Land of the Living

by Nicci French

  "Nice to meet you," she said faintly. "Sally."

  "Here." Terry dragged in two bin-bags with my remaining clothes, then put a bulging plastic bag of mail into my hands. He was red-faced.

  "Must go," I said. Then I turned to the woman. "Do you know what's odd? You look rather like me."

  She smiled, polite but incredulous. "I really don't think so."

  They were still on the fish when I backed into the kitchen, dragging my bags after me.

  "Abbie, back already! This is Paul and Izzie. Are you going to join us?"

  "Hi." I could tell by the way Paul and Izzie looked at me that they'd heard the full story. "Don't worry, I'm not really hungry. I'm going to go through my post." I lifted up the splitting plastic bag. "Get some clues, eh?" They all laughed nervously and glanced at each other. Sheila flushed, and leant forward to refill their glasses.

  "I'd love some wine, though."

  Most of the post was junk, January sales catalogues, stuff like that. There were two postcards: one from Mary, who was in Australia for the whole of the month; one from Alex in Spain. He must be back by now. I wondered if he'd heard. There were two invitations to parties. One had been and gone, but one was this weekend. Maybe I'd go to that, dance and flirt, I thought, and then, But what shall I wear? And what shall I say? And who on earth would flirt with someone who looked like a vagrant schoolgirl? Perhaps I wouldn't go, after all.

  There was a strange, formal letter from Laurence Joiner at Jay and Joiner's, confirming that I was on unpaid leave, but that my pension and National Insurance would still be paid. I frowned and put it to one side. Clearly I needed to go into the office sometime. Maybe tomorrow.

  Then there was a bank statement. At the beginning of the month I had been a glorious and uncharacteristic 1810.49 in credit but now I had only 597 left. I squinted at the row of figures. What on earth had I spent 890 on, on 13 January? Fuck, those must be the clothes that Robin had told me about. What on earth had possessed me? I must have been drunk or something. And I didn't even have the clothes to show for it. Then, three days later, I'd withdrawn five hundred pounds in cash, which was very odd. I usually take out about fifty.

  I drank some wine and opened an official-looking letter, which informed me that the tax disc on my car was due to run out. This didn't concern me too much because I didn't have a clue where my car was except I suddenly did, because I opened the next envelope and discovered that it was being held in a police pound in Bow.

  "Yes!" I said aloud. "At last!"

  I looked more closely at the letter. Apparently it had been towed away from an illegal parking place on Tilbury Road, E1, wherever Tilbury Road was. Wherever bloody E1 was. I could collect it between nine and five. I'd go tomorrow, first thing.

  I raced to the kitchen. "I've found my car!" I said to them.

  "Good," said Guy, a little startled. "Great. Where is it?"

  "In a police pound in Bow apparently. I'll get it tomorrow morning. Then I won't need all those cabs." I picked up the bottle of wine and poured myself another large glassful.

  "How?" asked Guy.

  "What do you mean, how?"

  "How will you get it? You don't have the key."

  "Oh." I felt winded by disappointment. "I hadn't thought of that. What shall I do?"

  "You could get a locksmith out," suggested Izzie kindly.

  "No, I know. There's a spare key at Terry's, somewhere, God knows where, though. In a safe place I've forgotten. I'll have to go back again. Shit. I thought tonight was the end of it."

  "At least you'll have your car again. That's something." "It's a start."

  I was falling, falling from a great height. Nothing could stop me and there was silent black air all around me and I was plunging through it. I heard myself call out, a wild cry in the night. I heard it echo.

  Then I woke with a violent lurch and lay as if winded on the pillow. The pillow was damp from sweat. I felt sweat trickle down my cheeks and neck like tears. I opened my eyes but it was still dark. Quite dark. There was a heaviness over my heart, as if a great weight had been dropped on to me. I was trapped in the darkness, I heard myself breathing, but the sound was hoarse, like a rusty gasp. Something was wrong. I couldn't catch my breath properly; it was stuck in my chest and my throat kept closing against it in spasms. I had to remember how to do it. I had to remember how to breathe. I had to count, yes, that was it. Breathe in and then out. Slowly. One-two, one-two. Pulling air into my lungs, holding it for a second, letting it out again.

