'What?'
'What do you think of my hairstyle?'
'Amazing,' she said. 'A bit extreme maybe, but amazing.'
'Does it make me look different?' I said.
'I didn't recognize you. Well, not at first.'
'Great,' I said, and she looked worried all over again.
I sat in the car and tried to clarify my thoughts. Avalanche. I felt like I'd been dropped on to a new planet. A foggy new planet. What did I actually know? The people at Jay and Joiner's saw me as a traumatized crazy. I'd left my job temporarily, at least after a row. And I'd left my boyfriend. At some point in the next few days I'd gone around visiting people who'd been involved in the project, apparently encouraging them to make complaints about the way our company had dealt with them. And I had met someone mad and murderous. Or could it possibly have been someone I already knew? It couldn't, could it?
An image came into my mind of an animal out in the open. I wanted to run for cover, but I didn't know which direction to run in. There were people who didn't know what had happened to me and there were other people who didn't believe what had happened to me. But there was one person who knew I was telling the truth.
Where was he? I looked around reflexively and shuddered. Maybe I could escape somewhere very far away and never come back. Australia. The North Pole. No, it was hopeless. What was I going to do, initiate the process of emigration? What did that involve? Or should I just go on holiday to Australia and refuse to leave? It didn't sound very feasible.
I took the take away receipt from the glove compartment: nb Maynard Street, NWi. It meant nothing to me. At one end of the spectrum, it might have been left there by someone else and have nothing important to do with me at all. Or it might be where he lived. But as soon as the thought came to me I knew I had to go there.
This was turning into the longest day of my life. I looked in the A-Z. It wasn't so far away. And I look completely different. I could pretend I had the wrong place. It would probably amount to nothing.
The flat was on the first floor of a smart stuccoed house just off Camden high street. I found a parking meter and crammed change into it to give me thirty-six minutes. It had its own entrance down the side. I stood in front of it and took a deep breath. I reached into the glove compartment and found the sunglasses. The cold winter evening was now as dark as the grave but it would complete my disguise. If a woman answered, I would have a proper conversation. If a man answered, I would play it safe. I would just say, 'Sorry, I must have the wrong address,' and start walking decisively away. There were enough people in the street for me to be safe.
But nobody answered. I pressed the bell again. And again. I could hear the bell ring, far inside. Somehow you can tell when a doorbell is ringing inside somewhere empty. I took my car keys out of my pocket and juggled them in my hand. I could go to one of the other flats in the building. But what would I ask? I walked back to the car. The meter showed that I had thirty-one minutes left. What a waste. I opened the glove compartment to replace the take away bill. There among the other stuff, the log book, a brochure, an
RAC membership card, was that key, the key that wasn't the key to my old flat.
Feeling ridiculous, I took the key and walked back to the flat. With a sense of utter unreality, I pushed it gently into the lock and opened the door. As I pushed it wider, I saw a pile of mail. I picked up a letter. Josephine Hooper. I'd never heard of her. She was obviously away. There were stairs and I climbed them slowly. It could hardly have felt stranger if I had walked through the wall. I looked inside. I saw stripped pine, pictures, photographs pinned to the wall in the entrance hall, photographs I didn't recognize. Rich colours. I pushed the door shut. Yes, I could smell the mustiness of absence. Something had gone off somewhere.
I had no memory of the house, the street. I had barely even been to the area before. But I had had the key to the door in my car, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised when I walked into the living room and turned on the lights and there, along with Josephine Hooper's pictures, table, rug, sofa, was my stereo, my television, my books. I felt as if I was going to faint. I sank back into a chair. My chair.
Eight
I wandered round the main room, finding traces of myself everywhere. At first I just looked at them, maybe touched them with one finger, as if they might dissolve and disappear. My small television set on the floor. My stereo and my CDs. My laptop on the coffee table. I lifted the lid and pressed the shift bar, at which it emitted a bleep and sprang to life. My green glass vase on the table, with three dead yellow roses rotting over its side and a scatter of black petals at its base. My leather jacket lying on the sofa, as if I'd just popped out for some milk. And there, stuck into the mirror over the fireplace, was a photograph of me. Two, to be precise: passport photos in which I was trying to suppress a smile. I looked happy.
