Polly was about to remove her nightshirt and put on the dress when the front door buzzer buzzed.
“Christ’s buggery bollocks!”
Polly stepped back out of the jeans and rushed over to the front door of her little flat. She lived on the top floor of a large house, one of the thousands of houses that once were home to prosperous Mary Poppins families. Places built to house twelve people and which ended up providing for twelve households. “There’s room in this conversion for four decent-sized flats or six small ones,” the property developers of the early eighties would say. “So what do you reckon? Fourteen? Or is that pushing it?”
That particular speculative bubble had, of course, long since burst, and there were now a mere six buttons on the front of Polly’s building. One of which led right up to the attic of the house, which was Polly’s home.
Polly gingerly took up the receiver of the entryphone intercom that hung on the wall beside her front door. Her hand was shaking. This was insane. Why had he come back? She was furious, of course, all the old emotions returning, the ancient wound exploding open, but she was thrilled as well. How could she not be? Never had she expected to hear his voice again, and yet here he was, only four floors below, standing at her own front door.
“Hello,” she said, attempting a noncommittal, matter-of-fact tone and failing entirely. “Is that you?”
Suddenly she was half her age. A young girl again, young and nervous and excited.
“Is that really you?”
“Your light was on. It’s never been on this late before.”
Polly stepped back as if she had received a blow. She nearly fell. The receiver dropped from her hand and bashed against the wall, swinging on its curly flex.
“Can’t you sleep?”
The hated voice, the hated and shocking voice drifted up from the dangling receiver.
“I thought you might want company. If you tell the police I came round my mum will say I was at home with her. Are you wearing any clothes, Polly? Have you got a bra on? What colour are your knickers? I bet you aren’t wearing any this late at night, are you?”
Polly’s eyes were full of tears now. Through the watery mist she focused on the red panic button that stood out upon the wall behind the door. It was so located that should an intruder ever push open the door, forcing Polly backwards into her flat, the button would then be in immediate reach. There was another one on the wall by her bed. Polly wanted to push those buttons, she wanted to alert the whole house to her persecution, to set alarm bells ringing there and in the local police station, but she knew that she must not do it. Her enemy was not at the gate, he was in the street and would no doubt soon scurry off as he always did. He was no physical threat. There was no justification in summoning a screaming squad car, and the police did not take kindly to having their services abused. One does not cry wolf with panic buttons. When you push them you need to be believed.
Blinking back her tears, Polly grabbed up the receiver.
“I’m calling the police. I am calling the fucking police right now! Fuck off! Please fuck off!”
“You use that word a lot, don’t you, Polly?” said Peter. “Is that because you like it, Polly? Fucking? Is that what you like?”
15
Downstairs the Bug turned and scurried away. He had taken a big risk ringing her doorbell like that. He’d certainly not intended to do it. He knew it would probably mean a police visit, more social workers, his mum in tears. But seeing her light shining so late, knowing that she, like him, was still awake in the small hours of the night, perhaps even thinking about him, that had been too much for him to resist. Now, however, he must retreat. If Polly did call the police and he were found in her street no denial from him or testimony from his mother would prevent his arrest.
Leaning against the wall beside her door Polly struggled to control her pounding heart and the tears that she could feel beginning to prickle up into her eyes. Her legs felt weak. Slowly she slid down the wall, her back cold against the plaster until she sat upon her haunches. Jack and the Bug? Within minutes of each other? What could be going on? What was happening?
Perhaps half a minute went by before the front door buzzer sounded again. She was waiting for it but it still made her jump. Like the phone, the buzzer seemed much louder than it did in the day. Even in Polly’s emotional state she found herself wondering if it could be heard in the flat below. She hoped not. She was currently in dispute with the man downstairs. He was a milkman who rose every morning at four and put on his radio, a habit which had caused Polly to voice numerous complaints. She did not want to arm the man with counter-accusations of late-night comings and goings.
The buzzer buzzed again.
She would not answer it. It would be the Bug again. Polly knew his pattern well enough. He tended to attack (which was how Polly privately described the Bug’s intrusions into her life), then attack once or twice more before disappearing, long before any policeman might deign to turn up. On the other hand, supposing it wasn’t the Bug? Supposing it was him, Jack? Unlikely, of course. After all, it was only a minute or two since Jack had telephoned, but he’d said he wouldn’t be long… If indeed it had been Jack at all… In her distraught state Polly found herself prey to the most paranoid of musings. Had the Bug found out about Jack? Was he somehow playing a terribly cruel trick on her? Had she merely imagined that the voice had been that of her former lover?
Buzz.
She had to answer it. So what if it was the Bug? She would call him a sad no-dick. What was more, if she did not feel justified in using her panic button she could certainly let off her rape alarm into the intercom. Sod the milkman, sod everyone else in the house if it woke them up. They weren’t being stalked. She would shatter the Bug’s eardrum. Polly went to her bedside table and took up the little alarm tube. Suitably armed, she returned to the intercom and picked up the receiver.
“Yes?” This time her voice was like steel. Fuck-off-and-die steel. Her thumb hovered over the rape-alarm button.
“Polly. It’s me. It’s Jack.”
It was Jack. There could be no doubt. There was only one Jack.
The relief! The blessed relief. But what about the Bug?
“Jack. Is there anyone else down there? A man?”
“What?”
“It’s a perfectly simple question! Is there anyone else there, Jack? Thin, pale, mousy hair?”
Down in the street Jack glanced about him. He did not know what he had expected Polly to say to him, but it was not this. The reunion conversation was not shaping up the way he had expected. First he had been forced to put her on hold, now she was asking him about other men.
“There’s no one in the street but me, Polly. Can I come up?”
Polly struggled to become mistress of her emotions and her thoughts. It must be coincidence. Jack and the Bug could not be connected. It just so happened that on this very strange and crowded night the two men who, in their different ways, had hijacked Polly’s emotions more effectively than any other people in her life, should clash. The Bug had simply chosen this night to revert to form, the same night that Jack, Jack of all people in the world, had decided to drop by.
“What is this about, Jack?” she said into the mouthpiece.
“Can I come up?” Jack’s voice replied from three floors below.
Everything seemed to be happening at a breathtaking speed. “I’m in my nightie, Jack!”
Jack did not reply to this. He considered making some smart Alec comment but decided against it, opting to leave her protest hanging on the wire that connected them. The tactic worked. Polly realized that however inappropriate the time and the circumstances might be, she was never going to simply tell Jack to go away.
“I’m on the top floor.”
Polly pressed the buzzer and let Jack back into her life.
