under the pot of basil. The earth was all dried out and the leaves had wilted. I watered it carefully. I washed up my mug, dried it, put it back on the hook and left.
Bow was a long way. By the time I arrived I had forty-eight pounds left and a few coppers. I asked in a post office for directions to the car pound. It turned out to be a mile away from the nearest Underground station. You'd have thought that if they towed away your car, they'd at least put it somewhere near public transport. I would have taken a taxi if I'd seen one, but I didn't. There were just lots and lots of cars and vans spraying water up from the wide puddles in the road.
So I walked, past the garages selling B M W s, the factories making lights and catering equipment and carpets; past the building sites where cranes topped with snow stood motionless. I saw the pound as I came over the hill; row upon row of cars surrounded by a high fence, with double-locked gates. Most of them were old and dented. Perhaps their owners had simply abandoned them. I couldn't see my car, which was also old and dented, anywhere.
I took my letter to the office in the corner and a man rummaged around in the filing cabinet, came out with a piece of printed paper, scratched his head and sighed heavily.
'So can I just take it?' I asked.
'Hang on, not so fast. You have to pay, you know.'
'Oh, yes, of course, sorry. How much?' I felt anxiously in my pocket for the dwindling wad of notes.
'That's what I'm working out. There's the fine for parking illegally, then there's the cost of towing it away, then you have to add on the time it's been here.'
'Oh. That sounds like rather a lot.'
It is, yes. A hundred and thirty pounds.'
'Sorry?'
'A hundred and thirty pounds,' he repeated.
'I don't have that much money.'
'We take cheques.'
'I don't have a cheque book.'
'Cards.'
I shook my head.
'Oh dear, oh dear,' he said. He didn't sound too sad.
'What shall I do?'
'I couldn't tell you.'
Can I take the car, drive to a friend's to get money, then come back here?'
'No.'
There was nothing for it but go away again. I slogged back to Bow and sat in a little cafe with another cup of bitter, tepid coffee. Then I went to a payphone, called Sam and asked him, begged him, really, to send sixty pounds no, make that eighty, ninety even -by courier to the police pound, where I'd be waiting. 'Please, please, please,' I said. 'I'm really sorry but this is an emergency.' I knew about the courier service because once he'd got his jacket collected from a club we'd been to because he couldn't be bothered to go back for it. Perk of the job, he'd said.
I finally got my car. At just after twelve thirty, I paid over the 130 and he gave me a printout of where it had been towed away from and a breakdown of the charges. Then he pointed out where it was parked, and unlocked the double gates. I had nineteen pounds left. I climbed in and turned the key in the ignition. It started at once. I turned up the heating and rubbed my hands together to get rid of their cold stiffness. There was a Maltesers packet lying on the passenger seat. I pushed the tape that was in the machine and didn't recognize the music that came on. Something jazzy and cheerful. I turned up the volume and drove through the gates. Then I pulled over and looked at the official receipt. The car had been towed away from outside 103 Tilbury Road, E1 on 28 January which I
worked out was my last day in hospital. The road must be near here, surely.
The road map was in the glove compartment. I found Tilbury Road and drove there, through an area of London that was quite unfamiliar to me. It was a long, dismal street of boarded-up houses, dimly lit news agents and twenty-four-hour shops selling grapefruit and okra and dented tins of tomatoes. I parked outside number 103 and sat in my car for a few minutes. I put my head on the steering-wheel and tried to remember. Nothing happened, no glimmer in the darkness. I put the map back in the glove compartment, and felt a rustle of papers. There were three receipts pushed in there too. One was for petrol: twenty-six pounds, on Monday 14 January. The second was for 150-worth of Italian lire on Tuesday 15 January. The third was for an Indian take away delivery for that same day: 16.80 for two pilau rice, one vegetable biryani, one king prawn tikka, one spinach, one aubergine, one garlic naan. To be delivered to 11b Maynard Street, London NWi. I'd never heard of Maynard Street and I couldn't remember when I'd last been in that corner of north London.
I stuffed the receipts back into the glove compartment and something fell on the floor. I leant down and picked up a pair of sunglasses and a key on a loop of string. Not my key. A key I had never seen before.
It was not quite four. I drove off again, through the drawn-out London outskirts, in the growing dusk. Everything seemed more frightening in the dark. I felt ragged with tiredness, but I still had things to do before going back to Sheila and Guy's.
Seven
'You know what you need, don't you?'
'No, Laurence, what do I need?'
'A rest.'
Laurence didn't know what I needed. I was standing in the office of Jay and Joiner's looking at the spot where my desk used to be. That was the funny thing. The office looked just as it had always looked. It's not a place that is anything special, which is pretty ironic for a company that designs offices. The only real attraction is that it is in a back alley, which is right in the middle of Soho, a couple of minutes' walk from the delicatessens and the market. When I say that the office looked the same, I mean the same except that all traces of me had vanished. It wasn't even as if someone else had just been sitting at my desk. The rest of the office seemed to have been repositioned very subtly so that the space I had once occupied wasn't there any more.
Carol had led me through. That was strange as well, being led through my own office. I didn't get the casual nods and greetings I was used to. There were double-takes, stares, and one new woman who looked at me curiously, assuming I was a customer, until Andy leant over and whispered something to her, and she looked at me even more curiously. Carol was breathlessly apologetic about the lack of all my stuff. She explained that people were falling over it and it had been put in boxes and stowed away in the storeroom, wherever that was. My mail was being opened and either redistributed around the office to relevant people or sent on to me at Terry's. But, then, I'd arranged all that, hadn't I? When I'd left. I nodded vaguely.
'Are you all right?' she asked.
That was a big question. I didn't know whether she just meant my appearance. She had certainly flinched when I had walked into
Reception in my civilian clothes. Very civilian clothes. Then there was my hair. Also I had lost over a stone since she had last seen me. Plus, my face was still a bit yellow from the bruising.
'I've had a bit of a difficult time,' I said.
'Yes,' said Carol, not catching my eye.
'Did the police come here? Asking about me?'
'Yes,' she said. She was looking at me now. Warily. 'We were worried about you.'
'What did they ask?'
'They wanted to know about your work here. And why you'd left.'
'What did you say?'
'They didn't ask me. They talked to Laurence about it.'
'What do you think?'
'What do you mean?'
'About why I left.'
I didn't tell her that I had no idea myself about why I'd left, no memory of leaving. I was hoping that there might be at least one person to whom I could avoid telling my story. I felt I couldn't bear looking at another face showing those signs of growing puzzlement. Should they pity me? Should they believe me?
