The man wrapped his fingers around the door handle. “Well, thanks to Harriet, I already know you’re Emily. I’m Jerome Miller. It’s great to meet you. If you ever want to drop by and say hi, I work at the Italian café across the road, Il Cuore? The coffee sucks but the service is exceptional.”
With one last blinding smile, Jerome pulled open the door and a torrent of noise flooded in. He waved her goodbye and then dove into the crowd. The door was closing again. If she was still standing here by the time it had shut it would mean another day without food.
Her heart racing, Emily drew in a deep breath, began counting, and ploughed forward. The crowd surged, absorbing her into the stream. All around, people pushed and parried. Cars and buses crawled along the road. Drivers punched horns at cyclists racing past. Lights changed to red, and pedestrians began crossing the road, pouring into the gaps between the vehicles like cement filling in cracks.
Emily hurried along, keeping up with the crowds as she counted each panicked breath. The street came to a crossroads where hundreds of workers, shoppers and tourists swamped the pavements, heaving in and out of large department stores and blocking the entrances of the underground station. Every face shared the same grim expression. Thick grey plumes asphyxiated the air. The blare of car horns and engines, in-store music, footsteps and chatter swooped and dived overhead, converging in a perpetual, relentless roar.
Bordering on hysteria, Emily attempted to push through the crushed bodies, but as she squeezed by each one, there was another to take its place. A scream climbed its way up her throat.
A side street swung into view. Forcing her way to the edge of the crowd, she leapt towards it. Suddenly, the world was quieter. Emily leant against the wall, drawing in deep breaths. She closed her eyes, shutting out everything.
In the village, the streets had been quiet and pleasant, paved with cobbled stones and decorated with hanging baskets of flowers outside each shop window. People wished you a good morning. Emily thought about those smiling faces. She recounted the names of all the people she had known; friends and acquaintances who had once waved a hand or stopped to pass on the latest news. How quickly they had turned on her without a moment’s thought.
In contrast to the large modern stores just metres away on the high street, this winding, narrow road contained small boutiques with names Emily had never heard of. Further along, shoehorned between a French patisserie and a Chinese herbal medicine store, was a supermarket. She stumbled towards it, eyeing the handful of people that hurried past. Not one of them acknowledged her existence, their gazes fixed on either the ground or their mobile phones.
The supermarket was a cramped affair. The aisles were long and narrow, their shelves stacked right up to the ceiling. Shoppers had to move in awkward single file, picking up the items they needed and then circling around again if they had forgotten something. Armed with a handwritten shopping list and a basket hooked over one arm, Emily navigated the curious one-way system. As she picked up the items she needed, she calculated the mounting cost. Her eyes grew wide with alarm. City life was not only chaotic, it was extortionate too. She wondered how so many people could afford to live here. And there were so many people living here.
It wasn’t just the sheer volume that overwhelmed her, it was the fact that everyone was so different. Her lowly sheltered life had been comprised of white working-class farming families. There were less than a hundred children in the village school where she had taught, and not one of them had come from outside of the surrounding community.
What a blinkered way of living, Emily thought, as she looked at the colourful cans on the shelves. A blinkered way of living that had almost been the end of her.
Her basket full, she turned a corner to join the snaking queue. Her mind wandered as she waited, finding its way towards Lewis.
The entire time she had been holed up in her cottage with reporters crawling over her garden, trampling on the flowers she had spent hours nurturing and feeding and growing, all Lewis had worried about was whether or not the unwanted attention would affect his chances of promotion at the bank. It hadn't been his photograph in the paper next to vile, accusatory words. It hadn't been his reputation destroyed, his freedom stolen away.
Yes, people did stop and whisper and yes, they did regard him with a steely candour from a discreet distance, but he was still able to trawl the aisles of the supermarket. When Emily had last entered the supermarket, her hood pulled up in a bid to pass unnoticed, two mothers from her school had dragged her across the aisle by her hair and thrown her into a pyramid of apples. Emily had tried to pick up the fruit while the women screamed terrible things and spat on her back.
