by Neil Cross
In each room he kept a 12-inch, aluminium-cased Maglite torch.
Although these torches had never been used, he changed their batteries on the first Monday of every month, in addition to which he kept one pack of spares per torch secreted in each room. This unopened pack too was replaced, unopened, every six months. He sometimes woke, having dreamed of a power cut, reaching for the cool metal tube beneath his pillow. Sometimes he slept cupping a Maglite like a teddy bear.
At the foot of the bed he left folded a pile of emergency clothing: a sweater, jeans, slip-on trainers. This was in case he was required to dress and be gone from the flat in a hurry - if the towel in the bathroom should fall, say, or the wardrobe door should creak open. For the same reason he left his keys hanging inside the front-door lock.
Gradually, he'd learned to sleep with softer, indirect lighting which made the possibility of a single blown bulb less catastrophic.
There was a standard lamp in each corner of the bedroom, banishing troubling shadows, and a desktop lamp on the bedside table -- to reach for, should the four standard lamps for any reason blow simultaneously.
He'd
left the main light fitting empty because to accidentally switch on the overhead light, then to correct himself and switch it off again, would make the room appear, momentarily, to be a little darker - even with all four standard lamps on. No degree of darkness was permissible.
He'd experimented with an eye-mask, but it had proved impractical; if Nathan heard a noise -- a click or a creak or a sigh -- it was necessary to fumble inefficiently with the mask's edges and flip the whole thing inside out on his forehead. Instead, he slept on his back with a light pillow placed over his eyes.
In December the dawn was late and the night was long.
Although Christmas was Hermes' busiest retail period, there wasn't much for Nathan and his head office colleagues to do; it was down to the boys in the front line - which is how the field sales reps were described when business was brisk. As the month waxed, then waned, he could do little more than keep an eye on sales and stock levels, measuring their failure against performance targets.
As Christmas Day approached and the possibility of a performance-related bonus once more evaporated, head office slipped into languor. The silent resentment wasn't helped by the seasonal round of obligatory departmental lunches, nor the Christmas party.
On Christmas Eve, Nathan worked as late as he could -- it was always possible to find something to do, even if it was filing or clearing out old paperwork. At 3.30, he wandered twice round the building, looking for somebody to have a drink with. But his colleagues were all gone; one by one, they'd bid cheery seasonal goodbyes and bundled themselves into overcoats, picking up their briefcases and handbags.
On the way home, Nathan stopped off to buy some food. Then he parked his car behind the nursery and approached home via the rear entrance. The nursery was in darkness; the children would soon be tucked up, enduring their own excited sleeplessness at the thought of a nocturnal visitation. But the darkness in the nursery didn't frighten Nathan. The walls were lined with painty splodges on cheap sugar paper. It wasn't conceivable that something wicked lurked in there.
But now he noticed the flats on the first floor were in darkness -- and so was the attic flat that abutted his. He looked at his watch, as if it might suddenly have become three o'clock in the morning.
Frowning, half embarrassed, he walked to the front of the building to see that, except for his own flat - which he kept illuminated even in his absence, in case the uninhabited darkness should act as an invitation -- there were no lights on. Not even in Flat A, on the first floor - where steadfast, boring Wendy and Dave lived. In an act of what felt to Nathan like calculated malice, they'd turned off the winking Christmas tree lights.
It hadn't occurred to Nathan that all of his neighbours might be away for the holiday. It hadn't happened before. The thought of all those empty rooms - of all that darkness, below him as he slept -- dried his mouth and caused his scrotum to shrivel up.
His key rasped too loud in the latch. Stepping into the hallway, every movement seemed to echo. Having banged the timer switch firmly with the heel of his hand, he made it up the first two flights of stairs.
Then he stopped.
He hit the timer switch again and, still clutching his shopping, he turned and ran back downstairs and out the front door.
Eventually, he found a city-centre hotel that was not fully booked.
The room was not cheap, and Nathan was not sufficiently composed to negotiate himself a last-minute best-price deal.
He returned to his flat in the drizzly light of Christmas morning, to pick up a few things: some clothes, some toiletries, a book, and some magazines for when he lost interest in it. He ate a room-service Christmas dinner while watching a repeat of Only Fools and Horses. He spent Christmas evening in the bar, defiantly reading and drinking.
He didn't know how drunk he was until he stood to retire. The walls performed a trick of perspective, retreating from him, and the barmen looked wicked and malicious.
But New Year's Eve, at least, was tolerable. He watched television and, because the hotel was in the city centre, close to the renovated docklands, he could hear the cars hooting their horns and the girls screaming and laughing and groups repeating one verse of 'Auld Lang Syne', over and over again, and still not getting it right. He could watch it on television too: he could watch a celebrity count in another year, and that was good. That put another year between him and it.
January kicked off with a cold snap. Winds blew in unchecked from the Russian steppes. England descended into bedlam, the way it always did when faced with weather that to whatever modest degree actually resembled winter.
So he had to sit out January, too - because nobody went househunting when frost was hard-baked into the ground, making soil like hardwood and concrete brittle like seaside rock. Nobody in England, anyway.
