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First published in Great Britain by Killer Reads 2018

Copyright © Joss Stirling 2018

Cover design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2018.

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

Joss Stirling asserts the moral right

to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008278656

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008278649

Version 2018-03-12

For Kate Bradley

Kate, you win the prize for Most Enthusiastic Editor. It’s been a pleasure working with you and the team at Harper Fiction. I hope you like your book!

‘human kind

Cannot bear very much reality.’

(T. S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’, The Four Quartets)

‘She is brave and strong and broken all at once. As she speaks it is as if her existence is no longer real to her in itself, more like a living epitaph to a life that was.’

(Anna Funder, Stasiland)

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About Killer Reads

Prologue

The door closed on the man lying broken at the foot of the stairs. Life hadn’t yet left him – a twitch of a finger, a shallow lift of the ribs, betraying that there was hope if help got there in time.

But it wouldn’t, would it?

Walking with unhurried steps down the suburban street despite a racing heart, the killer felt that congratulations were in order. Thinking fast on your feet was a trait to be regarded with a certain pride. It had come into its own just a short time ago when it became clear something had to be done. His madness had to be stopped.

The act was self-defence really, when you thought about it.

Oh yes, there were plenty of excuses to be made.

A wild glee bubbled up which had to be hidden from other people out and about enjoying a London summer’s evening. An innocent face was such an asset. Glimpsing the families lingering in shadowy gardens, citronella candles lit to deter the mosquitoes, memories of childhood games stirred. Candlestick in the conservatory by Mrs Peacock? No, no, that was a stab in the dark. Rope in the library, Professor Plum? Really, was that the best you could do? Lead pipe in the kitchen, Colonel Mustard? Warmer. The police would be left guessing like inept players when they found him – that’s if they even suspected a crime had taken place. Underestimated by everyone, the killer knew how not to leave too many traces. The scene was staged correctly. Justice done. Time to fade into the background, just one among the many passers-by. Just look at them. Any one of them, under the right conditions, might also take a cast-iron pan to the back of someone’s head and end a life.

Chapter 1

Jessica, 7th August 2016

‘I’m leaving.’

We have barely just walked through the door when Michael makes his declaration. I’m still standing in my holiday T-shirt and shorts, cradling the duty-free bought at the end of our week in Minorca. Our bedroom is scattered with a week’s worth of dirty clothes and he is already repacking his suitcase.

‘What? Leaving leaving, or just leaving?’ I ask, mesmerised as he transfers ironed shirts from the wardrobe to his carry-on. It’s like he’s become a whole different person after the holiday wear got dumped. Back to business. Item one: deal with errant girlfriend.

He pauses, hand arrested in choosing the right tie. ‘I’ll stay overnight at Gatwick. I don’t want to disturb you by having a taxi fetch me at five.’

And I’m not disturbed now with this sudden departure? ‘Oh, so just leaving. I see. I thought, after… you know… it might be hasta la vista, baby.’ I give a hiccup of laughter and unscrew the top of the lime-green liqueur I bought on impulse at the airport. I take a swig.

‘Jessica! I warned you that stuff was vile.’

‘Yeah, well. It tasted great on the beach.’

‘And now it tastes like bleach.’

He’s right but I’m not backing down. ‘Cheers. My funeral and all that.’

He shakes his head. He’s already finished stowing his conference gear. The Grand Prix pit teams could take lessons from him on efficient changeovers. ‘You know how to reach me.’

I really don’t, not anymore. ‘So we’re not going to talk about it?’

‘What good would that do? Don’t do anything stupid while I’m away.’ He walks past me without a goodbye kiss. I hear the front door slam.

I check the level in the bottle. Perhaps it will taste better with ice and lemon?

It doesn’t. I’m still lying awake at two in the morning, tossing and turning, getting up to go to the loo a million times. I check the time.

02:36.

The house clicks and settles in that odd way it does when it thinks no one is listening, like it’s really some living, breathing beast just pretending to be bricks and mortar. A horrible feeling comes over me of there being something wrong, someone out there, with me alone in the house. It’s happened before, usually when I’m in a car after dark on my own, waiting. Be honest, you’ve thought that too, haven’t you? Put your mind to it and it could happen right now where you are. In my nightmare, a man in a Scream-face mask is going to tap on the window. I can see him lurching from the bushes to stare, blank-faced, black circle of a mouth, hands pressed to his cheeks in terror, eyes fixed on me. I know it’s foolish but once the image is there, he’s there in the dark, the Scream guy, real as anything. And now he’s outside my back door as I lie upstairs in bed in a cold sweat.

Stop it, Jessica. You know how this works. It’s the late-night drinking that has summoned your personal horror. Yet my body hums with tension, telling me this time it’s different. This time he’s real. Paralysed, I lie wide awake, listening. There are footsteps in the side alley, I am sure of it, but no way am I going to look. I’m afraid I’ll see him – or not see him, which would be almost as bad, as I’ll know my brain is tricking me again. I take my phone under the blankets with me, thumb close to the emergency-call option on the home screen, but whoever it is doesn’t make another move.

It was probably just a normal intruder raiding the shed, I tell myself, and then laugh grimly at my idea of a small mercy.

Eventually, as it grows light and thoughts of the masked intruder recede, I drift off and sleep through my first alarm. On the second round, I leap up out of the twisted sheets and rush from the house, still buttoning my jacket. On the street, I bump into our neighbour, Lizzy, walking her spaniel. The dog lets off a staccato bark of hysterical joy at seeing me.

