But he had his own agenda. “You should have called.”
“Yes. Well. I would have done.” Leaving open the circumstances this action would have required, I put the kettle on instead. “Coffee?”
“Tea, if you’ve got it.”
“I think we run to tea.”
That pronoun slipped out.
It was history, obviously, that had prevented me from phoning Dennis Farlowe; had kept him the missing degree in the circle I’d rung round. Some of this history was the old kind, and some of it newer. I poured him a cup of tea, wondering as I did so how many gallons of the stuff — and of coffee, beer, wine, spirits; even water — we’d drunk in each other’s company. Not an immeasurable amount, I suppose. Few things, in truth, are. But decanted into plastic containers, it might have looked like a lifetime’s supply.
“Milk?” he asked.
I pointed at the fridge.
He fixed his tea to his liking, and sat.
Twelve years ago, Jane Farlowe was found raped and murdered in a small untidy wood on the far side of the allotments bordering our local park. The year before, Jane, Dennis, Michelle and I had holidayed together in Corfu. There are photographs: the four of us around a café table or on a clifftop bench. It doesn’t matter where you are, there’s always someone will work your camera for you. Jane and Michelle wear dark glasses in the photos. Dennis and I don’t. I’ve no idea why.
After Jane’s death, I was interviewed by the police, of course. Along with around eighty-four other people, in that first wave. I’ve no idea whether this is a lot, in the context. Jane had, I’d guess, the usual number of friends, and she certainly had the usual number of strangers. I would have been interviewed even if Dennis hadn’t made his feelings known.
Long time ago. Now, he said: “Has she been in touch?”
“No,” I said.
“It’s just a matter of time, David.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Everyone wishes you well, David. Nobody’s... gloating.”
“Why on earth would anyone do that?”
“No reason. Stupid word. I just meant — you know how it is. There’s always a thrill when bad things happen to people you like. But there’s none of that going on.”
I was about as convinced of this as I was that Dennis Farlowe was the community’s spokesperson.
But I was no doubt doing him a disservice. We had a complicated past. We’ve probably grown used to shielding our motives from each other. And more than once in the past year, I’ve come home to find him seated where he is now; Michelle where I am. And I’ve had the impression, on those occasions, that there was nothing unusual about them. That there’d been other times when I didn’t come home to find them there, but stilclass="underline" that’s where they’d been. In my absence.
That’s what I meant by newer history.
He said, “David. Do you mind if I make an observation?”
“Have you ever noticed,” I said, “that when people say that, it would take a crowbar and a gag to prevent them?”
“You’re a mess.”
“Thank you. Fashion advice. It’s what I need right now.”
“I’m talking hygiene. You want to grow a beard, it’s your funeral. But you should change your clothes, and you should — you really should — take a shower.”
“Right.”
“Or possibly two.”
“Am I offending you?” I asked him. “Should I leave?”
“I’m trying to help. That’s all.”
“Did you know this was going to happen?”
“Michelle leaving?”
“Well yes, I–Christ, what did you think I meant? That we’d have tea this morning?”
He said, “I didn’t know, no.”
“Would you have told me if you did?”
“No,” he said. “Probably not.”
“Great. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I’m her friend too, David.”
“Don’t think I’m not aware of that.”
He let that hang unanswered.
We drank tea. There were questions I wanted to ask him, but answers I didn’t want to hear.
At length he said, “Did she leave a note?”
“Did the grapevine not supply that detail?”
“David—”
“Yes. Yes, she left a note.”
Which was in a padded envelope, on the counter next to the kettle.
And I couldn’t wait a moment longer. It didn’t matter that Dennis was here; nor that I already knew in my bones what the experts would have decreed. I stood, collected the envelope, and tore its mouth open. Dennis watched without apparent surprise as I poured on to the table the postcard, still in its transparent wrapper; the letter I’d supplied as a sample of Michelle’s hand, and another letter, this one typed, formal, beyond contradiction.
Confirm that this is... no room for doubt... invoice under separate cover.
I crumpled it, and dropped it on the floor.
“Bad news?” Dennis asked after a while.
“No more than expected.”
He waited, but I was in no mood to enlighten him. I could see him looking at the postcard — which had fallen picture-side up — but he made no move for it. I wondered what I’d have done if he had. What I’d have said if he asked to read it.
At length, he told me: “I’m going away for a while.”
I nodded, as if it mattered.
“I’ve a new mobile. I’ll leave you the number.” He reached for the writing tablet on the sill, and scrawled something on it. “If she calls, if you hear anything — you’ll let me know, David?”
He tore the uppermost leaf from the pad, and pushed it towards me.
“David?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”
He let himself out. I remained where I was. Something had shifted, and I knew precisely what. It was like the turning of the tide. With an almanac and a watch, I’ve always assumed, you can time the event to the second. But you can’t see it happen. You can only wait until it becomes beyond dispute; until that whole vast sprawl of water, covering most of the globe, has flexed its will, and you know that what you’ve been looking at has indisputably changed direction.
With a notepad available on the windowsill, Michelle had chosen to unclip a postcard from the door of the fridge, and leave her message on its yellowing back.
Flipping it over, I looked at its long-familiar picture for what felt like the first time.
VIII
The doorway into the second room is precisely that: a doorway. There is no door. Nor even the hint of a door, in fact; no hinges on the jamb; no screwholes where hinges might have swung. It’s just an oblong space in the wall. The ghost of stone. She steps through it.
This is a smaller room. As wide, but half as long as the other. In a previous life of this building — before it succumbed to the fate all buildings secretly ache for, and became a ruin, scribbled on by weeds and tangled brambles — this would have been a secondary storeroom; only accessible via its larger twin, which itself can only be entered by use of a ladder dropped through the trap in its roof. Hard to say what might have been stored here. Wine? Grain? Maybe cheese and butter. There’s no knowing. The room’s history has been wiped clean.
And in its place, new boundaries:
To her left, a wall of tin. To her right, a screen of plastic.
IX
The Yard of Ale was one of those theme pubs whose theme is itself: a 400-year-old wooden-beamed structure on a crossroads outside Church Stretton, it was plaqued and horse-brassed within an inch of Disneyland. There wasn’t a corner that didn’t boast an elderly piece of blacksmith’s equipment with the sharp bits removed, or something somebody found in a derelict dairy, and thought would look nice scrubbed up and put next to a window. The whole place reeked of an ersatz authenticity; of a past replicated only in its most appealing particulars, and these then polished until you could see the present’s reflection in it, looking much the same as it always did, but wearing a Jane Austen bonnet.