by Neil Cross
'I've never been for a drink with my estate agent before.'
She smiled, but there was something dutiful and tired about it.
They watched the barman prepare Nathan's drink. When it arrived, with an unnecessary flourish, he took a sip, then said: 'Are you sure you're okay? You seem a little--'
'I'm fine. Really.'
'Tough day?'
She reached out and, as if he had asked her a child's question, patted the back of his hand. I 'It's not so much that.'
? He took another sip. He wished he'd ordered a gin and tonic. 'You can tell me about it, if you like.'
'Can I have a cigarette?'
'Don't ask me that. You gave up.'
'Go on. Just one.'
He laid the pack on the bar.
'Take as many as you like. But I won't offer you one.'
She took a cigarette, brushed a trailing lock of hair behind her ear.
She tipped her head sideways to light it and exhaled with great, grim satisfaction.
'Look . . .'
'What?'
'I don't really do this.'
'Do what?'
He grinned, as if he were exasperated. But really he was scared.
She said, 'I think you're a really nice man . . .'
'That's because you haven't got to know me yet.'
She chuckled, and then her eyes welled. She took another puff on the cigarette.
Nathan didn't know what to do with his hands. He laid them flat on the bar.
'It's just difficult at the moment,' she said. 'If the timing was better--'
'What? Are you married or something? Have you got a boyfriend ?'
She brushed back her hair again.
'God, I kind of wish it was that. It would be great, if all I had was a boyfriend.'
She stubbed out the cigarette and Nathan said, 'Okay, you've got to help me out here. Just a little bit.'
'May I have another cigarette?'
He pushed the pack towards her with his fingertips. They each lit a fresh cigarette.
Holly said, 'Look. I don't know how to say this. It's a bit weird.
Everyone I know already knows. So I've never actually had to tell anybody about it.'
Indecorously, she wiped her nose with the back of her hand and said, 'Okay. Say it. Four years ago. More than four years ago now, Jesus. Anyway. Four years ago, my sister . . .'
She couldn't bear to say the words, any more than Nathan could bear to hear them.
'Well, my sister sort of disappeared.'
It took strength to face her.
He said, 'Oh, Jesus. That's awful. I'm sorry.'
But she wasn't looking at him. He watched her profile. She wasn't seeing the bar any longer. She was seeing Mark Derbyshire's party.
'She went out one night. To a party. And she just never came home.'
'I don't know what to say.'
'The police searched for her. They even thought they knew who did it. But there wasn't enough evidence. And they never found her.
There was no body or anything. So really, we still don't know.'
They sat in silence and watched the barman, a handsome young Australian with an easy smile, shake a cocktail then pour three drinks for a cackling hen party at the far end of the bar.
'Jesus,' said Nathan.
Holly drained her drink. 'I'm sorry to do this to you.'
'Oh my God, don't be sorry.'
She stopped him. 'I had a boyfriend, at the time. Well, I say boyfriend. Fiance. We were supposed to get married. Three years ago, last June. Anyway. The strain was too much. You know, for the relationship.' She said this in an embarrassed, faux transatlantic accent and Nathan snorted in bitter complicity. 'It wasn't his fault, not really. I stopped being his girlfriend. All I could think about was Elise.'
'Well, what did he expect?'
She took his margarita and poured half into her own glass. Neither of them wanted to call back the Australian barman.
'It's easy to say that. But, you know, he's only human. And this thing, it sort of took over our lives: it was like there wasn't anything else in the world. It was impossible to do anything, to go anywhere, to, I don't know, have a conversation about something. It was like it was rude to be happy. So, anyway. We sold the house. I wanted to be close to Mum and Dad, so I left my job and moved back home.'
Nathan drained the last of the slush from his glass.
"I see.
'I'm sorry to lay all this on you.'
'Not at all. Don't be stupid.'
'So. This is really the first time I've done anything since.'
'Gone out with somebody?'
'Gone out, period.'
He stared into his empty glass.
'Right.'
'Anyway. So I told Mum about it--'
'About tonight?'
'Yeah. This is a new dress.'
'It's lovely.'
'Ha. Thank you. Anyway. I told Mum I was going out. I had to. I came home with this new dress and these new shoes. And, I don't know, I was excited. And so was Mum. She had this look in her eyes.
And she asked me who you were, how we met. So I told her, and she asked where we were going and where I'd bought the dress and how much I'd paid for it. . .' She re-tucked the stray lock of hair behind her ear. 'And then we both began to cry.'
'Right,' said Nathan.
Holly laughed at herself as she wept, then took a big, long sniff, and wiped her nose again.
'So you see. I'm sorry.'
'I don't know what to say.'
'It's all right. Nobody ever does.'
The passing barman set down before them two chrome bowls of green olives and peanuts.
'Okay,' said Nathan. 'What do we do now?'
Through the corner of his eye, he could see her as she lifted her handbag from under her coat. She fossicked around inside and withdrew a tissue and blew her nose. Then she quickly withdrew a compact, flipped it open, examined her puffy eyes and smudged make-up in the small mirror, said 'God', closed the compact, put it back in her bag and slipped the bag beneath the coat again.
