'It's no one you know. Have you got my mail?'
'I put it on the table.'
I wandered over and looked at the two envelopes there. One was a questionnaire about shopping habits, which I chucked immediately into the bin, the other an envelope marked 'special delivery'. I picked it up and it felt promisingly firm. I ripped it open. A brand new shiny credit card. A. E. Devereaux. I had a place to sleep, my clothes, some CDs and now a credit card. I was really coming back to life. I looked around.
'Of course, some of my stuff is still here, bits and pieces,' I said.
I sipped at my wine and Terry gulped at his. I was going to say something about his drinking and then I remembered with relief that I didn't have to do that any more. That was Sally's job now. But maybe he didn't drink with her.
'You can collect it any time you want,' he said.
'I haven't exactly got anywhere to put it,' I said. 'Is there a rush? Is Sally moving in?'
'I've only known her a couple of weeks. She's just'
'You know, Terry, if there's one thing I don't want to get into it's a discussion about how she really doesn't mean anything to you.'
'That's not what I meant. I was talking about you. I just wanted to say that I wasn't happy about what happened when you left.' He tried to take a sip from an empty glass. He looked down at the floor, then up at me. 'I'm sorry, Abbie. I'm sorry I hit you. Really. I've got no excuse to offer at all. It was my fault completely and I hate myself for it.'
I knew this Terry very well. This was the apologetic Terry. The one who admitted everything and said he would never do it again and from now on it would all be different. I'd believed that Terry too often but, then, he always believed himself too.
'It's OK,' I said at last. 'You don't need to hate yourself.'
'I was terrible to live with.'
'Oh, well, I was probably difficult too, in my own way.'
He shook his head ruefully. 'That's the thing, you weren't difficult at all. You were happy and generous and fun. Except for the first few minutes after your alarm went off in the morning. All my mates thought I was the luckiest man in the world. And you didn't give up on me.'
'Oh, well.. .' I said uncomfortably.
'Except you are now, aren't you? Giving up on me.'
'It's over, Terry.'
'Abbie
'Don't,' I said. 'Please. Listen, Terry, I wanted to ask you something.'
'Anything.' He was on his second glass of wine now.
'For some reason, my own sanity mainly, I'm trying to reconstruct this period that I can't remember. I'm investigating myself as if I were someone else. Now, from what I understand we had a massive row on the Saturday and I walked out.'
'As I've said, it wasn't really a row. It was all my fault. I don't know what came over me.'
'Terry, I'm completely uninterested in that. I just want to know where I was. And various other things. So I left, and went to stay with Sadie. But if I stormed out, I presumably wasn't carrying my CD player and my TV with me.'
Terry shook his head.
'No,' he said. 'You walked out with nothing except your bag. I thought you'd be back later that evening. The next day you rang and I tried to talk you out of it but I couldn't. You wouldn't tell me where you were. Then a couple of days later, you rang again. You said you'd be over to collect some things. You came on Wednesday and you took quite a lot of stuff.'
Now I was getting to the difficult bit. 'Was there anything else?'
'What do you mean?'
'Well, when we talked .. . when we rowed, you know, did we also, um .. . ?' 'We didn't really talk, as such. We had a row. You left. I asked if you wanted to come back. You refused. You wouldn't tell me where you were. I tried to reach you on the phone but I couldn't.'
'What about when I came round here to collect my stuff ? What about then?'
'We didn't meet. You came when I was out.'
I felt a lurch in my stomach.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I know I'm being stupid about this, but you're saying that we didn't have any contact after I walked out?'
'We talked on the phone.'
'I don't mean that. We didn't meet?'
'No. You wouldn't let me.'
'So who the fuck .. . ?'
I'd begun a sentence that I couldn't possibly finish.
'Look, Abbie, I really want to .. .'
At that moment the doorbell rang so I never learnt what it was that Terry really wanted, although I could make a fair guess at it. I saw Terry clench his teeth and I saw that he knew who was at the door, so I knew as well.
'This is a bit awkward,' he said, as he moved across to the door.
I wasn't in a condition to deal with anything at all. I could hardly speak.
'It's not at all awkward. Go and let her in. I'll come down with you. I'm going now.'
We trooped down the stairs in single file. 'I'm just on my way,' I said to Sally, on the doorstep. 'I was collecting my mail.' I waved the single envelope.
'It's fine,' Sally said.
'I won't make a habit of this,' I said.
'It doesn't matter at all,' she said.
'That's fantastic,' I said, as I moved past her. 'I can honestly say, with complete sincerity, that you and Terry make a better couple than Terry and I ever did.'
Her expression turned frosty. 'What are you talking about? You don't know me at all.'
'No,' I said. 'But I know me.'
I stopped off on the way home at one of those mini-supermarkets that compensate for the wrinkled fruit and veg they keep out on the pavement by never closing. I got milk, a bottle of white wine and the ingredients for a basic salad. Back in Jo's flat I locked the door with the chain then threw the salad together. I was so tired that I'd gone beyond the desire to sleep. My eyes felt sore, my head buzzed, my limbs ached. I swallowed a couple of pills and washed them down with a gulp of cold white wine, then I ate the salad alone and in silence, trying to clarify my thoughts. I looked at the small pyramid of Jo's mail. There was nothing necessarily sinister about that. She might have invited me to flat sit while she was on holiday or working abroad or almost anything. I flicked through her letters. There were a few red letters. I didn't know if that meant anything. Jo might be the sort of person who always leaves bills until the last minute. Or she might just have forgotten. Or she might be arriving back from her holiday at any second. I decided to give it a couple of days and then I would start to find out about Jo. First I had to find out about myself.
I sat cross-legged on Jo's pine floor and arranged things around me. There was the Avalanche file, the mail I'd collected from Terry out of the bag. There were the phone messages from Carol, the receipts I'd found in the glove compartment of my car. I went to the bureau in the corner of the room and pulled it open. I took a pen from a mug with a London Underground map on in it. From a drawer I took a handful of white A4 paper.
What did I know about the days that I couldn't remember? I took one of the pieces of white paper and wrote 'Lost Days' at the top. At the far right-hand side I wrote Tuesday 22 January. Right at the end of the day, just before midnight, I had collapsed on the doorstep of Tony Russell. How many days had I been held captive? Three? No, it must have been more than that. Four, five, six, maybe more. The last piece of information I was absolutely sure of was the evening of Tuesday 15 January when I had ordered a take away to be delivered to this very flat. I needed to fill in the days. What had I been doing? I knew I hadn't been seeing my friends.
A thought occurred to me. I went to the kitchen. I had to open a number of cupboard doors before I found
