by Paris, B. A.
Crossing over the road outside, I cut through the square to the main entrance, which takes me all of five minutes, and that’s walking slowly. It’s lovely, though. With its benches and play area, it’s perfect for both children and older residents. Something for everyone; that’s the beauty of the place. But the play area, complete with swings and slides, is definitely in need of a few coats of paint, which explains the messages Leo and I saw on the WhatsApp group about maintenance.
I don’t know London at all and the cacophony of car horns and sirens that hits me as soon as I leave The Circle is overwhelming. The overcrowded streets and people jostling to get past are also new to me and I realise how cocooned I’ve been in Harlestone, where the loudest noise are the combine-harvesters reaping crops in the surrounding fields during early summer. Still, there’s something invigorating about the buzz, the feeling that I’m part of a bigger picture, and I quickly pick up my pace to match that of the Londoners. With the help of Citymapper, I make my way to Finsbury Park. By the time I arrive, I feel as if I’ve completed an assault course.
In Harlestone, I can walk for hours over the fields without meeting anyone. It only takes me an hour to walk around the park but I’m pleased to have somewhere I can go without fear of being run over. Also, I need to stop comparing my life before, and my life now.
I arrive back at The Circle and as I tap the code in at the side gate, the main gate opens and Maria’s people carrier drives through. She waves, so I turn right, walking past numbers 12, 11 and 10 until I get to number 9.
‘Hi, Alice!’ she calls, as she gets out of the car. ‘How are you? Have you settled in?’
‘Yes, more or less. I’ve just been for a walk.’
‘It’s beautiful today, isn’t it? I didn’t have any appointments this afternoon so I decided to leave work early and pick up the children from school.’ Two boys scramble from the car while she lifts out the littlest one, who must be about three years old, and slides the heavy door shut. ‘Go on, into the house, boys. Ask Daddy to get you some juice.’
‘I’m sorry you couldn’t come on Saturday night,’ I say, walking down the drive towards her.
She gives me a rueful smile. ‘Me too.’ She has the gentlest of faces, with wide brown eyes and high cheekbones. ‘The babysitters we usually use deserted us.’
‘Yes, Tim said. It was nice that he was able to come.’
‘Tim?’ A frown creases her forehead. ‘I don’t think so. He was here with me and the boys. Unless he went over to yours, once I’d gone to bed.’
‘He must have done, because he was definitely there.’
She shakes her head in amusement. ‘Cheeky sod. He never said anything to me about it.’ Grabbing her handbag from the floor of the passenger seat, she moves to the door and shouts into the hall. ‘Tim, you never told me you went to Alice and Leo’s on Saturday!’
‘Hold on!’ he calls back. ‘I can’t hear what you’re saying.’
‘Selective hearing,’ Maria mouths as he comes to stand in the doorway beside her.
‘Sorry, what did you say?’ He looks over to where I’m standing. ‘Hi,’ he says. ‘Are you our new neighbour?’
And I find myself staring at a man I’ve never seen before.
Six
The weirdest of feelings comes over me, a sense that something is about to happen that I’m not going to like.
‘But – you’re Tim?’ I say, confused.
He laughs. ‘I was last time I looked.’
‘But not the Tim who came to the house on Saturday.’ I turn to Maria. ‘Well, that explains it, it was another Tim.’
‘I didn’t think he’d have sneaked out without telling me.’
‘Sneaked out where?’ Tim asks.
‘To Alice and Leo’s, on Saturday.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘I know you didn’t. But there was someone called Tim, and Alice assumed it was you.’
I look at this Tim, registering the differences. He’s not quite as tall, not quite as slim and not quite as dark-haired as the man I saw. Or quite as good-looking. And he’s wearing a striped rugby shirt, which I can’t imagine the other Tim wearing.
‘Is there another Tim living in The Circle?’ I ask. ‘With a wife called Maria?’
‘Not that I know of,’ Maria says. ‘Unless someone new moved in over the summer. Wow, imagine having our name doubles living here!’
