Land of the Living

Jack Cross's first response, if it can be called a response, was to start the car and drive off.

"I think I can manage this while driving," he said. "For a start I should say that Terence Wilmott has not been charged with the murder of Sally Adamson. But he is the obvious suspect and I'm afraid that the obvious suspect usually turns out to be the person who committed the crime. I take your points about Terry'

"Which means you don't," I interrupted.

"But the fact is that most people are not killed by strangers who attack them in a dark alley. They are killed by people they know. Women are most at risk from their sexual partners. Terry's history of violence towards his partners i.e." you is just further evidence. Compelling evidence, I'd say. As for where he did it, and why, and where he disposed of the body if he did all I can say is that there are no rules. People plan murders and they do them on the spur of the moment. Sometimes they don't conceal the body, sometimes they conceal it so perfectly that it's never found, sometimes they half conceal it. He might have killed her, then dumped the body along the road in an attempt to make it look as if she had been mugged while leaving the flat."

"If he was doing that, why would he leave the purse? And it would be ridiculously risky to carry the body along the street."

"Have you ever committed a murder, Abbie?"

"No. Have you?"

"No," he said, forcing a smile. "But I know people who have. Imagine the greatest stress you've ever experienced and multiply it by a hundred. You can't breathe, you can't think. People do the strangest things. They make the weirdest mistakes."

"There's another possibility."

"There are lots of other possibilities."

"No. This is really what happened."

"And what's that?" he asked, with exaggerated patience.

I didn't even want to say this aloud. I had to force myself. "You know that I've changed my appearance since it all happened."

"I have noticed."

"Since you turned me loose and left me without any protection, I've been taking huge precautions not to be followed. And almost nobody knows where I'm staying. I think that one of the only things that that man the man who grabbed me knows about me is where I worked and where I lived. I talked about things like that to him. I told him Terry's name. I remember."

"Yes?"

"Have you ever noticed that when a couple splits up and one of them gets together with somebody else almost straight away, the new partner often looks like a clone of the old one?"

"No, I haven't."

"It's true. I was struck by it immediately when I bumped into Sally. Ask Terry. I actually mentioned it to them when I met her."

"Tactful."

"She didn't agree. Well, she wouldn't want to, I suppose. But, anyway, she wouldn't have been able to tell. I'd already changed my appearance so much that we looked completely different. The point I'm trying to make is that the man who kidnapped me knows that I'm out there. Obviously he hasn't been arrested straight away, but still, he doesn't know what I know about him. I'm a risk for him. If he could kill me, he would be safer. One of the only ways he could find me would be to hang around Terry's flat. If he saw Sally coming out in the middle of the night he would obviously have assumed it was me."

"Go on."

"He strangled her, thinking she was me. He thought it was my neck. It's the only explanation that really makes sense."

I looked at Cross. He didn't reply. Suddenly he seemed to be concentrating hard on his driving. And then an idea came to me. "He thinks he's killed me."

"What?"

"That man. He thinks I'm dead. He thinks he's safe. He probably didn't realize he had made a mistake. If you could delay announcing the murder, or at least delay revealing the identity of the victim, then that would give me a few days to do something."

"That's a good idea," Cross said. "Unfortunately there's one drawback with it."

"What's that?"

"It's that I'm living in the real world. We're stuck with a few boring procedural rules. When people are murdered, we're not really supposed to keep it secret. We have to tell their family. And then we're meant to find out who did it."

We sat in silence for several minutes as we approached Jo's flat. The car pulled up.

"You know what's really funny," I said.

"No."

"You don't believe me. You think I'm a fantasist or maybe a chronic liar. You're quite nice and I know you felt a bit worse than the others about cutting me loose, but there we are. But if it had been me lying in that front garden instead of Sally, you would have been sure it was Terry and that man would have got away with it."

Cross leant over and put his hand on my forearm. "Abbie, as I have said before, if there is any new evidence, we will open up your case. Of course. And if your friend .. ."

"Jo."

"If Jo hasn't turned up in the next few days, you should tell me. You know that. I am not dismissing you. We did not cut you loose, as you put it, we had absolutely no evidence of any kind except that your boyfriend, Terry Wilmott, had beaten you up in the past and had done so just before you lost consciousness. That was all we had to go on. If it had been you we found last night, God forbid, then maybe it would have been Terry who did it. Hasn't that occurred to you? It's my opinion that you were lucky to get away from him."

"But what about my disappearance? Do you want to blame him for that? He has an alibi, remember?"

Cross's expression hardened. "He has a story that stands up, that's all. That's all we've got here, lots of stories. Except now we have a dead woman, lying a few yards from the front door of the man who beat you up."

I opened the door and got out. I bent down and looked at his face, faint in the glow of the street lights. "Tomorrow Sally's name will be in the papers and he'll know and he'll be after me again. But in the end you'll know I was telling the truth. I've got a way of proving it to you."

"What's that?"

"You'll know when you find me dead. I'll be strangled in a ditch somewhere and you'll still have Terry locked up and you'll be sorry."

"You're right," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I would be sorry."

I slammed the door so hard that the car shook.

Eighteen

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 this."

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."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

I fell silent. I was thinking furiously. That was something. That meant something. But what?

When we were standing on his doorstep, we kissed again. For a moment I felt as if I couldn't let go. I would just stay clinging to him and I would be safe. Then I told myself not to be so stupid. "I need to go back into the horrible world," I said.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going home I mean to Jo's to change. I can't go around in this stuff."

"I don't mean that."

"I'm not sure. Today or tomorrow, this man is going to discover that he's killed the wrong woman. He'll start looking for me again. Maybe I'll see if I can find out where Jo has gone. Though I don't know whether that will do any good." The hope I had felt earlier, lying in bed with Ben eating toast, was fading again.

Ben was fidgeting with his car keys, deep in thought. "I'll call Jo's parents today," he said. "They should be back by now. Then we'll take it from there."

I kissed Ben. I had to stand on tiptoe to do it. "That means "thank you"," I said. "And that you don't have to go out on a limb for me."

"Don't be stupid, Abbie. I'll call you later." He handed me a card and then we both laughed at the formality of the gesture. "You can always reach me at one of those numbers."

We kissed and I felt his hand on my breast. I put my hand on his hand. "I'm just thinking of this man from Amsterdam," I said.

I lay in the bath with the flannel over my face, and I tried to think what he would be thinking. He was about to discover that I was still alive. Perhaps he knew by now. There was another thing as well. There had been that reckless phone call to my own mobile. He had kept it. It was his trophy. And I claimed to be Jo. Did he think I was after him?

I dressed in Jo's clothes. I deliberately chose grey cords and a cream-coloured, thick-knitted sweater that were different from anything I had ever worn. Abbie Devereaux had to be dead and gone for the present. I'd just be one of the millions floating around London. How could he find me? But, then, how could I find him?

Next, I did what I should have done before: I picked up the phone and dialled from memory and Terry's father answered. "Yes?" he said.

"Richard, it's Abbie."

"Abbie." His voice was frostily polite.

"Yes, look, I know how awful everything must be at the moment

"Do you?"

"Yes. And I'm so sorry about Terry."

"That's rich, coming from you."

"Has he been released?"

"No. Not yet."

"I just wanted to say that I know it wasn't him and that I'll do anything to help. Maybe you could tell his solicitor that."

"Very well."

"I'll give you my number. Or, no, I'll ring you again, or Terry when he's back. All right?"

"Very well."

There was a silence, then we both said goodbye.

I stood in the centre of Jo's main room and looked around. It was like that awful stage of looking for something when you start looking again in the places where you've already looked. Even worse than that, I didn't know what I was looking for. A diary would have been useful. I could have discovered if she'd had anything planned. But I had already rifled through her desk. There was nothing like that. I wandered around picking up objects from shelves and putting them down again. There was a pot plant standing on the shelf by the window. My mother would have been able to identify it. She would know its Latin name. But even I could see that it was yellowing. The soil was hard and cracked. I brought a tumbler of water from the kitchen and dribbled the water on to the sad plant. It ran down into the cracks. That was another thing, wasn't it? Would a grown-up responsible young woman like Jo go away on holiday and leave her plant to die? I watered the banyan tree as well.

All of the pieces of evidence I had found were like mirages. They shimmered in the air, but when I ran to clutch them they melted. I had been living in the flat. It might well have been that she went on holiday leaving me in residence. She might have assumed that I would be there watering her plants.

I looked at the pile of mail that I had already filleted in search of anything useful. I flicked through it, for want of anything more sensible. One envelope caught my attention. It was the gas bill that I hadn't paid yet; my own funds had run out. It had one of those transparent windows, so that you could see the name and address inside. I gave a little grunt of surprise when I saw the name: "Miss L. J. Hooper'. Almost in a dream I found Ben's card and called the number of his mobile. When he answered he sounded busy and distracted, but when he heard my voice, his tone softened. That made me smile. More than smile, it sent a warm feeling through me. It made me feel ridiculously like a fourteen-year-old with a crush. Could you have a crush on someone you had just spent the night with?

"What is Jo's first name?"

"What?"

"I know it's a stupid question. But I was looking at one of her bills and she has an initial. An L before the J. What does it stand for?"

I heard a chuckle on the other end of the line. "Lauren," he said. "Like Lauren Bacall. People used to tease her about it."

"Lauren," I repeated, numbly, and I felt my legs tremble. I had to lean against the wall to hold myself up. "Kelly, Kath, Fran, Gail, Lauren."

"What?"

"That man, he used to give me a list of names of the women he had killed. Lauren was one of the names."

"But.. ." There was a long pause. "It could be a coincidence .. ."

"Lauren? It's not exactly in the top ten."

"I don't know. There are some funny names in the top ten nowadays. The other problem is that she didn't use the name. She hated it."

I started murmuring something, more to myself, so that Ben had to ask me what I was saying. "I'm sorry, I was saying that I know how she might have felt. She might have given that name to him because it was her way of refusing to be beaten by him. It wasn't her, Jo, that he was humiliating and terrifying, but someone else -her public self."

I put down the phone and forced myself to remember. What had he said about Lauren? Kelly had cried. Gail had prayed. What had Lauren done? Lauren had fought. Lauren hadn't lasted long.

I felt sick. I knew she was dead.

Jack Cross's tone did not soften when he heard my voice. It darkened. It grew weary.

"Oh, Abbie," he said. "How are you doing?"

"She was called Lauren," I said. I was trying not to cry.

"What?"

"Jo. Her first name was Lauren. Don't you remember? Lauren was one of the list of the people he had killed."

"I'd forgotten."

"Doesn't that seem significant?"

"I'll make a note of it."

I told him about the clothes as well, the clothes of Jo's that I'd been wearing. He seemed cautious.

"This is not necessarily significant," he said. "We already know that you were living in Jo's flat. Why shouldn't you have been wearing her clothes?"

I looked down at Jo's grey cords that I'd put on, then I shouted, "For God's sake, what sort of evidence is good enough for you?"

I heard a sigh on the line. "Abbie, believe me, I'm on your side, and as a matter of fact I was looking through the file just a few minutes ago. I'm even putting one of my colleagues on to it. We haven't forgotten you. But to answer your question, I just need the sort of evidence that will convince someone who doesn't already believe you," he said.

"Well, you're going to fucking get it," I said. "You wait."

I wanted to slam the phone down but it was one of those cordless phones that you can't slam, so I just pressed the button extra hard.

"Oh, Abbie, Abbie, Abbie, you stupid, stupid thing," I moaned to myself consolingly.

Twenty

I knew Jo was dead. I didn't care what Cross said, I knew it. I thought of his whispery voice in the darkness: "Kelly. Kath. Fran. Gail. Lauren." Lauren was Jo. She had never given him the name that people she loved called her by. She'd given him the name of a stranger. It was her way of staying human, of not going mad. Now he could add another name to his litany: Sally. Although perhaps Sally didn't count for him. She was a mistake. She should have been me. I shivered. Nobody knew where I was except Carol at Jay and Joiner's and Peter downstairs. And Cross and Ben, of course. I was safe, I told myself. I didn't feel safe at all.

I closed the curtains in the main room and listened to the new messages on Jo's phone. There wasn't much; just one from a woman saying that Jo's curtains were ready for collection, and another from someone called Alexis saying hello, stranger, long time no see, and he was back at last, and maybe they should meet soon.

I opened the one letter that had arrived that morning an invitation to renew her subscription to the National Geographic. I did it for her. Then I phoned Sadie, anticipating she wouldn't be there, and left a message saying I wanted us to meet soon and I was missing her, and found as I said it that it was true. I said the same kind of thing on Sheila and Guy's answering-machine. I sent a cheery, vague email to Sam. I didn't want to see or talk to any of them just yet, but I wanted to build bridges.

I made myself an avocado, bacon and mozzarella sandwich. I wasn't really hungry, but it was comforting to put the sandwich together methodically, then sit on the sofa and chew the soft, salty bread, not really thinking of anything, trying to empty my mind. I found myself seeing the pictures I'd made for myself when I was kept prisoner in the dark: the butterfly, the river, the lake, the tree. I set them against all the ugliness and all the dread. I closed my eyes and let them fill up my mind, beautiful images of freedom. Then I heard myself saying: "But where's the cat?"

I didn't know where the question had come from. It hung in the quiet room while I considered it. Jo didn't have a cat. The only one I'd seen round here was Peter's downstairs, the tabby with amber eyes that had woken me in the night and spooked me so. But thinking about the question that I'd posed was giving me a peculiar feeling, like a tingling in my brain. It was as if a half-memory was scratching at my consciousness.

Why had I thought of a cat? Because she had things that went with a cat. Things I'd seen without noticing. Where? I went to the kitchen area, pulled open cupboards and drawers. Nothing there. Then I remembered and went to the tall cupboard near the bathroom where I'd come across the vacuum cleaner and Jo's skiing stuff. There, beside the bin-bag full of clothes, was a cat-litter tray, which looked new but might have been merely scrubbed clean, and an unopened pack of six small tins of cat food. I shut the door and went back to the sofa. I picked up the sandwich, put it down again.

So what? Jo had had a cat once. Or maybe she still had a cat and it had gone missing because she'd gone missing and wasn't there to feed and stroke it. Perhaps it's dead, I thought, like ... I didn't finish that sentence. Or maybe she had been about to get a cat. I went back to the cupboard and took another look at the six tins. They were for kittens. So it looked as if Jo had been about to get a kitten. Why should that matter, apart from being one more poignant detail? I didn't know.

I pulled on my jacket and woollen hat and ran downstairs and out on to the street. I rang Peter's bell and he opened the door as if he'd been watching for me out of his window. His cat was asleep on the sofa, its tail twitching slightly.

"This is a nice surprise," he said, and I felt a twinge of guilt. "Tea? Coffee? Perhaps some sherry. Sherry's warming in this weather."

"Tea would be lovely."

"There's some I've just made, in the pot. It's as if I knew you were coming. No sugar, is that right?"

"That's right."

"You'll have a biscuit this time, won't you? Though you're always in a rush. I see you running out of the house, running back in. You should slow down, you know."

I took a digestive from the tin he held out. It had gone soft. I dunked it into the tea and ate it in three mouthfuls.

"I was wondering if I could get you anything from the shops," I said. "You probably don't want to go out much in this weather."

"That's the beginning of the end," he said.

"Sorry?"

"When you stop going out and doing things. I go out three times a day. I go in the mornings to the news agent for my paper. Just before lunch I go for a walk, even if it's raining like today, or icy cold. In the afternoon I go to the shops for my supper."

"If you ever do need anything

"It's very kind of you to think of me."

"What's your cat called?" I stroked its stippled back gently and pleasure rippled along its spine. It opened one golden eye.

"Patience. She's nearly fourteen now. That's old for a cat, you know. You're an old lady," he said to the cat.

"I was wondering, did Jo have a cat too?"

