Alice has become unbearable to be around. She splits and flakes, and her teeth drop from her mouth when he moves her, and he can’t ignore the fact that she smells any more. Her nails are coming away from their beds and slide about beneath the brush when he paints them. Superglue seemed to do the trick for a while, but with each passing week the dry flesh beneath deteriorates at a faster pace and they loosen again. He finds himself resenting her slightly more each day when he wakes and sees the wisps of faded hair that cling to the leathery scalp, the shrunken ears whose lobes seem to have slipped downwards until they are nearly touching her jawline, the razor-edged scapulae poking through her once-smooth shoulders. He knows that the state of her is mostly his fault, that he should have done his research more thoroughly, but still he resents her.
It’s the disappointment, he thinks. You go to all that trouble, you lavish such love and attention on someone, and they leave you anyway. No wonder I’ve started to resent her. It’s always best to end it first. But I’m tired of it, so tired of it: of picking up the pieces and carrying on, of getting fond and getting hopeful and still ending up alone.
Her eyes are closed. They have been since he held her in his arms and felt her heart stop beating. It’s another thing he holds against her: that she cannot gaze at him the way Marianne does. Discovering that you really can buy anything you like on eBay has been a huge boon, too. Marianne has beautiful green eyes; Jenaer glass dating back to the Spanish Civil war. They cost nearly fifty pounds each, but they were worth every penny. When Nikki comes out from her hiding place, blue eyes just like the ones that made him want her in the first place will be waiting to grace her face.
But, meantime, he must make space for her. There’s no room for freeloaders in his life, or in this room. And yet, he’s not without nostalgia. She had soft, soft skin. He remembers noticing it first of all about her. Lovely English skin, touched with roses, flawless. He loved to touch it, to stroke it, to feel it smooth beneath his fingertips. Hard to believe that this saddle leather is the same substance.
She grins at him, toothlessly, appealing for mercy. But he’s over her now. It’s strange, he thinks, how quickly love can be replaced by indifference. I adored her, once, but now she’s an inconvenience, a chore that must be done to make room for better times.
‘I’m sorry, Alice,’ he says. ‘It was never going to be for ever. You knew that, surely?’
He picks up the circular saw.
Chapter Twenty
And here he is, as she knew he would be. Standing at the foot of her bed, come in, no doubt, through the open window, toying with his BlackBerry and smiling at her in the half-light. His thinning hair is swept back with gel and he wears a slick Armani suit, like the last time she saw him. His eyes catch the shaft of light that comes in through the crack in the curtains, and gleam. His smile widens, and she sees that his teeth are sharpened into daggers.
Collette is instantly awake, but is slowing herself down by the time her feet hit the floor. Tony, or Malik or Burim, turns up almost every night, at some point; always the same, always smiling. Some nights he holds a knife, or a length of electric flex. Some nights he just stands over the bed and grins. She hasn’t slept straight through since the night she ran. Sleep is a luxury whose price is security. Those who can shut the world out and leave it at will are usually blessed by a world that doesn’t want to shut them up.
She collapses back beneath her sheet, the pillow hard and lumpy beneath her head despite its newness, and stares round the room in the light that filters through the curtains, checks the corners as though he might just have stepped back into the shadows, to toy with her. He was always the sort of man who loved to toy. The sort of man who would tell a joke so his business rival would throw his head back in hearty laughter and expose his throat.
There are noises, despite the hour. The tinkle of a piano sonata, turned down but still audible through the wall. From the basement window with its safe, strong bars, American voices arguing on the TV. Cher, talking to her cat in a baby voice, and the drone of Thomas’s voice, intermittently, seemingly unanswered, the way it sounds when someone’s on the phone. In the street, quiet footsteps pass the house, surprisingly many for a road that leads nowhere. A couple walk past, laughing. In the distance, the shrieks of a fox and a tomcat disputing territory.
He will find me, she thinks. It’s only a matter of time. For all I know, he’s found me already. For all I know, he’s right outside the window.
The thought makes her cold, despite the clammy night. She throws herself from the bed and slams the window down. Slips a hand between the curtains to secure the catch, afraid, suddenly, to show herself to the world outside.
The sounds are cut off and the night goes still. I should have bought a fan. I know I can’t sleep with the window open. I’ll buy a fan tomorrow. Oh, God, I mustn’t keep spending money. I know it seems like a lot, but it’s not, when it’s all you have left, when you’ve nursing home fees to pay, when you never know when you’re going to have to run again. This air’s so still. It’s like it’s pressing down on my head. Can I live like this? Can I live like this for ever?
She sits back down on the bed, her foot brushing against the bag as she does so. I need to find a place to hide that lot, she thinks. Can’t just have it lying about. I don’t really know anything about these people, and someone has to have burgled that old lady downstairs. You’re nuts, Collette. You need to get it out of sight. Split it up and get it out of sight.
She checks the street through the chink in the curtains before she turns on the light. The pavements are empty and, apart from a pool of light falling against the street wall from Vesta’s basement window, show no signs of life. Closing the window hasn’t made her feel safer. If anything, with his presence still permeating her subconscious, it’s made her feel hemmed in. The clock on her phone tells her it’s nearly two. She won’t sleep again until dawn, at least.
She upends the bag across the bed. So little, for so much: nineteen bundles, less than a couple of centimetres thick, and one broken one, doubled over in a rubber band. Twice as much, three years ago, but even then it was little enough that it fitted into a sports bag. She takes one bundle in each hand and starts to work her way round the room, searching for hiding places.
Three years ago: red blood on white skin, and stupid Lisa frozen to the spot. Tony laughing by the bar with his whisky glass, the man on the floor coughing up a tooth, a middle molar. It bounces on the carpet, tittups up against his shoe.
Their heads, turning…
All rooms are full of hiding places, if you’re looking. She’s become a past master at finding them. She kept half her money taped in plastic bags to the back of a heavy old commode, in Paris; five thousand pounds in a Tampax box in Berlin. The trick is to remember where you’ve put it, not to lose ten grand when you move on, as she did in Naples. The armchair has a loose cover, to hide the holes and stains beneath. She tucks half a dozen bundles round the edge of the cushion, tweaks the cover to hide the bulge. Goes back to the bed, picks up two more, moves on, thoughts churning.
Should I have run?
She asks herself that every day. Maybe I could have brazened it out, stepped round the curtain and played the hard-face, one of them.