Secret Smile

CHAPTER 35

Why do phones always ring when you're in the bath? I left it for ages, but it went on, insistent, until at last I wrapped myself in an unsatisfactorily skimpy towel and headed for the living room, at which point it stopped. I swore, and returned to the bathroom where I stepped gratefully back into the warm, soapy water and submerged myself. At which point it rang once more. I got there quicker this time, trailing water.

'Hello?'

There was a short pause, during which I knew for a certainty who was on the other end. I flinched and pulled my damp towel more tightly around me.

'Mirrie?'

At his voice, just the utterance of that single word, I felt the familiar, choking disgust. It was as if the air were suddenly thick and dirty, and I could barely breathe. Sweat prickled on my forehead, and I wiped it away with a corner of my towel.

'Yes.'

'It's me.'

'What do you want?'

'What do I want?'

'Look

'It's what you want, I think.'

'I don't

'Or what you have for me.'

I clutched the receiver and didn't reply.

'Rob just called me,' he went on. 'I hear that you're looking for me.'

A kind of groan escaped me.

'You want to see me.'

'No.'

'You want to give me something. Something I left behind. I wonder what that can be.'

'It's nothing.'

'It must be important, if you're going to all this bother. Mmm, Mirrie?'

'A book,' I stuttered feebly.

'A book? What book would that be?' He waited and when I didn't answer said: 'Would the book be an excuse, perhaps? You just can't let go, can you?'

For a moment, everything went misty.

'Cut the crap,' I said. 'This is me. Nobody else is around. You know what I know about you. You know and I know you know and every hour of every day I think about what you did to Troy and Laura and Kerry, and if you think…'

'Hush,' he said in a soothing voice. 'You need help. Rob thinks so too. He's very concerned about you. He says that in his opinion there's a word for what you've got. For your syndrome.'

'Syndrome? Syndrome'? I just want to send you this fucking book.'

'The book,' he said. 'Of course. The one whose name you can't remember.'

'Give me your address and then piss off.'

'I don't think so.' I could hear him smile.

'Jesus,' I said, with a sob of rage. 'Listen…'

But I was talking on a dead line. Brendan had put the phone down. I gazed at the receiver in my hand, then rammed it down on its holder.

I climbed back into the tepid bath. I ran hot water and then, holding my nose, slid under the water. I listened to the booming of the pipes and the beating of my heart. I was so violently angry that I felt I would fly apart.

I came up for air with a thought that made me leap from the bath and run naked and slippery back to the phone, crouching low as I passed the window so no one would see me. I dialled 1471 and waited until the automated voice told me the caller's number. I'd forgotten to have a pen ready so I held the digits in my head, chanting them as I scrambled in the drawers looking for pen and paper. I jotted them down on a stray playing card I found, then dialled 1471 again, just to check it.

It was a 7852 number. Where was that? Somewhere in South London, maybe. It wasn't a code I rang often, that was for sure. I shuffled on all fours under the window, then went to my bedroom, yanking out the bath plug on my way. I dressed in baggy cotton trousers and a loose top and then started flicking through my address book, looking for those four digits, trying to find out which bit of London Brendan was in now. There had to be a better way of doing this. I found a telephone directory and ran my finger down the lines and lines of names looking for the area code. My eyes were starting to swim with the effort until I found it: Brackley. That was reasonably accessible.

What now? I couldn't wander around Brackley looking for him. Maybe I should call the number and – well, and what? Talk to Brendan again? I couldn't do that; just the thought of it made me tremble. I poured myself a large glass of red wine and then turned on my laptop. Two minutes, a couple of search engines and I was looking at the name Crabtrees, a cafe in Brackley. I toasted my perseverance with a gulp of red wine that tasted rather vinegary. I looked at my watch: 7.35.

Now that I knew it was a cafe, I did risk calling the number. It rang and rang and just when I was about to put the phone down, someone answered.

'Yes?'

'Is this Crabtrees?'

'Yes. It's the payphone. You want someone?'

'Oh – well, can you tell me the opening hours?'

'What?'

'The opening hours of the cafe.'

'I dunno exactly; I've never been in here before. It's new and I thought I'd give it a go – eight till late, that's what it says on the board outside.'

'OK, thanks.'

'It's not a pub, though.'

'No.'

'You can't get drinks – it's all cappuccino and latte and those herbal teas that taste like straw.'

'Thanks.'

'And vegetarian meals. Organic this, that and the other.'

'You've been very helpful

'Alfalfa. I always thought it was cows that ate alfalfa.'

I didn't stop to think. I poured the wine down the sink, picked up my denim jacket and left. No underground goes to Brackley, so I drove there, through the balmy evening. The sky was golden and even the dingy streets were softened in its glow.

Crabtrees was in the upmarket bit, between a shop that sold candles and wind chimes and a shop that sold bread 'made just as the Romans used to make it'. I drove past it and then found a place to park a few minutes' walk away just in case Brendan was around.

I walked slowly past the cafe, with the collar of my jacket turned up, feeling excruciatingly visible – an absurd and ham-fisted parody of a private eye. I imagined Brendan sitting by the window and seeing me shuffle by. I cast a few rapid glances through the glass, but didn't see him. Then I turned around and walked past once more. The cafe was practically empty and he didn't seem to be in there.

I went inside. It was brightly lit and smelled of coffee, vanilla, pastry, herbs. I ordered a pear juice (with a hint of ginger) and a flapjack and took them into a corner. What would I do if he walked in now? I should have brought a large newspaper to hide behind. I could cut a hole in it and stare out, or something. Even a book to bend over would be better than sitting here exposed. But it was warm and clean and aromatic, and for a moment I allowed myself to relax. I was tired to my bones, tired in the kind of way that sleep can't cure. I put my head in my hands and gazed through the lattice of my fingers at the street outside. People walked past, men and women with purposeful strides. No sign of Brendan.