‘Had a good holiday?’ asks Lizzy, tugging on Flossie’s lead.

I have no time for the truth. When do I ever? ‘Great. Thanks for feeding the cat. I got you a present but I’m afraid I drank it. Believe me – I saved you from the hangover from hell.’

She laughs, as I hoped. ‘I don’t expect anything, you know that. I like Colette. It’s no trouble.’

‘Thanks. You’re a star. Must dash!’ Giving a cheery wave, I run for the station. Why have I let myself get in such a flap? I scold myself in my mind using Lizzy’s-voice-of-sense, for letting an overactive imagination cause such paralysis last night. The Scream guy never seems real at eight in the morning. Maybe things will improve today? I’ll have a good few hours at work and a decent conversation with Michael later to clear the air. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.

Then the train from Clapham is on time. Usually that would be cause for a marching band and trumpet fanfare, except I’m not. On time, I mean. I stumble up the station steps to see the 8:04 slide away to Vauxhall. My phone goes flying, screen hitting the concrete with that crack. I pick it up. Sure enough, the screen has gone all modern art – my life through shattered glass, still just about functioning.

Injured mobile in hand, I wonder if maybe I should take it as a sign? I should stop here, turn around and go home – repack the suitcase and max out the credit card on the first standby ticket to anywhere that isn’t this life of mine. Would Michael count that impulse as ‘stupid’?

The moment passes. Instead, I squeeze myself onto the next service, like a good little rat in the rat race. Suffering the indignities of the short-in-stature at rush hour, I travel with my face pressed against the back of a German student in a Bayern top. That’s no hardship. He smells good, all kind of musk and bath soap with a hint of alpine yodelling, and looks, well, far too young for me. Funny that that constitutes my most sensual experience of the month. Maybe of my year.

Change on to the Underground, another change and finally I make it to Dean Street, Soho, having hoofed it down Oxford Street as if someone gave a damn about what time I clocked in.

And then the key won’t turn in the lock.

Chapter 2

‘Brilliant, just bloody brilliant.’ I ease the key out, wipe it on my skirt and try again. Jiggle. Plead. Swear under my breath. ‘You will not defeat me, you stupid bit of useless metal.’

I’m coming apart at this last hitch. My head is pounding, hands trembling, tears close. Don’t do this to me, world.

I then notice that the Yale lock looks new – a shiny brass face, unscratched, innocent. Right. OK. Reason this through. I’ve been on holiday for a week so it’s possible my boss has had cause to change the locks in my absence – a mugging, a drunken oh-shit-key-went-down-the-drain incident, or maybe he’s finally listened to my doubts about the cleaner? I indulge in a grunt of vindication. I’ve been complaining that she barely wipes the surfaces and seems to think a squirt of air freshener into the scummy bathroom will convince me she’s doing the job. But if he has given her the boot, and changed the locks to pre-empt revenge attacks, why didn’t he at least text me to let me know?

I thump on the door. ‘Jacob, are you in there? It’s me, Jessica?’ I shout my name with a rising inflexion. Remember me? You know, the research assistant who’s been working alongside you for three months.

No response.

Defeated, I sit down on the top step and review my options. This comes as a particularly fat fly buzzing on top of the pile of crap that is my morning so far. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

OK, some would say I’m being overdramatic. So what do I do now?

I try ringing Jacob but the number is unobtainable. No surprise there, as he usually keeps it switched off, claiming he doesn’t like the idea that his position can be triangulated from every phone mast. I’d once made a lame joke about drone strikes but he just looked at me in that way of his. Some men, actually most men, seem to find me the equivalent of the tissue left in a pocket during the wash. My jokes and ill-thought-through comments are fluff to be brushed away with a show of mild irritation. I then try ringing the office phone, just in case. It’s only a few metres from me on the other side of blue door and if he is in he’ll have to pick it up. I should be able to hear it ringing, but there’s only silence. I lift my mobile to my ear and hear the distressed beep of another unobtainable line.

OK, think this through. I don’t wait for a solution to come to me; I always act. This is my place of work, right? Starting to doubt myself – and that’s very easy to do as doubt is my factory setting – I go back down the stairs and stare at the number 5a on the front door.

Yes, it is the right one, with the busted entrance that yields to a firm push. Our narrow door is sandwiched between the empty shop that was briefly a nail bar and the ex-tapas restaurant that rapidly went bankrupt in the way of overambitious eateries. Both premises are gathering post and circulars on the doormats like letters from an obsessed lover who really just won’t give up. They’re gone. Get over it.

I go back upstairs and carry on an extra flight. I know there is a flat up here as I have heard the sound of feet and occasionally bursts of loud music as I did my internet searches in the office below. I’d never seen the inhabitants so my mind has naturally run riot. We keep very different hours and I’ve sometimes speculated as to whether it is home to one of the prostitutes for which the area is famed. Don’t take any notice of me though. Little do I know about the contemporary sex industry, not having met a sex worker recently – at least, I’m not aware that I have. I probably have. I mean, do Michael’s students count? Some are said to be sleeping their way through college to avoid taking on crippling debt. Well done, government, prostituting the best and brightest.

