The Other Side of the Door

by Nicci French

  ‘Not until the necklace.’

  ‘The thing is, he was so nice to me. Stupid word. “Nice” isn’t a word to use about someone like him. From the very first moment I met him, he made me feel special, as if he really saw me – not Sally the housewife, not Sally the mother, but me. He said I was gorgeous. Do you know how long it is since someone told me that? You know, when you have a kid, you just disappear. Richard goes to work in the morning and comes back in the evening and he’s tired and I’m tired and we don’t really talk about anything except arrangements, and I can’t remember the last time we had sex. And all my friends – even you, Bonnie, and it’s not your fault – you’re out there in the world, falling in love and having fun and earning money, and it feels as if all that’s over for me. I’ve been going around down in the dumps, with greasy hair and stained jumpers and bags under my eyes, and suddenly this man comes along and makes me feel wanted again. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’ But I didn’t want to think about it, or imagine the two of them together. I’d go mad if I thought about that.

  ‘I love Lola and I wouldn’t be without her. And I love Richard too. In a way. But we don’t notice each other any more. Then along comes Hayden. You know what he’s like.’

  I made an indeterminate noise and gulped some coffee, though I already felt jittery with too much caffeine.

  ‘He ate my cakes and drank my tea and told me I was lovely – that I looked lovely. He laughed at things I said, and took Lola off my hands, and asked me questions about myself as if he really wanted to know the answer, and it was like being a teenager again – you know, butterflies in my stomach. Before he came along, I just wanted to sleep all the time. I was so tired I felt I could sleep for days on end and still be tired. Suddenly I felt full of energy, fizzing.’

  ‘So you had an affair.’ My voice sounded dry as dead leaves.

  ‘You couldn’t really call it that.’ Sally’s voice wobbled. ‘That makes it sound important. It was only twice. And it wasn’t even as if it ended – nothing happened, he still smiled at me and touched my hand and behaved as if I was special, he just didn’t do anything about it any more.’

  ‘When did all this happen?’ I wanted to know if we had overlapped.

  But Sally didn’t answer. Instead, she said earnestly, ‘I think he’s a damaged person. Something must have hurt him once and now he’s – Well . . . I don’t blame him. I think it did mean something to him. I’m sure it did. It must have. Maybe he stopped because he didn’t want to wreck my marriage.’ She gave a gulpy hiccup and dabbed her eyes again. ‘I thought I could help him, give him love and make him feel better about himself. Don’t laugh.’

  ‘I wasn’t. What about Richard?’

  ‘You mean, does he know? I was so terrified of him finding out. I thought someone might put two and two together and tell him or something – and the weird thing was, I gave myself away. I told on myself. I just found myself saying it. It had got so grim between us and he knew something was wrong and he was horrible about Hayden anyway, called him a – Well, never mind that. He definitely suspected something. That’s why he refused to let the band play in the house again – though he didn’t suspect I’d been unfaithful. He doesn’t think of me sexually any more, so I guess he couldn’t imagine anyone else thinking of me like that either. Maybe I wanted to hurt him, shock him out of his bloody complacency, or maybe I thought that telling him would make him look at me properly for once.’ She gave a sharp laugh. ‘It’s certainly done that.’

  ‘How did he take it?’

  She gave a little shiver. ‘Let’s just say he wasn’t calm about it. He kept saying he didn’t know how I could do something like that to Lola. Oh, God. I wasn’t doing anything to Lola. I love Lola and I’d never harm her and if I thought – The thing is, though, he’s not completely blind, Richard. He knows, he half knows, that it wasn’t just my fault. If we’d been getting on better, it wouldn’t have happened. I was so lonely, Bonnie.’

  I put my hand over hers. ‘You should have told me before.’

  ‘You always seem so in control of things. You wouldn’t have a husband who treated you like you were there to keep the house clean and put meals on the table. No one would just fuck you a couple of times when they first met you and leave you without even bothering to tell you he was leaving.’