"She wanted one. She said it would be companionship for her. Some people love dogs and some go for cats. She was a cat woman. What are you?"

"I'm not sure. So was she going to get one?"

"She came and asked me where she could find one; she knew I was a cat-lover too, you see. I've always kept them, ever since I was a child."

"When did she come and see you?"

"Oh, a couple of weeks ago. Just before you arrived, I think. You should know, though."

"Why should I know?"

"We talked about it together, when I met you on the day you moved all your stuff in."

"The Wednesday?"

"If you say so. Anyway, don't you remember? She said she was going to get one."

"When?"

"That afternoon, if she could find one. She seemed very keen on the idea. Said something about needing to set about making changes in her life, starting with the kitty."

"So what did you say to her, when she asked where she should look?"

"There's all sorts of ways of finding a little kitty. For a start, you can look at the cards in the news agent and the post office. That's what most people do, isn't it? There's always something. I noticed a card today, when I was getting my paper." The telephone started ringing on the table beside him and he said, "Sorry, dear, will you excuse me. I think it must be my daughter. She lives in Australia, you know."

He picked up the phone and I stood and put my cup in the sink. I waved at him as I left but he barely looked up.

I wanted to ring Ben and hear his voice. I had felt safe in his house, wrapped up in his warmth. But he was working and there was nothing I needed to say to him except hello, hello, I keep thinking about you.

It was already getting dark, although it was barely four o'clock. It had been the kind of dull, drizzly day when it never seemed to become properly light. I looked out of the window at the street, which had been covered with snow a few days ago. All colour seemed to have drained away. Everything was sepia and charcoal and grey. People walked past like figures in a black-and-white film, heads bowed.

I rewrote my Lost Days.

Friday n January: showdown at Jay and Joiner's. Storm out.

Saturday 12 January: row with Terry. Storm out. Go to Sadie's for night.

Sunday 13 January: leave Sadie a.m. Go to Sheila and Guy. Meet Robin for shopping spree and spend too much money. Meet Sam for drink p.m. Go back to Sheila and Guy's.

Monday 14 January: see Ken Lofting, Mr. Khan, Ben Brody and Gordon Lockhart. Phone Molte Schmidt. Fill car with petrol. Meet

Ben for drink, then meal. Sex with Ben. Phone Sheila and Guy to say not coming back for night. Stay night with Ben.

Tuesday 15 January: Go to cafe with Ben. Meet Jo. Ben leaves. Talk to Jo and arrange to move into her flat. Go to Sheila and Guy and leave note saying found somewhere to stay. Collect stuff from there. Go to Jo's flat. Book holiday in Venice. Phone Terry and arrange to collect stuff next day. Order Indian take away p.m. Make video?

Wednesday 16 January: collect stuff from Terry's and move it to Jo's. Meet Peter and talk about Jo getting a cat. Phone Todd. Go out and buy bonsai tree. Go to Ben's house p.m. Sex without condom. Go back to Jo's.

Thursday 17 January: Ring Camden police station to say Jo missing. Take first morning-after pill.

I stared at the list. Jo must have gone missing on Wednesday. Searching for a kitten. I wrote 'kitten' in large letters under the list and stared at it hopelessly. The telephone rang. It was Carol from Jay and Joiner's.

"Hi, Abbie," she said, sounding warm. "Sorry to disturb you."

"That's all right."

"I just got a strange phone call from a man who wanted to pass on a message to you."

"Yes?" My mouth was dry.

"His name was hang on, I've written it down somewhere. Yes, here we are. Gordon Lockhart." Relief surged through me. "He wanted to have your address or your number."

"You didn't give it to him, did you?"

"No, you told me not to."

"Thanks. Go on."

"I said he could write a letter to us and we'd forward it to you. But he said he just wanted to say thank you again."

"Oh. Right."

"And he said you should clip the roots every two years to stop it growing. Does that make sense? He went on about it. On and on. In the spring, he said. March or April."

"Thanks, Carol. It's just about a tree. Keep me posted, will you?"

"Sure. And your old man got in touch all right?"

"My dad?"

"He's probably trying to phone you as we speak."

"Dad?"

"He said he was trying to track you down. Wants to send you some present, but he's mislaid your new address."

"Did you give it to him?"

"Well, it was your dad."

"Fine," I managed. "I'll speak to you later. "Bye."

I threw the phone down, took a few deep breaths, then picked it up and dialled.

"Hello."

"Dad? Hi, this is Abbie. Is that you?"

"Course it's me."

"You rang the office."

"What office?"

"Just a minute or two ago. You rang jay and Joiner's."

"Why should I ring them? I've been doing the garden. The snow pulled down the orange climbing rose. I think I can save it, though."

I was suddenly cold, as if the sun had gone behind the clouds and an icy wind had sprung up. "You mean, you didn't ring them?" I said.

"No. I keep saying. You haven't phoned for weeks. How have you been keeping?"

I opened my mouth to reply, and then the doorbell rang, one long, steady peal. I gasped. "Got to go," I said, and jumped to my feet. I could hear my father's tiny voice through the phone's mouthpiece. I raced from the sitting room into Jo's bedroom, grabbing my bag and keys as I ran. The bell rang again; two short bursts.

I fumbled with the catch then pulled up the window and leant out. It was only about an eight- or nine-foot drop into Peter's narrow, overgrown garden, but it still looked horribly far and I'd land on concrete. I thought about going back into the living room and dialling the police, but everything in me was telling me to flee.

I clambered out on to the window-sill then turned so I was facing backwards. I took a deep breath and pushed off.

I hit the ground hard and felt the shock jarring up my body. I half fell, hands outstretched and scraping along the cold concrete. Then I straightened up and ran. I thought I could hear a sound from the flat. I pounded across the garden's overgrown and sodden lawn. My legs felt like lead as I dragged them over the rotted mulch of leaves; I could barely make them move and it was as if I was running in a dream. A nightmare, where you run and run and never get anywhere.

There was a high wall at the back of the garden. It was full of cracks and in some places the bricks had crumbled and come away. There were brambles with purple stems as wide as hose pipes climbing up it. I found a handhold, a foothold, pulled myself up. I slipped, felt rough brick grazing my cheek; tried again. I could hear myself panting, or sobbing; I couldn't tell which. My hands were on top of the wall, and then I was there, one leg over, the next. I let go and fell into an adjacent garden, landing painfully and twisting my ankles. I saw a woman's face peering out of the downstairs window as I staggered to my feet and limped to the side passage that led out on to the road.

I didn't know which direction to go in. It didn't really matter, so long as I went somewhere. I jogged along the road, each step throbbing in my ankle. I could feel blood trickling down my cheek. A bus drew up at a stop a few yards away and I hobbled towards it and jumped on board as it was drawing away. I went and sat by a middle-aged woman with a shopping basket, even though there were spare seats, and looked back. There was no one there.

The bus went all the way to Vauxhall. I got off at Russell Square and went into the British Museum. I hadn't been there since I was a child and it was all different. There was a great glass roof covering the courtyard and light flooded down on me. I made my way through rooms lined with ancient pottery, and rooms full of great stone sculptures and I saw nothing. I came to a room lined with vast, leather bound books; some were on stands, opened at illuminated pages. It was softly lit and quiet. People, when they talked,

talked in whispers. I sat there for an hour, gazing at the rows of books and seeing nothing. I left when it was closing time; I knew I couldn't go home.

Twenty-one

As I came out on to the steps of the museum I realized that I was freezing. I had escaped from the flat in only a light sweater. So I walked to Oxford Street and went into almost the first clothes shop I came to. I spent fifty pounds on a jacket. It was red and quilted and made me look as if I should be standing on a railway platform taking down train numbers, but it was warm. I took the tube north and walked to Ben's house. He bloody wasn't there. I walked over to a Haverstock Hill cafe, ordered an expensive frothy coffee and allowed myself to think.

Jo's flat was now out of bounds to me. He'd found me again, and now he'd lost me again, for the time being. I tried to think of another possibility but there was none. A person had obtained my address from Carol by pretending to be my father. I made a feeble attempt to imitate a sceptical policeman. I tried to imagine an angry client or someone I'd hired being so desperate to contact me personally that they would attempt this complicated subterfuge. It was nonsense. It was him. So what would he do? He had found where I was staying. He didn't know I knew that or maybe he didn't. He might think that I was out and he simply had to wait there for me. If that was so, then I could call the police and they could go and arrest him and it would all be over.

This idea was so tempting that I could hardly stop myself. The snag was that I knew I was about one millimetre away from Jack Cross losing patience with me altogether. If I tried to call out the police because of some suspicion I had, they might simply not come. Or if they did come, they might just find that he wasn't there. And what was I asking them to do? Go up to any man, any man at all, and accost him on suspicion of being my kidnapper?

I finished my coffee and walked back to Ben's flat. The lights were still off. I didn't know what to do so I lurked outside, stamping my feet, rubbing my hands together. What if Ben was in a meeting? What if he had suddenly decided to meet someone for a drink or go out for dinner or a movie? I tried to think of somewhere else to go. I started to compile a list of friends I might drop in on. Abigail Devereaux, the Flying Dutch woman, wandering from house to house in search of food and a bed for the night. People would be hiding behind their sofas when I rang the bell. By the time Ben walked up the steps, I was feeling thoroughly sorry for myself.

He looked startled as I stepped out of the shadows, and I immediately tried to apologize for being there, and then, in the middle of my apology, I began to cry and was immediately angry with myself for being so pathetic and tried to apologize for crying. So now Ben was standing on the steps outside his flat with a crying woman. Worse and worse. In the midst of it all Ben managed both to put his arm round me and get his keys out of his pocket and unlock the door. I started an explanation of what had happened at Jo's flat but, whether because I was shivering with cold or whether saying it out loud made me realize how frightened I had been, I was unable to speak coherently. Ben just murmured words into my ear and led me up to the bathroom. He turned on the bath taps. He started to pull down zips and unfasten buttons on my clothes.

"I like the jacket," he said.

"I was cold," I said.

"No, really."

He pulled my clothes over my head and eased my trousers down my legs and over my feet. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Red-faced from the cold, red-eyed from crying. I looked raw, as if my skin had been peeled off with my clothes. The hot water of the bath stung at first, then felt wonderful. I wanted to live in that bath for ever, like a primeval swamp animal. Ben disappeared and came back with two mugs of tea. He placed them both on the side of the bath. He started to take his clothes off. This was nice. He got in with me, entangling his legs with mine, and he behaved like a complete gentleman: he sat at the end with the taps. He draped a flannel over them so that he was able to lie back without being in total discomfort. My mouth was working again and I managed to give him a fairly composed account of my escape, if that's what it had been.

He looked genuinely startled. "Fuck," he said, which struck the right note. "You climbed out of the back window?"

"I didn't open the door and ask him in for tea."

"You're absolutely sure it was him?"

"I've been desperately trying to think of any other explanation. If you can come up with one, I would be so grateful."

"It's a pity you didn't get a look at him."

"Jo's front door doesn't have a peephole. There was the additional problem that I was having a heart-attack from fear. I have to admit that there was a part of me that almost wanted to lie down and wait for him to come and get me so that it would all be over."

Ben took another flannel and draped it over his face. I heard a sort of murmuring from under it.

"I'm sorry," I said.

He pulled the flannel away. "What?" he asked.

"About all this. It's bad enough for me, but I can't do anything about that. I'm sorry that you've been landed with it as well. Maybe we met at the wrong time."

"You shouldn't say sorry."

"I should. And I'm also saying it in advance."

"What do you mean?"

"Because I'm about to ask you for a favour."

"Go on, then."

"I was going to ask you to go to Jo's flat and get my stuff for me." Ben looked so unhappy at this that I immediately rushed into a desperate explanation. "Because I obviously can't go there myself. I can't go there ever again. He might be watching from outside. But you'll be fine. He's only looking for me. He might assume that he's got the wrong flat."

"Right," said Ben, looking even less happy. "Yes, of course, I'll do it."

The atmosphere had definitely changed. We didn't talk for a bit.

"Are you all right?" I said, eager to break the silence.

"This wasn't what I planned," he said.

"I know, I know, it would have been easier for you if you'd met somebody who wasn't involved in something like this."

"That's not what I meant. I was talking about here, in this bath, now. I was planning to help wash you. I would have rubbed you on your shoulders, and then down over your breasts. We would have gone to bed. But now, instead of that, I'm going to get dressed and go out and probably get murdered myself. Or he might torture me to find out where you are."

"You don't have to, if you don't want to," I said.

In the end, Ben phoned up a friend of his, Scud. "Not his real name," Ben said. Scud worked with computer graphics, but in his spare time, he played club rugby. "He's fifteen stone and a lunatic," Ben said. He managed to persuade Scud to come over straight away. "Yes, now," I heard him say on the phone. Scud arrived fifteen minutes later and he was, as advertised, massive. He looked amused to meet a new woman wearing Ben's dressing-gown and he was evidently puzzled by the pared-down version of my story that Ben gave him. But he shrugged and said it would be no problem.

I gave a brief description of where my stuff was.

"And when you leave, make sure you're not followed," I said.

Scud looked at me, apparently alarmed. I'd forgotten that much of what I said made me sound insane to unprepared normal people. Ben pulled a face.

"You said there'd be no problem."

"Not for you. But he might think you're connected with me and follow you. Just keep an eye out."

The two men exchanged glances.

Ben was back in less than an hour, an hour in which I drank a tumbler of whisky and flicked through Ben's glossy magazines. He came in looking as if he had been Christmas shopping. He dumped the bulging carrier-bags on the floor. "I owe Scud one," he said.

"What for? Did anything happen?"

"I owe Scud one for dragging him away from his wife and children in order to rummage around the flat of someone he doesn't know. And then possibly involving him in criminal activity."

"What do you mean?"

"Jo's front door was open. It had been forced."

"But there's a chain."

"It must have been kicked in. The whole frame was broken."

"Jesus."

"Yes. We weren't sure what to do. It's probably not legal to go round a crime scene helping yourself to things that don't belong to you."

"He broke in," I murmured, almost to myself.

"I think I've got everything," Ben said. "Clothes, mainly. Some of the odds and ends you asked for. Your pieces of paper, stuff from the bathroom shelf. I can't guarantee that some of this isn't Jo's. In fact, the more I think about this the less legal it seems."

"Great," I said, hardly listening.

"And Jo's photograph, like you asked."

He put it on the table and we both looked at it for a moment.

"I did want to make one comment," he said. "In fact, more than one. I assume that you've got nowhere to stay, so I don't want to make a big deal of this or presume on anything but you're welcome to stay here. As long as you want to, basically."

I couldn't stop myself. I gave him a hug. "Are you sure?" I said. "You don't have to, just because I'm in this helpless state. I'm sure I could find somewhere."

"Don't be stupid."

"I don't want to be like this dismal, needy woman forcing herself on a man who's too polite to kick her out."

He put up his hand. "Stop," he said. "Shut up. We should find somewhere to put all this stuff."

We started going through this odd assortment that I'd gathered over the past days.

"The other thing I wanted to say," he said, while sorting through my underwear, 'at least I wanted to raise it as a possibility, is that this was just a normal break-in."

"What about the person who rang work pretending to be my dad?"

"I don't know. There might have been a misunderstanding.

Perhaps what you heard at the door was someone breaking in. They rang the door bell, as they do, to check that no one's home. You didn't answer, in your normal style. The villain assumes nobody's home and breaks in. There's so much of that happening in the area. Just a few days ago, these friends of mine round the corner heard a huge crash in the middle of the night. They went downstairs and exactly the same thing had happened. Someone had kicked the door open and grabbed a bag and a camera. It might have been the same thing."

"Was anything taken?"

"I couldn't tell. A couple of drawers were open. The VCR was still there."