I realise immediately that I’ve got my picture all wrong when I see the messenger bike blocking the stairwell – unless this is a form of sexual delivery about which I am ignorant. That is entirely possible as my recent experience has been vanilla all the way – and what came before that I really don’t want to remember. I shuffle past, reminded of my less-than-sylphlike proportions as my hip takes a jab from a brake and my butt squashes against the wall. I knock on the door.

After a few seconds, I hear someone approaching. The door opens and a lanky guy wearing an entirely too-small towel, is staring down at me.

‘So?’

What kind of greeting is that? ‘Um, hi, I work downstairs but I can’t get into my office. I don’t suppose you know if there was a locksmith here during the week?’ Stupid question. Why would he know that? What am I even doing here? I try a friendly smile even though my head is still throbbing. I probably look demented.

He rattles off a reply in a foreign language, Polish I think. I can get the ‘nie mowie po angielsku’ (I don’t speak English) thanks to a Polish barista who had once taught me a few words and given me a free coffee for my attempts. It dawns on me that the man hadn’t said ‘so?’ at all, but ‘co?’ – Polish for ‘what’, which sounds almost the same.

‘No English?’ I find myself saying, as if this is in any way relevant to my situation. In post-Brexit Britain I go for an over-friendly, I’m-not-one-of-the-haters, commiserating tone.

‘Leetle,’ he says. As little as his distracting towel.

‘Sorry, never mind.’ I back away before the towel gives up its perilous grip on his hips.

‘You have problem?’ he asks.

Not as long as you keep a hold, mate, I want to quip, but bite my tongue. This month’s goal, agreed with Charles, my therapist, is not to blurt out inappropriate comments or jokes. I failed spectacularly last week but am trying the new-leaf approach. Anyway, here is someone actually showing an interest in helping. I feel so grateful to find a human who cares that I begin a pantomime of my predicament, complete with props: key, lock, downstairs, shake of head.

‘OK. Moment.’ He goes back into his flat and closes the door.

Hanging on to the promise in that ‘Moment’, I wait for him to emerge, which he duly does a minute later, wearing lycra that looks like it’s been slapped on with a roller brush. Soho’s answer to Chris Froome, he hefts the bike out of my way and follows me downstairs. I hold up my keys, and point to the lock. Then magically, he produces a brand-new Yale key on a ring with a fob in the shape of a little bicycle-wheel.

Thank God, some sanity is being restored to my morning. Jacob must have had the locks changed and had the idea of leaving the spare with the guy upstairs. He could’ve told me. My headache begins to ease.

My Polish white knight opens the door and stands back.

‘Thanks.’ I hold out my hand for the key, but he shakes his head.

‘I keep. For boss.’

I don’t really hear this explanation because the room I enter is just not right. Ten days ago, my messy desk with laptop sat in front of the sash window, a grey filing cabinet in the corner, a pinboard of all the cases we were working on next to that. Jacob’s desk had taken up the majority of the room across from me, a chair for clients and a coffee table pushed against the wall. The decor had been gunmetal grey with water-stain accents. The door opposite the entry had led into a depressing little kitchen and bathroom in the cheap extension, which I guess had been put on in the 1930s when it was decided indoor plumbing was here to stay.

Now I feel like I am walking into the same room but in a parallel universe. The place is bigger. Someone has knocked through to the kitchen, laid a wooden floor and painted the walls white, refitted the kitchen. All in the space of ten days. A treatment table, still wrapped in plastic, has replaced Jacob’s desk, and all the paraphernalia for an aromatherapy-cum-massage is neatly laid out on a pale-wood counter that takes up one wall. A feng shui kind of arrangement of ominous forked twig and stones – I mean, where are they planning to shove that? – stands on a low table where my desk had been. It smells new – new paint, new people, new business. There wasn’t even a nail mark in the wall to show where the pinboard once hung.

I resist the temptation to slap my cheek to check I’m not dreaming. ‘What happened to all the stuff that was in here?’ I ask, pointless though it is.

My Polish helper just smiles that bemused ‘seen enough, lady?’ smile.

‘Where is Jacob Wrath? Who’s renting this place?’ Finally I think of a relevant question with which the key holder might be able to help. ‘Do you have a number for the landlord? Landlord? Yes?’ Meeting incomprehension, I type the word into Google translate and let him squint through the spiderwebbed screen.

He nods and pulls a phone out from God knows where in his close-fitting outfit. Also in dumb show, he selects a contact and turns the screen to me. I jot down the number with a biro on a receipt dug out of the bottom of my shoulder bag.

‘Thanks.’

My guide stands back. He’s not going to leave me here, clearly, in case I steal a box of patchouli essential oil. I walk back down the stairs and on to the street. A few moments later, my new friend is outside with the bike slung over his shoulder. He dumps the bike on the road, gives me a wave, and mounts in one smooth move.

‘Jen-Coo-Yan. Thanks!’ I call after him in my one remembered coffee-powered phrase.

And then it starts to rain. Of course it does. But not glamorously, not like that scene at the end of Four Weddings and a Funeral, where the girl stands looking damp but still adorable. This is thunderous downpour where no one escapes with any shred of dignity. Deciding to take my phone call to a drier spot, I scurry to the coffee shop I like on Soho Square.

Buying an Americano to cut down the wait produced by the arcane art of working an espresso machine, I slide into a table near the back. Chasing a couple of paracetamol with a shot of black coffee, I tap in the number I got from the Two-wheeled Pole.

The phone is answered with an aggressive ‘Yes? What the fuck is it?’

