The Other Side of the Door

by Nicci French

  ‘You look great.’

  ‘I look tired, I look frazzled, I look fat, I look like my hair needs cutting and my legs need waxing and my nails need painting.’

  ‘You’ve been reading too many glossy magazines,’ I said. ‘The ones that tell you how to be a size eight three days after giving birth.’

  ‘You know, one of the books I read before having Lola had a section on what you need to take with you into hospital – things like a rubber ring to sit on in case you have to have stitches, and a spray bottle for your partner to squirt into your face when you’re in labour, though if Richard had done that to me I would have punched him. And one of the essential items was your makeup bag so you could make yourself look fresh and attractive for your husband.’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘No – what’s awful is that I did. I took in my makeup and even put on some bloody mascara before I had visitors. Can you imagine? You’ve just brought a whole new life into the world, this miracle, and you have to think about how you look. You wouldn’t do that, though.’

  ‘Only because I don’t usually wear makeup much anyway.’

  ‘There you are, then.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I dunno, really.’ She yawned. I could see down her pink throat. She looked like a cat – a large, tired, slightly shabby cat.

  ‘We should go away somewhere for a weekend,’ I said.

  ‘Bliss. But what would I do with Lola?’

  ‘We’d take her.’

  ‘No, we would not. If we went away together, I want to drink and I want to sleep. Two things I can’t really do with her around.’

  ‘Leave her with Richard, then.’

  She snorted. ‘As if. Tell me something about the big wide world.’

  ‘I’m getting a band together.’

  ‘What?’ She hooted with laughter and Lola shifted on her lap.

  ‘Hang on, it’s not as if I’ve never played an instrument before.’

  ‘How come I didn’t know about this?’

  ‘Well, it’s only been a couple of days. I haven’t seen you.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘I’m telling you now.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry. I think I kind of rely on you to give me some vicarious excitement. What kind of band?’

  ‘A folksy, bluegrassy, this-and-that, amateur and not-very-good kind of band that can play at a friend’s wedding in the middle of September and then not be a band any longer.’

  ‘Disband the band.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll be spotted, be offered a record deal.’

  ‘Hardly. We’ll get together for rehearsals once or twice a week, play three or four numbers that no one will pay any attention to and that will be the end of that.’

  ‘Maybe I could join.’ She sounded wistful.

  ‘Do you play anything?’ I knew she didn’t, of course – we’d been in a recorder class together when we were eleven, but that was about it.

  ‘I could shake a tambourine.’

  ‘No tambourines, no triangles, no maracas.’

  ‘Who’s in it?’

  ‘Me, Sonia, a pupil – or, rather, an ex-pupil – called Joakim, and this guy who was in our original uni band.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘His name’s Neal. I’m not sure you actually met him. I didn’t know him that well. Dark hair, quite good-looking, a bit shy.’

  ‘He sounds nice.’

  ‘And I was wondering if I should invite Amos.’

  ‘Amos!’

  ‘You think I shouldn’t?’

  ‘Well. I mean, why would you?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’d be offended if I didn’t.’

  ‘So what? Amos being offended is no longer your worry, is it?’

  ‘I guess not. And, anyway, maybe it’s too soon. I know it was mutual, sort of, but we were together for ages.’

  Sally shifted her position on the grass and gave a great yawn. ‘Sorry. I am interested. It’s just this time of day.’

  ‘Amos thinks we should stay good friends, but it isn’t that simple. You can’t just go from being lovers who think they might be together for ever to being on civilized good terms. Or I can’t, at least. I think it’s different for him. Maybe Sonia’s right and that’s because it didn’t mean so much to him, but I think it did. Or maybe I just want to think it did. All that time has to have meant something.’ I paused. ‘Sally?’

  A tiny snore bubbled from her lips. She was asleep. I looked at her, lying flung out on the grass, one arm over her face and the other on Lola’s bunched-up body. Her chestnut hair needed washing; there were stains on her dress, purple smudges under her eyes. I put the remains of our picnic into the bag and stood up to drop it into the rubbish bin.

