The Hanging Club- Max Wolfe 03

27

Tara Jones was standing outside New Scotland Yard.

There is an eternal flame in the lobby of New Scotland Yard, remembering the officers of the Metropolitan Police who died in the great wars of the twentieth century, and I paused by it to watch Tara Jones waiting out on the street.

Through the security fence I could see her standing by the revolving sign, a file in her hand, oblivious to the two young detectives who turned their heads to look back at her. She was one of those women who do not care very much about the effect they have on men. Or don’t care at all. I came through the revolving metal gates that let you out of the New Scotland Yard and walked up to her.

And it was only then that I realised that she was waiting for me.

‘They said you were dead,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘On the Internet.’

I smiled. ‘And it’s usually so reliable.’

She smiled back at me. We still had not touched.

‘Are you all right?’ she said.

‘Mustn’t grumble,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. Really. It all could have been a lot worse.’

‘I’ve got this for you.’

A double espresso from Starbucks. It’s the thought that counts. I took a sip.

‘Thank you.’

She shook her head. ‘Oh God, oh God.’

‘What?’

‘Your neck.’

There was a thick red welt around my neck that was hidden under my shirt collar apart from where the rope had angled up to the knot, leaving a livid stripe of raw flesh slashed from my Adam’s apple to left ear.

She touched my face with both her hands, her fingertips measuring the bones beneath my skin. I took her in my arms and lightly touched my mouth against her mouth. It wasn’t quite a kiss. It was as if we were seeing if our mouths were a good fit. The preliminary exploration was a success. They seemed to fit perfectly. They seemed to fit better than any other mouth I had ever known. We tried again, deeper this time. Then we broke abruptly away, suddenly aware that we were standing under the revolving sign outside New Scotland Yard. But she took my hand and would not let it go. We walked toward my car.

She was not smiling.

‘What just happened?’ she said, running a hand through her hair, the gold wedding band glinting in all that shiny blackness.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

But it wasn’t true.

I knew exactly what had happened.

It is when we are closest to death that we cling most strongly to life. It is when we can feel the chill of the grave on our skins that we crave the touch of warm human flesh. When we learn that we are all alone in the universe is exactly when we need another mouth. It is our most basic human impulse. The meaning of life is more life, I thought, pitching the empty Starbucks carton into a bin.

I squeezed her hand and smiled at her unsmiling face, and at that moment she was the only woman on earth that I wanted.

‘Do you want to get a real coffee?’ I asked her.

We drove to the Bar Italia.

I could have dropped the BMW X5 in the underground car park of West End Central and then we could have walked across Regent Street to Soho. That would have been the obvious thing to do. But I did not want to break the spell, I did not want her to change her mind about going for a proper cup of coffee, I didn’t want her to change her mind about me.

Because as I steered the big BMW around St James’s Park and Trafalgar Square and into the narrow streets of Soho, the spell between us felt like a fragile thing, as if it could dissolve at any moment.

Tara Jones stared straight out of the window and twisted the gold band on the third finger of her left hand and wondered what the hell she was doing with me.

‘Don’t you have to go to work?’ she said.

‘They gave me the rest of the day off.’

‘Because those men tried to kill you last night?’

I nodded. ‘Some guys have all the luck.’

I found a parking spot on Old Compton Street and we walked to Frith Street while I told her a brief history of the Bar Italia.

‘The Bar Italia has been in the same family for three generations now and they have their own secret blend of coffee that was invented by a man called Signor Angelucci who used to be next door and because their Gaggia coffee machine doesn’t have a water filter no salts are run through it—’

She stopped me with a look.

‘Max?’

‘What?’

‘You’re babbling, just a little bit.’

‘I’m nervous.’

She placed a kiss on my mouth. It felt good. Our mouths fit so well. Ridiculously, thrillingly well. I folded her in my arms and when she spoke her voice was muffled against the lapel of my old wedding suit.

‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to be nervous with me.’

