Page 7 of A Face in the Crowd
I’ve almost closed the door when a solitary creak ekes ominously from across the hallway. From inside Jade’s old apartment. I stop to watch, but seconds pass without any other noise; without any hint of movement or acknowledgement. It’s an old building, after all.
It’s when I eventually click my door shut that I wonder if I heard anything at all.
Chapter Three
The money is stacked on my table again, all £3,640 of it. I leave it there, as if it’s an invited guest. It feels comforting to have it in front of me and I find myself slightly reordering the piles so that the cleaner, newer notes are all together. It’s only when Billy comes to lie at my feet that I notice I’ve spent almost twenty minutes simply looking at – and touching – the money.
In the end, I force myself to get my laptop from the drawer underneath the television. It was a Christmas deal on Amazon nearly two years ago, although cheap for the same reason most things are cheap: it’s barely useable. I flip the lid and turn it on and then put it down. Booting up takes a minimum of five minutes – and that’s if it loads at all. Using the computer is something like raising a toddler. Sometimes it does what it’s told and everything’s happiness and light; other times it’s uncooperative, even against threats of extreme violence.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be allowed to raise a toddler.
I wait for the laptop to go through its usual routine of deciding whether it’s going to actually do something today – bit like those workmen digging up the road – and then it finally reaches the main screen.
There is work for me to do and I load the Open University website, but, before I actually get on with anything, I find myself googling ‘missing money’ and the name of our town. I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but there’s nothing of note. I try ‘stolen money’, but that only brings up a few news stories about minor robberies going back over the past few years. There’s nothing recent, so I try searching for the exact amount.
Nothing.
The £3,640 could be part of a larger figure, of course. Some sort of robbery, or drug money? I don’t know. I’ve probably seen too many crime dramas.Drug money? I might be naïve but I don’t think my sleepy little corner of the world is up there with the South American cartels when it comes to laundering cash.
I pack the money into the envelope once more, but it’s like trying to cram toothpaste back into a tube. Each time I remove all the notes, the envelope seems to shrink slightly. Eventually I reseal the envelope and put it into the drawer, but it’s almost as if the money is calling to me. Whenever I look to my laptop hoping to do some university work, I find my attention drifting to the drawer.
It’s not long before I move the envelope to the cupboard underneath the kitchen sink. Because I still can’t focus, I then hide it underneath the mattress that’s part of the bed which folds down from the wall next to the sofa. My flat is so small that there isn’t anywhere better to conceal it, not without ripping up floorboards.
That doesn’t stop me from thinking about it. It’s hard to know where the money came from. I noticed it after getting off the bus – but the number 24 doesn’t seem the type of place that someone would be carrying around so much cash. That said, I’m not sure I frequent any places in which people would be carrying these sorts of amounts. The envelope wasn’t in my bag when I was looking for my bus pass, so it appeared either on my walk from the bus stop, or on the bus itself.
I’m lost in a daydream when my phone starts to ring. It’s an old, battered Android that I’ve dropped more times than I care to remember. If it wasn’t for the £1.99 case I bought from the market, my phone would have been a goner months ago. I pay £10 a month, which is one of my more extravagant outgoings. There is no landline phone in the flat and it’s hard to lead a life in these times without a mobile: I am texted my shift times and I have to call our building manager, Lauren, if there are any problems at the flat. Even my banking, for what it’s worth, is done through an app.
The phone’s screen is scratched and scuffed but the word ‘unknown’ beams bright. I wouldn’t usually answer – it’ll almost certainly be a life-sapping marketing call – but there’s a part of me that somehow believes it might be the money-owner calling.
‘Hello?’
There’s silence from whoever’s at the other end, not even one of those tell-tale clicks that happen when it’s a telemarketer. I check the phone, but it’s back to the home screen. Whoever called me rang off the moment I answered. The previous caller’s option reveals only ‘unknown’. I stare at it for a second to two, wondering if there’s anything I can do to trace the call and then deciding I’m not that bothered.
By now, Billy is back on his feet and hanging around by the front door. When he was younger, he’d actually paw when he wanted to be let out – but he’s far savvier now. He knows that it only takes a look for me to understand what he wants. He likes to roam the corridors of the building, pacing around for a few minutes to go up and down the stairs. I take him out in the mornings and evenings so he can go to the toilet, but it’s like he learned to walk himself in between times.
When I open the door, there is a corgi also wandering around. He is named Judge and he turns to look up at me, as if I’ve caught him up to no good. Judge’s owner, Nick, lives two doors down and we sometimes take the dogs for joint walks. The two dogs sniff at one another and then head in opposite directions along the hallway. I guess it isn’t only me who has become a reclusive loner.
I leave the door slightly open, ready for Billy’s return, and then perch on the edge of the kitchen counter as my phone buzzes once more.
It’s a message this time – and there are no questions about who it’s from. I was on the street a couple of months back when one of those chugger-types enthusiastically bounded towards me. I try to stare at the floor in such situations but somehow ended up with a promo card that offered three free months’ membership of a dating website. I wasn’t going to do anything with it, but then, for a reason of which I’m still not completely sure, I ended up signing up. It was probably the word ‘free’ that did it. There’s very little I turn down when it’s not going to cost me anything.
An actual dating website seems old-fashioned given the amount of left- and right-swiping that goes on nowadays. I guess that’s how quickly times move.
Either way, I have a message from one of my matches, a bloke named Harry.
So… are we ever going to meet?
I’ve been putting him off, with a part of me hoping he’d go away. It’s not that his pictures aren’t appealing, nor that he hasn’t entertained me with his messages, more that Ben’s legacy still seems so close. There are mornings when I wake up and still think Ben is lying next to me; times when my phone beeps and I’m certain it’s him.
It’s been five years –five years– and I’m still not sure I’ll ever quite forget everything that happened.
I think about not replying, about letting Harry’s messages drift until he gets bored and stops contacting me.
Surely five years is long enough?
Tomorrow evening?
Harry pings a reply back almost instantly:
