2000 - Thirtynothing

by Lisa Jewell

  FORTY-ONE

  Dig returned to Nadine’s flat, with DCs Farley, Stringer, Short and McFaddyen. He rang on the doorbell, asked for Phil, waited until both doors were opened and then stood back and allowed the officers to go about their business.

  He’d never seen anything like it. Within seconds, hordes of people began spilling from the house like insects, hurriedly pulling on jackets and shoes and hats as they went. A second later the music died, leaving the entire street with a strange, dead, ringing sound. And then a couple of minutes later Dig watched with a morbid fascination from his hiding-place across the street as Phil himself was marched firmly towards the waiting police car and lowered into it.

  He was still smiling.

  Dig remembered what Phil had said at the party: ‘Wherever I lay my hat, Digby, wherever I lay my hat.’ Of course. It made perfect sense to Dig. He probably thought of prison as just another place to lay his hat and, no doubt, when he got out, he’d find somewhere new to ‘lay his hat’, some other poor woman’s lovely flat.

  He didn’t believe a word Phil had said earlier on. There was no way, just no way, that a wrinkly old git like Philip Rich with his dead eyes and his dirty hair and his bad teeth could possibly have got Nadine to drop her drawers, to invite him to move into her flat. It made him feel sick just thinking about it.

  There must have been some other explanation for it. There must be more to Philip Rich than met the eye. Dig had always had his suspicions about him, never trusted him. He would get to the bottom of this peculiar state of affairs. But first he needed to speak to Nadine.

  For the first time ever Dig felt protective and tender towards Nadine, Nadine who needed no one, least of all Dig Ryan. He’d protected her property. He’d looked after her. The thought left him feeling curiously warm inside.

  He watched the blue-and-white car pull away from Gordon House Road and then walked sadly towards Nadine’s house. The front door was open. He moved into the hallway and towards Nadine’s flat.

  Inside he wandered around desolately. The mass stampede from the flat had created even more damage. Nadine’s weird pink-foil wallpaper had been shredded by the hordes of people all rushing to the front door at the same time. The pile of magazines on the deco cabinet had been thrown to the floor and mashed underfoot. Wine bottles and lager cans littered the carpet.

  Dig’s head filled up with images of happier times, thoughts of all the evenings he’d spent here with Nadine in her eccentric little castle, listening to music, getting stoned, getting ready to go out, discussing their disastrous love lives. He’d been with her when she’d first been to see the flat. She’d fallen madly in love with it and he’d tried to persuade her it wasn’t right for her. It’s characterless, he’d told her, it’s got no soul and it’s overpriced. But she hadn’t listened to him. She’d bought it for the asking price and he’d shaken his head and said, ‘You’re making a huge mistake—you’re going to be desperate to move in six months’ time, and then you’ll be imprisoned in here by negative equity and you’ll start hating it. Take my word.’

  Nadine had, of course, proved him entirely wrong, compensating for the beige Anaglypta, dark-stained-oak and magnolia walls of her childhood with flights of fancy and bright colours, turning the dull, echoing flat she’d bought into a mad, welcoming, warm and cosy refuge from the world. Dig loved it in Nadine’s flat.

  Imagine, he thought with a sudden sense of dread, if something happened and I was never allowed to come back here again. Imagine if something happened to Nadine and I never saw her again. What would be the point, he wondered, of going on? Would he have any desire to get up in the mornings or to go out at the weekends if there was no Nadine?

  Imagine if she died. Imagine if she got run over by a bus and someone phoned him and said, ‘It’s Nadine, something’s happened.’ He couldn’t, he just couldn’t countenance it—he’d never smile again…

  Dig was surprised and just a little horrified to find that his eyes were filling up with tears as he explored this morbid train of thought. He gulped to force them back and wiped away an escapee as it slid down the side of his nose. How ridiculous. He must be over-tired. That was the only explanation. Over-tired and over-emotional and—and—Jesus, what a day.

  …and imagine, his mind forced him to keep thinking, imagine if something happened to Nadine and you never got a chance to apologise for not phoning her last night when she was so upset, never got the chance to explain to her about Delilah, to assure her that nothing had happened between you, to ask her about that message on the answerphone, to find out why she lied to you all those years ago about how she felt about you.

