Land of the Living

by Nicci French

  No one raised their heads to see me standing there. I was completely at a loss. I didn't even know what I was thinking. I didn't know what to do next, or whom to turn to for help. I didn't know what help I would be asking for: tell me what happened, tell me what to do, tell me who I am, tell me where to go from here, only tell me .. .

  I shut my eyes and tried for the thousandth time to remember something, anything. Just a tiny chink of light in the darkness would do. There was no light, and when I opened my eyes again I was staring once more into the street, made unfamiliar by winter.

  I went to the phone and dialled Terry's number at work. It rang and rang. I tried his mobile number and got voice mail

  "Terry," I said. "Terry, it's me. Abbie. I urgently need to speak to you."

  I phoned Sadie's number next, but only got an answering-machine and I didn't want to leave a message. I thought about calling Sheila and Guy but then I would have to explain it all and I didn't want to do that, not now.

  I had imagined coming home and telling my story. Friends would sit round me with wide eyes, listening. It would be a horror story with a happy ending, a story of despair, then hope; of ultimate triumph. I would be a kind of heroine, because I'd survived and was telling them the tale. The awfulness of what had happened would be redeemed by the ending. What could I say now? The police think I'm lying. They think I made it all up. I know about suspicion: it spreads. It is like an ugly stain.

  What do you do when you're feeling lost, angry, depressed, scared, a bit ill and very cold? I ran a bath, very hot and deep, and took all my clothes off. I looked at myself in the mirror. There were hollows in my cheeks and my buttocks; my pelvic bones and my ribs jutted out sharply. I was a stranger to myself. I stood on the scales that were under the sink: I'd lost over a stone.

  I lowered myself into the scalding water, held my nostrils together between finger and thumb, took a deep breath and disappeared under the surface completely. When I finally emerged, spluttering into the steamed-up air, someone was shouting. They were shouting at me. I blinked and a face came furiously into focus.

  "Terry!" I said.

  "What the fuck do you think you're doing in there? Have you gone mad?"

  He was still in his thick jacket and his face was blotchy with cold. I pinched my nose and slid under the water again, to shut out the sight of him, to stop the voice that was calling me mad.

  Two

  I scrambled out of the bath with Terry glaring at me, wrapped myself in a towel, and went into the bedroom. I grabbed clothes from wherever I could find them a pair of old jeans from the bin-bag, an itchy, dark-blue sweater from the drawer, some scuffed trainers, that old pair of scrunched-up black knickers. At least they were clean. On the shelf above the bath I found a hair band so I was able to tie up my wet hair with trembling hands.

  Terry was sitting in the wicker chair in the corner of the living room. In the wicker chair I'd bought in a second-hand shop in the high street one rainy Sunday morning. I'd even carried it back myself, using it as an umbrella. He leant forward and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. The ashtray I'd taken with me as a souvenir from a cafe where I'd once waitressed. He took another cigarette from the packet lying on the table and lit it. With his copper hair, his pale skin, he looked beautiful, the Terry I had first met. It was when he started to talk that problems began.

  "Aren't you going to ask me if I'm all right?" I said. Though, of course, it was too late for that. If I had to ask him to ask me, it wasn't going to work as an expression of concern. Like when you ask someone if they love you if you have to ask them, they don't. Or not enough. Not the way you want them to.

  "What?" he said. He made it sound more like a statement than a question.

  "What's going on?"

  "That's what I want to know. You look dreadful. And that cut .. . What's wrong with you?"

  "You know I've been in hospital?"

  He took a long slow drag on his cigarette and blew out the smoke slowly, savouring it, as if it was of far more interest than I was. There were two bad-tempered Terrys. There was angry,

  shouty Terry. The one I'd briefly glimpsed in the bathroom. And there was quiet, calm, sarcastic Terry, the one sitting in the wicker chair smoking his cigarette.

  "Yes, I heard," he said. "Eventually. I heard from the police. They came here."

