Secret Smile

CHAPTER 20

I fastened the laces of my trainers and drank a glass of water before opening the front door. It was half past six in the morning, still dark outside and much colder than the previous day. There was a glint of frost on the pavement, and car windows were iced up. For a brief moment, I allowed myself to think that this was masochistic. Instead of torturing myself like a medieval nun, I should go back to bed – or, at least, the sofa bed. It would still be warm from my body. I put aside that thought, pulled the door shut behind me and set out on a run that would take me up the small roads to the park.

It had been a long time. At first I felt chilly and a little stiff, but gradually I settled into a rhythm, and as I jogged – past the newsagent that was just opening up its metal shutters, past the deserted primary school, the recycling centre – I watched the dawn turn to day. Lights came on in houses; street lamps turned off; cars spluttered into life along the roadside; the sky that had been dark grey became gradually lighter and streaked with pink clouds. The postman was doing his rounds. A woman walking three huge dogs straining at their leads was pulled past me. I thought of people turning over in bed to stop their alarm clocks; children stretching and yawning and wriggling down under their duvets for the last snatch of sleep; showers running, kettles boiling, bread toasting… All of a sudden I felt a small stab of happiness, to be running along the empty London streets as the sun rose on a glorious late autumn day.

I stopped at the bottom of the road on my way back to pick up a pack of streaky bacon and some white bread. In the flat, no one was stirring yet, so I had a quick shower and pulled on trousers and a jersey that was old and warm and raspberry pink. I put on the kettle for coffee and started to grill the bacon. Laura's door opened and her head poked round. She looked half-asleep still, like a young girl, with mussed hair and rosy cheeks. She sniffed the air and murmured something unintelligible.

'Coffee and bacon sandwiches,' I said. 'Do you want it in bed?'

'It's Monday morning!'

'I thought we should start the week well.'

'How long have you been up?'

'An hour or so. I went running.'

'Why are you so cheerful all of a sudden?'

'I'm taking my life in hand,' I said. 'This is the new me.'

'God,' she said, and withdrew her head. A moment later she had joined me in the kitchen, wrapped in a thick dressing gown.

She sat at the kitchen table and watched as I put the rashers between thick slices of bread, and boiled milk for the coffee. She nibbled at her sandwich cautiously. I chomped into mine.

'What are you up to today?' she asked.

I slurped at my coffee. Warmth was spreading through me.

'I had an idea in the night. I'm going to ring round the people who I know are going to be out of the country for a bit. There are quite a few because our customers often want us to do work for them while they're not there. I'll ask if they want a responsible couple to housesit for them. There's at least one family with loads of pets that someone would have to feed twice a day anyway. Maybe they'd be glad of Kerry and Brendan staying. I'm sure I can find someone like that – it's much better than looking in the classifieds. So…' I poured myself another cup of coffee and topped it up with hot milk, then took another sandwich. 'I'm going to find them somewhere else to live because they're obviously not going to do it themselves, are they? And then Troy can be with me like we'd planned. Then I'm going to the Reclamation Centre with Bill and then I'm going to do my accounts and then I'll go to my flat and collect a few things and tell them when they've got to be out by. There.'

'I feel tired just thinking about it.'

'So I'll be out of your hair soon.'

'I like you being here.'

'You've been fabulous, but I feel in the way. I want to leave before you're wishing me gone.'

'Shall I cook us supper?'

'I'll buy a takeaway,' I said. 'Curry and beer.'

Laura left for work and I cleared up breakfast, put a clothes' wash on and vacuumed the living room. I promised myself that I'd buy her a big present when I left.

I went to Bill's office, just a few hundred metres from his house, and started making phone calls. The family with pets had already arranged for a friend to housesit. The young woman who lived in Shoreditch didn't really want someone she didn't know living in her flat. The couple with the beautiful conservatory had changed their plans and weren't leaving for several months. But the two men with a small house on London Fields were interested. They'd call me back when they'd talked it through.

I started on the accounts while I was waiting. It didn't take long before the phone rang. They were going to America in eight days' time for three months, maybe for longer if everything went well. They hadn't thought of getting someone in, but as it came through a personal recommendation, and as long as the new kitchen was still done while they were away, and as long as Kerry and Brendan paid some rent, kept the house clean and watered the date palm and the orange tree that were in the bathroom, then that would be fine.