But this was someone else's flat, full of unfamiliar furniture -apart from my chair and books that I'd never read or even heard of, except the book of recipes that lay on the surface near the hob. Here was all the foreign clutter of someone else's life. There was a framed photograph on one of the shelves and I picked it up and examined it: a young woman with curly windswept hair, hands thrust into the pockets of her padded jacket, grinning widely, and hills spread out behind her. It was a lovely, carefree image, but I had never seen the face before. At least, I couldn't remember seeing it. I gathered up the mail that was lying on the floor and leafed through it. All the letters were to Jo Hooper, or Josephine Hooper, or Ms J Hooper. I put them in a neat pile on the kitchen table. She could open them later. But when I looked at the dead flowers on the table, or the amount of mail that had stacked up on the floor, I wondered when she was last here herself.
I opened the 'Mail' file on my laptop, clicked on the 'send and receive' button and waited while a little clock shimmered on the screen. There was a melodic bleep and I saw I had thirty-two new messages. I scrolled down them quickly. Nothing but messages from organizations I'd never heard of, alerting me to things I didn't want to know about.
I hesitated in the quiet room. Then I went across the hall and pushed open the first of the doors. It swung open and I was in a bedroom, with open curtains and a radiator that was warm. I turned on the light. The double bed was made, three velvet cushions scattered at the base and a pair of red checked pyjamas on the pillow. There was a lavender-coloured dressing-gown hanging on a hook on the door, and some moccasin slippers on the floor. On the top of the chest of drawers there was an ancient, balding teddy, a bottle of perfume, a little pot of lip balm, a silver locket, and another photograph this time a close-up of a man's stubbly face. He had an Italian look to him, dark with absurdly long eyelashes. There were fine lines around his eyes and he was smiling. I opened the wardrobe. That black dress, that soft woollen shirt, this thin grey cardigan were someone else's. I lifted the lid of the laundry basket. It was empty, except for a pair of white knickers and some socks.
The next door opened on to the bathroom. It was clean, warm, white-tiled. My blue-and-white toothbrush was in a glass beaker, next to her black one; my toothpaste, with the lid off, was next to hers, with the lid on. There was my deodorant, my moisturizing cream, my makeup case. My green towel was on the radiator, next to her multi-coloured one. I washed my hands, dried them on my own towel, stared at my unaccustomed face in the mirror. I half expected to see her standing behind me, with that smile. Josephine Hooper. Jo.
When I went into the third room I knew at once it was mine -not, at first, because of individual objects that I recognized, but because of the peculiar, powerful sense I had of coming home. Perhaps it had something to do with the smell, or the vague, controlled mess of the room. Shoes on the floor. My suitcase lying open underneath the sash window, with shirts and jerseys and underwear still packed inside. A thick deep-pink jersey thrown across the chair. A small pile of dirty washing in the corner. A tangle of jewellery on the bedside table. The long rugby shirt I wear at night hung over the bed head. I pulled open the cupboard door and there were my two smart suits, my winter dresses and skirts. And there was the blue coat I'd heard about from Robin, and the brown, crushed-velvet dress. I leant forward and sniffed its soft folds, wondering if I had ever got round to wearing it.
I sat down on the bed and for a few moments I just sat there, gazing around me. My head buzzed lightly. Then I slipped off my shoes and lay down and closed my eyes and listened to the hum of the central heating. It was quiet in here. Every so often I heard a faint shuffle from the upstairs flat, or a car driving along on an adjacent road. I pulled the rugby shirt towards me, and put my head on it. Somewhere, a car door banged and someone laughed.
I must have dozed off because when I jerked awake, with a strange taste in my mouth, it was raining outside. The street lamps were glowing orange and the tree outside my window shimmered in its orange glow. I was chilly, so I picked up the pink jersey and discovered, underneath it, my bag. There it was, bulging and securely fastened. I fumbled with the zip. On the top there was my wallet. I opened it and found four crisp, twenty-pound notes and quite a bit of change. My credit cards were in there too, and my driving licence, a book of stamps, my
