The Other Side of the Door Read online

‘We won’t have much to tell them.’

  ‘Then it won’t take long,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know how to reach me?’ said Nat.

  ‘Am I going to need to reach you?’

  He wrote his number on a beer mat and handed it to me. ‘You could keep us in touch with what’s going on,’ he said. ‘If there’s anything we need to know.’

  As I walked home I went over what I’d said to the police. I’d been so stupid. I’d thought I’d been so discreet about Hayden and me, almost invisible, but people had known, perhaps everybody. Soon the police would hear and would want to know why I’d been less than truthful. I would have to think what I was going to say about that.

  Before

  I knocked briskly on the door that used to be my door and assumed a nonchalant expression.

  ‘Bonnie!’

  ‘Hi. Sorry I’m a bit late.’

  ‘Late?’

  ‘You’ve forgotten?’

  ‘No – that is, what?’

  ‘I’ve come to collect my things. We arranged it at the last rehearsal.’

  ‘Was that today?’

  ‘Sunday morning, when you could be sure to be here. Can I come in?’ I took a step forward so that I was standing on the threshold.

  ‘I’m not quite ready for you. Sorry. Maybe we could do it another day. There’s no real hurry, is there?’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say.’ I winced at the sharpness in my voice. ‘The thing is, I’ve borrowed Sally’s car. There’s not that much, and you said you’d put it all in boxes already.’ I advanced a few paces more and Amos backed away from me. He looked as though he had just got out of bed, in a baggy and stained pair of shorts and a ragged T-shirt, his face stubbly and his hair standing on end.

  ‘You’d better come up, then,’ he said, rubbing his face with the back of his hand as he went up the stairs that led to the flat. I remembered when we’d first seen it together. The estate agent had unlocked the door that Amos was pushing open now and we’d stepped through into the main room, empty of furniture, cool and full of sunlight that shone through the two large windows and lay across the grey carpets in slanted rectangles. I’d fallen in love with it at once, imagined sitting there, listening to music, looking out at the street at the end of a day, leading my life, gradually filling the spaces with memories and clutter. Now I was a stranger again, come to remove the clutter. I glanced around. Everything was slightly unfamiliar. The sofa stood in a different place; there was a low coffee-table that hadn’t been there before and on it were several mugs that post-dated me.

  ‘Coffee?’ asked Amos, hovering awkwardly, unsure of how to treat me – was I a guest? An intruder?

  ‘That would be good.’

  ‘With or without milk?’ He blushed. ‘I mean, I know how you used to take it, but you might have changed.’

  ‘It’s OK. I haven’t. Not with how I take my coffee anyway.’

  In the silence there was the sound of a lavatory being flushed, then a tap running.

  ‘I – um – I should have said.’

  Muffled footsteps, and the door opened.

  ‘Hello, Bonnie.’ Sonia stood in the entrance wearing boxers and a black T-shirt with ‘Dyslexics Untie’ across the front. Her feet were bare, the nails painted deep red.

  ‘That’s my top,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll wash it and get it back to you.’ She smiled at me in a kindly fashion. For some reason I felt wrong-footed by the pair of them, horribly ill-at-ease in this place that had been my home until recently. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Good. Fine. Great. I’m collecting my stuff. Then I’ll be off.’

  ‘No hurry. Let’s have coffee and then I’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘I’m just going to get it,’ said Amos, and hurried into the little kitchen that adjoined the living room, half tripping in his eagerness to get away.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be here.’

  ‘And I didn’t know you were coming. But it’s all right. Isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s weird.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And you and Amos –’ I stopped.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That’s weird too.’

  ‘You said it was fine.’

  ‘Fine, but weird.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I want to run away.’

  ‘I can see it’s odd, me being here with Amos and you coming on your own.’

  ’It’s not that,’ I said, although of course it was. I felt at a perilous disadvantage.

  ‘You’ll find someone soon.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  The door opened and Amos came in, carrying three mugs of coffee.

  ‘You’ll meet someone,’ said Sonia. She spoke quietly but she had a clear and carrying voice – she was one of those people whom you could hear in a crowded room.

  My cheeks burned. I glared at her to shut her up but she didn’t seem to understand. Amos put the mugs carefully down on the coffee-table before giving me a sympathetic look. ‘It’s true,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want to meet someone. I’m quite happy not meeting someone, thank you. It’s nice of you to be concerned, Amos, but I’m much happier being on my own, getting my sense of independence back.’ I couldn’t seem to shut up. ‘I’m having a lovely time. A great summer. I just want to take my things.’

  ‘I’ll have this, then pop out to get some food, shall I?’ Sonia said to Amos.

  ‘Yeah, that’d be best.’

  ‘Stay if you want. You can be our referee.’

  ‘That’s precisely what I don’t want to be, Bonnie.’ Sonia grinned.

  ‘I can see it might be difficult. That’s my picture, by the way.’ I pointed to the small black-and-white photograph of swans on a river.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Amos said. ‘We bought it together, I clearly remember.’

  ‘We bought it together with my money.’

  ‘That’s not how I recall it.’

  ‘And I don’t think you ever liked it.’