  There was so much that needed talking about, and where was Nadine? In Spain, that’s where, in bloody Spain, while his head pounded and his heart ached and his life twisted itself in and out and all around like a fucking Möbius strip.

  Dig sighed heavily and lowered himself on to his haunches. He picked up one of Nadine’s poor, destroyed magazines and held it to his chest.

  Please come home, Nadine, he breathed to himself, please come home.

  FORTY-TWO

  Nadine piled all her cases and aluminium-clad boxes on to the pavement and eyed her front door with suspicion.

  London was still soggy and unhappy, and the crisply sunny days of her weekend in Barcelona suddenly seemed like a distant memory. Her neighbour’s cat leapt up onto the wall to greet her and Nadine gently scooped the bedraggled creature into her arms, let herself into the house and deposited him in the terracotta-tiled hallway, where he could dry out while he waited for his owners to get home from work.

  She felt for her key in her pocket and breathed in deeply as she brought it towards the keyhole. She’d managed to work herself up into a complete paranoid frenzy over the course of the weekend about what might have happened to her flat while she was gone. She had images in her mind of spilt wine, broken glass, wild parties and police raids. Ridiculous, of course, she knew she was being ridiculous. Pia and Sarah had spent most of the last three days persuading her how silly she was being. ‘Don’t be daft,’ they kept saying, ‘don’t be so overdramatic. The flat’s going to be just fine. Phil will be home by now, back in Finsbury Park,’ they soothed. ‘The worst thing that could happen is that you might be minus a few cornflakes or he might have finished the bog roll. Take it easy.’

  Instead they encouraged her to discuss the whole ‘Phoning Dig’ fiasco. That was much more interesting as far as they were concerned—a real-life soap opera for Pia, unfolding in front of her very eyes. They were all convinced she’d done the right thing, especially Sarah, of course, who’d started the whole bloody thing in the first place and was already planning what she going to wear to the wedding. They’d been on her case all weekend to phone him again.

  ‘No way,’ she’d insisted, ‘don’t even waste your time thinking about it. I am never phoning Dig again. Ever, OK?’ She had a plan anyway. A plan to work her way out of the awful nightmare she’d landed herself in. If Dig did ever phone her again, for whatever bizarre reason, then she’d just tell him that she’d been playing Truth or Dare with the girls and that phoning him and telling him she’d been thinking about his willy was the punishment they’d concocted for her.

  OK. So it was a crap excuse. But at least it was an excuse. And actually, she supposed, men were generally so bemused by the carryings-on of drunken women en masse that he’d probably just shrug and accept it as gospel. Of course, he’d think, ‘Women—they’re weird, we all know that.’

  But that was just on the very slim off chance that he did ever phone her again. There was no reason why he should. She’d dissed his new girlfriend, she’d been pissed and belligerent and slightly insane—she’d been deeply unattractive.

  ‘Ah yes,’ she could hear Dig sighing in years to come, ‘Nadine. She was a great girl. We were so close. But I had to let her go when she became unstable. Poor Nadine. It’s all rather tragic.’ And then he’d squeeze Delilah’s hand and throw her a slightly sad
but very relieved look and they’d both silently thank God for the day that they excised Mad Nadine from their perfect, pure, impeccable fucking lives.

  Hmph. She clenched her jaw and stabbed the front-door key into its hole.

  It was going to be fine, she told herself. Everything was going to be just fine. Her flat would be fine. Her life would be fine. It was all going to be perfectly—fine. She took a few deep breaths to psych herself into believing that everything really was going to be fine before slowly twisting the key in the lock and pushing the door open.

  She flicked the hall light on and clamped her hand over her mouth.

  A strange, strangulated little yelp slipped through her fingers.

  A million thoughts landed in her mind at once as she absorbed the physical reality of her trashed hall, the most insistent of which was that this wasn’t, couldn’t possibly be, physical reality at all, was, in fact, some kind of dream or psychological trick precipitated by the preceding three days of irrational concern. Like a mirage. Yes—that’s right—a mirage.

