by Nicci French
‘Do you want to get a bus or a cab?’
‘Not unless you do.’
‘I quite enjoy walking in the rain.’
We walked in silence, taking care not to touch and not looking at each other but staring ahead at the muddy path, the grey water. I was hot and cold at the same time.
We went under a bridge and in the half-light, without knowing we were going to, we stopped and kissed urgently, pressed up against the damp wall, water dripping from our hair and running down our cheeks like tears. Our wet clothes clung to us. Then we moved apart and set off along the canal again. Owen hadn’t even let go of his bag full of equipment.
‘Do you like being a despatch rider?’ he said.
‘Kind of. I don’t want to do it for ever. Who wants to be a despatch rider when they’re sixty? I’ve already been doing it longer than I thought I would. I thought it was just for a few weeks in the summer while I made up my mind what I wanted to do next, and that was a year ago.’
‘So why did you continue?’
‘Because I never made up my mind what I wanted to do next. I was studying law, you know. That’s how I met Pippa. But I never really knew why I was doing it. I went travelling instead, worked abroad. It’s been fun, but at some point I guess I’ll have to get a grown-up job. It’s odd, isn’t it? I mean, I look at someone like Miles. When I first met him he was radical and dangerous. He was always going on about individual freedom and the way the system imprisons you. But what was I expecting? That Miles should still be chaining himself to trees and Dario should do botched painting jobs and get stoned and I should cycle round London until I drop dead in the saddle? And that we should all live like students in Maitland Road for ever and ever? Maybe that’s why we’re upset about moving. Because it means we have to look at our lives.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Are we having a conversation?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps not. You’re doing most of the talking: I’m just letting you.’
‘Oh. Well, I won’t say anything else, then.’
But he took me by the wrist, pulled me to a halt again and stared at me in the streaming rain. ‘Listen. You know you said I didn’t even see you. It’s not true. I see you. Here, look at your cheekbones, you could be from Lapland. Your eyes are set wide apart. You’ve got quite a sharp collarbone’ – with one finger, he traced it – ‘and strong arms and a flat stomach. On your shoulders, under your shirt, you’ve got small prominent knots of muscle. But then you’ve got these full breasts and -’
‘You’re talking about me as if I wasn’t here. I don’t like it. Stop it.’
‘I’d like to photograph you.’
‘I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.’
‘All the contradictions.’
‘Didn’t you hear me? I’m not one of your subjects.’
‘A beautiful object, an object of desire.’
‘Oh, please.’
‘Black-and-white. By a window.’
‘I don’t think so.’
He put his hands on my shoulders and looked at me. ‘I’d like to photograph you, Astrid,’ he said softly. ‘Please?’
‘I tell you what. Let me look at your other pictures and then I’ll see.’
‘Come on, then.’
He set off at a stride, and I had to almost run to keep up, the heavy bag bumping against my shins. We got to the house and he took it from me, then helped me out of his sodden jacket. There was the tinny sound of a radio coming from the top floor, but otherwise it seemed empty. We went up the stairs together. He opened the door of his room and looked at me.
‘Now?’ I asked, running my hands through my dripping hair and feeling my jeans cling to my legs.
‘Unless you don’t want to.’
‘Of course I want to,’ I said crossly. ‘I’m just wet through and – oh, never mind. Show me.’
Owen’s room looked different now, in the daytime, when I was fully conscious. The previous tenant, a friend of a friend of Miles, had been called Annette. She was an insomniac accountant who used to make cakes in the middle of the night, and who’d left to move in with her boyfriend when she got pregnant. She had almost parodically female tastes: the walls had been pink, the curtains lilac, with a frilly valance round the bed to match; there was a dressing-table with a folding mirror in the corner – I hadn’t known anyone of our age ever had things like that – and several soft toys heaped up in the armchair. It was very different now. The pink had been painted over with pale grey; the bed had been replaced by a futon, there were dark blinds instead of curtains; a dressmaker’s dummy stood in one corner, draped with scarves, and photographs hung on the walls.