She stood up, saying: 'I'm sorry to do this to you.'
'It's okay. I understand.'
'Thanks for the cigarettes.'
It sounded like the most desolate thing he ever heard.
He said, 'I'll give you a call.'
She seemed to think for a moment. Then she shook her head and wrinkled her nose.
'Best not.'
She pulled her winter coat over her new dress, then belted it around her waist. She tested the clasp on her handbag, then slung it over her shoulder. She leaned in to kiss his cheek. She had to stand on tiptoes.
She squeezed his hand, and then she walked away.
He watched her go. Then he turned and signalled to the Australian barman to order a long, cold gin and tonic. The barman placed it on the bar with an impact like a gavel. Then he stood, his hands on his narrow hips and his bar towel stuffed into the belt of his smart barman's trousers.
'You all right there, mate?'
'Not really.'
Nathan drained the drink. Then he passed some cash across the bar and - without waiting either for his change or for the Australian to acknowledge the size of the tip - he too gathered his coat and left.
17
The next morning, Nathan parked across the street from the offices of Morris Michael estate agents. It was on a main road, so he parked on a double yellow, two wheels on the pavement, his bonnet nudging into a bus stop.
He didn't even know why he was doing it. Holly wouldn't come in via the front door: she'd drive her Golf Cabriolet round the back, via Merrily Road. Probably she'd make herself a cup of tea in the tiny kitchen at the back, and chat with a few colleagues before wandering through and turning on her computer. Somebody would raise the shutters and turn the lights on.
He wondered what she might do, if she wandered to the window and saw him out there, disconsolate at the wheel. He imagined there would be a moment - a jolt of
surprise and fear, more appropriate than she could imagine -- and he went weak with shame.
But, nevertheless, he waited until the lights came on.
Then he fumbled with the keys in the ignition and leapt headlong into the traffic.
He was an hour late for work.
That morning, he'd risen quickly. There was a raw patch of shaving rash round his throat. One sideburn was slightly longer than the other. He was not followed by a diffuse trail of Acqua Di Parma. He might as well have turned up naked but for a ragged blanket.
Eyebrows were raised.
He closed the office door and set his briefcase on his tidy desk.
Then he sat down and logged on.
He left it as long as he could stand it, a full working week, and then he phoned her at work. Deepak asked for his name. This was followed by a weighted pause. Deepak told Nathan that Holly was currently out of the office and could Tim maybe take his call?
Nathan thanked him and said, 'I'll call back later.'
But when he did, the same thing happened.
Sometimes it was difficult -- even during meetings - to resist the urge simply to drive to her place of work and sit outside. He just wanted to see whatever she saw. This made him feel close to her.
He knew how dangerous this was. Holly's tolerance for peculiar behaviour from interested men was probably low. Given her occasional media profile -- and the lack of success in solving Elise's disappearance -- the police were likely to take any of her complaints seriously.
If she complained about Nathan, it wouldn't take the police long to learn that he had been a guest at Mark Derbyshire's Christmas party. If that happened, Nathan could be in serious trouble.
But he needed to be near her. Sometimes he fooled himself that a wry and apologetic smile would win her over; that she could not fail to see the benevolence of his intent.
But he feared she'd see the gargoyle's face that leered beneath his own - the beast whose eyes he sometimes glimpsed while shaving.
He
lay in the soft glow of his bedroom, drawing patterns in the irregularities of the ceiling and thought about following her home.
He dismissed the idea as impractical.
Then he thought about it again.
Eventually, under bright electric lights, he slept. Every night came the same dream. In the dream, he was Bob. He stood in the dark corner of a room he knew to be Holly's. In the dream, she slept - a shape under the blankets that Nathan did not want to see.
That morning - as once more he cleaned his vomit from the bathroom floor - Nathan realized that he knew how to find her. He went to the chest of drawers and opened the lowest of them.
He removed the various work-related files and documents he'd brought home over the years, including some paperwork of Justin's that he'd surreptitiously lifted and photocopied, in an effort to protect himself legally from the ramifications of one fuck-up or other.
Beneath all this were collected a number of newspaper clippings: the articles that had appeared around the fourth anniversary of Elise's disappearance.
Two of these articles featured similar sentences.
From the Telegraph:
The Elise Fox Trust, which June runs from their family home in Sutton Down. . .
And, from the local press:
The trust is run from a spare bedroom in the Sutton Down house where Elise was born .. .
Nathan stared at the clippings as if they were very old - antiques discovered behind a black-spotted mirror. Then he placed them carefully back inside their folder, and the folder back inside the drawer. He closed the drawer and, still not dressed or shaved, and once again running late for work, he found the phone book. It was stacked with a dusty Yellow Pages in the small cupboard which housed his electricity and gas meters.
There were a number of Foxes in the 2001 phone book, but none were listed in Sutton Down. He set the book aside.
The previous tenant's collection of telephone directories and Yellow Pages were stuffed, slightly damp and cobwebby, near the back of the cupboard. Nathan pulled one out. It was six years old: dated to a time before the Foxes had any reason he knew of to go ex-directory. He flicked through the pages. And there it was.
He went to get his phone. He entered the number and the address under H.
