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Chapter 3

I reach home with only a cracked phone to show for my attempt to fulfil my part of the gainful employment deal. On the doorstep of our Victorian semi-detached house, stone worn into a dip by the passage of so many feet, so many bags of shopping, I have a moment of doubt as I slide my key into the lock, but there are no surprises. It turns. Wouldn’t that be the cherry on top of the crap if Michael had taken it into his head to edit me out of his life today too? If he’d given the order for the locks to be changed while I was at work and he was guten tag-ing the frauleins? I’m like that paragraph in one of his articles, the one around which the copy editor has put a square bracket. Do you really need this part?

Stet. For now. I have my uses.

I go inside, disarm the alarm, and walk through to the kitchen conservatory at the back to dump my shoulder bag on the table. Something prompts me to check so I go past the tiny utility room and peer nervously out of the glass in the back door but I’m not sure what I’m expecting to see. An abandoned Scream-face mask? Footprints in the flowerbeds? I still can’t shake that feeling of not being alone, the flight from Soho not having helped my rational processes.

I check the door to the basement is securely bolted – it features in another of my nightmares where I imagine the undead breaking through the London clay beneath, climbing up the wooden stairs and invading the house. It’s actually not that scary with the light on as it’s full of Michael’s snow sports gear and boxes of his wife’s things that he has never wanted to throw out. He goes down there from time to time just to bury his face in her ski-suit – he thinks I don’t know. It’s kind of sad really, this wanting to catch the scent of someone who’s gone forever. He won’t do that with anything of mine if I go.

I return to the kitchen. Here I’m surrounded by the hobbies I have adopted and failed to finish during my recovery: the bulky quilt project stuffed in a bag like a dead Elmer the elephant, the jewellery maker’s starter kit, and the half-finished oil painting of the Serengeti – I’d had big plans for that. Beginning to feel a little desperate and a whole lot suspicious, I boot up the old desktop and check my last two months’ statements. I had one payment in June, a cheque that I’d cashed myself, but the promised standing order has still not arrived. I can see Jacob now, fingers hovering over his laptop keyboard, handsome ‘trust me’ dark eyes meeting mine as he asks me what day of the month I’d like to receive my pay. He’s a good-looking man, an outdoors type with tanned skin and work-roughened hands. He habitually wears a string of wooden beads around his throat like a dog’s collar that he said he carved himself, and I believe him. In that game of ‘Which person would you take with you to a desert island?’, he’d be a good choice as he’d whittle, build and farm his way to survival.

‘I’d like to be paid on the first,’ I said, just so thankful that someone would pay me after all that had happened. When my salary hadn’t come through in July, I’d raised it with him and Jacob had laughed it off as a mistake, saying he’d missed the deadline to set something up for the previous month but I should get twice the amount come 1st August. I hadn’t wanted to push or suggest another cheque. I knew that his finances were tight and my position was tenuous. If he’d asked more questions he would’ve found out about the Eastfields disaster and then I’d be out the door. The single payment had persuaded me to trust him.

I log off from my account, all too aware my balance is in desperate straits. That is two months’ part-time work for which I haven’t been paid and I don’t need a crystal ball to tell me that I’m unlikely to see the money. I’m thirty and on skid row. Again. Why can’t I negotiate my adult life better than this? If I told you what had happened to me recently it would appear to be one crisis after another. I sometimes feel that some cosmic soap scriptwriter has got hold of me and keeps orchestrating season finales. I just want a quiet run of modest happiness with no thrills or spills.

I need to talk to someone about this. I need to vent. But who is there? My half-sister has forbidden me from troubling my mother. She’s delicate, vulnerable, says Miriam, it’s time you relied on yourself. That always brings to mind Mum as a dandelion clock, a perfect sphere, tremulous, seemingly fixed until a puff of wind starts to unravel it. She only ever seemed competent when with me, never with her capable older child, which is probably why Miriam doesn’t understand our relationship. But big sister is right about one thing: I sense Mum is retiring from a world which she finds too much for her, pottering around the edges of Miriam’s life on the farm, looking after grandchildren, getting involved in her village community where what happens on Strictly is about the most distressing topic of conversation. Her whole aim is to try to keep from being underfoot. Her existence is cast as a form of apology, her epitaph ‘I’m sorry I took up so much room’. No, Mum isn’t the right person to help me with this.

Depressingly, I find myself reverting to habit and sending Michael a text. Can we talk? I don’t want to do this by messaging. A minute passes in which I put on the kettle. I can see he’s read it, and he knows I know he’s read it, so I get a response.

Is it important?

It’s important to me.

