Land of the Living Read online

  I looked up at Jo's windows. There were no lights on, and the place seemed very empty and dark. I put the key into the lock. I imagined myself up there, sitting alone through the evening and the long night, picturing Sally's dead body and waiting for the morning to come. Perhaps I should go to Sadie's again, or Sam's, or Sheila's. But the thought of it filled me with despair. I would have to tell them everything that had happened since they'd seen me last, and too much had happened. Though I'd seen them all just a few days ago, they felt too far away. I had fallen out of their world and had become a stranger, and who would know me now?

  I couldn't just stand there on the street, an unmoving target. I turned the key and pushed open the door. I looked at the stairs, climbing up to the unlit rooms, and fear rose up in me. I pulled the door shut again and stood for a moment, leaning against it and trying to breathe calmly. A part of me wanted to slide down the door and collapse on the path. I could curl up in a ball, with my arms wrapped around my head, and lie there like a dying animal. Someone else could come and deal with everything. They'd lift me up and carry me somewhere safe and warm and I wouldn't have to go on like this, day after day.

  I didn't curl up on the path. I turned back towards the high street, where I flagged down a taxi and asked them to take me to Belsize Park. I didn't know the number of the house but I thought I would remember it once I got there. He probably wouldn't be there, and if he was I didn't know what I would say to him.

  I found the house easily. I remembered the tree on the pavement outside, and I somehow knew that it had a wrought-iron fence. There were lights on both downstairs and upstairs. I gave the cab driver a ten-pound note and told him to keep the change. I walked towards the door and my legs felt like jelly and my breath kept catching in my throat. He would probably be in the middle of a dinner party. He'd probably be in bed with someone. I rapped the knocker loudly and stood back. I heard him coming and a little sob escaped me.

  "Abbie?"

  "Is someone here? Are you in the middle of something?"

  He shook his head.

  "Sorry," I said. "Sorry to bother you like this, but I didn't know what else to do. You're the only person I know who knows everything. If you see what I mean. Sorry."

  "What's happened?"

  "I'm scared."

  "Come inside. You must be freezing." He opened the door and I stepped into the wide hall.

  "Sorry."

  "Stop saying sorry, for God's sake. Come on, come into the kitchen, get warm. Here, give me your coat."

  "Thanks."

  He led me into a small kitchen. There were pot plants all along the window-sill and daffodils on the table. I could smell glue, sawdust, varnish.

  "Here. Sit down, move that junk. Let me get us something to drink. Tea? Or how about hot chocolate?"

  "Lovely."

  He poured milk into a pan and set it on the hob.

  "What about food? When did you last eat?"

  "This morning, a fry-up. Remember?"

  "Was that only this morning? God."

  "Did your meeting go all right?"

  "It went, at least. Shall I make you something?"

  "Just hot chocolate. That would be very comforting."

  "Comforting," he said, with a smile.

  He spooned chocolate granules into the boiling milk and stirred vigorously, then poured it into a large green mug. "Drink that, Abbie, and tell me what's happened."

  "Sally died," I said.

  "Sally? Who's Sally?"

  "Terry's new girlfriend." I waited for him to ask who Terry was but he didn't, just nodded and frowned.

  "I'm sorry about that, but did you know her well? Was she a friend?"

  "I hardly knew her at all. But she was killed."

  "Killed? Someone killed her?"

  "Outside Terry's flat. The police are convinced it was Terry."

  "I see," he said slowly.

  "It wasn't. I know it wasn't. But, of course, they just think I'm trapped in some paranoid fantasy. For them, this proves it: Terry bashed me around and I turn it from a squalid tale of domestic abuse into a heroic story of a kidnap. Then he continues the pattern and murders his next girlfriend."

  "But he didn't?"

  "No. Terry wouldn't murder anyone."

  "Lots of people who wouldn't murder anyone go and murder someone."

