In the end he’d phoned Greece and spoken to his mum. She said, ‘Peter, you have a brilliant mind. You will be an asset to the University and they won’t care how much hair grows on your legs, or about the shape of your feet.’
He knew people would stare. They would stare on the train, they would stare on the streets of Cambridge, they would stare in the cloisters of the university. And even though the professors would be interested in his work, his knowledge, his intuition, he knew they would double-take at the first sight of him, before swallowing their human curiosity, giving rein instead to shared scientific enthusiasm. It wasn’t going to be easy.
He’d been back to the tailors. Smart trousers, shirt and tie, jacket. He knew he looked gauche and ill at ease. But so would any other teenage geek on the way to his first interview. That’s what he would look like, horns and hooves aside.
Part Four: EARTHQUAKE
40. Cassie
When I left, I moved to a new city, one I’d never been to before, and I found work in a florists shop. I liked handling the plants. I felt as though they brought me closer to you. I kept your photographs in a carrier bag under my bed. I moved quietly and attracted no attention.
Terry came every night. He was meant to be sucking the soul from me, but he’d taken most of it that first night along with my milk, and the rest was stuck fast. He might have managed if he’d persevered. If he’d continued to rape me every night, perhaps I’d have been reduced to a husk, a papery shell that would have eventually blown away on the wind. But he had no desire. Maybe it was because of Sally that he couldn’t do it. Apart from a few occasions early on when I fell asleep by accident, he left me alone.
He became thin as the years went by – not in girth but in substance. He needed my sister’s food and probably her love too. I had none to give him. Eventually, he faded away entirely except between the hours of midnight and five when he would sit by my window and look out at the city while I sat on my bed reading library books.
I fully expected that this would continue to be my life. But one day at work I looked up to see a woman looking at the roses.
‘Can I help you?’ I said.
She picked out a stem – a pink rose just beginning to open – and turned towards me. ‘I’d like a dozen of these please,’ she said.
I’d never spoken to her before. I’d only ever seen her at a distance, but I knew her immediately.
‘You!’
I could tell that my boss was watching. Meg’s blonde bob was immaculate, her smile sweet as violets, her nails on the stem of the rose perfectly manicured.
‘I want to apologise.’
‘For…?’
‘It wasn’t a fair fight. I shouldn’t have used my power to involve outside agencies; it should have just been you and me.’
‘You mean Terry…?’
‘He can go – has gone already, I expect. You’re free.’
‘So…’
‘May the best woman win,’ she smiled. ‘Can I have them wrapped and tied with a bow?’
I looked at my boss, but she didn’t seem to have heard except for the last part, because she handed me the tray of ribbons. After Meg had gone my boss commented on what an elegant lady she was, and said nothing about our strange conversation.
I went back to my room that evening and slept for thirty-two hours without moving. The next day I resigned from my job and caught the next train back to Hawden.
41. Peter
He was wrong: they didn’t politely ignore his feet. They made a point of discussing them.
‘It won’t be easy,’ they said, ‘fitting in. You will meet some who think you shouldn’t be here. How do you think you will cope?’
‘I don’t know,’ he’d replied. ‘I’m learning not to hide, not to pretend, but it’s hard. I hope I will be able to focus on my work, to make friends, to ignore the others.’
They had nodded and handed him a leaflet about student wellbeing.
And although they wouldn’t let him know, officially, for a week or ten days, they had made it plain they would welcome him in. All three professors shook his hand, said they very much looked forward to working with him and were excited to meet such a promising student.
It seemed a done deal. His dad would be delighted. His mum would be proud. He should phone them. He walked up and down the station platform, past the racks of bikes, the coffee kiosk, his phone in his hand, his fingers still.
What he wanted was to phone Lauren, to tell her his news. They had discussed it, before, when he was still undecided.
‘Of course you should go,’ she’d said.
And when he’d talked about how he would miss her, miss the hills, the woods, she’d poked him in the side and laughed.
‘Do you think there’s no countryside in Cambridgeshire?’ she said. ‘You can become a fen runner. The hills will still be here when you come home.’
‘I suppose.’
‘And besides, I won’t be here either. Who knows what part of the country I’ll be in?’
She’d got her UCAS form in early. She’d applied to London, Bristol, Durham and York. He could imagine her as a student, carrying piles of books into lecture theatres, wearing long knitted scarves, feeding the ducks in the park. She’d been part of his life for so long. If he closed his eyes he could smell her hair. His fingers hovered over the keys.
Then he heard her voice in the woods that morning. ‘I need Richard. I need to find Richard.’
He shoved the phone into his coat pocket. Whatever she was doing right now it didn’t involve him. She wouldn’t welcome an interruption. And he didn’t want to speak to his mum or dad. He wasn’t ready to speak to anyone. He wasn’t even ready to go home. He went into the ticket office and bought a one-way ticket to Kendal. He could get out from there into the Dales. He’d leave his suit folded behind a rock where he could return for it. He needed to run; he needed to get up high on the hills. He needed to run all night.