‘She might be known as Mary rather than Maria. Maybe there’s a Tim and Mary?’
Tim shakes his head. ‘Are you sure he introduced himself as Tim?’
‘Yes.’ I laugh to hide my uneasiness, because it’s just occurred to me that the man never actually said his name was Tim. I’d said ‘you must be Tim’ and had let him in without waiting for him to say whether he was or not. And what about him calling his wife Mary rather than Maria? Was that because he’d misunderstood what I’d said and had looked for something to cover the slip he’d made?
‘How old was he?’ Maria asks.
‘It’s difficult to say – early forties, maybe?’
I tell them as much as I can about the other Tim but they can’t come up with anyone who fits his description.
There’s a crash from inside the house. ‘Better get back to the boys,’ Tim says hastily.
‘It’ll be someone’s brother, or someone who just happened to walk in off the road and slip through the gate behind someone,’ Maria says. ‘Since Will was in that television series, there’ve been a couple of instances where fans have got in.’
‘He didn’t look like a fan.’
Realising I’m being boring, I decide to stop talking about the man who gate-crashed the party. But I can’t get him out of my mind so during my fifty-yard walk home, past numbers 8 and 7, I call Leo.
‘Did you speak to someone called Tim on Saturday evening?’ I say, after I’ve asked him about his day.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Could you try and remember whether you did or not? It’s important.’
There’s a pause. ‘I don’t remember a Tim. Why?’
I see Geoff coming across the square with two bags of heavy shopping and give him a wave. ‘Because a man called Tim came along and I thought it was Maria’s husband from—’
‘It couldn’t have been,’ Leo interrupts. ‘I saw him this morning as I was leaving and he apologised for not being able to come.’
‘I know, I was just talking to him.’ I stop at the bottom of our drive and dig in my pocket for my keys. ‘The thing is, there doesn’t seem to be another Tim living here.’ Tucking my phone under my chin to unlock the front door, I launch in to an explanation of the conversation I’d had with the stranger.
‘Wait a minute,’ Leo says when I get to the end. ‘He didn’t actually say his name was Tim? You said “you must be Tim” and that was it? He never actually said that he was?’
‘He didn’t say that he wasn’t,’ I say defensively, stepping into the hall and kicking off my trainers.
‘And the thing about his wife – you said Maria and he said Mary?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Tall, dark hair, grey eyes, smartly dressed,’ I recite, padding to the kitchen in my bare feet, the wooden floor deliciously cool beneath my feet. ‘Does it ring any bells?’
‘None at all. Maybe you should ask around. He must have spoken to someone at the party. How long did he stay?’
I take a carton of juice from the fridge, pausing a moment to acknowledge the photo of my sister and parents. ‘I don’t know. I left him to get a drink while I closed the front door. I saw him in the kitchen but I didn’t see him after that. Are you sure you didn’t see him in the garden?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. I hope he didn’t go upstairs. There’s a lot of confidential stuff in my office.’
I want to lie but I can’t. ‘Not by himself, no.’
‘What do you mean?’
I reach into the cupboard for a glass and pour juice int
o it. ‘Just that I showed a few people around.’
‘What! Why?’
‘Because they were curious to see the work we’d had done.’
‘For God’s sake, Alice, I can’t believe that you showed a bunch of strangers around our house!’ He can’t hide his exasperation and I can picture him running a hand through his hair, almost as if he wants to tear it out in frustration at my naïvety. ‘How do you know that this man didn’t go snooping around once he was on his own?’
‘He didn’t,’ I protest.
‘You said you didn’t see him again. Maybe that’s because he was upstairs, having a good look through everything.’
‘He wasn’t the type. He looked – I don’t know…’
‘There isn’t a type! Have you checked if anything is missing?’
‘No—’
‘Well, maybe you should make sure your jewellery and credit cards are still there.’
Worry starts to take hold. ‘I’m sure everything’s fine,’ I say, making an effort to sound upbeat to de-stress him. ‘He’s probably a friend of someone who lives here. Maybe he was staying with them or something.’
