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

then had to wait for twelve minutes on the platform, pacing up and down with impatience, before the next train arrived.

When I got to Kentish Town I tried to behave normally but I couldn’t suppress a sense that people were watching me, that eyes were following every move I made. Perhaps I wasn’t behaving normally. I went into a chemist’s and bought a pack of plastic gloves. We had thrown away the ones we’d used before.

I turned down the little lane, casting glances over my shoulder to make sure nobody I knew was near me. The garage was open today, a car on the courtyard raised on a ramp with a man in a dirty vest lying underneath it. I strode past and made it to the front door. It was impossible to tell if the young man on the first floor was in or not, and I slid the key into the lock and turned it carefully, trying to make no sound as I pushed the door open and stepped into the communal hall. Quiet and empty. This time yesterday nothing had happened. But twelve hours ago, Sonia and I had been pushing Hayden’s body into the dark waters of the reservoir and watching the waters close over him. I extracted a pair of gloves from the packet and pulled them on with a snap.

The door to Liza’s flat swung open with a creak that made me wince, and I stepped inside, closing the door slowly behind me. For a moment I thought he would be there, his arms flung out, the dark blood. But there was just a space, a great nothing. He was gone.

The idea that I had left something behind had been buzzing in my head: did I actually take the scarf? (Of course I had—I’d wrapped it around my head at the airport.) Did I really pick up the Hank Williams CD? (I knew I had, but what if I hadn’t?) Had I wiped the door handles properly? What had I forgotten, what detail had I overlooked? And above all of this, under it all, where was my satchel? Why hadn’t I found it? Perhaps in my terror I hadn’t looked properly. That must be the answer. It was bound to be somewhere, under the bed or at the back of a cupboard, and I had to get it before someone else found it. Yet I remembered where I’d left it, carelessly on the floor by the sofa. I could see it.

Sonia and I had wiped away our fingerprints yesterday evening. Why had we done that? It was just an act of paranoid stupidity. In fact, if anyone ever checked, it would seem very suspicious indeed if I hadn’t left fingerprints everywhere. After all, I was Liza’s friend: I had spent many hours in this flat and, what was more, I had watered her plants and collected her mail for the first few days of her holiday. I paced around the room, putting my hands on shelves, on the little table and the backs of chairs, conscious that I wasn’t making matters any better but unable to stop myself.

We had cleared up the spilled tulips and righted the chair, but we had left the mail scattered on the carpet, so I gathered it up and put it in a neat pile on the table. Hayden’s beloved guitar was still lying on the floor, with its smashed body. I picked it up and cradled it in my arms for a moment. I could see his face as he played it, the way he lost himself in music, his face both dreamy and rapt. Perhaps, I thought, that had been his true face—not charming and boisterous, not angry or contemptuous or watchful, but peacefully self-forgetful, in a world where he had nothing to prove and nothing to lose.

I put the guitar in its case and zipped it up, then started to look for the satchel again. I searched everywhere I had searched before. I searched places I knew it couldn’t be (under the bedclothes, and I couldn’t prevent myself from putting my head on the pillow where his had been, smelling his smell); in the bathroom cupboard that housed the boiler; under the sink where Liza kept cleaning stuff—and, anyway, we’d been through that yesterday when we were scrubbing away evidence. It wasn’t anywhere. I sat on the sofa and put my throbbing head into my sweating hands. What now?

I had to leave and never come back. Even as I thought this I heard noises above me, someone’s footfall in the upstairs flat, and then I saw the red light flashing on the answering-machine. What messages had been left on it? Was my voice there, for instance? I couldn’t think—and neither could I work out if it mattered or not. I stood up slowly, like an old woman, and shuffled towards the door. Then stopped: there was something I’d forgotten, after all. In the kitchen I filled the miniature watering can and went from plant to plant, letting small streams of water trickle onto the drying soil of Liza’s plants until it was moist and spongy. I had a memory—so sharp I felt that if I turned quickly enough he would be there—of standing with this can in my hand and Hayden taking it from me, putting it down on the kitchen surface, pulling me towards him by my belt, never smiling but just gazing at me as if he was about to say something urgent. He didn’t speak, though. He wasn’t one for fine words, really—neither of us was. He had once promised to write a song for me, but he never had.

I emptied the last of the water out of the can and put it back in its place with a tiny click. Then I took a final look around—at the bed where we’d lain together, the sofa where I had pushed him back and kissed him hard on his lovely mouth, the floor where