Ash & Bone

6

The onset of winter always affected Maddy Birch badly, the end of summer time only days away: the putting back of the clocks rocking her body in the same hormonal way as her monthly periods, sending her in search of Nurofen and curling her up beneath the quilt with a hot-water bottle held fast against her stomach.

Hurrying home on newly dark nights like tonight, the wind funnelling along the warren of streets between Holloway Road and Hornsey Rise, even the scarf tucked down inside her coat didn't succeed in keeping out the chill. If she could have afforded to keep the heating on in her flat throughout the day, she would. Anything to avoid opening the door into the same cold ground-floor rooms that, now November was nigh, smelt forever damp.

The first thing she usually did, even before taking off her coat, was set a match to the gas fire in the hearth; then she would fill the kettle and press down the switch, a mug of tea to warm her hands. If it were really cold, hot buttered toast. What she'd be like come February didn't bear thinking about.

'It can't be as bad down here as where you come from,' Vanessa had said once when Maddy had complained. 'Bloody Lincolnshire! Wind blows straight across from Siberia up there. Hear the wolves howling in the bloody night.'

On this particular night, however, there were things on Maddy's mind other than the wind: DCI Repton waiting to ask her about her session with the inquiry team, his concern all but shielded behind his bigotry, real or assumed; the superintendent's So, just to be clear, you did see Grant reaching for the second gun? – casual enough to be, almost, an afterthought. In all probability we will want to talk to you again.

Maddy pushed open the narrow gate and lifted her keys from her bag; someone had used her small square of front garden as a dumping ground for a half-empty tray of chips and mushy peas.

Stepping into her flat, in the instant between pushing back the door and switching on the light, Maddy froze, a wave of cold like electricity along the backs of her legs and arms. For that moment, her heart seemed to stop.

The doors to the living room and bathroom, both leading off the hall, stood wide open and at that time of the year she always kept them closed.

'Hello?'

Her voice sounded strange, unnaturally thin.

There was time to step back outside, relock the door, but what then?

Instead she went quickly forward into the living room, flicking on the light.

Nothing stirred, nothing moved.

Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen the same.

Maddy's breathing steadied, the adrenalin ceased to flow through her veins. What little she possessed of value was still there. A glass sat on the draining board, one she seldom if ever used. The bolt across the top of the French windows was unfastened and when she put pressure on the curved handle it sprang open, unlocked. There were slight circular marks on the outside she couldn't remember seeing there before.

The skin prickled along her arms.

After locking the windows correctly, she went through each room carefully again. Her watch said ten past eight and she was due to meet Vanessa at nine. Maddy was on the point of phoning to cancel, had the telephone in her hand, when she changed her mind.

Their favourite curry house, on Kentish Town Road, had undergone a makeover, stripping out the flock wallpaper and remarketing itself as hyper-cool, so that it now resembled an expensive canteen with discreet lighting and Egyptian cotton napkins in pale lavender. This place, in the hinterland between Tufnell Park and Archway, was more their kind of thing, bog standard, nothing fancy, fine until after pub closing time, when the atmosphere would become edgily raucous and poppadoms were liable to be sent skimming like frisbees through the gaseous air.

'Nothing was stolen, right?' Vanessa said. 'Missing?'

Maddy shook her head.

'But things had been moved around, you said? Disturbed?'

'One or two. I think so. I'm not sure.'

'And the doors out into the garden, you couldn't have left them unlocked?'

'No.'

'You're positive?'

'Yes. No. I mean, I'm always careful about things like that. But, no, I can't swear to it, no.'

Vanessa angled her head to one side. 'You're not getting weird on me, are you? Freaking out?'

'It's all very well for you,' Maddy said. 'Taking the piss.'

'I'm not,' Vanessa said. 'Here, have a piece of my chicken tikka. Cheer yourself up.'

'It's not funny.' Maddy surprised herself with the force of her voice. 'It's not some bloody joke.'

'Then report it,' Vanessa said.

'There's no point.'

'Why not?'

'Because whoever I reported it to, their reaction would be just like yours.'

'I'm sorry.'

'It's okay.' Forcing a smile, Maddy took some of Vanessa's chicken tikka anyway. 'It's just with this other business as well, the inquiry. They had me in this afternoon.'

'How was it?'

'Like I was in the dock for something I didn't know I'd done.'

'Bastards.'

'Doing their job, I suppose.'

'That it now, though?'

Maddy shook her head. 'More than likely want to talk to me again.'

They were on to the coffee – almost certainly instant, but it did come with After Eights – when Maddy said, 'That other night, the karaoke, remember? When it all went wrong. There was something I didn't tell you.'

Vanessa stopped stirring her two sugars. 'Go on.'

'I thought I saw someone I knew.'

'In the pub?'

'Yes. Standing near the back, watching.'

'Who?'

'My ex-husband, Terry.'

'And was it?'

'No, I don't think so. Someone who looked like him, that's all. Far as I know Terry's in North Wales and good riddance.'

Vanessa smiled. 'You've not forgiven him then?'

'What for?'

'I don't know, do I? Last time I asked about him, you practically jumped down my throat.'

'I'm sorry.'

