Secret Smile

CHAPTER 30

I did it. I made myself do it and I did it. I put my flat on the market. I was sleepwalking through it, not thinking. I just didn't care, and so it went more smoothly than anything I've ever done in my life. A young man with a clipboard came and looked around and raved about how saleable it was. He said their commission rate was three per cent. I said two and there was just a beat of hesitation and he said all right. The very next morning, a woman came to see it. She reminded me of me, except a bit richer, a bit more grown-up. She had a real job. She was a doctor. I saw the flat through her eyes. So much had been moved out that it had a minimalist look to it that made the space seem brightly lit, larger than it really was.

She said that the flat had a good feel to it. She smiled and said it must have good feng shui. I took a deep breath and said yes and thought about Troy hanging from the beam. Half an hour later the estate agent phoned saying that Rebecca Hanes had offered ten thousand less than the asking price. I said no. He said the market was looking a bit soft at the moment. I said it didn't matter. He rang back ten minutes later and said she had offered the full amount, but she wanted to move in straight away. I said I didn't want to be hurried. I would move in a month. He said he thought that might be a problem, but he rang back after a few minutes and said that would be fine. As I put the phone down, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror and I wondered: is that the secret of doing deals? Is that the secret of life? If you care less than the other person, then you win. Was that me?

I was pretty far along in the process of jettisoning my old life, but I had done nothing about getting myself a new one. I took my old school atlas off the shelf and opened it at ' England and Wales, South'. Suddenly I realized that I had an existential freedom to my life. I had no particular family connection with anywhere outside London. I wasn't constrained. I was equally indifferent to everywhere. Should I draw a line an inch around London? Two inches? Three inches? Would I like to live beside the sea? And, if so, which sea? Village or town? Or open countryside? Or island? Thatched cottage? Houseboat? Martello tower? Decommissioned lighthouse? My freedom was like an abyss in front of my feet. It was almost awesome. It was also the wrong way round. I needed to think about work. What I needed to do was to find a job or jobs. I needed to make some calls. But there wasn't immediate pressure now. I'd bought myself a month by being horrible to a nice woman.

I made a resolution. I would contact two people every day who might be of some help in finding me work. I sat down with a piece of paper and after five minutes' thought I had a shortlist with one name on it, a guy called Eamonn Olshin, who had just finished training as an architect. So I phoned him up and asked if we could meet up so I could pick his brains about work. Eamonn was surprisingly – almost ridiculously – friendly. I had been seeing the world as a hostile, treacherous place for so long that it was startling when someone just sounded pleased to talk to me. He said it was funny I should call because he'd been meaning to get in touch for ages and how were things? I was enigmatic in my reply to that one. He said that, come to think of it, he was having people round for supper that very evening and why didn't I come along? My immediate impulse was to say no because I wanted to spend the rest of my life living in a hole in the ground and because it would make me seem pathetically needy. But I was needy. Maybe not pathetically so, but definitely in need. A brutally simple thought struck me. Who would I normally turn to at a time like this? Laura. I said yes, all right, trying not to sound too desperate.

Eamonn's flat was down in Brixton. I wanted to arrive fashionably late, again in order not to show that I was too keen, and then I lost my way so I was ludicrously late. Also, the plan had been to breeze in looking rather cool, but because I'd had to ask the way from about five different people I ended up sprinting along back streets and then the flat was on the top floor, so I was puffing like a walrus, and clammy and dishevelled, when I finally walked through the door, just before nine o'clock. There were eight people sitting around the table, two or three of whom were vaguely familiar. Eamonn introduced me to them in turn. The first was his girlfriend, Philippa, which was a relief. He really had invited me because he wanted to see me. After I had regained my concentration, it was too late. I'd missed almost all the names.

They were halfway through the meal and I said I'd quickly catch up, but I helped myself to just a token portion of lasagne. I sat next to Eamonn and talked briefly about my plans. He was very encouraging, but he had assumed I was looking in London. I told him I was going to move away, probably to the countryside. He looked baffled.

'Where?' he said. 'Why?'

'I need to get away,' I said.

'That's fine,' he said. 'Take a weekend break. There are some great deals. But don't go and live there. London is where you live. Everywhere else in England is for…' He paused, as if it were difficult to remember what it was for. 'I don't know, going for walks in, flying over on your way somewhere.'

'I'm serious,' I said.

'So am I,' said Eamonn. 'We can't afford to lose you. Look, there are people from all over the world stowing away on ships and in containers and under lorries, just because they want to get to London. And you're leaving. You mustn't.'

Philippa raised an eyebrow at her new boyfriend.

'She said she was serious.'

Maybe Philippa thought that Eamonn was being too nice to me. He sulked a bit and said he would talk to his boss to see if he knew any people who 'weren't good enough to make it in London '. We chatted for a bit and then the conversation lapsed and I felt a nudge. It was the man sitting on the other side of me. He was one of the ones who had looked familiar. Of course I hadn't caught his name. Unfortunately he remembered mine.

'Miranda,' he said. 'It's great to see you.'

'David! Blimey!' I said. He'd cut his hair short and had a small moustache over his upper lip.

He waggled his finger at me roguishly. 'Do you remember where we last met?'

'It's on the tip of my

'I saw you sitting on your arse on the ice at Alexandra Palace.'

A wave of nausea swept through me. Oh, yes. He had been one of the group on the day I met Brendan. What was it? Was God punishing me? Couldn't he have given me a single evening free of this?

