The Other Passenger

by Louise Candlish

  ‘Not “just”, but . . .’ I hang my head a little. ‘I thought it might be relevant.’

  ‘You’ve taken drugs together, have you?’

  I’d forgotten he wasn’t here when I described the dinner party at the Ropers’ flat. ‘Well, once or twice, but I’m too old for that game.’

  Both sets of eyes flare, but no comment is made. Merchison’s pen is already dismayingly still.

  ‘Anything else you’d like to share now your memory’s cranking to life?’ Parry asks.

  ‘There is something, actually. He asked me if I could lend him some money. Back in October, I think it was.’

  ‘How much?’ He looks as if he could thump me for waiting this long to share the most incendiary details.

  ‘Five thousand pounds. He said it was for rent arrears, but now I feel certain it was a drug debt.’

  ‘Did you lend it to him?’

  ‘No, I don’t have that kind of money to spare. Look, I know it probably isn’t that much in terms of his overall debts, but . . .’ I falter.

  ‘But even if you had had it, you still wouldn’t have given it to him?’ Merchison guesses.

  I meet his eye. ‘You guys are in a better position to know this than I am, but what I was actually going to say was that people have been killed for less, haven’t they?’

  In the first instance of harmony between the three of us, there is a collective intake of breath.

  22

  October 2019

  Admittedly, it was a bit late in the day that I began worrying about Kit’s lifestyle choices, when the drug use I’d assumed to be recreational and self-contained started to feel as if it were defining him. As if it might bring everything crashing down. After the excitement of the wedding had faded, the backslapping and good wishes, he was visibly untethered, the very opposite of the new dynamic Clare had predicted. At least once a week, he failed to turn up for the river bus, which meant he must have been getting into work late, if at all.

  I wasn’t the only one to miss him. I’d clock Steve’s disappointment when he approached our seats on Boleyn and saw it was just me – followed by Gretchen’s, when she saw it was just Steve and me. It occurred to me that the low-level flirtation she and Kit had engaged in might have become less tenable now he was married and that he might in fact be avoiding her. The notion that he might be avoiding me only struck later, when we connected one morning on the later boat – I’d missed the 7.20 by seconds – and I caught the reflex of irritation in his eyes when he saw me sitting there.

  ‘You all right?’ I asked. His complexion was terrible, greying and blemished, his eyes glassy.

  ‘Yeah, fine.’

  ‘How’s work?’ It had been a while since he’d talked of leaving his firm of dinosaurs (and, of course, the Cold Fish) to jump on some tech start-up or other cliché.

  He didn’t bother answering, but turned to look out of the window. The river was pale under a flagstone-grey sky; any minute now, the rain would come down. As we sat in strange, tense silence, I imagined myself saying, ‘Have I done something to offend you?’ and the justifiably violent twist of his response: ‘You fucking know you have!’

  But I wasn’t a lunatic. My job was to thwart any airing of my own injurious part in his affairs and carry on acting as if his off-colour mood was nothing to do with me at all. Instead, I tried a different angle. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  He jerked to attention. ‘You know what? There is, actually.’

  My pulse quickened as I caught the torment in his eyes. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I need a loan, mate. Quick.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Three or four grand. Five would be great.’ His voice wavered with a desperate hope that I knew it cost him to show. ‘I could get it back to you when I get my end-of-year bonus.’

  ‘Five grand?’ I was stunned. (And if I knew anything about his performance at work, he wasn’t getting any bonus.) ‘I haven’t got that sort of money, Kit. You know I work in a café.’

  He dismissed this, of course. ‘Yeah, but you could get it from Clare.’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that. What’s it for, anyway?’

  ‘Just cash-flow problems. We owe a couple of months’ rent.’

  Rain began to slide down the window in diagonal lines.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, carefully. ‘I think you’d have to ask her yourself – or get Melia to. Could you ask work for an advance? You can’t be the first employee they’ve had who needs a bit of help.’