  ‘Maybe not, but that’s hardly the point. Anyway, I’m coming round to it.’

  Sonia sighed and stood up. ‘This is not a competition, Amos,’ she said evenly. He turned beetroot. ‘You don’t get to win or lose. You don’t like it, so don’t hang on to it.’ She lifted the photograph off the wall, dusted the glass with the edge of her shirt – my shirt – and put it into my hands. It was a demonstration to me. ‘Now, I’ll put some clothes on and be out of here. See you, Bonnie.’ She leaned down to where I was sitting on the edge of the sofa, put her hands on my tense shoulders and kissed me, first on one cheek, then the other. I breathed in her clean, soapy smell and felt the softness of her thick hair against my cheek. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was firm, like a command. ‘It is.’

  It was better after she had left because we could behave in a childish, petty manner without feeling ashamed of ourselves under her grown-up, considering gaze. I got the glass vase but he kept the wok that neither of us had ever used; I got the four champagne flutes that had been a moving-in present from a friend and he kept the shot glasses. I bartered the patchwork throw for the bathroom mats. We bickered over books, almost came to blows over a Crosby, Stills and Nash CD. It’s extraordinary what you accumulate. I had always thought of myself as someone who travelled light, yet an hour and a half later Sally’s car was stuffed with printer ink, DVDs, a pair of speakers, old copies of music magazines, scuffed walking-boots, sheets and pillowcases, a bean bag, a stool, several cushions, a stand-alone mirror, a cafetière and a chipped teapot, wind chimes, posters, lampshades, pot plants, plates, mugs, a large hammer, a small rusty saw, a bag of buttons, last year’s wall calendar, a Christmas-tree stand plus a box of defective Christmas lights. All the debris of life: phone chargers, adaptors, pens, socks, cotton reels, assorted bits of makeup. When they were locked away from me, they had seemed intensely desirable and the thought of them being in Amos’s
possession had filled me with rage and a self-righteous grievance; now, in the back of the car, they returned to being useless, unwanted, superfluous. I stopped at a skip and threw in several bags, barely checking what was inside them. Then, at the florist in Camden, I bought a large bunch of flowers to go with the vase I’d fought for, and drove home.

  After

  It was DI Wallis and DI Wade again, but this time it wasn’t at my flat but at the police station, and it wasn’t an informal chat but a formal interview, with a tape recorder playing. They didn’t smile at me, and they didn’t reassure me, and I found that my hands were shaking so much that I had to put them on my lap to hide them. My voice seemed to echo in that small, bare room, which was so brightly lit that I felt every twitch on my face would be noticed by them, that every lie would be amplified. I told myself to say as little as possible, to repeat what I’d said before – but I could no longer remember what I’d said. My story, such as it was, seemed to have been lost in the whirling panic of my mind – or, at least, tiny fragments remained, floating around in a blizzard of thoughts and fears. I was an actress with a scattering of randomly remembered lines and a whole play stretching out before me, a concert musician without music, a child back at school again, facing the nightmare of exams and only a few unassimilated facts bobbing around in the stew of ignorance.

  I had spent the morning reading newspapers in the café down the road. I had ordered a pot of coffee, which I had drunk too quickly, burning my lips and increasing the jittery sensation in my limbs, and an almond croissant I scarcely touched because I felt so queasy that I thought even a few sugary flakes might make me throw up. All the papers had stories about Hayden Booth, the gifted musician with a promising future, whose body had been found in a reservoir. Headlines screamed of mystery, tragedy, relatives’ sorrow. What relatives? Did he have a mother, a father, brothers and sisters he had never mentioned, maybe little nephews and nieces he’d let clamber over him as Lola had clambered over him? In almost all, there was a photograph of him taken several years ago: he was standing on a stage and holding his guitar, his face half in shadow and his eyes hooded. He looked like someone famous, like someone beautiful. The fact of him took my breath away and I folded my arms around myself and waited until the thudding of my heart subsided and I could see the newsprint clearly again.

  I didn’t want to read about him but I couldn’t stop myself. I scanned every line, waiting for my name to leap out at me, or for some damning fact to hit me, but there was nothing I didn’t know, except his age, which was thirty-eight, and the name of his ex-manager, Paul Boland. The stories had been hastily put together the day before, and the police, who were sitting opposite me now, were way ahead of them. They knew, for instance, that I hadn’t told them the whole truth.

  When I had first sat down, my bare legs hot and sticky against the plastic chair, I had been offiered a solicitor. It was my legal right. ‘If you don’t have one, we can arrange one for you.’ DI Wade waited for my reply.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think . . .’

  If they were offiering me a solicitor, did that mean I was – what was the phrase that was always used? – under suspicion? My first instinct was to say yes. I imagined someone – a silver-haired man in a grey suit, carrying a slim leather briefcase, or a slender, well-groomed woman with high cheekbones and a fine, ironic intelligence – sitting beside me and steering me through the dangerous waters ahead, making everything steady and safe. But, then, what would I tell the solicitor? I realized I would have to lie to them as well, have to attempt to remember the exact story I had already told, and the thought of adding another layer of deception to the tottering edifice made me feel giddy with panic.

