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

something mad happened. For a moment we weren’t in a sitting room in Stoke Newington, we were in the Deep South on J. J. Cale’s back porch with Ry Cooder and Earl Scruggs and God knew who else. As he played, Neal and Guy clung on, like fallen riders with a foot caught in a stirrup. He glanced at me in the way you do when you play together, keeping in time, signalling tiny shifts with your eyes. When he stopped, there was more laughter, but of a different kind.

‘That was amazing,’ Joakim stammered. His cheeks had flushed.

‘You did it,’ said Hayden, handing him back the fiddle. ‘You just need to let go.’

Amos was smiling as well. But not with his eyes.

After

We drove to Stansted in silence. It was three in the morning and the roads were practically deserted. Each time there were headlights in my rear-view mirror my mouth dried and my heart raced at the thought that it might be the police. This was what it must be like to be a criminal, I thought. But, of course, I was a criminal now. During the last few hours I had crossed a line into a different world.

At one point, Sonia ordered me to stop in front of a row of terraced houses. She got out of the car and dropped the plastic bag full of everything I’d collected in the flat into a dustbin that was standing on the pavement. She pushed it deep inside and wiped her hands on her trousers before climbing back into the car. I drove on. Later, we stopped at another bin and got rid of the rug.

‘Stop,’ said Sonia suddenly, as we reached the signs to the long-stay car park. I pulled over.

‘What is it?’

‘There are cameras at the barrier. When you take your ticket to get in, you’re staring into one.’

‘Then we can’t go there.’

‘Yes, we can.’ She opened the glove compartment and fished out a pair of sunglasses. ‘Put them on.’

‘But—’

‘Now your scarf. Tie it over your head. Oh, let me.’ She wrapped it tightly around and nearly throttled me with the knot. ‘Nobody would recognize you now.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll lie on the floor. Let’s go.’

She lay down in the back of the car and I drove into the car park. I took the ticket, the barrier rose and signs directed us to Zone G.

‘Hang on!’ Sonia said, from the floor. ‘Wait!’

‘What?’

‘Pull over. This is stupid. It’s not just at the entrance there are cameras—they’re everywhere. We haven’t thought this through properly. I must have been mad.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘On the train, as well. We can’t get the train back into London. We should never have come here.’

‘But we have. Do you want me to turn round and leave?’

‘I don’t know.’ For the first time she seemed confused. ‘What do you think?’

‘What do I think?’

‘Yes. Come on.’

‘Where are there cameras?’

‘Everywhere! On the shuttle—aren’t there? I can’t remember, but I bet there are. And in the airport. And in the station. And on the train. Everywhere we go, there’ll be photographs of us.’

‘Oh,’ I said. My brain was working very slowly. I squeezed the steering-wheel and stared at the rows upon rows of gleaming empty cars stretching in all directions. ‘So, how about if you get out here and go on alone? And I’ll leave the car in Zone G and then—’ I stopped.

‘Yes?’ Sonia hissed from the floor. ‘Then what?’

‘Then we can meet up at the taxi rank.’

‘Taxi?’

‘If I, in my sunglasses and scarf, leave the car here, and you get on the shuttle first and wait at the rank, I’ll follow a little later and we can catch a cab together. That way, nobody can connect us to the car.’

There was a silence.

‘Sonia?’

‘I’m thinking.’

‘We can’t go on sitting here.’

‘So we go separately and meet up again?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right.’

‘I’ll wait at the rank outside the airport.’

‘OK.’

‘Hang on—I haven’t got any money.’

‘We’ll have to get the driver to drop me off at the flat so that I can pick up my card and he can drive us to a cashpoint to get the money.’

‘Right.’

‘If I’ve got enough in my account to cover it.’

‘What if you haven’t?’

‘I’m sure I have,’ I said, without conviction.

As soon as we arrived at Zone G, Sonia climbed over to the passenger seat, opened the door and slid out. I saw her in my mirror walking rapidly away towards the shuttle stop. The car park was full and I had to drive up and down the rows before I found a gap. It felt very strange to be doing this alone. My body felt boneless and alien; my heart felt huge and pulpy. My breath was coming in short gasps. I reversed and then I started to tremble so much that I had to stop and make myself breathe slowly. What if I bumped into another car, set off an alarm?

Very slowly, I reversed into the space, pulled on the handbrake, switched off the headlights, turned the key, got out. It was nearly dawn. There was a stripe of paler sky on the horizon and the shapes of trees were beginning to emerge. I shivered, suddenly cold. I pulled off the sunglasses and left them on the passenger seat; took the scarf off my head and wound it around my neck, over the bruise, instead. I sat in the car and waited for the first shuttle bus to arrive and leave, taking Sonia away. Not until another car had arrived did I get out and walk over to the stop.

I got onto the bus at the far end, away from the driver, so that he wouldn’t get a good look at me. At first it was just me and a middle-aged man in a suit, puffy-faced with tiredness. Then, a few minutes later, the bus stopped and we were joined by a family of five, towing enormous suitcases on wheels and squabbling. I was very conscious that I didn’t look like someone about to go