  ‘That’s just what I seem like on the outside,’ I said. ‘From the inside it doesn’t feel like that.’

  ‘What happened with Hayden – it was so important to me, and important to Richard as well. Maybe it’s even ruined our marriage, although I don’t think either of us wants that. But now I think maybe it meant nothing to Hayden. Just one of those things. He’ll forget about me soon enough – perhaps he already has.’

  I recognized everything she had said. In a way, her story had been my story – except she was now trying to return to her husband, retracing her footsteps to where she had been before she’d met Hayden. But I had crossed a line and was in another country, one from which there was no coming back. My old life, as it had been before Hayden pulled me into his arms and kissed me, seemed far away, safe and luminous with the soft allure of something irrevocably lost. It wasn’t just my old life that was lost, but my old self. I could never be that woman again, I thought. I had done something that couldn’t be confessed and forgiven.

  ‘We should talk properly about what happened,’ I said, ‘and what’s going to happen with you and Richard now. But you’re about to go to a police station, so tell me why you’ve reported him missing.’

  ‘I got scared.’

  ‘Scared?’

  ‘It sounds stupid. I know he’s just wandered off to the next bit of his life. I don’t think he has the kind of continuity that you or I have. It’s just one thing, and then the next thing, and nothing adds up. As a matter of fact, I think even when he was with me there was someone else, although he never said so. I just got this sense. I think that’s why he didn’t come back after the second time. But I was thinking – I was thinking what he said to me once.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That he was worthless. That I shouldn’t get involved with someone like him.’

  ‘He said that?’ The very words he’d used with me, and I’d repeated to Neal.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You think he might have killed himself.’

  ‘No! Yes. I don’t know. I don’t really think he’d do that but once I started wondering I couldn’t just leave it. I went round there, you know – I phoned him on his mobile and on his landline, and went to where he was staying and rang the bell. I felt sure he was there, knowing it was me and not wanting to see me. It was horrible.’

  But it was me, I thought – me and Sonia with Hayden’s dead body, listening to you, willing you to go away. My skin prickled at the memory.

  ‘So?’ I prompted her.

  ‘I told Richard yesterday that I was going to report it to the police and even he thought it might be sensible.’ She looked at me with her reddened eyes. ‘Did I do right, Bonnie?’

  ‘You did what you had to.’

  ‘I’ve realized I don’t actually know anything about him. I don’t know where he grew up, who his parents are, his friends, anything.’

  I didn’t know much either. Just odd fragments he’d let slip. Once he’d said he loved elephants because they never made any noise when they walked but were silent and delicate, and that when any of their family died, they mourned them; when I’d asked him how he knew, he told me he’d once spent some time in Africa. The idea of Hayden in some game park looking at elephants and lions through binoculars was so ridiculous it had made me laugh. He had mentioned women, of course – that one’s spirit, that one’s madness – but never by name or in specific detail. He talked about them as if they were fantasies or dreams or myths. He had talked about bands, festivals, odd gigs in obscure pubs, but with no date, no location. I knew he had grown up somewhere in the West Country, that his father had been hopeless and his mother sa
d, that he had hated school, wherever that school had been. I wondered if that was why women had so adored him. He seemed to have come from nowhere and to carry with him an air of mystery and hurt. We wanted to solve him and we wanted to cure him. For a minute, I saw his face flushed with rage and his fist raised. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  ‘I’m so glad you know,’ Sally was saying.

  ‘I’m glad too.’ Did she know, though? Did she suspect? Surely, surely she must. And why hadn’t she asked me how I’d come to have the necklace? ‘I’ll come with you to the police.’ Because there was nothing else I could do. This was Sally: my secret rival, unwitting whistleblower and oldest friend.

  Before

  ‘Sally rang and told me we can’t play at her house any more,’ I called, into the bathroom.

