He shook his head.
"Sorry," I said. "Sorry to bother you like this, but I didn't know what else to do. You're the only person I know who knows everything. If you see what I mean. Sorry."
"What's happened?"
"I'm scared."
"Come inside. You must be freezing." He opened the door and I stepped into the wide hall.
"Sorry."
"Stop saying sorry, for God's sake. Come on, come into the kitchen, get warm. Here, give me your coat."
"Thanks."
He led me into a small kitchen. There were pot plants all along the window-sill and daffodils on the table. I could smell glue, sawdust, varnish.
"Here. Sit down, move that junk. Let me get us something to drink. Tea? Or how about hot chocolate?"
"Lovely."
He poured milk into a pan and set it on the hob.
"What about food? When did you last eat?"
"This morning, a fry-up. Remember?"
"Was that only this morning? God."
"Did your meeting go all right?"
"It went, at least. Shall I make you something?"
"Just hot chocolate. That would be very comforting."
"Comforting," he said, with a smile.
He spooned chocolate granules into the boiling milk and stirred vigorously, then poured it into a large green mug. "Drink that, Abbie, and tell me what's happened."
"Sally died," I said.
"Sally? Who's Sally?"
"Terry's new girlfriend." I waited for him to ask who Terry was but he didn't, just nodded and frowned.
"I'm sorry about that, but did you know her well? Was she a friend?"
"I hardly knew her at all. But she was killed."
"Killed? Someone killed her?"
"Outside Terry's flat. The police are convinced it was Terry."
"I see," he said slowly.
"It wasn't. I know it wasn't. But, of course, they just think I'm trapped in some paranoid fantasy. For them, this proves it: Terry bashed me around and I turn it from a squalid tale of domestic abuse into a heroic story of a kidnap. Then he continues the pattern and murders his next girlfriend."
"But he didn't?"
"No. Terry wouldn't murder anyone."
"Lots of people who wouldn't murder anyone go and murder someone."
"That's what the police keep saying. But I know him. Anyway, if he did kill her he would have collapsed with guilt and phoned 999. He certainly wouldn't have dragged her body outside and put it a few doors up. And if he wanted to hide it, which he wouldn't have done, because anyway he wouldn't have done it in the first place, then he would have
"I'm not the police, you know."
"No. Sorry. It's just .. . everything. I keep thinking about poor, stupid Terry. And Sally, of course. But there's something more. Sally looked like me. I mean, like I used to look before I got my haircut and stuff." I watched his face change. "I just have this horrible feeling that it should have been me."
"Oh," he said. "I see."
"He's out there, looking for me. He'll find me. I know it."
"And the police don't take you seriously?"
"No. I don't really blame them. If I wasn't me, I don't know if I would take me seriously. If you see what I mean."
"I do see what you mean."
"Do you believe me?"
"Yes," he said. "'"
"In a big way, I mean? About everything."
"Yes."
"Really? You're not just saying that?"
"I'm not just saying it."
I looked at him. He didn't flinch or look away. "Thank you," I said. I picked up my mug of hot chocolate and finished it. I felt better, all of a sudden. "Can I use your bathroom? Then I'll go home. I shouldn't have come barging in like this, it was stupid of me."
"Up the stairs, the first room you come to."
I stood up. My legs felt wobbly as I climbed the stairs. I used the toilet then splashed my blotchy face. I looked like a washed-out schoolgirl. I came out and headed back down the stairs again. It was a nice house; I wondered if a woman lived there. There were pictures on the walls and books in piles. There was a large plant in the alcove where the staircase turned. I stopped dead and looked at it, its old, gnarled trunk and its dark green leaves. I crouched down and pressed a finger against its mossy soil. I sat down beside it and put my head in my hands. I didn't know whether to cry or giggle or scream. I didn't do any of them. I just stood up and went down the rest of the stairs, very slowly. I walked into the kitchen. Ben was still sitting at the table. He wasn't doing anything, just staring into space. He looked tired, as well. Tired and a bit low, perhaps.
Like a person in a dream my dream, the dream of a life I'd once inhabited, a dream I couldn't remember -I walked round the table and laid one hand against his face. I watched his expression soften. "Was it like this?" I said. I bent over him and kissed him on the side of his mouth. He closed his eyes and I kissed his eyelids. I kissed him on his mouth until it parted. I felt soft and new. "Was it?"
"No, it wasn't."
"So what was it like?"
"You said to me that you felt ugly. You'd been talking about
Terry. So I took you by the hand." He took me by the hand and led me across the room to where there was a full-length mirror hanging on the wall. He placed me in front of it so that I was looking at myself, ragged, blotchy, pale, straggly, worn-out Abigail. He stood behind me and we caught each other's gaze in the mirror. "I brought you over here and I made you look at yourself. I said that you were beautiful."
"I look like something you found on a skip."
"Shut up, Abbie. I'm talking. You were beautiful then and you're beautiful now. I told you that you were lovely and then I couldn't stop myself. I kissed you like this, on your soft neck. Yes, you leant your head just like that."
"What then?" I said. I felt faint.
"I kissed you like this and rubbed my hands over you, your face and neck. Then I carried on like this."
He was kissing my neck and at the same time he undid the buttons on the front of my shirt until it opened.
"That right?" I murmured, not very coherently.
He reached under my shirt and unfastened my bra at the back and pulled it up at the front and then his hands were on my breasts. His soft lips were still on my neck, not so much kissing my skin as stroking it.
"Like this," he said.
I was going to say something but I couldn't speak. His right hand stroked my stomach gently, moving downwards. He deftly snapped open the button at the top of my trousers and opened the zip. He knelt down behind me, kissing his way down my spine as he did so. He put his hands inside the waistband and pulled my trousers and knickers down around my ankles. He stood up again. He was behind me, his arms around me.
"Look at that," he said, and I looked at my body and in the mirror I looked at him, looking at my body and I looked at my body with his gaze. And I looked into the mirror and thought of my naked body in that mirror, when was it? Two weeks ago?
When I spoke to him my voice was drowsy with arousal. "I look undignified," I said.
"You look wonderful."
"And I can't run away."
"You can't run away."
"What did I do after that?"
And then he showed me. I had to hobble, ridiculously, towards his bedroom and I fell over on the bed. I kicked off my shoes and shook off my clothes. They were virtually off anyway. Then he took off his own clothes, taking his time. He reached over to a drawer and took out a condom, opening the packet with his teeth. I helped him put it on. "I know about this," I said. "I found the morning-after pill among my stuff."
"Oh, God," he said. "I'm sorry. We didn't have time."
"I'm sure I was to blame as well."
"Yeah," he said, gasping now. "You were."
We looked at each other. He put up one hand and touched my face, my neck, my breasts. "I thought I'd never touch you again," he said.
"Was it like this?"