‘Yours?’ I asked Owen.
‘Only that one.’ He pointed at a black-and-white picture of a swimmer, her body almost entirely submerged; the water, and the light that bounced off it, distorted the figure into a series of impossible angles, so that the image became almost abstract. ‘The others are by friends.’
There were photographs leaning against every wall, and more stacked on the table under the window. I felt apprehensive and self-conscious.
‘Why don’t you sit there?’ he said, gesturing to the chair by the side of the table. ‘Here, rub your hair with this towel.’
I sat down awkwardly. Owen picked up a stack of photographs and put them in front of me.
‘This is some of my more recent work,’ he said formally.
I stifled the impulse to giggle or run away. ‘Right,’ I said.
‘I’ve been working on them during the last couple of weeks. I’m trying to put together a portfolio.’
I turned the first one and was relieved: it was simply of water, full of ripples and glancing light – like the image on the wall, but without the human figure. Then I felt a quiver of shock run through me. It wasn’t just water after all: there was a face beneath the dislocated surface, barely visible, eyes staring up, hair spread out like weeds. Like a suggestion of a drowned woman’s face.
I turned over the next one. A naked woman was lying on a stained mattress, as white and flawless as a marble statue, her long hair rippling over her face so that it was only possible to see her open mouth. One hand was flung over the mattress and open, with writing on the palm that I couldn’t decipher; the other was between her legs. It was both erotic and impersonal and I shivered in my clammy clothes.
‘Your women don’t have faces,’ I said.
Owen didn’t reply, just turned over the next picture for me.
A stubby thorn bush in winter, looking as unyielding as metal. That was all right.
Another naked woman – the same as the first? – this time just standing very straight and letting herself be scrutinized by the camera lens.
The same woman, her hands tied with rope, a calm smile on her face.
‘Who is she?’ I asked.
‘Her’s name’s Andrea. We studied photography together.’
I felt a jab of something. Was it jealousy? ‘Does she have a problem doing these?’
‘Why?’ said Owen. ‘Would you?’
‘I don’t know what to make of them,’ I said. ‘I mean, they’re powerful, but I don’t know.’
‘They’re just exercises,’ said Owen, pulling out another print.
A foot, twice the size of real life. You could see every detail – the chipped nail, the hairs on the toes, the tiny specks of dirt.
Like a slap in the face, a sudden flamboyance of colour and life: an ordinary street scene, but Owen had made it look like an exotic carnival, as if Hackney was Brazil. I smiled.
Black-and-white again. A woman sitting by a window, her back to the camera, her head completely bald, her spine running in a knotted track up her smooth back.
The same woman close-up and facing the lens, with her eyes unnaturally wide. In them I could clearly see the reflection of the photographer. I put out a finger and touched it.
‘You,’ I said.
‘Self-portrait.’
Another tre
e, charred but with shoots growing from its blackened stump.
‘Trees, water and naked women,’ I said. ‘Lots of your photographs don’t look like photographs.’
‘What do they look like?’
‘Paintings. Sculptures. I don’t know.’
‘Do you want to see any more?’
‘Bring it on.’
He put several more prints on the table. I worked my way through them, and it felt like work, under his unblinking gaze. I laid the final one aside and swivelled round in the chair.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘They’re troubling.’
‘They’re meant to be troubling. At least you didn’t just say they were nice.’
I pulled my shirt over my head. ‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘They’re not nice.’
I unclipped my bra and dropped it on the floor. Owen was looking at me with an intensity I’d never seen before, even from him. I kicked off my shoes and peeled off my wet jeans and knickers.
‘You want me to photograph you?’ he said.
I shook my head.
Afterwards he lay beside me on the bed, stroking my stomach.
‘So is it still a no?’ he said.
‘That’s right.’
