Complicit

by Unknown

  As I stood there like that, I heard the phone, not the flat phone, not my mobile, which I had turned off anyway. So that was what I’d forgotten. His mobile. I knew where it would be and the muffled sound of the ringing tone confirmed it. I waited until it stopped, then made myself go back to the body and squat beside it. With half-closed eyes I pushed my hand under it and felt for the rectangle shape. I wriggled my fingers down into the pocket and drew out the mobile. I didn’t put it into the bag, though. I turned it off without looking at who had called him and slid it into my pocket.

  I looked down at him. At it, huge on the floor. Now what? Because I knew that I couldn’t do this alone.

  Before

  Keeping a class of teenagers under control is a bit like conducting an orchestra, except that it’s an orchestra made up of some kind of feral, man-eating beast. It’s one of those animals that can smell your fear; it can see it in your eyes, sense it in the shortness of your breath, the acceleration of your heartbeat. And then it goes for you. But it doesn’t kill you immediately. It’s like a crocodile or a shark that grabs you and plays with you for a while. There were teachers who arrived with confidence and qualifications and thick skin, but just one thing would go wrong and you’d find them crying in the toilets. And when things got really out of control, there was only one thing to be done: send for Miss Hurst.

  Miss Hurst was Sonia, who had become my best friend at the school and then perhaps my best friend out of the school as well. We hadn’t known each other long, but we had got on from the moment we first met in the staff toilets on the first day of term. She wasn’t naturally sociable or extrovert – some of the other teachers felt she held herself aloof – and her wholehearted friendship was like a gift she had conferred on me. She had long dark hair and she was larger than me, taller and more imposing, I guess, but her authority wasn’t about her physical presence, so far as I could tell. I hadn’t properly seen her in action because kids didn’t mess around in my lessons. In fact, it wasn’t really possible for them to do so: shouting and singing and dancing and moving were what you were meant to do in my classes. Her control didn’t have much to do with discipline and nothing whatever to do with threats of punishment, although her contempt, which could be withering, felt a bit like a blow-torch to your ego. She was just so obviously capable. Her subject was chemistry, and obviously you’d trust her to put two chemicals together without blowing the school up – but you also assumed she’d know how to fix a car or pull out a splinter or tie a bow-tie, and she knew how to manipulate that strangest of organisms, a roomful of hormonal teenagers. Just before the end of term, she had put in her application to be the new deputy head, and although she was young for the post, I felt certain she’d be successful: if Sonia was around, you felt safer.

  So, she seemed a natural person to call on. She used to play the violin, rather badly, in the school orchestra, but she could sing. She had a good ear and the right husky sort of voice. She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but she was better than that. She had presence: when she was in a room you wanted to look at her, and when she was in a group you wanted to please her. She held herself well, she was confident without being irritatingly arrogant, and if she could stand in front of a class, she could sing a few old country songs at a wedding.

  I lured her to my flat under false pretences. I fed her on bagel chips and white wine and asked her advice about colour schemes and light fittings. She had strong opinions, of course, much stronger than any of mine. I inquired casually whether she was going away for the summer. She wasn’t; she didn’t have the money for it. I took a breath.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Absolutely not.’

  I filled her glass.

  ‘You’re tempted, aren’t you?’ I said.

  ‘The idea is completely ridiculous.’

  ‘Can’t you imagine yourself standing in front of the musicians, like Nina Simone or Patsy Cline?’

  ‘What musicians?’

  Yes, I thought. She’s going to do it.

  ‘So far just me,’ I said. ‘I mean, actually confirmed.’ I felt obliged to add, ‘The first two people I asked turned me down flat.’

  ‘Who else was in the group? Anyone I know?’

  ‘Amos, of course. That’s when we met.’

  ‘Amos?’ Was I imagining it, or did Sonia flush? I looked away, not wanting to see, not wanting to acknowledge the suspicion that had been growing for several weeks now – that she was interested in him. Why did this make me feel so panicky? After all, they were both free, no betrayal would be involved, everyone had behaved honourably. I hated to think that I wanted to be separate from Amos yet still have him hanker after me. When she spoke next, her voice was determinedly casual. ‘Is he taking part in this?’

  I hesitated. ‘I haven’t asked him. Yet.’

  ‘And it won’t be awkward?’

  ‘Why would it be? It was perfectly amicable, after all.’

  Sonia smiled at me, the moment of awkwardness gone. ‘Breakups are never amicable,’ she said. ‘They’re catastrophes – or they’re amicable for one person and not for the other. When it’s amicable it’s only because neither of them was committed in the first place.’