  ‘That’s a pain.’ Hayden was in the bath. He’d been there for about an hour. Every so often he would pull out the plug to let out some water, then put it back and turn on the hot tap for a bit. I could barely make him out through the fug.

  ‘She sounded very upset. I think Richard’s put his foot down.’

  He reached up a big toe and turned on the tap. ‘There’ll be somewhere else.’

  After

  It wasn’t the way I expected a police station to be. It – or, at least, the bit of it we were allowed into, just walking off the street – was more like a very downmarket bank, with the police officer sitting on the other side of a plastic grille. You could imagine strange people hearing voices, brandishing weapons, coming in demanding justice or revenge or something they didn’t quite understand. Even the police needed protecting.

  The officer seemed engrossed in filling out a form and he barely looked up when Sally started to speak. His face was screwed up with concentration, his balding head shining with the effort of it. When Sally said she was there to report a missing person, his head jerked up, but as she gave her meandering account of what had happened and why it was so important, his interest visibly waned.

  ‘So, are we meant to make some sort of statement?’ said Sally.

  ‘When was it you last saw him?’ said the officer.

  ‘Nine days ago,’ said Sally. She turned to me. ‘When did any of us see him, Bonnie?’

  ‘The eighteenth, I think. Or something like that.’

  ‘Of this month?’ said the officer.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sally. ‘Ten days ago. Almost. He’s just vanished without a word. Something’s happened to him. I’m sure of it.’

  The officer rapped his pen several times on the desk but he didn’t write anything down.

  ‘We’re not going away,’ said Sally. ‘Somebody has to look into this.’

  The officer turned to me. I made a face that I hoped would demonstrate a vague support of Sally without being too persuasive.

  ‘Please take a seat over there,’ said the officer. ‘I’ll send someone out to see you.’

  We sat on a wooden bench opposite posters advising us of our rights and urging us to lock our doors and mark our valuables. A succession of people arrived and made their complaints at the desk about acts of vandalism, petty crime and other grievances that were almost incomprehensible. It was as if they just had to tell their story but it wasn’t clear whether they needed a policeman, a doctor, a priest or just someone who would listen. Sometimes the officer wrote something on a form, but mainly he nodded patiently and murmured something we couldn’t hear from our side of the waiting room.

  Finally there was a buzz. The reinforced door opened and a uniformed policewoman came out and sat next to us. She introduced herself as PC Horton (‘but call me Becky’) and said she understood we had some concerns.

  ‘Concerns?’ said Sally, crossly, and began the story once more – but then she stopped. ‘Aren’t you going to write any of this down?’

  The policewoman leaned forward and placed a hand on her arm. ‘Tell me about your concerns first.’

  Sally looked suspicious. ‘Are you here as some kind of therapist? Are you going to reassure me or are you going to find Hayden Booth?’

  ‘First we need to be clear about what’s happened,’ said Becky. She felt like a Becky, rather than a PC Horton. She was being our friend. That seemed to be the point of her. ‘Then we’ll decide what to do.’

  So Sally told the story, as she saw it, of Hayden’s appearance and disappearance and how she was sure that something serious must have happened.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ she said, looking at me, as if for validation. ‘He was rehearsing for an upcoming concert and then, without a word, he’s gone and nobody knows where he is or what’s become of him.’

  ‘Have you made any attempt to find out?’

  ‘Of course. Bonnie here and a couple of other people went round to his flat to check up on him.’

  ‘What did you find?’ Becky said, to me.

  I felt like an actor who had been pushed on stage suddenly. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know my lines properly but that I hadn’t decided what part I should be playing. It was crucial that I seemed loyal to Sally, that I was backing her up and supporting her. But it was far more crucial that I wasn’t so convincing in the role that I persuaded the police to mount a full-on search for Hayden. I ought to have thought about all this but there hadn’t been time.

  ‘He didn’t show up at a rehearsal and we couldn’t reach him, so we went to his flat to see if he’d left something to show where he’d gone.’ An idea occurred to me. ‘When I say his flat, I don’t really mean that it’s his. He didn’t . . .’ I corrected myself: ‘He doesn’t own it. He’s not even renting it. A friend of mine’s gone away and he was just staying there for a bit.’

