I didn’t know where I was going. I walked briskly, jacketiess and cold, and breathed the air deep into my lungs. I felt calmer now that it was daytime: I was going to be all right, somehow. At a cafe near Shepherd’s Bush I stopped for a coffee, bitter and black. The smell of grease and bacon made me feel faintly queasy. It was nearly seven o’clock and already the roads were clogged with traffic. I set off again, remembering Adam’s instructions to me when we were in the Lake District. Get into a rhythm, one step at a time, breathe properly, don’t look too far ahead. I wasn’t thinking at all, just walking. Newsagents were open and so were some food shops. After a bit, I realized where my feet were taking me but I didn’t stop, although I went more and more slowly. Well, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. I needed to talk to somebody and there were precious few people left.
I got there at ten past eight, knocked firmly on the door and felt suddenly and horribly nervous. But it was too late to run away. There was the sound of footsteps, then there he was and there was I.
‘Alice.’
He didn’t sound shocked to see me but he didn’t sound too happy either. Nor did he ask me in.
‘Hello, Jake.’
We stared at each other. The last time we had met, I’d accused him of putting spiders in my milk bottle. He was still in his dressing-gown, but it was a dressing-gown I didn’t recognize, a post-Alice one.
‘Just passing?’ he said, with a glimmer of his old irony.
‘Can I come in? Only for a minute.’
He pulled the door wider and stepped back.
‘It’s all changed here,’ I said, looking around me.
‘What did you expect?’
There was a new sofa and curtains, and large new cushions on the floor near the fireplace. A couple of pictures I’d not seen before hung on the walls (green now, not off-white). There were none of the old photographs of him and me.
I hadn’t thought about it properly, or at all. But I now knew that I had somehow assumed that I would step into my old, rejected home and find it waiting for me, although I had made it cruelly clear that I would never return. If I was honest with myself, I had probably also assumed that Jake would be waiting for me, whatever I’d done to him. That he would wrap an arm round me and sit me down and make me tea and toast and listen to me pouring out my married woes.
‘It’s no good,’ I said at last.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee, now that you’re here?’
‘No. Yes, all right.’
I followed him into the kitchen: new kettle, new toaster, new matching mugs hanging on new hooks, lots of fresh plants on the window-sill. Flowers on the table. I sat down on a chair.
‘Have you come to collect the last of your things?’ he asked.
I saw now that it was useless to have come here. I’d had some quaint idea, last night, that even though I had lost everyone else, I somehow wouldn’t have lost Jake. I persevered for a few more ghastly sentences.
‘I’m a bit out of my depth,’ I said.
Jake raised his eyebrows at me and handed me my coffee. It was too hot to drink, so I put it in front of me and twisted it round on the table, spilling some. ‘Everything’s got a bit strange.’
‘Strange?’ he said.
‘Can I use the lavatory?’
I stumbled into the tiny room and stared at myself in the mirror. My hair was greasy and my cheeks were pasty and thin, and there were great shadows under my eyes. I hadn’t washed last night or this morning, so mascara and grime smudged my face. My orange jumper was inside out, though I didn’t bother to change it. What was the point?
I washed my face, at least, and as I was flushing the lavatory I heard a scraping noise in the room above. The bedroom. Someone else was here.
‘Sorry,’ I said, as I came out, ‘it was a mistake.’
‘What’s wrong, Alice?’ he asked, with a hint of real concern. But not as if he still loved me – more as if I were a stray cat who was suffering on his doorstep.
‘I’m just being a bit melodramatic.’ A thought struck me. ‘Can I use your phone, though?’
‘You know where it is,’ he said.
I phoned directory inquiries and asked for the police station in Corrick. I wrote the number down on the palm of my hand with a felt-tip that was lying on the floor. I started to dial, then I remembered the phone calls that Adam and I had been receiving. I had to be careful. I replaced the receiver.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said.
‘When did you last have something to eat?’ Jake asked.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Shall I call you a taxi?’
‘I can walk.’
‘Where to?’
‘What? I don’t know.’
Upstairs, someone was having a bath. I stood up. ‘Sorry, Jake. You know, sorry.’
He smiled. ‘That’s okay now,’ he said.
Thirty
I bought a phonecard in a newsagent’s, the most expensive in the shop, and then found a phone-box.
‘Police station,’ said a metallic female voice.
I had prepared an opening sentence. ‘Can I talk to whoever is in charge of the Adele Blanchard file?’ I said, authoritatively.
‘What department?’
‘God, I don’t know.’ I hesitated. ‘Criminal?’
There was a pause at the other end of the line. Exasperation? Bemusement? Then I heard a dim sound of talking. Obviously she had her hand over the receiver. Then she was back with me. ‘Let me see if I can connect you to somebody.’
There was a beeping as she transferred me.
‘How may I help you?’ said another voice, male this time.
‘I am a friend of Adele Blanchard,’ I said confidently. ‘I’ve been away for several years in Africa, and I just wanted to know what progress has been made on her case.’
‘Could you give me your name please?’
‘My name is Pauline,’ I said. ‘Pauline Wilkes.’
‘I’m afraid we can’t give out information over the phone.’
‘Have you heard of her?’
‘I’m sorry, madam, do you have anything to report?’ ‘I… no, sorry, goodbye.’
I put the phone down and dialled directory inquiries. I found the number of the Corrick public library.
As I arrived in Corrick for the second time, I felt a slight unease. What if I met Mrs Blanchard? Then I dismissed the thought from my mind. What did it matter? I would lie, as usual. I hadn’t been to a public library since I was a child. I think of them as old-fashioned municipal buildings, like town halls, dark, with heavy iron radiators and tramps hiding out from the rain. The Corrick public library was bright and new, and next to a supermarket.