‘Wouldn’t he have said?’
‘I’ll ask around,’ I tell him, wanting to be off the phone.
‘Call me later. If you don’t find out who it was, we should probably tell the police.’
I hang up and run upstairs, propelled by the thought of the man being in the bedroom. Hurrying over to the dressing table, I check that my jewellery is there – it is – and that my credit cards are still in my bag, which has been on the shelf in the wardrobe since I put it there on Saturday evening; they are. Everything is exactly as it should be. But I can’t relax and I know I won’t be able to until I find out who the man is and why he gate-crashed our party.
It’s seven in the evening when I decide to go and see Eve and Will. Someone must know who the man was, if anything he would have needed a code to get into The Circle. But Eve’s car isn’t in the drive and when I knock on their door, there’s no answer, so I carry on walking around The Circle anti-clockwise, disrupting people’s dinners and television programmes. Some kindly invite me in but I stay on the doorstep and quickly explain about the man who turned up uninvited on Saturday, asking if anyone spoke to him. But nobody has.
‘Are you sure he wasn’t a figment of your imagination?’ Connor asks with a slow drawl when I get to number 11 and describe the tall, dark, good-looking stranger that I’m trying to trace. Tamsin, standing next to him, doesn’t exactly smirk but a half-smile plays on her lips and my cheeks heat with embarrassment.
The people at number 10 don’t remember seeing our gate-crasher, neither does Geoff at number 8, and I’m halfway up Lorna and Edward’s drive when I remember that they didn’t come on Saturday. But worried that they’ll have seen me from their window, I ring on their doorbell anyway.
‘I hope you don’t mind if I don’t invite you in,’ Edward says, when he opens the door. With his shock of white hair neatly parted to one side and blue eyes undimmed by age, he is still a handsome man. ‘We haven’t been well and we wouldn’t like you to catch anything.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I say, feeling bad for disturbing them. ‘Can I do anything to help?’
Edward shakes his head. ‘We’ll be right as rain in a couple of days. It’s just a touch of flu.’
‘We’re sorry we couldn’t make your party,’ Lorna says, appearing behind him, patting her neat bob – the same white as her husband’s – self-consciously into place. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘Yes, very much, thank you.’ I pause and they both smile at me expectantly. ‘There was something strange though,’ I say. ‘I discovered earlier that one of the men who turned up shouldn’t have been there.’
‘Oh?’ Edward says.
‘I thought he was Tim from number 9,’ I explain. ‘But I saw Tim earlier and realised my mistake. So now I’m curious as to who he was… Leo is worried and wondering if we should call the police. But I’m sure there’s a simple explanation,’ I say hurriedly, because Lorna’s face has bleached almost as white as her hair.
She raises a hand and clutches at the string of pearls looped around her neck.
‘He said he was a friend of yours,’ she says. Her voice is strangely strangled, and I worry for a moment that she’s pulling too tightly on the pearls. ‘And that you weren’t answering the intercom. That’s why I let him in.’
The confusion on Edward’s face quickly turns to shock. He stares at his wife, as if he can’t quite believe what she did. Now Lorna’s face floods with colour. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise you’d only invited residents.’
‘It’s fine,’ I reassure her quickly. ‘It’s actually a relief to know how he got in. But could you tell me exactly what he said?’
‘He said he’d been invited for drinks at number 6 but that you probably couldn’t hear the intercom because of the noise.’
‘Did he mention us by name?’
She takes a moment to think about it. ‘No, he just said for drinks at number 6. I’ve never let anyone in before, not without checking first. I can’t imagine why I did this time.’ She looks guiltily at Edward and he nods, agreeing that it’s the first time she’s ever acted so imprudently.
‘I’m sure it’s all fine,’ I say again.
‘Let us know if you find out who he was,’ Edward says, already closing the door.
‘I will.’
But there’s only Eve and Will left to ask. I check their drive; Eve’s car is there, so I go straight round.
