Secret Smile

'Didn't you…?' he said. 'Someone said that you had a thing with that guy who was there.'

I looked around quickly, and I was relieved that an animated conversation about life in the country was proceeding without me.

'Yes,' I said. 'Briefly.'

'What was he called?'

Couldn't he shut up?

'Brendan,' I said. 'Brendan Block.'

'That's right. Strange guy. I only met him a few times. He was an old friend of one of the guys, but…' David laughed. 'He's out there. He's just one of these people, the stories you hear about him. Amazing.'

There was a pause. I knew, I just knew, that I should start talking about anything else at all. I could ask him about where he lived in London, what his job was, if he was single, where he was going on holiday, just anything except what I knew I was going to say.

'Like what?'

'I don't know,' said David. 'Just odd things. He'd do things the rest of us wouldn't do.'

'You mean, brave things?'

'I mean things you'd think of as a joke, he'd actually go ahead and do.'

'I'm not following you.'

David looked uncomfortable.

'You're not still together, are you?'

'As I said, it was just a brief thing.'

'I just heard about this from someone who was at college with him.'

'He went to Cambridge, didn't he?'

'Maybe later, this was somewhere in the Midlands, I think. From what I heard, Brendan was really winging it. He did no work at all. Apparently his idea of hard work was to photocopy other people's essays. He was doing one course where the tutor got so pissed off that he failed him altogether. Brendan knew where he lived and he went round there and saw his car parked outside the house. He'd left one of the windows wound down about an inch. What Brendan did was to put some rubber gloves on – you know, the kind you use for washing up – and what he did was he spent an entire night going around the area picking up dog shit and pushing it through that crack in the window.'

'That's disgusting,' I said.

'But amazing, don't you think? It's like a stunt in a TV show. Can you imagine coming down in the morning and opening your car door and about a million dog turds fall out? And then trying to clean the car. I mean, try getting that smell out of the car.'

'It's not even funny,' I said. 'It's just horrible.'

'Don't blame me,' David said. 'He wasn't my friend. And then there was another story about a dog. I'm not exactly sure of the details. I think they were renting a house somewhere and a neighbour was getting on their nerves. He was some old guy with one of those scraggly, mangy dogs. It used to run around the garden barking, driving everyone mad. Brendan was very good with animals. My friend said that the most ferocious Rottweiler could run at you and in about five seconds Brendan would be scratching it under his chin and it would be rolling on the ground. So Brendan got hold of the dog and he put it in the back of some builder's lorry that was just about to drive off. There were these other people around who thought he was joking and that he'd get the dog out, but he didn't. Someone came along and got in the lorry and drove off, and it headed down the road with this barking coming out of the back. Insane.'

'So this man lost his dog?'

'Brendan said he was testing those stories you hear about in the local papers about dogs finding their way home from miles away. He said he definitively disproved it.'

I looked around once more and the table had fallen silent. Everyone had been listening.

'How cruel,' said a woman from across the table.

'I must admit,' said David, 'that the story came out sounding less funny than I thought it was going to. This guy was always talked of as a practical joker, but you don't want to be on the receiving end of his humour. Better to hear about it.' He looked around warily. 'Maybe better not even to hear about it.' The rest of the people started talking among themselves again. David leaned closer to me and spoke in a murmur. 'Not someone you want to get on the wrong side of. And if you do, roll your windows up, if you get my meaning.'

'I don't understand,' I said. 'How could you be friends with someone like that?'

'I told you,' David said, shamefaced now. 'I didn't know him that well.'

'That behaviour sounds psychotic'

'Some of the stories were a bit extreme, but he seemed all right when I met him. I didn't know the people he played jokes on. Anyway, you know more than I do. You… well, you went out with him.'

Fucked him. That's what David meant. I breathed deeply. I couldn't stop myself now. I was furious, but I wasn't exactly sure who to be angry with. I tried to speak calmly.

'I wish I'd heard these supposedly amusing stories about Brendan before I went out with him.'

'It might have put you off.'

'Of course it would have fucking put me off.'

'You're a grown-up,' said David. 'You have to decide for yourself who you go out with.'

'I didn't have the information,' I said. 'For fuck's sake, I thought I was with friends. I feel like someone who's been given a car with dodgy brakes.'

'It's not like that. I remember you talking to him. I only heard about you as a couple later.'

'Did you think of us as a nice couple?'

'I wouldn't have chosen him for you, Miranda. Maybe someone could have said something. Does it really matter? You said you weren't seeing him any more.'

'I think it does matter,' I said. 'You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking of a group of people I thought of as friends watching me get into conversation with someone who had filled a car with dog shit because he got an F.'

'I'm sorry,' said David. 'I didn't think of it at the time.'

'Whose friend was he?'

'What?'

'You said he was an old friend of one of the guys. Which one?'

'Why do you want to know?'

'I just do.'

David thought for a moment.

'Jeff,' he said. 'Jeff Locke.'

'Do you have his phone number?'

David gave a half-smile.

'You want to get in touch?'

I looked at him. The half-smile vanished. He started to rummage in his pockets.

CHAPTER 31

When I woke, I was drenched in sweat and my heart was thudding. I had been dreaming, but the dream was breaking up and sliding away. I tried to hold on to a corner of it. Something about drowning. Drowning, not in water but in a substance that was slimier. Thrashing around and looking up at the bank and there were people sitting there, talking to each other and smiling. Lots of faces: my mother's face; an old friend from school whose name I no longer remembered; and my own face too, suddenly there on the bank. I lay in bed, my skin prickling, and tried to draw more of the dream back into my conscious mind. Something about Troy. I saw his face in my mind now, chalky-white and his mouth calling something, except no sound came out.

I sat up in bed, drawing the duvet around my shoulders. It was just past four, but there was still orange light from the street lamps and blue light from the moon shining through the half-open curtains into my room. I waited for the panic to subside. It had just been a dream, I told myself. It didn't mean anything: random images flickering in the night. I was scared to go back to sleep again because then I'd see Troy shouting for help in my head.

I hauled myself out of bed, pulled on my dressing gown and padded into the bathroom. In the mirror, my forehead looked shiny with sweat and my hair was damp, though I was now shivery with clammy cold. I rubbed a towel over my face, then went into the kitchen and made myself a mug of hot chocolate, which I took back to bed with me, along with an A to Z of London. I opened it at the right page and squinted down at the tiny letters, the network of roads. When I'd found what I had been half-dreading I would see, I put it on my pillow and lay down. I closed my eyes. Soon, it would be light and the birds would be singing and the sounds of the morning would start.