  After

  Sonia knelt by his body. She hesitated for a moment, then straightened him out with her pink-gloved hands. She took his arms, one after the other, and laid them so they were lying straight by his sides. Her face had become expressionless again. I could only tell that she was distressed by the slight tightening of her mouth and the way, every so often, she gave a small blink as if to clear her vision.

  ‘You have to help me, Bonnie,’ she said.

  ‘What shall I do?’ To show I was co-operating I took off my thin jacket and hung it over the back of the chair. My knees were trembling and I almost tripped as I turned back to her. My body seemed to have a mind of its own – twitching hands, wobbling legs and a faint buzzing in my ears.

  ‘We’ll roll him up in the rug.’

  I wanted to say I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t kneel down and touch him, manipulate his cooling limbs, bundle him up like a piece of garbage. I couldn’t. I had lain by this body, held it, kissed it, and I couldn’t.

  ‘We have to pull it to one end of the rug and then roll,’ Sonia was saying. ‘Bonnie? Look, if we’re going to do this . . . this . . .’ Her voice cracked. ‘We have to do it now or not at all.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Take the shoulders.’

  I made myself kneel by the body. A few inches from my knee, the pooled blood was dark, almost black.

  ‘When I say, try to shift it up.’

  ‘Yes.’

  A dead body is heavy. It won’t be shifted. His soft hair. I used to run my fingers through it. I could hear his murmur of pleasure, the way he said my name, like a groan. But it was matted with blood now.

  ‘We’re going to have to roll it over,’ said Sonia. ‘Move it that way.’

  I will see his face, his beautiful face. Will his eyes be open, will they stare up at me?

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready.’

  There he was. His eyes were open and they looked up past me to the ceiling. His face was pale, almost grey, like putty. I couldn’t help myself. I peeled off one glove and put out a hand to touch him for a last time, to close those unseeing eyes.

  ‘No.’ Sonia’s voice stopped me. ‘Don’t do it, Bonnie. He’s dead. It’s all over. Now it’s a corpse, and we’re getting rid of it. If you start letting yourself feel everything, we won’t be able to go through with this. Remember later – feel whatever it is you have to feel later. Not now.’

  I lifted my eyes to her face, which was stern and handsome. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘When we’re ready we have to get it out of here and into his car. Where are the keys? You have got them, haven’t you?’

  ‘In my pocket, with the one for the flat.’

  We squatted at either end of the body and lifted the end flap of the rug over it. Now I couldn’t see his face any more. Straining with the effort, we rolled the body over in the rug. It rose and fell with a muffled thump. My ribs ached, and sharp stabs of pain shot through me. I had a sudden memory of rolling up a tent when I was a teenager, trying to make it tight and even. But bodies are unwieldy things. Through the rug I could feel his shape. The bulk of his should
ers. Don’t feel. Don’t remember. Don’t even think. Just act.

  Before

  The phone rang just as a friend who had popped by was telling me he thought I could simply knock down the wall between the small kitchen and sitting room, making one not-so-small room. It was Joakim, still awkward with my transition from teacher to human being. He asked me if I’d found a drummer. I told him we might have to make do without. He gave an awkward cough. ‘There’s someone I know.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘My dad. He’s keen.’ There was a pause. ‘Not good, but very keen.’

  After

  The body was hidden from sight but, if anything, that made it worse. Before it had been a horrible mess, perhaps even a tragedy of some sort. Now it looked like what it was, which was a crime.

  ‘What next?’ I said.

  ‘We carry it out to the car.’

  ‘Won’t he be very heavy?’

  ‘We have to.’

  ‘Couldn’t we just leave him in the street somewhere? It might look as if he was mugged.’

  Sonia sighed, as if I were failing to live up to her expectations. ‘We’ve got to do what we said we’d do,’ she said. ‘The best chance is for it to seem as if he’s gone away. If he’s found dead tonight, there’ll be a huge inquiry straight away. It’ll all fall apart.’

