That was a laugh. So I laughed, a ridiculous, strangled giggle. I’m sure Miranda could smell the drink in me. This was the nice man Polly wrote her about?
I turned down Burleigh Street to end the conversation. I hunched up my shoulders to discourage her. “Leave me alone, Mrs. Bailey!” I said loudly.
But we’d already diverged. I saw over my shoulder that she was headed the other direction down East Road, toward her hotel. At the pedestrian light I finally felt far enough away from her to unclench my hands. I didn’t pay attention to the stranger next to me.
This person also crossed the street. He stayed just a step behind and beside me. At the mini-roundabout just off the main road, he grabbed me by the collar of my coat and shoved me up against the wooden fence. He wrenched my backpack off my shoulder. I got twisted around, and for a moment the strap caught on my wrist. He pulled, hard, and the bag jerked free. He ran, pounding his steps into the pavement.
My arm quivered. Ridiculous. He was just a teenager. There wasn’t any danger. He didn’t want to hurt me; he just wanted my backpack.
And the laptop that was in it.
My thesis. Shit.
That was my excuse. I took off after him. He was faster than me, but it felt good to run.
In my mind, I caught up with him. I slammed him up against a fence, like he’d slammed me. I wrenched the backpack off his shoulder. It was only fair. But my imagination had momentum; it didn’t stop there. I took out the laptop and raised it over my head. I slammed it down onto him. The plastic casing cracked, creating sharp edges. I beat him with it. I beat him bloody.
It never happened. He outran me through the park and I stopped and caught my breath.
I sank down onto the kerb, my shoes nestled in broken glass. Nothing desperate had been lost. A little money, a few cards in the front pocket, two books. My phone and computer could be replaced. I had backups of all but my latest work.
Thank God he’d got away. I couldn’t even hear his steps anymore. Thank God.
I waited for the adrenaline to subside. I didn’t want to bring rage inside the Chanders’ house.
I no longer had my keys. I didn’t want to chat in answer to the doorbell. It was late for them anyway-they go to bed by nine, usually. The front window was partly open, as usual; the house thermostat against all reason goes by the temperature of the unheated entry hall and so never stops pumping heat into the lounge. I pushed it up the rest of the way and climbed in. I still had on the gloves that Liv had returned to me.
On the next floor up, the girls were in bed. I stepped carefully and slowly, to dull the inevitable creaking of the floor. Their parents were making love, quietly, tactfully, so that the girls wouldn’t know. The door was closed and their sounds were discreet but definite as I went past.
Up another flight. In my room, on my desk, Mrs. Chander had left me a note: Miranda Bailey had phoned this afternoon. It was probably she who had been hung up on by Alexandra as well. She’d probably been behind the unidentified calls I’d got on my mobile earlier. I’d thought they were Liv. I’d made a lot of assumptions today.
I threw a shirt and socks into a bag. I needed only one more thing.
I pulled open the Russian inlaid-wood box Alexandra had given me Christmases ago-but there were only some francs and lire inside, my pre-Euro collection. Where was it? I always kept it in there.
I rifled through my wardrobe drawers, the contents of which were never well folded to begin with because I do my own laundry. I checked the top shelf of the cupboard-knocking down two shoe boxes that then spilled out shoeshine tools and a mini-humidifier. It wasn’t there.
Then I remembered the girls. They’d been through the boxes on my desk, in an innocent, curious way, and had admired it. Aahana said she’d always wanted a great key like it-like something out of The Count of Monte Cristo. I’d told her that great keys come with big old houses, and that this wasn’t for her. I remember putting it back inside and closing the lid. Aahana was usually a good child, but apparently not always.
Past the closed bedroom doors, all quiet now, down the carpeted stairs and into the cramped kitchen. The stove-top espresso maker was still full of this morning’s grounds and filled the room with an incense-like sharpness. Through the patio door at the back I could see the girls’ replica Chateau d’If, made of crates and scrap lumber.
The cardboard box making one end of the structure was mouldy and sagging from repeated damp, but the main part of it was grand, if precarious. It also had only a tiny opening, possibly to keep out adults, but mostly, I suspected, to heighten the dramatic prison effect. They were dramatic girls.
I probed with my hand, banging on the outside first to frighten spiders. On a nail inside the entry hung my key.
CHAPTER 5
I cycled out of town on Barton Road.
I switched off my headlamp where there were streetlights, to conserve the battery for the dark stretches, which were utterly black. The route took me down curvy lanes, past the lit church towers of Haslingfield and Fowlmere, and over the moderately busy A505. The repetition of pedalling dulled my anxiety. I panted in exertion instead of panic. Suddenly the steeply banked single track I was on spilled out into an expensive cluster of new-build homes. There, in the last, weak glint from my weakening bicycle light, was a sign for Dovecote.
I tried to remember it, to calibrate my expectations. I knew the version in my mind, exaggerated over the years, would be less than accurate. Would the driveway stretch as long as it had appeared to me then, would the main house loom as massive and solid? Up till then, my experience with buildings of that size had all been school-related, all shared space. That Dovecote was owned by a single person had thrilled me. I used to fantasise about being one of those boarders whose parents didn’t bring them home for school holidays. I knew it didn’t work this way, but I imagined they got to roam the school grounds, and camp out on their own in the empty classrooms. I wanted to run up and down the stairs, and yell to hear the echo. In my memory of that fantasy, I’m slamming doors. It doesn’t feel angry, it just feels strong. Does everybody want to do that?
Lesley Harter had bought Dovecote to convert it into a hotel. To celebrate her purchase, she’d held a garden party on the grounds, avoiding the interior of the manor house, which had been in need of major renovations. I was nineteen then. I came with my family. I told a story that had happened to me just weeks before:
I’d been accused of stealing a woman’s purse in a crowd. A policeman had detained me but could find no evidence that I was the thief. I’d felt confident of my honesty, and never feared they would take me.
Everyone who heard it laughed. No one ranted on the unfairness of the accusation, because they had all felt it: I was unassailable. No authority would ever believe I had done it. It was a fine adventure-that was all.
But Lesley took me aside and said, seriously, “Nick, you’re a good boy. But if you’re ever in actual trouble, you can always come here. All right? It’s yours if you need it.” She gave me a key to Dovecote. “It may be a mess of reconstruction for the next few years, but it’s a place to go.” Her security code, she said, was the year Hatshepsut became Egypt ’s first female pharaoh. I looked up the numbers when I got back to our family house, in a history almanac that had been kept in the bedside table of my old room ever since I was a little boy. I wasn’t surprised that it was still there. It’s amazing to me now what I’d taken for granted.
The sign ahead of me didn’t indicate whether Dovecote had yet become a hotel. For all I knew, Lesley might have sold the place. There could be a conference going on, or a wedding. But I didn’t really think so, just as I didn’t really think Lesley was changed. Lesley, who wasn’t fragile. Lesley, with whom no carefulness was required. I wanted to hold something durable, something that wouldn’t shatter if I dropped it.