  "That's what the police keep saying. But I know him. Anyway, if he did kill her he would have collapsed with guilt and phoned 999. He certainly wouldn't have dragged her body outside and put it a few doors up. And if he wanted to hide it, which he wouldn't have done, because anyway he wouldn't have done it in the first place, then he would have

  "I'm not the police, you know."

  "No. Sorry. It's just .. . everything. I keep thinking about poor, stupid Terry. And Sally, of course. But there's something more. Sally looked like me. I mean, like I used to look before I got my haircut and stuff." I watched his face change. "I just have this horrible feeling that it should have been me."

  "Oh," he said. "I see."

  "He's out there, looking for me. He'll find me. I know it."

  "And the police don't take you seriously?"

  "No. I don't really blame them. If I wasn't me, I don't know if I would take me seriously. If you see what I mean."

  "I do see what you mean."

  "Do you believe me?"

  "Yes," he said. "'"

  "In a big way, I mean? About everything."

  "Yes."

  "Really? You're not just saying that?"

  "I'm not just saying it."

  I looked at him. He didn't flinch or look away. "Thank you," I said. I picked up my mug of hot chocolate and finished it. I felt better, all of a sudden. "Can I use your bathroom? Then I'll go home. I shouldn't have come barging in like this, it was stupid of me."

  "Up the stairs, the first room you come to."

  I stood up. My legs felt wobbly as I climbed the stairs. I used the toilet then splashed my blotchy face. I looked like a washed-out schoolgirl. I came out and headed back down the stairs again. It was a nice house; I wondered if a woman lived there. There were pictures on the walls and books in piles. There was a large plant in the alcove where the staircase turned. I stopped dead and looked at it, its old, gnarled trunk and its dark green leaves. I crouched down and pressed a finger against its mossy soil. I sat down beside it and put my head in my hands. I didn't know whether to cry or giggle or scream. I didn't do any of them. I just stood up and went down the rest of the stairs, very slowly. I walked into the kitchen. Ben was still sitting at the table. He wasn't doing anything, just staring into space. He looked tired, as well. Tired and a bit low, perhaps.

  Like a person in a dream my dream, the dream of a life I'd once inhabited, a dream I couldn't remember -I walked round the table and laid one hand against his face. I watched his expression soften. "Was it like this?" I said. I bent over him and kissed him on the side of his mouth. He closed his eyes and I kissed his eyelids. I kissed him on his mouth until it parted. I felt soft and new. "Was it?"

  "No, it wasn't."

  "So what was it like?"

  "You said to me that you felt ugly. You'd been talking about

  Terry. So I took you by the hand." He took me by the hand and led me across the room to where there was a full-length mirror hanging on the wall. He placed me in front of it so that I was looking at myself, ragged, blotchy, pale, straggly, worn-out Abigail. He stood behind me and we caught each other's gaze in the mirror. "I brought you over here and I made you look at yourself. I said that you were beautiful."

  "I look like something you found on a skip."

  "Shut up, Abbie. I'm talking. You were beautiful then and you're beautiful now. I told you that you were lovely and then I couldn't stop myself. I kissed you like this, on your soft neck. Yes, you leant your head just like that."

  "What then?" I said. I felt faint.

  "I kissed you like this and rubbed my hands over you, your face and neck. Then I carried on like thi
s."

  He was kissing my neck and at the same time he undid the buttons on the front of my shirt until it opened.

  "That right?" I murmured, not very coherently.

  He reached under my shirt and unfastened my bra at the back and pulled it up at the front and then his hands were on my breasts. His soft lips were still on my neck, not so much kissing my skin as stroking it.

  "Like this," he said.

  I was going to say something but I couldn't speak. His right hand stroked my stomach gently, moving downwards. He deftly snapped open the button at the top of my trousers and opened the zip. He knelt down behind me, kissing his way down my spine as he did so. He put his hands inside the waistband and pulled my trousers and knickers down around my ankles. He stood up again. He was behind me, his arms around me.

  "Look at that," he said, and I looked at my body and in the mirror I looked at him, looking at my body and I looked at my body with his gaze. And I looked into the mirror and thought of my naked body in that mirror, when was it? Two weeks ago?