  "I tried to phone you," I said. "You weren't here. Well, you know you weren't here, of course."

  "I've been away."

  "Terry," I said, "I've been having the most well, the most terrible, terrible time. I want to .. ." I stopped, I didn't know what I wanted or what to say. I certainly did not want to be sitting in a chilly room with an angry man. A hug, I thought. A hug, a cup of cocoa, someone saying they're glad I'm home, someone saying they missed me, someone making me feel safe. That's what I need right now. "I can't remember things," I said at last. "I'm all in the dark and I need your help to sort things out." No reaction. "I should be dead," I said.

  Another bloody slow drag at the cigarette. Was he on something? There seemed to be an extra beat before everything he said, as if there was some ironic subtext that I was missing. People talk about being able to feel when a storm is coming. Their old war wound starts to ache or something. I've never been able to manage it myself. My own war wounds ache all the time. But whenever a row is coming with Terry, I can feel it. I can feel it all over my skin and in the hairs on the back of my neck and in my spine and my stomach and behind my eyes, and I can feel it in the air. But this time my own anger stirred inside me, too.

  "Terry," I said, 'did you hear what I said?"

  "Am I missing something?"

  "What?"

  "Is this some weird way of coming back?"

  "They discharged me from the hospital. That's all. What did they tell you? Haven't you heard anything about it? I've got so much to tell you. Oh, God, you'll never believe it." I gave a gulp when I heard myself say that, and hurried to correct myself. "Except it's true, of course."

  "Isn't it a bit late for that?"

  "Sorry? I guess you've got a few things to tell me about as well. Where were you?"

  Terry gave a barking kind of laugh then looked around as if he was worried that someone else might be looking at him. I closed my eyes then opened them again. He was still there in the wicker chair, smoking, and I was still here, standing over him.

  "Are you drunk?" I asked.

  "This is some kind of put-on, right?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Is this some way of getting back at me?"

  I shook my head to clear it, and it throbbed violently. I felt as if I was seeing everything through a grey mist.

  "Listen, Terry. O K? I was grabbed by a madman. He hit me on the head and I blacked out. I don't know what happened, only some of it. But I could have died. I nearly did. I was in hospital. You weren't around. I tried to call you, but you never answered. Probably you were on a binge, is that it? But I've come home."

  Now Terry's expression changed. He looked puzzled, completely thrown. His cigarette burned between his fingers as if he'd forgotten about it.

  "Abbie .. . I just don't get this."

  I sat down on the sofa. The sofa was Terry's. I think his mother had passed it on to him years before. I rubbed my eyes. "I know the police talked to you," I said warily. I wanted to tell as little as I could to Terry. And that was part of the problem, wasn't it? "What did they say?"

  Now it was Terry's turn to look wary. "They wanted to know when I'd last seen you."

  "And what did you tell them?"

  Another slow drag on the cigarette. "I just answered their questions."

  "And they were satisfied?"

  "I told them where I'd been staying. I think they made a couple of calls to check. That seemed to be enough for them."

  "What did they tell you about me?"

  "They said you'd been injured."

  ' "Injured"?" I said. "That was their word?"

  He gave a shrug. "Something
like that."

  "I was attacked," I said.

  "Who by?"

  "I don't know. I never saw his face."

  "You what?" He gawped at me. "What happened?"

  "I don't know. I've got no memory of it. I was hit. Hard. On the head. I can't remember anything for days and days."

  I had his attention now. He clearly had so many questions, he could hardly think of which one to ask.

  "If you don't remember anything, how do you know you didn't just fall over and hit your head?"

  "He took me prisoner, Terry. He was going to kill me. I escaped."

  At this point, I suppose, pathetically, I felt that any human being would come over and hold me and say, "How awful," but Terry just carried on with his interrogation, as if he hadn't really heard what I was saying.

  "I thought you didn't see him."

  "I was blindfolded. It was in the dark."

  "Oh," he said. There was a long pause. "Christ."