  I took a sip, more than a sip, of wine and felt it sting my gums. There was a familiar ache in my chest when I thought about Amos – not pain, but the memory of pain, which has lodged itself in your bones and become part of who you are. ‘Well,’ I said lightly, ‘we managed to remain friends, kind of, whatever that means about our relationship in the first place.’ All those high hopes and buoyant plans for the future that hadn’t exploded in some climactic break-up but had gradually withered and died, leaving behind a long-drawn-out dejection, a disappointment in us, in myself. All those months when we both knew but couldn’t admit that the journey we had set out on together was petering out and that one day soon our paths would separate. In some ways I would have preferred Sonia’s catastrophe to the gradual rusting and corrosion we had experienced with a sense of helpless regret.

  ‘Who actually ended it?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Someone must have said the words.’

  ‘Probably it was me. But only because he didn’t have the courage.’

  ‘Was he very upset?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was – but you know that. You saw some of it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sonia. ‘Sad, drunk evenings.’ We grinned at each other ruefully. It seemed a long time ago now; long enough for Sonia to be thinking of taking my place.

  I gave a little shiver. ‘You got me through. You and Sally.’

  ‘And whisky.’ Sonia always deflected sentimentality.

  ‘And whisky, true. Whisky, beer, coffee, music. Speaking of which…’

  ‘Will Amos want to play in a band with you?’

  ‘I haven’t asked. I don’t know.’

  Sonia looked at me intently, then gave a nod. ‘You waited until the third glass of wine before asking me, didn’t you?’

  ‘The second, I think.’

  ‘The third, definitely,’ Sonia said, taking a sip as if to confirm it. ‘On the minus side, you’ve only heard me in the choir.’

  ‘And that karaoke night last year.’

  ‘Was that me?’

  ‘One of the best versions of “I Will Survive” I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘On the plus side, I don’t know any of the people who’ll be in the audience. Does it matter if you make a fool of yourself in front of people who don’t know you?’

  ‘It’s like a tree falling in the forest.’

  After

  I took my mobile out of my bag and turned it on, punched in the first three digits of the number. Then I changed my mind and turned it off again, dropping it back into the bag as if it might burn my fingers. I had read articles in newspapers about how experts can tell not just whom you called on your phone, but precisely where the call was made from. People were caught out like that, alibis broken.

  I couldn’t use the landl
ine, and I couldn’t use his mobile, wedged into my pocket. For a brief moment, I thought of giving up and simply dialling 999, weeping to the impersonal voice at the other end. Thoughts hissed in my brain and I tried to separate them out, think each through. I picked up the keys from the bowl, checking to make sure the flat key was among them. Then – through my sleeve again – I unbolted the door and opened it, giving his body a last swift glance before stepping out onto the landing and closing the door behind me. It gave an agonizing click as I pulled it shut. What if someone saw me? I knew that the family next door were away on holiday, because we had been watering their plants for them – or, rather, I had. The young man who lived upstairs was around, although not during the day and usually not until very late in the evening, and today was Friday, the beginning of the weekend. But perhaps he was ill and lying in bed just above me. Or perhaps he was on his way home right now. He could be turning off Kentish Town Road at this very moment and walking up the little dogleg lane, hand already in his pocket fumbling for the keys. Maybe I’d meet him as I opened the front door. I couldn’t move. I stood on the landing, straining for any sound. I took a deep breath and walked purposefully towards the entrance, trying not to break into a run.

  Now I was on the unlit street and no one else was there. Even though the pain in my ribs knifed through me, I started to jog past the small garage opposite, but it was closed for the night, only the sign advertising MOTs and bodywork repairs flapping idly in the wind. Round the bend, and still it was dark and empty, and at last I was out on the main road, the blessed relief of lorries and cars and motorbikes thundering past, people I didn’t know on the pavement, alone or in laughing huddles, walking slowly because it was summer and the night air was soft and warm. I didn’t know which way to turn for a phone box because I’d never needed one before now. Maybe they would all be boarded up and useless, the dead receiver dangling from its cable. I turned left and went under the railway bridge, striding quickly until at last I saw a red telephone box. Inside it smelled of piss. There was graffiti on the glass and a solitary sticker advertising the services of Mischa, who specialized in massages. I needed change, and fumbled uselessly in my purse for a coin, my fingers thick and clumsy. I dialled the number. Let her be in, let her be in. She was.

  ‘Bonnie? Are you all right?’

  ‘I need your help. Right now. It’s something big.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Hearing her voice calmed me. ‘I can’t, not on the phone. You have to come.’

  She didn’t ask unnecessary questions, just said: ‘All right. Are you at home?’

  I thought of telling her to come to Liza’s flat, but then I remembered she wouldn’t know where that was. Also, I realized it would be better to take her there, rather than having her turn up like a normal person. So we arranged to meet outside the phone box and she said she’d come at once. It wasn’t far.