God, I wish I was the least bit assertive but that was missed out of the baby shower of cradle blessings thrown by my good fairies. Instead I got impulsiveness, disorganisation and an inability to swear in public. I can swear perfectly well in private – fuck it – see what I mean? But whereas other people seem to regard the f-word as an ordinary intensifier, I can’t use it. Not at all. Not even when it is literally what I’m doing. Especially not then.

‘Um, hello, is that the landlord of 5a Dean Street?’

‘What’s it to you? You’re not that fucking woman from Number 7? Don’t waste my time telling me Marek is playing his music too loud. Fucking racist bitch. Take it up with him.’

I guess Marek is the bicycle messenger. ‘It’s nothing to do with him or his music. I’m not from Number 7. I work in the office below his flat – or at least I did. I was wondering if you know what’s happened to the previous tenant, Jacob Wrath?’

There’s silence at his end. I can hear birdsong and the crunch of gravel. Is he on a golf course? I immediately imagine an Essex gangster type, thick gold jewellery and a blonde younger wife. My mind loves these leaps.

‘You know that fucker Wrath?’

This doesn’t sound good. ‘Um, yes. I mean, I work for him. Do you have a forwarding address for correspondence?’

‘Ha! Stay right where you are… What did you say your name was?’

‘I didn’t.’ Suddenly, it doesn’t seem a very good idea to admit who I am, so I say the first thing that comes to mind. ‘Holly Golightly.’ It must be the whole adrift-on-the-streets-of-a-big-city-in-the-rain thing that’s getting to me if I’ve gone from Four Weddings to channelling Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

‘I’m sending my man round to talk to you. Where are you? Coffee shop?’

He can hear the hiss of the milk being steamed into submission and the Italian being bandied about behind the counter. I calculate what could happen. To lie or not to lie? He needs time to send someone over. ‘Yes, I’m in Carlo’s, Soho Square. Do you know it?’

‘No, but my man will find you.’

‘Why? What do you want?’

‘I’ve got something for you.’

That doesn’t ring true. He didn’t know I existed until he took the call. ‘Right then. I’ll wait for him here. I’m in the seat by the window.’ I mentally picture Audrey Hepburn sitting there over a solitary coffee to make it more real for us both.

‘You fucking be there, all right?’

‘Of course.’ Sending a mental two-fingers, I end the call and then power off the mobile. I have to hope that no unsuspecting girl on her own takes a seat by the window but so far I’m good: there are two Asian boys with laptops who look like they’ve settled in for the morning.

This is getting ridiculous. I’ve just talked to a man who sounds like the cliché of the mobster boss. I don’t do that. My life doesn’t include that kind of conversation. Gathering my things, I leave the cafe, having already plotted my next move into the garden square. I stand in the shelter of the half-timbered hut in the centre, a child-sized Tudor fortress, and keep watch on Carlo’s. A damp ten minutes pass and then a man arrives on a motorbike. He gets off, locks his helmet in the seat compartment, revealing he is the spitting image of Idris Elba, and heads into the cafe. Is that him, the landlord’s man? Two women follow him in with their pushchairs, children under plastic wrap. Then an older man with a briefcase.

I should’ve got a description, but I never got the knack of thinking things through.

Motorcycle man comes back out with a sandwich in a to-go box and roars off. OK, not Idris. Through the window, I see the mothers edge out the Asian students with an interesting piece of psychological warfare. They let their two-year-olds occupy the low window seat normally devoted to flyers for local businesses and West End shows. The kids, two boys, lounge on their bellies and wave their heels in the air as they bash toy cars into each other. The Asian students exchange a look, close their laptops and scram. The mothers settle in the still-warm chairs like a couple of self-satisfied generals. The man with the briefcase comes out but with no sign he’s bought anything.

Him? He doesn’t look dangerous but he looks legal. I don’t want to take charge of any papers or writs that the landlord might be trying to serve. I’ve worked out by now that Jacob must owe him money – just as, come to think of it, he owes me my pay.

The older man, paunchy, grey receding hair, navy suit, makes a call. I would bet that if I had my phone switched on, it would be ringing right now. Then more bad news: he is joined by two serious-looking blokes who have just got out of an SUV, the muscle to the brains. The knee cappers. Spine crackers. My fertile brain comes up with lots of words for them but no hint of how to handle them.

Self-preservation instinct kicks in. I really shouldn’t still be here.

Something tips him off. Mr Lawyer raises his eyes and meets mine across the square. He knows. I break into a run and risk taking the shortest route to Tottenham Court Station. Good idea? Bad idea? How do I know? All I can be sure of is that they’ll be in pursuit. If I get into the Underground their car won’t help. I reach Oxford Street and feel too exposed on the pavement. I dive into the first shop with open doors, a saucy lingerie store where a woman blends in and three guys stand out like priests in a bordello. I weave expertly through the aisles of satin and lace panties and barely-there bras and take the far exit that brings me out closest to the entrance to the station. Once at the bottom of the stairs, I fly through the barriers with a wave of my Oyster card and vanish down the escalator to the Central Line.

With heart pounding, I get on the first service going anywhere. I’m not even sure if I’m going east or west. I’ll work out the route home later. I duck down as I think I catch sight of one of the big guys arriving on the platform just as the doors close. The woman opposite gives me a funny look, but this is London and the trains are full of weird people you really don’t want to challenge. She turns her gaze back to her paperback.