'That's right,' I said.

David laughed.

'A good day,' he said. 'It's the sort of thing you ought to do more often and you never really get around to it. Didn't we do a sort of conga on the ice?'

'I wasn't really secure enough, I…'

He narrowed his eyes in concentration. I could see he was trying to remember something. I thought to myself, please, God, no.

'Didn't you…?' he said. 'Someone said that you had a thing with that guy who was there.'

I looked around quickly, and I was relieved that an animated conversation about life in the country was proceeding without me.

'Yes,' I said. 'Briefly.'

'What was he called?'

Couldn't he shut up?

'Brendan,' I said. 'Brendan Block.'

'That's right. Strange guy. I only met him a few times. He was an old friend of one of the guys, but…' David laughed. 'He's out there. He's just one of these people, the stories you hear about him. Amazing.'

There was a pause. I knew, I just knew, that I should start talking about anything else at all. I could ask him about where he lived in London, what his job was, if he was single, where he was going on holiday, just anything except what I knew I was going to say.

'Like what?'

'I don't know,' said David. 'Just odd things. He'd do things the rest of us wouldn't do.'

'You mean, brave things?'

'I mean things you'd think of as a joke, he'd actually go ahead and do.'

'I'm not following you.'

David looked uncomfortable.

'You're not still together, are you?'

'As I said, it was just a brief thing.'

'I just heard about this from someone who was at college with him.'

'He went to Cambridge, didn't he?'

'Maybe later, this was somewhere in the Midlands, I think. From what I heard, Brendan was really winging it. He did no work at all. Apparently his idea of hard work was to photocopy other people's essays. He was doing one course where the tutor got so pissed off that he failed him altogether. Brendan knew where he lived and he went round there and saw his car parked outside the house. He'd left one of the windows wound down about an inch. What Brendan did was to put some rubber gloves on – you know, the kind you use for washing up – and what he did was he spent an entire night going around the area picking up dog shit and pushing it through that crack in the window.'

'That's disgusting,' I said.

'But amazing, don't you think? It's like a stunt in a TV show. Can you imagine coming down in the morning and opening your car door and about a million dog turds fall out? And then trying to clean the car. I mean, try getting that smell out of the car.'

'It's not even funny,' I said. 'It's just horrible.'

'Don't blame me,' David said. 'He wasn't my friend. And then there was another story about a dog. I'm not exactly sure of the details. I think they were renting a house somewhere and a neighbour was getting on their nerves. He was some old guy with one of those scraggly, mangy dogs. It used to run around the garden barking, driving everyone mad. Brendan was very good with animals. My friend said that the most ferocious Rottweiler could run at you and in about five seconds Brendan would be scratching it under his chin and it would be rolling on the ground. So Brendan got hold of the dog and he put it in the back of some builder's lorry that was just about to drive off. There were these other people around who thought he was joking and that he'd get the dog out, but he didn't. Someone came along and got in the lorry and drove off, and it headed down the road with this barking coming out of the back. Insane.'

'So this man lost his dog?'

'Brendan said he was testing those stories you hear about in the local papers about dogs finding their way home from miles away. He said he definitively disproved it.'

I looked around once more and the table had fallen silent. Everyone had been listening.

'How cruel,' said a woman from across the table.

'I must admit,' said David, 'that the story came out sounding less funny than I thought it was going to. This guy was always talked of as a practical joker, but you don't want to be on the receiving end of his humour. Better to hear about it.' He looked around warily. 'Maybe better not even to hear about it.' The rest of the people started talking among themselves again. David leaned closer to me and spoke in a murmur. 'Not someone you want to get on the wrong side of. And if you do, roll your windows up, if you get my meaning.'

'I don't understand,' I said. 'How could you be friends with someone like that?'

'I told you,' David said, shamefaced now. 'I didn't know him that well.'

'That behaviour sounds psychotic'

'Some of the stories were a bit extreme, but he seemed all right when I met him. I didn't know the people he played jokes on. Anyway, you know more than I do. You… well, you went out with him.'

Fucked him. That's what David meant. I breathed deeply. I couldn't stop myself now. I was furious, but I wasn't exactly sure who to be angry with. I tried to speak calmly.

'I wish I'd heard these supposedly amusing stories about Brendan before I went out with him.'

'It might have put you off.'

'Of course it would have fucking put me off.'

'You're a grown-up,' said David. 'You have to decide for yourself who you go out with.'

'I didn't have the information,' I said. 'For fuck's sake, I thought I was with friends. I feel like someone who's been given a car with dodgy brakes.'

'It's not like that. I remember you talking to him. I only heard about you as a couple later.'

'Did you think of us as a nice couple?'

'I wouldn't have chosen him for you, Miranda. Maybe someone could have said something. Does it really matter? You said you weren't seeing him any more.'

'I think it does matter,' I said. 'You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking of a group of people I thought of as friends watching me get into conversation with someone who had filled a car with dog shit because he got an F.'

'I'm sorry,' said David. 'I didn't think of it at the time.'

'Whose friend was he?'

'What?'

'You said he was an old friend of one of the guys. Which one?'

'Why do you want to know?'

'I just do.'

David thought for a moment.

'Jeff,' he said. 'Jeff Locke.'

'Do you have his phone number?'

David gave a half-smile.

'You want to get in touch?'

I looked at him. The half-smile vanished. He started to rummage in his pockets.