  At that moment there was a sound so unexpected that for a few seconds I couldn’t make out what it was. It was as if my brain was refusing to accept it. I had to think hard and then I realized. It was a doorbell. The doorbell of the flat. It rang again. We looked at each other. I was certain that the same questions must have been in both of our minds. Who was it? Had they heard anything? And, most important of all, more important than anything else in the world: did they have a key? My brain was working slowly. I couldn’t make sense of it. First I thought: No, they can’t have a key or why would they be ringing the bell? But then I thought: Some people leave a key somewhere, under a flowerpot. I’d done it myself sometimes. Was it possible Liza had done that and not told me?

  There was another question I tried not to ask myself. What if there was a key and the person let themselves in? What then? To that question I couldn’t even imagine an answer. I looked down at the bundle on the floor, then up again at Sonia. She just gave a shrug. Of reassurance? Helplessness? I started to hiss something in a frantic whisper but she shook her head and put a finger to her lips.

  There was a silence and we waited, keeping absolutely still. I tried to hear steps from outside but I couldn’t make anything out. All I could hear was my heart, the blood rushing and pounding through my body and, beside me, Sonia’s breathing – small, shallow gasps that made me realize she was as scared as I was. The phone rang. It had to be the person outside. Maybe they’d had some sort of arrangement. Was there an answering-machine? I hadn’t thought of that. The phone rang and rang. It felt as if someone was punching me on a bruise, over and over. Finally it stopped. We waited and waited, much longer than was necessary. I didn’t trust myself to speak and it was Sonia who broke the silence. When she spoke it was still in little more than a whisper.

  ‘I think they’ve gone.’

  ‘Will they come back, though?’ My chest hurt, as if I’d run a long distance.

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘I feel a bit sick,’ I said.

  ‘Are you actually going to be sick?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Try to breathe deeply.’

  ‘We mustn’t do anything until the middle of the night – I mean about getting him out.’

  Sonia gave me an exasperated look as if I were one of her more stupid pupils. ‘Does anybody else have a key for the flat?’

  ‘Liza gave one to me, which I gave to him, but I’ve taken it back now,’ I said. ‘And she said she was going to leave one with the man who lives upstairs, in case of emergencies.’

  ‘No one else?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘But you know how it is – keys get copied. He might have given them to other people as well.’

  ‘We should be all right.’

  ‘It’s just if someone came in . . .’

  ‘At least it would be simple.’

  ‘Simple?’ I said. ‘What would we say?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t matter much, though.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘Let’s agree to take him to this reservoir you went to once,’ I said.

  ‘Langley reservoir.’

  ‘Right. And we’ll open the windows, take off the handbrake and push the car off the edge. Yes? But then what?’

  ‘Then we go home.’

  ‘But how? We won’t have the car.’

  ‘We’ll walk.’

  ‘It might be miles to the nearest station.’

  ‘Have you got a better idea?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anyway, that’s the least of our problems at the moment. Let’s get to that bit and then think about it.’

  ‘OK. You’re right.’

  ‘We can leave in about half an hour.’

  Before

  Guy Siegel was a solicitor in a large and respectable firm, but when I called at his house he was dressed in jeans and an expensively distressed sweatshirt. As he passed me a bottle of beer it felt more as if he was the one who was a musician. He didn’t hand me a glass. It was all very rock and roll.

  ‘You probably wouldn’t believe it,’ he said, ‘but in my last couple of years at school I played in a punk band. Well, really we were a post-punk band. It probably seems like ancient history to you.’

  ‘It’s a bit before my time.’

  ‘Come on through,’ he said. ‘Ancient history. We were called Sick Joke. You know, I had a fantasy that we’d be signed up and go on the road and . . . Well, I’d probably better not say exactly what my fantasy was. But you don’t get a house like this working in a post-punk band.’

  I looked around at the rugs and vast sofas, the tastefully abstract paintings on the wall. ‘I guess not,’ I said.

  ‘Joakim’s like me,’ he said. ‘He’s got a fantasy of working as a musician.’