After half an hour of nibbling at the flapjack and sipping at the juice, I paid up and asked the young woman behind the counter what time they closed.

'Nine,' she said. She had silky blonde hair twisted on to the top of her head, a scattering of clear freckles over the bridge of her nose and a lovely candid smile. She glanced at the watch on her delicate wrist: 'Just seven more minutes, I'm glad to say.'

'And what time do you open in the morning?'

'Eight o'clock.'

'Thanks.'

I knew it was ridiculous, but I was back at eight, with a newspaper. I ordered a milky coffee and a brioche and took up my seat again, wedged behind the coat stand so that if Brendan did come in he wouldn't see me. There were two middle-aged women behind the counter this time, and a man in the kitchen, behind the swing doors.

I stayed an hour and a half, and had two more coffees, and then, shaky with caffeine and fatigue, went outside and sat in my van for a bit. I called Bill and said I wouldn't be at work for a couple of days, and then I left a message on Don's machine apologizing for not turning up to finish the job, but promising I'd be back soon. I didn't say when, because I didn't know when and I didn't want to think about the hopelessness of my task. London was a huge, swarming place in which you could hide and never be found. Brendan may have been passing by and would never return to the cafe again, and I was hiding in a corner, camped out behind a newspaper, waiting with a dry mouth and a pounding heart for something that wouldn't happen. Or he could be just across the road, at an upstairs window, looking down. Maybe he was coming along the street now and if I didn't hurry I'd miss him. Maybe this was what going mad was like, crouching in a cafe, hiding in my van, pacing the streets in an area of London miles from home.

I went to the candle and wind-chime shop and took my time choosing and buying a glass bowl and some floating candles in the shape of water lilies, all the time peering out at the street. I went to the baker's and bought a wheel of brown sourdough bread that cost so much that at first I thought the decimal point was in the wrong place. I walked very slowly up the street and down again. I went into a bookshop and bought a book of walks in and around London. I poked about in a hardware shop until the glares of the man behind the counter drove me out. I bought a pad of ruled notepaper and a pen at a stationer's, and some toffees to suck during my vigil. I returned to Crabtrees once more, which was filling up now.

As well as a couple of waiters, who looked like students, the young woman from last night was back. She was flustered with the lunchtime rush, but she nodded at me in recognition when I ordered white bean soup and a glass of sparkling water. I sat in my obscure corner and leafed through the book of walks. I ate very slowly, and when I'd finished got myself a cup of tea. When the door opened I would bend down, as if tying my shoelace, then peer round the bottom of the table to see who was coming in. At just after two, I started trudging up and down the streets again, aimless and footsore and wretched with the impossibility of my task. I told myself I'd give it until closing time and then call it a day.

At half past four, the young woman looked mildly surprised to see me again. I had a pot of tea and a slice of lemon drizzle cake.

At seven, I came back for vegetable lasagne and a green salad, but I just pushed it round my plate and left. I got the van and parked it near the cafe and huddled in the dying light, waiting for it to be closing time. I sat for a while, doing nothing, just staring out at the shapes of the buildings against the sky. I felt very far from home. Forlorn. On the spur of the moment, I rang Don again and when he answered, before I could change my mind, said:

'That drink you mentioned, did you mean it?'

'Yes,' he said without hesitation. 'When? Now?'

'Not now. Tomorrow?'

'Great.'

He sounded genuinely pleased and the glow of that stayed with me after I'd said goodbye, a little bit of sunlight in the gloom.

I must have dozed off because I woke with a start and found the light had faded and the crowds on the street had thinned, although there was still a pool of people outside the pub up the road. It was just before nine, and I was stiff and sore and thirsty. I turned the key in the ignition, switched on the headlights, put the gear into reverse, released the handbrake, glanced in the rear mirror, and froze.

If I could see him in the mirror, could he see me? No, surely not. I was only a strip of face, two eyes. I turned off the ignition and the headlights and slid down low in the seat. In a few seconds, he was walking past the van. He was just a couple of feet away from me. I held my breath in the dark. He stopped at the door of Crabtrees, where the young woman was turning the 'Open' sign to 'Closed'. When she saw Brendan, her face lit up and she lifted a hand in greeting before opening the door to him. I sat up a bit straighter in the seat and watched as he took her in his arms and she leaned into him and he kissed her on her eyes and then her lips.

She was very beautiful, Brendan's new girlfriend. And very young – not more than twenty-one or – two. She was besotted. I watched her as she pushed her hands into his thick hair and pulled his face towards her again. I closed my eyes and groaned out loud. Whatever Don had said, whatever my common sense told me, I couldn't leave it – not now I'd seen the freckles on her nose and her shining eyes.

The woman collected her coat and shut the door. She waved goodbye at someone still inside and then she and Brendan walked arm in arm down the road, back the way he'd come. I waited until they were nearly out of sight, then got out of the van and followed them, praying he wouldn't turn round and see me skulking in the distance. They stopped outside a door between a bicycle shop and an all-night grocery and broke apart while the girl fumbled in her pocket for the key. Her flat, then, I thought. That made sense. Brendan was the cuckoo in other people's nests. She pushed the door open and they disappeared inside.

The door swung shut and a few moments later a light in an upstairs window came on. For a second, I saw Brendan standing, illuminated. He closed the curtains.