by Unknown
Not that it was a particularly brilliant hiding-place. What if someone who came to the flat suddenly did something that needed lots of sugar, like making lemonade or baking a cake, emptied the jar and found the key? It sounded stupid, but what would I actually say?
I got up, ran to the kitchen and plunged my hand into the jar. I suddenly thought: What if it isn’t there? But, of course, it was. I placed it on the table and sat and stared at it. It was like a talisman, representing my contact with Hayden, my guilt. It almost exuded energy, so that I hardly dared touch it. Instead I thought about it so intensely that I almost felt dizzy. What I needed to do was throw it, and the flat key I still had, away somewhere they would never be found. Why on earth hadn’t I done that in the first place? Why? I tried to interpret the motives of this other person, the earlier me, who had abandoned the car. There must have been a reason, even if I hadn’t articulated it to myself at the time.
I forced myself to think about this, even though it was in the past and all I really wanted was to shut it away. Yes, there had been a reason for keeping the key. If I had thrown it away, I would have lost my last chance of doing anything to the car. If I had remembered a mistake I had made, something I had left behind, there would have been nothing I could do about it. Now the car and its location wormed their way into my thoughts. Was leaving it there really such a great idea? If the police started to search for his car, wouldn’t an airport car park be one of the first places they’d look? It wasn’t as if they’d have to check all those thousands of vehicles one by one. They’d probably just have to type the registration number into a database. They’d be able to find the exact time the car had arrived there, which would give them the time of Hayden’s disappearance. They could start asking for alibis. Was it really likely that we hadn’t left some traces in the car? Even if we hadn’t, the photograph of us entering the car park would show a woman driving. There were too many weaknesses. I made myself think and think and, with a sickening lurch, realized where my thoughts were taking me. I was like a person with vertigo who was making herself walk to the edge of a very steep cliff and lean over as far as possible to stare down into the depths.
I washed and dressed, but it was too early to go out. I needed to wait until the shops opened, and I wanted to get to the airport when there were lots of people around. The key lay in front of me, burning a hole in the table, as I drank cup after cup of coffee and hunted through the phone book until I found what I needed. I tore a corner off a newspaper and wrote the address down.
It was eight thirty when I finally left the flat. First I went to a cash machine and withdrew £300. I was now £233 overdrawn: how would I pay my mortgage next week, or buy food? I walked up the high street until I reached a shop I vaguely remembered but had never been into before. It sold strange clothes at unbelievably cheap prices. I bought a garish pair of maroon slacks for five pounds, a horrible sweatshirt that bore the slogan Spalsboro Sports Club and a picture of an eagle for two pounds, and a pair of cotton gloves for two pounds fifty. I went back to the flat, put them on and faced myself in the mirror. I looked strange. I looked poor. But it didn’t matter. All I needed was the cash and the key.
I went out to Stansted on the train, surrounded by people with luggage, heading off on holiday. I stared out of the window at the canals, the vast construction projects, the scrubland that eventually gave way to a brief moment of countryside. I felt another sudden stab of horror. The car-park ticket. What had we done with it? I was almost sure we’d left it in the car. I thought of ringing Sonia, then decided not to. I’d probably have to tell her what I’d done, but I’d leave it till afterwards. Was it in the car? What would I do if it wasn’t? I’d just have to leave the car, go back to Plan A, and worry about it for the rest of my life.
When I got out of the terminal building, ready to catch the shuttle to the long-term car park, I realized I needed to know which zone to get to. There were twenty-six, one for each letter. I had parked there before and I’d always remember the letter by connecting it with something I knew, a name, a place, a pet. But I hadn’t done that this time. I hadn’t thought I’d be coming back. I ran through the alphabet in my mind. The letters all seemed neutral. A, B, C, D, E, F, G… That was it. G for God. All-knowing, all-powerful, non-existing. At least, that was what I hoped. I got on the bus.