  ‘He’s good,’ I said. ‘But I told you that at the parents’ evening. If you’re half as good as him, you’ll be fine for us.’

  Guy swigged his beer. ‘I’m a bit more than half as good, I reckon. You need a drummer?’

  ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘You wouldn’t mind having a father and son in the group?’

  ‘If it’s all right with you two.’

  ‘You don’t want me to audition?’

  ‘I trust Joakim. And you too, of course.’

  ‘I’ve got my own drum kit.’

  ‘So much the better.’

  He took another swallow from his bottle and looked at me appraisingly. ‘As I said, Joakim’s got this fantasy of working as a musician, just like I did. It’s ridiculous, of course.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Don’t you agree?’

  ‘I’m a music teacher,’ I said, ‘so I don’t think I’m the right person to say that playing music is a fantasy.’

  ‘I don’t think Joakim’s got any interest in being a teacher.’ Guy said this as if it were even worse than being a musician. ‘He wants to play live. What do you think about that?’

  ‘What do you want me to say? He’s good. One of the best I’ve taught.’

  ‘He looks up to you. He respects you. Playing like this is all good fun, now that he’s finished his exams, but I’d be grateful if you’d talk to him about the realities of being a musician.’

  ‘This is just a one-off performance at a friend’s wedding. We’re not touring America.’

  ‘But if he asks.’

  ‘I really don’t give career advice. However, we’re a pretty motley collection. I don’t think there’s much chance that we’ll seduce Joakim with our glamorous rock-and-roll lifestyle. Anyway, you’ll be there to keep an eye on him. Is that why you want to sig
n up?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Guy said. ‘I’ve spent too long playing along to Led Zep records. It’ll be good to play with some real people.’

  After

  I crept out of the door again and onto the lane. It was entirely dark now, just a few stars blinking above me and the dull orange glow of London all around. The lights were out in the flat above, but still, the person who lived there might return at any moment. Even thinking of that made my heart lurch. The shapes on the road became hunched figures that were watching me. I unlocked his car, opened the boot in readiness and returned to the flat.

  ‘All clear,’ I said to Sonia.

  Without saying anything more, we knelt beside him. I took his feet and Sonia his shoulders.

  ‘One, two, three and . . .’ she mouthed.

  We heaved and managed to lift him a few inches. His body sagged between us. An arm broke free of the rug and I let out a squeal before I could help myself. ‘He’s so heavy,’ I said.

  ‘Drag him,’ said Sonia. ‘Until we get to the front door.’ We bumped him along the floor, sometimes summoning enough strength to give him a heave that carried him a foot or two along. The rug he was wrapped in stuck on the carpet but slid more easily when we got to bare boards. There were shooting pains in my ribs. My head banged and my neck throbbed and I could feel sweat running off me. Beside me, Sonia grunted and gasped.

  At last we were at the front door. I pushed it open and stepped outside. The lane was empty and silent. The garage sign banged faintly in the breeze. I nodded at Sonia.

  We half lifted the body. The rug came loose again and his hand dragged on the ground. Those hands, strong and warm: once they had stroked my face, cupped my chin. I tried to stop myself thinking of it. I staggered and couldn’t keep a grip and he thumped onto the tarmac. I gave a cry as if we were hurting him.

  ‘Sorry,’ I whimpered.

  ‘Just a couple of yards now.’

  Stooping, buckling at the knees, we shuffled the last few feet to the car. We shouldered the bundle upwards, not speaking but panting with the effort. The rug slipped further. I could see his hair. Soft hair. But the boot was too small and he was too big. He didn’t fit. We had to push it – the corpse, the body, him, the man I had . . . had what? Not loved, unless love can be violent, hopeless and dark, with its end written into its beginning. We had to push and twist his body, shoving it into the space. As if he was a thing – but he was a thing. He was dead. Nothing was left except memory and loss. I heard his head bang on the metal. My shirt was sticking to my back; it hurt to breathe. Sonia stood upright, her face pale in the darkness, and pulled the boot shut.