  When I spoke to him my voice was drowsy with arousal. "I look undignified," I said.

  "You look wonderful."

  "And I can't run away."

  "You can't run away."

  "What did I do after that?"

  And then he showed me. I had to hobble, ridiculously, towards his bedroom and I fell over on the bed. I kicked off my shoes and shook off my clothes. They were virtually off anyway. Then he took off his own clothes, taking his time. He reached over to a drawer and took out a condom, opening the packet with his teeth. I helped him put it on. "I know about this," I said. "I found the morning-after pill among my stuff."

  "Oh, God," he said. "I'm sorry. We didn't have time."

  "I'm sure I was to blame as well."

  "Yeah," he said, gasping now. "You were."

  We looked at each other. He put up one hand and touched my face, my neck, my breasts. "I thought I'd never touch you again," he said.

  "Was it like this?"

  "Yes."

  "This?"

  "Yes. Don't stop."

  We didn't stop. We looked at each other the whole time, sometimes smiling at each other. When he came, he cried out like a man in pain. I gathered him to me and held him close. I kissed his damp hair.

  "It can't have been better than that," I said.

  He put his lips against the pulse in my throat and then he groaned something into my neck.

  "What was that?"

  "I said, not an hour's gone by without me missing you."

  "Perhaps I've been missing you, too, but I didn't know it."

  "How did you know?"

  "The bonsai tree." I drew back and glared at him. "So why the fuck didn't you tell me?"

  "I'm sorry, I didn't know what to do. I wanted you to feel something, not be told you had felt it. If that makes sense."

  "I don't know. There's a bit of me waiting to be furious with you. Really furious. That's not a joke. I've been searching and searching for bits of the me that I lost, blundering around like a terrified blind woman, and you knew that, and you could have helped me all along. But you didn't. You chose not to. You knew things about me that I didn't know about me. You still do. You can remember fucking me and I've got no memory at all. You know the other me, the me I keep hidden, and I don't know the other you, do I? What other things do you know about me? How will I know that you've told me everything? I won't. You've got bits of my life. That's not right. Is it?"

  "No."

  "Is that all you've got to say?"

  "I'm sorry. I didn't know what to do," he said helplessly. "I wanted to tell you but what would I have said?"

  "The truth," I said. "That would have been a good place to start."

  "I'm sorry," he said again.

  I stroked his chest softly. Before I had been grabbed and shut up in a cellar, I had been happy. Everyone had said so. I'd been happy because I'd left a man who beat me up, left a job I disliked, and met Ben. Since coming out of hospital, I had been haunted by the fact that the days I had lost were ones full of lovely memories. I had lost the bits I wanted to keep; I had kept the bits I wanted to let go. Thoughts flitted through my head, or fragments of thoughts. Something about saying yes to life, something about not spending the rest of my life being scared.

  Later, we had a bath together. Then he went downstairs and made us both sandwiches, which he brought up on a tray, with a bottle of red wine. I sat against the pillows.

  "You're always making me meals," I said.

  "We had oysters before."

  "Did we? I love oysters."

  "I know. That's why we had them. We'll have them again."

  I picked up his hand and kissed it, then bit into the sandwich. "So it was a Wednesday evening, right?"

  "Monday."

  "Monday! You're sure? Straight after we first met?"

  "Sure."

  I frowned.

  "But you didn't wear a condom?"

  "I did."

  "I don't get it. You said earlier .. ."

  "You came back."

  "On Wednesday?"

  "Yes."

  "You should have fucking well told me that."

  "I know."

  "And you didn't

  "No."

  "Why?"

  "You came on an impulse. With the tree. We'd arranged to meet the next evening Thursday because I had several people round on the Wednesday. Clients. They were there already and you knocked on the door and handed me the tree. I kissed you."

  "Yes?"

  "And then I kissed you some more."

  "Go on."

  "You undid the buttons on my shirt. We could hear my guests talking to each other in the next-door room."

  "And?"

  "We went to the bathroom and locked the door and we fucked."

