Killing Me Softly

Thirty-two

I had obviously woken him up, even though it was past eleven o’clock: he was puffy and squint-eyed with sleep, and was wearing grubby pyjamas, wrongly buttoned up. His hair stood out from his head, making him look even hairier than I had remembered him.

‘Greg?’

‘Yes?’ He stared at me from the doorway, showing no sign of recognition.

‘It’s Alice. I’m sorry to disturb you.’

‘Alice?’

‘Alice, as in Alice-and-Adam Alice. We met at the book launch.’

‘I remember.’ There was a pause. ‘You’d better come in. As you can see, I wasn’t really expecting visitors this morning.’ And he smiled suddenly; baby-blue eyes very sweet in his crumpled, unwashed face.

I had been expecting Greg to live in a mess, but it was a neat little house, everything in its proper place, every surface wiped and clear. And there were pictures of mountains everywhere – great snowy peaks in black-and-white or colour on every white wall. It felt a bit strange, standing in this over-tidied house, to be surrounded by such epic vistas.

He didn’t ask me to sit down, but I did anyway. I had crossed London to see him, although I didn’t know why. Perhaps I had just remembered liking him when we had met briefly, and clung on to that. I cleared my throat and he looked suddenly amused. ‘Tell you what, Alice,’ he said. ‘You feel uncomfortable because you’ve just turned up on my doorstep uninvited, and you don’t know how to begin. And I feel uncomfortable too, because I’m not dressed when any respectable person would be, and I’ve a cracking hangover. So why don’t we go into the kitchen? I’ll show you where the eggs are and you can scramble some and make a pot of coffee while I put some clothes on. Then you can tell me why you’re here. This isn’t just a social call, I take it?’

I stood dumb.

‘And you don’t look as if you’ve eaten in weeks.’

‘Not very well,’ I confessed.

‘Eggs, then?’

‘Eggs would be great.’

I whisked four eggs in a saucepan and set them over a low heat, stirring all the while. Scrambled eggs should be cooked very slowly, and served soft rather than like rubber. Even I know that. I made the coffee – far too strong, but we could probably both do with a jolt of caffeine – and toasted four slices of stale bread. When Greg came back into the kitchen breakfast was on the table. I found that I was ravenous, and the salty, creamy eggs and buttery toast soothed and steadied me. The world ceased swimming in front of my eyes. I took gulps of bitter coffee between mouthfuls. Opposite me Greg ate with methodical pleasure, distributing the eggs evenly over the toast and pushing neat squares on to his fork. It felt strangely companionable. We did not speak.

When he had cleared his plate, he laid down his knife and fork and pushed his plate away from him. He looked at me expectantly. I took a deep breath, smiled at him, and to my consternation felt tears hot on my cheeks. Greg pushed a box of tissues at me and waited. ‘You must think I’m mad,’ I said, and blew my nose. ‘I thought perhaps you could help me understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘Adam, I suppose.’

‘I see.’

He stood up abruptly. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

‘I haven’t got my coat. I left it in the office.’

‘I’ll lend you a jacket.’

Outside, we set off at a lick along the busy road that led down to Shoreditch and, beyond that, the Thames. Suddenly Greg led us down some steps and we were on a canal towpath. The traffic was left behind and it was as quiet as the countryside. It seemed reassuring, but then I thought of Tara. Was it in this canal that her body had been found floating? I didn’t know. Greg walked as fast as Adam, with the same effortless stride. He stopped and looked at me. ‘Why ask me, of all people?’

‘It happened so fast,’ I said. ‘Me and Adam, I mean. I thought the past didn’t matter, that nothing mattered. But it doesn’t work like that.’ I stopped again. I couldn’t tell Greg all my fears. He was the man whose life Adam had saved. He was Adam’s friend, sort of. I looked at the water. Motionless. Canals don’t flow like rivers. I wanted to talk about Adele, or Françoise, or Tara. Instead, I said, ‘Do you mind the way everyone thinks he’s the hero and you’re the villain?’

