakfast, she takes her plate over to the sink. White boxes sit stacked on the countertop, packed with cupcakes. She lifts each lid in turn, inspecting her handiwork. When she reaches the last box she hovers her finger right to left, then reaches in and pulls out a cupcake. Dark chocolate sponge with a tiny green Frankenstein monster on top. Then she hands it to me through the bars.
‘Still a few weeks away but, happy Halloween!’
I turn it left and right. The silver bolts at the sides of the monster’s neck are precise and symmetrical.
‘What is this made out of?’ I hold the cake in the air. ‘Him I mean.’
‘Three things.’ She holds a trio of fingers in the air and smiles. ‘Pure. Unadulterated. Sugar,’ she says, lowering each digit in turn. ‘They should come with a health warning.’
‘Are you baking today?’ I keep my tone light.
‘No, I—’
She stops. Something has caught her eye.
I tense.
What is she looking at?
She reaches for the pile of post on the table.
‘Almost forgot.’ She hands me an envelope. ‘This came.�
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A green kangaroo logo sits next to the stamp. It’s from Roost, the social storage company I use to house my things. It’s an unusual set-up – the website lets people offer their spare garage, attic or cupboard space for a price online – but it’s cheap and what with everything, I’m grateful for the fact it’s so random. The Brixton loft where I keep my stuff would be the last place someone would think to look.
I turn over the envelope in my hands. I pay the Roost providers, a retired couple called Rita and Winston, by direct debit, so it can’t be an invoice. Besides, Roost tend to correspond by email.
When I read what’s inside my stomach drops, quick and sudden as a lift whose cables have been cut.
Rita and Winston are moving house and can no longer honour our agreement. Any monies I am owed will be refunded and I have twenty-eight days to remove my things. The small print informs me that if I do not do this by the specified date then the providers have the right to dispose of my stuff however they wish. They’ve written to me by snail mail as a last resort, having had no response to their digital correspondence and phone calls.
I do the numbers in my head. All post has to be vetted by the prison service and so it gets to me on a delay. The letter is dated two weeks earlier, 2nd October. I’ve got a fortnight to sort something out.
I feel like I’ve been at the wheel of a car, navigating it expertly around hairpin bends and up and down steep hills, only for the steering column to sheer. Now, when I turn the wheel there is no resistance. It spins, loose and free.
Hannah grabs an apple from the bowl and heads toward the stairs.
‘See you at lunch.’
She takes a bite. The crunch jolts me back to the kitchen, to the cage. I realise I still don’t know her plans for the day, whether she’s in or out.
Hannah
The Virgin Active was at the bottom of Camden High Street. Set back from the stalls of cherry-red Doc Martens and feathered dreamcatchers, it was all glass and neon and looked more like a nightclub than a gym. John had come here two or three times a week to swim or do circuits.
The Captive Page 10