"Hmmm," I said sceptic ally

Ben looked thoughtful for a moment. He seemed to be thinking so hard that it hurt. "What do you want for supper?" he said.

I liked that. I liked that so much. In the middle of all I was going through, that question as if we were a couple living together. Which we were, as it turned out.

"Anything," I said. "Anything you've got that's left over. But, look, Jo's vanished, someone got my address from Carol under false pretences, there's a knock at the door. I scoot out of the back and he breaks in. It's too much."

Ben stood like a statue, except it was a statue holding a pair of my knickers. I snatched them from him.

"Tomorrow I'll call the police," he said. "Jo's parents should be back tonight. We'll speak to them and then, unless they've got good news, we've got to report her missing."

I put my hand on his. "Thanks, Ben."

"Is that whisky?" he asked, catching sight of my glass. Well, his glass, strictly speaking.

"Yes, sorry," I said. "I was in urgent need of something."

He picked up the glass and took a gulp from it. I saw his hand was shaking.

"Are you all right?" I said.

He shook his head. "You know you said that you thought we might have met at the wrong time? I hope that's wrong. Things feel right in all sorts of ways. But I'm afraid that I'm not really the person who's going to be able to fight anybody -off, take a bullet for you. I think I'm afraid, to be honest."

I kissed him, and our hands felt for each other.

"Most people wouldn't say that," I said. "They'd just find an excuse not to have me in the house. But at the moment I'm interested in your plan."

"What plan?"

"The one that began with you washing my shoulders. We can miss out the washing bit."

"Oh, that plan," he said.

Twenty-two

"Listen. I woke up and I couldn't get back to sleep and I've been thinking. You know how it is when you just lie there in the dark and thoughts whirl round and round your head? Anyway, this is how it is. He's after me, but I'm after him too. I've got to get to him before he gets to me. Agreed?" I was sitting at Ben's kitchen table in one of his shirts, dipping brioche into coffee. Outside, there was frost on the grass. The kitchen smelt of fresh bread and hyacinths.

"Maybe," he said.

"So what does he know about me? He knows my name, what I look like, more or less, where I lived until a couple of weeks ago, where I stayed until yesterday, where I work. Or worked. Right, what do I know about him?" I paused for a moment to drink some coffee. "Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing at all. A blank. Except there's one thing in my favour. He doesn't know that I know he's after me. He thinks he can just creep up behind me, but actually we're like children in that game when you circle round the tree, each pursuing the other and fleeing from them at the same time. But he thinks I don't know he's coming to get me. If you see what I mean."

"Abbie ..."

"There's something else too. I'm not just following him, or at least intending to follow him, once I know where to start. I'm following me the me I can't remember, I mean. Like Grandmother's Footsteps."

"Hang on .. ."

"Maybe Grandmother's Footsteps isn't quite right. But presumably the me that I can't remember may have tried to find out where Jo was. I would have done, wouldn't I? If I'm doing it now I would have done it then. Don't you think it's a possibility? That's what I

was thinking."

"What time did you wake this morning?"

"About five, I think. My mind was racing. What I need is a piece of solid evidence I can take to Cross. Then they'll start the investigation and protect me and everything will be fine. So if I retrace my footsteps, which were retracing Jo's footsteps, then I may end up where I ended up before."

"Which, if you remember what happened to you, doesn't sound like a good idea at all."

"The problem, of course, is that I can't retrace my footsteps because I can't remember them."

"Do you want some more coffee?"

"Yes, please. And I don't know what Jo's footsteps were either. But, anyway, there was only a small amount of time between when she disappeared and when I was grabbed. I'm sure of that at least, because I know from Peter she was around on Wednesday morning, and I disappeared on Thursday evening."

"Abbie." Ben took both of my hands and held them between his own. "Slow down a bit."

"Am I gabbling?"

"It's ten past seven and we went to sleep late. I'm not at my sharpest."

"I've been thinking I need to follow up the cat."

"Sorry?"

"Jo was going to get a kitten. Her neighbour in the downstairs flat told me that. She'd bought everything for it, and I'm guessing she was just about to get it. If I could find out where she was going to get it from well, anyway, I can't think of anything else to do. I have to begin somewhere."

"So now you're planning to track down a cat?"

"I'll ask at the pet shop and the post office, where they pin up notices. The vet, too. They often have notices, don't they? It's probably pointless, but if you've any better ideas I'd love to hear them."

Ben looked at me for a long, long time. I imagined him thinking:

Is this worth it? Because I did have some insight into my condition: I might have been babbling but at least I knew I was babbling.

"I tell you what," he said. "I've got to pick up some letters at the office. I'll give some instructions to the guys. I'll be back here mid-morning and we can do it together."

"Really?"

"I don't like the thought of you wandering around on your own."

"You don't have to do this, you know. You're not responsible for me or anything."

"We talked about this last night. Remember?"

"Thank you," I said. "Very much."

"So, what are you going to do while I'm gone?"

"I'm going to call Cross again, though I can't imagine he'll be very pleased to hear from me."

"You have to, though."

"I know."

"I'll call Jo's parents' house from work. There was no reply yesterday evening. We should go and see them before I contact the police."

"Yes. Oh dear."

"I know."

Ben left before eight. I had a scalding shower and made myself another cup of coffee. Then I called Cross, but was told he wouldn't be back in his office till the afternoon. I almost cried with impatience. Half a day is a long time when you feel every minute might count. I had a couple of hours before Ben returned. I cleared up the kitchen and changed the sheets on the bed. His house was more grown-up than anything I was used to. It struck me that Terry and I had lived a bit like students. Everything in our lives had seemed temporary, where and how we lived just arrangements we'd stumbled into. We'd got by, but messily and, in the end, violently. Ben's life was stable and considered. He was doing the job he wanted to do; he lived in a lovely house, where each room was painted a different colour and was full of carefully chosen objects. I opened his wardrobe. He had just two suits, but they looked expensive. His shirts hung neatly on their hangers, above three pairs of leather shoes. Things don't just happen to him, I thought. He chooses them. And he chose me, and he'd missed me when I'd gone. I shivered with pleasure.

He came back just after ten. I was waiting for him, dressed in warm clothes and with a notebook in my bag. I also had the photograph of Jo, which I thought might jog people's memories.

"Jo's parents aren't back till tomorrow," he said. "I spoke to the dog-sitter again. They spent an extra night in Paris. We should drive over to their place in the afternoon. It's not far, just on the other side of the M25."

"That'll be grim."

"Yes," he said. For a moment, his face was wiped of all expression. Then he said, with forced cheeriness, "All right. Cat time."

"You're sure you're up for this? I mean, it's probably a wild-goose chase. Wrong metaphor."

"I'll have you for company." He wrapped an arm round me and we went out to his car. I briefly remembered my own car, stuck in a bloody pound somewhere, but pushed away the thought. I could deal with all of those things later. Friendships, family, work, money (chronic lack of), tax forms, parking tickets, overdue library books, everything had to wait.

We parked in a small street a few hundred yards away from Jo's flat. We'd planned to make a circuit of the area, stopping off at every news agent that had cards in the window. It was a boring, frustrating business. The vet's was a dead end. Nobody in the shops recognized Jo's photo, and only a few had cards advertising pets.

After nearly two hours, I had written down three telephone numbers. When we went back to the car, Ben phoned them on his mobile. Two of the cards turned out to have been put up in the last few days so were irrelevant. The other card had been up for longer and, when Ben rang the number, the woman said that there was still one kitten without a home but we probably wouldn't want it.

She lived on the estate just round the corner so we called in on her. The kitten was a tabby and still tiny. The woman, who was very tall and solid, said it had been the runt of the litter and remained fragile. She had to admit that it also seemed to have something wrong with its eyesight. It bumped into things, she said, and stepped in its food. She picked it up and it sat in her large, calloused hand and mewed piteously.

I took Jo's photo out of my bag and showed it to her. "Did our friend come round here asking about kittens?" I asked.

"What?" She put the tabby on the floor and peered at it. "No, not that I know of. I'd remember, I'm sure. Why?"

"Oh, it's too long a story," I said, and she didn't press me. "We'll be going, then. I hope you find your kitten a home."

"I won't," she said. "Nobody wants a blind cat, do they? I'll just have to take it to the cat sanctuary. Betty'll take her in."

"Cat sanctuary?"

"Well, it's not really a sanctuary, that sounds too official. But she's cat-mad. Bonkers. She lives for cats; they're all she cares about. She takes in all the strays. She must have about fifty, and they're breeding all the time. Her house is only small as well. It's a sight, really. It must drive her neighbours mad. Maybe you should go there if you're looking for a kitten."

"Where does she live?" I asked, taking out my notebook.

"Down Lewin Crescent. I don't know the number but you can't miss it. Poky little place and the upstairs windows are all boarded up. It looks deserted."

"Thanks."

We went back to the car.

"Lewin Crescent?" asked Ben.

"We may as well, now we're here."

We found the place on the A-Z and drove there. It was wonderfully cosy in the car, but outside it was cold and the wind was a knife. Our breath plumed into the air. Ben took my hand and smiled down at me; his fingers were warm and strong.

The house was certainly dilapidated. There were weeds and frosted, rotten sunflowers by the front door, and the dustbin was overflowing. A wide crack ran up the wall and the paint on the window-ledges was coming away in large flakes. I pressed the bell but couldn't hear it ring, so I knocked hard as well.

"Listen," said Ben. Through the door I could hear mews, hisses, a strange scratching. "Have I told you I'm allergic to cats? I get asthma and my eyes go red."

The door opened on a chain and the sound grew louder. A face peered through.

"Hello," I said. "Sorry to bother you."

"Is it the council?"

"No. We've just come because we were told you have lots of cats."

The door opened a bit more. "Come in, then but be careful they don't get out. Quick!"

I don't know what hit us first, the wall of heat or the smell of meaty cat food, ammonia and shit. There were cats everywhere, on the sofa and the chairs, curled up near the electric heater, lying in soft brown heaps on the floor. Some were washing themselves, some were purring, a couple were hissing at each other, backs arched and tails twitching. There were bowls of food by the kitchen door, and three or four cat-litter trays next to them. It was like an obscene version of a Walt Disney film. Ben hung back by the door, looking appalled.

"It's Betty, isn't it?" I asked. I was trying not to wince. A cat was winding itself round my legs.

"That's right. You should know."

Betty was old. Her face had folded. Her neck sagged. Her fingers and her wrists were blue. She was dressed in a thick blue shift with several buttons missing, and she was covered in cat hair. She had shrewd brown eyes, peering out from her wrecked face.

"We were told you take in stray cats and that sometimes you give them to people in search of a pet," I said.

"I have to be sure it's to a good home," she said sharply. "I'm not easily satisfied. I don't just give them to anybody, I keep saying."

"We think a friend of ours might have been here," I said, and produced the photo of Jo.

"Of course she did."

"When?" I took a step forward.

"You do go round and round in circles, don't you? But she wasn't right. She seemed to think you can just let a cat wander in and out as they please. Do you know how many cats get killed by cars each year?"

"No," I said. "I don't. So you didn't want her to have one of your cats?"

"She didn't seem too keen anyway," said Betty. "As soon as I said I had my doubts about her, she was out of the door."

"And you can't remember when it was?"

"You tell me."

"Midweek? Weekend?"

"It was the day the bin-men come. They were clattering around outside when she was here."

"What day's that?"

"That would be a Wednesday."

"So, a Wednesday," said Ben, still standing up against the front door. "Do you know what time?"

"I don't know why you have to be so pushy."

"It's not that we're' I began.

"Morning or afternoon?" asked Ben.

"Afternoon," she said grudgingly. "They usually come when I'm giving the cats their tea. Don't they, pussies?" she added, addressing the room at large, which seemed to shift and ripple with the movement of cats.

"Thank you," I said. "You've been very helpful."

"That's what you said last time."

I froze with my hand on the door handle. "Did I come here before?"

"Of course you did. On your own, though."

"Betty, can you tell me when I came?"

"No need to speak so loudly, I'm not deaf. Or stupid. The day after, that's when you came. Lost your memory, have you?"

"Home?" said Ben.

"Home," I agreed, then blushed violently at the word. He noticed and laid a hand on my knee. I turned and we kissed each other very gently, our lips hardly grazing. We kept our eyes open and I could see myself reflected in his pupils.

"Home," he said again. "Home to toast and tea."

Toast and tea, and making love in an unlit room, while outside it grew colder and darker and we held each other for comfort. And for a while we didn't talk about sombre things, but did what all new lovers do, which was to ask about each other's past. At least, I asked him.

"I've already told you," he said.

"Have you? You mean, before?"

"Yes."

"Isn't that odd, to think that I'm carrying all these things inside me things that were done to me, things you've said to me, secrets, gifts and I don't know what they are? If I don't know, is it the same as it never having happened, do you think?"

"I don't know," he said. I traced his mouth with one finger; he was smiling in the darkness.

"You'll have to tell me again. Who was before me?"

"Leah. An interior designer."

"Was she beautiful?"

"I don't know. In a way. She was half Moroccan, very strikin."

"Did she live here?" I asked.

"No. Well, not really."

"How long were you together?"

"Two years."

"Two years that's a long time. What happened?"

"Nearly a year ago now, she fell in love with someone else and left me."

"Stupid woman," I said. "Who could ever leave you?" I stroked his soft hair. It was still only afternoon, and here we were, lying under the duvet as if we were in a small cave, while outside the world closed in. "Were you very hurt?"

"Yes," he said. "I suppose I was."

"But you're all right now? Are you?"

"Now I am."

"We need to talk about Jo," I said, after a bit.

"I know. I feel I shouldn't be so happy." He leant across, switched on the bedside lamp and we both blinked in the sudden dazzle. "So she was looking for a cat on Wednesday afternoon, and you were looking for her on Thursday."

"Yes."

"You're following yourself

"Like that mad cat woman said round and round in circles."

Twenty-three

Ben went out to buy food for supper, and on a sudden impulse I rang Sadie.

"Hi there," I said. "Guess who?"

"Abbie? God, Abbie, where've you disappeared to? Do you realize I don't even have a phone number for you? I was at Sam's yesterday evening; he was having a little birthday get-together, and we all said how odd it was you weren't with us. We even toasted you. Well, we toasted absent friends, and that was mainly you. But nobody knew how to get hold of you. It's as if you've fallen off the face of the earth."

"I know, I know. And I'm sorry. I miss all of you, but, well I can't explain now. I should have remembered his birthday; I've never forgotten it before. But things are, well, rather dramatic'

"Are you all right?"

"Kind of. In a way yes and in a way no."

"Very mysterious. When can I see you? Where are you staying?"

"At a friend's," I said vaguely. "And we'll meet soon. I just need to sort things out first. You know." What I wanted to say was: I just need to save my life first. But that sounded insane. It even felt insane, here in Ben's house, with the lights on and the radiators humming and from the kitchen the sound of the dishwasher.

"Yes, but listen, Abbie, I've talked to Terry."

"Have you? Is he all right? Have the police let him go yet?"

"Yup, finally. I think they kept him as long as they were legally-entitled to, though."

"Thank God for that. Is he all over the place?"

"You could say that. He's been trying to get hold of you."

I'll call him. At once. But is he still under suspicion, or what?"

"I don't know. He wasn't being exactly rational when I talked to him. I think he was a bit pissed."

"Sadie, I'll go now. I'll call Terry at once. And I'll come and see you soon, very soon."

"Do that."

"Is Pippa well?"

"She's gorgeous."

"Well, I know that. You are too, Sadie."

"What?"

"Gorgeous. You're gorgeous. I'm lucky to have friends like you. Tell everyone I love them."

"Abbie?"

"Everyone. Tell Sheila and Guy and Sam and Robin and well, everyone. When you see them, tell them I .. ." I suddenly caught sight of myself in the mirror over the fireplace. I was waving my hand around hysterically, like an opera singer. "Well, you know. Send my love, at least."