Seven
Eve stops chopping a bunch of leafy coriander and turns to me, the knife in her hand.
‘Nobody remembers him at all?’
I shake my head in frustration. ‘I’ve been all the way around The Circle. You and Will are my last hope.’
‘You said he was tall?’
‘Yes, taller than Tim.’
‘And he said he was Tim?’
‘He didn’t say that he was or wasn’t. I presumed he was, because we’d been talking about either him or Maria coming. The only thing I know is that he’s not from The Circle.’
Eve puts down the knife and wipes her hands on a towel. ‘Sounds like a gate-crasher to me,’ she says, laughing.
‘You don’t have to sound so cheerful about it.’
‘Sorry. It’s just that I kind of admire gate-crashers, especially if they manage to get away with something big. As long as they don’t do any damage, or steal anything.’ She looks at me. ‘Did he?’
‘No, but that’s not the point. We didn’t invite him so he shouldn’t have been there.’
‘Me and Will gate-crashed a wedding once,’ she says. ‘It was amazing. We were having a drink at a hotel and we were surrounded by this huge wedding party – there must have been at least two hundred guests. Then someone came in and called everyone through to help themselves to an enormous buffet. It was the summer and we could see people carrying their plates out to these white-clothed tables which had been set up outside. We watched for a while and it seemed to be very casual; there were no set places, people just sat where they wanted. So we tagged onto the end of the line, filled our plates high with food and plonked ourselves down on a table where there were three older couples.’
‘You didn’t!’
‘We did. We didn’t feel bad as they seemed relieved to have us making up the numbers at their table. When they asked us how well we knew the bride and groom, we said, almost truthfully, not very well at all. It turned out that they didn’t either. They were neighbours of the bride’s parents and they sort of hinted that they’d only been invited out of politeness, because they were neighbours, not because they were good friends. And we definitely livened up their evening so didn’t feel we’d done any harm. Besides we were hungry, and very young. We probably wouldn’t do it now.’
‘I’d never be brave enough,’ I say. ‘But, our mystery man – what would his motive have been for gate-crashing a drinks evening? He
would only have got a sausage roll and a few crisps out of it, and he didn’t even get those because no-one remembers seeing him in the garden. I saw him getting a drink of water from the tap in the kitchen but I doubt that thirst was his motive for turning up uninvited.’
‘Are you sure nothing was taken?’
‘Pretty sure. Nothing major anyway. My jewellery and credit cards were still there when I checked and there doesn’t seem to be anything missing from the house. We don’t have anything valuable anyway.’
‘Did he go upstairs?’
‘Yes, but only because I offered to show him the work we had done.’
Eve pauses at this and rubs her hand across her forehead. ‘Did you stay with him all the time?’
‘Yes – but I suppose he could have gone back up when I was outside. Leo is really annoyed because he has sensitive work-related stuff in his office.’
Eve picks up the knife and goes back to the coriander. ‘I’ll ask Will if he remembers a stranger at your party. He’ll be here in a minute. Have you eaten? Would you like to stay for dinner?’
I get reluctantly to my feet. ‘That’s lovely of you, it smells delicious. But I’d better phone Leo back. And go through the house again, just to make sure nothing is missing.’
I check that our computers, tablets and valuables are where they should be, but before I can call Leo, Ginny phones.
‘How did your drinks evening go?’ she asks.
‘Really well. I managed to meet just about everyone who lives in The Circle. The best thing is, there are quite a few couples who seem to be the same age as us. Eve and Will are younger, but the others seem to be in their late thirties, early forties. Next time you and Mark come over, I’ll invite them round so that you can meet them.’ I pause. ‘I managed to make an enemy, though.’
‘Oh?’
‘Not really an enemy but she didn’t seem to like me very much. A beautiful redhead called Tamsin. I think she thinks I’m going to muscle in on her friendship group. She’s friends with Eve, and as Eve lives next door, maybe she’s worried we’re going to be popping in and out of each other’s houses all day long.’