  This comforting thought lasted less than a microsecond before reality hit with a vengeance. Her flat was destroyed. She’d been burgled. Her hand still clamped to her mouth, she slumped her shoulders and fell to her knees, bags and cases slipping from her shoulders and hands, her keys clanging to the ground. Oh God. Look at this place. Look at it. Look at her walnut cabinet. Look at all her magazines everywhere. Look at the pink-foil wallpaper, all scuffed and ripped.

  She hobbled on her knees down the hallway. Spilt wine, fag-ends, ripped pages from magazines, huge, dirty footprints—everywhere. There was a lump the size of an egg in her throat. She breathed deeply to prevent useless tears escaping and got to her feet using the bathroom doorframe to pull herself up. She pushed open the bathroom door and waited helplessly while it creaked open.

  ‘Oh God,’ she moaned, when she saw what was within, ‘oh no. Oh no.’ Tears began spilling, despite her attempts to control them. ‘Oh no,’ she sniffed.

  She began moving more quickly then, from room to room, from kitchen to living room, and everything she saw increased the knot in her stomach and the sadness in her heart. Her flat. Her lovely, lovely flat. The flat she’d created with her bare hands, from skips and second-hand shops, from clearance sales and her parents’ generosity, month by month, year after year, piece by piece. All ruined. All dirty. All broken and shitty and fucking fucking horrible.

  Anger started to erupt inside her as she stepped over empty wine bottles, and she felt a primal scream building in her chest. Her fists clenched themselves tightly and then she let it go. She opened her mouth, closed her eyes and screamed, not a scream of fear but a deep, sonorous scream of pure rage.

  ‘FUCKING BASTARDS!’

  She began half-heartedly to collect bits and pieces together—empty beer cans, half-full beer cans afloat with stinking, swollen fag-butts and spliff-ends. There were articles of discarded clothing lying around the place—other people’s discarded clothing. She picked up a rancid-looking flannel shirt gingerly, between two fingernails. A soft-top packet of Camels fell from the pocket. She let the shirt drop to the floor. She hadn’t been burgled—that was obvious now. There was nothing actually missing. Just lots of grim stuff added, things moved around and other things broken. She hadn’t been burgled—she’d been partied.

  Phil.

  Fucking Phil.

  She’d known this was going to happen, from the minute she’d closed her front door behind her on Saturday morning to the minute she’d opened it again just now. Her instincts had been spot on. She felt sick. She found it impossible now to rustle up even the smallest shred of sympathy for Philip Rich. She was glad in fact, glad his parents had died, glad his girlfriend had topped herself, glad his house had burned down. He deserved it. All of it. He deserved worse. He deserved more. Much more.

  Her head filled with thoughts of retribution, most of which revolved around the general theme of cutting off various bits of his horrible pasty body and making him eat them.

  ‘You fucking bastard, ’ she shouted out loud, ‘you fucking bastard.’ She kicked the doorframe, collapsed to her knees and began to howl. She wailed and thrashed and sobbed and shouted. And then had rapidly to pull herself together when she heard the doorbell ring.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ she muttered to herself, pushing tear-sodden tendrils of hair from her cheeks and wiping her eyes. She got heavily to her feet and stumbled towards the front door. As she crossed the hallway towards the main door she saw a sight she knew would stay with her for ever, a vision that brought goosebumps to her flesh and a lump to her throat, that turned her stomach to liquid and her knees to jelly, the sweetest, most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life. Everything that had occurred in the past week and a half, from sleeping with Phil to running him over, from having her flat trashed to leaving appalling messages on answerphones, every bad moment of every bad day, every feeling of insanity and misery and unhappiness just dissolved when she pulled open her front door and saw Dig standing there.

  He was wearing a frilly apron, a cap and a daft smile.

  In one hand was his precious purple Dyson, in the other a dustpan and brush and at his feet sat a tiny, quivering Yorkshire Terrier.

  ‘I’ve come about the cleaning position,’ he grinned. ‘I’ve got excellent credentials and references. I’ve been voted the cleanest person in NW5.’