That’s right, sister. Nothing to see here.

The train goes into a tunnel and I sit up.

Well, hell. It appears that my boss and my job have gone. Time I was too.

Chapter 3

I reach home with only a cracked phone to show for my attempt to fulfil my part of the gainful employment deal. On the doorstep of our Victorian semi-detached house, stone worn into a dip by the passage of so many feet, so many bags of shopping, I have a moment of doubt as I slide my key into the lock, but there are no surprises. It turns. Wouldn’t that be the cherry on top of the crap if Michael had taken it into his head to edit me out of his life today too? If he’d given the order for the locks to be changed while I was at work and he was guten tag-ing the frauleins? I’m like that paragraph in one of his articles, the one around which the copy editor has put a square bracket. Do you really need this part?

Stet. For now. I have my uses.

I go inside, disarm the alarm, and walk through to the kitchen conservatory at the back to dump my shoulder bag on the table. Something prompts me to check so I go past the tiny utility room and peer nervously out of the glass in the back door but I’m not sure what I’m expecting to see. An abandoned Scream-face mask? Footprints in the flowerbeds? I still can’t shake that feeling of not being alone, the flight from Soho not having helped my rational processes.

I check the door to the basement is securely bolted – it features in another of my nightmares where I imagine the undead breaking through the London clay beneath, climbing up the wooden stairs and invading the house. It’s actually not that scary with the light on as it’s full of Michael’s snow sports gear and boxes of his wife’s things that he has never wanted to throw out. He goes down there from time to time just to bury his face in her ski-suit – he thinks I don’t know. It’s kind of sad really, this wanting to catch the scent of someone who’s gone forever. He won’t do that with anything of mine if I go.

I return to the kitchen. Here I’m surrounded by the hobbies I have adopted and failed to finish during my recovery: the bulky quilt project stuffed in a bag like a dead Elmer the elephant, the jewellery maker’s starter kit, and the half-finished oil painting of the Serengeti – I’d had big plans for that. Beginning to feel a little desperate and a whole lot suspicious, I boot up the old desktop and check my last two months’ statements. I had one payment in June, a cheque that I’d cashed myself, but the promised standing order has still not arrived. I can see Jacob now, fingers hovering over his laptop keyboard, handsome ‘trust me’ dark eyes meeting mine as he asks me what day of the month I’d like to receive my pay. He’s a good-looking man, an outdoors type with tanned skin and work-roughened hands. He habitually wears a string of wooden beads around his throat like a dog’s collar that he said he carved himself, and I believe him. In that game of ‘Which person would you take with you to a desert island?’, he’d be a good choice as he’d whittle, build and farm his way to survival.

‘I’d like to be paid on the first,’ I said, just so thankful that someone would pay me after all that had happened. When my salary hadn’t come through in July, I’d raised it with him and Jacob had laughed it off as a mistake, saying he’d missed the deadline to set something up for the previous month but I should get twice the amount come 1st August. I hadn’t wanted to push or suggest another cheque. I knew that his finances were tight and my position was tenuous. If he’d asked more questions he would’ve found out about the Eastfields disaster and then I’d be out the door. The single payment had persuaded me to trust him.

I log off from my account, all too aware my balance is in desperate straits. That is two months’ part-time work for which I haven’t been paid and I don’t need a crystal ball to tell me that I’m unlikely to see the money. I’m thirty and on skid row. Again. Why can’t I negotiate my adult life better than this? If I told you what had happened to me recently it would appear to be one crisis after another. I sometimes feel that some cosmic soap scriptwriter has got hold of me and keeps orchestrating season finales. I just want a quiet run of modest happiness with no thrills or spills.

I need to talk to someone about this. I need to vent. But who is there? My half-sister has forbidden me from troubling my mother. She’s delicate, vulnerable, says Miriam, it’s time you relied on yourself. That always brings to mind Mum as a dandelion clock, a perfect sphere, tremulous, seemingly fixed until a puff of wind starts to unravel it. She only ever seemed competent when with me, never with her capable older child, which is probably why Miriam doesn’t understand our relationship. But big sister is right about one thing: I sense Mum is retiring from a world which she finds too much for her, pottering around the edges of Miriam’s life on the farm, looking after grandchildren, getting involved in her village community where what happens on Strictly is about the most distressing topic of conversation. Her whole aim is to try to keep from being underfoot. Her existence is cast as a form of apology, her epitaph ‘I’m sorry I took up so much room’. No, Mum isn’t the right person to help me with this.

Depressingly, I find myself reverting to habit and sending Michael a text. Can we talk? I don’t want to do this by messaging. A minute passes in which I put on the kettle. I can see he’s read it, and he knows I know he’s read it, so I get a response.

Is it important?

It’s important to me.

I mean can it wait until tomorrow? I’m about to go into a presentation.

What would be the point of a conversation, I wonder, dragging him away from his oh-so-vital conference on something or another? Please hold, your call is important to us. Michael doesn’t even pretend to give me the pseudo-sincerity of the automated switchboard. I try one last time. My boss has gone. So has the office.

The elusive Jacob Wrath. Or is that illusive?

