'It's okay. I understand.'
'Thanks for the cigarettes.'
It sounded like the most desolate thing he ever heard.
He said, 'I'll give you a call.'
She seemed to think for a moment. Then she shook her head and wrinkled her nose.
'Best not.'
She pulled her winter coat over her new dress, then belted it around her waist. She tested the clasp on her handbag, then slung it over her shoulder. She leaned in to kiss his cheek. She had to stand on tiptoes.
She squeezed his hand, and then she walked away.
He watched her go. Then he turned and signalled to the Australian barman to order a long, cold gin and tonic. The barman placed it on the bar with an impact like a gavel. Then he stood, his hands on his narrow hips and his bar towel stuffed into the belt of his smart barman's trousers.
'You all right there, mate?'
'Not really.'
Nathan drained the drink. Then he passed some cash across the bar and - without waiting either for his change or for the Australian to acknowledge the size of the tip - he too gathered his coat and left.
17
The next morning, Nathan parked across the street from the offices of Morris Michael estate agents. It was on a main road, so he parked on a double yellow, two wheels on the pavement, his bonnet nudging into a bus stop.
He didn't even know why he was doing it. Holly wouldn't come in via the front door: she'd drive her Golf Cabriolet round the back, via Merrily Road. Probably she'd make herself a cup of tea in the tiny kitchen at the back, and chat with a few colleagues before wandering through and turning on her computer. Somebody would raise the shutters and turn the lights on.
He wondered what she might do, if she wandered to the window and saw him out there, disconsolate at the wheel. He imagined there would be a moment - a jolt of surprise and fear, more appropriate than she could imagine -- and he went weak with shame.
But, nevertheless, he waited until the lights came on.
Then he fumbled with the keys in the ignition and leapt headlong into the traffic.
He was an hour late for work.
That morning, he'd risen quickly. There was a raw patch of shaving rash round his throat. One sideburn was slightly longer than the other. He was not followed by a diffuse trail of Acqua Di Parma. He might as well have turned up naked but for a ragged blanket.
Eyebrows were raised.
He closed the office door and set his briefcase on his tidy desk.
Then he sat down and logged on.
He left it as long as he could stand it, a full working week, and then he phoned her at work. Deepak asked for his name. This was followed by a weighted pause. Deepak told Nathan that Holly was currently out of the office and could Tim maybe take his call?
Nathan thanked him and said, 'I'll call back later.'
But when he did, the same thing happened.
Sometimes it was difficult -- even during meetings - to resist the urge simply to drive to her place of work and sit outside. He just wanted to see whatever she saw. This made him feel close to her.
He knew how dangerous this was. Holly's tolerance for peculiar behaviour from interested men was probably low. Given her occasional media profile -- and the lack of success in solving Elise's disappearance -- the police were likely to take any of her complaints seriously.
If she complained about Nathan, it wouldn't take the police long to learn that he had been a guest at Mark Derbyshire's Christmas party. If that happened, Nathan could be in serious trouble.
But he needed to be near her. Sometimes he fooled himself that a wry and apologetic smile would win her over; that she could not fail to see the benevolence of his intent.
But he feared she'd see the gargoyle's face that leered beneath his own - the beast whose eyes he sometimes glimpsed while shaving.
He
lay in the soft glow of his bedroom, drawing patterns in the irregularities of the ceiling and thought about following her home.
He dismissed the idea as impractical.
Then he thought about it again.
Eventually, under bright electric lights, he slept. Every night came the same dream. In the dream, he was Bob. He stood in the dark corner of a room he knew to be Holly's. In the dream, she slept - a shape under the blankets that Nathan did not want to see.
That morning - as once more he cleaned his vomit from the bathroom floor - Nathan realized that he knew how to find her. He went to the chest of drawers and opened the lowest of them.
He removed the various work-related files and documents he'd brought home over the years, including some paperwork of Justin's that he'd surreptitiously lifted and photocopied, in an effort to protect himself legally from the ramifications of one fuck-up or other.
Beneath all this were collected a number of newspaper clippings: the articles that had appeared around the fourth anniversary of Elise's disappearance.
Two of these articles featured similar sentences.
From the Telegraph:
The Elise Fox Trust, which June runs from their family home in Sutton Down. . .
And, from the local press:
The trust is run from a spare bedroom in the Sutton Down house where Elise was born .. .
Nathan stared at the clippings as if they were very old - antiques discovered behind a black-spotted mirror. Then he placed them carefully back inside their folder, and the folder back inside the drawer. He closed the drawer and, still not dressed or shaved, and once again running late for work, he found the phone book. It was stacked with a dusty Yellow Pages in the small cupboard which housed his electricity and gas meters.
There were a number of Foxes in the 2001 phone book, but none were listed in Sutton Down. He set the book aside.
The previous tenant's collection of telephone directories and Yellow Pages were stuffed, slightly damp and cobwebby, near the back of the cupboard. Nathan pulled one out. It was six years old: dated to a time before the Foxes had any reason he knew of to go ex-directory. He flicked through the pages. And there it was.
He went to get his phone. He entered the number and the address under H.
Then he replaced the phone books at the back of the cupboard. It seemed to him that every action associated with Holly Fox must be covered up.
He imagined Detective William Holloway, squatting to peer in this low, musty cupboard, finding the telephone directory, finding that its broken spine opened on her number; that Nathan's fingerprint was smudged in damp newsprint on Elise's address.
The thought made him giddy. He sat down and called in to work that once again, he'd be in late.
He gave no excuse, assuming that his normally perfect timekeeping and wasted holiday entitlements justified the occasional late morning. But Nathan had never experienced what it was to be the target of office gossip.
At work, as he stood gathering his morning's mail from the departmental pigeonhole, Justin affected to breeze past him, a zephyr of mint and whisky and Issey Miyake. He sidled up to Nathan and muttered, 'Did she keep you up all night?'
Nathan pulled himself upright and made as if to speak. But he could feel the entire department looking at him. Heads were raised at desks like deer at a waterhole.
He said, 'Oh, for fuck's sake, Justin,' and whirled on his heel and marched to his office. He paused on the threshold and then, very deliberately, slammed the door so that it trembled in its frame.