It was not until February that he began to compile a list of local estate agents.
He made the calls from work, during his lunch hour. If the call should be traced, he need only claim to be househunting. In case this should ever be checked out (he well remembered Detective Holloway's cordial malice), he went to see his bank's mortgage adviser, who agreed on the spot to a mortgage in principle.
There were many more local estate agents than Nathan had anticipated.
A single, large advert in the Yellow Pages might cover half a dozen local branches. Because of this, and because he didn't always get a lunch break, it was nearly three weeks before he called Morris Michael estate agents and said, 'Hi, can I speak to Holly Fox please?'
By now, he'd repeated this sentence so often that, somewhere along the line, it had lost its meaning. So the reply "I'm afraid she's out on a viewing right now, may I take a message - was followed by a long silence, during which Nathan's salesman's throat tightened and let him down. He slammed the receiver into its cradle and hurried to the lavatory.
He fumbled at his belt and suffered a protracted bout of diarrhoea.
Then he went to the car park behind the office and sat in his car, listening to loud music. He smoked seven cigarettes.
He watched motorcycle couriers with packages to deliver, and colleagues who'd nipped out for a smoke (there was a forlorn, stained patch of concrete designated for smokers: contrived to be as uninviting as possible, it deterred nobody). He turned down the music and pretended, ineptly, to be speaking into a mobile phone.
Back in his tiny, glass-fronted office, he wrote the estate agent's number on a Post-it note, and returned the Yellow Pages to Angela's desk.
It took him more than a week to call the number again. But he thought about little else; the idea had annexed a corner of his brain, like adolescent obsessions sometimes had. Whatever else he was doing, the greater part of him was rehearsing imaginary conversations with Holly Fox.
When he called a second time, the voice on the line asked him to wait. There was a bass
o rumbling as the receiver was set down. He hadn't been left on hold and he could hear the background sounds of somebody busy approaching the phone: muffled snippets of conversation, other noises rendered indecipherable; the rumbling of the phone as it was lifted from the desk; a hand cupped over the receiver.
Softly, 'Okay, I will. Later.'
Then:
'Hello, Holly speaking.'
Nathan stood up, as if someone had entered the room, saying: 'Hello?'
'This is Holly. How can I help you?'
'I'm looking for a house.'
'O-ffay.'
He thought by the tone of her voice that she was searching her desk for a pen.
He told her his price range. She asked what he was looking for.
He said, 'Something nice.'
'Okay. That's a start. A flat? A house?'
'Can I afford a nice house on my budget?'
'You'd be surprised. If you pick the right area.'
'Okay. A house would be great. Obviously. Yes. A house.'
'Bedrooms?'
'Yes, please.'
'Got that. How many?'
'Oh. I see. Sorry. I don't know. Two?'
'Two bedrooms. And would you consider a three-bedroom if it fell within your price range?'
'Maybe. Should I?'
'Most Victorian properties have three bedrooms, you see.'
'Right. I see. Okay. Then yes.'
'One of them is usually quite small. A lot of people use them for home offices.'
'Okay.'
'They make good office space.'
'Right.'
'So. Let me have a look at what's available. Then it's probably a good idea if you come in and see me to have a chat. I don't want to show you something you're not interested in.'
'Okay.'
'Right. When is good for you?'
'Any day after five. Except usually Tuesdays and Thursdays.'
'Right. So that's Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.'
'Except the first Monday of every month.'
'Okay.'
She either consulted her diary or pretended to; he couldn't imagine that February was a very busy month when your business was selling houses.
'How about next Wednesday? Five o'clock?'
Today was Friday afternoon.
To hide a sudden rush of panic, Nathan pretended to consult his own diary.
In fact, he knew very well that he had a meeting on Wednesday afternoon at 5.15 p.m. It wasn't the kind of meeting he was able to cancel - the buyer of a small but potentially profitable chain of stationers wasn't happy with the service provided so far by Hermes. But he said, 'Wednesday would be great.'
'Great,' said Holly. 'I'll see you then, then.'
'Great.'
'Out of interest, how did you get my name?'
'I'm sorry?'
'You asked for me by name. Have we met?'
'No.'
'I didn't think so.'
'A friend recommended you. A client, actually.'
'I see. Well, that's always nice to know.'
Right,' said Nathan. 'See you Wednesday.'
'See you Wednesday,' said Holly Fox, and hung up.
Nathan sat, staring at the telephone as if it might at any moment leap into the air like a frog and attack him. But it just sat there until it rang again, fully fifteen minutes later, and almost scared the shit out of him.
14
He coped well enough until Tuesday. But on Wednesday he couldn't go to work. He lay in bed as the sun curved and dipped across the sky.
But when he eventually rose at 3 p.m. it still seemed too soon.
He couldn't even drive. He sat at the wheel of his BMW, holding the cold steering wheel. The last parents, ruddy-faced with cold, were collecting their children from the nursery: tottering bundles in big winter coats and hats and colourful Wellingtons.
He called a minicab and waited in the cold, propped against the BMW, until it arrived at the gate. If he sat in the car or went back inside, he knew he would not be able to go through with it.