There was just one person ahead of her now. Two men worked the counter, conversing in a language she didn’t recognize. Emily watched them for a minute, then her eyes wandered over the shelves of cigarette packets and painkillers, until they came to rest on a small public message board.
Among the handwritten postcards advertising rooms to rent and massage services, was a missing persons notice. The photograph at the centre of the notice was grainy black and white, but the person it depicted was unnervingly familiar. The woman had short, light hair parted in the middle, a square jaw and aquiline nose. Her eyes emitted an iciness that permeated right through the paper to prick Emily’s skin.
She reached the counter. As one of the men began scanning and packing her items, Emily read through the information on the poster.
Alina Engel. 43 years old. 5’ 4. 60 kg. Reported missing after failing to return home from an evening shift at the Ever After Care Foundation. Alina, who is of German descent, called her husband at around nine pm on Monday, 24th August, stating that she was waiting for the 247 bus on the corner of Romford Road and Fowler Road, IG6. Co-workers confirmed seeing Alina leave at around eight-thirty. She was wearing a blue and white nurse’s uniform and was carrying a light blue backpack at the time of her disappearance. If you have any information or know of Alina’s whereabouts, please call the following number.
Emily stared in stunned silence, reading the words over and over.
“You know her?” the shopkeeper asked.
Emily shook her head. “Do you?”
“People come in and out every day. They look the same to me.”
Emily paid the man.
“I should take it down,” he said. “After three months, that woman isn’t coming back.”
Behind them, waiting customers grumbled. Emily thanked the shopkeeper and turned to leave. She stared at the poster one last time, memorizing Alina Engel’s features. If only her phone had been in her purse and not switched off in one of the kitchen drawers, then she would have been able to take a picture.
The street was busier now but she hardly noticed, her mind fixed on the missing woman’s face. She tried to hold it there, an exact image copied from the poster to her brain. Minutes later, she emerged panting and wheezing from the throngs.
Inside The Holmeswood, someone had taped a notice across the lift doors: GET THIS FIXED! SOME OF US CAN’T USE THE STAIRS!
By the time Emily made it to her apartment, she felt as if her heart might punch a hole through her chest. Slamming the door behind her, she dropped the grocery bags onto the floor and hurried towards the bathroom.
The painting was still there, face down against the wall. She flipped it over. Alina Engel stared back.
***
“You’ve got lots of space in here for just one person.”
Harriet sat at the dining table, peering around the room with an inquisitive eye. Emily had been busy. There were books on shelves and rugs on the floor. An array of photographs and prints hung from the walls, featuring striking landscapes—a dense forest in the grip of autumn, a rickety pier overlooking a tranquil lake—but there were no family photographs, Harriet noted. No people.
“It’s probably too big,” Emily said, sliding a cup and saucer towards her guest. “I’m having trouble filling it.”
“A nice h
usband would take up some room,” Harriet said, stirring spoons of sugar into her tea.
“Or some new cabinets.”
Harriet cackled. “Someone’s had man trouble.”
Shifting in her seat, Emily looked out of the window. Winter sun bounced off the glass, creating a glare.
“Men are always trouble,” Harriet said. “They either want you to be the servant to their master, or they want you to be their nursemaid. They’re like babies, never really growing up. But I suppose we have to put up with them. Lord knows who else will.”
She gave Emily a wry wink and sipped some of her tea.
“Assuming every woman wants to be in a relationship,” Emily said. “And that every woman is attracted to men.”
Harriet squinted, then shook her head. “I don’t know anything about those modern relationships. Have you met Jerome yet? He’s very modern.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s one of those,” Harriet said, lowering her voice. “Had a gentleman friend living with him until recently, went by the name of Darnell. Just goes to show, it doesn’t matter what side your bread is buttered, if there’s men involved you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
Emily nodded. “What about Alina Engel? Did she have her work cut out?”
