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

was an obscene bumping as we got his shoulders over. The back of the boat was dangerously low in the water and the bow reared up. Without a word, we heaved and jerked him some more. I could feel his soft belly under my fingers, the waistband of his jeans rough against my knuckles. Now his head was in the water, his hair floating like seaweed on the surface. One more push and he was slithering in, going down like a diver in search of treasure, like a drowning man, his clothes catching brief bubbles of air, his arms curling back against his body, his legs sliding through the dark, rippling surface. And suddenly the boat was steady in the water again. Its heavy load was gone. He was gone. There was nothing to show he had ever been there. I leaned over the edge of the boat and was sick, violently retching up all the contents of my stomach. After, I scooped up a handful of water and washed my face.

Then I sat down at my oar again and we rowed back. It was much easier without him. We clambered out, dragged the boat up the shore, removed the oars from the rowlocks and turned the boat turtle once more, stowing the oars underneath and replacing the heavy tarpaulin. Sonia found our shoes and we put them on, standing in the dim moonlight with the waters making a faint lapping sound behind us.

After several moments Sonia put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Let’s go back,’ she said.

‘Back?’

‘Home.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Home.’

‘We have to get rid of the rug. I saw some huge bins on our way—we can just push it into one.’

She put her hand on the small of my back and pushed me onto the path.

‘What about his car?’ I said suddenly.

‘What about it?’

‘What do we do with it?’

‘You’re right. I didn’t think.’

‘Let’s just leave it somewhere in the middle of London, throw away the keys.’

‘If we leave it, someone will report it. The police will be called to tow it away. You always see it happening.’

‘We don’t have a choice.’

We walked slowly back to the car. The half-moon was high in the sky now and reflected in the water. I thought of him out there, lying on the bottom for the fish to nibble at.

‘I know,’ Sonia said. ‘We’ll drive it to Stansted.’

‘The airport? Why?’

‘We can just leave it in the long-stay car park. In most places cars get towed away after a few days, but people park cars there for weeks. Months, even.’

‘You think?’ I said doubtfully. I couldn’t work out if the idea was brilliant or crazy.

‘I can’t think of anything else. Can you?’

‘I can’t think of anything at all.’

I got into the car and turned the key in the ignition, then looked at her sitting beside me, so upright, fastening her seat-belt and pushing stray locks of hair behind her ears. ‘Do you want to know what happened?’ I asked.

‘Do you want to tell me?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Then wait.’

‘Sonia.’

‘Yes?’

‘You can’t tell anyone about this, ever.’

‘I know.’

‘Absolutely no one.’

She knew who I was talking about.

Before

I’ve never really had secrets. When I was at school I had friends who lived in their own families like spies. They led double lives, concealing sexual activity, dubious friends, cigarettes, drugs, laziness, delinquency, in some cases outright criminality. It seemed such hard work. There was so much to remember, so much to conceal. And all it took was a word at the wrong time, something left in the open, a lie that didn’t quite fit and everything would be exposed.

I didn’t see the point. I didn’t exactly rub my parents’ noses in my teenage behaviour, but if they asked a question, I answered it with the truth, if not necessarily the whole truth. I didn’t have secret lives, I didn’t have secret friends, I didn’t have secret admirers. I never kept a secret diary or, in fact, a diary of any kind. I never drank in secret or smoked in secret.

But I did have one secret, which, perhaps, on deeper consideration, was the reason I had agreed to Danielle’s ridiculous and irritating suggestion. It was a secret love, a secret passion, a secret obsession, which I kept in a case in the cupboard and only brought out when nobody was around. It was a Deering Senator five-string banjo.

Most of my memories of the gig that Danielle had seen were of what was wrong with it. It was under-rehearsed. One of the main musicians had dropped out at the last minute. We all knew it was the end of our college life and that lots of the people there wouldn’t meet again for years, if ever. But for me the occasion hadn’t lived up to all the emotion, and Danielle had just projected onto our performance emotions that weren’t there. Above all, we were lacking a banjo. How can you play bluegrass music without a banjo? You can’t.

It wasn’t until years later, when I was in Denmark Street to buy some sheet music, that I glanced at the windows of electric guitars and basses and there it was, nestled in the corner, looking at me like a pathetic little puppy begging me to buy it. It cost more money than I had in the bank so I went into the shop and beat the price down to all the money I had and walked away in such a state of shock that I forgot to buy the sheet music I had come for. I took it home like an adopted waif to join the family of instruments I already had, the electric keyboard, the fiddle, the guitar, the recorder I only played at school and the flute I hadn’t touched for years.

I suspected that for most people the banjo seemed a comical instrument, the sort of thing that would be played by a man wearing a red-and-white-striped jacket and a straw boater, singing slightly saucy novelty tunes. To ordinary people it probably even