I saw Owen’s photographs before Astrid. I let myself in one day when Dario was asleep and everyone else was out. I wasn’t working myself now. It took too much time and the money wasn’t good enough. I made up some of the difference from people’s carelessness. Pippa was the best. She left notes lying around in her room and never noticed if they disappeared. Since Peggy’s death, I’d collected forty pounds from her. And twenty from Miles, when he left his wallet at home one day by mistake. A few coins from Astrid, so far. Mick and Owen were trickier, and Dario never seemed to have any money on him. One time, though, I lifted some weed from his room and sold it back to him. I said someone had given it to me at work and I didn’t want it, but I thought he might. He insisted on giving me something for it, and I could tell he felt a bit guilty that he was ripping me off.
For me the crunch had come when we were finishing the work on the house, which the landlord was doing up before selling. While we were adding the last touches – painting the walls, laying down the last skirting-boards – this couple had come to look at it. They weren’t that old, in their early thirties perhaps, but it was obvious they were stinking rich. They had an air of smug wealth about them. Their hair gleamed as if every strand had been buffed. Their skin glowed. There was a kind of carelessness about them, as if they were so far above normal people that they didn’t even need to show it. We were invisible to them, workers with rough hands and plaster in our hair, who, for all they knew, didn’t even understand English. And if we did understand, what did it matter? What did we matter? In loud, drawly voices, they said that if they bought the place, they’d start again. Their words: start again. Some of the decoration wasn’t to their taste. They’d obviously have to rip out the kitchen units and get an architect in to have a look at the layout of the ground floor. The bathrooms were cheap and nasty. I stood and listened to them and felt a fluttering in my chest, as if a moth was trapped in there. A band tightened round my head. Ticking in both eyes.
I laid down my paintbrush, walked into the garden, where I could escape what they were saying, and made a promise to myself. I was going to get some proper money together and I was going to leave. Leave London, leave the UK, go to a new life where people would treat me with respect and I would be the one calling the tunes. I saw the beaches of Brazil, the beautiful women gazing up at me adoringly. For a few moments, I even saw Astrid beside me, hanging off my arm, laughing at what I was saying, pressing her slim, strong body against mine.
I left that day, after collecting what was owed to me, and I didn’t go back, and I didn’t answer the messages that were left on my mobile. I didn’t tell the Maitland Road lot, of course, which meant that each morning I would leave the house at the usual time, and each afternoon return as if from a hard day at work. Now I had time to make plans and time to investigate the people I was living with.
Which was how I knew that Pippa had fucked poor old Mick, one more scalp to add to her collection. And then – much better, much more interesting, something to make my spine tingle – I came into the kitchen and saw Pippa saying something to Owen. She laughed and put her hand on his arm, and he went red and stepped back and I knew, I just knew, that they had done it as well. Pippa and Owen. Could no one else tell? I looked at them when they were all together and it was obvious that they were like blind people. Even Astrid.
One rainy day I was in Owen’s room again, examining his photographs, which I’d been thinking about ever since I’d had that glimpse of them. All of them were black-and-white. Some were blurred and arty and pretentious, water and burned trees and posters half ripped off walls. The women were different. I could hardly move and my breath rasped in my throat. Owen, I thought, you bastard. You’re not so different from me, after all. You think you’re making art but really you’re making pornography. Just because there’s no colour doesn’t mean that blood isn’t blood, flesh isn’t flesh. It made me laugh. He’d got some woman to take her clothes off by telling her it was art. Then I came across the woman with the mutilated face. I picked it up and held it in front of the window to see it more clearly. He was good, I had to admit it. He really was good. I felt envious of him. I touched each slash with my fingers. Now I know you, I thought. I know you, but you don’t know me.
I heard the downstairs door open and the sound of voices: Astrid and Owen. I put the picture back, stepped quickly out of the room and went upstairs to my own, where I lay on my bed. I could hear them talking in low voices in the hallway, then their footsteps mounting the stairs together. I folded my arms round my body and screwed my eyes shut. Rain rattled against the window in waves with the wind but it felt as if it was inside my brain. The pair of them were going into Owen’s room, where they would be together, surrounded by those images. I saw the naked bodies of Owen’s women, and then I saw Astrid and Owen naked too and it felt like something swelling in my head. I crept down one flight of stairs and listened outside their door. Astrid was saying something. What? I put my ear against the door.
‘Your women don’t have faces.’
So he was showing her the pictures. I couldn’t hear what they were saying next; just murmurs, his voice, then hers. And then there was silence. Fucking silence. Except the roaring in my head.
Sometimes things come together, as if they were meant. You don’t make plans, but you make yourself ready and available and plans come to you, falling into your lap like a gift.
The next day, I just happened to find myself near the Horse and Jockey at around the time I knew Astrid usually finished work, so I went in, scanning the room for a glimpse of her. She wasn’t there and I turned to go.
‘Davy. Over here, mate!’
It was one of her biker friends. I couldn’t remember his name, though I’d met him there several times and he always treated me as if we’d been friends for years.
I walked over to the group.
‘Looking for Astrid?’ he said.
‘I was just passing.’
‘Yeah?’ He grinned knowingly. ‘She’s not here. Have a drink, though.’
‘Why so generous all of a sudden?’ asked one of the other bikers, who had a shaved head and a ring through his nose.
‘I got a tip today from Queen Ingrid. Can you imagine?’
‘Queen Ingrid?’ asked Buzzcut.
‘You know. That bloody de Soto woman up in the fortified palace in Highgate.’
‘The tan’s real – she has lots of holidays.’
‘And you got a tip? What was it? Additional services?’
There were smirks all around, even from a couple of the girls.
‘No such luck. She needed a bit of furniture moving. So what’ll you have, Davy?’
‘Half of lager,’ I said. ‘Don’t they have servants for that sort of thing?’
‘Didn’t seem to be anybody around.’
I sat in the warm fug, sipping slowly, smiling when they smiled and laughing when they laughed, keeping half an eye out for Astrid, my mind ticking away.
Early the next morning I bought an A-Z at the newsagent up the road, took the Underground to Highgate and walked the rest of the way, map in hand, like a tourist. The walk was all uphill. At the end, I felt I’d arrived at a place that looked down on the rest of us, scrabbling around in the heat of the city.
Century Road was just off the main street, and I needn’t have worried about picking out the de Soto house: set back from the road, behind an iron fence, a burglar alarm blinking above its porched door, its tall windows glinting in the morning sun. Two cars were parked in the forecourt, a Jaguar and a Range Rover. His and hers. I looked around, suddenly feeling self-conscious. It seemed stupidly suspicious to be standing on a residential street staring at an expensive house. I walked along the road and through a square until I got to a shopping street. I returned to Century Road with a newspaper and a cup of coffee. I sat on the kerb, sipped coffee and pretended to read the paper. Now I looked like a dozen boring, explainable, forgettable people.