'Eight days?' I said.

'Right.'

Their house was lovely, far more spacious than my flat, and overlooking a park. It had a circular bath and deep-pile carpets, and when we'd installed their kitchen it would have a stainless-steel hob and quarry tiles and a large sunroof. There could be nothing that Brendan could find to object to, surely. In eight days I could be back in my flat. I'd paint my bedroom wall yellow and change all the furniture around. I'd clean windows and throw things out.

'That's great,' I said. 'Really, really great. You've no idea.'

I called Troy on my mobile and told him. I could hear him smile.

I arrived at my flat a bit early. There was a light on in one of the windows, though I could see no sign of Kerry's car. I inserted the key in the lock, fumbling in the darkness, and pushed open the door. If no one was there, that would be a relief. If they were in, I could tell them about the house in London Fields and try to talk to Kerry. Yesterday I had felt that she would never forgive me, but today it looked different to me. Nothing had happened, except inside me.

I went up the stairs and there was a smell that made me mutter crossly to myself because it was bad enough them forcing me out of my own home, but the least they could do was keep it clean. Then I pushed open the living-room door. It banged against something that clattered out of the way as I pushed harder.

What did I see? What did I feel? I don't know, really. I never will know. It's jumbled up together in a foul twist of memory that I'll never lose.

Scuff-toed boots that I'd seen hundreds of times before, but a foot above the floor, and then his canvas trousers, stained at the knee, and a buckled belt around the waist. A smell of shit. A chair on its side. Fear a thick eel in my throat. I couldn't look up. I had to look up. His face above me, tilted to one side, his mouth slightly open. I could see the tip of his tongue. Blue around his lips. His eyes were open, staring. I saw the rope that he was hanging from.

Maybe he was still alive. Oh God, maybe he was; please, please, please. I righted the chair and clambered on to it, half falling over, and there I was pressed up against his body, trying to hold him up to relieve the pressure of the noose on his neck and trying to undo the knot. Fingers trembling too much. His hair against my cheek. His cold forehead. The slump of his body. But people can be alive when they look dead, you read about it, bringing them back to life when all hope is gone. But I couldn't undo the knot and he was so heavy and smelt of death already. Shit and death, and his flesh was cold.

I jumped down from the chair, leaving his body swaying there, and raced to the kitchen. The bread knife was in the sink, and I grabbed it and ran back to Troy. Standing on tiptoe on the chair I began sawing at the cord while still trying to hold his body. Suddenly he was free and we fell on to the floor together and his arms were over my body in a ghastly embrace.

I pushed him off me and hurled myself towards the phone. Jabbed the buttons.

'Help,' I said. 'Help. He's hung himself. Please come and help. Please. What shall I do?'

The voice at the other end of the phone was quite calm. It asked questions and I gabbled answers, and all the time Troy lay an arm's length away and I kept saying, 'But what shall I do, what shall I do?'

'The emergency services will be with you as soon as possible,' said the voice.

'Shall I give him the kiss of life? Shall I pump his chest? Tell me what to do.'

I looked at Troy while I was saying it. His skin was chalky white, except where it was blue around the lips. The tip of his tongue protruded. The eyes were open and sightless. The noose around his neck was slack now, but there was dark bruising where it had been. My little brother.

'Hurry,' I said in a whisper. 'Hurry up.'

I put the phone down and crawled across to where he lay. I put his head in my lap and stroked the hair off his forehead. I leaned down and kissed him on his cheeks, and on his mouth. 1 picked up his hand and cradled it between both my own. I did up the middle button of his shirt, which had come undone. In a minute I would pick up the phone and call my parents. How do you say: your son is dead. I shut my eyes for a moment, drenched with the horror of it.

His sweater was draped over the back of the sofa. There was a book on the table, face down. The clock ticked on the wall. I looked at it: twenty-five past six. If you could turn the clock back through the minutes and the hours until it was before Troy had stood on that chair with the noose round his neck and then kicked off, into death. If I'd arrived before, left my cheese and pickle roll and my accounts and my loitering in the warm office, and driven here instead. I ran my fingers through his hair. Nothing would ever be all right again.

The doorbell rang and I laid Troy 's head gently back on the carpet and went to open it. While they were clustered round Troy, I picked up the phone.