Emerging, with a dozen others, from the evening suntrap of Portslade station — two open platforms on a line running due west — Paul steps out into Portland Road. Waiting on the traffic island, he wonders whether to pop into the Whistlestop for a quick one. The pub sits at the junction of Portland and Boundary roads, where the former ends, outstaring its wide, low-lying, desolate length — desolate under November rain, of course, but also under the heavy stare of this July sun. At this time of day there is no shade on Portland Road. He decides against the pint. He had a few in the Penderel’s Oak with the others after work, and now, seventy minutes of rammed train later, he has a lurking, indefinite headache; it is hardly perceptible, merely a shimmer of pain as he turns his head to look for further traffic, and seeing none, steps onto the tarmac. His new shoes — bright black Churches — pinch his hot feet, and as he walks he looks forward to easing them off, to peeling off his black undertaker’s socks, and waggling his blind toes in the warm shade of the garden. Summer evenings, the sun is shut out of the garden, the new sun umbrella — cream canvas and solid wood — unnecessary. He knows that Heather drinks coffee under it in the morning, and on Sunday mornings when the weather is fine he reads the papers there. Occasionally he looks up from the acres of text and surveys his square of lawn — pleasingly wider than the narrow space of the Lennox Road house — with its flagstones set into the turf to form a serpentine path (true, only two stubby turns) and a displeased-looking, spiky palm at the end — the sort of palm you see outside hotels and in front gardens all over Hove. The house has a proper front garden, with some tall beige feather-dusters of grasses. The neighbours in the other half of the semi have rose bushes in theirs. The next house along has a monkey-puzzle tree.
He passes the the pink-brick cube of Martello House (‘HM Customs & Excise, VAT Office’) — with few windows, it looks like some sort of prison — and turns into the wide street that is Portland Villas. He wishes it were shadier — that is his only problem with the street on which he now lives. The sun glares off the expanse of tarmac, off the exposed pavements, blindingly off the parked cars. Now, even on the west side of the street there is almost no shade, what little there is falling into the gardens in front of the houses, which are mostly semi-detached, and grouped in stretches of eight or ten to the same pattern.
As he approaches his house, already feeling the jacket on his arm for his keys, he squints warily at the parked cars. After what happened in June, there is, of course, no yellow Saab; he knows, however, that Martin has been around since then — once he saw him (he is pretty sure) in a nondescript grey Ford. He stared at the car for several minutes, until its occupant started the engine and moved off. Even that was a month ago now. The phone calls, the text messages, the emails, the letters (some put through the door in the dead of night) have petered out. Yes, since the police had a word with him — it was traumatic to involve them — things have quietened down. Seeing no sign that the house is under surveillance, Paul opens the freshly painted gate and pulls the keys from the pocket of his tangled jacket. Since then, there have been only two messages. The first, an email full of foul-mouthed abuse, was followed, only a few days later, by an invitation to a barbecue — a photocopied invitation with Hope you can make it! added in a flourish of blue biro. Under the circumstances, this invitation was far more disturbing, seemed far more insane, than the abusive email that immediately preceded it. Yes, there had been something terrifying about that barbecue invite. On meat-red paper, there was a cartoon — so crudely drawn it seemed to have been done with a marker pen — of some meat sizzling over coals, and a knife and a long barbecue fork … Portland Villas throbs with the dusky peace of wood pigeons. The moon floats up pale and ethereal in the sky. Tired, Paul half turns for a last sweep of the quiet street, then unlocks the door — it has panes of glass frosted to look like silk — and enters his house.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people, for all their efforts, and for their enthusiasm most of alclass="underline" Alex Bowler, Sam Edenborough, Will Francis, Dan Franklin, Jago Irwin and, last but not least, Anna Webber.
Of course many other people have also had a hand in this book, in many different ways. I want to thank them too.