“Eh? You mean Allie? Oh yes, she certainly did. That man was trouble all right. Karl Henry, mister big man, walking around like he was something important. The amount of times I heard him shouting it’s a wonder he had any voice left. That poor woman should have left him as soon as he raised a hand to her.”
“He hit her?”
Harriet sat back in the chair and pursed her lips. “All I know is that one time, me and Andrew were coming back from the shops when we bumped into Allie on the stairs. She was on the way to work—some kind of nurse she was—and her lip was all fat on one side, with a big purple bruise on her chin. I asked her if she was all right, and you know what? She jumped like I'd screamed at the top of my lungs!”
“What did she say?”
“That's just it. She didn't say anything. She just carried on walking as if she hadn't even seen us. Like we were invisible.”
Emily put down her teacup, disturbed that not so long ago her apartment had been home to violence and abuse. In this very room, the bedroom, maybe both, a man had raised a hand and brought it down hard against his wife's face. She wondered if that left a residue; all that negative energy seeping into the walls and floors.
“Never was one for talk that Allie,” Harriet added. “Not even when you got her on her own—if you managed to get her on her own. And it wasn’t a language problem because she could talk better English than most people I know. Shame really, she seemed like a nice lady.”
Emily leaned forward, pushing her cup to one side. “Paulina Blanchard, the letting agent, she told me that Karl Henry was moving out because his wife had left him. That she’d gone back to Germany. Today in the supermarket, I saw a missing persons notice. It was for her. For Alina.”
Harriet raised an eyebrow. “All I know is what that pig told me. That she’d run off and left him. And you know what I said to him? I said, ‘Well it’s about time too!’ He didn’t like that, not one bit, the nasty piece of work.”
“But he reported her missing. It said so on the poster. That she called him on her way home from work the night she disappeared.”
“First I’ve heard about it.” Harriet stopped to drain the contents of her cup.
“But if she was reported missing didn’t the police come around? Surely they would have asked the other tenants if they’d seen her.”
Her tea finished, the old woman folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t talk to the police. See how they treated my poor Andrew when he got attacked. I don’t talk to them and I don’t trust them. You ask me they’re all as bent as each other.”
Harriet’s reaction had been unexpected. If anything, Emily had imagined the old woman would have been first in line to extract information.
“What about the other neighbours? Would they have talked to them?”
“Don’t know,” Harriet said, losing interest in the conversation. “Don’t talk to the other two on this floor. Apparently they’re too busy to crack a smile. You could ask Jerome. He lives right below. Probably heard every fight that went on.”
“It’s strange though, isn’t it?” Emily said, half to herself, half to Harriet. “If your wife had gone missing, wouldn’t you want to stay put in case she came back?”
“Men,” said Harriet, with a disapproving shake of her head. “Got any biscuits?”
***
She ate late, hungrily devouring a plate of chicken and pasta, then climbed into bed. Now, in the darkness of the bedroom, Emily thought about Alina Engel. What could have happened to her? She thought about Lewis—about how he might be getting on in his new house and with his job at the bank. She thought about her mother and was swept up in a great wash of grief. In the midst of that grief came Phillip, and then Emily knew she would not sleep. Not unaided.
Outside, the city embraced night in all of its colours. Traffic sounds and voices still dallied on the air, the more hedonistic of urbanites not ready to retire to their beds.
Getting up, Emily padded into the bathroom and swallowed a pill from a prescription bottle. Perching herself on the edge of the bathtub, she waited for the heaviness to take hold. It began at the front of her head, weighing it down until she could not lift it up again. Then, like rain, it trickled through her veins, numbing each part of her, filling her with thick lead. The last to go was her mind. Down into the lead it sank, disappearing into a thick pool. Down into a black sludge where thoughts suffocated and anxieties drowned. Down she went, deeper and deeper. Until there was nothing left of her but a whisper. Dust.
