He turns back to his companion. ‘Good book?’
She looks up. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have said you could sit down if I’d known you were going to try to talk to me. Sorry. But I’m not looking for friends.’
Thomas feels the blood rush to his cheeks as she looks down once again, pointedly, at her book. ‘Sorry,’ he says, plaintively. ‘Only being friendly.’
She rolls her eyes and purses her lips. Picks up her coffee without taking her eyes from the reader and takes a sip. Plugs in her iPod earphones as a final dismissal.
Embarrassed, he gets up and leaves. He knows when he’s not wanted. Well, actually, of course, he often doesn’t. This is one of his problems. He grew up thinking that it was all about the men, that the women were just waiting to be chosen, and that all the men had to do was choose. It’s been a terrible disappointment to discover that the rules are more complicated. He hurries off up the street once he’s got a few paces from the table, keen to put space between himself and his humiliation. Reaches the Sunrise Café and sees that it’s still open. Oh, well, he thinks. They probably do cappuccino too. Everywhere does, these days. And one of those Portuguese custard tarts. They’re always good.
‘Piss off,’ says a voice beside him.
Thomas looks round, surprised. It seems such a random thing to have said. He sees a man, donkey jacket on despite the heat and combat trousers, glaring at a mousy woman in a loose tweed skirt, a formal white blouse and a lilac cardy. She’s clutching a sheaf of leaflets, one sheet frozen in the air between them where she’s clearly tried to hand him one.
‘Sorry,’ she says.
‘You’re allowed your beliefs,’ he says, ‘but stop trying to shove them down other people’s throats.’
‘I wasn’t!’ she protests. She has a Princess Diana haircut, circa New England Kindergarten, and a little crucifix on a chain round her neck. Lovely blue eyes, though, and a neck like a swan’s. He peers to see what the leaflet says and catches a glimpse of a big black THEGOODNEWS and a hand-drawn, childish cross. ‘I was just -’
‘Trying to talk to me about God. Yes. I know. And I don’t care.’
‘But I just -’ she says.
‘You people make me sick,’ says the man, and knocks the leaflets from her hand. They cascade to the pavement.
Thomas sees his chance. Leaps across the gap between them and is sweeping them up in a moment, as the assailant is still making his way past to storm off up the street.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ says the woman. How the British love to apologise. ‘Thank you. Sorry. Thank you.’
She has a high-pitched, schoolmistressy voice. A voice that’s far older than she is. And beautiful skin. White as snow and faultless. Hypoallergenic soap and cold cream, he thinks. None of your modern cosmetic products. You only get that beautiful English Rose complexion from cold cream. Lovely skin. The sort of skin you want to touch, because you know it’s not often been touched before.
‘No, no,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. There was no need for him to go all Dawkins on you like that. Totally unnecessary.’
He manages to collect the leaflets together, taps them back into shape. Yes, they’re Christian leaflets. They have the name of the local evangelical church across the bottom. He occasionally sees them coming out of their barn-like building on a Sunday, pink-faced and pleased with themselves, the men in grey suits and V-necked sweaters, the woman dressed almost exactly as this one is now. He holds them out to her and she takes them with a grateful, bashful smile. ‘You have to expect that sort of thing,’ she says. ‘Some people just don’t want to hear the Word.’
‘What “word” is that?’ he asks, though he knows, and he sees hope spring into her eyes. She’s clearly not been having much luck today, judging from the quantity of leaflets she still has left.
‘I’m spreading the Word,’ she says, emphasising the Word as though it’s significant for its very existence, ‘about our church.’
Thomas feigns interested surprise. ‘A church? Well!’
‘I don’t suppose… do you have a church already?’
He can feel little prickles of excitement under his clothes. Such beautiful skin. If I had her alone, I could touch it. ‘Well, I…’
‘I don’t suppose you even live around here,’ she says, and looks disconsolate. It clearly doesn’t occur to her that anyone who doesn’t tell her to piss off might not be interested in God.
‘Oh, no! No, I’m just… it’s funny I should bump into you,’ he says. ‘I’ve only just moved into the area, and…’
‘Oh! Where from?’
He thinks fast. The first name that comes into his mind pops out. ‘Colindale.’
‘Colindale! That’s a long way!’
And I’ve never been there. That’s why I picked it. No one from Northbourne has been to Colindale. It’s at the far end of the Northern Line, and God knows the Northern Line’s a hike from here.
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
Her skin is so pale it’s almost translucent. It’s as though she’s never been out in the sun before. I can almost see the blood beneath your skin, he thinks. I can almost see your arteries.
‘You must be a bit…’
‘Yes, it’s not… anyway, I’ve not found a church yet…’
She looks as pleased as punch. ‘So I’m preaching to the converted, then!’
‘Hardly,’ he says, and sees her look confused. ‘Preaching – you weren’t preaching. Heavens, what did you think?’
She laughs. Little white pearly teeth. Not rabbity at all, as he’d half-expected. As she does so, she tosses her head back and shows him her long white throat. Beautiful. He feels the prickle of his skin again. And so open. No wedding ring, he notices. No one waiting at home.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Psycho has caught a beetle, and is torturing it on the lawn. Funny, thinks Hossein, how that cat always looks at his best when he’s at his most vicious. He’s all sheen and lean, long muscle, stalking the hapless insect on dancer’s legs with a tail like a shepherd’s crook, glancing up occasionally to check that his audience is still entranced.
‘I’m sure that cat used to be called Toby,’ he says.
‘He did,’ says Vesta. ‘And before that he’s been Snooki, and Bell-end, and all sorts. For a bit he was Mr Skwoodgy.’
‘Mr Skwoodgy?’
‘I know. I think you can probably guess what that lad was like.’
Hossein smiles. For a moment, with his almond eyes and his golden aura, he looks not unlike a cat himself. ‘Psycho is better, I think,’ he says.
‘Yes. It suits him. Mind you, I don’t think he cares what you call him, as long as you call him for dinner.’
‘Talking of dinner,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ says Vesta. ‘I should get started, I suppose.’
But she doesn’t move. Looks instead at the steps going down to her kitchen with a face full of sadness.
‘It’s all spoiled, you know, now,’ she says.
‘Oh, Vesta…’
‘I know. I’m sorry. After all the work you’ve done and all the help, and all of you… the things you’ve risked for me… but I can’t. Every time I’m in there, all I can see is…’
He glances at the fence that divides the garden from the Poshes’. It’s not just walls that have ears. It’s fences, too. Vesta sees his eyes move, and quietens down. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be; I understand.’
She looks at him with a face that says that no one will ever understand. ‘I don’t want to be here any more,’ she says.
Hossein nods. ‘I understand. After Roshana… even though none of it happened there, I couldn’t be in the apartment any more. I kept seeing her. Disappearing round corners, standing on the balcony. Sometimes, places… they get poisoned.’
‘But I don’t know how to leave,’ she says.