  "Yes."

  I'm sorry, Abbie," he said awkwardly. It was far too little and it came too late to mean anything; awareness of this was written all over his face. Then he asked: "So what are the police doing?"

  This was the question I had been dreading. This was why I hadn't wanted to get into a detailed discussion. Even though I knew I was right, I felt ashamed even in front of Terry and at the same time I felt bitterly angry with myself for that.

  "They don't believe me," I said. "They think it never happened."

  "But what about the injuries? Those bruises?"

  I pulled a face. I wanted to cry but I absolutely was not going to cry in front of bloody Terry. Which was another part of the trouble.

  "From what I understand, the people who are on my side think I imagined it. The people who aren't on my side think I made it up. They all think they're doing me a favour by not charging me with wasting police time. So they've turned me loose. I'm out in the open again, with no protection." I waited for him to come over to me. He didn't move. His face had a blank look to it. I took a deep breath. "So what's happened with my stuff ? Who took it?"

  "You did."

  "What? Me?"

  "Two weeks ago."

  "I took it?"

  "Yes." Terry shifted in his chair. He looked at me closely. "Is this true? Do you not remember anything?"

  I shook my head.

  "It's all fuzzy. There's a whole dark cloud over the last few weeks. I've got a vague memory of being at work, of being here. Then it all fades. But what are you talking about? What do you mean I took it?"

  Now it was Terry who looked embarrassed. His eyes were flickering, as if he was thinking quickly, trying to come up with something. Then he looked calm again.

  "You left," he said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's not as if you haven't threatened to about a million times. And don't look at me as if it's something that's my fault."

  "I'm not looking at you in any way at all'

  He narrowed his eyes. "You really don't remember?"

  "Not a thing."

  He lit another cigarette. "We had a row," he said.

  "What about?"

  "I don't remember. What are rows ever about? Something stupid. Maybe it was the final straw."

  "What a cliche that is."

  "Well, there you are. Maybe I used a cliche that offended you or picked up the wrong spoon. We had a row. You said that that was it. I thought you were joking and I, well, I went out. But when I got back you were gathering up your stuff. Most of it, anyway. You took everything you could fit into your car and then you drove off."

  "Is this true?"

  "Look around you, Abbie. Who else would want your C D player apart from you?"

  "So you're saying it was just one of our rows."

  "One of our worse rows."

  I felt bleak and cold. There seemed no reason for concealing anything now.

  "I've forgotten a lot of things," I said. "But I remember that our worse rows usually ended with you lashing out at me."

  "That's not true."

  "Did you hit me?"

  "No," said Terry. But the expression on his face was both defensive and ashamed.

  "You know, that was one of the reasons why the police didn't believe me. I'm a victim. I've got a history. I'm a woman who has been hit. I called the police before. Do you remember that evening? Maybe you don't remember it. You'd been drinking and there was some sort of row. I don't remember what that one was about either. Was it the one where I'd washed a shirt of yours that you wanted to wear and it was still wet? And I said if it was a problem, why didn't you wash it yourself ? Was it that one? Or was it one of the ones where you said I ruined your life by going on at you? There were a lot of those. It's hard to tell those ones apart. But it ended with you grabbing the kitchen knife and me calling the police."

  "No, I don't remember that," Terry said. "You're exaggerating."

  "No! I'm not exaggerating, I'm not making it up. I'm saying what happens when you get drunk. First you get cheerful, then aggressively cheerful, then maudlin and self-pitying, and by the fourth drink you're angry. And if I'm there, you're angry with me. And I'm not going to sit here like some vengeful woman and list the things I've seen you do when you're drunk. But for some reason that I've never been able to work out, you get off on it. And then, for some reason I've also never been able to fathom, I believe you when you cry and say it'll never, not ever, happen again."

  Terry stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. Was that his fourth, or his fifth?

  "Abbie, this is a pretty good fucking imitation of the row we had."