42. Ali
I was pissed off when Lauren turned up. Everything had been going pretty well. I was back at Sally’s up at Old Barn, and she and her old man, Terry, were loved-up and as happy as anything. Sally’s cooking, which had been amazing anyway, stepped up a gear when he came back. She didn’t just make soups and stews now, she made chilli bread and chicken satay and key lime pie. It was even better than Gran’s. Gran never made exotic things like that.
What Richard and I were planning was dangerous. I mean, Smith may have been cool about the wad of dosh in his shoe, but he wouldn’t be if we took his whole livelihood. But I didn’t feel nervous, just excited really. When I was with Richard things seemed a bit more… possible.
I didn’t have any problem with Lauren herself: I didn’t know her. I didn’t like what Richard was doing to her and didn’t want to have her white face and bloodshot eyes with us all day reminding me. She looked like she’d had a particularly heavy night and was suffering big time. But there was no point in arguing. And anyway, I felt a bit sorry for her and bad about saying in front of her face that I didn’t want her to come. Her eyes followed Richard around the room and she had an inane smile on her face, like she was on drugs.
We got the nine o’clock train to Leeds and arrived after the worst of the rush hour. Richard had a map with him and knew where he was going. We walked from the station, under the arches past the Cockpit, along the main road. Then he took us along a side street, and another, and before long I was hopelessly lost. I was beginning to wonder if Richard knew where he was going, when suddenly, there it was: St Ann’s Street. It was a short road, joining up two others. It had nothing particular to recommend it. There were a couple of trees growing each side on the pavement, and at the far end, through a gap between two buildings on the adjoining street, you could catch a glint of water, which I guessed was the river.
The buildings on one side were student housing, set bac
k from the road behind rectangular patches of grass and fag butts. The other side had a taller, smarter block of flats, a garage and work yard, and at the far end a small row of shops.
We made for the shops, and sure enough, the furthest away was a newsagent and post office. It wasn’t very big. The post office part was just a hatch at one side of the shop and there was a queue of about five people who took up most of the space. We looked in, but the three of us would have made the place positively crowded.
‘I’ll wait out here with Laura,’ Richard said.
She elbowed him in the ribs. ‘It’s Lauren,’ she said.
By the time I got to the front of the queue I’d the read the front page stories on all of the newspapers and could list the lead items in the latest issues of Country Life and Runners World. There was an old lady two ahead of me who was both deaf and stupid, and there was a problem with her pension. The shop sold white, pink and yellow bonbons, and also midget gems, mint imperials, chewing nuts, and a mix of sweets which was called Yorkshire mixtures. These were all in jars behind the other counter where no one was queueing.
By the time I’d learned all the varieties of crisp available I was at the front, and a middle aged lady sat the other side of the glass in a white blouse with glasses on a chain. She had a short grey hair and a look of efficiency I thought might be fake considering the snail pace of the queue.
‘Yes?’ she said, glaring at me.
‘I wanted to ask about post office boxes,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘You’ll need to go to the main post office for that.’
‘No, it’s here,’ I protested. I pulled out a scrap of paper which I’d copied the code onto and showed it to her. ‘This is the number. See, it says St. Ann’s.’
She glanced at it, then back at me.
‘That’s not a post office box number,’ she said.
‘It’s not?’
‘No, they only have numbers, not letters. It must be something else.’
I looked at the number, as though I didn’t know it off by heart.
‘What is it then?’ I said.
She shrugged. ‘An address?’
She gave a look behind me to where the queue had grown to the door, and I realised I wasn’t going to get any further.
‘Well, thanks then,’ I said, and left.
Richard and Lauren were sitting on the wall in front of the student housing. She was leaning against him, her head on his shoulder, and he had his arm around her. They looked like a couple, like he was looking after his girlfriend who was feeling a bit worse for wear. I waited for some cars to pass and realised I’d twisted the piece of paper into a knot.
I shook my head as I crossed over to them.
‘No good?’ Richard asked.
‘It’s not a post office box number.’
‘What are we going to do then?’ asked Lauren.
‘The woman said it might be an address.’
‘Let me see.’
She held out her hand and I gave her the twisted paper. She unfolded it gingerly and looked at the code.
St Ann’s 143 ca66ages.
‘Was there a gap between the numbers?’ she asked.
Richard and I looked each other.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
‘I’ve got it in my wallet.’ He took his wallet out of his coat and removed the twenty pound note with the black writing. We all looked at it.
‘Yes, look,’ said Lauren. ‘The one is slightly apart from the four and three. It’s not St Ann’s 143, it’s St Ann’s 1 43.’
‘It could be,’ I said. ‘But how does that help?’
‘The student houses are numbered, look. We’re outside number five, and the next one is number four. Number one must be at the other end. We need to go in and find room number 43, or a locker or something.’
