The Other Side of the Door, Nicci French [new reading .TXT] 📗

return at any moment. Even thinking of that made my heart lurch. The shapes on the road became hunched figures that were watching me. I unlocked his car, opened the boot in readiness and returned to the flat.

‘All clear,’ I said to Sonia.

Without saying anything more, we knelt beside him. I took his feet and Sonia his shoulders.

‘One, two, three and . . .’ she mouthed.

We heaved and managed to lift him a few inches. His body sagged between us. An arm broke free of the rug and I let out a squeal before I could help myself. ‘He’s so heavy,’ I said.

‘Drag him,’ said Sonia. ‘Until we get to the front door.’

We bumped him along the floor, sometimes summoning enough strength to give him a heave that carried him a foot or two along. The rug he was wrapped in stuck on the carpet but slid more easily when we got to bare boards. There were shooting pains in my ribs. My head banged and my neck throbbed and I could feel sweat running off me. Beside me, Sonia grunted and gasped.

At last we were at the front door. I pushed it open and stepped outside. The lane was empty and silent. The garage sign banged faintly in the breeze. I nodded at Sonia.

We half lifted the body. The rug came loose again and his hand dragged on the ground. Those hands, strong and warm: once they had stroked my face, cupped my chin. I tried to stop myself thinking of it. I staggered and couldn’t keep a grip and he thumped onto the tarmac. I gave a cry as if we were hurting him.

‘Sorry,’ I whimpered.

‘Just a couple of yards now.’

Stooping, buckling at the knees, we shuffled the last few feet to the car. We shouldered the bundle upwards, not speaking but panting with the effort. The rug slipped further. I could see his hair. Soft hair. But the boot was too small and he was too big. He didn’t fit. We had to push it—the corpse, the body, him, the man I had . . . had what? Not loved, unless love can be violent, hopeless and dark, with its end written into its beginning. We had to push and twist his body, shoving it into the space. As if he was a thing—but he was a thing. He was dead. Nothing was left except memory and loss. I heard his head bang on the metal. My shirt was sticking to my back; it hurt to breathe. Sonia stood upright, her face pale in the darkness, and pulled the boot shut.

WE DROVE IN silence, me at the wheel and Sonia studying the road atlas we’d found in the car, giving me terse directions. Police cars came at me out of alleys and parked on blind corners; lights flashed blue and sirens wailed in the night. In the rear-view mirror, I saw eyes watching me. I sat up quite straight, pinned my gaze on the road ahead. Our heavy load dragged at my mind. The car was a coffin, a little tin coffin. London dwindled, and at last the headlights were picking out hedges, fields and trees, and finally a tarmac track. The gates were locked and for a moment we nearly gave up—I nearly gave up, putting my head on the steering-wheel and saying over and over again, ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s all over.’ Sonia remained calm. She examined the map and directed me round to the other side where there was another entrance. Glinting black waters of the reservoir, sailing boats lined up on the shore, rattling and tinkling in the small breaths of wind.

Before

‘I don’t know if it’s a good idea,’ I said to Amos.

We were sitting outside one of those London pubs that used to be a down-at-heel dive, filled with smoke and the smell of stale beer, but had reinvented itself and was now a gastro-pub, serving things like seared scallops on a bed of lentils, or blue-cheese and poached-pear salad—which was what I was eating. Amos had a steak sandwich. The sun poured down from a clear blue sky. We’d done this so many times before—sat outside a pub talking, making plans.

‘Why not?’

‘Because.’ I made a vague gesture with my hands. If he didn’t know, I wasn’t going to say.

‘You mean because we used to go out together and now we’ve split up?’

‘We didn’t go out together. We lived together. For years.’

He looked at me. I couldn’t make out his expression: it seemed both scrutinizing and beseeching. ‘It was fun, wasn’t it?’

‘Fun? You mean, living together?’

‘We had fun.’

‘Sometimes,’ I replied. Fun, fights, tears, regrets, and a slow, depressing ending. I looked at him: thin, with dark intense eyes and a beaky nose, a shock of dark brown hair. I used to tell him he looked like Bob Dylan—Bob Dylan circa 1966. That was when I still loved him.

‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’ He sounded like a small boy.

‘It’s not quite as easy as that.’

‘That’s up to us.’ He took my hand. I pulled it away. ‘Who else is going to play?’

‘Neal—remember him? Then a boy from school and his rich father. Don’t make that face. Oh, and Sonia,’ I added, as if she was an afterthought.

‘Sonia?’

‘Yes. She’s going to sing.’

‘I can imagine her voice,’ he said. ‘Velvety.’

‘Hmm. I don’t quite understand why you’re so keen to play in this band, Amos.’

He shrugged. ‘It’ll be a hoot. And I’m at a loose end.’

‘No holiday plans, then?’

‘I’m too busy trying to pay off my mortgage to take a holiday this year,’ he said. ‘Or next.’

Ten months ago, Amos and I had bought a flat together just off the Finchley Road. It was lovely, with tall rooms and big windows and white walls, a balcony for plants. The day we had moved in, a glorious late-September day, we had lain on the carpet together, in the unfurnished, echoing room, and held hands, staring up at the freshly painted ceiling and giggling with happiness and surprise at being so grown-up, so together