Damn you, Michael, with your clever word play. Couldn’t you for once try to care? We had been friends before, even if we’re not now. I close the message thread. His comment reminds me that the couple of times I arranged for a social meet-up after work for the three of us, me, Michael and my employer – ‘come on, guys, it’ll be fun’ – Jacob cried off, claiming new lead, head cold, threatened train strike. It was all the more galling as I had called in a lot of home-life favours to get Michael to agree to traipse up to Soho (his characterisation of a simple tube journey). He began to make barbed jokes that Jacob didn’t exist, that he was a figment of my imagination. Now I think that Michael just didn’t want to discuss me with my boss, or look responsible for my day-to-day welfare, and Jacob was just avoiding making himself real to anyone but me. So much easier to slip away when you’ve few connections to sever.

How far has Jacob taken it? Paranoia is getting a hold. I search for our website, the one I’d helped create and administer. Wrath Investigations, Specialists in Missing Persons Cases. (Yes, I am aware of the irony that the expert has gone AWOL himself.) Instead of the picture I’d posted of a lost girl in profile against the background of a London station, I get a broken link. I do a more general search and find only one relevant record: my cheery announcement on a business networking site that I’d started work as a profiler at Wrath, the implication being that it was far better than teaching Psychology A level. I’d meant it as a ‘look, see: I’m bouncing back’ to old colleagues but now I’m ashamed. It seems like I’m trying far too hard. I delete my profile. I don’t want the landlord to find me that way now I’ve not stayed to meet his man.

My phone starts doing an Irish jig on the table. I check the number. I’d noticed three missed calls in my log from the same phone since I turned it back on, which suggests the landlord isn’t going to let this go. I decline the call but wait for the person to leave a message.

‘Miss Golightly, if that’s your name, this is Max Tudor of the law firm Tudor Associates.’ The lawyer is more of a film buff than his employer and has recognised the borrowed name. ‘I believe we almost met today. My client, Harry Khan, wishes urgently to speak to you. Mr Wrath owes him three months’ rent. The only payment he ever received was the first instalment plus deposit, which has naturally been forfeited. We are eager to find a Miss Jessica Bridges, whose name and signature appears as co-guarantor on the lease.’

What? I know I didn’t sign anything resembling a lease while working for Jacob. I may be many things but utterly braindead is not one of them.

‘As Mr Wrath has decided to make himself unreachable, we wish to pursue our claim with her. You might like to tell her that as her name and address are listed, she will not be able to avoid us. I strongly recommend you ask her, Miss Golightly, to get in touch.’ The sarcasm with which he says my fake name makes it clear he believes he’s talking to Jessica Bridges. Which he is.

I turn off my phone again. My three-month employer has shifted quickly in my mind from hapless to fraudulent. Have I really been set up? For real? And why?

I sink on to a kitchen chair and beat the table top with a fist, hissing swear words. The very worst thing is that no one will believe me if I tell them. I’ve tried that before and it has never gone well. Despite what Michael thinks, it’s not the ‘Cry Wolf’ situation; there’s always been a wolf in my mess-ups, but I’ve always managed to escape – just. This time it looks like the wolf knows where I live and is coming to eat me.

The landline starts ringing, making me start. I rub my aching fist. No one ever calls us that way, not unless they are trying to sell us something. I bite a hangnail, looking at the handset as if it will make the decision for me. It’s probably the man again, having traced me via my address on whatever agreement Jacob has forged. Jacob knew where I lived because I’d filled out a form with all my details when applying for the job, as any normal person would do. I’m not speaking to the lawyer; I’m learning Jacob’s lesson and not making myself real. I have to go out before the landlord sends more people round to bang on the front door. Fortunately, the house is in Michael’s name, so the lawyer can’t burst in with bailiffs. As far as the law is concerned I don’t own anything worth seizing. When Mr Khan works that out, he’ll back off, surely?

I grab my bag, stuffing in keys and phone. Entering the utility room, I step over the drift of laundry waiting to go into the washing machine and pluck down a change of clothes from the dryer. They’ve been hanging there for over a week and need an iron but I’m not an ironing kind of person. That’s Michael’s phrasing about me. ‘You’re not a tidy sort of person’; ‘you’re not a focused kind of person’; ‘you’re not a careful kind of person’. No shit, Sherlock.

That reminds me to fetch my tablets. I go up to the bathroom on the half landing and pack my wash bag, including my disposable contact lenses and little box of Ritalin capsules. In my hurry, had I remembered to take one this morning? I think not. I quickly pop one from the blister pack and wash it down with a gulp snatched from under the running tap. It’s supposed to help my concentration but, to be honest, I’ve not noticed much improvement since I started the course, not unless I take a couple and I’m not supposed to exceed Charles’ prescribed dose. Tempting though. I find myself staring blankly at the green glass bottles arranged on the windowsill for a drifty moment. What am I doing? Oh yes, packing. Getting the hell out of Dodge, as they say in American novels.

Pocketing the pills, I enter the bedroom and step over Michael’s holiday clothes. How have we become the couple where he expects me to pick up after him? It’s the not-having-a-proper-job thing that’s done it to us. Or maybe he was always heading that way but I’d just not woken up to my expected role? Next he’ll be leaving me housekeeping money on the table like my dad used to do for Mum and expecting dinner on the table.

Speaking of money.

I go through Michael’s bedside drawer, looking for his wallet. He has a travel one – currently with him in Berlin – and the one he carries at home, stuffed with loyalty cards. I find it and borrow forty pounds. As I put it back, I can’t help but notice the framed photo of his wife, dead now just over five years, smiling up at me in her perfect pose of windswept black hair and sultry smile, forever young. He says he doesn’t keep it on display out of consideration for me, despite the fact that I’ve no problem sharing my life with her picture. I never met Emma, she’s dead; so why should I feel bad? It would be healthier to have her out in the open. Instead, I’ve had to put up with the knowledge that she’s snuggled down next to us at night. He usually lies on his side, turned towards her, presenting his back to me.