CHAPTER FOUR
Il Cuore was a cramped affair. Customers hunched over small tables, their knees pulled together and their elbows tucked in. The space itself was pleasant enough, with varnished floorboards and terracotta walls decorated with prints of sun-blistered landscapes. The aroma of coffee was rich and spicy, with a twist of cinnamon and a hint of chocolate.
Backed up in the furthest corner, Emily’s pulse began to resume a less worrisome rate. She watched the growing queue of office workers on their breaks snaking its way along the counter and up to the door, while two harassed-looking baristas took orders and gestured to each other in heated Italian.
Dressed head to toe in black, Jerome worked the tables, flashing his smile in exchange for tips. Noticing Emily, he saddled up to her with notepad and pen.
“Hello there, neighbour. It’s good to see you again. Are you all unpacked?”
Emily fumbled with a newspaper that had been left behind by the previous customer, pulling it towards her, then folding it neatly in half.
“Almost.”
“Wonderful. When’s the housewarming?” Jerome picked up the used cups and saucers. He frowned as he ran a damp cloth over the table’s sticky surface. Emily had either failed to hear his question or had ignored it. “So what can I get you?”
Emily squinted at the menu board above the baristas’ serving area.
“Coffee.”
“What kind?”
“Regular?”
Jerome jotted down her order. “You’re not from around these parts are you? I’ll be right back.”
Emily watched him slink between the tables and disappear behind the counter. Unfolding the newspaper, she flipped through the pages, skipping past stories of murder, corruption and rape, until she came to the classifieds. She skimmed through the various job sectors, mentally crossing off the vacancies for which she lacked the qualifications or experience. The few jobs remaining included graveyard-shift office cleaning, modelling for ‘exotic’ photoshoots, and temporary secretarial positions.
“One regular coffee, and a little treat on the house. Ossi Dei Morti.”
Emily stared at the plate of pale white cookies Jerome had set down in front of her.
“Bones of the dead,” he said. “Job hunting?”
Picking up one of the cookies, Emily inspected it with the grim fascination of a coroner.
“Just seeing what’s out there.”
“What do you do? Wait, let me guess. I'm good at this. You're a librarian.”
Emily thought about becoming a librarian. It would be quiet and calm. She could lose herself between the pages of books, like she used to when her life had been meaningful and ordinary.
“Okay, not a librarian.” Jerome stared at her with an intensity that made her squirm. “But something similar.”
“What’s it like being a waiter?”
Much to the chagrin of waiting customers, Jerome sat down.
“Minimum wage, long hours, the exquisite charm of the general public—it’s a real winner. Job satisfaction on every level.” He reached over, picked up one of the thin white biscuits and twirled it between his fingertips. “Waiting tables is a means to an end. Like most of the waiters in this city, I graduated from drama school with the absolute certainty I’d ace my first audition and become an overnight success. Or failing that I’d be spotted by some nefarious talent agent who’d encourage me to sleep my way to the top, starting with them. Instead, I’m living off tips and stuck at home every night, watching reruns of crappy shows I wouldn’t be caught dead in and most likely never will. I know what you’re thinking—what a cliché, huh?”
“Where I used to live, waiters were just waiters.”
“And probably better off for it. Where did you grow up?”
Emily looked around the busy room. “Nowhere. You won't have heard of it.”
“Someone has secrets,” Jerome teased. “Well you’ve come to the right place to bury them. You have friends here?”
“Not really.”
“Family?”
Emily shook her head, stared into her coffee.
“Well now,” Jerome said, eyeing her with concern. “You know this isn’t the easiest place to make new friends. Most people are floating around in their own little bubbles, or too busy fighting each other for a seat on the tube. But that’s just London—it doesn’t like to get too comfortable. You’d think with millions of people crammed together in one place there wouldn’t be room to get lonely. I guess what I’m saying is if you ever want to watch some bad TV, you know where I live.”
Lost Lives (Emily Swanson Mystery Thriller Series Book 1) Page 3