The minicab was ten minutes late. By then all the children had gone. Through the bright-lit, curtain-less bay windows he watched the nursery workers talking and laughing and tidying up.
The cab driver seemed to pick up on Nathan's mood and didn't talk.
Nathan asked to be dropped at the top of Blackstock Road; he needed the walk. He paid the driver and lit a cigarette and buried his hands deep in the warm pockets of his overcoat. People huddled at bus stops.
It took him another ten minutes to get there.
The estate agent's interior was obscured by cards in the window advertising houses and flats for sale and rent.
He walked in to a blast of central-heating warmth. The office was subdued; young men and women in dark suits sat behind their computers.
There was a waiting area: a low coffee table with property magazines scattered on it, a couple of cheese plants, a water cooler.
Now and again the phones rang, trilling like distant birds.
Nathan opened a magazine and pretended to read.
Then a woman said his name and he looked up and there she was.
She smiled and held out a hand.
'You must be Nathan.'
He'd forgotten how to move. He put down the magazine and coughed and offered his hand and smiled.
'Sorry I was late.'
Up close, she was unmistakably Elise's sister. There was something about the angle at which she held her head, slightly tilted. She was probably in her late twenties. Shorter than Elise, softer. Hair much longer; it was corkscrew curly and red and fell over her shoulders.
She blew a strand of fringe from her brow. She wore a charcoal-grey suit and a crisp white shirt with a large collar, worn over the lapels of her jacket. She seemed harried, busy, happy, clever.
He followed her to her desk. Her screen saver read HOLLY FOX
and gave her mobile phone number.
She offered him a cup of tea. He thanked her.
She had an assistant to make the tea. Nathan had reached a point in his life when there always seemed to be an assistant to make the tea. This particular assistant was an Indian kid in a suit and tie. He couldn't be older than eighteen.
Holly Fox asked Nathan some questions. He coughed into his fist before answering. His throat was so dry.
He croaked, 'I'm sorry.' And she waved, as if his cough was both a trifle and a pleasure. Nathan knew she did this because she was keen to get his details on to her customer database, after which she could sell him a house at the highest possible price. If her earnings were commission-based, she probably needed it.
Nathan wasn't paid on commission, but a proportion of the reps'
salary was, and he knew well what kind of anxiety it could cause especially in the slow, dead months after Christmas. (That's why the reps loved Valentine's Day, and were beginning to like Easter, too.) The tea arrived. It came in a bone-china cup and saucer, which Nathan thought a nice touch, except the saucer was chipped.
Nathan felt it coming back - the ability to do this.
He smiled at her. The smile ignited something inside him, some kind of reserve.
Holly produced an A4 file. His name was clipped to it with a giant paper clip. It contained about thirty sheets of A4, which she flicked through. She removed one or two pages from the sheaf, frowning as if in profound concentration. Then she scrunched the pages into a ball and dumped them in the waste-paper basket.
By such demonstration of mental effort was created the sense of a 'fully bespoke service' as promised in the firm's advertisement.
She showed him the details of three Victorian houses, two flats in Victorian conversions and one loft-style apartment in an area of town he would have feared to visit, let alone live in. The asking price for each property was just slightly above the absolute maximum Nathan had given - this was a trick he hadn't anticipated but which in retrospect looked obvious.
He told her he wasn't really interested in lo
ft style apartment living, and he told her that - although the brushed-metal door handles were very alluring - the flats did seem rather overpriced. That left the three houses. All of them were on different streets in the same estate, all of them were owned by the same property developer.
'Would you like to view them?'
'That would be great. If you don't mind.'
'Not at all. Excuse me, just for a moment.'
She came back with a butterscotch mac slung over her forearm and a small, expensive-looking handbag in her hand. She wore a ring on the third finger of her right hand (a solitaire diamond set in platinum) and a fine chain round her neck, but no other jewellery. She wore good perfume. Nathan thought of a department store.
He followed her through the back of the office, past the tiny, rather grubby kitchen where his tea had been made, and through a rear door that opened on to a muddy yard in which were parked a number of cars. Holly skipped along the edges of shallow puddles, making a disgusted face, saying, 'Icf'
Then she unlocked a black Volkswagen Golf and sat at the wheel.
Nathan buckled himself in the front passenger seat, saying, 'Nice car.'
Holly was looking over her shoulder, reversing into the road.
Concentrating, she said, 'It's a bit of an estate agent's car, really.'
'Isn't that what you are?'
With a few aggressive manoeuvres, passing the wheel through her hands like a rally driver, she nudged and lurched and then sped into the traffic. She held up a practised, dismissively regal hand to thank the van driver who'd been forced on pain of sudden death to let her in.
She turned on the radio. Nathan seldom listened to the radio any more - being able to imagine the psychopathology of the DJ always spoiled it for him. Then Holly's mobile phone went and she took the call - which consisted mainly of her saying: Yes. Yes. When? Not really.
Okay. Well, see if you can - while driving with one hand as speedily as the laws of physics, rather than the laws of the land, permitted.
