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

and I could clearly remember taking it off before I helped Sonia clear up. And then, if it’s possible to remember an absence, I could now remember not putting on the jacket when we left—or, rather, I couldn’t remember putting it on, and I definitely hadn’t been wearing it for the rest of that night. Yet I had returned to the flat since that awful evening and still failed to see it. Was I asking to be caught?

Guy and Joakim were wandering around what was really a theatre set that Sonia and I had created. Guy looked at the mail on the floor inside the door and flicked through it. ‘There’s nothing here for him,’ he said.

‘I don’t think he’s the kind of guy who gets much mail,’ said Joakim.

‘Everybody gets mail,’ said Guy.

I wanted to say something but I couldn’t think of anything normal and noncommital.

‘I don’t get mail,’ said Joakim.

‘I meant all adults—but maybe Hayden doesn’t count as an adult.’

I had to force myself not to look. Instead I pretended to examine objects I had arranged.

‘The kitchen,’ I said suddenly.

‘What?’ said Guy.

‘Do you think it might be worth checking out?’ I said. ‘People keep lists there. To-do lists. Attached to the fridge with a magnet.’

It sounded incredibly feeble and Guy seemed doubtful. I made myself speak in a lighter tone. ‘You could check out what he keeps in his fridge at the same time.’

Even using the present tense took an effort. ‘Keeps’, not ‘kept’. As far as Joakim and Guy were concerned, Hayden was somewhere at this moment doing something. Perhaps he was just about to walk through the door. They were able to feel irritated or puzzled by him in the way you can’t feel about people once they’re dead. You can hate them or love them, you can mourn them, but you can’t be irritated by them, you can’t resent them. Guy looked very irritated indeed, muttering to himself as he made his way, slightly reluctantly, towards the kitchen. Joakim followed, probably out of a genuine interest to see what Hayden had in his fridge.

I crossed the room and snatched the jacket off the chair. I looked around desperately. I didn’t have a bag with me and my mind wasn’t working clearly enough. I simply couldn’t decide whether trying to hide it was a foolish risk. I heard some noises from the other room. For lack of any other idea, I slipped the jacket on. I heard voices, getting louder. They were coming back. All that mattered was the first couple of seconds. I’d heard of experiments—if you were distracted, it was amazing what you didn’t notice. On the mantelpiece was a slim black vase, elegant, expensive and fragile. I took it in my hands and as they came into the room I let it fall. It shattered on the stone fireplace. ‘Shit,’ I said.

The two ran forward.

‘What the hell was that?’ said Guy.

‘It was a vase,’ I said. ‘Oh, God, that was so clumsy. I feel awful.’

Guy gave a grim smile. ‘Not to worry. If we dispose of the bits, it can safely be blamed on Hayden.’

‘That sounds terrible.’

The two of them cheerfully mocked my incompetence as they found a dustpan and brush and swept up the pieces. They didn’t say a thing about the jacket. The diversion had worked. It was also because they were men, of course. If Sally had been with me, a hundred broken vases wouldn’t have stopped her asking where the jacket had suddenly appeared from.

‘So, are we done?’ I said, when the fragments of what was probably a family heirloom of Liza’s had been tipped into an old shopping bag.

‘I guess so,’ said Joakim, disconsolately, glancing at his father.

Guy was still looking around discontentedly. I was feeling physically sick as I thought about what I’d done and what I’d almost allowed to happen. Sonia and I had rearranged the flat, adjusted furniture, removed evidence and then I had left my jacket on the back of a chair for anyone to find. If I’d done that, what else had I forgotten about? The fact was that there were just so many things that needed arranging, concocting, concealing, lying about, and I only needed to get one wrong. It was a matter of concentration, but what was the activity of mind that would allow me to find the things I had forgotten or omitted? It would stay like that for the rest of my life unless it all went wrong and everything was exposed. The prospect of discovery suddenly seemed almost restful.

‘You didn’t find anything in the kitchen?’ I said, trying to control the tension in my voice.

‘You know the funny thing?’ said Guy.

‘No,’ I said. ‘What?’

‘The point about Hayden is that he’s a wild, spontaneous musician, right? He suddenly doesn’t turn up at a rehearsal and doesn’t trouble to inform us, and we’re supposed to think he’s left town, he’s back on the road, that he got some gig he couldn’t turn down.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did he really live here?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Of course he did. There’s a case in the corner of the room that’s clearly his, and I saw some shirts hanging in the wardrobe, among this Liza’s clothes. There were a couple of beers in the fridge—but it doesn’t look like the sort of place a rock-and-roller just walked out of. There’s no milk gone off in the fridge, no screwed-up shirts tossed in the corner, no old newspapers.’

I made myself not reply, just concentrated on keeping my breathing steady. What was his point?

‘You know what I think?’

I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.

‘I don’t think this was sudden at all. I think he was planning to leave well in advance. The fact that he didn’t tell us was just his way of saying a big “fuck you” to us.’

‘Dad,’ began Joakim, in an angry, protesting tone.

‘He just thought we were a bunch of amateurs and he wanted to make sure we knew it. Doesn’t that