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Nothing, really. We couldn’t find his passport or mobile phone or wallet or anything like that, so we assumed he’d taken them with him.’

  ‘They found his guitar broken,’ said Sally. ‘Don’t you think that’s suspicious? He’s a working musician and his only guitar is smashed and he’s gone.’

  ‘It’s not exactly his only guitar,’ I said.

  ‘It’s his favourite, then.’

  ‘Did you contact his employer?’ said Becky.

  I didn’t reply. I left Sally the task of damaging her own argument.

  ‘He doesn’t have an employer,’ she said. ‘He’s a musician.’

  Becky seemed puzzled by that. ‘What kind of musician? Does he have a group or a regular venue where he plays?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sally. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘How long has he been . . . Well, where he is now?’

  ‘I don’t know. A few weeks,’ said Sally.

  ‘And where was he before that?’

  Sally’s face had gone red. She was flustered. ‘I don’t know. Do you, Bonnie?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Before he moved into Liza’s flat, he was staying on people’s floors.’

  ‘Floors?’

  ‘Or sofas. Before that, he was playing somewhere out of London, I think. I don’t know where.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s gone back there,’ said Becky.

  ‘But he hasn’t,’ said Sally. ‘He just hasn’t. I know. He wouldn’t have just gone. He would have said. Look, I don’t understand this. If someone comes and reports a missing person, isn’t it your job to go out and find them? That’s what you see on TV – lines of people searching forests, dragging lakes.’

  I felt a twinge when Sally said that, as if someone had jabbed me with something deep inside.

  When Becky spoke, it was in a gentle tone, like a mother soothing a hysterical child. ‘The word “missing” can mean different things. If a toddler has been missing for half an hour, it’s an emergency. When it’s an adult, it’s more of a problem. Adults have the right just to leave, if they want. It can be very distressing for their loved ones. We hear terrible stories of husbands abandoning their families. But unless we have reason to believe that a crime has been committed, there’s not much we can do.’

  �
�But there is reason to believe it,’ said Sally. ‘Haven’t you heard all I’ve been saying?’

  ‘This man is some sort of rock musician, is that right?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘I don’t know much about this kind of thing, but I understand that people like that have quite irregular lifestyles. They go on tour, they suddenly get jobs, they come and go.’

  ‘He hasn’t just gone,’ said Sally. ‘He’s vanished off the face of the earth.’

  Becky’s expression changed to one of slight suspicion. ‘Were you involved in some way with this man?’

  I saw Sally’s eyes flickering in distress. What was she going to risk?

  ‘We were friends,’ she said.

  Now there was a long pause. I could see that Becky was weighing this up, wondering whether to tell us to go away.

  ‘If you give me your address, a colleague or I will come round and talk to you again, and see if there’s a basis for further inquiry.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sally. ‘That’s all I ask.’

  ‘And remember,’ said Becky, ‘it may be nothing. He’ll probably be waiting for you when you get home.’

  Before

  Sometimes everything is wrong and there’s nothing you can do about it. I had no time to arrange anything remotely acceptable so the next rehearsal took place at my flat. There really wasn’t space for them in the living room and I had to start by telling everyone that we’d have to play as quietly as possible because I couldn’t risk falling out with my new neighbours.

  Guy didn’t turn up, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. There wouldn’t have been room for him and his drums, and the noise would have been disastrous. I felt acutely self-conscious about Hayden. We’d only got out of bed just before the rehearsal was due to start, and although I had showered and cleaned and scrubbed, I felt they’d be able to smell him on me. And he had such an air of possession: he looked at my stuff, picked up books, left bits of clothing around. Of course, he was like that everywhere. He always seemed to take over any space he occupied but my flat now seemed permeated by him. It must be obvious to everybody.