‘Don’t be such a prude.’
I shook myself free of his touch, got out of his bed and started to pull my clothes on. I had the impulse to shout at him but I resisted it and when I spoke it was in a calm tone. ‘We live in the same house, but until yesterday we’d scarcely exchanged a word. Then in the last twenty-four hours we’ve – what? We’ve fucked. Three times, though the first time it was like a fight and the second time you had your eyes shut all the way through, and then there was this. I have no idea what you think of me. Maybe you dislike me. Maybe you have contempt for me. Maybe you don’t think about me at all. I would feel really uncomfortable letting you stare at me through the lens of your camera in the way you’ve stared at these other women.’
Owen just looked at me. I thought I could detect the hint of a smile.
A door opened and shut downstairs and Davy called, ‘Hello!’ I shivered.
‘Is that it, then?’ I asked.
‘Is what it?’
‘With us – it’s finished, is it?’
‘It? I didn’t know it had ever actually begun,’ he said, in an indifferent voice.
‘No?’ I put my hands on either side of his beautiful, hurt face and kissed his angry mouth hard. ‘Then how can it be over?’
That night, I stood by the window and wondered what Owen was doing in his room, just a few feet away from me. But Pippa interrupted my reverie. As always, she didn’t knock or call, just pushed my door open and sat on the side of my bed. Her cheeks glowed. ‘Hey! Guess what?’
‘What?’
‘Mick used to be in the army.’
‘Did he? That makes a kind of sense, doesn’t it? It explains how he can cook meals for large numbers of people, anyway. Why’s he so secretive about it?’
‘He was in the first Gulf War and he left after. He doesn’t like talking about it.’
‘Clearly.’
‘After he left, he just travelled for years. I don’t think he has a clue what to do with the rest of his life.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Oh.’ Pippa gave a little giggle and threw me a coy look.
‘No! You didn’t?’ I said, dismayed at the thought of all that was going on in the house.
‘I did.’
‘You had sex with him? Just now?’
‘I thought he looked sad and I was curious about him. I thought it might cheer him up.’
‘You make it sound like half a pint down the pub.’
‘It wasn’t the most intense experience of my entire life. Nice, though.’
‘Did you just knock on his door and ask him if he wanted to have sex?’
‘Not quite. I went to his room. God, Astrid, it’s completely bare. There’s nothing in there at all. It’s like he’s still in the army. Just a bed and a chest and that cupboard we hauled up from the junk room, nothing else. No personal touches. Anyway, I poked my head round and asked him if he wanted a cup of tea or a beer or something. And when he said no, I just kind of went in. And one thing led to another.’
‘God,’ I said. ‘Mick.’
‘Mick.’ Pippa grinned.
‘Will you do it again?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. It wasn’t like that. It was just fun.’
‘Won’t it be awkward between you?’
‘Why should it?’
I found it difficult to answer. ‘It would be awkward for me, I guess.’
‘I just thought you’d want to know.’
‘Yes,’ I said dubiously.
‘How about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Your love life.’
‘I don’t have a love life at present.’
‘No?’
‘No!’
‘Then you’re going to, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’
‘Come on, Astrid. Owen. I saw the way you were looking this morning. And then not looking. I could have sworn you two had…’
I felt I was being cajoled into sharing confidences. But I wasn’t in the mood for bantering and giggling.
‘There isn’t any “you two”, and I wasn’t looking like anything. I was helping Mick make bacon butties.’
‘This is me you’re talking to, world champion at deciphering erotic glances in the morning. He’s gorgeous and he’s free. Why don’t you pounce? I would. Hey, can I borrow this shirt tomorrow?’
‘All right.’
‘Mick’s got a huge scar on his back. That was rather thrilling.’