Vanessa shrugged. 'Your business, not mine.'

'It's not that, it's just… you know…'

'Not still nursing a crush for him, are you?'

'Christ, no!'

'Then what's the big mystery?'

'There's no mystery.'

'You just don't want to confide in your best friend, that's all.'

Maddy laughed. 'You don't give up, do you?'

'Not usually, no.'

'All right, but I'm going to need a drink.'

'Here, or the pub?'

'The pub.'

Vanessa turned around and signalled to the young waiter who was leaning back against the wall, texting someone on his mobile, to bring them the bill.

It was quite dark outside, a few people walking by, cars, the occasional bus. The pub was quiet, mostly regulars, one pool table, a television above the bar. They took their drinks to a quiet corner near the window. When Maddy started telling her story, she thought how mundane it sounded, how everyday.

Terry had been working just up the street from where she'd been living with her parents when she first met him, a builder, plasterer to be more exact, most of the houses in that part of Stevenage being renovated, made good. Maddy had taken a shine right off. Cheeky bugger, Terry, but not as bad as some of them, not crude. Nice body without his shirt, she'd noticed that. Nice hands, considering the work he did, not too rough.

After a week of hints and innuendo, he'd come out with it, asked her to meet him for a drink Friday night and she'd thought yes, why not? She'd been working in London then, Capital Radio, in reception, taking the train in every day to King's Cross, then the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square. Exciting at first, all that buzz and noise.

They'd gone on holiday together, that first summer, Majorca, and he'd proposed, not down on one knee but as good as, rolling around on the sand outside their hotel, six days' half board. She'd thought it was the drink talking, that he'd try to pass it off next day as some kind of a joke, but that wasn't the way of it at all. Three months later there they were outside the registry office, Maddy in a nice little suit from Next, new shoes that were killing her, the look on her mum's face sour enough to turn milk. Whatever expectations she'd been nurturing about a future son-in-law it was clear Terry didn't live up to them.

What she did say: 'You watch out, my girl, he'll have you pregnant this side of Christmas and where's your independence then? Where's your bloody life?'

It hadn't worked out like that, but not for lack of trying.

Maddy had thought the problem might lie with Terry, but it turned out it was with her. Terry had one kid already, a boy, four years old, living in Milton Keynes with his mother, a part-time hair stylist called Bethan. Maddy found out quite by chance.

It turned out that when she'd thought Terry was away working on some housing project in Northampton, he was in a two-bed flat in Milton Keynes with Bethan and the boy, playing happy families.

'None of your fucking business, is it?' Terry said when she confronted him.

Maddy told him he had to choose, her or Bethan, and he began packing his bag.

'What the hell did you marry me for?' Maddy asked.

'Fuck knows!'

When she said she wanted a divorce he said fine.

When she got home from work that evening he'd gone. She'd not been married much more than two years and, in retrospect, she was amazed it had held together that long.

'Was that when you joined the police?' Vanessa asked, as Maddy reached for her glass.

Maddy nodded. 'I was bored, wanted to get away. The look on my mum's face whenever I came in, a mixture of pity and I-told-you-so.' She laughed. 'We'd been to Lincoln a few times, when we were up in Skegness on holiday, driven over to look at the cathedral, mooch around. I thought it was a nice enough place.' She laughed again. 'At least it wasn't Stevenage.'

'What made you leave Lincoln and come down here, to the Met?'

'Bored again, I suppose.'

'And now this Grant business, the inquiry. It's getting you all stressed out. No wonder you're seeing things.'

'Thank you, doctor.'

'I used to be a nurse, you know.'

'I know.'

'You know what you ought to do,' Vanessa said. 'The perfect solution.'

'Go back to Lincolnshire?'

'Nothing that extreme. Take up yoga instead.'

'Me? Yoga? You're joking.'

'I don't see why.'

'Can you see me sitting cross-legged in some draughty room like a Buddha in tights?'

'It's not like that. That's meditation if it's anything. Yoga's brilliant. Helps you relax. And it's really good exercise.' She grinned. 'Look at me.'

'I don't know.'

'Go on. There's a new class just started. Where I go, that community centre by Crouch Hill. Introduction to Yoga. Give it a try.'

'I'll see. No promises, mind.'

'Okay. Now drink up and I'll walk you home. Make sure there's no bogeymen under the bed.'

The first evening Maddy went along she almost packed it in during the warm-up. All these women – they were all women – taking it in turns to stand with their back to the wall with one leg outstretched and raised as high as possible, their partner holding it by the ankle. One or two actually got their legs high enough to rest their feet on their partners' shoulders, while it was all Maddy could do to manage forty-five degrees for seconds at a time.

It didn't seem to get any easier. Reaching the required position was difficult enough – Dog Head Down or The Pose of the Child – but holding it was even harder. Maddy was acutely conscious of her muscles stretching, legs and arms quivering, the instructor bending over her from time to time and moving her gently but firmly into position. 'That's it, Maddy. Wider, wider. Wider still.'

When it was over she limped home and into a hot bath and vowed never to return. But she did. The next Wednesday and the next and the Wednesday after that. By then it had even stopped hurting.