‘Villain?’ he said. ‘I thought I was just the coward, the weakling, the Elisha Cook Junior role.’

‘Who?’

‘He was an actor who played cowards and weaklings.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean…’

‘I don’t mind people thinking he was a hero, because he was. His courage, fortitude, coolness, all that, was extraordinary that day.’ He glanced sideways at me. ‘Is that what you want to hear? As for the rest of it, I’m not sure I want to talk over with you how I feel about my failure. Wife of the hero and all that.’

‘It’s not like that, Greg.’

‘It is, I think. Which is why you found me in my pyjamas this morning, nursing a hangover. But I don’t understand it, and that is what torments me. What does Adam say about it?’

I took a deep breath. ‘I think what Adam believes is that there were people in the expedition who didn’t belong on Chungawat.’

Greg gave a laugh that dissolved into a racking cough. ‘He can say that again,’ he said, when he was recovered. ‘Carrie Frank, the skin doctor, she was a fit hiker but she’d never climbed before. She didn’t know how to put her crampons on. And I remember screaming a warning to Tommy Benn when he had attached himself wrongly to the belay. He was about to fall off the mountain. He didn’t respond and I remembered he didn’t understand any English at all. Not a single word. God, what was he doing with us? I had to slide down and reattach his ‘biner. But I thought I’d handled that, that I’d created a foolproof system. It failed and the lives of five people under my protection were lost.’ I put a hand on his arm but he went on, ‘When it came to it, Adam was the hero and I wasn’t. You don’t understand things about your life. Join the club.’

‘But I’m scared.’

‘Join the club, Alice,’ he repeated, with a half-laugh.

Suddenly and incongruously, there was a small garden on the other side of the canal, with ranks of red and purple tulips.

‘Was it something in particular that’s scared you?’ he asked eventually.

‘It’s all of his past, I guess. It’s all so shadowy.’

‘And so full of women,’ Greg added.

‘Yes.’

‘Difficult for you.’

We sat on a bench together.

‘Does he talk about Françoise?’

‘No.’

‘I was having an affair with her, you know.’ He didn’t look at me as he said it, and I had the impression that he had never said it before. For me, it was like a blow, sharply unexpected.

‘An affair with Françoise? No. No, I didn’t know. God, Greg, did Adam know?’

Greg didn’t answer at once. Then he said, ‘It began on the expedition. She was very funny. Very beautiful.’

‘So they say.’

‘It was over between her and Adam. She told him when we all arrived in Nepal that it was ended. She was sick of all his infidelities.’

‘She finished it?’

‘Didn’t Adam tell you?’

‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘He didn’t say anything about it.’

‘He doesn’t take kindly to rejection.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘Françoise ended her long-standing relationship with Adam, and a few days later you and she started having an affair?’

‘Yes. And then, if you want me to spell it out for you, a few weeks after that she died up in the mountains because I fucked up with the fixed lines, and Adam saved me, his friend who had usurped him.’

I tried to think of something to say that could be plausibly comforting and gave up.

‘I must be getting back.’

‘Listen, Greg, did Adam know about you and Françoise?’

‘We didn’t tell him at the time. We thought it might be a distraction. It wasn’t as if he was being celibate himself. And afterwards…’ He let the sentence die away.

‘He’s never mentioned it?’

‘No. Are you going to discuss it with him?’

‘No.’

Not that, not anything else either. We were long past the point of telling.

‘Don’t stay silent on my account. It doesn’t matter any more.’

We walked back and I took off his jacket and handed it to him. ‘I’ll catch a bus along here,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Greg.’

‘I’ve not done anything.’

Impulsively, I put my arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth, feeling the prickle of his beard.

‘Take care of yourself,’ I said.

‘Adam’s a lucky man.’

‘I thought that I was supposed to be the lucky one.’