  "Standing up?"

  "Yes. It took about thirty seconds."

  "Show me," I said.

  I stayed the night with Ben. In spite of everything, I slept heavily and when I woke in the morning, I could smell coffee and toast. Through the curtains, the sky looked blue. I was frightened by my sudden happiness. It was like the coming of spring.

  Nineteen

  We had toast in bed. The crumbs spilt on to the sheets, but Ben lay back on the pillows and pulled the duvet under his chin, looking very comfortable.

  "Don't you have work to do?" I said.

  Ben leant across me to look at the clock by the bed. Funny how quickly you could feel comfortable with another body. "Eighteen minutes," he said.

  "Won't you be late?"

  "I'm already late. But there's someone coming in to see me. He's come all the way from Amsterdam. If I'm not there to meet him, I'll be a bad person as well as late."

  I kissed him. It was meant to be just a peck.

  "You'll have to stop doing that," he said. "Or I won't be able to go."

  "You see," I said, whispering it, because my face was almost touching his, 'if I were you and you were me, I'd think that you were mad. Or I was mad. If you see what I mean."

  "You've lost me."

  "If somebody I'd met disappeared and turned up a fortnight later and seemed to have no memory of even having seen me, I'd think they were completely mad. Or a liar. As you know, the police are torn between the two theories."

  "I thought I was mad. Then I thought you were mad. Then I just didn't know." He stroked my hair. It made me shiver with pleasure. "I didn't know what to do," he said. "It seemed an impossible thing to explain. I suppose I thought that I had to make you like me again. In any case, the idea of me saying to you, "You're attracted to me, or at least you were, you don't remember it but you really were" ... It didn't sound particularly sane."

  "You don't have hands like a designer," I said.

  "You mean they're rough and scratchy?"

  "I like them."

  He contemplated his own hands with curiosity. "I do a lot of my own manufacturing. Things get spilt on my hands. They get scratched and hammered and
scraped, but that's the way I like it. My old man is a welder. He's got a workshop at home and he spends all his weekends taking things apart and putting them back together. When I was younger, if I wanted to communicate with him, the only way was by going in there and passing him the wrench or whatever it was. Getting my hands dirty. That's what I still do, on the whole. I found a way of getting paid for what my dad did as a hobby."

  "It's not quite like that for me," I said. "Not with my dad or with my work."

  "You're fantastic at your job. You pulled the whole thing together. You scared us all shitless."

  "Sometimes I can't believe the things I do or did. You know, risk assessment for an office? You can imagine risk assessment for an oil rig or a polar expedition but the insurance company wanted a risk assessment for the office so I did it. Just at the moment I'm a world expert on every bad thing that can happen to you in an office. Did you know that last year ninety-one office workers in the United Kingdom were injured by typing-correction fluid? I mean, how can you injure yourself with typing-correction fluid?"

  "I know exactly how. You use the fluid, you get some on your fingers and then rub your eyes."

  "Thirty-seven people injured themselves with calculators. How do they do that? They only weigh about as much as an egg carton. I could tell them a thing or two about risk."

  It didn't seem so funny any more. I sat up and looked at the clock. "I guess we both need to get going," I said.

  We took a shower together and we were really very disciplined. We just washed each other and dried each other. We helped each other dress. Putting Ben's clothes on him was almost as exciting as taking them off had been. On the whole it was better for him, no doubt. He had fresh clothes to put on. I had the same ones from the night before. I had to go back to the flat and change. He came over to me, ruffled my hair, kissed my forehead. "It's a bit creepy seeing you in Jo's clothes, though," he said.

  I shook my head. "We must have the same taste," I said. "These are mine. In fact, this shirt is the one I was wearing when I was kidnapped. I would have thought I'd have thrown it in the bin, or burnt it but it's quite a nice shirt, and I figured that I'm not going to stop thinking about things just because I set fire to some clothes .. ."

  "That shirt was Jo's. She bought it in Barcelona. Unless you've been buying clothes in Barcelona as well."