Page 11 of Close to You
I flick on the bedside lamp and then cram everything into my small suitcase. The trophy won’t fit, so I end up carrying it down to reception, along with my case. The party has seemingly fizzled out and the reception area is empty except for a weary-looking woman behind the desk. She’s tapping something into her phone but quickly puts it down when she notices me.
‘Can I help?’ she asks.
‘I’d like to check out.’
I expect there to be weirdness, but I suppose she’s seen far stranger things than a guest checking out at 2.30 a.m. I hand over the room key and get the bill, before heading out towards the car park. I pass the door to the suite in which our awards party was held, and there is a phalanx of unfortunate sods cleaning up after us. The lights continue to twinkle above them, like the scene on a particularly bleak Christmas card.
Outside, and the tarmac of the car park is covered with a glistening sheen of frost. The trees that ring the hotel are glazed white and the air bites like a snarling wolf.
Winter could not care less about how quickly I want to get home.
My windscreen is covered with a layer of ice and, after getting into the car, I turn the heaters up to full and sit with my fingers on the vent, waiting for the glass to clear.
All the while, I think of David with his secrets; and now David in the photo. There is no logic to it and yet, I suppose, ever since I killed him, I’ve been expecting another of David’s surprises. I couldn’t have suspected something like this but, among the confusion, there is a degree of inevitability.
Killing David was never going to be the end of his legacy.
The fans have cleared a clear oval in the centre of the windscreen and I ease my way off the car park. It’s only a couple of minutes until I’m swallowed by the darkness of the unlit country lanes. It’s the type of night where the cold is so all-encompassing that it scratches at a person’s soul; where the darkened, frozen tendrils slither unseen until warmth is a distant dream.
I turn on the radio to distract from the night. Because things aren’t desolate enough, the presenter is doing a phone-in about the best type of cheese, which is intercut with Christmas music. There’s a time and a place for Cliff Richard – birthday parties for dementia sufferers, or Guantanamo Bay – but it’s definitely not empty back roads in the dead of night.
The country lanes lead me to deserted A-roads, where there are a handful of headlights. I’m on autopilot and my mind meanders, wondering why other people are out at this unholy hour.
It’s almost two and a half hours until I arrive home. It’s admirable that the radio presenter somehow managed to drag out a discussion about cheese to last the entirety of the journey. It’s a degree or two warmer in Gradingham than at the hotel, but the trees and bushes are still peppered with white. I switch off the engine and sit in the car as the windows immediately begin to steam. The winners’ photo is still open on my phone, but, as I zoom in on it, things feel different. Perhaps it’s the change of location, or maybe it is the mindlessness of the radio, but the picture of David doesn’t feel as shocking as it did when I first saw it. It will simply be someone who looked like my ex-husband, nothing to worry about. A coincidence of circumstance as opposed to anything more. I try to put it out of my mind as I turn onto my street.
Some might think it strange – but I’ve always liked the sound of my address. It’s hardly apt for the weather, but 1 Sunshine Row has an appeal that belies the basic look of the red-brick block.
I yawn as I unlock my front door and sleep suddenly feels close once more. There’s nothing quite like my own bed. Like a friend who’ll always be there.
As soon as I step inside, the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. It’s instinct, like the sense of being watched, or that flash of panic a moment before something terrible happens.
I turn on the light and stand on the welcome mat, taking in the room ahead of me. It is a two-bedroom apartment. There is no hall and the door opens directly into the open-plan living room and kitchen. There are few places to hide and, at first glance, everything feels normal. The television is on the stand where I last saw it. The router is at its side, with green and orange lights blinking. There is still a cluttered pile of mail next to the microwave; with a porridge-coated bowl in the sink and a carton of almond milk on the side that I must’ve forgotten to return to the fridge.
‘Hello…?’
There’s no reply and I stand by the door waiting and listening.
Nothing, except my imagination.
I step across to the kitchenette, ready to drop my keys into the ceramic Tigger head that’s a constant feature of my day. Keys go in; keys come out. If it wasn’t for that, they would end up lost in coat pockets, bags, or who knows where. I found it at a collectors’ market when I was with David. It cost a fiver – but value isn’t only measured with money. It is worth so much more than that, though there are only two people who have ever known its true symbolism. There’s me – and there’s David.
As I go to drop my keys into Tigger’s head, I stop with my hand outstretched towards the counter. When I left for the hotel, I took my keys from the ceramic head. Now, hours later, the counter is inexplicably empty.
Six
THE WHY
Three years, eight months ago
I’m sitting on the step of my flat when the battered Transit pulls in. The rims are rusty and the exhaust spews a dark, noxious cloud into the alley at the back of where I live. Over time, currencies come and go. People will trade rocks for metals; potatoes for beans. Gold is only valuable because someone decided they liked how shiny it is. Anything can have value – yet there isalwaysa time in a person’s life where he or she needs a van.
Ben clambers down from the driver’s seat as Jane trails around from the passenger side. He borrowed the vehicle from one of his mates, which is, as best I can tell, the way most people get hold of a van. Ben opens the back and then reaches in and picks out a large cardboard box.
‘It’s not as heavy as it looks,’ he insists.
It would sound more authentic if he wasn’t rocking from foot to foot, while alternating his grip as if clinging onto a banana skin soaked in washing-up liquid.
Ben rests the box on the lip of the van’s bumper and looks towards me. My flat opens into what is, essentially, a dead-end alley. The apartment above mine has a door that opens onto the road at the front, but nobody lives there. I don’t know who owns it and have always assumed it’s an investor, or something like that.