When I reached the car I found the ticket in the glove compartment. Everything went easily. I had to go into the office to pay £80.20 but the girl behind the counter barely looked at me and there was no camera when I drove out of the barrier. They’re not bothered about you when you leave, just so long as you’ve paid.
When I got to London, I turned off into Walthamstow towards the address I’d written down. It was perfect. The SupaShine Twenty-Four-Seven Car Cleaning Service was located on what must previously have been a petrol station or a car showroom. As I pulled in, I saw a large group of overalled young men hard at work with hoses and sponges on a row of cars. I removed my gloves, because they made me look insane. I got out and an extremely fat man holding a clipboard came up to me. ‘You want standard wash and leather?’ he said.
‘What else do you do?’
He pointed up at the sign on the wall.
‘What’s the Interior Valet?’ I asked.
He sniffed. ‘Vacuum and shampoo all carpets, including boot carpet. Clean every surface, remove rubbish, clean the ashtrays.’
He peered at the car dubiously. It was absolutely filthy.
‘What about the exterior?’ he said.
That didn’t matter so much but I didn’t want him to remember me and he had probably never in his entire life been asked to clean the inside of a car and not the outside. ‘And the exterior as well,’ I said. ‘Of course.’
He walked over and looked more closely at Hayden’s shoddy old Rover with its rusting sills and balding tyres. ‘It’s usually company cars that have the Executive,’ he said.
‘I borrowed it,’ I said. ‘I promised to have it washed before I gave it back.’
‘That’ll be ninety pounds,’ he said, with a shrug.
‘A bargain,’ I said, and counted the money out.
‘It’ll take about half an hour,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a waiting room.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
For the next half-hour I stood in the warm morning sunshine in a part of London I had never visited and watched the men doing what Sonia and I should have done, which was to scour every surface, vacuum-clean and remove a surprising amount of clutter, some of which may have been things that we – more probably I – had dropped by mistake. Better still I heard the men talking to each other in a language, or languages, I didn’t understand. I knew this type of place. They employed recent immigrants, low wages, no questions asked, high turnover. Nobody would remember me. Nobody would even still be here should any questions be asked. Nobody would remember the woman from the non-existent Spalsboro Sports Club.
I put my gloves back on and drove away, but only went a few hundred yards before turning left onto a busy road full of down-at-heel Internet cafés, shops selling cheap umbrellas, greengrocers with tubs containing fruit I couldn’t name, a seedy taxidermist’s, a barber, a shop selling canaries, budgerigars and hamsters in cages that were stacked up in the window, and another offering hardware. It was a poor and crowded area – perfect for my purposes. I pulled up behind a white van delivering fizzy drinks, checked that I had left nothing on the seats to incriminate me, turned off the engine but left the key in the ignition, got out and strolled away, trying to look nonchalant. Now someone just had to steal it. Surely that wouldn’t take long.
I had planned to go straight home, but I suddenly found I was so tired and so dizzy with a sensation that might have been hunger or might have been fear that I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I stumbled down the street until I came to a café with two tables by the window and a counter full of doughnuts and pastries. I ordered a cup of tea and a blueberry muffin and sat at a table. The
tea was tepid and stewed and I had to drink it in hasty sips; the muffin had seen better days. It was like sawdust in my mouth, but nevertheless I could feel its sweetness giving me energy.
Outside the window life was going on. Women pulling toddlers passed by, teenagers in a gaggle, solitary men – some walking slowly and others with a quick and purposeful stride. There were a lot of cars, barely moving on the traffic-clogged road. Motorbikes and lorries too. And – I blinked but there could be no mistaking it – a tow-truck with a rusty old Rover on it. Hayden’s Rover. The Rover I had left with the key in the ignition to be stolen. How had that happened? It had taken them less than half an hour to tow away the car I’d left to be stolen. Had I parked it on a red line? Surely not. Now, instead of Hayden’s car getting its number plate ripped off and being driven around London by a thief, it had been taken away by the traffic police. Had I ruined anything? And then I thought: Maybe not. Maybe I had found a good way of getting rid of the car. Or was it a disaster? I didn’t know and there was nothing I could do about it. It was too late.
An hour later, I was back at home. I took my crazy clothes off and put real ones on, then walked around Camden, depositing the slacks, the sweatshirt and the two gloves in four different litter-bins. Then, with great unwillingness, I rang Sonia and told her I needed to meet her and, yes, it was urgent and, no, there was nothing to worry about and, yes, it should just be me and her, so she told me about a pub along the road from where she lived. I met her there and bought two glasses of wine, and we went outside on the pavement into the sunshine and I told her everything I had done. When I had finished, Sonia was silent.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘You idiot,’ she said loudly.
‘Sonia,’ I hissed. A couple were sitting at one of the picnic tables out on the pavement and the man looked at us.
‘You stupid, stupid idiot,’ she repeated, but this time in a furious whisper. ‘What the hell were you playing at?’
‘I thought it was too risky to leave it in the car park,’ I said. ‘We might have left some trace. We should have washed it first, washed away any clues. We were bound to have left something. Fibres, I don’t know. And they would have found it soon, just standing there.’
‘How do you know?’ said Sonia. The effort to keep her voice down seemed painful. ‘How can you possibly know?’
‘They must have some way of checking after a couple of weeks,’ I said. ‘Otherwise people would go and dump cars in airport car parks all the time.’
‘What if you’d had a breakdown?’ said Sonia. ‘Or an accident? Or been caught by a speed camera? Or been stopped by police?’
‘It seems mad…’
‘So you’ve just handed Hayden’s car to the police? That was your plan?’
‘It wasn’t what I had in mind but it’s not really the police,’ I said. ‘I’ve had cars towed away a couple of times. They take them to the pound.’
‘Yes?’ said Sonia angrily. ‘And then?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that. I suppose it’ll just stand there,’ I said. ‘And I suppose they’ll send out a letter and then another, but as he had no permanent address, who knows how long it will taken them to trace it back? And even if the police do discover it, so what? What’s suspicious? And now it’s not tied to the time of Hayden’s disappearance.’
Sonia took a sip of wine, then a large gulp. ‘Something’s wrong,’ she said. ‘You’ll have been caught on a CCTV camera or something.’
‘It was the right thing to do,’ I said.
‘There are cameras everywhere. Remember – surveillance society?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I thought I needed to get it scrubbed down. At least I’ve done that.’
‘We made a plan,’ said Sonia. ‘I haven’t said this before but I’m saying it now. You brought me into this. I helped you. We made a plan. You can’t just wake up in the night, have a bright idea, change everything and only tell me about it after.’
‘The plan was wrong.’
‘It wasn’t. Or if it was, it wasn’t as wrong as undoing it and making another wrong one. If they’d found the car, they’d have assumed he’d left the country. What will they think now?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said unhappily. ‘It doesn’t matter. They probably won’t think anything. Does anyone really care, apart from us?’ And then I remembered my bag arriving in the post and the adrenalin of terror sloshed through me again. ‘Hardly anyone.’
Before
‘Miss Graham! Miss Graham! I did it!’
I looked at the slip of paper and then at her. She had a grin splitting her face in half and two fat tears rolling down her cheeks. I put my arms around her and kissed her. ‘That’s fantastic, Maud,’ I said. ‘And well deserved.’
‘I can’t believe it. I’m so happy. I’m so happy.’ And she was off, running across the grass to a group of girls who were hugging each other, squealing and taking photographs with their mobiles. I looked around me at all the young people walking into the school with their faces set in tense apprehension, or coming out with their envelopes in their hands, my ex-students, in groups or alone.
I hate results days at school. However many get the grades they need, there are always some whose hopes are dashed. The worst is collecting GCSEs – that would be next week – when large groups of students, who haven’t worked, whom you’ve known from their first day at the school and will probably leave with few qualifications, gather for this ritual public humiliation. But even today, collecting A levels, felt brutal enough. Looking around the scattered crowds, I could tell immediately which ones had done badly: not just Amy, weeping onto the shoulder of her best friend, but Steven Lowe, laughing and shrugging, pretending he didn’t care and fooling no one, a shy young man called Rob, who looked as if he had been punched in the stomach and was having trouble standing upright, Lorrie and Frank, sucking desperately at cigarettes.
Along with nine other teachers, I had been there since half past eight and it was now ten o’clock. Generally, the day got worse before it ended: the students who expected to do well usually turned up first thing. Others came later, dragging their heels, acting indifference, putting off the moment of bitter and anticipated truth.
Then I saw a figure I knew, slouching nonchalantly along with his hands in the pockets of his jeans and a cigarette hanging from his lower lip. Joakim spotted me and lifted his hand but didn’t stop and I watched him as he sauntered towards the table where his envelope was lying. His neck and shoulders were stiff, but then I watched them relax. That was the nearest he got to expressing relief or gladness. He rolled the piece of paper loosely into a hollow tube, stopped for a few seconds to talk to a mate, let a girl with blonde pigtails cover him with lipstick kisses, shook the hand of Joe Robbins, the school head, then turned to go.
‘OK?’ I said to him, as he passed.
‘All right.’ A smile quivered on his mouth. He handed the printout to me to read.
‘Terrific,’ I said, putting my hand on his arm and seeing his cheeks glow with pleasure. ‘You should be very proud of yourself.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Go and celebrate,’ I said, as a boy hollered at him to join them. ‘I’ll see you this evening.’
‘You will?’
‘Our dry run – at the barbecue. You’re the one who arranged it.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘You’ll be there?’
‘Sure. I’d be going to the party anyway. It’s a celebrate-or-drown-your-sorrows thing. Our gig can just be a little break in the drinking.’
By the time we started to play, it was threatening rain. A hot wind shook fat drops from the sky. There must have been at least 150 young people there, most of whom were already drunk when they arrived – and if they weren’t, they quickly proceeded to become so, swilling back cans of beer, smoking joints and eating burned sausages or grey burgers. I saw a boy I had taught several years ago vomit into the shrubbery, groaning and weeping as he did so. Nobody really took
much notice of our music, except to cheer and cat-call Joakim. Many of them knew Sonia and me, at least by sight, and there was a comical double-take when they saw us standing there. But they quickly forgot about us and all of the old hierarchies. The ex-school captain took a year-twelve girl behind the shed where he seemed to believe they were invisible. The leader of the school council threw a stone at the cat. The band played on.
‘Did you hear about Joakim’s results?’ said Guy in the break, a look of barely restrained smugness on his face. ‘Did he tell you?’
‘I know. Fantastic.’
‘He’s a star,’ added Sonia.
‘It’s a relief as much as anything.’
Hayden had taken himself off to a group of teenagers, including Joakim, who were gathered at the end of the garden. Ripples of their laughter drifted over to where we stood. They were passing round a thick joint and I saw Guy glance at them, then away.
‘He’s going to Edinburgh, isn’t he?’ I asked, to distract him.
‘Yes. Less than six weeks. His mother will miss him.’
‘What about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Won’t you miss him?’
‘It’s different for a father,’ said Guy. I opened my mouth to argue, then shut it again. ‘Anyway, we’ve been squabbling so much lately it’ll be good for us both to get a bit of distance. He’s itching to leave home. I said,’ he raised his voice for his son and Hayden, who were making their way down the garden towards us, ‘that you’re itching to leave home.’
‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly.’ Joakim cast a pleading look at Hayden.
‘I don’t blame you,’ said Guy. ‘Maybe I’ve been a bit hard on you lately.’
‘Nah.’ Joakim shuffled his feet.
‘I was saying to Bonnie and Sonia that your mother will miss you. But so will I.’
‘Oh, but you don’t need to say goodbye just yet,’ said Hayden, buoyantly.
