All of a sudden, her hand lifted to her mouth. ‘The kettle. I forgot.’ She ran out of the room. Before he could follow her, she ran back in again. ‘Would you like some tea?’
He glanced at his watch. Twenty-past nine. Almost half an hour had passed since she opened the front door and he walked in. Time was beginning to speed up. He saw clock-hands spinning, a calendar shedding its pages like leaves in a gale.
‘Is there time?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there’s time.’
He stood by the kitchen window while she rinsed two cups under the tap. He couldn’t help noticing the sticky patches on the table, the dust and rubbish on the floor. It surprised him that she lived in such squalor. He watched her open a box of tea-bags. She used one in each cup, dropping them in the sink when they had yielded their flavour.
At one point she turned to him, steam from the kettle rising past her face. ‘I’m so glad you came,’ she said. ‘Charlie was really worried about you.’
Charlie? He managed a smile. He still had no idea who he was supposed to be, but he thought that if he played along with her, then it would make the whole thing easier — easier than he could possibly have imagined. When she spoke to him, he held his tongue and tried to look as though she was only telling him what he already knew.
She stood in front of her wardrobe, one hand on her hip, the other covering one corner of her mouth. The dull tingle of hangers on the rail, the sprawl of discarded clothes across her bed. She couldn’t decide what to wear. She was even slower than Jill, who often used to take an hour to dress if they were going out, and perhaps because of this odd, skewed sense of familiarity, a feeling of nostalgia, really, he didn’t try to hurry her. Instead, he sat on a chair with his back to the window and sipped his tea, which had long since cooled. He felt the sun reach into the room and touch his shoulder. Gradually, he found himself relaxing. So much so, in fact, that when she finally appeared in a black skirt and a denim jacket and told him she was ready, it caught him unawares and even, for a few brief moments, disappointed him.
Yes, it was easy in the flat, and walking up the road, that was easy too, but as they entered the tube station, a change came over her. She began to mutter under her breath, and her words, when he could hear them, made no sense to him. On the platform he tried to talk to her, to calm her, but she seemed to be listening to something else. There was a buzzing in her ears, no, a fizzing, which she didn’t like at all. Further down the platform a guard’s head turned slowly in their direction, expressionless but inquisitive. Barker began to wish he’d thought of a taxi. What they needed now was to be hidden from the world, invisible.
At Baker Street a middle-aged woman stepped into their carriage. She had a page-boy haircut, which heightened the bluntness of her features. Barker sensed trouble coming the moment he saw her. Some people, you just know. He watched her sit down opposite. Watched her eyes. How they drifted idly towards the two of them, then tightened into focus. She wasn’t frightened of his size or his tattoos or the scar on the bridge of his nose. In fact, she hardly seemed to notice. She just leaned over, concerned, and said, ‘Is something wrong?’
Glade stared into the woman’s face, then she began to shake her head. ‘I don’t know what you’re saying,’ she murmured. ‘I can’t hear you.’
The woman looked across at Barker. ‘Is she ill?’
‘She’s fine,’ he said. ‘Just leave us alone.’
‘Are you sure?’ The woman studied Glade again. ‘She looks as if she needs some help to me.’
Barker lifted his eyes towards the roof. No corners, just curving metal. Cream-coloured. Shiny. In a loud voice, he said, ‘Maybe you’d like to mind your own fucking business, all right?’
Several people shifted in their seats, but he knew they wouldn’t interfere. People don’t, in England.
The woman sat back, her eyes fixed on some imaginary horizon, her lips bloodless, pinched. Barker nodded to himself. That was more like it. If only he’d been paid to get rid of her. Come to think of it, he probably would have done the job for nothing.
At last they arrived at King’s Cross. He took Glade by the arm. ‘Our stop,’ he told her.
She looked at him, narrowing her eyes, and then she nodded. It was a habit of hers, making him wonder if she might be short-sighted.
As they left the carriage, Barker looked round, saw the woman watching them through the window. She would remember the encounter. She’d be able to say, ‘You know, I thought there was something strange about them.’ Only it would be too late by then. Yes, when she heard the news, she would remember. And then she’d probably blame herself. If only she had done something. There’d be guilt, huge guilt. But after what she’d put him through during the last ten minutes, Barker couldn’t pretend that he was sorry.
Upstairs, in the station, he asked for two singles to Hull. The man at the ticket counter told him it would be cheaper to buy returns. Super Savers, he called them.
‘But I’m not sure when we’re coming back,’ Barker said.
‘Still cheaper. Even if you never come back.’ The man watched Barker patiently, waiting for him to understand.
‘Super Saver,’ Glade murmured at his shoulder. ‘I like the sound of that.’
Barker looked down at her. She nodded, then drifted away from him, drawing glances from the people standing in the queue. Her height, her slenderness. Her bright-orange hair. He turned back to the man behind the counter.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Two Super Savers.’
The tickets in his hand, he crossed the station concourse, stopping under the departures board. The train to Hull didn’t leave for another three-quarters of an hour. With Glade behaving the way she was, he thought it might be wise to delay boarding until the last minute. In the station, with all its freaks and misfits, all its strays, a girl muttering would be less likely to stand out.
Then Glade was pulling on his sleeve. ‘Have you got any money?’
‘Yes, I’ve got money,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘Can I have some?’
‘What for?’
‘I’d like something to drink.’
‘I’ll buy you something.’
She looked at him knowingly, half-smiling, as if he was trying to trick her and she had seen through it. ‘I’d better come too,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you.’ She led him into the newsagent’s and down to the back where the soft drinks were kept. He watched her scan the cooler, her eyes jumping from one row of cans to the next.
‘That,’ she said, pointing.
‘Kwench!?’ He remembered noticing the same bright-orange cans lying on the floor in her kitchen.
‘Six of them,’ she said.
‘Six?’ He stared at her, over his shoulder.
She nodded. ‘I’m thirsty.’
He was looking into her face, which had an earnestness, a seriousness, that he had seen in children, and he realised, in that moment, that he would find it impossible to deny her anything.
‘Six,’ she repeated. In case he hadn’t heard her. In case he had forgotten.
He reached into the cooler, took out six cans of Kwench! and carried them up to the till.
‘I hope that’ll be enough.’ She was staring anxiously at the cans. She seemed to be making some kind of calculation.
‘You drink all these,’ he said, ‘we’ll get you some more.’
The cashier smiled at Glade indulgently. ‘Maybe you should buy the company.’