  He lost his patience. ‘You’re the one who just offered to help! Look, forget it.’ And he didn’t look at me again, fingers rapping on his thigh in a ceaseless rhythm, as if counting down to the moment this torture would end. At last, well before his stop, he leapt up and made for the door, the first to disembark. Below, the river was liquid mud, stippled with rain, its lethal eddies and currents visible on the surface like feeding mouths, and I saw Kit glance down at it with trepidation. Hard to believe anything could survive in it for more than a few seconds, I thought, and I willed him to cross the gangway with greater care than usual.

  I thought hard about whether to report his request to Clare, but after that row in France I ruled against drawing further attention to her financial might and my utter powerlessness. I could no longer deny my resentment, but I owed her a period of co-operation and would not involve her in this.

  Instead, I raised it with Melia.

  ‘I’m worried about him. He feels out of control. And he must be skating on thin ice at work – the last thing he needs is to lose his job.’

  She exhaled heavily, her nostrils flaring. ‘I’ll talk to him.’

  *

  The season was turning, daylight hours shrunken and precious, and the spokes of the Eye glowed neon against the darkening sky, delicate as harp strings. In the café, the young people in their pricey trainers and their zero-gravity activewear added jackets befitting a jaunt to the Lake District, not Waterloo. But, of course, we were close to one of the busiest railway stations in Europe. These people, they weren’t all wage slaves, eschewing annual leave, denying themselves vitamin D; many, perhaps fifty per cent, simply secured their coffees with our special biodegradable lids and escaped to wherever they chose. I envied them.

  According to Regan, there had now been more than a hundred violent killings in London so far this year. ‘The bloodlust in the capital shows no sign of relenting,’ she read aloud from her Metro, in earshot of bemused customers.

  It was an uneasy time, for sure, but at least Melia seemed to have cajoled Kit into getting his work attendance back on track, even if he did continue with his nervous roving on the boat – he couldn’t stay in his seat for longer than five minutes.

  One morning, when he disappeared to the deck for a second cigarette in half an hour, I broached my concerns with Steve. ‘Do you think Kit might have an addiction issue?’

  Frowning, Steve peered at me through the powerful lenses of his glasses. ‘Leave it out, Jamie.’

  ‘I’m serious. As someone who’s, you know, struggled in the past, I know how it feels when people don’t step up to help. Everyone assumes someone else is doing it.’

  ‘You had a phobia, mate. Kit’s just letting off steam now and then.’

  As he returned to his phone, I took the easy option. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  ‘I am. Live and let live, yeah?’

  Another time, on the evening boat, I observed an interaction that should have worried me but in fact had the opposite effect. Kit was at the bar getting in the beers, and Gretchen had gone to the loo. On her return, she approached Kit at the bar and murmured something in his ear. A change of order, I supposed, but then she touched his hand. It wasn’t erotic, like the way Melia touched me, but sisterly, as if reassuring him there was closeness in his life, kinship. I watched as he acknowledged it, a look on his face I found impossible to read, just a scrawl of general human despair. Though Gretchen waited, and the lump of his Adam’s apple mo
ved as he cleared his throat, no words were spoken.

  I pretended not to notice, of course.

  23

  November 2019

  I didn’t know it at the time, but the double date Clare and I had with the Ropers soon after would be our last. It was early November, several days into a run of dreary and oppressive weather, and we hadn’t been in Mariners half an hour before I realized Kit’s mood was going to make the evening untenable. Whatever phase of drug abuse it represented – I suspected involuntary withdrawal – he was irritable, unrestrained, lucid to the point of withering.

  And predictable by then, so very predictable. Melia had joined us directly from showing a rental on Prospect Square to a re-lo consultant who represented a family from Switzerland and she was expressing amazement at the annual running costs, when Kit spoke rudely over her: ‘Oh, the kind of people who live there wouldn’t even notice.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t they?’ Clare asked, accepting a challenge that by now provoked little more than an eye roll from me. ‘Isn’t it possible “the kind of people” living there are actually working their arses off to pay those bills? Fretting about keeping their heads above water like the rest of the world?’

