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

Just don’t talk to each other about me, that’s all. I mean, do. Of course you will. Just don’t tell me about it.’

At the end of Sally’s road I stopped. ‘I’ll go first. You wait for a couple of minutes.’

‘Why?’

‘So no one knows.’

‘Knows what?’

I smiled at him and kissed his lips. ‘Nothing.’

They were all there, waiting.

‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Amos. ‘You’re supposed to be the group leader.’

‘That makes us sound like the Brownies.’

‘Where’s Hayden?’ asked Joakim.

‘Shut up about Hayden,’ said Guy, turning on him. His neck had gone puce.

‘But what—’

‘Just shut it.’

Sally burst out of the kitchen bearing a cake. She had done something to her hair and was wearing lipstick. As she came towards me I smelled her perfume. ‘Where’s Hayden?’ she said.

‘Here I am,’ said Hayden, entering the room. ‘Hi, everyone. Were you waiting for me? Sally, you look very nice today. Why, hello, Bonnie!’ He gave an exaggerated start of surprise. ‘How are you today?’ His slow grin undressed me in front of everyone.

‘Let’s get on.’ I turned away from him. Neal was looking at Hayden and then at me. It was as though I could actually see the knowledge enter him like a poison. He knew. And, as our eyes locked, I could see that he realized I had understood this.

‘Who wants cake?’ asked Sally, brightly. ‘Coffee and walnut. Bonnie?’

‘Not just now.’

‘I’ll have some,’ said Hayden. He took a large piece and put half of it into his mouth, chewing and then swallowing it as everyone watched him. He licked his fingers.

‘Neal?’

‘No.’ His voice was soft and tired. I turned away so I wouldn’t have to see his face but I sensed his eyes on me.

‘What have you done to your face?’ Amos asked.

‘It’s nothing,’ I said lightly.

‘You should see the other guy,’ Neal said. It was meant as a joke but it came out too loud and harsh. There was a silence.

‘I fell against the bathtub,’ I said. ‘It hardly even hurts any more.’

‘It’s yellow.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Shall we start?’ Joakim was tuning his fiddle. Its pure high notes hung in the room.

‘Ready, Sonia?’ I asked.

She nodded and let her arms fall to her sides, palms turned slightly outwards in her singing position.

‘Sonia’s going to show us how “It Had To Be You” should be sung,’ I said.

‘She has a voice like smoke and velvet,’ said Hayden.

‘Why, how nice of you, Hayden,’ Sonia said ironically.

‘Very sexy.’

I could feel Amos bristling in the corner. The room seemed clammy. Out of the window I could see Richard and Lola in the garden. He was dead-heading the roses and she was squatting on the ground, peering intently at the soil. It looked so cool and clean out there, away from the hot, thick air inside. My hands were damp and little drops of sweat ran down my chest. I wanted to be somewhere far away, somewhere green and peaceful and empty of squabbling people.

‘On the count of three,’ I said. ‘Let’s channel some Billie Holiday.’

After

The phone rang loudly beside me, jolting me from crowded dreams. Still only half awake, I put out a hand, found the phone and brought it to my ear. ‘Yes?’ I said.

‘Bonnie, it’s me. Sally.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Just before seven o’clock.’

‘What’s wrong? Is Lola OK?’

‘I’ve phoned the police.’

‘Why?’

‘I told them I wanted to report Hayden missing.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s missing.’

I tried to think clearly and make myself react as an ordinary person would. ‘Not missing in a phone-the-police way, Sally. We checked his flat. He’s probably just moved on.’

‘I’ve done it now. I can’t undo it. Will you come with me?’

I couldn’t come up with a convincing excuse to get out of it. Perhaps it would be useful to be there and hear what Sally had to say. After I’d hung up, I tried to think. My brain felt like a wheel turning uselessly in mud, deeper and deeper. Sally had gone to the police. What did that mean? Would they start investigating Hayden’s disappearance or simply dismiss her worries as the hysterical suspicions of an infatuated woman? Would they want to talk to people? To us? To me? And what would I say? Would they go to the flat and look for clues? If I’d managed to leave my jacket there, hung casually over the back of the chair, what else had I left, overlooked, forgotten, mismanaged, slipped up on? Were my fingerprints on everything? Had he told people about us? I thought I’d covered everything up but I suddenly realized I was absurdly deluded. Clues would surface that I couldn’t even imagine. Single strands of hair could be enough to convict someone. My hair would be on his pillow, my sweat on his towels, on his sheets, my fingerprints on his mugs and glasses, my image on a CCTV camera somewhere. Maybe there’d been a lens pointed at us when we’d slid Hayden’s body into the reservoir’s dark waters. You can’t go unnoticed. I’d stand in a line-up and someone I’d never seen before would point their finger and say: ‘Her. She’s the one. Yes. Without a doubt.’

I told myself to calm down. What could they discover? As long as Sonia didn’t say anything, nothing could incriminate me. Could I trust Sonia, though? Surely I could. She was my friend. And, anyway, if she told anyone, she’d be incriminating herself as well as me. But someone else knew something. They had to, or why would they have sent my satchel back to me? My satchel full of all the things I’d left in the flat, and the necklace belonging to Sally. What did it mean? Something was happening and I didn’t know what it was. Things were waiting to ambush me, nasty surprises lurking round corners and behind doors.

I put on a pair of denim shorts and a stripy top. I looked androgynous and undeveloped, like a teenage boy just before he hits the spotty adolescent phase, or one of those rag dolls with flaxen hair and floppy legs. I studied myself in the mirror.