"You're sure you're all right?"

"It's all so weird, Sadie."

"Listen-'

"I've got to go. I'll call you."

I called Terry. The phone rang and rang, and just as I was about to give up, he answered.

"Hello." His voice was slurred.

Terry? It's me, Abbie."

"Abbie," he said. "Oh, Abbie."

"They've let you go."

"Abbie," he repeated.

"I'm so sorry, Terry. I told them it couldn't be you. Did your dad tell you I rang? And I'm so sorry about Sally. I can't tell you how sorry."

"Sally," he said. "They thought I killed Sally."

"I know."

"Please," he said.

"What? What can I do?"

"I need to see you. Please, Abbie."

"Well, it's difficult right now." I couldn't go to his house he might be waiting there for me.

The front door opened and Ben came in, with two carrier-bags.

"I'll call you back," I said. "In a few minutes. Don'tgo away." Putting the phone down, I turned to Ben and said, "I have to see Terry. He sounds terrible and it's because of me, all of this. I owe him."

He sighed and put his bags on the floor. "There was I, planning a romantic dinner for two. Stupid."

"I have to, don't I? You do see?"

"Where?"

"Where what?"

"Where do you want to meet him?"

"Not at his place, that's for sure."

"No. Here?"

"That would be too odd."

"Odd? Well, we can't have odd, can we?"

"Maybe a cafe or something is better. Not a pub he sounded as if he'd drunk quite enough already. Tell me somewhere near here."

"There's one on Belmont Avenue, at the park end of the road. The something Diner."

"Ben?"

"What?"

"Will you come with me?"

"I'll drive you there and wait outside in the car."

"Ben?"

"Yes, Abbie."

"I appreciate it."

"Then that makes it all worthwhile," he said drily.

Forty-five minutes later I was sitting in the Diner (it was just called the Diner), drinking cappuccino and watching the door. Terry arrived ten minutes later, muffled up in an old greatcoat and a woollen hat. He was slightly unsteady on his feet and his face had a wild look about it.

He came over to my table and sat down too noisily. He pulled off his hat. His hair was a bit greasy and his cheeks, red with cold or drink, had a new gaunt look to them.

"Hello, Terry," I said, and put my hands over his.

"Your hair is growing back."

"Is it?"

"Oh, God." He closed his eyes and leant back in his chair. "Oh, God, I'm knackered. I could sleep for a hundred hours."

"What can I get you?"

"Coffee."

I gestured to the waitress. "A double espresso, please, and another cappuccino."

Terry took out his cigarette packet and shook one out. His hands were trembling. He lit it and sucked ferociously, making his face look even more hollow.

"I told the police you didn't do it, Terry. And if you need me to, I'll talk to your solicitor. It's all a mistake."

"They went on and on about me being a violent man." The waitress put the coffee down on the table, but he took no notice. "It was like my head filling up with blood. I never would have hurt you. They made it sound as if I was an evil fucker. They said I'd sent you over the edge

"Did they now?"

"And Sally .. . Sally .. . Oh, shit."

"Terry. Don't."

He started crying. Fat tears rolled down his cheeks and into his mouth. He tried to pick up his coffee but his hands were shaking so much that he spilt great splashes of it over the table.

"I don't know what's happened," he said, mopping ineffectually at the puddle with a napkin. "Everything was going along normally, and then it all went to hell. I kept thinking I'd wake up and it would be a bad dream and you'd be there, or Sally would be there. Someone, anyway. Someone would be there. But instead you're here and Sally's dead and the police still think it was me. I know they do."

"The main thing is that they've let you go," I said. "It wasn't you and they can't say it was. You'll be all right now."

But he wasn't listening. "I feel so fucking lonely," he said. "Why me?"

I felt a spasm of irritation at his self-pity. "Or why Sally?" I said.

The next morning Ben phoned Jo's parents. They were back from holiday and I could hear the mother's voice. No, they hadn't seen Jo since before their holiday; she hadn't come with them. And, yes, they'd be delighted to see Ben if he was in the area and of course it was fine if he brought a friend with him. Ben's face was tight, his mouth drawn down as if he'd eaten something sour. He said we'd be there by eleven.

We drove in silence through north London, to their house in Hertfordshire. It was foggy and damp; the shapes of trees and houses loomed up at us as we passed. They lived just outside a village, in a low white house at the end of a gravel led drive. Ben stopped at the top of it for a few seconds. "I feel completely sick," he said angrily, as if it was my fault. Then he drove on.

Jo's mother was called Pam, and she was a handsome, robust woman with a firm handshake. Her father, though, was skeletally thin and his face was etched with lines. He looked decades older than his wife and when I shook his hand it was like grasping a bundle of bones. We sat in the kitchen and Pam poured us tea and produced some biscuits. "So tell me, Ben, how's everything going? It's been ages since Jo brought you over to see us."

"I've come for a reason," he said abruptly.

She put down her mug and looked at him. "Jo?" she said.

"Yes. I'm worried about her."

"What's wrong with her?"

"We don't know where she is. She's disappeared. You've heard nothing at all?"

"No," she said in a whisper. Then, louder, "But you know how it is with her, she's always gadding off without telling us. She can go weeks without getting in touch."

"I know. But Abbie was sharing her flat and Jo just went missing one day."

"Missing," she repeated.

"You have no idea where she might be?"

"The cottage?" she said, and her face brightened with hope. "She sometimes goes and camps out there."

"We went there."

"Or that boyfriend of hers?"

"No."

"I don't understand," said Jo's father. "How long has she been missing?"

"Since about January the sixteenth," I said. "We think."

"And today's what? February the sixth? That's three weeks!"

Pam stood up. She stared down at us and said, "But we must start looking! At once!"

"I'm going to the police now," said Ben, rising too. "As soon as we leave here. We've already talked to them about this well, Abbie has anyway, but they don't take it seriously for the first week or so. Unless it's a child."

"What shall I do? I can't just sit here. I'll ring round everyone. There'll be a simple explanation. Who have you talked to?"

"It might mean nothing," said Ben helplessly. "She might be fine. People are always going missing then turning up."

"Yes. Of course," said Pam. "Of course that's true. The thing is not to panic'

"We'll go straight to the police now," said Ben. "I'll ring you later. All right?" He put his hands on Pam's shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. She clutched at him briefly then let him go. Jo's father was still sitting at the table. I looked at his parchment skin, the liver spots on his brittle hands.

"Goodbye," I said. I didn't know what else to say. There wasn't anything.

"Ben, this is Detective Inspector Jack Cross. This is Ben Brody. He's a friend of Josephine Hooper, who I told you about last'

"I know. I visited her flat, remember? And you told me about wearing her clothes, and you told me her name's Lauren."

"I'm glad you let Terry go," I said. "Now you know he's not guilty, you must realize there's someone out there who is, and maybe Jo .. ." - "I can't comment on that," Cross said warily.

"Shall we begin by telling Detective Inspector Cross what we actually know for certain, Abbie?"

Cross looked at him with faint surprise. Perhaps he had thought that anyone connected with me was bound to be mad: contamination by association.

Much of it I had told him before, of course, but then the words had sounded like yet more confirmation of my paranoia. They sounded more plausible when it wasn't me saying them.

We went over everything, several times. It was very technical, like filling in a complicated tax return. I wrote down the times and dates that I'd worked out for the missing week, both for myself and for Jo. I handed over Jo's photograph. Ben gave him the telephone numbers for her parents and her ex-boyfriend and told him which companies she regularly worked for.

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I'll consider this," Cross replied. "But I'm not'

"The thing is .. ." I stopped and looked at Ben, then resumed. "The thing is, I'm very scared that if I'm right about Jo being grabbed by the same man as me, then, well, she's very likely, she's probably, you know .. ." I couldn't say the word, not with Ben sitting beside me. I couldn't even remember meeting Jo; he'd known her half his life.

A series of expressions chased across Cross's face. When he had first met me, he had believed my story without hesitation. I was a victim. Then he had been persuaded not to believe me at all, and I had become a victim of my own delusions; an object of pity. Now he was filled with shifting doubts.

"We'll just take it bit by bit," he said. "We'll contact Ms Hooper's parents. Where are you staying?"

"With me," said Ben.

Cross looked at him for a few seconds, then nodded. "All right," he said, standing up. "I'll be in touch."

"He's beginning to believe me, isn't he?"

Ben picked up my hand and twisted the ring on my little finger round. "Do you mean about you or about Jo?"

"Is there a difference?"

"I don't know," he said.

"I'm so sorry about Jo, Ben. I'm really, really sorry. I don't know how to say it."

"Sorry?" he said. "I still hope the phone will ring and it will be her."

"That would be nice," I said.

He poured us both some more wine. "Do you think a lot about the days when you were his prisoner?"

"Sometimes it just feels like a terrible nightmare and then I even think, Maybe I did dream it, after all. But then other times usually in the night, or when I'm on my own and feel especially vulnerable it comes back to me as if I was actually reliving it. As if I was actually in it again, and had never escaped, and all this' - I waved my hand around the brightly lit kitchen, the plates and wine glasses on the table 'was the dream. Everything's jumbled up, what I remember and what I imagine and what I fear. You know when I wake in the early hours, when everything seems grim and sad, what I sometimes think? I think that I'm on a wheel, going round and round. And that I've done all this before because in a way I have, haven't I, searching for Jo, falling in love with you? and I'm about to disappear into the darkness again."

"It'll soon be over now."

"Do you really think so?"

"Yes. The police will deal with it and, God, they'll want to get it right this time. You can just lie low for a few days, here with me, and then the nightmare will be over. I'm sure of it. You'll be off your wheel."

Twenty-four

Ben was at work and I was in his shower in the middle of the morning. That was one of the many good bits about Ben's house. It was modern and technological and things functioned in a way I had hardly even imagined before. The so-called shower at Terry's was like a dripping tap six feet above the bath. You stood under it and it drip-drip-dripped on to you. Even when the water was hot, the drops got cold on the way down. Ben's shower, on the other hand, was a real machine, with an apparently inexhaustible supply of hot water and the power and concentration of a fire hose. And it wasn't in the bath. It had an entire space to itself with a door. I crouched in a corner and I imagined that I was on a planet that was perpetually bombarded with hot rain. Of course, such a planet would have had its disadvantages when you wanted to eat or sleep or read a book, but just then it felt fine. A jet of hot water hitting my head with considerable force was a good way of stopping myself thinking.

I'd like to have stayed in there until spring, or until the man was caught, but I finally switched off the shower and dried myself with the slowness and attention to detail of a woman without a pressing appointment. I wandered through to Ben's bedroom and dressed myself largely in his clothes: tracksuit bottoms and a floppy blue T-shirt many sizes too big for me. And some huge football socks and a pair of slippers I found in the back of his cupboard. In the kitchen I boiled the kettle and made half a pot of coffee for myself.

One day I was going to have to start thinking about taking my career out of its current state of abeyance, but that could wait. Everything could wait.

I drank my coffee then made some half-hearted attempts at cleaning and tidying. I didn't know Ben's house well enough to do much. I didn't know what implement went into which drawer or on which hook and I wasn't keen enough to scrub the floor or anything extreme like that so I contented myself with doing the dishes, wiping surfaces, straightening out the duvet and generally putting things in neat piles. Even that took less than an hour and left me with an empty day stretching out until Ben came back. I had a chance to spend time in the way I'd always planned to but never had the time. I could flop on a sofa and drink coffee and listen to music and read and be a woman of leisure.

Women of leisure wouldn't listen to the jangly pop music that made up the bulk of my own collection. They would want something more sophisticated. I browsed through Ben's CDs until I found something that looked jazzy and mellow. I put it on. It sounded very grown-up. More like a soundtrack than something you would actually listen to, but that was fine. I was going to be reading and sipping coffee and I just wanted something in the background. The problem with having an entire day of leisure was settling on a particular book to read. I wasn't in the mood to tackle a proper serious book and there was no point in starting a big fat thriller. In fact, as I took books out of the shelves and inspected them, it quickly became clear that I wasn't quite in the mood to be an authentic woman of leisure. Despite my long shower and my empty schedule, I was still very agitated. I couldn't concentrate on anything. I couldn't stop thinking about the one thing I wanted to avoid.

Ben had a stack of photography books and I sat flicking through them, unable to settle on one in particular. I lasted the longest with a collection of photographs from the nineteenth century. There were exotic landscapes and dramatic events, battles and revolutions and disasters, but what I looked at were the faces. There were men and women and children. Some were distracted, terrified. Others were celebrating at fairs and fiestas. Sometimes a face would look round at the camera with a conspiratorial smile.

That was what struck me most. The strangeness of those faces. I thought, and I couldn't stop thinking, that all of those people, the beautiful and the ugly, the rich and the poor, the lucky and the benighted, the evil and the virtuous, the religious and the godless,

now had one thing in common: they were dead. Each of them, singly, utterly alone, in a street or on a battlefield or in a bed, had died. All of the people in that world were gone. I thought about that but I didn't just think about it. I felt it like toothache. This was part of what I had to get over. I looked at the higher shelves at the spines of the smaller books, which wouldn't have any pictures in them. Poetry. That was what I needed. I've probably only read about eight poems in the years since I left school but I suddenly felt the need to read a poem. It would also have the extra advantage of being short.

Ben obviously wasn't much of a poetry reader either but there were a few of the sort of anthologies that grandparents and godparents give you when all inspiration fails. Most of them looked too much like textbooks for me or else they were poems on subjects that didn't interest me, like the countryside or the sea or nature in general. But then my eye fell on a volume called Poems of Longing and Loss, and even though I felt like an alcoholic reaching for a bottle of vodka, I couldn't resist it. I sat with my coffee and dipped into the book. I was hardly aware of tracing the meaning of individual poems. Instead, there was a blur of grief and regret and absence and grey landscapes. It was like being at a party of depress-ives, but in a good way. Trying to pretend that I was happy and relaxed had been a mistake. It was much better to find that there were other lost souls who felt the way I did. I was among friends, and after a while I found I was smiling with recognition.

I liked the book and turned to the beginning to see who had compiled this wonderfully bleak anthology and I saw that a message had been scrawled on the title page. I experienced the tiniest flash of an impulse that it was wrong to read the message. I ignored it. It wasn't as if I had rifled through Ben's desk and found his diary or some old love letters. An inscription in a book is like a postcard that has been pinned to a wall. Even if it's addressed to a single person, it's still a sort of public declaration. At least, that's what I told myself in that fraction of a second, and when I saw the first three words of the inscription, which were "Dearest darling Ben', I began to suspect that this wasn't really a public declaration but by that time I was reading it and this is what I read: "Dearest darling Ben. Here are some sad words which are better at saying what I feel than I am myself. I am so so sorry about all this and you are probably right but I feel torn apart and terrible in different ways. And this is a hell of a message to write in a book. All of my love, Jo." It was dated November 2001.

And there wasn't even the tiniest bit of me that even tried to believe that this could be some other Jo. I had been living in Jo's flat for days and her writing was all over the place, on shopping lists, memos, on the covers of videos, and I knew it almost as well as I knew my own. I felt scalding hot all through my body, through my hands and my feet, and then I shivered uncontrollably. Fucking Ben. Fucking fucking Ben. He'd told me all about that bloody Leah. He'd been all sensitive about that relationship and how beautiful she'd been and everything, and he'd just omitted to mention the minor little detail that after he'd split up with her he just happened to have been fucking the woman whose flat I was living in, the woman who just happened to have disappeared. I thought of him casually ringing her doorbell. They were friends, it was no big deal. We had spent huge amounts of time wondering where Jo was. Or, at least, I had been wondering. What had he been thinking? I feverishly went over conversations I had had with him. What had he said about her? He had fucked her in the same bed that he had fucked me. He hadn't thought to mention it. But, then, he hadn't mentioned to me that he had already fucked me. What other secrets did he have?