  "Then I wish that I remembered it, because I rather like the woman I was who pulled herself together and walked out."

  "Yes," said Terry, sounding suddenly almost as tired as I was. "I rather liked her as well. You know, I'm sorry I didn't come and see you in the hospital. I was going to when I heard about it, and then stuff came up and then suddenly you were in my bath."

  "That's all right," I said. "So where are my things?"

  "I don't know."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You left me, remember?"

  "When did I leave you?"

  "When?"

  "What date?"

  "Oh. On Saturday."

  "Which Saturday?"

  He cast me a glance, as if he suspected this was some elaborate charade. "Saturday January the twelfth. Around midday," he added.

  "But that was sixteen days ago! I don't remember it." Once again, I felt close to tears. "Didn't I leave a forwarding address?"

  "You went to stay with Sadie, I think. But that was just for a night."

  "And after that?"

  "No idea."

  "Oh, my God," I said, and just held my head in my hands. "So where do I go now?"

  "You could stay here for a bit, if you want. It would be all right. Just until you got things sorted out. We could talk things over .. . You know."

  I looked at Terry sitting there in his cloud of cigarette smoke. And I thought of that woman, the woman I couldn't remember, me, who had taken the decision and walked out sixteen days earlier.

  "No," I said. "No. I've got things to sort out. All sorts of things."

  I looked around. Didn't someone say that if you leave something somewhere, it shows you want to come back? For sort of the same reason, I felt I had to take something away. Anything. There was a

  IOI

  small globe on the mantelpiece. Terry had given it to me on the only birthday of mine we had spent together. I took hold of it. He looked quizzical.

  "It's mine," I said. "You gave it to me. It was my birthday present."

  I moved towards the door and then I remembered something. "Sorry, Terry," I said. "I haven't got my purse. I haven't got anything. Could you lend me some money? Ten pounds. Twenty. Anything."

  With a vast sigh, Terry got up and walked across to where his jacket was hanging over the back of the sofa. He searched through his wallet. "I can give you fifteen," h
e said. "I'm sorry. But I'll need the rest tonight."

  "That's all right."

  And he counted the money out as if he were paying the paper bill. A ten-pound note, three pound coins and then a mass of silver and copper. I took it all.

  Three

  I spent 2.80 on the Underground, and put a twenty-pence piece into the open violin case of a busker who was standing at the bottom of the escalator, playing "Yesterday' and trying to catch people's eyes as they flowed past him on their way home from work. I spent another fiver on a bottle of red wine when I reached Kennington. Now I had just seven pounds left, stuffed into my back pocket. I kept feeling it to make sure it was still there, one folded note and five coins. I had a plastic bag full of the unfamiliar clothes I'd been found in six days ago; only six days. I had a globe. As I stumbled along the street, head down against the wind and nose turning red, I felt dangerously unencumbered. It was as if without all the ordinary stuff of my previous life I was weightless and inexplicable and could drift away like a feather.

  I had let myself dream of this: walking down the cold street with a bottle of wine to see a dear friend. Now I kept glancing around to see who was walking beside me, behind me. Why had I never noticed before how strange people look, especially in winter when they're muffled and buttoned up into themselves? My old shoes kept slipping on the ice. At one point a man put out his hand to steady me as we crossed the road. I wrenched my arm away and he stared at me in surprise.

  "Be in, be in, be in," I said, as I pressed the bell to Sadie's basement flat and waited. I should have phoned in advance. What if she was out somewhere, or away? But she was never out at this time of day. Pippa was only six or seven weeks old and Sadie was euphorically housebound. I pressed the bell again.

  "Coming!" called a voice. I could see her figure through the frosted glass. "Who is it?"

  "Me. Abbie."

  "Abbie! I thought you were still in hospital! Hang on."

  I heard her cursing and fiddling with the locks and the door swung open and there she was, with Pippa in her arms, swaddled in thick towels and only a section of wrinkled pink face showing.