The lovely Emma. I’ve begun to call her that in my mind, sometimes chatting to her when I’m on my own. Was Michael such a bully to you too? Were you ‘an ironing sort of person’? You don’t look it. I bet you made him do his own shirts. He might’ve even done yours. Did he nag you about forgetting to put the sharp knives away at night? He has this hang-up about preventing someone breaking in and using them on us. It’s all that reading about psychopaths. Michael has such dark expectations that even a kitchen is first and foremost a potential crime scene.

I rarely delve beyond the photo as Michael has snapped at me several times for prying but I decide to have a proper root through the bedside shrine. You know how it works, while the cat’s away…

A little blue box with a wedding ring. I’ve opened that up before. You clearly had something I don’t, Emma, if you brought him to the point where he got down on one knee. Only way I’d get him there would be if I set a trip wire for him to fall over and that wouldn’t end in a proposal.

There’s a bundle of cards tied with a ribbon. Variations on ‘Happy Anniversary, darling’ followed by a row of big kisses. Her writing is a surprise – large loopy words in turquoise ink. A risk taker on the pen front. I conclude that she felt confident about covering more space than most of us do. Some photos. Emma at work. A couple of nice studio ones in the little album from their wedding in the US. I approve of her dress. She looks so glamorous. Very very sexy. No wonder I don’t measure up.

Right at the bottom there’s a new addition to the shrine: a Moleskine notebook. I wonder where that’s come from? I have a soft spot for that brand myself, a hangover from the teenage diary days, and I usually have several on the go at the same time, one for work, one for my random thoughts. I flick open the cover and find that it is filled with Emma’s, rather than Michael’s, handwriting. Unlike my notebooks, hers is meticulously kept – dates, neat little anecdotes, not my jottings, highlighting and underlinings. I read a couple of sentences. ‘Michael took me to Venice for a surprise weekend to make up for the bad news. I love that man more and more each day.’

Romantic Venice? I should be so lucky.

Before I have time to quash my own impulse, I’ve pulled out my phone and begun capturing any page that takes my fancy, just snapping, not taking time to read. I can’t remove something so personal to Michael, even for a day, but I have to know more about this woman – this wife – who haunts our relationship. If I understand her, then maybe I’d get a better handle on what she was to him and I’d know where I’ve been going wrong?

At least that’s what I tell myself. Maybe I’m just plain nosy and what I’m doing is way out of line? It’s a bit like grave-robbing, isn’t it? My jury is out and decided to go for a long lunch break while I carry on taking photos.

I make myself stop at twenty images. More would be obsessive, wouldn’t it? I bite my lip, seeing another entry that appeals. OK, now that really is the last. No more. Step away from the diary, Jessica.

The last page, handwriting no longer so exuberant, some of the words illegible, I see that she mentions getting a cat to cheer Michael up. It was a nice thought, to give him something to live for afterwards. My mind takes another swallow dive off the top board. The cat. I’ve forgotten the cat. Lizzy had fed her while we were away, but Michael will not be pleased if I abandon his beloved Colette to fish her dinner out of food recycle bins. Pocketing my phone after a last photo, I hurriedly put the Emma shrine back exactly as I think I found it. I then make sure I walk on Michael’s dirty boxers on my way out of the bedroom.

I fill up the kibble bowl and change the water. Radar ears alert for the rattle of food, the cat flap slaps and Colette winds round my ankles, a black-and-white silk scarf of a creature. I stroke her. I am a cat kind of person, one of my few remaining plus points as far as Michael is concerned. I wonder if that’s the only reason he’s not evicted me. Who could he get to feed Colette at such short notice? He can’t keep asking Lizzy. She has her own life to lead and we can’t expect her always to pick up the loose threads of ours. The old lady next door, Mrs Jessop, is grounded with a bad hip, waiting for the op. The rest of the street are nodding acquaintances only.

‘I’ll be back, Colly. Don’t eat it all at once. And don’t answer the door to strangers.’ I grab my bag and head out, leaving her in regal charge of the house. She does it so much better than me.

Chapter 4

There’s really only one place I want to go. The undertaker’s. It’s not as desperate as it sounds. My best friend works there, responsible for fulfilling the weirdest contract in the world. Payne and Bullock, a family concern, is paid to deal with the dead who fly into Heathrow. There are more of them than you might think. Some are already dead and are being repatriated – one sangria too many and lights out in the Costa Brava. Others join the exclusive mile-high-die club, less popular than its sexual equivalent. If it’s a busy long haul over the Atlantic, they are strapped in as discretely as possible and covered by a blanket. Mr So-and-so is not feeling well. Please respect his privacy. Why have you put the blanket over his face then? Madam, can I offer you any duty-free? A stiff drink next to the stiff?

My mind runs through what it would be like to be the passenger in the seat next to the body. I suspect I’d be tempted to behave badly and would want to touch it. I’ve never felt what death is like and this would be the perfect opportunity. I would only do it if no one was watching, of course. We are all interested in death; some of us are just more ready to admit to it.