I tried to think of the innocent reasons he might have had for not telling me. He didn't want to upset me. It might have been awkward. But the other reasons kept intruding. I needed to think about this. I needed to sort it out in my head. But not here. I was starting to tell myself different stories in my head, and all of them definitely required that I get out of Ben's house as soon as possible. I looked at my watch. The day didn't seem so long any more. I ran into his bedroom and took my clothes off his clothes as if they were contaminated. I started to mutter to myself like a madwoman. I wasn't sure I could get it to make sense but the one thing that Jo and I had in common was that we had been sexually involved with Ben. There was no doubt about that. Not only-that, we had both been sexually involved with him just before we disappeared. I quickly pulled on my own clothes. I just couldn't get it to make sense. I had to think about it somewhere else, somewhere safe and quiet. Because I wasn't safe here any more. The quietness of the house closed round me.

Once I was dressed I moved quickly around the flat retrieving what I absolutely needed. Shoes, bag, sweater, purse, my horrible warm red jacket. What was he playing at with me? He'd lied to me, or sort of lied, or omitted to tell the full truth, and I wasn't going to sit here and wait for him to come home. I tried to remember that voice out of the dark. I'd heard Ben's voice in the dark as well, next to me in bed, murmuring in my ear, groaning, telling me he adored me. Could it be the same voice?

I ran over to Ben's desk and started rummaging through the drawers. I pushed files and notebooks aside impatiently until I found what I was after. A strip of passport-sized photographs of Ben. I contemplated it for a moment. Oh, God, he was a handsome man. I had asked whether people had seen Jo. But I had never asked had never thought to ask whether they had seen Ben. I had been tracking myself tracking Jo. I might consider tracking Ben. I hesitated, then picked up his mobile phone. I needed it more than he did. I opened his front door and before leaving I turned and looked back, as if to say goodbye to a place where I had been briefly happy.

I couldn't rely on anyone now. I had to be quick. I was running out of safe places.

Twenty-five

I was running. Running down the road, bitter wind on my cheeks and my feet slipping on the icy pavement. Where was I going? I didn't know, I just knew I was going, leaving, moving on to somewhere else, something else. I'd closed the door on the warm house that smelt of sawdust and I hadn't even taken a key. I was on my own again, out here in the winter weather. It occurred to me that I was very visible, in my red jacket, but the thought flitted vaguely through my head like a snowflake then melted. I just kept running, my heart thumping in my chest and my breath coming in gasps, and the houses and trees and cars and the faces of other people were a blur.

At the bottom of the road I forced myself to stop and look around. My heart slowed down. Nobody seemed to be taking any notice of me, though you never know. Think, Abbie, I told myself; think now. Think for your life. But I couldn't think, not at first. I could only feel and see. I saw pictures in my head. Ben and Jo together, holding each other. I closed my eyes and saw darkness, and it felt like the darkness of my lost time, folding around me again. Eyes in the pitch black; eyes watching Jo, watching me. A butterfly on a green leaf, a tree on a hill, a shallow stream, then clear deep water. I opened my eyes and the harsh grey world came back into focus.

I started moving again, walking this time, not really knowing where I was going. I walked past the park and down the bill. I walked towards Jo's flat, though I knew I mustn't go there. On the main road, which was full of traffic and lined with shops selling pastries, hats, candles, fish, I saw Jo's face. I blinked and stared and of course it wasn't her. It was just a woman, going about her day, with no sense of how blessed she was.

I knew I had traced Jo to within the last couple of hours of her freedom, Wednesday afternoon, and she'd been looking for a kitten. She had disappeared on a Wednesday afternoon, and the next day I too had gone. After all this time of blundering around chasing for clues, that was all I had. A pathetic shred.

I turned on my track and went down the high street and left on to a road that led to Lewin Crescent. I walked up the narrow street until I came to the dingy house with its boarded-up windows and knocked on the door. I listened and I could hear miaows; I even thought I caught a faint whiff of urine. Then I heard shuffling footsteps on the other side of the door. The door opened a chink on its chain and her eyes peered suspiciously out at me. "Yes?"

"Betty?"

"Yes?"

"It's Abbie. I came to see you two days ago. I asked you about my friend."

"Yes?" she said again.

"Can I come in?"

The chain slid and the door opened. I stepped into the hot, stale room, with its moving carpet of cats. The smell caught in my nostrils. Betty was wearing the same blue shift with its missing buttons and covering of cat hairs, and the same ratty slippers and thick brown tights. I thought at least some of the ammonia smell came from her. She was so thin that her arms were like sticks and her fingers twigs. Her skin gathered in pouches on her small face.

"So it's you again. Can't keep away, can you?"

"There was something I forgot to ask you."

"What?"

"You said you'd seen my friend? Jo?" She didn't answer. "The one who came about having a kitten and you said she couldn't have one because .. ."

"I know who you mean," she said.

"I didn't ask about the man I was with. Hang on." I fumbled in my bag and took out the strip of passport photos of Ben. "Him."

She glanced briefly down. "Well?"

"Do you recognize him?"

"I think so."

"No, I mean, did you recognize him? Before."

"You're a very confused young lady," she said. She held out a hand to the ginger cat that was butting against her legs and it leapt up and nuzzled its chin against her fingers, purring like a tractor.

"What I want to know is, had you seen him before he came here with me?"

"Before?"

"Have you seen this man more than the once?" I asked desperately.

"When did I see him?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"I mean, yes, when did you see him?" I was starting to feel slightly sick.

"I said that to you. I said, when did I see him? "Yes" isn't an answer."

I rubbed my eyes. "I just wanted to know if you'd seen him before two days ago. That's all."

"All sorts of people come here. Is he from the council?"

"No, he's-'

"Because if he's from the council, I won't let him into my house."

"He's not from the council."

"Cats are naturally clean animals, you know."

"Yes," I said dully.

"And some people think it's not nice, the way they hunt. But it's just their nature."

"I know."

"I don't give my kitties to homes where they're allowed to go outside. That's what I told your friend. When she said she'd let a cat outside, I told her it wasn't a fit place. It would just get run over."

"Yes. Thank you. I'm sorry to have bothered you." I turned to go "Not like the hippie lot, mind."

"The hippie lot?"

"Yes. They don't make proper checks." She sniffed disapprovingly.

"These, um, these hippies have lots of cats, like you?"

"Not like me," she said. "No."

"Did you tell Jo about them?" '"

"Maybe," she said.

"Betty, where do they live?"

I don't know why I felt I was in such a hurry. It was as if I was scared the trail would go cold. I knew where Jo had gone after Betty's or, at least, I knew where she might have gone, and that was enough for me. Now I was in the final hour or two of her final day. Everything else had faded and all I could see was her receding shape and I was stumbling along in her footsteps. But who was coming behind me? Who was following me?

Betty had called them hippies, but I guessed from what she'd said about them their dread locked hair and patched clothes that they were New Age travellers. She had told me that they lived in an abandoned church over in Islington, and I prayed that they hadn't moved on. I jogged back to the high street and flagged down a taxi. Because I didn't know the exact address although I knew the general area, I told the woman driver to take me to the Angel. I could walk from there. I kept glancing over my shoulder. I kept looking for a face I'd seen before. I saw nobody, but still the sickening sense remained that I didn't have much time left. I sat on the edge of my seat, impatient with traffic jams and red lights.

It was starting to get dark by the time we reached the Angel -or, at least, the colour was draining from the day. I had lost all track of time and I couldn't even think what day it was. It was a weekday, I knew that. Most people were at work, sitting in heated offices, drinking coffee from vending machines, having meetings that they liked to think were important. I paid the driver and got out, side-stepping a half-frozen puddle. Out of the low, dulling sky a few flakes of snow fell. I pulled up the collar of my jacket and started walking.

Some of the church had been painted in primary colours, and there was an asymmetrical rainbow over the large wooden-ribbed door. A rusty pink-sprayed bicycle leant against the wall, beside an , old pram full of wood and another full of tin cans. By the side of the church was a van decorated with swirls and flowers, and with blinds drawn down over all of its windows. A large, dun-coloured dog was nosing its tyres.

I lifted the knocker and let it fall with a heavy rap on to the door, which was already open a crack.

"Just push and come in," shouted a female voice.

The interior of the church was dim and hazy with smoke from a fire burning on the floor, in a makeshift fireplace of bricks. Round it a group of people sat or squatted, wrapped in blankets or coiled in sleeping-bags. One was holding a guitar, although he was making no attempt to play it. I saw the shapes of other figures towards the back of the church, where there were still a few pews. There were mattresses and bags over the floor. A great crack ran down the stained-glass window.

"Hi," I said uncertainly. "Sorry to butt in."

"You're welcome here," said a woman with cropped hair and studs in her eyebrow, nose, lips and chin. She leant forward and thick copper bangles cascaded down her arm.

"I'm Abbie," I said, and shook her mittened hand. "I just wanted to ask .. ."

"Well, we know you're Abbie at least, I do. Some of us haven't been here for more than a few days. I'm Crystal remember? You've cut your hair, haven't you? Anyway, sit down," said Crystal. "Do you want tea? Boby's just made some. Boby! Another tea -we've got a visitor. You don't take sugar, do you? See, I always remember."

Boby came over with mud-coloured tea in a pewter mug. He was small and skinny and had a white, nervous face. His combat trousers hung off him and his neck looked thin in the chunky knit of his sweater.

"Thanks," I said. "I've been here before, have I?"

"We've got some beans spare. Do you want some?"

"I'm fine," I said. "Thanks."

The man with the guitar ran his fingers over the neck of the instrument to produce a few broken chords. He grinned at me and I saw that his mouth was full of black, broken teeth. "I'm Ramsay,"

he said. "Ram for short. I came yesterday from the bypass protest. My first night for weeks on the solid ground. Where've you come from?"

I realized I looked like a runaway. I'd become one of them. I didn't have to struggle to make sense here. I slid down by the fire and took a gulp of my tepid, bitter tea. The smoke from the fire stung my eyes.

"I don't know where I've come from, really," I said. "But Betty told me about you lot."

"Betty?"

"The old woman with all the cats," said Crystal. "You told us about her last time."

I nodded, feeling oddly peaceful. The fight had gone out of me. Perhaps it wouldn't matter, being dead. "I probably did," I said. "I probably asked you about my friend Jo."

"That's right. Jo."

"I asked if she'd come here."

"D'you want a roll-up?" said Boby.

"All right," I said. I took the thin cigarette that he held out and Ram lit it for me. I inhaled and coughed. Nausea swept over me. I took another drag. "Did she come here?"

"Yup," said Crystal. She looked at me. "Are you OK?"

"Yes."

"Here. Have some beans." She picked up one of the tins of baked beans that was by the fire, stuck in a plastic spoon and handed it over. I took a mouthful: disgusting. Then another. I sucked on the roll-up and pulled acrid smoke into my lungs.

"Great," I said. "Thanks. So Jo came here, did she?"

"Yeah. But I told you."

"I can't remember things," I said.

"I get like that too," said Ram, and made another stab at a chord. A man opened the door of the church and came in pushing the pram. He tossed some more wood on the fire then bent over and kissed Crystal. They kissed for a long time.

"So she came here looking for a kitten?" I said finally.

"Because that crazy Betty thinks we keep cats here."

"Don't you?"

"Can you see cats?"

"No."

"I mean, we have had a few strays, because we give them milk and food. And some of us were in a raid that released cats from a laboratory the other month."

"I dunno how she heard about us, though."

"Nor do I," I said. "So did she just go away?"

"Jo?"

"Yes."

"She gave us some money for our projects. A fiver, I think."

"And that was it?"

Tup."

"Oh, well," I said. I looked around. Perhaps I could join them and become a traveller and eat baked beans and sleep on stone floors and up trees and make roll-ups until my fingers were stained yellow. That would be different from designing offices.

"Except I said she could always try Arnold Slater."

"Arnold Slater?"

"He's the man we gave some of the strays to. When the dogs started chasing them. He's in a wheelchair but he looks after them anyway."

"So did she go there?"

"She said she might. So did you last time, I mean. Weird, eh? Like deje vu. Do you believe in deje vm?"

"Of course. Round and round and round I go," I said. I threw the end of the roll-up into the fire and drained my tea. "Thanks," I said. I turned suddenly to Boby. "You have a big tattoo of a spider, don't you?"

He blushed violently then pulled up his thick jumper and on his flat white stomach was a tattooed web that stretched out of sight round his back. "There," he said.

"But where's the spider gone?" I asked.

"That's what you said before."

"Clearly I'm a very consistent person," I said.

It was really dark when I left the church, even though it wasn't evening yet. I could make out the ghost of a moon behind the clouds. Arnold Slater lived two minutes from here and he was old and in a wheelchair and Jo had thought she might go to see him and I had thought I might follow Jo and go to see him ... I stepped out into the road, and at that moment the mobile I'd grabbed as I left Ben's started to ring, making me jump violently. Backing on to the pavement, I put my hand in my pocket and pulled it out. Without thinking, I pressed the 'call' button.

"Hello?" I said.

"Abbie! Where the fuck are you, Abbie? What are you up to? I've been out of my mind worrying. I've been calling the house all day and you didn't reply so I came back and you weren't here

"Ben," I said.

"So I waited and waited. I thought you might have gone to the shops or something, and then I saw my mobile wasn't on the charger any longer, so I rang it on the off-chance. When are you coming home?"

"Home?"

"Abbie, when are you coming back?"

"I'm not coming back," I said.

"What?"

"You and Jo. I know about Jo. I know you were with her."

"Listen to me now, Abbie -'

"Why didn't you tell me? Why, Ben?"

"I was scared that'

"You were scared," I said. "You."

"Christ, Abbie -' he said, but I pressed the off-button. I held the phone cradled in my hand and stared down at it as if it could bite. Then I scrolled down the names in its memory bank. I didn't know any of them until I came to Jo Hooper. I recognized the number, because it belonged to her flat. But then there was another Jo Hooper (mobile). I pressed 'call' and heard the sound of ringing and just as I was about to give up, someone said, "Hello," in a whisper. So quiet I could hardly hear and, anyway, whispers in the dark all sound the same.

I didn't say a word. I stood with the mobile pressed to my cheek. I tried not to breathe. I heard him breathing very softly. In and out, in and out. There was a coldness in my veins. I closed my eyes and listened. He didn't say anything else. I had the strongest feeling that he knew it was me, and that he knew I knew it was him. I could feel him smiling.

Twenty-six

I felt that I was in a dream running down a slope that was becoming steeper and steeper so that I was unable to stop. There was nothing in the street that I recognized not the stunted tree with a broken branch flapping down, not the huge wooden buttresses propping up one ramshackle stretch of houses. There was just a smell about it. I had the impression of footsteps sounding ahead of me. Jo's. My own. If I moved more quickly, I would catch them.

I'd written Arnold Slater's number on the back of my hand. Twelve. The far end of this insalubrious street. But I was going to the house of an old man in a wheelchair. He couldn't be the one. I wouldn't have stopped anyway, now that I was almost scraping at Jo's heels. I thought of her walking along this street, impatient. Could it be so difficult to get a bloody cat? The street was the familiar mixture of the restored, the abandoned and the neglected. Number twelve wasn't so bad. It must have been owned by the council because quite elaborate work had been done to enable a wheelchair to get to the front door. There was a concrete ramp and some heavy-duty handrails. I rang the bell.

Arnold Slater wasn't in his wheelchair. I could see it folded up in the hall behind him. But he was no kind of threat to anyone who could move faster than a tortoise. He was an old man in an outdoor coat, blinking at the daylight and holding the door handle as if for support. He looked at me with a frown. I was trying to remember him. Was he trying to remember me?

"Hello," I said brightly. "Are you Arnold Slater? I've heard that you might have a cat for sale."

