she tended to fall asleep. Her grandfather and then her mother had run hairdressing establishments, so it had seemed the natural thing to carry on, only on her own terms and with her own ideas in a contemporary form. She would really have liked to be a guru, founder of her own mystic cult, but had been obliged to compromise and settle for soothsaying.
In the underclothes she had taken off the night before with a baggy red velvet dress on top and a knitted shawl, she glanced into the mirror. Even to her uninterested eyes her hair looked in a bad state, dry and sprinkled white with dandruff. She tied it up in a red and purple scarf, rinsed her hands, splashed water on her face, and stumped downstairs. Her temper, never sunny,was going from bad to worse. She had intended to spend the day at a field event organized by her water-divining teacher. A final attempt at getting hold of Danila failed and Shoshana perched herself reluctantly on the high stool behind the counter. The first client to arrive thought he recognized her as the old woman he had once seen in a Turkish village and from whom he had bought a carpet in the market square.
It had been the worst night of his life. He had slept fitfully, waking every hour with a raging thirst. The most horrible thing was opening his eyes for the final time at nine in the morning and, for a moment, forgetting entirely what had happened and what he had done. Memory returned almost at once and he groaned aloud.
There had been dreams and in one of them a creature had come across the roofs, climbed on drainpipes to his own window, and tried to make its way in. At first he thought it was ac at, but when he saw its human face, the staring eyes and the great gash in the forehead, he screamed aloud. After that he lay trembling, wondering if old Chawcer had heard.
It was only when he finally got up that the drink of the night before hit him. He poured water down his throat but it seemed to have no effect. His head felt sore all over as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper and an ache inside moved about, sometimes over his eyes, sometimes behind one ear or at the back of his neck. He remembered reading somewhere, in one of thos einterviews she gave, that Nerissa never drank anything alcoholic but subsisted on sparkling water and vegetable juices. Having a bath helped him a little, he felt he wasn't strong enough to face the challenge of a shower, all that water drummingon to the top of his head. But he was almost too weak toget out of the bath and when he was standing on the bathmat,the towel around him, he staggered and almost fell.
Dressing was a long, slow process because movement made the pain in his head shift from front to back and ears to eyes. It was the worst hangover he had ever known. Not a heavydrinker in normal circumstances, he went straight to alcohol in moments of stress. I'm not used to it, that's the trouble, he said to himself. People who were always getting hungover recommended eating, or drinking milk, or the hair of the dog. The thought of any of it made him retch. Once he had been sick he felt slightly better, able to stand upright, drink more water, and put into a carrier bag his blood-stained underpants and her clothes-a black Wonderbra and the hated tights, black leatherminiskirt and boots, skimpy pink sweater, and a cream-coloredfaux fur jacket. Cheap stuff, he judged it, accustomed as he was to the wardrobes of Colette Gilbert-Bamber and her friends, supermarket stuff, not even chain store. Her mobile was inside her pink plastic handbag along with her purse with five poundsf ifty in it-he put that in his pocket-a Switch card, a compact of bronzing powder, a red lipstick, a hairbrush, and her door keys.
He didn't want to think about what had happened, but h ecouldn't help it: her blood running down his beautiful portrait, her eyes looking at him. Well, she had asked for it, she had only got what she asked for, talking about Nerissa like that, daring to find fault with her skin. Jealous, of course. Still, she should have known better than to have said those things to him. She should have recognized him as a dangerous man and should have…
His train of thought was abruptly cut off by the sound of the door to the next room closing. He put a hand up to his chest and clutched at the fabric of his sweatshirt, bunching it up in his fist, he didn't know why, perhaps to hold it against hisheart. It was all he could do to stop himself letting out a moan of fear. Had whoever it was gone into that room or been in there and come out of it? He heard footsteps cross the floor, a noiseas if someone had tripped over, and held his breath. A drawer was opened, then another. The walls must be very thin up here. The old bat it was, of course. He knew her step, an old person's slow and heavy tread. But why was she in there? Hecouldn't remember a previous occasion. She must have heard something in the night, that girl crying out or falling to the floor or even his own movements with bucket and scrubbingbrush. Suppose she wanted to come in here and saw that blood on the wall?