  ‘Of course,’ Melia said, placatingly, but Kit was not about to concede so easily.

  ‘So it was all hard work, was it, Clare? You paid for that massive house by working your arse off?’

  She glared at him. ‘Yes.’ It was unfortunate that she glanced at me then and caught the doubtful look on my face. I sucked in my breath. This was just the sort of territory I had always dreaded us entering, confidences that could only have come from me being recirculated between the two couples as common knowledge, and it seemed incredible it had taken this long to happen.

  ‘Give us a break,’ Kit said, sneering. ‘You make out you’re this self-made businesswoman, but we all know your house was bought for you by your parents.’

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ Clare snapped, casting me an outraged look. I could only hope she presumed I’d told Kit directly, not Melia.

  ‘Kit,’ Melia warned, and I could read the message she hoped to transmit to him: Stop. Remember the wedding champagne. Remember I work for her company.

  Remember your fucking manners, was what I thought. Clare had always been generous to him, she didn’t deserve this takedown. ‘Don’t speak to her like that,’ I said, but I could tell it was a beat too late for Clare’s liking.

  ‘Of course you’re happy about it, Jamie,’ Kit scoffed. ‘You’re like those grown-up kids on your square, living for free, someone else paying the bills. We’d all like to be a glorified lodger like you.’

  ‘I am not living for free,’ I protested, feeling true dislike for him, but Clare lifted a hand.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, why does everything have to be about money with you lot?’

  You lot. She meant me, too, all three of us, and I registered in myself a complicated blend of insult, fear and release at the change of status.

  ‘Only someone with money would say that,’ Kit pointed out, correctly, and when Clare spoke again her tone was less hectoring.

  ‘Okay, so it’s not fair, but we all know life isn’t fair.’

  ‘No, it’s a precious gift,’ Kit sneered. ‘We should just be grateful to be alive, right? To be allowed to buy the chosen ones a drink?’

  ‘Kit,’ Melia said again. ‘Clare’s the one who’s always buying us drinks. You’re being really rude.’

  Clare laid a reassuring hand on her arm. ‘It’s fine, Melia. If he’s offering, this chosen one will have another glass of Pinot Grigio.’

  While I admired her for the way she’d recovered herself, I suddenly felt a far simpler emotion than any other so far that evening: sadness. Sadness for the circularity of our association with the Ropers. As a foursome, we seemed to have returned to where we’d started, at the subject of Clare’s house, but what had begun with a joyous dinner hosted in its rooms seemed to be ending with so much bitterness she’d be forgiven for fearing a brick through her window or a lit match through the letterbox.

  Unsurprisingly, she left after that next glass, insisting I stay, but two tetchy rounds later, Melia and I followed. Normally, we avoided leaving on our own together, but Kit was determined to stay out, his eyes already scanning the bar for likely playmates as we said our farewells.

  So long as we didn’t touch, it was no risk for me to walk her home to Tiding Street. Instead, we drew as close as was decent and spoke in low voices about Kit, what was wrong with him, how his urges might be reined in before he said something that really got him into trouble. Though it wasn’t late, their neighbours’ windows were mostly dark and I wondered what they made of the Ropers, with their partying and histrionics.

  I waited, shuffling my feet, as Melia found her keys.

  ‘Come up,’ she murmured into my neck.

  ‘I can’t, darling.’

  ‘I like you calling me that. Please come up. Just for a few minutes.’

  ‘No. Kit could come back any time.’

  ‘Killjoy.’

  ‘I know, but it’s for selfish reasons, believe me. I don’t want it to end tonight.’

  ‘I don’t want it to end ever,’ Melia said, and even in the face of her inebriation – and my own – I allowed my vanity to accept her tribute as nothing more than I deserved.