  Nadine melted then and dissolved into fresh tears. ‘Oh Dig,’ she snuffled into his shoulder, ‘oh Dig. Thank God you’re here. Thank God.’

  Dig squeezed her back, hard as anything, tighter than he’d ever hugged her before.

  ‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he said, smiling at her.

  Nadine smiled back at him and looked into his soft, dark eyes, pain just falling away from her as she did so. ‘It feels like ages,’ she sniffed. She looked down at the trembling dog. ‘Is that the feather duster?’

  Dig laughed and leaned down to pick him up. ‘No,’ he said, ‘this is the world’s smallest and most unappealing dog and this small and unappealing dog is getting the early train back to Chester tomorrow morning. Aren’t you, mate?’ The dog looked at him fearfully, as if he’d just suggested the knacker’s yard.

  ‘What?’ said Nadine. ‘On his own?’

  Dig threw her a pitying look.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, breathlessly, ‘you mean Delilah’s going home?’

  ‘Yes,’ smiled Dig, ‘Delilah’s going home. Back to her husband. Back to have a baby.’ He smiled.

  ‘But—but—but…’

  ‘Nothing ever happened between me and Delilah, you know. Nothing. We had one kiss. I’ve done a lot of thinking since you went away and there’s a lot of stuff you need to know, Nadine. About Delilah. You need to hear about Delilah. You’ve got her so wrong. She’s a good person. She’s a very good person who’s had a very hard time. And we need to talk about Phil. About why he let this happen to your flat. He isn’t a good person. But,’ he said, seriously, ‘most importantly, we really, really need to talk about us.’

  ‘What do you mean—about us?’ Her stomach fizzed at the very concept, at the fact that Dig had even mentioned it.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ushering her into the hallway, ‘get your rubber gloves on and get into the kitchen. We’ll talk as we clean.’

  FORTY-THREE

  There was a lot of talking that rainy Tuesday afternoon and a lot of explaining. Dig had spent twenty minutes on the phone the previous day to a DI Wittering, who had been more than expansive on the subject of Philip Rich, a character who the Metropolitan Police had been familiar with since his ex-wife had first reported him twelve years earlier for the theft of her black MG and the contents of her savings account.

  They’d come into contact with him again seven years later when his suicide was reported to them by a distraught woman called Mandy Taylor, claiming to be his fiancée. She’d watched in horror as he threw himself off Putney Bridge two weeks before they were due to be married. He had, apparentl
y, taken the precaution of emptying their joint bank account before taking his life and when Mandy Taylor bumped into him coming out of a pub off Tottenham Court Road six months later she’d been too shocked to press charges.

  His parents—who were alive and well and had attended his funeral—refused to have anything to do with him after their first reunion and these days he was a squatter dabbling in a bit of small-time drug-dealing.

  ‘You…you mean, he made all that up—all that stuff about his parents and his girlfriend and everything?’

  Dig nodded. ‘He’s a con artist, Nadine. He’s been a con artist from the day you met him.’

  After a tip-off from Phil’s elderly father, Haringey council had evicted him and eight students from a flat in Finsbury Park on Friday morning, and it seemed he’d decided that Nadine and her flat would make a much better alternative to finding a new building to squat.

  ‘Of course,’ sighed Nadine, ‘of course. That flat. It didn’t seem right. All those students and that strange furniture. And…and’—she was growing quite animated as so many of the events of the last few days began to make sense—‘and—of course! The old man. And the portable telly. That was his father! And that’s why he left me all those messages. That’s why he was hanging around outside my flat. That’s why he wouldn’t leave. He had nowhere else to go. I thought he was desperate to see me, but he was just desperate for a roof over his head. Oh my God. To think…I just…oh God, Dig, I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I fell for all that…’

  Her face fell even further after Dig had related the story of Delilah’s visit to London, of Sophie and Michael and her unplanned pregnancy.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ she said, ‘I feel so bad. All that time I spent bitching about her and hating her and she was going through so much. And I had no idea. None at all. I just thought she was here to make trouble, to take you away from me. Oh God, Dig, I feel like such a fucking bitch…’