There's nothing for her to see in there, he said to himself, and repeated it, nothing for her to see, nothing. But he would have to know, he couldn't just leave it. Very carefully he opened the front door and put his head round it. The door to the bedroom where she lay under the floorboards was a little ajar. His head ached all over now, a vicious, squeezing, throbbing pain. But he came out, wearing his jacket, carrying the bag with herclothes, the flat key in one pocket, car keys in another. He must have made some sort of sound, one of those involuntary moans or sighs he seemed to have been making all night, for suddenly, as he stood there, Miss Chawcer stumped out of the room and gave him a very unfriendly look.
'Oh, it's you, Mr. Cellini.'
Who did you think it was, Christie? He'd have liked to say that but he was afraid, of her and of the Rillington Place killer too. Of his spirit or whatever it was he'd imagined haunted this place. She said, incomprehensibly, 'You look as if you have been frightened by a revenant.'
'Pardon?'
'A ghost, Mr. Cellini, a phantom. 'Revenant' means that which has come back.'
He couldn't stop her seeing the shiver that passed through him. Yet he was furious. Who did she think she was, a bloodys choolteacher and him in the first form? She gave a merrier laugh than he had ever heard come from her.
'Don't tell me you're superstitious.'
He wasn't going to tell her anything. He wanted to ask her what she had been into that room for but he couldn't do that. It was her house, the rooms were all hers. Then he saw she was holding something, an old calendar, it looked like, and a book. Maybe she'd been in there to find those things. A load floatedf rom his shoulders, hovered there, lifting the headache.She took a step back, closed the door behind her. 'Someone should report that Indian man to the-the powers that be.'
He stared. 'What Indian man?'
'The one in the turban with the chickens or whatever they are.' She crossed ahead of him to the top of the stairs, turnedher head. 'Are you going out?' She made it sound as if he werebreaking the rules.
'After you,' he said.
He put the bag of clothes into the boot of the car, drove to a row of bins and, opening the clothes bank, dropped her skirtonto the tray. The bin was nearly full and it was with difficulty that he was able to make the tray swing and deposit its load. It wouldn't take any more. Maybe for the rest of the clothes he ought to go some distance away. He found himself drivingtoward Westbourne Grove and, reluctant to pass Shoshana's Spa, turned down Ladbroke Grove toward the Bayswater Road. Thinking of the spa brought into his mind something she had said to him he had forgotten until now. Nerissa wasn't a member. Going there, getting that contract together, chatting up Danila-all of it had been a waste of time. She ought tohave told him Nerissa only went there to have her fortune told weeks before. That had been another nail in her coffin, he thought. If ever a woman had asked for what she got, she had.
Driving up the Edgware Road, he passed the Age Concern charity shop but he dared not take clothes in there. Better the bin on the edge of Maida Vale and the other in St. John'sWood. While there he went down the steps in Aberdeen Place and making sure there was no one about, no boat coming, no watcher at one of the overlooking windows, he dropped her mobile and her keys into the canal. Returning the way he had come, he went up Campden Hill Square and parked a little way from Nerissa's house.
Perhaps it was because it comforted him. Just knowing that was her place and that she lived in it-with all her servants, no doubt, and maybe a good friend staying-made him feel he had something to look forward to. He could put the disposal oft hat girl behind him and move on. What better place to be in than here, thinking of new ways of getting to meet Nerissa? It was a pretty house with its white paint and blue front door, some kind of red flowering plant climbing across it. Her newspaper still lay on the step with a carton of milk beside it. Any minute now a servant would open the door and take in paperand milk. Nerissa would be still in bed. Alone, he was sure, for although he believed he had read everything written about her,there had been very little about boyfriends and no scandal, no shaming photographs of her behaving vulgarly with some man in a club. She was chaste and cool, he
