'Go on.'
'You undid the buttons on my shirt. We could hear my guests talking to each other in the next-door room.'
'And?'
'We went to the bathroom and locked the door and we fucked.'
'Standing up?'
'Yes. It took about thirty seconds.'
'Show me,' I said.
I stayed the night with Ben. In spite of everything, I slept heavily and when I woke in the morning, I could smell coffee and toast. Through the curtains, the sky looked blue. I was frightened by my sudden happiness. It was like the coming of spring.
Nineteen
We had toast in bed. The crumbs spilt on to the sheets, but Ben lay back on the pillows and pulled the duvet under his chin, looking very comfortable.
'Don't you have work to do?' I said.
Ben leant across me to look at the clock by the bed. Funny how quickly you could feel comfortable with another body. 'Eighteen minutes,' he said.
'Won't you be late?'
'I'm already late. But there's someone coming in to see me. He's come all the way from Amsterdam. If I'm not there to meet him, I'll be a bad person as well as late.'
I kissed him. It was meant to be just a peck.
'You'll have to stop doing that,' he said. 'Or I won't be able to go.'
'You see,' I said, whispering it, because my face was almost touching his, 'if I were you and you were me, I'd think that you were mad. Or I was mad. If you see what I mean.'
'You've lost me.'
'If somebody I'd met disappeared and turned up a fortnight later and seemed to have no memory of even having seen me, I'd think they were completely mad. Or a liar. As you know, the police are torn between the two theories.'
'I thought I was mad. Then I thought you were mad. Then I just didn't know.' He stroked my hair. It made me shiver with pleasure. 'I didn't know what to do,' he said. 'It seemed an impossible thing to explain. I suppose I thought that I had to make you like me again. In any case, the idea of me saying to you, 'You're attracted to me, or at least you were, you don't remember it but you really were' ... It didn't sound particularly sane.'
'You don't have hands like a designer,' I said.
'You mean they're rough and scratchy?'
'I like them.'
He contemplated his own hands with curiosity. 'I do a lot of my own manufacturing. Things get spilt on my hands. They get scratched and hammered and scraped, but that's the way I like it. My old man is a welder. He's got a workshop at home and he spends all his weekends taking things apart and putting them back together. When I was younger, if I wanted to communicate with him, the only way was by going in there and passing him the wrench or whatever it was. Getting my hands dirty. That's what I still do, on the whole. I found a way of getting paid for what my dad did as a hobby.'
'It's not quite like that for me,' I said. 'Not with my dad or with my work.'
'You're fantastic at your job. You pulled the whole thing together. You scared us all shitless.'
'Sometimes I can't believe the things I do or did. You know, risk assessment for an office? You can imagine risk assessment for an oil rig or a polar expedition but the insurance company wanted a risk assessment for the office so I did it. Just at the moment I'm a world expert on every bad thing that can happen to you in an office. Did you know that last year ninety-one office workers in the United Kingdom were injured by typing-correction fluid? I mean, how can you injure yourself with typing-correction fluid?'
'I know exactly how. You use the fluid, you get some on your fingers and then rub your eyes.'
'Thirty-seven people injured themselves with calculators. How do they do that? They only weigh about as much as an egg carton. I could tell them a thing or two about risk.'
It didn't seem so funny any more. I sat up and looked at the clock. 'I guess we both need to get going,' I said.
We took a shower together and we were really very disciplined. We just washed each other and dried each other. We helped each other dress. Putting Ben's clothes on him was almost as exciting as taking them off had been. On the whole it was better for him, no doubt. He had fresh clothes to put on. I had the same ones from the night before. I had to go back to the flat and change. He came over to me, ruffled my hair, kissed my forehead. 'It's a bit creepy seeing you in Jo's clothes, though,' he said.
I shook my head. 'We must have the same taste,' I said. 'These are mine. In fact, this shirt is the one I was wearing when I was kidnapped. I would have thought I'd have thrown it in the bin, or burnt it but it's quite a nice shirt, and I figured that I'm not going to stop thinking about things just because I set fire to some clothes .. .'
'That shirt was Jo's. She bought it in Barcelona. Unless you've been buying clothes in Barcelona as well.'
'Are you sure?'
'I'm sure.'
I fell silent. I was thinking furiously. That was something. That meant something. But what?
When we were standing on his doorstep, we kissed again. For a moment I felt as if I couldn't let go. I would just stay clinging to him and I would be safe. Then I told myself not to be so stupid. 'I need to go back into the horrible world,' I said.
'What are you going to do?'
'I'm going home I mean to Jo's to change. I can't go around in this stuff.'
'I don't mean that.'
'I'm not sure. Today or tomorrow, this man is going to discover that he's killed the wrong woman. He'll start looking for me again. Maybe I'll see if I can find out where Jo has gone. Though I don't know whether that will do any good.' The hope I had felt earlier, lying in bed with Ben eating toast, was fading again.
Ben was fidgeting with his car keys, deep in thought. 'I'll call Jo's parents today,' he said. 'They should be back by now. Then we'll take it from there.'
I kissed Ben. I had to stand on tiptoe to do it. 'That means 'thank you',' I said. 'And that you don't have to go out on a limb for me.'
'Don't be stupid, Abbie. I'll call you later.' He handed me a card and then we both laughed at the formality of the gesture. 'You can always reach me at one of those numbers.'
We kissed and I felt his hand on my breast. I put my hand on his hand. 'I'm just thinking of this man from Amsterdam,' I said.
I lay in the bath with the flannel over my face, and I tried to think what he would be thinking. He was about to discover that I was still alive. Perhaps he knew by now. There was another thing as well. There had been that reckless phone call to my own mobile. He had kept it. It was his trophy. And I claimed to be Jo. Did he think I was after him?
I dressed in Jo's clothes. I deliberately chose grey cords and a cream-coloured, thick-knitted sweater that were different from anything I had ever worn. Abbie Devereaux had to be dead and gone for the present. I'd just be one of the millions floating around London. How could he find me? But, then, how could I find him?
Next, I did what I should have done before: I picked up the phone and dialled from memory and Terry's father answered. 'Yes?' he said.
'Richard, it's Abbie.'
'Abbie.' His voice was frostily polite.
'Yes, look, I know how awful everything must be at the moment
'Do you?'
'Yes. And I'm so sorry about Terry.'
'That's rich, coming from you.'
'Has he been released?'
