Swirling her drink in her glass, she said, ‘I’m curious, Roy. About your wife; is it something you talk about? Tell me if I’m being nosey and it’s none of my business.’
He reached hesitantly into his pocket for his cigarettes. Technically he had given up, but there were moments when he still needed one. Like now.
A waiter appeared with menus, two massive folded cards. Grace put his down without glancing at it, and Cleo did the same. ‘No, you’re not being nosey.’ He raised his hands a moment, a little helplessly, unsure where to begin his reply. ‘I’ve always talked about it openly, maybe too openly. I just want people to be aware – you know. I’ve always thought that if I talk about it to enough people, maybe one day I will jog someone’s memory.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Sandy.’ He offered the pack to Cleo but she shook her head. He took a cigarette out.
‘Is it true what – what people say? She just disappeared?’
‘On my thirtieth birthday.’ He fell silent for a moment, all the pain returning.
Cleo waited patiently, then prompted, ‘On your thirtieth birthday…?’
‘I went to work. We were going to go out with some friends for dinner in the evening, to celebrate. When I left home, Sandy was in a great mood; we’d been planning a summer holiday – she wanted to go to the Italian lakes. When I came back in the evening she wasn’t there.’
‘Had she taken her things?’
‘Her handbag and her car were gone.’ He lit the cigarette with the Zippo lighter Sandy had given him then gulped some more of his drink. Talking about Sandy didn’t seem right on a date. Yet at the same time he felt he really wanted to be honest with Cleo – to tell her everything, to give her as much detail as possible. Not just about Sandy but about his entire life. Something about her made him feel he could be open with her. More open than with anyone he could remember.
He took a long drag on his cigarette, then blew the smoke out. It tasted so damned good.
Frowning, Cleo asked, ‘Her handbag and her car? Were either of them ever found?’
‘Her car was found the next evening in the short-term car park at Gatwick Airport. But she never used any of her credit cards. The last transactions were on the morning she disappeared, one at Boots for ?7.50, one for ?16.42 from the local Tesco garage.’
‘She didn’t take anything else? No clothes, no other belongings?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What about CCTV?’
‘There weren’t so many around then; the only footage we got was on the forecourt at the Tesco garage – she was alone and she looked fine. The cashier was an old boy; he said he remembered her because he always noticed the pretty ones and he’d had a bit of a laugh with her. Said she didn’t seem under any duress.’
‘I don’t think a woman would just walk out of her life, leaving everything behind,’ Cleo said. ‘Unless…’ She hesitated.
‘Unless?’ he prompted.
Fixing her eyes on him she replied, ‘Unless she was running away from a wife-beater.’ Then she smiled and said gently, ‘You don’t look like a wife-beater to me.’
‘I think her parents still harbour a sneaking suspicion that I’ve got her buried under the cellar floor.’
‘Seriously?’
He drained his glass. ‘I suppose they figure every other avenue has been exhausted.’
‘They actually accused you?’
‘No, they’re sweet people; they wouldn’t do that. But I see it in their faces. They invite me over for the odd drink or Sunday lunch to keep in touch, but what they really want is an update. There’s never much to tell them, and I can see they are looking at me strangely, as if they’re wondering, How much longer can he keep up these lies about Sandy?’
‘That’s terrible,’ Cleo said.
Grace stared at the cluster of gleaming bracelets around Cleo’s wrist, thinking what great taste she had in everything. ‘She was their only child; their lives have been destroyed by her disappearance. I’ve seen it in other situations, from work. People need something to cling to, something to focus their emotions on.’ He took another drag on his cigarette and tapped the ash into the ashtray beside the price tag of his jacket. ‘So, enough about me. I want to know about you. Tell me about the other Cleo Morey.’
‘The
‘The one you change into when you clock off from the mortuary.’
‘Not yet,’ she teased. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet, not by a long way.’
He saw she had finished her drink also, and hailed the waiter, ordering another for each of them. Then he turned to Cleo. ‘I’m sorry, it’s your turn to answer a question.’
She pulled a face, which made him grin. ‘I want to know,’ he said, ‘why the most beautiful woman in the world is working in a mortuary, doing the most horrible job in the world.’
‘I was a nurse – I did a degree at Southampton University. I wasn’t a very good nurse. I don’t know – maybe I didn’t have the patience. Then I spent a couple of weeks working in the mortuary at the local hospital and I just found – I don’t know how to describe it – I just felt that – it was the first place I had been to in my life where I could make a difference. Have you ever read the writings of Chaung Tse?’
‘I’m just a dumb copper from the backstreets of Brighton. I never got to read anything fancy. Who he?’
‘A Chinese Taoist philosopher.’
‘Of course. Silly me for not knowing.’
She dug her fingers into the ice at the bottom of her glass, then flicked a droplet of water at him. ‘Stop being horrid!’
He flinched as it struck his forehead. ‘I’m not being horrid.’
‘You are!’
‘Tell me what this Chaung Tse geezer said!’
‘He said, “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly.”’
‘So you turn corpses into butterflies?’
‘I wish.’
They were the last to leave the restaurant. Grace was so engrossed in Cleo – and so drunk – he hadn’t noticed that the last customers had left a good half an hour before, and the staff were waiting patiently to close up.
Cleo made a grab for the bill, but he snatched it off the plate, adamant.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘I get the next one.’
‘Deal,’ he said, tossing his card down, hoping he still had some credit on it. A few minutes later they staggered out into the blustery wind, and he held the door of the waiting cab for her, then climbed in, his head spinning.
He’d lost count of how much they had drunk. Two bottles of wine, then sambucas. Then more sambucas. And they’d had several drinks to start. He slid an arm over the seat, and Cleo nestled comfortably against him. ‘Ish been good,’ he slurred. ‘Like I shmean, really-’
Then her mouth was pressed against his. Her lips felt soft, so, so incredibly soft. He felt her tongue hungrily against his. It seemed just seconds later the taxi pulled up outside her flat, in the fashionable North Laines district in the centre of the city. Through the haze of alcohol he recognized the block, a recent conversion of an old industrial building. There had been a lot of publicity about it.
He asked the cab to wait while he got out and walked with her to the entrance gates, unsure suddenly when they got there, of the protocol. Then their mouths found each other again. He held her tight, a little unsteady on his feet, running his hands through her long, silky hair, breathing in her perfume, totally intoxicated by the night, by her scents, by her softness and warmth.
It seemed just moments later when he awoke with a start in the back of the cab, alone, to the beep of an incoming text.
He fumbled with the keys to read the text. It was from Cleo. It read simply, X.
40
