Secret Smile

'Hi, sorry to trouble you. My name's Miranda Cotton and I'm a friend of Brendan Block. I need to reach him urgently. Can you help me?'

'I'm not sure,' he said. 'I haven't seen him for ages. I've got a number.'

I couldn't resist a smile when he read out my phone number to me.

'I've tried that one,' I said. 'He's not there any more. Maybe someone else could help me? How did you get to know Brendan?'

There was a pause that I had become used to. Is it like that with all friends or was there something particular about Brendan? When I thought of my friends, I just knew where I had met them. It was at school or college or because they had been at school with someone else or they were someone's cousin. But everybody seemed a bit vague about Brendan. Suddenly he had been there in their lives and they weren't quite sure how he had got there. Craig McGreevy gave me a couple of names and numbers. One of them didn't answer, but the other did and put me on to someone else who put me on to someone else, who put me on to a man called Tom Lanham who, as soon as I mentioned Brendan, said:

'Are you ringing about his stuff?'

'His stuff?'

'When he moved out, he left some boxes. He said he was going to collect them, but that was about a year ago.'

'You shared a flat with him?'

'He stayed here for a bit, then took off and I haven't seen him since. Are you a friend?'

'That's right. I'm trying to track him down. I might be able to help you with his stuff. I could take it to him.'

'Are you sure?' Tom said. 'That would be great. It's still in a corner of my room. I don't know what to do with it.'

'Could I come round and talk to you?'

'Any time. What about tonight?'

I was disconcerted by his eagerness. How much stuff was there?

'Where do you live?'

'Islington. Just off Essex Road. I'll give you directions.'

He wasn't going to take no for an answer, so I took down the details and three hours later I was knocking on his door. Tom had obviously just returned from work. He was still in his suit, his tie loosened. His hair was carefully brushed. I guessed that he worked in the City. I was in overalls. He grinned at the contrast between us.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I didn't have time to change.'

He escorted me in and offered me a drink. I asked for coffee. He embarked on a ridiculously pretentious process involving a single paper filter placed over a mug. But it was very good, very strong. He poured himself a large glass of wine.

'So you don't know where to find Brendan?' I said.

'Why do you want to find him?'

'I'm worried about him,' I said.

Tom smiled.

'I thought he might owe you money,' he said.

'Why?'

'Because he owes me money.'

'What for?'

'It's not such a big deal,' Tom said. 'He was meant to be contributing towards the mortgage, the heating, the phone, but he never quite got around to it. He went off to work on a film somewhere and I haven't seen him since.'

'A film?' I asked.

'He said he was helping with some location scouting.'

'When was that?'

Tom sipped at his wine. I didn't feel too sorry for him. He didn't look as if the money mattered very much.

'About a year ago,' he said. 'Did you say you were going to take his stuff away?'

'I could pass it on to him,' I said.

'That would be great,' Tom said. 'I was thinking of putting it on a skip. Someone came to stay in the room he'd been using, so I put his things in a couple of empty wine boxes. It's just a few odds and ends.'

'I'll take it off your hands.'

'Why are you doing this?' he asked.

'It's a bit like you and the money he owes you,' I said. 'Except it's not money.'

Tom looked at me with a puzzled expression.

'I suppose what it is is none of my business?'

I tried to make myself smile as if none of this was very important.

'It's like with you,' I said. 'Not a big deal.'

He was still looking at me in a way I found disconcerting.

'Can I take you out to dinner?' he said.

'I'm sorry, I…' For a moment I tried to invent an excuse and then thought: why bother? 'I just can't.'

I hadn't been tempted. I didn't like his suit. Anyway, I wanted to look at the things Brendan had left behind when he met me. The things he didn't need. Tom carried one of the boxes out to the car. Then he asked for my number. I gave it to him. What did it matter? It wouldn't be mine for much longer.

As soon as I got home I tipped the boxes on to the floor of my living room and sifted through the pile. At first it looked enticing but, as I sorted through each item, it quickly began to seem impersonal and disappointing. Much of it was just the sort of scraps that might be lying by anybody's bed, and I couldn't see why Tom hadn't simply thrown them away. There were a couple of yellowed newspapers, a brochure for holidays in Greece, a couple of paperbacks. There was a brown shoelace, a London street map, a watch with a plastic strap, some blank audio cassettes. There were quite a lot of letters, of the anonymous kind, offering credit cards or loans. Almost all of them were unopened. There were some dried-out pens without tops, a pair of plastic scissors for cutting paper, a cardboard beer mat, a cheap calculator, a small plastic torch with no batteries, lots of paper clips, a plastic bottle containing eye drops. It was just a collection of objects. There didn't seem to be anything that connected, no touch of anything personal.

Except right at the end, there was a handwritten note on lined paper that looked as if it had been torn from a notebook. The writing was a childish scrawl. It said: ' Nan 's in St Cecilia's.' This was followed by an address in Chelmsford and a room number.

I looked at the piece of paper and I wished I'd never seen it. If I'd had a friend – a friend like Laura – sitting with me now she would have asked me what I was doing, and I would have said to her: 'I don't know.' She would have said: 'He's gone. Let him go.' 'What's it to do with you?' I might have said: 'I'm in a zoo and by mistake I open a cage and let a dangerous animal escape. He scratches and bites me and then he is gone. Should I just be glad and get on with my life or is it still my responsibility?' My friend might say: 'You didn't let him into the world. You stumbled into him. It was bad luck. He did terrible things to you and he's gone. What are you going to do? Are you going all the way to Chelmsford to see someone you don't know for some reason you don't understand?'

At that point I would have thought for a long time and I would have said:

'I wish that that man Tom had just thrown all this in the bin and that would be the end of it. But I keep thinking of those people back at the skating rink last year. They knew there was something weird about Brendan. And if they didn't know, they fucking should have. They saw him flirting with me and they saw us getting on. One or two of them were my friends and they should have told me about him.'

My friend would say to me: 'You're worrying about people you don't know, people you'll never see.'

And I would say: 'Yes. Stupid, isn't it?'

It was as if God himself were trying to discourage me. It rained all the way up the A12. and I missed the turn off because I was looking at the map on my lap. It was difficult to find St Cecilia's, a grimy pebble-dashed square building at the end of a row of houses, and I had to park in the next street so that I was soaked. St Cecilia's was a residential home. As soon as I opened the swing door I was hit by a smell of cleaning fluid and all the odours that the cleaning fluid was trying and failing to cover up. Nobody was at the front desk. I looked around. There was another door which led to a corridor. An obese woman in a light blue nylon housecoat was mopping something up. When she dipped the mop into her metal bucket it clattered, as if she couldn't see it properly. I cleared my throat and she looked round at me.

'Hello,' I said. 'Have you got a Mrs Block here?'