  Who was there? Someone was nearby. A board creaked. I wanted to sit up but my body wouldn't move, and I wanted to call out but my voice was frozen inside me. Another board creaked. There was breathing. I could hear it, just outside the door. I lay flattened against my pillow. I could feel my mouth pulled back in a scream, but still no sound came, and there was the breathing again, footsteps, a quiet, stifled cough.

  "No," I said at last. "No." I spoke louder. "No, no, no, no." The words filled up my head. They ricocheted around the room, crashed around my skull, tore at my throat. "No, no, no, no."

  The door opened and in the slab of light I could see a black shape.

  "No!" I screamed again, even louder. There was a hand on my shoulder, fingers on my hair. I thrashed on the bed. "No, no, no, no. Oh, please, no!"

  "Abbie. Abbie, wake up. It's all right. You're having a dream. It's just a dream."

  "Oh, Jesus."

  "Abbie."

  "God, God, God," I whimpered.

  "You were having a nightmare."

  I took hold of Sheila's hand and pressed it against my forehead.

  "You're soaked through! You must have a fever."

  "Sheila. Oh, Sheila. I thought.. ."

  "You were having a nightmare."

  I sat up. "It was terrible," I said.

  "You poor thing. Listen, I'm going to get you a towel to put over your pillow. You'll be all right now."

  "Yes. Sorry. I woke you."

  "You didn't. I was going to the bathroom anyway. Hang on."

  She went away and returned a few moments later with a large towel. "All right now?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "Call if you need me."

  "Thanks. And, Sheila leave the door open, will you? And the light in the corridor on?"

  "It's very bright."

  "It doesn't matter."

  "Good night, then."

  "Night."

  She left and I lay back in bed. My heart was still pounding like a drum. My throat hurt from screaming. I felt weak and shaky and clammily sick. The light flooded in through the door. I lay and watched it and waited for it to be morning.

  "Where would I have hidden it?"

  "No idea," said Terry. He was still in his dressing-gown, the one I'd given him for his last birthday, drinking thick black coffee and smoking cigarette after cigarette. A blue fug clouded the room, which smelt of ash and the garlic from last night. There was no sign of the other woman, though.

  "I mean, it's not in any of the little cabinet drawers. It's not in the wooden bowl that every bit of crap ends up in. It's not in the bathroom."

  "Why would it be in the bathroom?"

  "It wouldn't be. That's what I said, it's not."

  "Oh." He lit another cigarette. "Well, I've got to get dressed and go. I'm running late as it is. Will you be long?"

  "As long as it takes to find the key. Don't worry, I can let myself out."

  "Well, not really."

  "Sorry?"

  "You don't live here any more, Abbie. You walked out on me, remember? You can't just come and go like this."

  I stopped rummaging and stared at him. "Are you serious?"

  "I'll get dressed while you look," he said. "But, yes, I am."

  I opened all the drawers in the kitchen and living room and banged them shut again, opened cupboards and slammed them closed. Not with the cutlery; not with the bills; not with the tins of food, the bags of flour and rice, the cereal packets, the packets of coffee and
tea, the bottles of oil, vinegar, soy sauce. Not on one of the mug hooks. Not on the lintel of the door between the two rooms. Not on the bookshelves, or with the stationery, or in the glass bowl where I put used to put things like rubber bands, paper clips, spare buttons and hair bands stamps, tampons.

  Terry came back into the room. He put his hands into his coat pockets and jangled change impatiently.

  "Look," I said, 'you don't want me here and I don't want to be here. Go to work and when you come back I'll have gone. I won't steal anything. I won't remove the things that are mine. You can have them. I might as well start over with a completely blank slate. I won't scribble obscenities on the bathroom mirror with my lipstick. I'll find the key and I'll leave. OK?"

  He jangled the coins some more. "Is this really the way it's going to end?" he asked eventually, which took me by surprise.

  "The woman who was here last night seemed nice," I said. "What was her name? Sarah?"