"Bloody hell," he said.

"Sorry," I said. "Don't you have cats?"

He shuffled aside to leave a space. "A few," he said, with a throaty chuckle. "Come in."

I looked at his thin, sinewy wrists protruding from his raincoat. I assured myself once more that this man couldn't do me any harm and stepped inside.

"I've got cats," he said. "There's Merry. And Poppy. And Cassie and, look, there's Prospero."

A mustard-coloured shape darted down the hallway and disappeared into the gloom. I suddenly had an image of a secret society, a freemasonry, of cat nuts dotted around London, linked by their obsession like the secret rivers that run beneath London.

"Nice names," I said.

"Cats have their own names," he said. "You've just got to recognize them."

I was in a fever. His words seemed to come from a long way away and take a long time to reach me. I was like someone who was drunk and trying not to show it. I was doing my best possible impersonation of a cheerful young woman who was terribly eager to have a discussion about cats. "Like children, I guess."

He looked offended. "They're not like children. Not like my children. These ones can look after themselves."

My head was buzzing and I was moving from one foot to another in impatience. "I was sent by the people in the church. They said you had cats for sale."

Another scratchy laugh, like he had something stuck in his throat. "I don't have cats for sale. Why would I want to sell a cat? Why do people keep thinking that?"

"That's part of what I wanted to talk to you about. Have you had other people coming here wanting to buy cats from you?"

"They're mad. I've taken the odd cat off their hands and then they send people on to me as if I was a pet shop."

"What sort of people?"

"Stupid women wanting a cat."

I forced myself to laugh. "You mean women have been pitching up here trying to buy a cat? How many?"

"A couple of them. I told them both that they weren't for sale."

"That's funny," I said, as casually as I could manage, 'because I think a friend of mine may have been one of the people who was sent to you. Could this be her?" I had been fingering the photograph of Jo in my jacket pocket. Now I took it out-and showed it to Arnold.

Immediately he looked puzzled and suspicious. "What's this? What do you want to know for?"

"I was wondering if she was one of the women who came here looking for a cat."

"What do you want to know for? I thought you wanted a cat. What's all this about? You some sort of police or something?"

My thoughts were scattered all over, I could almost hear my brain humming inside my head. I felt in a rush, escaping something and chasing something both at the same time, and now I had to think of some half-way plausible explanation of what on earth I was up to.

"I'm looking for a cat as well," I said. "I just wanted to make sure I'd come to the same place she had."

"Why don't you ask her?"

I wanted to scream and howl. What did it matter? This wasn't a checkpoint on the Iraqi border. It was a house in Hackney with four mangy cats. I just needed to move on to the next square in the ridiculous game I was playing and he was the only one who could help me. I tried to think. It was so hard. Poor Jo hadn't got her cat here, that was obvious enough.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Slater," I said. "Arnold. I just have this need to get a cat."

"That's what they all say."

"Who?"

"That woman in the picture."

"Thank God," I said to myself.

They've all got to have a cat and they've got to have it today. Can't wait until tomorrow."

"I know the feeling. You get the idea of something in your head, like a hamburger, and you've just got to have one. You won't rest."

"A hamburger?"

"Now, Mr. Slater, if I was to come to you and ask you for a cat, which in fact I have done, and you were to say that yours aren't for sale, as they aren't, what would you recommend? Where would you steer me?" Arnold Slater's attention was still on Jo's photograph. I put it back in my pocket. "Arnold," I said, more quietly and urgently, 'where did you send her?"

"Who was the other one?"

He was looking at me with a keener expression. He may have been starting to remember me. I paused but it was no good. I couldn't think of any possible way of telling him anything like the truth.

"It doesn't matter. It's not a big deal, Arnold. It's only a cat. I just want to know where you sent them."

"There's pet shops," he said. "Ads in the paper. That's the best way."

"Oh," I said. Was this it? The blind alley.

"I just sent them round the corner."

I bit my lip and tried to stay calm as if it was all terribly unimportant. "That sounds good," I said. "Did you hear back from her?"

"I just sent her on."

"So she probably got her cat, then."

"I dunno. I didn't hear back."

"So it sounds like the place for me," I said. "Sounds like a good place for cats."

"I dunno about that," he said. "It's just a place round the corner. They sell all different stuff. Christmas trees at Christmas. I bought logs there for my fire. He dropped them round. He had some kittens. I didn't know if they'd gone."

"What's its name, Arnold?"

"Hasn't got a name. It was a greengrocer's and then they put up the rent and then it was different shops, and then it was Vic Murphy."

"Vic Murphy," I said.

"That's right. I sent them to Vic. But the shop still says Greengrocer's on the sign. Well, not Greengrocer's. Buckley's Fruit and Vegetables."

"How do I get there?"

"It's just a couple of minutes' walk."

But it took more than a couple of minutes for Arnold to explain the route to me and then I left him there with his cats and his baffled expression. He must have still been thinking about the photograph and wondering what on earth I was up to. I glanced at my watch. It was just after six thirty. I wouldn't do anything reckless. I would just go and have a look from a safe distance. I looked like a different person. It would be fine. Still, I found it difficult to breathe. My chest felt tight.

To get there, I had to walk up a long, dull street, full of houses that had been boarded up. I knew the street. At first I thought a part of my lost memory was returning, but then I saw the street sign. Tilbury Road. It was from here that my car had been towed away. I walked in a daze of dread and unreality.

It was a row of shabby shops in a mainly residential street. There was a launderette, a food shop with vegetables and fruit on racks outside, a betting shop and the Buckley's Fruit and Vegetables shop. It was closed. Very closed. Green metal shutters were pulled down in front of it and looked as if they hadn't been opened for weeks. Posters had been plastered on it and names and insignia sprayed across. I stepped close up and pushed uselessly against it. There was a letter-box. I looked through and I could see a large pile of mail inside on the floor. I walked into the food shop next door. Behind the counter were two Asian men. The younger of them was filling the cigarette rack. The other was older, white-bearded, reading the evening newspaper.

"I'm looking for Vic Murphy," I said to him.

He shook his head. "Don't know him," he said.

"He used to run the shop next door. The one selling logs and Christmas trees."

The man gave a shrug. "He's gone. Shut up."

"Do you know where?"

"No. It's a rubbish shop. Different people come but they all end up closing down."

"It's really important I find Vic Murphy," I said.

The men grinned at each other. "Owe you money?"

"No," I said.

"I think he went without paying a few bills. A few of them came round after him. But he was long gone."

"So there's no way of tracking him down?"

Another shrug. "Not unless you want to ask the bloke who moved his stuff for him."

"Who's that?"

That'd be George."

"Have you got his number?"

"No. I know where he lives, though."

"Can you tell me?"

"Baylham Road. Number thirty-nine, I reckon."

"What was Vic Murphy like?"

"Pretty weird," the man said. "But you've got to be pretty weird to run a shop there. I mean, logs and Christmas trees. I reckon he just got a batch of logs and wanted to flog them and move on."

"Did he have any cats?"

"Cats?"

"I want to buy a cat."

"You want a pet shop, love."

"I heard that Vic Murphy sold cats."

"I don't know. He may have had a cat. There's always cats around. But you never know who they belong to, do you?"

"I've never really thought about it," I said.

"They like whoever feeds them, cats."

"Really?" I said.

"Not like dogs. You'd be better off with a dog. A dog's a real friend."

"I'll bear it in mind."

"Protection as well."

"Yes."

"I don't think you'll get your money back."

"What?"

"From that Vic Murphy."

"I already told you, he doesn't owe me money."

"That's what the other one said. They say they're friends. Don't want to scare him off."

I took my photograph of Jo out of my pocket.

"Was this girl one of them?" I asked.

The man looked at the picture. "She's a woman," he said.

"That's right."

"They were all men. Except you."

Twenty-seven

I set off once more. People had left their offices now and were trudging home through the cold, dark streets. Men and women with their heads down against the wind, just thinking about being some place warm. I wasn't thinking about anything except getting the address. I knew I was no longer following in Jo's footsteps and my own. At the same time everything had been so tantalizingly close, and I was grimly determined to follow the last lead.

A van roared past, splashing icy mud from the puddles in the road over me. I cursed and wiped the mud from my face. Perhaps I should just go home? Where was home? I'd have to go back to Sadie's. Except I simply couldn't bear the thought of turning up there again, coming full circle and ending up right back at the nightmarish beginning, with nothing achieved except dread, fear, danger, deceit.

I took Ben's mobile out of my pocket and held it for a minute, standing still in the middle of the pavement while people surged round me. I turned it on. There were twelve new messages and I played them back. Three were to Ben, from people I'd never heard of. Eight were from Ben to me, each sounding more frantic than the one before. The eighth just said, "Abbie." That was all. "Abbie." Like someone calling to me from a long way off.

There was another message to me, from Cross. "Abbie," he said, in a stern voice. "Listen to me. I have just spoken to Mr. Brody, who seems very concerned about your whereabouts. Can I suggest to you that, at the very least, you let us know where you are and that you are safe? Please call me as soon as you get this message." There was a pause, then he added: "I'm serious, Abbie. Get in touch. Now."

I turned off the mobile and put it into my pocket. Jack Cross was quite right. I had to call him at once and tell him what I'd discovered.

Across the road was a pub, the Three Kings. It'd be warm in there, full of smoke and laughter and spilt beer and gossip. I'd go quickly to this person with the van, find out the address where Vic Murphy had gone. Then go into the pub, order a drink and some crisps, and call Cross to tell him what I'd found. He could take it from there. I'd call Ben, too. I had to give him his mobile back, at least. And after that .. . but I didn't want to think about what I would do after, because that was like staring across a stretch of dead brown water.

I felt cheered by this decision. An address, then it would be over. But it was so savagely cold. My toes ached with it, my fingers were turning numb, and my face felt tight and raw as if there was grit in the wind, scraping at my skin. The pavement glinted with frost; parked cars were becoming covered with a thin layer of ice. I walked quicker, breath curling up out of my mouth. My nose stung. I could sleep on Sadie's sofa tonight then go flat-hunting in the morning. I had to get a job, begin again. I urgently needed the money and, even more, I needed the sense of purpose and normality. I'd buy an alarm clock tomorrow and set it for seven thirty. I'd have to collect clothes from Ben's, and get Cross to escort me to Jo's flat for the rest of my stuff. My life was scattered in little fragments around London. I had to get it back.

I turned left, up a narrower, darker street. The sky was clear and there was a thin, cold moon and glittering white stars above me. Curtains were closed on the houses I passed, and through them shone the bright lights of other people's lives. I'd done all I could, I thought. I'd searched for Jo and I'd searched for me, and I hadn't found either of us. We were lost and I no longer believed that Cross would find us, but he might find him and I might be safe.

I didn't believe anything any more, not really. I could no longer imagine that I was in peril, or that I'd been grabbed and held in a dark place, and escaped. The remembered time and the lost time seemed to merge in my head. The Ben I'd known and forgotten seemed inseparable from the Ben I'd rediscovered then lost again. The Jo I'd once met and laughed with was gone, gone even from my memory. Everything was as insubstantial as everything else. I

just put one foot in front of the other, because that was what I'd told myself I had to do.

With fingers that felt like frozen claws, I took the instructions out of my pocket and peered at the writing. I took the second turn on the right: Baylham Road, which had speed humps along it, and high privet hedges. The road led up a small hill then down, houses on either side. Lights were on in their front rooms; some had smoke rising from the chimneys, blissful bits of other people's lives. I trudged on.

They'd said at the shop that it was number thirty-nine, which was on the left side of the road, just at the bottom of the rise. From a distance, I could see no lights on and although I hadn't really expected anything my dismal sense of having gone astray increased. I trailed down the hill and stopped in front of number thirty-nine.

It was different from the other houses, because it was set back from the road, and accessible by a rotting double gate, which hung loosely from its hinges and creaked every time the wind gusted. I pushed it open. This was my last task. In a few minutes, I would be through with this; I would have done everything that I could. Inside was a yard, full of iced-up potholes. It was littered with objects that loomed out at me in the darkness a pile of sawdust, a wheelbarrow, a rusty trailer, a stack of rubber tyres, a couple of what looked like storage heaters, a chair, lying on its back with a leg missing. The house was to the left of the yard a two-storey, red-brick building, with a small porch over its front door. There was a broken terra cotta pot in the porch, and a pair of large rubber boots, which for a moment made me hope that the man was in after all. I pressed the bell at the side of the door but couldn't hear the sound of its ring, so I hammered with my fists instead, and waited, stamping my feet to keep the feeling in them. Nothing. No one came. I pressed my ear to the door and listened. I couldn't hear a sound.

So that was the end of that. I turned round again to face the yard, which I looked at properly for the first time. I realized that this was an old stableyard. Under the clear sky, I could just make out the individual horse boxes and, when I looked closer, there were still names written above each doorway in fading capital letters. Spider, Bonnie, Douglas, Bungle, Caspian, Twinkle. But there were no horses here any longer, and obviously hadn't been for a long time. Many of the doors were missing. Instead of straw and manure, I could smell oil, paint, mechanical things. An upper door of one of the horse boxes hung open; inside it was dark, full of objects paint tins, planks, panes of glass. Instead of the whinny and snort of horses, there was thick silence.

Then I heard a sound. I thought it came from the low building at the other side of the yard, opposite the house. Perhaps the landlord was here, after all. I took a few steps in the direction of the sound. I still wasn't scared. Not really.

"Hello?" I called. "Hello, is anyone home?"

Nobody replied. I stood still and listened. I could hear cars in the distance; somewhere music was playing, the faint pulse of its bass quivering in the night air.

"Hello?"

I went across to the building and stood outside, hesitating. It was made of breeze blocks and wood and had no windows. The tall door was held shut by a heavy latch. There was another sound, like a long hum or groan. I held my breath and heard it again.

"Is anyone there?" I called.

I lifted the latch and pushed the heavy door till it swung open enough for me to peer inside. But it was cold and dark almost pitch black, out of the moonshine. There was no one in here, after all, except perhaps an animal. I thought about bats, and mice, and then I thought about rats, always nearby, growing large and bloated on rotten food and dead animals, creeping about under the floorboards, with their sharp yellow teeth and thick tails ... I heard the sound again as the door creaked, blown by the wind.

Gradually I could make out dim shapes inside the building: straw bales heaped up at one end, a machine like an old plough near me. Something indistinguishable at the end. What was it? I edged forward. The door shut behind me and I put out my hands. There was damp straw under my feet now.

"Hello," I said again. My voice sounded small and wavery; it floated in the air. There was a smell in my nostrils now; a smell of shit and piss.

"I'm here," I said. "I'm here." I took a few more steps, on legs that felt as weak as bits of string and weighed down by the boulder of terror in my chest. "Jo?" I said. "Jo? It's me, Abbie."

She was seated on straw bales at the end of the building, just a dark outline in the dark air. I felt for her: thin shoulder beneath my hands. She smelt rank of fear and shit and stale sweat. I put my hands higher and felt the rough fabric where her face should be. She was making small noises through the cloth, and her body jerked at my touch. I put my hand up to her throat and felt the wire there. I felt round her back and there was stiff, cold rope twisted around her wrists and leading back away from her body, towards the wall behind her. When I tugged violently at it, it pulled taut but didn't give. She had been tethered like a horse.

"Ssh," I murmured. "It's OK." A high noise came out of her shrouded face. "Don't struggle, don't do anything. I'll do it. I'll rescue you. Oh, please, please, stay still."

I pulled at the hood. My fingers were shaking so badly that I couldn't do it at first, but eventually I tugged it up, over her head. I couldn't see her face in the darkness and her hair was just a greasy tangle under my fingers. Her cheeks were icy and wet with tears. She kept making the same high-pitched noise, like an animal stuck fast in a trap.

"Sssh," I hissed. "Keep quiet, please, shut up. I'm trying."

