Although it had started as an innocent friendship. And now, for the first time, she was looking at her rival. And Katie wasn’t the woman she had expected. Not that she had really known what to expect, Brian had never talked about her much. In her mind she had imagined some sour-faced biddy with her hair in a bun. Some ghastly old goat who had lured Brian into a loveless marriage. Not this quite stunning, confident and happy-looking beauty.
And suddenly she felt totally lost. And wondering what on earth she thought she was doing here. Half- heartedly, she pulled her mobile phone from her handbag – the cheap lemon-coloured canvas bag that she had bought at the start of summer because it was fashionable, but which was now looking embarrassingly grubby. Just like she was, she realized, catching sight of herself, and her grungy work clothes, in a photo-booth mirror.
She would need to go home and change, and freshen up. Brian liked her to look good. She remembered how disapproving he had seemed on one occasion when she’d been kept working late at the office and had turned up to meet him in a smart restaurant without having changed.
After some moments of hesitation, she called his number, held the phone to her ear, concentrating fiercely, still unaware of the man in the hoodie who was standing just a few feet from her, apparently browsing through a series of paperback books on a spinner at the kiosk.
As another tannoy announcement boomed and echoed around her, she glanced up at the massive, four-faced clock with its Roman numerals.
Four fifty-one.
‘Hi,’ Brian said, his voice startling her, answering before she had even heard it ring.
‘You poor thing,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes.’ His voice was flat, porous. It seemed to absorb her own, like blotting paper.
There was a long, awkward silence. Finally, she broke it. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in a hotel. The bloody police won’t let me into my house. They won’t let me into my home. They won’t tell me what’s happened – can you believe it? They say it’s a crime scene and I can’t go in. I – Oh, Jesus, Sophie, what am I going to do?’ He started crying.
‘I’m in Brighton,’ she said quietly. ‘I came down early from work.’
‘Why?’
‘I – I thought – I thought that maybe – I don’t know – I’m sorry – I thought maybe I could do something. You know. To help.’ Her voice tailed. She stared up at the ornate clock. At a pigeon that suddenly alighted on the top of it.
‘I can’t see you,’ he said. ‘It’s not possible.’
She felt foolish now for even suggesting it. What the hell had been going through her mind?
‘No,’ she said, the sudden harshness of his voice hurting her. ‘I understand. I just wanted to say, if there was anything I could do –’
‘There isn’t anything. It’s sweet of you to call. I – I have to go and identify her body. I haven’t even told the children yet. I . . .’
He fell silent. She waited patiently, trying to understand the kinds of emotions he must be going through, and realizing how very little she really knew about him, and quite what an outsider she was in his life.
Then, in a choking voice, he said, ‘I’ll call you later, OK?’
‘Any time. Absolutely any time, OK?’ she reassured him.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry – I – I’m sorry.’
After their conversation, Sophie called Holly, desperate to talk to someone. But all she got was Holly’s latest voicemail greeting, which was even more irritatingly jolly than her previous one. She left a message.
Then she wandered aimlessly around the station concourse for some minutes, before walking out into the bright sunlight. She didn’t feel like going to her flat – she didn’t really know what she wanted to do. A steady stream of sunburned people were heading up the street towards the station, many of them in T-shirts, singlets or gaudy shirts and shorts, lugging beach bags, looking like trippers who had spent the day here and were now heading home. A lanky man, in jeans cut off at the knees, swung a massive radio blaring out rap, his face and arms the colour of a broiled lobster. The city felt in holiday mood. It was about as far from her own mood as Jupiter.
Suddenly her phone rang again. For an instant, her spirits rose, hoping it was Brian. Then she saw Holly’s name on the display. She hit the answer button. ‘Hi.’
Holly’s voice was mostly drowned out by a continuous, banshee howl. She was in the hairdresser’s, she informed her friend, under the drier. After a couple of minutes trying to explain what had happened, Sophie gave up and suggested they speak later. Holly promised to call her back as soon as she was out of the salon.
The man in the hoodie was following her at a safe distance, holding his red plastic bag and sucking the back of his free hand. It was nice to be back down here at the seaside, out of the filthy air of London. He hoped Sophie would head down to the beach; it would be pleasant to sit there, maybe eat an ice cream. It would be a good way of passing the time, of spending a few of those millions of hours he had sitting on deposit in his bank.
