‘Dunnae forget,’ she said. ‘Or I’ll haunt ye. I will. I’ll haunt ye.’
In the tube station everyone was transient except the transients, who hovered by the barriers like vultures waiting to swoop. The escalator trundled around like a mobile tongue disgorging diminishing gobs of passengers out into the cold night. It was getting late. People wrapped their coats around them and eyed those in the foyer suspiciously. They hurried out to the street, anxious suddenly to be home.
Agnes did not look at them as they passed. She was looking instead at the two guards who were hanging around the wooden booth by the ticket barrier. One of them spat at the wall. The other one had his hands in his pockets and was whistling.
‘Oi, Wayne,’ said the one who had spat. ‘What do you reckon to this lot, then?’
He nodded in Agnes’s direction. She felt sure Greta’s assailant hadn’t been called Wayne.
‘Dunno, mate,’ said Wayne. He grinned nastily. ‘We could send ’em down the tunnels for the night, I suppose. They won’t know they’re living.’
Wayne’s mate found this hypothesis hilarious and guffawed loudly. One or two of the tramps by the door sidled surreptitiously out into the street.
An attractive woman emerged from the escalator, and both guards followed her with their eyes as she passed through the barriers.
‘I could fancy that,’ said Wayne’s mate. ‘Fancy a bit of rough, my dear?’ he yelled after her in a plummy voice.
The girl passed close to Agnes as she left the station. Her face was burning. Back inside, the guards had forgotten her already and were laughing about something else. Scum, Agnes thought. Absolute scum. She wanted to run after the girl and offer her something: friendship, loyalty, invisibility, whatever she wanted. We should stick together, she would say. She would tell her about Annie. That was what happened to you in the end. You had to stick together.
More people hurried through the barriers. Agnes craned her neck to see beyond them. She wanted to get a better look at Wayne’s mate.
‘Last train!’ he shouted just then. ‘Ten minutes till the last train!’
He turned his back and leaned against the booth. Agnes looked at her watch. She had not realised it was so late. She would have to come back tomorrow. The tramps began pulling blankets out of plastic bags and unfurling them against the wall at the back of the station. They were bedding down, and would remain there till morning if Wayne’s mate did not succeed in luring them to the tunnels. Agnes knew she had to go home. She had no choice, any more than they did. It was who she was. Even so, with the alternatives lined up against the wall like convicts, she was fascinated by the opportunity of change. She could lose it all just by doing nothing. Just by staying here, she could become someone else. There would be a certain freedom in having nothing. The possibilities were endless.
She went over to the ticket machine and got out her purse. It was empty. She had given the last of her money to Annie. A knot of panic began to grow in her stomach. It was all right, she could go back to Greta’s house and maybe spend the night there. It was several seconds before she remembered telling Greta not to answer the phone or the doorbell. She could phone home and ask Merlin to meet her at the door to pay for a taxi. That was the answer. She found a telephone and reversed the charges. There was nobody at home. Agnes stood in the cold neon-lit station and felt a wave of desperation rise up in her throat. A middle-aged man in a camel-hair coat was coming through the ticket barriers.
‘Excuse me,’ she said politely, approaching him. ‘I’m trying to get home and I don’t seem to have any money. I wonder if you could help me.’
He hesitated momentarily, surprised. She could see him trying to work her out. He looked away and walked past her. The outrage! She stared after him, dumbfounded. As if it wasn’t obvious what kind of person she was! She caught her reflection dimly in one of the steel plates fixed to the wall and was surprised. She looked scruffy and old. It had been a long day. A woman came off the escalator and approached the barriers. Agnes felt her heart swell with relief. She looked kind and would surely be sympathetic.
‘Excuse me—’ she began, before remembering how far this approach had got her last time. The woman had stopped and was looking at her expectantly. ‘Can you spare me some change?’ Agnes blurted out.
The woman immediately looked embarrassed. She sighed and put a hand in her pocket.
‘Oh, all right,’ she said, holding out a ten-pence piece. ‘Although why you people can’t get jobs like everyone else escapes me.’
She clicked smartly off before Agnes had time to respond. So much for change, she thought. Ten pence indeed. Wayne’s mate had been observing her progress and now sauntered over to the ticket barrier.
‘Oi, you,’ he said. ‘Clear off.’
Agnes looked at him with barely disguised distaste. The badge on his lapel read ‘Kevin’.
‘Kevin!’ she said. ‘I might have guessed. How incredibly original.’
A man was approaching from the escalator. He was about her age. He looked like he might understand.
‘I said clear off, you old tart!’ said Kevin.
‘I assure you,’ Agnes replied, ‘there is nothing I would like better. But first I must draw your attention to a certain matter.’ She smiled winningly and pointed at his trousers. ‘Your flies are undone.’
As he looked down, she walked over to the man and stood purposefully in front of him.
‘Excuse me,’ she began.
He looked at her and her heart almost stopped. It was John. His hair a bit longer, perhaps, his clothes different. Something was pounding in her chest.
‘Can I help you?’ he said presently.
Agnes felt faint. He didn’t recognise her, then. She stared at him in silence.
‘Do you need money?’ he said. He delved into a pocket and took out some coins. ‘There. I hope that helps.’
He smiled at her and began walking away. Agnes looked in her hand. He had given her two pounds.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
He stopped and turned around. He looked almost ashamed.
‘It’s the least I can do,’ he said.
Chapter Twenty-two
AGNES sat at the wooden table in the kitchen of her family home. It was late evening. Outside, against the dark sky, the darker shadows of bats swooped and spun like falling leaves. Agnes’s mother, bare-faced and dressing-gowned, made tea with the air of one rallying round.
‘It’s funny that you’re here,’ she said presently. Agnes did not attempt to deny it. Tom’s coming home tomorrow. You must have smelled trouble with your sixth sense. You always were good at that.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’ said Agnes, aiming for a specific rather than a general explanation of her parent’s meaning. ‘What sort of trouble? What’s happened?’
The house had seemed quiet and strangely unfamiliar when she arrived. They hadn’t been expecting her, and their unpreparedness made her feel as if she had happened unawares upon a secret behind-the-scenes existence; like a restaurant in the early morning, the chairs on tables, the smell of disinfectant, someone pushing a mop around perhaps.
‘He’s lost his job,’ said her mother. ‘They told him a few days ago. For some reason, I thought he’d have told you himself.’
She looked rather flushed with the unexpected responsibility of relaying information of such newsworthiness.
‘Lost his job?’ Agnes was incredulous. ‘But — but how could he? How?’
‘He didn’t just drop it in the street, dear. There is a recession on, after all.’