I untwisted the wire round her throat. It seemed to be attached from the ceiling or something, so she had to keep her head tilted backwards. Because I couldn't see what I was doing, it took ages, and at first I twisted it in the wrong direction, making it tighter. I could feel the sharp pulse in her throat. I kept whispering that everything would be all right, but we could both hear the hissing terror in my voice.

Her ankles were tied together, rope wound round and round her calves so she was trussed. But this time it was easier than I'd expected. Soon her legs were free, and she kicked out like a drowning person kicks for the surface. Her left foot thumped into my stomach and her right clipped my elbow. I got my arms around her knees like a rugby player and held her. "Sit completely still," I begged. "I'm doing my fucking best."

Next I found the knot behind her back. As far as I could feel, it was absolutely tight. I pulled and tugged uselessly at it, my nails tearing, and it didn't give. I knelt down and dug my teeth into the rope, which tasted oily. I remembered the taste of oil, I remembered the smell of shit and piss that was in the room and on her skin and in my lungs. And the smell of fear. And the way my heart banged against my ribs and my breath came in shattered gasps and bile rose up in my throat and there was darkness in every direction .. .

"Hang on," I said. "I'm going to see if I can untie it from the other end. Don't worry. I'm not going. Please, please, please, don't make that noise. For God's sake."

I followed the rope from her wrists to the wall, where it was tied to what felt like an iron hoop. If only I could see something. I felt in my pocket, in case I might miraculously find matches, a lighter, anything. There was none, but I did bring out my old car keys. I dug the end of the key into the bulge of the knot and worked it in deeper, wriggled it around until I felt the faint creaking give of the rope. My fingers were stiff with cold. At one point I dropped the key and had to scramble around among the straw on the floor to retrieve it, my fingers scraping on the rough surface. She started to make muffled screams inside her gag again and then she half stood up, before collapsing across the bales.

"Shut up," I hissed. "Shut up shut up shut up shut up! Oh, shit, don't tug on the rope like that, it'll only tighten the knot. Keep still! Let the rope go slack. Oh, Christ! Please please please."

I worked away with the key. I could feel the knot loosening, bit by bit, but, oh, God, it took a long time; such a long time. Sweat was gathering on my forehead and turning clammy there. I could just run away, I thought. Now! Run and call for help. Why the fuck didn't I run into the road and stand there howling and screeching for help? I could hammer at doors and flag down every car. I had to leave, at once. I mustn't, mustn't, mustn't be here. The eased further.

Nearly," I gasped. "A few minutes more and you'll be free. Ssssh, please."

Done! I stood up and pulled the gag from her mouth and a terrible wailing sound escaped from her.

"Jo?" I whispered. "Are you Jo?"

"I'm Sarah. Sarah. Help me. Please help me. Oh God, oh God, oh God, godgodgodgod."

I felt winded with disappointment, except there was no time for that now. No time for anything except flight.

"Get up!" I said, grabbing her by the forearm.

She half rose, falling against me in her weakness.

"Listen! What's that?" I gasped.

Someone was outside. There were footsteps in the yard. The clank of something metal in the distance.

I shoved Sarah down on the bales. I stuffed the gag back in her mouth, stifling the gurgling sound that she was making. She started struggling, but feebly.

"Sarah! Our only chance. Let me. Fucking let me. I'm here, Sarah. I'll save you. All right?"

Her eyes flickered at me, terrified. I found the wire dangling above me like a giant spider's thread, and pulled it over her head, pulling it tighter. The footsteps were coming nearer. I wrapped the rope clumsily round her legs. The wrists. I had to find the rope. I bent down and swam my hands over the gritty floor until I picked it up. Now the footsteps were getting nearer. A wheezy cough. There was a scream burning in the back of my throat and I swallowed it back. Nausea. Blood hammering in my eardrums. I felt for the hood on the floor and then the bales beside the seated, shuddering figure, and when I found it, I jammed it back over her head roughly, feeling her neck jerk.

"Wait," I hissed, and hurtled over to the other side of the room, behind a metal object that ripped my shin, my heart like a violent drum beat he would surely hear, my breath like sobs that he had to hear, as soon as he lifted the latch, opened the door, came inside.

Twenty-eight

I had retreated into a corner right at the back, away from the door. I was deep in the shadow, behind an incomprehensible, rusting machine, an assembly of wheels and cogs and bolts, connected to nothing. Even if he looked in my direction he probably wouldn't be able to see me. Probably. That was the difficult word. I shuffled back as far as I could. I felt the chill damp of the wall on my neck, on my scalp through my short hair. And now he was there. I had found him by accident. I felt a plunging, plummeting sensation of nausea as I fell back into my nightmare.

And then, as I saw him, my first feeling was: there must be a mistake. When he had been a voice out of the darkness, I had thought of him as huge and powerful, a monster. He had been the foul god who was going to punish me and reward me and feed me and starve me and decide whether I lived or died.

Now I saw flashes of him as he caught the light. Just a detail here and there, a rough coat, and straggled, greying hair, combed across his balding head. I could hardly see his face at all. It was largely covered by a flowery woman's scarf. To a stranger it might have looked like a protection against dust. But I knew what it was. It was to disguise his voice. He came in muttering to himself, carrying a galvanized bucket, which he tossed on the floor with a clatter. I couldn't connect my memories with this shambling, down-at-heel, insignificant man. He looked like the person you don't notice who has come to clean the windows or sweep the floor. He talked to Sarah as if she were a slightly troublesome pig that needed mucking out.

"How are you doing?" he said, arranging things around her in ways I couldn't see. "Sorry I've been away a bit. Been busy. But I'll be here for a bit now. I've made time for you."

He walked out and for a wild moment I considered flight. But almost at once, he returned with something that he placed on the ground with a clatter. It might have been a tool-box. He came and went, came and went, carrying and hauling in objects from the yard outside. Most of them were hidden in the gloom but I caught sight of an unlit lantern, a blow-torch and some empty vinyl bags, the sort that people carry their sports kit in. And all I could do was crouch in the darkness, trying not to move, not to breathe. The straw rustled against my foot when I shifted position. I gulped when I swallowed. Surely he could hear the thunder of my heart, the rush of my blood, the scream in my throat?

During one of his brief absences I reached into my pocket and my fingers closed around Ben's mobile phone. Softly, oh, so slowly, I took it out and brought it close to my face. I wrapped my fingers around it and pressed a button to illuminate the tiny screen. There was the tiniest of beeps. It sounded like the ringing of a bell. Had he heard it? There was no chance of talking but could I send a text message or just dial 999? I looked at the screen. How could he not see that light in the darkness? Up the right-hand side of the screen there were three broken lines, which showed that the battery was almost full. On the left-hand side there should have been what looked like four flowers, or goblets, on top of each other to indicate the strength of reception. But there was one, indicating no reception at all. There was no chance. I couldn't make a call and I couldn't receive a call. I slipped the phone back into my pocket.

I wanted to cry and curse and scratch my fingernails on the stone. As soon as I had seen Sarah, I should have got out and called for help. It would have been so simple. Instead, I had followed myself back into the trap. I was cursed and blighted. I looked across at him, silhouetted against the faint light from the space outside.

I went over options in my mind. I could make a run for the door and try to escape and bring help. That was completely hopeless. He was by the door. Even with the advantage of surprise, I would have no chance. I could attack him, smash him over the head, knock him out. Could I get to him without him hearing? Could I take him by surprise? It didn't seem likely. No, my only chance was to wait and hope he would leave and I would have my chance.

The thought of that, of having to stay silent in the shadows, made me want to lie on the cold floor and weep.-I felt so very tired. I wanted to sleep. Perhaps I didn't want to die, but I was close to wanting to be dead. At least the dead are cut off from pain and fear. What was the point of even fighting against it?

And then, almost without realizing it, I started to feel different. Looking at him bustling casually around with that poor girl trussed up on the straw bales, I began to feel that I was looking at myself. I remembered those days when I had been the one with the wire around my neck and the hood over my face. I had been there, with my toes over the edge of the abyss, waiting to be slaughtered, and I remembered what I had felt. I had given up all hope of surviving. What I had prayed for was a chance to go for him, tear an eye out, scratch him, just do some sort of damage to him, before I died. Now I had been given that opportunity. I couldn't defeat him. That was too much to ask. But if he found me, at least I would do him some damage. I needed something. I felt a small whimper of regret. I would have given everything I had ever owned for a kitchen knife or an aerosol spray. Then I made myself not mind about that. I was here. I had nothing. Anything I could put in my hand would be something.

I crouched and started to feel around me in the darkness, very delicately, praying that I wouldn't knock anything over. My right hand touched something cold. A tin, by its size a paint tin. I pushed at it experimentally. It was empty, useless to me. Next to it my fingers closed around a handle. This was more promising but it turned out to be a paint brush with stiff, clogged bristles. There was nothing. No chisel. No screwdriver. No steel pole. Nothing I could hold. I stood up again, feeling my knees creak. How could he not hear that? I just had to wait until he had gone. Then I could go outside and call the police. Release Sarah.

The man was arranging things. I couldn't make out exactly what he was doing but I could hear him muttering lightly to himself. He reminded me of my father at the weekend, the only happy part of his life, when he would be repairing the fence in the garden, painting a window-frame, putting up a bookshelf.

The man was unfastening the wire around Sarah's neck. Oh, yes, the bucket. The hooded figure was pulled forward, her trousers tugged down, she crouched over the bucket, his hands around her neck. I heard the splashing in the bucket.

"Well done, my beauty," he murmured, pulling her trousers back up.

With the casualness of long practice, he refastened the wire around her neck until she was helpless once more, but there was a tenderness about it. He seemed to like her more than he had liked me. He had never called me his beauty. The language had always been hostile. He had always been breaking me down.

"You've slimmed down," he said. "I think we're ready. You're lovely, Sarah. Lovely. Not like all of them."

He stood back, in contemplation of her. I heard a metallic rasping sound and a flicker of light. He had lit the lantern. Light was splashed across the room and I shrank back behind the machinery. He examined Sarah with approving murmurs, feeling her naked arms, running his fingers along them, the way you might feel a horse to check if its fever had subsided. He laid the lantern on the floor. He lifted his arms, with his hands behind his head. He looked like someone who was newly awake, yawning and stretching and then I saw he was unfastening his scarf. It required some complicated tugging and fiddling with the tight knot and then he pulled the scarf away and there, for the first time, in the shifting orange light of the lantern, I saw his face.

It meant nothing to me. I didn't recognize it. I didn't know him. And, suddenly and strangely, it was as if a small turn had been made to the dial and everything had come into focus. The edges were sharp and hard, even in that flickering lantern light. My fever had gone. Even my fear had gone. What I had wanted was to know, and now I knew. Even my thoughts were clear now, and hard-edged. I didn't remember. My memory had not been restored. The sight of his drab face provoked no shock of recognition. But I knew what I needed to know.

I'd thought it was about me. There I had been in my fucked-up life, my stupid job and my disastrous relationship, and I had thought and fantasized and feared that he that man over there had recognized it in me. I had been heading for -disaster and I had brought it willingly on myself. He had recognized it in me and we had been made for each other, needed each other. I had wanted to be destroyed.

Now I knew that this wasn't true. Maybe I had been careless, frantic, deranged, but I had blundered into his path. Not even that. I could never know for sure, but I guessed that it was Jo who had encountered him, eager, vulnerable, desperate, a perfect victim for him. I had been concerned for Jo and had followed in her footsteps and encountered him in turn. That pathetic loser over there had nothing to do with my life. He was the meteor that had fallen on me. He was the earthquake that had opened up under my feet. And that was the funny thing. There, cowering in the darkness and knowing I was trapped, I felt free of him.

I couldn't remember what had happened. I would never be able to. But now I sort of knew what had happened those weeks ago. I'd been out there, in the land of the living, and then by mistake I had wandered into his territory, into his hobby. What do they say about a fight? I had read or heard or been told that the winner was the person who struck the first blow. I think I could guess what must have happened. I was looking for Jo. This man, this unmemorable man, was part of the background, part of the furniture. Suddenly he had leapt into the foreground. He'd pulled me out of my world into his world. It had nothing to do with my world except that I was going to die in it. I imagined myself being taken by surprise by this man I had hardly noticed and fighting back too late, my head banged against the wall, or clubbed.

I made myself think: If he sees me, what will I do? I made myself remember what he had done to me. All the terrible memories that I had spent weeks trying to suppress I now dragged out to the forefront of my mind. They were like a terrible inflamed, rotting, infected tooth around which I pushed my tongue as hard as I could to remind myself of what pain could be like. And then I looked at that man, fussing around Sarah, as if she were a sheep being crammed into a stall, slapping at her, muttering endearments,

setting out tools in preparation. He was both the patient, fussing lover and the busy, dispassionate slaughter man

There was apparently some resistance from her because he cuffed her lightly.

"What's that, my love?" he said. There must have been some sort of groan from inside the hood, but I couldn't hear it. "Am I hurting you? What? What is it? Hang on a moment, love."

I heard his breathing, oh, yes, I remembered that hoarse breathing, as he struggled to release the gag.

"What's this?" he said. "You been trying to get free."

She coughed as she was released from the gag, coughed and heaved.

"There, there, my darling, mind your neck now."

"I was choking," she said. "I thought I was going to die."

"Is that all?"

"No, no."

A suspicion started to spread in me like a stain. I knew what was going to happen now and I wasn't afraid. I had died already. It didn't matter.

"So what is it?"

"I don't want to die," she said. "I'll do anything to stay alive."

"You stupid little bitch. I've told you. I don't want anything. They didn't pay the ransom. Did I tell you that? They didn't pay the ransom. You know why? "Cause I didn't ask for one. Hur hur hur." He laughed at his own joke.

"If I told you something. Something really important. Would you let me live?"

"Like what?"

"But would you?"

There was a few seconds' silence now. He was troubled.

"Tell me first," he said in a softer tone.

Sarah didn't speak. She just gave a sob.

"Fucking tell me."

"Do you promise? Do you promise to let me live?"

"Tell me first," he said. "Then I'll let you go."

A long pause. I could count Sarah's gasps as I waited for what I knew she was going to say.

"There's someone here. Now let me go."

"What the fuck?"

He stood up and looked around at the very moment that I stepped forward towards him, out of the shadow. I had thought of flying at him but that would be no good. He was almost ten yards away. He had too much time. I looked beyond him at the doorway. It might as well have been on the moon. He narrowed his eyes with the effort of making me out in the shadow at the back, way away from the door.

"You?" he said, his mouth open in bafflement. "Abbie. How the fuck did you .. . ?"

I took a step towards him. I didn't look at Sarah. I looked him right in the eyes.

"I found you," I said. "I wanted to find you. I couldn't stay away."

"I've been fucking looking for you," he said. He looked around, obviously disconcerted. Was there anybody else here?

"I'm on my own," I said. I held up my hands to him. "Look. I've got nothing."

"What the fuck are you doing here?" he said. "I've got you now. You fucking got away. I've got you."

I smiled. I felt so calm now. Nothing mattered. I thought again of those days in the dark. My tongue pushing at the rotting tooth. Remembering. Reliving.

"What do you mean you've "got me"?" I said. "I've come back. I wanted to come back."

"You'll regret this," he said. "You'll fucking regret this."

I took another step forward. "What do you want with her?" I said. "I was listening to you both." I took another step forward. We were just a few feet apart now. "I heard you calling her your love. I felt that should have been me. Isn't that funny?"

He looked wary again. "It's not funny," he said.

I took another step forward. "I missed you," I said.

"You fucking ran away," he said. &

"I was scared," I said. "But afterwards I thought about it. You understood me. You dominated me. Nobody ever understood me the way you understood me. I want to understand you."

He smiled. "You're mad, you are."

