‘I’m glad you talked me into that,’ I told Beck afterwards, as I lay with my head on his chest. He ran his hand over my lower back and bottom, but made no other reply; and when I tried to speak to him again, he had inevitably fallen asleep.
But I felt wide, wide awake.
I rolled onto my back and smoked a cigarette, then another. Then I simply lay in the dark waiting for my mind to shut down, wishing, more and more, that I’d not switched off the bedside light. At least, then, I’d be able to read.
Our bedroom, I found, was a rather in-between sort of room. The curtains weren’t quite thick enough to block out the light from the streetlamps, and the double glazing wasn’t well sealed enough to cut out the London traffic. It got pretty stuffy in the summer, too. If I were ever to design a bedroom, I decided, it would be as cool and dark and quiet as the bottom of the sea.
It was 1.37 when I finally admitted defeat and got up. I eased the bedroom door open and closed with a burglar’s stealth, and then put on the reception room light and got myself a glass of water. I felt like a coffee, but was, at this point, still nurturing the small hope that I’d start to feel sleepy some time before dawn.
Despite everything, despite the fact that I had to be in a rested, presentable state to interview Miranda Frost in not much more than seven hours, there was something oddly interesting about being up in the middle of the night, alone and for no particular reason. The flat felt unfamiliar – the way home feels after you take down the Christmas decorations, or return from a long holiday. It didn’t feel at all like the flat I’d left earlier, when I’d gone to get the tomatoes. It was as if Simon’s death had opened a portal on a subtly altered reality. I realized that what I wanted, more than anything, was to be next door again, just to sit quietly in that empty flat. But when I crept out and tried the door, it was locked.
So, instead, I opened the window in our reception room, leaned out as far as I could, and smoked. There was the odd taxi passing in the street below, but nothing else. None of the house lights opposite was on. It was a solid mass of anonymous brick, each building melting into the next. I drew the warm smoke and cool night air into my lungs and wondered how many lonely deaths occurred in London on the average Wednesday night. And how many of those deaths were sudden and unexplained? Several, I was sure. Certainly enough to make Simon’s death a mere statistic. Not the sort of thing that would warrant even a paragraph in the Evening Standard. Things would be different, of course, if I didn’t live in London. In other parts of the country, where people weren’t crammed one on top of the other like battery hens, it would be easier to grieve when a neighbour died. In other parts of the world, the simple action of going next door to borrow food would not be met with raised eyebrows and sidelong glances. But here, in a city of eight million, I couldn’t escape the feeling that it was this action that had caused Simon’s unlikely death. It was as if I’d broken one of the cardinal rules of modern urban living, and had to suffer the consequences. Maybe that was what I should have told PC Something: that there was nothing coincidental about my going over to Simon’s flat today. It was just cause and effect.
My thoughts were spinning, so I left the window and tried to read for a bit. Then, when I couldn’t concentrate on that, I flipped open my laptop and checked my emails. There was only one new message, from my sister. She wanted to make sure I wasn’t planning to pull out of the ‘family meal’ at the end of the month. I sent a reply saying that I was still shortlisting excuses. After that I read my Google homepage for a while. Quote of the day was from Einstein: ‘The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.’ Tomorrow’s weather was grey, grey, grey. On a whim, I typed lack of emotion death into the search bar, and spent the next fifteen minutes completing a psychopath test, then started reading a forum post about a man who had felt no emotion when his mother died in a car crash. I clicked on link after link, following an erratic trail through cyberspace, with no destination in mind.
And this was how I first stumbled on the Monkeysphere.
2
THE TEMPEST
I awoke slumped across one arm of the two-seater, my spine twisted like a corkscrew. I couldn’t have been asleep for more than two hours, but the muscles in my lower back felt taut as piano strings, and my head was full of thick, numbing fog – through which dim figures paraded like sarcastic wraiths: Simon, laid flat on a trolley; the policemen, casting conspiratorial glances; Miranda Frost, awaiting me in a faceless house in Highbury.
Shit.
I lurched into a sitting position, my eyes darting for the clock: 7.48. Why hadn’t Beck woken me? The impulse to cast blame was hamstrung, a heartbeat later, by the inconvenient and obvious truth. Beck always slept like a corpse, and due to the ridiculously short amount of time it took him to get ready in the mornings, his alarm wouldn’t be going off until eight. Mine should have gone off at six forty-five. I fumbled for my mobile. It had gone off at six forty-five; and my phone was set to silent.
How long would it take to traverse central London? Ten minutes speed-walking to Shepherd’s Bush Market, twenty-five to King’s Cross, then another five to Highbury and Islington. Add on fifteen, at least, to battle through the tunnels and wait for trains. Plus ten to find the house. Numbers tumbled through my mind like drunken acrobats, until I realized it was much too early for maths. Call it an hour, flat-out. That left less than twelve minutes to be washed, dressed and out the front door.
A shower was out, obviously, as was breakfast, as was coffee – despite the fact I’d never needed it more. There was a little bit of speed at the bottom of the freezer, but I was loath to take it on an empty stomach because of the ulcer I’d developed last year. Nevertheless, I was halfway to the kitchen before I’d talked myself out of it. Speed for breakfast; Dr Barbara would have kittens! Twenty milligrams of fluoxetine and a cigarette on the way to the Tube station would have to suffice.
Clothes, hair, teeth, make-up, toilet: my priorities arranged themselves before me like a row of dominoes already in motion. Fortunately, my clothes had been pre-selected days ago. The only thing I had to change was the footwear, replacing heels with ballet flats. Of course, I could have done with the extra inches – I can always do with the extra inches – but at this time of day, with so little sleep, heels were a visit to A&E waiting to happen.
After my own rude awakening, I had no thought of allowing Beck to wake gracefully. I flung the bedroom door open – he shot bolt upright – grabbed an armful of clothing from the wardrobe, and was back out and heading for the shower room in a matter of moments. Once I’d managed to wriggle into my tights, the rest of the outfit proved less of a challenge. Half a can of Batiste Dry Shampoo and a headband gave my hair the illusion of order and cleanliness, and then I gargled mouthwash while I peed to save myself thirty valuable seconds. I applied eyeliner and volumizing mascara with the deftness of a cartoonist creating features, then flirted with the idea of contacts before deciding that my big, black-framed glasses were a far better choice. Beck always said they made me look sexy and studious – and I hoped that Miranda Frost would appreciate at least half of this duality.
I sprang from the shower room in a cloud of body spray, with Beck saying something long-winded and, so far as I could tell, pointless through the open bedroom door. I couldn’t wait for the end; I had to cut him off with a swift synopsis of the facts.
‘Darling, I’m horribly late. I overslept, on the sofa – don’t ask! I’m leaving in the next minute. Please don’t get up or try to talk to me. You’ll only slow me down.’