Dr. Reeves didn't come to the funeral. It was at St. Mark's, and apart from Gwendolen and her father, only three other people were there: an old cousin of Mrs. Chawcer's, their current maid, who came because she was religious, and the old man next door in St. Blaise Avenue. Since he hadn't been at thefuneral, Gwendolen was sure Stephen Reeves would just turn up at the house one day. He was leaving it for a little while outof respect for the dead and the mourners. During that week she spent more time, trouble, and money on her appearance than she had ever done before or since. She had her hair cut and set, she bought two new dresses, one gray and one dark blue, she experimented with makeup. Everyone else piled it on, especially about the lips and eyelids. For the first time in her life she wore lipstick, bright red, until her father asked her if she'd been kissing a fire engine.
Dr. Reeves never came back.
Chapter 4
For the third time in a week, Mix sat in his car on Campden Hill Square with the windows shut and the engine running to keep the air-conditioning on. It was a hot day and getting hotter every minute. He felt like a stalker and didn't much like it, partly because it reminded him of Javy. When he was twelve Javy had caught him looking through a pair of binoculars that belonged to his elder brother and beaten him for being a peeping Tom. Useless to say he hadn't been looking at the woman next door but at someone's new motorbike parked by the curb.
Forget it, he said to himself, put it out of your mind. He always said that when he started thinking of his mother and Javy and life at home but he never really forgot it. Reading Christie's Victims would have passed the time while he waited, but he might get immersed in it and miss her. It must be half an hour he'd been there, waiting for her to come out, keeping his eyeon her front door or shifting it to the golden Jaguar parked on her drive. Of course he'd seen her on previous visits butit had always been with some man escorting her or she'dbeen dressed in one of those semitransparent shifts she liked so much, under a fur wrap or sequin-embroidered denim jacket,or else in skin-tight jeans and stilt heels that permitted only small mincing steps. On those occasions she got into the chauffeur-driven limo.
It wouldn't be long before a traffic warden appeared and moved him on. Having a client in Campden Hill Square would have been a help but he didn't. Judging by the bronzed, taut muscled young men who called at several of these houses, the residents mostly had personal trainers. He was wondering if there was any point in staying, he had several calls to make before lunchtime, when a woman out walking a dog banged on the car window. She had a cigarette in her hand and the dog, not much bigger than a Beanie Baby, was wearing a redcollar with a diamante tag hanging from it. They were all richround here.
"You know," she said in a voice like Colette Gilbert-Bamber's, "it's very wrong of you to sit there with your engine on like that. You're polluting the environment."
"How about you with your smoke?" The combination of waiting about and her voice made him angry. "Why don't you get lost and take that toy on a lead with you?"
She said something about how dared he and marched off, dropping ash. He was on the point of giving up when Nerissa came out of her front door and got into her own car. She wore a rose-pink sleeveles stop and white jeans, her hair tied on the top of her head with a pink silk ribbon. Mix thought she looked lovelier than ever, even in the big black shades that half covered her face. Casual suited her. But what kind of fashion didn't?
To follow her was essential, even if it made him late for the appointment he had at twelve in Addison Road. He'd give the woman there a call and say he'd been held up. Nerissa drove into Notting Hill Gate and turned up toward the Portobello Road but avoided it and went on to Westbourne Grove. For once, there was very little traffic, nothing to separate his car from her car or hold them up. Roadworks at the top slowed them both and he saw her put her head out of the window in an attempt to see what was going on. But finally they were through the barriers and past the cones. More suddenly than he expected-she didn't signal-she swung the car into a meteredspace in a side street, dropped in her coins and ran up to a door with the number 13 Charing Terrace on it and "Shoshana's Spa and Health Club" in big chrome letters. By then, staring after her, he was holding up a stream of traffic. A chorus of hooting and yells of rage from other drivers at last forced him to move.
He was ten minutes late for the woman in Addison Road. All the way to the back of this big house and down the basement stairs, she lectured him on punctuality as if she were his employer, not his client. Mix nearly told her that, in his opinion, the damage to the climbing machine was caused by disuse, not wear and tear, and he wasn't surprised when he looked at the shape and size of her. But he didn't. She had an elliptical cross-trainer on order from Fiterama Accessories, and if he was rude she'd withdraw her custom.
Nothing like that mattered now he'd found the gym Nerissa went to. Pity about the number though. Along with his other occult beliefs and fears, Mix was superstitious, especially about walking under ladders and the number thirteen. He always avoided having anything to do with it when he could. When this phobia or whatever it was had started he didn't know, though it was true that Javy, whom his mother had married on the thirteenth of the month, had his birthday on the thirteenth of April. The day he had beaten Mix so badly it had nearly killed him had very likely been the thirteenth, but Mix had been too young then to remember or even to have known.
The Cockatoodle Club in Soho was overheated, smelled of various kinds of smoke and Thai green curry and was none too clean. So, at any rate, said the girl who Ed's girlfriend Steph had brought along for Mix. Ed was another rep-engineer at Fiterama and Mix's friend, Steph his live-in partner. The other girl kept running her finger along the chair legs and under thetables and holding it up to show everyone.
"You remind me of my gran," said Steph.
"A place where people eat ought to be clean."
"Eat! Chance'd be a fine thing. It's a good three-quarters of an hour since we ordered those prawns."
The other girl, whose name was Lara, and who had hay fever or something that made her sniff a lot, resumed her fingerdusting of the area below their table. Steph lit a cigarette. Mix, who didn't approve of smoking, calculated that it was her eighth since they had come in here. The music, which was hiphop, was too loud for normal speech, and to make yourself heard you had to shout. How Steph managed with her damaged lungs, Mix didn't know, imagining the villi all lying prone in there. Just as the waitress appeared with curried prawns for the girls and cottage pie for the men, Lara's questing finger touched his knee and was pulled away as if he'd stung her.
They exchanged resentful looks. What with the noise and this awful girl and the cottage pie smelling as if green curry had got into it, Mix felt like going home. He wasn't very old, but he was too old for this. Lara said a waitress dressed like that was an insult to all the women patrons.
"Why? She's lovely. I love her skirt."
"Yes, you would, Ed. That's my point. More like a belt than a skirt, if you ask me."
"I didn't ask you," Ed yelled at the top of his voice. "As for insults, I'm only looking, I'm not going to screw her."
"You wish."
"Oh, shut up," said Steph, taking Ed's hand affectionately.