We came apart and she slipped her arm through mine and we walked down Old Compton Street into Frith Street like a proper couple, a real couple, and it felt so natural and right and she smiled when she saw the green neon sign that announces the Bar Italia.

We sat holding hands under the large poster of Rocky Marciano that the champ’s widow Barbara gave to the Bar Italia after he died because Marciano had always loved it here. But I didn’t tell her about Marciano’s relationship with the Bar Italia in case it led to some babbling. I kissed her mouth and drank a triple espresso and Tara had a cappuccino, and nobody took any notice of us because AC Milan was playing Inter Milan on the big screens and we were just another couple, lost in the backstreets of Soho.

‘I don’t know anything about you,’ she said. ‘And you don’t know me.’

‘You know me.’

‘What were you like as a boy?’ she said. ‘Did you get bullied?’

I thought about it.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I was a bit different because I lived with my grandmother. But I had a friend who was adopted. Jackson. My parents were gone and he never knew his mum and dad.’ I smiled at the thought of Jackson Rose as a kid. ‘We stuck together,’ I said. ‘For years.’

‘I was bullied every day,’ she said. ‘I went to a normal school. Horribly normal. They – some boys, a little gang – they said I sounded like a seal when I talked. You know? That noise seals make? They said that’s what I sounded like when I talked.’ She squeezed my hand, frowning at my face. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

I wanted to hunt them down.

I wanted to find them.

I wanted to be in a room alone with them for . . . oh, thirty minutes should do it.

‘But it’s all right now,’ she said. ‘So don’t look like that. Smile again. Please?’

‘OK.’

‘It was only a few pathetic idiots. And it made me stronger. Children will pick on anyone who’s a bit different. And you,’ she said, gripping both my hands and shaking them. ‘You live with your daughter. Just you and her. I heard at the office. I don’t know who told me.’

‘Scout. She’s nearly six.’ Tara waited for some kind of explanation. I shrugged. ‘It happens.’ I smiled to soften the words. ‘I didn’t plan it. Nobody plans to be a single parent. That’s the way it turned out. We were left to get on with it. And we did. We do.’

‘It must be hard.’

I shook my head.

‘Scout makes it easy. And it’s not really just the pair of us. There’s Stan, our dog. And we’ve got a lot of support.’ I thought of Mrs Murphy and her family. I thought of Scout’s buddy, Mia, and her family. I thought of my colleagues up at West End Central, who always found a spare desk and some pens and paper for drawing whenever I had to bring Scout to work. I thought of Edie Wren.

‘There’s a lot of people around us who want us to make it,’ I said.

‘I don’t know how you do it. Aaron – my husband – and I find it tough enough with a full-time nanny.’

I didn’t want to hear about Aaron the husband. I didn’t want to think about any of that. Not today. Not in here. So I touched her hair. Her shining, swinging, fabulous hair. I had wanted to do that for quite a while.

‘It needs a wash,’ she said.

‘Yes, it’s a disgrace,’ I smiled. ‘I don’t know how you have the nerve to step out of the house.’

‘Funny man. I’ve never seen you in a suit before,’ she said, running her fingers under the lapels of my jacket.

‘I got married in this suit,’ I said, and when I looked down at her hands on my lapel I saw that the blue wool was shiny with time. I had never noticed that before. My wedding suit was old.

She brought her face close to mine.

‘You should get a new one,’ she whispered.

She gave me a coffee-flavoured kiss and slipped off the stool. ‘Time to get back to the real world,’ she said.

The traffic was unmoving on Shaftesbury Avenue when we started back to West End Central so I put on the blues-and-twos and everything that blocked our path quickly got out of the way.

‘Oh God!’

Tara sank deep into her seat, laughing with some combination of embarrassment and delight as the two-tone siren howled and the grille lights blazed and London made way.

We laughed out loud all the way back to Savile Row.

And it was only hours later, after Scout had fallen asleep on the sofa reading a book called I Like This Poem and the bells of St Paul’s were chiming the hour that I suddenly realised Tara Jones had never heard the sound of the blues-and-twos.