'You don't hang about.'
'You don't really want to come, do you?'
I shivered and looked outside, at the cold darkness. I didn't want to, but I didn't want to be here either, lying in bed bathed in my sweat, my heart thumping in my chest, my mouth dry, just waiting for it to be light again when unbearable fear became manageable. Looking at the clock. Falling asleep but then jerking awake a few minutes later. Listening for noises and scared by the wind. Thinking of Jo. Thinking of me. Of him in the darkness, watching me.
'I'll come,' I said. 'Where's your car?'
'Outside my house.'
'Where's your house?'
'Belsize Park. A couple of stops on the tube.'
'Let's get a cab.' I couldn't bear the idea of being underground tonight. I'd had enough scares for one day.
'OK.'
'I'll go and put some warmer clothes on. And this time I will ring someone, to tell them who I'm with and stuff. Sorry.'
Fifteen
As far as I could tell in the darkness, Ben Brody lived in a nice house, just near a park. The street was wide and lined with tall trees that waved their empty branches in the lamplight.
'Why don't you just wait in the car while I grab a few things? You look all in.'
He opened the car door and I climbed into the passenger seat. It was freezing, and the windows were frosted over. It was a very empty, tidy car, just a box of tissues and a road atlas on the floor. I huddled up in my thick jacket, blew curls of breath into the icy air and waited. A light went on in the upstairs room of Ben's house, then a few minutes later it went off again. I looked at the clock on the dashboard; it was nearly two. I asked myself what I was doing there, in the deep of the night, in a part of London I'd never set foot in before, in the car of a man I didn't know. I couldn't come up with an answer that made any sense at all, except that I'd reached breaking point.
'We can go now.'
Ben had opened the door. He was dressed in jeans, a thick speckled jumper and an old leather jacket.
'What've you got there?'
'A torch, a blanket, some oranges and chocolate for the journey. The blanket's for you. Lie on the back seat and I'll cover you up.'
I didn't protest. I clambered over and lay down and he draped me in a thick blanket. He started the engine and turned up the heating. I lay there with my eyes open as we slid away. I saw street lights flick by; tall buildings. Then I saw stars, trees, a distant aeroplane in the sky. I closed my eyes.
I slept and woke through the long drive. At one point I surfaced to hear Ben droning some songs to himself that I didn't recognize.
Another time I struggled into a sitting position and looked out of the window. It was still dark and I could see no lights in any direction. No other cars passed us. Ben didn't say anything, but he passed me a couple of squares of chocolate that I nibbled slowly. Then I lay down again. I didn't want to talk.
At half past five we stopped at a garage for petrol. It was still dark, but I could see a smudgy greyness on the horizon. It seemed colder than ever, and I could make out snow on the hilltops. Ben came back carrying two polystyrene cups of coffee. I climbed over into the front seat, dragging the blanket with me, and he handed one to me. I wrapped my hands around its warmth.
'White, no sugar,' he said.
'How did you guess?'
'We had coffee before.'
'Oh. How far is it?'
'Not long now. The cottage is a mile or so from a village called Castleton, on the coast. Take a look on the map if you want it's on the floor by your feet. I may need you to guide me a bit.'
'Do you think she'll be there?'
He shrugged. 'You always have dark thoughts in the early hours of the morning.'
'It's starting to get light now. You must be tired.'
'Not so bad. It'll hit me later, I expect.'
'In the middle of your meeting.'
'Probably.'
'I can drive if you want.'
'I'm not insured. You'll have to talk to keep me awake.'
'I'll do my best.'
'We passed Stonehenge. I nearly woke you. But we'll go back the same way.'
'I've never seen it.'
'Really?'
'It's amazing the things I haven't seen. I've never been to Stonehenge, or to Stratford, or to Hampton Court or to the Tower of London or to Brighton pier. I've never been to Scotland. Or the Lake District, even. I was going to go to Venice. I'd bought the tickets and everything. When I was in a cellar with a gag over my mouth, I should have been setting off for Venice.'
'You'll go one day.'
'I suppose so.'
'What was the worst thing?' he asked, after a pause.
I looked at him and he looked ahead, at the road and the rolling hills. I took a sip of coffee. I thought about saying that I couldn't talk about it, then I thought that Ben was the first person I had met since I ran barefoot from captivity who wasn't looking at me with an expression of wariness or alarm. He wasn't treating me as if I was pitiable or deranged. So I tried to answer. 'I don't know. I can't say. Hearing him wheeze and knowing he was there beside me. Thinking I couldn't breathe and was going to suffocate, going to drown inside myself. It was .. .' I tried to come up with the right word '.. . obscene. Maybe just the waiting in the darkness and knowing I was going to die. I tried to hang on to things so I wouldn't go mad not things from my own life, because I thought that would be a further way of tormenting myself, of going insane with loneliness and terror. Just images, really, like I told you before. Beautiful pictures of the world outside. I still think of them now, sometimes, when I wake in the night. But I knew I was getting stripped away, bit by bit. I was losing myself. That was the point -or, at least, that's what I think the point was. I was going to shed all the bits that made me into me and in the end I'd just be this ghastly object gibbering on a ledge, half naked, dirty and ashamed.' I stopped abruptly.
'Why don't you peel us both an orange? They're in the bag between us.'
I peeled two oranges and their aroma filled the car. My fingers were sticky with the juice. I handed him his, segment by segment. 'Look,' he said. 'There's the sea now.'
It was silver and empty and still. You could hardly tell where the water ended and the dawn sky began except to the east, where the sun cast a pale light.
'Tell me where I should be turning off,' he said. 'It must be about now.'
We turned right, away from the sun, along a small road that descended towards the coast. Then left again, along an even smaller road.
'It's just about here, I think,' Ben said, peering ahead.
There was a closed gate and a small track. I got out of the car and opened the gate, waited till Ben had driven through, then closed it again.
'Do Jo's parents come here much?'
'Hardly at all. He's too ill, and it's not very luxurious. So they're always glad to have people use it. It's pretty basic, no heating or anything, and beginning to get rather run down. But from the bedroom you can see the sea. There it is.'
The cottage was tiny and grey-stoned. It had thick walls and small windows. Tiles had blown off the roof and lay smashed around the front door. It looked shabby and neglected.
'There's no car here,' said Ben. 'No one's here.'