That’s what kicked off my friendship with Drew Payne. We met at a local bar when Lizzy and I were out on a girls’ night with colleagues from her school – her attempt to cheer me up and my first venture into public after my breakdown. At the start, it felt like an awkward evening with her staffroom friends all trying so hard not to talk about the fact that I’d recently been given the push from my teaching position at Eastfields. I suspect Lizzy had banned the topic but it was the equivalent of the instruction ‘don’t think of a blue elephant’ – these nice primary-school teachers, unsullied by the experience of tutoring hormonal teenagers, couldn’t help but feel the holes in the conversation were forming the big-elephant shape of my disgrace.

‘Let me get the next round,’ I announced, in part so I could flee the niceness. Lizzy followed me to the bar as I attempted to order. As usual, I failed to attract the attention of the server.

‘I’m sorry. I can feel I’m making the whole evening a disaster,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to go so you and your friends can enjoy yourselves?’

Pretty, confident, blessed with a swatch of honey-blonde hair that I had seen make straight guys weak at the knees, Lizzy merely rolled her eyes and took the crumpled twenty from my fingers. She elbowed her way past the shirt-sleeved businessmen blocking the counter.

‘You really don’t want me to leave?’

‘Don’t be silly, Jessica. Just give it time – and a few more drinks. They’ll all loosen up after that.’

‘Hey, it’s Lizzy, isn’t it?’ The man next to her at the bar, who had been nursing a pint, turned on hearing her voice.

Lizzy frowned, ready to deter all boarders, but then her expression cleared. ‘I know you, don’t I? Let me guess: guerrilla gardening club?’

‘Guerrilla what?’ I laughed.

The guy grinned. ‘There’s a group of us in West London. We descend in the dead of night on public spaces like verges and roundabouts and plant stuff – bulbs, vegetables, even trees.’ He thumped his chest. ‘Reclaim the streets for nature, yo!’

‘Lizzy, I did not know that about you!’ I accused my friend. ‘You rebel.’ I’d known she was into the Green Party but hadn’t realised she’d taken things further.

‘I like to keep my secrets secret. It’s Drew, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. Can I buy you a drink?’

‘We’re getting drinks in for our whole table, but thanks.’ Lizzy saw her chance. ‘Hey, can I order, please?’

Her attention now on the bartender, I was left to make conversation with the guerrilla gardener. I gave him a quick study. Medium height, edgy looks, he might look a bit too alternative for most of the women in this posh bar. I couldn’t see him coming here as his first choice.

‘So, um, what brings you here? A couple of neglected hanging baskets that need filling on the sly?’

He laughed. ‘No. I was abandoned by a disappointed date.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. It happens a lot. Once they reach the “what do you do?” part of the conversation, my profession puts a lot of people off.’

Lizzy picked up the first three drinks. ‘Can you bring the rest over when they’re ready, Jessica?’

I didn’t want to leave the conversation with Drew at this intriguing juncture. ‘Of course. No problem.’

‘Nice to see you again, Drew. Catch up another time, hey? I’d better get back to my friends,’ said Lizzy.

His eyes followed her, another in the disappointed Lizzy fan club.

‘She doesn’t date much,’ I told him.

‘Oh.’ He turned his attention back to me. ‘How do you know her?’

‘Not gardening club. Same street. Known her a few years now. We live really close, in and out of each other’s houses, you know the kind of thing: watering plants when we go away, feeding each other’s pets.’ Hauling the broken fragments of a friend to the bar to cheer her up. ‘But you can’t leave me guessing. What profession is it that sends your dates running for the hills? Paid assassin? No? Uh-oh, not a…’ I whispered as if it was a shameful secret, ‘… a tax collector?’

‘Undertaker.’ He wiped condensation off his Corona and lime. ‘Someone’s got to do it.’

He wasn’t my idea of an undertaker, too young and wild for that with a range of piercings. I suspected tattoos up his sleeve. To find him doing something so unexpected ticked my boxes. ‘You don’t need to apologise. What are you called? Dead Guys R Us?’

He snorted at my stupid joke, which was lovely.

‘No, Payne and Bullock, almost as bad. I’ll suggest yours to Dad as the new company motto.’

‘Frankly, Drew, your date was an idiot. You’re doing a necessary job. Interesting. All walks of life and so on.’ The bartender put the last of the drinks in front of me. ‘Not walking obviously – at least I hope not. I mean, corpses rising off the slab: cool in a horror flick, not cool in real life.’ Enough, Jessica. Don’t say any more. I glanced over my shoulder but Lizzy’s friends were happily chatting now I wasn’t there. ‘Um, so how did your family get into it?’

His eyes sparkle. ‘There were all these dead bodies, see? And no one to bury them.’

I was wondering now if I’d got him wrong about his gaze following Lizzy. Was his vibe a bit on the gay side? He certainly seemed at ease with me. ‘Ah, one of civilisation’s oldest problems.’

My table waited a long while for their drinks. I only returned once I’d persuaded Drew to come with me. I’d assured him that the girls’ night rule only existed to be broken. And if later Lizzy happened to mention to Michael how well I’d got on with her guerrilla gardening friend, then that would be all to the good. I was hoping that Michael would be a tiny bit jealous as I feared we’d already entered the ‘I couldn’t care less what you do as long as you stop dragging me down’ phase in our relationship.

So it’s to Drew’s house I am fleeing now. Watching for pursuit by Khan’s men on the mean streets of Clapham, I take the train to Feltham.

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