  *

  As I let myself back into Prospect Square, Clare watched me with a thunderous expression from the sitting-room window. I strode towards her, tripping on the curled edge of a rug, which worsened my own mood, and the row erupted the moment she turned to face me.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  I didn’t quite meet her eye. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Something’s going on. For you to tell Kit you’re a – what was it? – a “glorified lodger”? You know that’s nonsense.’

  ‘I didn’t use that term, he did. Just forget it, you know what he’s like.’ Through the old glass behind her, the square was a still life in a hundred shades of black, the streetlamps casting a thin amber light onto the tips of the railings.

  ‘Look at me, Jamie. This is the second time I’ve asked you what’s wrong and I’m not sure I can keep on asking. If you can’t tell me, who can you tell?’

  It was an excellent question – Clare’s were, as a rule – but I had no intention of giving an honest answer. I did look at her, though. Her eyes were glistening with hurt, lids drooping with fatigue.

  ‘I’m just worried about him,’ I said, feebly.

  ‘Who? Are we still talking about Kit? I’ve heard enough about him to last me a lifetime.’

  I knew the feeling.

  ‘Well, if that’s really it, you’re on your own. Far be it from me to interfere in your friendships.’

  She’d withdrawn into pomposity, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t upset and confused. ‘You don’t consider him a friend of yours anymore?’

  She gestured, hands upturned. ‘I consider him Melia’s problem – and I don’t know why you persist in making him yours.’

  The clarity of her assessment took my breath away. All those evenings with our younger, wilder counterparts that had ended with our good-natured discussion of them: they were over now. What had been implied in the bar was categorical: Clare considered herself the only responsible adult left standing. And maybe I did, too.

  *

  Towards the end of November, Melia paid her only visit to the Comfort Zone. It was three o’clock and Regan was on her break when a tour party descended in search of a mid-afternoon lunch. Melia, off work that afternoon, playfully offered to help me out. ‘Go on, I’ve done loads of café work. I bet I can work that monster on my own.’ And before I knew it, she was behind the counter and standing in front of the shiny chrome coffee machine.

  I knew it would be a health and safety breach if she so much as touched it. ‘Don’t, you need training for that. But you can do these sandwich orders, if you like? The fillings are in Tupperware
in the fridge.’

  For forty-five minutes we worked in harmony and then, with a glance at her phone, she prepared to leave as suddenly as she’d arrived. ‘We should think about running a place together. It’d be fun.’

  I felt the surge of pleasure I always did when we spoke of our having a future together. After Kit, after Clare. After this. She flashed me a wicked smile and patted the tote bag at her hip. ‘Aren’t you going to check I haven’t stolen from the till? I am a known debtor.’

  ‘I trust you.’ I smirked. ‘Tell you what, when we divvy up the tips, I’ll save my share for you.’

  She kissed me goodbye on the lips and a departing customer sent a curious backwards look. How did he get her? He must have some hidden talent . . .

  After she’d gone and Regan had returned, I felt a strange, elevated mood, almost fanciful, as if I’d imagined the whole thing.

  24

  27 December 2019

  You can lead a detective to water, but you can’t make him drink.

  Having recorded my drugs intelligence in his notebook in frustratingly scant detail, Parry insists on leading me to water, back to the river and the water rats’ Christmas drinks.

  ‘If you’d stopped getting on so well, why go for drinks?’ he demands and I feel a painful pressure building in my chest. We are reaching our conclusion. This is the part of the story that matters.

  ‘We hadn’t stopped getting on, not really, it just wasn’t the same.’

  ‘Whose idea were the drinks?’

  ‘I don’t remember. Kit’s, I think.’

  ‘You’re sure it wasn’t yours?’

  I shrug.

  ‘How long in advance was the date planned?’

  ‘I remember it as being pretty spontaneous. Look, if organizing Christmas drinks is your idea of foul play, you’re going to be working a lot of overtime this month.’

  But I know exactly what he’s getting at: premeditated behaviour. Malice aforethought. For the first time in this encounter, I challenge them to spell this shit out: ‘So you think I had something to do with his disappearance, do you?’

  ‘You tell us,’ Parry answers, inevitably.