  "Sally," he said, giving up. "OK. I'll leave you to it."

  Thanks. "Bye, then."

  "Bye Abbie." He hovered by the door for a few seconds, then was gone.

  I made myself a last cup of coffee. I took the mug and wandered round the flat. Part of me was wondering if the key would be hidden inside this cup, that cubby-hole. Part of me was just looking, remembering. I found the key under the pot of basil. The earth was all dried out and the leaves had wilted. I watered it carefully. I washed up my mug, dried it, put it back on the hook and left.

  Bow was a long way. By the time I arrived I had forty-eight pounds left and a few coppers. I asked in a post office for directions to the car pound. It turned out to be a mile away from the nearest Underground station. You'd have thought that if they towed away your car, they'd at least put it somewhere near public transport. I would have taken a taxi if I'd seen one, but I didn't. There were just lots and lots of cars and vans spraying water up from the wide puddles in the road.

  So I walked, past the garages selling B M W s, the factories making lights and catering equipment and carpets; past the building sites where cranes topped with snow stood motionless. I saw the pound as I came over the hill; row upon row of cars surrounded by a high fence, with double-locked gates. Most of them were old and dented. Perhaps their owners had simply abandoned them. I couldn't see my car, which was also old and dented, anywhere.

  I took my letter to the office in the corner and a man rummaged around in the filing cabinet, came out with a piece of printed paper, scratched his head and sighed heavily.

  "So can I just take it?" I asked.

  "Hang on, not so fast. You have to pay, you know."

  "Oh, yes, of course, sorry. How much?" I felt anxiously in my pocket for the dwindling wad of notes.

  "That's what I'm working out. There's the fine for parking illegally, then there's the cost of towing it away, then you have to add on the time it's been here."

  "Oh. That sounds like rather a lot."

  It is, yes. A hundred and thirty pounds."

  "Sorry?"

  "A hundred and thirty pounds," he repeated.

  "I don't have that much money."

  "We take cheques."

  "I don't have a cheque book."

  "Cards."

  I shook my head.

  "Oh dear, oh dear," he said. He didn't sound too sad.

  "What shall I do?"

  "I couldn't tell you."

  Can I take the car, drive to a friend's to get money, then come back here?"

  "No."

  There was nothing for it but go away again. I slogged back to Bow and sat in a little cafe with another cup of bitter, tepid coffee. Then I went to a payphone, called Sam and asked him, begged him, really, to send sixty pounds no, make that eighty, ninety even -by courier to the police pound, where I'd be waiting. "Please, please, please," I said. "I'm really sorry but this is an emergency." I knew about the courier service because once he'd got his jacket collected from a club we'd been to because he couldn't be bothered to go back for it. Perk of the job, he'd said.

  I finally got my car. At just after twelve thirty, I paid over the 130 and he gave me a printout of where it had been towed away from and a breakdown of the charges. Then he pointed out where it was parked, and unlocked the double gates. I had nineteen pounds left. I climbed in and turned the key in the ignition. It started at once. I turned up the heating and rubbed my hands together to get rid of their cold stiffness. There was a Maltesers packet lying on the passenger seat. I pushed the tape that was in the machine and didn't recognize the music that came on. Something jazzy and cheerful. I turned up the volume and drove through the gates. Then I pulled over and looked at the official receipt. The car had been towed away from outside 103 Tilbury Road, E1 on 28 January which I

  worked out was my last day in hospital. The road must be near here, surely.

  The road map was in the glove compartment. I found Tilbury Road and drove there, through an area of London that was quite unfamiliar to me. It was a long, dismal street of boarded-up houses, dimly lit news agents and twenty-four-hour shops selling grapefruit and okra and dented tins of tomatoes. I parked outside number 103 and sat in my car for a few minutes. I put my head on the steering-wheel and tried to remember. Nothing happened, no glimmer in the darkness. I put the map back in the glove compartment, and felt a rustle of papers. There were three receipts pushed in there too. One was for petrol: twenty-six pounds, on Monday 14 January. The second was for 150-worth of Italian lire on Tuesday 15 January. The third was for an Indian take away delivery for that same day: 16.80 for two pilau rice, one vegetable biryani, one king prawn tikka, one spinach, one aubergine, one garlic naan. To be delivered to 11b Maynard Street, London NWi. I'd never heard of Maynard Street and I couldn't remember when I'd last been in that corner of north London.