"It doesn't matter," I said. "I'm here. I'm in your hands. There's just one thing." Another step forward. We were quite close now.

"What's that?"

"All that time, when we were together, you were just this voice in the dark, looking after me, feeding me. I used to think about you all the time, wonder what you were like. Will you let me kiss you just once?" I moved my face closer to his. He smelt of something bad. Sweet and chemical. "Just once. It won't matter." Close up, it was such an ordinary face. Nothing frightening about it. Nothing special. "Look at me," I said, holding my hands out, open and empty. "I'm just here, in front of you. Just one touch." As I leant over I thought of him not as a man but as a sheep's head. That was important. I imagined a dead sheep's head that had been cut away from the body. "Just one kiss. We're both lonely. So lonely. Just one." I softly touched his lips with mine. Nearly now. Nearly. Slowly. "I've waited for that." Another kiss. I brought my hands up to his face, gently touching the side of his face with my palms. Wait. Wait. A dead sheep's head. Tongue on the rotten tooth. My face moved back. I looked at him wistfully and then I pushed my thumbs into his eyes. They were only the eyes in the skull of a dead sheep. A dead sheep who had kept me in the dark and tortured me. I knew that the nails on my thumbs were long. I gripped on the side of his head with my other fingers like claws and the thumbnails gouged into his eyes and I saw with interest that my thumbs, as they pushed into his head and scraped in the sockets, were now streaked with liquid, a watery liquid streaked with yellow, like pus.

I thought he would grab me. I thought he would kill me. Tear me into pieces. He didn't even touch me. I was able to step back and pull my sludgy thumbs out. A strange scream came from deep inside him, a howl, and his hands went up to his face, and his body folded up and he lay wriggling on the floor, spluttering and whimpering.

I took a step back, out of the reach of this grub-like creature, squirming and squeaking on the floor. I took a tissue from my

2OQ

pocket and wiped my thumbs. I took some deep breaths, filling my lungs. I felt like a drowning swimmer who had reached the surface and was breathing in the beautiful clean life-giving air.

Twenty-nine

There was the moon still, and there were the stars. Frost on the surface of everything, a glitter in the semi-darkness. A world of ice and snow and stillness. The cold cut into my face. I breathed in, quite steadily, and felt clean air in my mouth, and streaming down my throat. I breathed out again and watched how my breath hung in the air.

"Oh-oh-ohhh, nu-nu."

Sarah made a sound like an animal, a piteous, high-pitched tangle of syllables. I couldn't make out the words. I put my arm more firmly around her shoulders to hold her up and she hung off me, whimpering. Her body felt tiny against me and I wondered how old she was. She looked like a snotty, unwashed little kid. She crumpled and put her head on my chest and I could smell her greasy hair and her sour sweat.

I put my hand in the pocket of my jacket and pulled out Ben's mobile. There was just enough power now. I dialled 999. "What service, please?" a woman's voice demanded. I was stumped for a moment. All of them really, except the fire brigade. I said there were serious injuries and a serious crime. We would need two ambulances, and also the police.

I put the phone back and looked at Sarah; her small, slightly flat face was a ghastly white, with spots all over her forehead and a swollen mouth. Her lips were pulled back in a terrified, silent snarl. She looked like a trapped animal. I could make out a bruise on her neck where the wire had been. Her whole body was shaking. She was only wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and some cotton trousers, thick socks but no shoes.

"Here," I said, and took off my quilted jacket and put it round her. I pulled the collar up high so her face was protected from the air. "You're wearing my shirt," I said and put my arm back round her.

A sound came from her shivering body. I couldn't make out what she was saying.

"They'll be here soon," I said. "You're safe now."

"Sorrysorrysorrysorry."

"Oh, that."

"It wasn't me. Not me. Mad. I thought I was going to die." She started to weep. "I knew I was about to die. I was mad."

"Yes," I said. "I've been mad like that too. But I'm not any more."

The blue lights and sirens came over the hill. Two ambulances and two police cars. Doors swung open. People jumped out and hurried towards us. There were faces looking down at us, hands separating us. Stretchers were laid on the ground. I sent a couple of people inside. I could hear Sarah beside me, sobbing and sobbing, till her sobs turned into a raw, retching sound. I could hear voices being soothing. The word "Mummy' cut through the babble. "Where's Mummy?"

A blanket was draped over my shoulder.

"I am perfectly all right," I said.

"Lie down here now."

"I can walk."

There were shouts from inside. One of the men in green overalls ran out and whispered to a young policeman.

"Jesus Christ," the policeman said, and looked at me hard.

"He's a killer," I said.

"A killer?"

"But it's quite safe. He can't see anything. He's not dangerous any more."

"Let's get you into the ambulance, my dear." The voice soothed me as if I was hysterical with shock.

"You should call Detective Inspector Jack Cross," I continued. "My name is Abigail Devereaux. Abbie. I put out his eyes. He'll never look at me again."

They drove Sarah away first. I clambered into the second ambulance with the blanket still around me. Two people climbed in with me,

a paramedic and a female police officer. Somewhere behind me I was aware of a growing clamour, voices shouting urgently, the wail of a third ambulance coming down the road. But I didn't need to bother with that any more. I sat back and closed my eyes, not because I was tired -I wasn't, I felt quite clear-headed, as if I'd slept for a long time but to block out the lights and the clutter around me and to stop all the questions.

Oh, I was so clean and so warm. I had shampooed hair and scrubbed skin, and my fingernails and toenails were clipped to the quick. I'd brushed my teeth three times, then gargled with some green concoction that made my breath feel minty right down to my lungs, I sat up in bed, wearing an absurd pink nightie and covered in stiff, hygienic sheets and layers of thin, scratchy blankets, and drank tea and ate toast. Three cups of scalding hot sugared tea and a piece of limp white buttered toast. Or margarine, probably. They don't have butter in hospital. There were daffodils in a plastic jug on my locker.

Different hospital, different room, different view, different nurses bustling around with thermometers and bedpans and trolleys, different doctors with their clip charts and their tired faces, different policemen staring at me nervously then looking away. Same old Jack Cross, though, hunched in the chair like an invalid himself, with his hand around his cheek as if he had a toothache, and staring at me as if I frightened him.

"Hello, Jack," I said.

"Abbie .. he started, and then stopped, working his hand round so his fingers covered his mouth. I waited and eventually he tried again. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," I said.

"The doctors said

"I'm all right. They just want to keep me under observation for a couple of days."

"I'm not surprised, I don't know where to begin. I .. ." He shifted in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Then he sat up straighter and took a deep breath. He looked me straight in the eyes. "We were wrong.

There's no excuse." I could see him thinking about putting forward all the reasons and excuses, then swallowing them back. Good. "I can't believe you did that." He slumped into the chair again and put his face back into his hand. "What a fucking balls-up from start to finish. You can take us all to the cleaners, you know."

Is he dead?"

"He's in the ITU."

"Oh."

Do you know what you did to him?"

"Yes."

"His eyes." He said this in a whisper. I couldn't tell if he was looking at me with admiration or horror and disgust. "You pushed them half-way into his brain. I mean, fuck."

"With my thumbs," I said.

"But, Jesus, Abbie, you must be .. ."

"I didn't have anything else."

"We'll need to take a formal statement later."

"Of course. Is Sarah all right?"

"Sarah Maginnis is shocked, malnourished. The way you were. She'll be all right. Do you want to see her?"

I thought about that for a minute. "No."

"She's very sorry, Abbie."

"You know?"

"She can't stop talking about it."

I shrugged.

"Maybe I was lucky," I said. "He was going to kill her. He'd taken his scarf off. I don't know what I would have done. I don't know if I would have just stood there and watched him do it. Nobody would have blamed me, would they? Poor, traumatized Abbie."

"I don't think you'd have just stood there."

"Is there any news about Jo? Has he said anything?"

"I don't think he'll be talking for a bit. We're beginning our investigation into Miss Hooper's disappearance."

"You're too late," I said.

He lifted his hands but then let them fall back on to his lap. We sat in silence for a few minutes. A nurse came in and said someone had left me flowers at Reception. She laid a damp bunch of anemones on my locker. I picked them up and sniffed them. They smelt of freshness; there were droplets of water on their bright petals. I laid them back on the locker. Cross's face was grey with fatigue.

"Tell me what you know about him," I said.

"We've only just begun. His name is George Ronald Sheppy. Fifty-one years old. His only conviction was for animal cruelty, years ago. Slap-on-the-wrist job. We don't know much more yet, we've talked to a few neighbours. He was an odd-job man a bit of this and a bit of that. Removals, fairground mechanic, lorry driver. Doesn't seem much, really."

"What about the other women?"

"The other names," said Cross. "We'll keep on looking, of course, especially now try to match missing people with areas he worked. Maybe when we know more .. ." He gave a helpless shrug. "I'm just saying, don't expect too much."

So the names were still only syllables spoken to me in the darkness.

"Are you seeing someone?" he asked.

"Several doctors, but I'm fine."

"No I meant someone to help you. Who you can talk to. After what you've been through."

"I don't need help."

"Abbie, I've been in there, I've seen what's left of him."

"Do you expect me to be traumatized?"

"Well.. ."

"I put his eyes out." I held up both hands and stared at my fingers. "I put my thumbs against his eyeballs and I gouged his eyes out. That's not a trauma, Jack. The trauma was being grabbed. The trauma was being held in a cellar with a hood over my head and a gag in my mouth and eyes watching me in the darkness, hands touching me in the darkness. That was trauma. Knowing I was going to die and no one could help me. That was trauma. Escaping and finding out no one believed me. That was trauma. Being in danger all over again, when I should have been safe. That was trauma. This was not. This was me surviving. This was me staying alive. No, I don't think I need help any more. Thank you."

He leant back as I was talking, as if I was pummelling him. When I'd finished speaking, he nodded and left.

Ben came at lunchtime his lunchtime, that is. Hospital lunch is at about half past eleven. Supper is at five. Then the evening stretches on and on until it becomes night, and then the night stretches on and on until it edges into morning again. He leant over me to kiss me awkwardly on the cheek with cold lips. He was wearing his lovely floppy overcoat. He held out a box of chocolates and I took it and put it on the pillow. He sat down and we looked at each other.

"I brought this as well," he said, and pulled a smooth wooden oval out of his pocket. It was honey-coloured, veined with darker contours. "Hornbeam," he said. "A special wood. I made it for you last night in the workshop, when I was waiting for you and hoping you'd come back."

I closed my fist around it. "It's beautiful. Thank you very much."

"Do you want to talk about it yet?"

"Not really."

"Have you remembered anything?"

"No."

There was a silence between us.

"I'm sorry about Jo," I added. "She's dead."

"You don't know that. Not for sure."

"She's dead, Ben."

He stood up and went and looked out of the small closed window at the blue sky above the rooftops. He stayed like that for several minutes. I think perhaps he was crying.

"Abbie," he said, at last, turning back to the bed, "I was out of my mind with worry. I wanted to help you. I didn't want you to be on your own like that. Whatever you felt about me and Jo, you shouldn't have run off, as if you thought I was the murderer or something. I know you were upset with me. I understand that. But you could have died. And it wasn't right, Abbie," he said. "It wasn't well done."

"Ben."

"All right, all right.. . Look, I'm sorry about me and Jo at least, I'm sorry you found out like that. I'm not saying I'm sorry we had an affair. That's something different and, if you want, one day I can tell you about it. And I'm not even saying I was completely wrong not to tell you. We started right in the deep end, us two. We didn't have the proper order to our relationship, did we? In the normal run of things, we would have got to know each other, and gradually given each other our confessions. We hardly knew each other and suddenly there you were living in my house and scared for your life, and everything was all so momentous and so out in the open. I didn't want to start our relationship by laying all my cards on the table, all at once. I was scared of losing you again."

"So instead you started our relationship off with a lie," I said.

"It wasn't a lie."

"Not technically. Morally."

"I'm sorry that I lied," he said. He sat down beside me again and I lifted my hand to stroke his nice soft hair.

"And I'm sorry that I ran off like that," I answered. "Have a chocolate."

"No, thanks."

I took one. Caramel.

"There are words now that hold different meanings for me than they do for, say, you," I said. "Darkness. Silence. Winter." I took another chocolate. "Memory," I added, and put the chocolate into my mouth.

Ben picked up my hand, the one that wasn't wrapped round his wooden egg. He held it against his face. "I do love you," he said.

"I think I was mad for a bit. That's all over."

"You look different," he said. "Beautiful."

"I feel different."

"What are you going to do next?"

"Earn some money. Grow my hair. Go to Venice."

"Do you want to come back?"

"Ben .. ."

"I'd like you to."

"No. I mean, no, you probably wouldn't like me to although it's very nice of you to ask. And, no, I won't."

"I see." He put my hand on the bed and smoothed its fingers, one by one, not looking at me.

"You could ask me out," I said. "We could go on a date. See a movie. Drink cocktails. Eat swanky meals in restaurants."

He started to smile at me, eager and uncertain. It made his eyes crinkle up. He was a nice man, really. I'd invented all the rest.

"Spring is coming," I said. "You never know what may happen."

There was someone else who came to see me. Well, of course, lots of people came to see me. My friends, singly or in groups, clutching flowers, tearful or giggly or embarrassed. I hugged people until my ribs hurt. It was like a non-stop party in my room. It was like the party I'd thought I would have the first time I returned from the dead, only to enter instead a world of silence and shame yet now I found that I was a stranger at my party, looking in on the fun, laughing but not really getting the joke.

But someone else came, too. He knocked on the door, even though it was half open, and stood on the threshold until I told him to come in.

"I don't know if you remember me," he said. "I'm .. ."

"Of course I remember," I said. "You told me that I had a very good brain. You're Professor Mulligan, the memory man, the only person I really want to see."

"I didn't bring flowers."

"That's good, because I'm leaving here this afternoon."

"How are you?"

"Fine."

"Well done," he said.

I remembered from before the sense of approval he brought with him. It made me feel warm. "Jack Cross told me you stood up for me."

"Well .. ." He waved his hands vaguely in the air.

"You walked out of the meeting."

"It didn't do any good. Tell me, did your memory come back at all?"

"No. Not really," I said. "Sometimes I think there's something there, just on the fringes of my consciousness, but I can't catch it and if I turn my head it's gone. And sometimes I think that the lost time is like a tide that flooded me and that's now ebbing away. It's so infinitesimally slow that I can't possibly detect it and perhaps I'm imagining it. Or maybe, bit by bit, memory will return. Do you think that's possible?"

He leant forward and looked at me. "Don't count on it," he said. "Anything's possible but everything's a mystery."

"For a long time I thought that there would be an answer in the end," I said. "I thought if I saw him I would remember. I thought that the things that were lost could be found again. But it's not going to happen like that, is it?"

"What did you want to find?"

"I wanted to find me."

"Ah. Well, then."

"I'll never get that lost me back, will I?"

Professor Mulligan took one of the flowers and sniffed it. He tore off the end of the stalk and inserted it into his lapel.

"Do you mind?" he said. I smiled and shook my head. "Try not to dwell on what you don't remember. Think of the things that you do."

Things I don't remember. I count them up on my fingers: leaving Terry, meeting Jo, meeting Ben, meeting him. I still think of him as nameless, just 'him', the man, a dark shape, a voice in the darkness. I don't remember falling in love. I don't remember that week of being simply and gloriously happy. I don't remember being snatched out of my life. I don't remember losing myself.

Things I do remember: a hood on my head, a wire on my neck, a gag in my mouth, a sob in my throat, a voice in the night, a laugh in the darkness, invisible hands touching me, eyes watching me, terror, loneliness, madness, shame. I remember dying and I remember being dead. And I remember the sound of my beating heart, the sound of my continuing breath, a yellow butterfly on a green leaf, a silver tree on a small hill, a calm river, a clear lake; things I haven't seen and will never forget. Being alive. I remember.