Then he replaced the phone books at the back of the cupboard. It seemed to him that every action associated with Holly Fox must be covered up.
He imagined Detective William Holloway, squatting to peer in this low, musty cupboard, finding the telephone directory, finding that its broken spine opened on her number; that Nathan's fingerprint was smudged in damp newsprint on Elise's address.
The thought made him giddy. He sat down and called in to work that once again, he'd be in late.
He gave no excuse, assuming that his normally perfect timekeeping and wasted holiday entitlements justified the occasional late morning. But Nathan had never experienced what it was to be the target of office gossip.
At work, as he stood gathering his morning's mail from the departmental pigeonhole, Justin affected to breeze past him, a zephyr of mint and whisky and Issey Miyake. He sidled up to Nathan and muttered, 'Did she keep you up all night?'
Nathan pulled himself upright and made as if to speak. But he could feel the entire department looking at him. Heads were raised at desks like deer at a waterhole.
He said, 'Oh, for fuck's sake, Justin,' and whirled on his heel and marched to his office. He paused on the threshold and then, very deliberately, slammed the door so that it trembled in its frame.
He booted up his computer, listening to its mysterious internal ticks and whirrs, then entered his password.
There was a rap at the door. It was Angela, the departmental administrator.
She said, 'You all right?'
'Yeah. Y'know.'
Apparently she did. She pressed a palm to her vertically extended fingertips.
'Tea?'
He smiled back, for her implicit English assurance that there was no problem in the world that a cup of tea could not, somehow, make better.
'Please,' he said.
Ten minutes later she brought it to him. She'd prepared it just as he liked it: strong white, one sugar. Alongside it on his desk she placed four jammy dodgers, Nathan's favourite biscuit. While the kettle was boiling, she'd nipped to the local shops to buy them for him.
was
Looking at the biscuits, a symbol of something lost, Nathan overcome with the urge to weep.
erAnd
Angela stood there, nodding slightly, exactly as if she und stood.
18
On Friday Nathan ordered flowers. He gave the florist his credit card details and told them price was not a problem -- he wanted the flowers to be beautiful but not ostentatious. They must look, he said, exactly as if he'd spent a great deal of time discussing them with a florist. He picked them up on Saturday morning.
The shop was weirdly humid. The pale sunlight filtered through a glass ceiling and deep green foliage. The flagstones were damp beneath his feet.
The florists were a rotund Japanese woman and a lithe Scot with a coppery crewcut. They were excited to greet him and (having discussed him over coffee that morning -- their best customer of the week) fussed around him like manservants. They told him what each of the flowers were, their significance, and why they had been chosen.
They wrapped the bouquet in cellophane and brown paper and ribbon and handed it to him with no small degree of ceremony.
He left the shop carrying the flowers like a vast offering. He was aware of people looking at him, bundled up in a long coat, carrying such a big bunch of flowers. He knew what they were thinking and enjoyed the fact they were right. Eventually, he found the courage to return some of the glances, smiling complicity with a couple of pensioners in powder-blue macs and sensible shoes.
He lay the bouquet on the back seat of his car, which still smelled faintly chemical from the valeting. He turned on the radio and s
pread a map book on his lap. Gradually, the car filled with the thick scent of flowers.
He was distracted as he drove out of town.
Eventually, something caught his attention. He looked up to see he was driving past a field of forlorn cattle. He saw the name of the town, Sutton Down, written on a road sign.
He took a road through the forest where Elise Fox lay face down.
He looked for the entrance to the dark unnamed lane, but didn't see it.
After passing the forest, he pulled over to the grassy side of the road until his heart had slowed. He wanted a drink and he wanted a cigarette. But he also wanted to smell clean. He wanted to look like he had stepped out of the shower, bright and handsome and confident.
He
didn't recognize Sutton Down. The night he'd passed through, it had been indistinct shapes in the night. Now he saw that it centred on a long, oval village green. There was an ancient, low-ceilinged pub with a pagan sign.
He identified the correct house on the third circuit of the village green: it was three or four hundred years old, set back behind some twisted apple trees preparing to blossom. He parked the car by the grassy verge. He pulled his coat from the back seat, and put it on. It was speckled with dark spots where moisture had dripped from the bouquet he'd rested on it. There was a golden smear of pollen across the chest.
He hoiked the flowers gently under his arm and remote-locked the car with a wrist-flicking flourish, an over-compensation in case an onlooker should perceive his nervousness.
On the drive, an old, racing green MG was parked alongside a white Peugeot 205 gone rusty round the wheel rims. The door to the house was framed with ivy. Nathan stood on the stone doorstep. He was almost giggling with anxiety.
He rang the doorbell.
After a long minute, he heard some obscure shuffling in the hallway.
Panic rose in him and he considered squatting down behind the Peugeot, to hide. But he couldn't imagine how he might explain himself, should he be seen. So he stayed where he was.
It wasn't Holly who answered the door; it was her father, a neat, narrow-shouldered man who wore pressed indigo jeans and a pastel shirt.
He said, 'Yes?'
'Mr Fox?'
'Yes?'
'I'm Nathan. A friend of Holly's.'