  I stuffed the receipts back into the glove compartment and something fell on the floor. I leant down and picked up a pair of sunglasses and a key on a loop of string. Not my key. A key I had never seen before.

  It was not quite four. I drove off again, through the drawn-out London outskirts, in the growing dusk. Everything seemed more frightening in the dark. I felt ragged with tiredness, but I still had things to do before going back to Sheila and Guy's.

  Seven

  "You know what you need, don't you?"

  "No, Laurence, what do I need?"

  "A rest."

  Laurence didn't know what I needed. I was standing in the office of Jay and Joiner's looking at the spot where my desk used to be. That was the funny thing. The office looked just as it had always looked. It's not a place that is anything special, which is pretty ironic for a company that designs offices. The only real attraction is that it is in a back alley, which is right in the middle of Soho, a couple of minutes' walk from the delicatessens and the market. When I say that the office looked the same, I mean the same except that all traces of me had vanished. It wasn't even as if someone else had just been sitting at my desk. The rest of the office seemed to have been repositioned very subtly so that the space I had once occupied wasn't there any more.

  Carol had led me through. That was strange as well, being led through my own office. I didn't get the casual nods and greetings I was used to. There were double-takes, stares, and one new woman who looked at me curiously, assuming I was a customer, until Andy leant over and whispered something to her, and she looked at me even more curiously. Carol was breathlessly apologetic about the lack of all my stuff. She explained that people were falling over it and it had been put in boxes and stowed away in the storeroom, wherever that was. My mail was being opened and either redistributed around the office to relevant people or sent on to me at Terry's. But, then, I'd arranged all that, hadn't I? When I'd left. I nodded vaguely.

  "Are you all right?" she asked.

  That was a big question. I didn't know whether she just meant my appearance. She had certainly flinched when I had walked into

  Reception in my civilian clothes. Very civilian clothes. Then there w
as my hair. Also I had lost over a stone since she had last seen me. Plus, my face was still a bit yellow from the bruising.

  "I've had a bit of a difficult time," I said.

  "Yes," said Carol, not catching my eye.

  "Did the police come here? Asking about me?"

  "Yes," she said. She was looking at me now. Warily. "We were worried about you."

  "What did they ask?"

  "They wanted to know about your work here. And why you'd left."

  "What did you say?"

  "They didn't ask me. They talked to Laurence about it."

  "What do you think?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "About why I left."

  I didn't tell her that I had no idea myself about why I'd left, no memory of leaving. I was hoping that there might be at least one person to whom I could avoid telling my story. I felt I couldn't bear looking at another face showing those signs of growing puzzlement. Should they pity me? Should they believe me?

  Carol looked thoughtful. "I think you were right," she said. "You couldn't go on the way you were going. You were burning yourself out."

  "So you think I did the right thing?"

  "I envy you your six months off. I think it's very brave."

  Another shock. Six months. And I noticed her use of the word 'brave': 'brave' as a euphemism for 'dumb'.

  "But you're looking forward to me coming back?" I said jokingly. She looked wary again and that really did alarm me. What the fuck had I been up to?

  "Obviously things got a bit frazzled at the end," she said. "And people said things they shouldn't have."

  "I always had a big mouth," I said, when what I really wanted to say was, "What is all this about?"

  "I think you were mainly right," Carol said. "It's always a matter of tone, isn't it? And timing. I think it's good you've come in to talk things over." We were at the door of Laurence's office now. "By the way," she said, too casually, 'that stuff with the police. What was it about?"

  "It's complicated," I said. "Wrong place at the wrong time."

  "Were you .. . you know .. . ?"

  Oh, so that was it. The gossip was that I might have been raped. Or not really raped.

  "No, nothing like that."