to myself like a madwoman. I wasn't sure I could get it to make sense but the one thing that Jo and I had in common was that we had been sexually involved with Ben. There was no doubt about that. Not only-that, we had both been sexually involved with him just before we disappeared. I quickly pulled on my own clothes. I just couldn't get it to make sense. I had to think about it somewhere else, somewhere safe and quiet. Because I wasn't safe here any more. The quietness of the house closed round me.
Once I was dressed I moved quickly around the flat retrieving what I absolutely needed. Shoes, bag, sweater, purse, my horrible warm red jacket. What was he playing at with me? He'd lied to me, or sort of lied, or omitted to tell the full truth, and I wasn't going to sit here and wait for him to come home. I tried to remember that voice out of the dark. I'd heard Ben's voice in the dark as well, next to me in bed, murmuring in my ear, groaning, telling me he adored me. Could it be the same voice?
I ran over to Ben's desk and started rummaging through the drawers. I pushed files and notebooks aside impatiently until I found what I was after. A strip of passport-sized photographs of Ben. I contemplated it for a moment. Oh, God, he was a handsome man. I had asked whether people had seen Jo. But I had never asked had never thought to ask whether they had seen Ben. I had been tracking myself tracking Jo. I might consider tracking Ben. I hesitated, then picked up his mobile phone. I needed it more than he did. I opened his front door and before leaving I turned and looked back, as if to say goodbye to a place where I had been briefly happy.
I couldn't rely on anyone now. I had to be quick. I was running out of safe places.
Twenty-five
I was running. Running down the road, bitter wind on my cheeks and my feet slipping on the icy pavement. Where was I going? I didn't know, I just knew I was going, leaving, moving on to somewhere else, something else. I'd closed the door on the warm house that smelt of sawdust and I hadn't even taken a key. I was on my own again, out here in the winter weather. It occurred to me that I was very visible, in my red jacket, but the thought flitted vaguely through my head like a snowflake then melted. I just kept running, my heart thumping in my chest and my breath coming in gasps, and the houses and trees and cars and the faces of other people were a blur.
At the bottom of the road I forced myself to stop and look around. My heart slowed down. Nobody seemed to be taking any notice of me, though you never know. Think, Abbie, I told myself; think now. Think for your life. But I couldn't think, not at first. I could only feel and see. I saw pictures in my head. Ben and Jo together, holding each other. I closed my eyes and saw darkness, and it felt like the darkness of my lost time, folding around me again. Eyes in the pitch black; eyes watching Jo, watching me. A butterfly on a green leaf, a tree on a hill, a shallow stream, then clear deep water. I opened my eyes and the harsh grey world came back into focus.
I started moving again, walking this time, not really knowing where I was going. I walked past the park and down the bill. I walked towards Jo's flat, though I knew I mustn't go there. On the main road, which was full of traffic and lined with shops selling pastries, hats, candles, fish, I saw Jo's face. I blinked and stared and of course it wasn't her. It was just a woman, going about her day, with no sense of how blessed she was.
I knew I had traced Jo to within the last couple of hours of her freedom, Wednesday afternoon, and she'd been looking for a kitten. She had disappeared on a Wednesday afternoon, and the next day I too had gone. After all this time of blundering around chasing for clues, that was all I had. A pathetic shred.
I turned on my track and went down the high street and left on to a road that led to Lewin Crescent. I walked up the narrow street until I came to the dingy house with its boarded-up windows and knocked on the door. I listened and I could hear miaows; I even thought I caught a faint whiff of urine. Then I heard shuffling footsteps on the other side of the door. The door opened a chink on its chain and her eyes peered suspiciously out at me. 'Yes?'
'Betty?'
'Yes?'
'It's Abbie. I came to see you two days ago. I asked you about my friend.'
'Yes?' she said again.
'Can I come in?'
The chain slid and the door opened. I stepped into the hot, stale room, with its moving carpet of cats. The smell caught in my nostrils. Betty was wearing the same blue shift with its missing buttons and covering of cat hairs, and the same ratty slippers and thick brown tights. I thought at least some of the ammonia smell came from her. She was so thin that her arms were like sticks and her fingers twigs. Her skin gathered in pouches on her small face.
'So it's you again. Can't keep away, can you?'
'There was something I forgot to ask you.'
'What?'
'You said you'd seen my friend? Jo?' She didn't answer. 'The one who came about having a kitten and you said she couldn't have one because .. .'
'I know who you mean,' she said.
'I didn't ask about the man I was with. Hang on.' I fumbled in my bag and took out the strip of passport photos of Ben. 'Him.'
She glanced briefly down. 'Well?'
'Do you recognize him?'
'I think so.'
'No, I mean, did you recognize him? Before.'
'You're a very confused young lady,' she said. She held out a hand to the ginger cat that was butting against her legs and it leapt up and nuzzled its chin against her fingers, purring like a tractor.
'What I want to know is, had you seen him before he came here with me?'
'Before?'
'Have you seen this man more than the once?' I asked desperately.
'When did I see him?'
'Yes.'
'What?'
'I mean, yes, when did you see him?' I was starting to feel slightly sick.
'I said that to you. I said, when did I see him? 'Yes' isn't an answer.'
I rubbed my eyes. 'I just wanted to know if you'd seen him before two days ago. That's all.'
'All sorts of people come here. Is he from the council?'
'No, he's-'
'Because if he's from the council, I won't let him into my house.'
'He's not from the council.'
'Cats are naturally clean animals, you know.'
'Yes,' I said dully.
'And some people think it's not nice, the way they hunt. But it's just their nature.'
'I know.'
'I don't give my kitties to homes where they're allowed to go outside. That's what I told your friend. When she said she'd let a cat outside, I told her it wasn't a fit place. It would just get run over.'
'Yes. Thank you. I'm sorry to have bothered you.' I turned to go 'Not like the hippie lot, mind.'
'The hippie lot?'
'Yes. They don't make proper checks.' She sniffed disapprovingly.
'These, um, these hippies have lots of cats, like you?'
'Not like me,' she said. 'No.'
'Did you tell Jo about them?' ''
'Maybe,' she said.
'Betty, where do they live?'
I don't know why I felt I was in such a hurry. It was as if I was scared the trail would go cold. I knew where Jo had gone after Betty's or, at least, I knew where she might have gone, and that was enough for me. Now I was in the final hour or two of her final day. Everything else had faded and all I could see was her receding shape and I was stumbling along in her footsteps. But who was coming behind me? Who was following me?
Betty had called them hippies, but I guessed from what she'd said about them their dread locked hair and patched clothes that they were New Age travellers. She had told me that they lived in an abandoned church over in