  I stood outside the box and stared straight ahead, at the people, the plane trees, the orange streetlights, the smudged charcoal horizon. Everything looked unreal, as if I was gazing at a photograph that was slightly out of focus. I turned on my mobile to check the time, then turned it off again. I walked up and down, just twenty paces one way and twenty back. I didn’t want to miss her, though I knew it would take her at least ten minutes, even if she had run out of the house as soon as she put down the phone. I hadn’t smoked for several years, but I went into the twenty-four-hour shop on the corner and bought a packet of Silk Cut and a box of matches. I lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, felt a nauseous dizziness rush through me, spluttered loudly and long. At least it gave me something to do while I waited.

  I wondered whether it was wrong to ask her to help me, to ask anyone. I didn’t really wonder. Of course it was wrong. Everything was wrong. But what was my alternative? And who else could I ask? Who else could I trust to tell me what to do? I smoked a second cigarette, more successfully this time, and ground out the stub with my heel for an unnecessarily long time.

  At last she was there, in a grey cardigan with her long black hair tied back.

  ‘Thank God,’ I said.

  Sonia took my arm. ‘You’re trembling. What’s happened?’

  ‘You have to come with me.’

  We didn’t talk as I led her down the lane. She was walking more slowly than I was, and I had to stop to urge her on. I kept expecting to see someone, although Liza’s flat stood at the dead end of the road, just in front of the railway line, and people hardly ever went down there. Sometimes a group of teenagers would be hanging around, up to something out of view of the main road, but now there was nobody. I unlocked the street door but when I reached the door to the flat I stopped.

  ‘Bonnie?’

  ‘I didn’t know who else to turn to,’ I said. ‘Please don’t make a sound.’

  I unlocked and opened the door and Sonia and I stepped inside. I shut it behind us and drew the bolt.

  Sonia managed somehow to stay silent. I didn’t even hear an intake of breath. She stood just inside the room, the body spread out in front of her, and stared at it. Her arms hung loosely by her sides, her chin was jutted forward slightly, her feet were planted slightly apart as if she was scared she might topple, and her face was blank. It was as if someone had taken a damp cloth and wiped away all traces of emotion and thought. I didn’t speak or move either. I waited. All I could hear was the sound of my breathing.

  At last she shifted her position slightly and spoke in a whisper. ‘It’s…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked around the room as if she was expecting someone else to be standing there. I could see her taking in each separate item: the smashed guitar, the upturned vase and heap of tulips, the chair lying on its side. Her gaze returned to the body. She hadn’t looked at me yet, her eyes darting everywhere but towards me. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That it was you I called.’

  Finally she turned to me. Her eyes flickered. She dropped them from my face to the bruise on my neck.

  ‘Were you and he…?’

  ‘Involved?’ I said. ‘Kind of.’

  She gave a long, deep sigh, as if she had been holding her breath since she stepped over the threshold. Her voice came out in a soft wail. ‘Why am I here?’

  Before

  ‘I don’t know, Bonnie.’

  ‘That means you might?’

  ‘I hardly touch the guitar nowadays.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter!’

  ‘Are you going to tell me it’s like riding a bicycle?’

  ‘Would that persuade you?’

  Neal gave me a smile, which made him look more like the man I remembered from university. We hadn’t seen each other for nearly ten years and even then I hadn’t known him well. He had been a friend of Andy’s and had been hauled in to play bass guitar, reasonably competently. In fact, that was how I used to think of him – as competent, practical. His hair was darker than I’d thought, but not long as it had been then when it had fallen to his shoulders. He had filled out, was no longer the skinny young man everyone in the band had liked because he was always ready to help out, fix things when they broke, ferry things when they needed ferrying. Liza had taken a bit of a shine to him in those days; maybe she had even made a drunken pass. But it had come to nothing, and after university he had slipped out of our lives. I hadn’t really thought about him since.

  We were sitting in the small garden of his tiny house in Stoke Newington. I’d told him, when I’d found his number in the phone book and rung, that I could meet him outside his workplace, but apparently he worked from home, supplying garden sheds to people who didn’t want to move but needed more room. I had an example of the shed in front of me, at the bottom of the garden. He had erected it himself and apparently it served as his office and a demonstration to interested clients of what they could get for their money. It was really just a simple
extra room or a large version of a child’s playhouse, with a pitched roof, two windows, a door, and enough space inside for a sofa, a desk and a bookcase.

  It was mid-morning, and we were drinking coffee in the warm sunlight. Clematis was climbing one wall and the flower-beds were crammed with plants. A bee buzzed above my head. I took a sip of coffee, leaned back in my chair and sighed. ‘This is good,’ I said. ‘I’m not surprised you work from home.’

  ‘It’s not always like this.’

  ‘I’ve got a flat that’s about as big as your shed, but not nearly as nice. Maybe I should get one to live in.’

  He laughed. I saw a faint scar slanting from the corner of his left eye. His eyebrows were thick and dark. I found myself wondering if anyone lived with him in his little house, helped him water his flowers and do the accounts.

  ‘All right,’ Neal said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘You will?’

  ‘I’m not going away until the end of September this year. It’ll brighten up my summer.’

  We looked at each other. Both of us were smiling.