The thought caught him off guard. Moments later came the sound of a car pulling up outside. He looked around. Maybe he should try to clear up—though there was hardly any mess. As usual, there were one plate, one knife and fork, one glass, and a single saucepan on the draining board. Nothing else was out of place. God, what was the use?
He took one last look around, then grabbed his keys and headed for the door. Down the stairs. Past the scuff marks. Through the faint cloud of perfume. The lower he got, the colder the air became, and he felt his confidence starting to drain with it.
No, you’ve got to do it, he urged himself. Do it. Don’t turn back now.
He was in the corridor, just one set of doors separating him from Peggy and the girls, their shapes blurred through the frosted glass.
Do it. No going back.
His hand was on the door handle. His legs were shaking so much he thought they might give way. Things just have to get worse before they can get better. Do it, you fucking coward—do it.
Peggy threw her arms around him and he felt her tears on his cheeks. He hugged her back so tightly he could feel her loosen her own grip in surprise.
“Hey now, hey,” she whispered, and the softness of it brought tears swimming into his own eyes. He could see Suze trying to carry three different bags out of the car at once, struggling to keep her balance. Maisie was at her side, her face pale, her arms folded tightly around herself. Peggy put her hands on Andrew’s chest. “Shall we go inside?” she said. Andrew watched her eyes searching his, concern now dawning.
“Andrew . . . ?”
— CHAPTER 27 —
Andrew was sitting on a dead man’s bed wondering if he’d broken his foot. It had ballooned up grotesquely since last night, fluid expanding underneath spongy flesh, and it was now throbbing and hot, as if infection were setting in. He hadn’t been able to fit a shoe on it that morning—the best he could do was a knackered old flip-flop he’d found at the bottom of a cupboard. The pain was excruciating, but nowhere near as bad as what he felt when he closed his eyes and pictured again the disappointment dawning on Peggy’s face.
It had all happened in such a blur—his garbled apology to her and the girls (no, sorry, they couldn’t come in after all, he was so so sorry, he’d explain when he could, it just wasn’t possible tonight)—then the confusion on Peggy’s face, and the hurt, and finally the disappointment. He’d fled inside, unable to watch Peggy shepherding her confused daughters back into the car, jamming his fingers in his ears so he couldn’t hear them questioning why they were leaving already. He was back in the corridor, past the scuff marks and through the cloud of perfume, and up the stairs, and inside, and then he was listening helplessly as the car drove off, and when he could no longer hear its engine he looked down and saw the train set laid out with all its precision and care and expense and then he was kicking and stamping at it, bits of track and scenery slamming against the walls, until all that was left was carnage blanketed by silence. He hadn’t felt a thing at first, but then the adrenaline wore off and the pain hit him in a dull, sickening wave. He crawled to the kitchen and found some frozen peas, then searched the cupboard next to him, optimistically hoping to find a first aid kit. Instead, there were two bottles of cooking wine covered in a thick film of dust. He drank half a bottle in one go, until his throat stung and the wine spilled over his mouth and down his neck. He shifted so he was sitting against the fridge, and that’s where he eventually fell into a fitful sleep, waking just after three and crawling to his bed. He lay there, tears leaking down his cheeks, and thought of Peggy driving through the night, her face intermittently illuminated by streetlights, pale and afraid.
He’d turned off his phone and thrown it in a drawer in the kitchen. He couldn’t bear to hear from anyone about anything. He still had no idea what had happened to Keith. Maybe he’d already been fired for hurting him like that.
When the morning came, he couldn’t think what to do other than carrying out the property inspection he’d been scheduled to do. He sat on the tube among the rush-hour commuters, the pain in his foot now so severe it strangely emboldened him to stare at everyone in turn, feeling miserable at just how much he wanted someone to ask if he was okay.
The address for the property inspection had rung a bell, but it was only when he’d limped onto the estate that he recognized it as the place he and Peggy had come on her first day. (Eric, was that the man’s name?) As he prepared himself to enter the property of the late Trevor Anderson, he looked across the rain-slick concrete slabs, a hopscotch game still faintly outlined, and saw a man carrying two off-license bags’ worth of shopping struggling to open the door to the flat where Eric had lived. Andrew wondered if the man knew about what had happened there. How many thousands of other people, in fact, might at that very moment be about to open the door to a house where the last occupant had died and rotted without anybody noticing.
—
According to the coroner, Trevor Anderson had died having slipped and banged his head on the bathroom floor, adding that conditions in the house were “pretty poor” in the bored tone of someone reviewing a disappointing quiche from a gastropub. Andrew had put on his protective clothes, forcing himself to ignore a fresh wave of pain in his foot, and observed his usual ritual of reminding himself why he was there and how he should behave, before going inside.
It had been clear Trevor had found it hard to cope in his last days. Rubbish was piled up in the corner of the living room—the collection of stains on one particular spot of the wall suggesting various things had been thrown at it before sliding down to join the pile. There was a fiercely strong smell of urine because of the bottles and cans of all sizes filled to the brim, which were spread out in a halo around a small wooden stool just feet from a television on the floor. The only other things that could count as possessions were a pile of clothes and a bicycle wheel resting up against a beige radiator shot with scorch marks. Andrew had searched through the rubbish but knew in his heart of hearts that he’d find nothing. He’d gotten to his feet and peeled off his gloves. In the side of the room that functioned as the kitchen, the oven door hung open in a silent scream. The freezer buzzed for a moment, then clicked off again.
He’d hobbled into the bedroom, once separated from the living room by a door, but now just by a thin sheet secured by parcel tape. Next to the bed was a mirror, flecked with shaving foam, leaning up against the wall, along with a bedside table improvised from four shoeboxes.
The pain had suddenly been too much and Andrew had been forced to hop over and sit on the bed. There was a book on top of the shoeboxes, an autobiography of a golfer he’d never heard of, the cheesy smile and baggy suit placing it firmly in the 1980s. He opened the book at random and read a paragraph about a particularly arduous bunker experience at the Phoenix Open. A few pages on, a lighthearted anecdote about a charity match and too much free cava. As he flicked forward again something came loose and fell into his lap. It was a train ticket, twelve years old: a return from Euston to Tamworth. On the back there was an advert for the Samaritans. “We don’t just hear you, we listen.” Below, in a small patch of white space, something had been drawn in green pen.
Andrew spent a long time studying Trevor’s drawing. He knew it was his, because it consisted of three simple oblongs, each with a name and dates inside them:
Willy Humphrey Anderson: 1938–1980
Portia Maria Anderson: 1936–1989
Trevor Humphrey Anderson: 1964–????