Page 39 of Don't Let Him In

I tap my nose and say, “You know what, Luke, it’s been so long since I used it that I’m not sure I can even remember it anymore.”

I kick the wall when I leave. I kick it so hard that I fear I’ve broken a toe. I punch it with my fists, and I growl like a dog. “Fuck’s sake.” I hit the wall again. “Fuck’s sake.” A woman passing by looks at me with concern, and I breathe in heavy and hard and straighten myself up, clear my throat, run a hand over my hair, soothe myself.

I want to see Martha. I need to see Martha. She is the only person who could make me feel better right now, who could cool this rage, this darkness, this hatred. I haven’t seen her for three days, and I am aching for her. But she is busy with work, with the boys, with some birthday party or other that she’s helping to plan for a friend. It’s all very tedious, but I told her that I totally understand, of course I do. I have promised her that I will take her somewhere amazing next week, a boutique hotel somewhere, or a fine-dining night in London. I told her it will be a surprise. But first I have to find the money to pay for this amazing surprise and unfortunately right now there is only one way of getting hold of it.

Amanda gets home from her job at about 6 p.m. and smiles wanly at me. I think she was hoping I might have gone; there’s a sliver of disappointment in her expression. “Hi,” she says. “How did it go?”

For a moment I think she means my meeting with Luke, but then I remember my hospital appointment, the one about my heart. I say, “Actually, not good news. It looks like I’ll be needing to go in for treatment. For a week or so.”

“What sort of treatment?”

I’m not ready to answer the question, so I skim over it, carry on as if she hadn’t said anything.

“It’s a special unit that’s just been built, somewhere up north. I can’t remember the name of the hospital. They’re going to email me over all the details. But it does mean a lot of travel. By train. Theycan’t keep me in overnight. And you know, Amanda, I have literally no money right now. I’m waiting for things to sort themselves out with my ex. She owes me thousands. Tens of thousands. But in the short term, and God, I amso sorryto ask you this, I really am, but do you think you could tide me over, just for a few days, maybe a week or so, just so I can afford the train travel for my treatment, the occasional hotel overnighter? Eight hundred, maybe? That sort of region?”

I see her eyes flicker over my face; she’s trying to read me, trying to make sense of what I’m saying. She says, “But, Damian, I’m penniless. You know that. I live from paycheck to paycheck, week to week. I don’t have eight hundred pounds. I—”

I cut in over her. “It doesn’t have to be eight hundred pounds. Five hundred would probably be enough. Do you not have some wriggle room on a credit card, an overdraft, something like that? Or what about…?” I pause and lick my lips. “One of the boys. They’re both working, aren’t they? Could you get hold of something from one of them maybe?”

I see her face contort slightly and I cut in again before she can respond.

“I know. It’s a tough ask. I get that. And I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t an emergency. But it really is an emergency. Without this treatment, Amanda, I might be limiting my life by twenty years. I would be a walking time bomb.”

“And this treatment? What sort of—”

“I’ll be a guinea pig. It’s still being trialed. Just a handful of us right now. Lasers.”

“Lasers?”

I can see that the muscle memory from having lived with me for nearly ten years is still there, that alarms are firing, responses are kicking in, but I know, I just know that she will eventually give me what I want just as long as I can keep on talking. So I keep on talking, and as I talk, I inject breathlessness into my voice. I take deep,swooping mouthfuls of air, I pause halfway through a word, close my eyes, and then, when I can see that she is starting to worry about me, I ask her for a glass of water and tell her that I need to lie down for a while, that I am shattered, that my body hurts, and her expression moves from incredulity to concern. And there it is as she passes me the glass of water: the love, the love I knew would never have died, because Amanda always adored me, possibly more than anyone has ever adored me.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she says, tenderly. “I’m sure I can find it somehow.”

THIRTY-FIVE

The screen shows three faces. At the top is Jane, wearing red lipstick and oversized reading glasses. She’s being distracted by a large dog who keeps nuzzling at her neck from behind. “You have very smelly breath, Reggie,” she says before pushing him gently away. Next to Jane is Ash, and at the bottom of the screen is the woman called Sarah May. She’s in her early thirties, Ash would guess; her hair is dark blond and tied back from her face, with a blunt fringe framing serious, dark eyes. Behind her is a heavily curated bookshelf, spines in color order, plants, framed graphic art. She smiles just once and says, “Hi. Nice to meet you both.”

Ash introduces herself and then Jane. “Jane,” she tells Sarah, “used to go out with my dad in the nineties. My dad died last year, and I got in touch with Jane because I wanted to hear her memories of him, but also because my mum started seeing this guy a few weeks ago. He’s called Nick Radcliffe and he kind of came from nowhere with some dodgy backstory about knowing my dad when they were young and—”

Jane interjects. “I could smell the whiff coming off it from the very first moment. It was so clearly not quite right. The restaurant Nick said he worked at with Ash’s dad in the nineties shut down twenty years ago, so we can’t corroborate that he was ever there. But we’ve been doing some digging, and we found a photo of the man who currently calls himself Nick Radcliffe on this page for a life-coaching consultancy. With adifferent name. Justin Warshaw. And a wedding ring. While our Nick Radcliffe claims never to have been married.”

Sarah May’s face remains inscrutable. “Gosh,” she says after a short lull. “That’s insane.”

Ash and Jane nod in unison.

“So,” says Sarah, “let me tell you what I know about Justin. Or whatever his actual name is. I met him in a pub about twelve years ago. I was twenty-two, I suppose. I’d just graduated, I was working in a bookshop, didn’t want to go home, but didn’t want to start my real life yet. I was going out with a very avoidant man, and I was drinking too much. I was crying in a pub, something the guy had done, or not done—I don’t know, I can barely remember—and this tall older man approached me, and I didn’t feel threatened by him. He was very good-looking, very gentle, he got me a glass of water from the bar, and he checked in with me. And then he gave me his card. The whole thing felt like a dream, like he was an angel or something. I emailed him that same night and we had our first appointment two days later.”

“Wow,” says Jane. “And how did it go?”

“Brilliantly,” Sarah replies. “He was brilliant. Well, I mean… that’s how I felt at the time. He was so energetic, full of ideas. He gave me all these incredible techniques to use to get on top of my life, to deal with the man, the job, my stasis, all of that. And at the time I felt like it was all working, like he was changing my life for the better. He gave me my first session for free and then it was fifty pounds an hour, and then, after a couple of weeks, he put it up to a hundred an hour, and then, I don’t know, it all got a bit weird, and I didn’t quite realize it was weird at the time, but he started asking me to do two sessions a week and I tried to tell him I couldn’t afford it, that I worked in a bookshop, so he got me to…” She sighs and her eyes drop down for a moment before she looks up again. “He said I should get a loan from my mum and dad.”

Jane and Ash both inhale through their teeth. “And did you?” asks Jane.

Sarah nods, and Jane says, “Ouch.”

“How long did this go on for?” Ash asks.

“Oh God, about a year, I guess, two sessions a week. And then he got me to pay out for plans and books and… accessories. I just paid for all of it and then after it was all over, after we stopped, I looked it up and saw it was all stuff he’d bought off Amazon for like a few pounds, and I’d given him fifty quid for it. You know? And all the while, I really thought it was working, what we were doing together. I thought I was getting my life on track, but when I look back on it, I just wasn’t. I was still working in the bookshop, still avoiding going home to see my family, still letting the avoidant man into my inboxes, into my head. At the end of the year nothing had actually changed, but Justin had somehow managed to make me believe that it had. That it was all just one session away, one new exercise away. And it was only a few months later that I could see the only thing which had changed was that I was five thousand pounds in debt.”

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