Chapter Eight
Some days you draw the short straw. I got up just before seven, ignored Owen, dodged Miles, stepped round Davy, who was dismantling a crooked lintel and muttering something about ‘resident cowboys’, grabbed a piece of toast on my way out, switched on my radio – and immediately there was a message from Campbell telling me to pick up a package in Canonbury and take it to Camden Town. Twenty minutes later, as I was slogging along Hampstead Road on an empty stomach with car fumes in my face, the radio crackled again and he told me I might as well go straight from Camden Town up to Highgate to collect a package. Highgate is up a steep hill. It was a house I’d been to before and it was as high as it was possible to get in London.
Once, on the way up, I had passed a sign helpfully informing me that I was as high as the tip of St Paul ’s Cathedral. The woman who lived there was wealthy and chic and I thought she was one of those people who doesn’t see poverty or disease or tramps in doorways. She lived in a different world, one of entitlement, and she treated us messengers like servants, which is, I suppose, what we were. She never recognized me. I was just part of the crowd of people who smoothed her way. One of the stories I told the gang at the Horse and Jockey was how I had been summoned once to collect a Japanese takeaway at the bottom of the hill and take it up to the top. As I handed it over, puffing and sweating while she was immaculate in her linen and her jewellery, I had thought that this was the sort of thing that provoked revolutions.
‘Why me?’ I asked, into the radio.
‘Because you’re there.’
So I dropped off the package in Camden Town, grabbed a sweet crêpe and a coffee from the stand in the high street, and set off in the faint drizzle. There were seriously rich people in Hampstead and Highgate, tasteful shops, expensive restaurants, exclusive schools where girls in pork-pie hats and boys in blazers got dropped off by mothers in four-wheel drives, tall and gracious houses with walled gardens and alarms blinking over their front doors, golf courses. The house was set back from the road. A tulip tree was flowering in the front garden and a pruned wisteria over the decorative porch, two huge empty earthenware pots standing at either side of it. I had never gone inside and only ever glimpsed the hall, which was twice the size of my bedroom and smelled of polish
, paint, leather and money.
I swung myself off my bike, leaned it carefully against one of the porch’s pillars, and rang the doorbell. I waited for thirty seconds or so, heard nothing, then rang again, for longer this time, and stepped back. Nobody came. A satisfying little bubble of anger formed in my chest. They make some poor sod cycle all the way up the hill at whim, then can’t be bothered to be there.
I pulled out my mobile, noting the time, nine forty-one, and called Campbell to check there wasn’t some kind of mistake, but the line was busy. I rapped the door knocker hard.
Again, nothing. I knelt down in front of the letterbox and prised it open. It was one of those that are angled in such a way that you can only make out a small strip of the interior. I peered through and saw the first few carpeted steps of the stairs. I twisted my head so my nose was pushed against the aperture and made out the glossy wooden floorboards of the hall. And something else besides. I squinted and squashed my face closer into the door. Something smooth, pale brown. It looked like skin, a segment of an arm. I half stood, bending at a painful angle to get a better look. A segment of forearm becoming a wrist, and then, no matter how I twisted my face, I could see no further.
I called through the letterbox. I could hear my voice bounce round the clean empty spaces of the house. ‘Can you hear me?’
The arm, if that was what it was, remained still. I scrambled to my feet and hammered at the door with both fists, then pressed the bell once more, its discreet chime repeating. I looked again through the letterbox. There was no movement.
There was only one thing to do. For the first time in my life I dialled 999. A voice answered. ‘Which service, please?’
I had to make myself think.
‘Ambulance, I guess. I think someone might be hurt or ill. Someone’s lying on the other side of the door. I can see the arm.’
I gave the address and said I would wait until they arrived, then walked up and down the small stretch of grass, not knowing what to do with myself. Maybe whoever it was had had a heart-attack or a stroke. Or had fallen down the stairs and knocked herself unconscious. Or maybe it wasn’t an arm at all, I thought, and someone would stroll up the road just as the ambulance arrived with its blue lights flashing and I would look like the idiot of the year.