  ‘No,’ I managed. ‘I don’t need a solicitor.’ I attempted a breezy self-confidence. ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ said DI Wade. ‘So . . .’

  So we began – and began, of course, with the fact that I had known Hayden Booth rather better than I had previously let on.

  ‘You told us . . .’ said DI Wade, flicking through his notebook ‘. . . yes, you said that he didn’t have a girlfriend.’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘That is, yes, I told you that.’

  ‘Would you like to amend that statement?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you still want to tell us that he didn’t have a girlfriend?’

  A deep heat flooded my body. I could feel it passing through me in waves. My face burned. ‘He didn’t. I mean, that’s not the word for it.’ They both waited. Joy Wallis bounced her pencil lightly on the surface of the table, tap tap tap. ‘It wasn’t like that with Hayden.’ Silence opened in front of me and I thought for a moment that I would hurl myself into it, blabber everything, get this over with. I swallowed hard and looked up. ‘He wasn’t the kind of man who had a steady girlfriend.’

  ‘So you said last time.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘You misled us.’

  ‘I didn’t understand.’

  ‘Understand what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I tried again. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mislead you. It’s true that I wasn’t Hayden’s girlfriend.’

  ‘How so?’ mused DI Wade.

  ‘We weren’t in a committed relationship,’ I said. ‘I had only known him for a couple of weeks or so, through the band. You know. I told you before.’

  ‘Were you sexually involved with Mr Booth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So. You weren’t his girlfriend but you were sexually involved with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You had sex with him.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Approximately how many times did you have sex with Hayden Booth?’

  ‘Is that relevant?’

  ‘We’ll know once you’ve told us.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Once? Twice? Three times? More?’

  ‘Nearer that, yes.’

  ‘More than three?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many more?’

  ‘I don’t know. A few.’

  ‘Say, six or seven times in less than two weeks and you weren’t his girlfriend?’

  ‘No. I wasn’t.’

  ‘Was it secret?’ This was from Joy Wallis.

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It just was. We didn’t want people to know. To make assumptions. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Assumptions that you were a couple?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘So nobody knew.’

  ‘I guess Jan and Nat knew. Kind of. The guys in his band. Knew that we had a – thing.’

  ‘This thing.’ DI Wade spoke the word carefully, as if it was an accurate portrayal of what had been between Hayden and myself. ‘Was it still going on when he died?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Sorry – you guess so?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Where did you meet?’

  ‘My flat. His. It belongs to my friend who’s away at the moment – but I’ve told you that.’

  ‘Did you have arguments?’ Joy Wallis again. Her voice was softer than DI Wade’s and she didn’t look at me when she spoke, but down at her notebook, in which, I saw, she was not writing.

  I flinched. For a moment, I saw Hayden’s fist plunging towards my face. As they looked at me, waiting for my answer, I felt the now-faded bruise on my neck throb, as if to give me away. Surely they must see it, feel it.

  ‘No. We snapped at each other, of course. You know.’

  ‘Not really. Go on.’

  ‘He was a bit of a slob.’

  ‘So you argued about mess?’

  ‘A bit. Maybe.’

  ‘Was he faithful to you?’

  ‘I told you, I wasn’t his girlfriend. He didn’t need to be faithful.’

  ‘So he wasn’t faithful.’

  ‘The word
doesn’t apply.’

  ‘There were other women?’

  I thought of Sally, whom he’d captivated and abandoned. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  We went round and round the subject. My head was banging in the stifling heat. My hands sweated. And then DI Wade asked: ‘Did Mr Booth have a car?’

  ‘Yes.’ My voice rasped. I wound my fingers together and tried to make my voice stronger. ‘He had a car. I went in it once.’ That was in case traces of me remained in spite of the valet cleaning.

  ‘Do you remember the make?’

  ‘Blue. That’s all I know. Old and blue.’

  ‘A blue Rover, thirteen years old.’ He gave me the registration number as well, reading it out from the file.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Do you know where he kept it?’

  ‘That would be outside Liza’s flat, where he was staying.’

  ‘I see.’ He leaned back in his chair and put his latticed hands behind his head. ‘I’m going to tell you something about that car, Miss Graham. It’s not outside his flat now.’ I muttered something meaningless. ‘It was found in Walthamstow, parked illegally on Fountain Road on the afternoon of Sunday, the thirtieth of August.’ He consulted his notebook again. ‘It was ticketed at seven minutes past three and the vehicle was removed twenty minutes later.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Someone must have stolen it,’ I said.

  ‘The keys were still in the ignition.’

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘Doesn’t that seem strange?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I don’t mean to be rude but what does it matter what it seems to me?’

  ‘Do you know where it was before that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It was at Stansted airport, the long-stay car park.’

  ‘What was it doing there?’ I said.

  ‘It was left there just after four a.m. on the twenty-second of August . . . The driver was wearing sunglasses and a headscarf. In the middle of the night.’

  ‘Do you think it could have been Hayden?’ I asked.

  ‘It doesn’t seem very likely. We believe the driver was a woman.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said.

  ‘White, quite young.’

  I made a noise that came out wrong, a strangled croak.