‘You could be right,’ Richard was looking at her admiringly.
‘I guess,’ I said.
‘Well done Lauren.’
She stood up. ‘Let’s go then.’
Walking along the street Lauren and Richard held hands. I walked on the other side of Richard, and when he smiled at me I increased the space between us.
Lauren was looking a bit better. She stayed close to Richard, leaning towards him so not only their hands touched but also their arms, and sometimes their shoulders. It made her look a bit drunk and unsteady, but her face had more colour in it.
Student house number one was just the same as the others: painted a weird beige colour, a rectangular block twice as long as it was tall. There were steps up to a front door, which was locked, with a number key pad to the side.
‘We don’t have the code,’ said Lauren, deflated.
‘We must have. It must be on here.’ Richard took out the note again and we all peered at it.
‘The only numbers on it are 1 43 and 66 in the middle of cabbages,’ I said. ‘We could try the 66.’
Richard pressed in the numbers and tried the door, but it stayed fast. He tried 43 and various other combinations, but nothing worked.
‘Maybe it’s not the house after all,’ I said.
‘I don’t know. It seemed like a pretty good idea.’
Lauren smiled at him and he smiled back. I turned away.
‘Maybe it’s some sort of ingenuity test,’ said Richard. ‘First get into the building.’
‘We’re meant to break in?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ Richard began, but then the door opened and a boy came out with a folder and three books in one arm.
‘Hi,’ he said, holding the door open for us.
‘Hiya,’ we replied, and walked in.
The heavy door closed behind us. We were at the end of a corridor painted off-white. There was a sign on the wall saying 1-15. To our left, behind a fire door, was a flight of stairs with another sign, First Floor 16-30, Second Floor 31-45, Third Floor 46-60.
‘That was easy,’ I said.
‘I guess they knew that sooner or later you’d get in,’ said Richard.
‘As long as we can get out again.’ Lauren giggled.
The walls of the stairwell were painted the same colour and the stairs were made of stone. The place smelled of burnt toast and piss.
On the first floor there was a fire door through to a corridor, and the same on the second floor. We went through and walked along looking at the room numbers. Half way along was a kitchen. I wondered how we’d explain our presence if we met any of the students who lived on the floor, but the kitchen was empty. There were dirty mugs next to the sink and an empty pizza box on the table. Photos of grinning people were attached to the fridge with magnets. Room 43 was further on, two from the end.
It had an ordinary door with a keyhole. No keypad. Nowhere to enter a code.
‘Shall I knock?’ Richard asked.
I nodded and Lauren agreed. Richard rapped on the door three times.
Nothing happened.
I tried the handle and the door opened. We peered in. The room had a bed in it, a wardrobe and chest of drawers, and a desk with a chair. That was all. There were no clothes or sheets or posters on the wall. Room 43 was uninhabited.
‘You moving in?’
A Japanese girl was standing in the corridor.
‘I am,’ I said. ‘Or I might be. I was having a look.’
‘It’s nice here. Ok. Students are fun, and sometimes drinking, late at night in kitchen.’ She smiled at me. ‘Pizza too.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘You’re welcome,’ she said, smiling. ‘I am Kiki. I am living next door.’
‘Alicia,’ I said.
‘I have lecture now.’
‘Ok.’
‘See you again.’ She smiled and shook my hand.
After she was gone we went in, closed the door
behind us and searched the room. We looked in every corner, underneath the carpet, behind the bed. We took out each drawer and turned it over. But Room 43 was just an empty room. There was nothing in it except cheap furniture.
‘There’s nothing here,’ said Richard.
‘No,’ I agreed.
We walked back along the corridor and down the stairs. The front door let us back out onto the steps and patchy grass.
‘What now?’ asked Lauren.
‘We’re missing something.’ I said. ‘We’re really close. What can it be?’
Two girls came along the path wheeling bicycles and Richard had to move out of their way.
‘Let’s walk round the building,’ he said.
At the far end were the bike racks, a long line of them, and quite a few bikes fastened with brightly coloured sausage-shaped locks. We walked by slowly, looking at them. Richard stood up straight, his face bright.
‘They’re numbered,’ he said. ‘There’s a place for each room.’
Sure enough, each parking place had a room number on it. We counted along to number 43, and this time it wasn’t empty. There was a neon green mountain bike fastened with an elaborate lock.
The lock had seven rings to line up, each marked with the numbers one to nine and the letters a to e. Richard started twisting them into place.
‘There’s no g,’ he said.
We looked at the note again.
‘Try a nine,’ suggested Lauren. ‘ca66a9e.’
He twisted the rest of the rings into place and the lock opened.
‘It’s a bike,’ I said. ‘What the fuck would Smith and Jeannie want with a bike?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Richard. ‘But we’re not going to find out here. Let’s take it and go.’
No one looked as we walked off with the bike. We walked quickly away from the student area towards the station and caught the next train back to Hawden.
TAINTED LOVE Page 24