I mean can it wait until tomorrow? I’m about to go into a presentation.

What would be the point of a conversation, I wonder, dragging him away from his oh-so-vital conference on something or another? Please hold, your call is important to us. Michael doesn’t even pretend to give me the pseudo-sincerity of the automated switchboard. I try one last time. My boss has gone. So has the office.

The elusive Jacob Wrath. Or is that illusive?

Damn you, Michael, with your clever word play. Couldn’t you for once try to care? We had been friends before, even if we’re not now. I close the message thread. His comment reminds me that the couple of times I arranged for a social meet-up after work for the three of us, me, Michael and my employer – ‘come on, guys, it’ll be fun’ – Jacob cried off, claiming new lead, head cold, threatened train strike. It was all the more galling as I had called in a lot of home-life favours to get Michael to agree to traipse up to Soho (his characterisation of a simple tube journey). He began to make barbed jokes that Jacob didn’t exist, that he was a figment of my imagination. Now I think that Michael just didn’t want to discuss me with my boss, or look responsible for my day-to-day welfare, and Jacob was just avoiding making himself real to anyone but me. So much easier to slip away when you’ve few connections to sever.

How far has Jacob taken it? Paranoia is getting a hold. I search for our website, the one I’d helped create and administer. Wrath Investigations, Specialists in Missing Persons Cases. (Yes, I am aware of the irony that the expert has gone AWOL himself.) Instead of the picture I’d posted of a lost girl in profile against the background of a London station, I get a broken link. I do a more general search and find only one relevant record: my cheery announcement on a business networking site that I’d started work as a profiler at Wrath, the implication being that it was far better than teaching Psychology A level. I’d meant it as a ‘look, see: I’m bouncing back’ to old colleagues but now I’m ashamed. It seems like I’m trying far too hard. I delete my profile. I don’t want the landlord to find me that way now I’ve not stayed to meet his man.

My phone starts doing an Irish jig on the table. I check the number. I’d noticed three missed calls in my log from the same phone since I turned it back on, which suggests the landlord isn’t going to let this go. I decline the call but wait for the person to leave a message.

‘Miss Golightly, if that’s your name, this is Max Tudor of the law firm Tudor Associates.’ The lawyer is more of a film buff than his employer and has recognised the borrowed name. ‘I believe we almost met today. My client, Harry Khan, wishes urgently to speak to you. Mr Wrath owes him three months’ rent. The only payment he ever received was the first instalment plus deposit, which has naturally been forfeited. We are eager to find a Miss Jessica Bridges, whose name and signature appears as co-guarantor on the lease.’

What? I know I didn’t sign anything resembling a lease while working for Jacob. I may be many things but utterly braindead is not one of them.

‘As Mr Wrath has decided to make himself unreachable, we wish to pursue our claim with her. You might like to tell her that as her name and address are listed, she will not be able to avoid us. I strongly recommend you ask her, Miss Golightly, to get in touch.’ The sarcasm with which he says my fake name makes it clear he believes he’s talking to Jessica Bridges. Which he is.

I turn off my phone again. My three-month employer has shifted quickly in my mind from hapless to fraudulent. Have I really been set up? For real? And why?

I sink on to a kitchen chair and beat the table top with a fist, hissing swear words. The very worst thing is that no one will believe me if I tell them. I’ve tried that before and it has never gone well. Despite what Michael thinks, it’s not the ‘Cry Wolf’ situation; there’s always been a wolf in my mess-ups, but I’ve always managed to escape – just. This time it looks like the wolf knows where I live and is coming to eat me.

The landline starts ringing, making me start. I rub my aching fist. No one ever calls us that way, not unless they are trying to sell us something. I bite a hangnail, looking at the handset as if it will make the decision for me. It’s probably the man again, having traced me via my address on whatever agreement Jacob has forged. Jacob knew where I lived because I’d filled out a form with all my details when applying for the job, as any normal person would do. I’m not speaking to the lawyer; I’m learning Jacob’s lesson and not making myself real. I have to go out before the landlord sends more people round to bang on the front door. Fortunately, the house is in Michael’s name, so the lawyer can’t burst in with bailiffs. As far as the law is concerned I don’t own anything worth seizing. When Mr Khan works that out, he’ll back off, surely?

I grab my bag, stuffing in keys and phone. Entering the utility room, I step over the drift of laundry waiting to go into the washing machine and pluck down a change of clothes from the dryer. They’ve been hanging there for over a week and need an iron but I’m not an ironing kind of person. That’s Michael’s phrasing about me. ‘You’re not a tidy sort of person’; ‘you’re not a focused kind of person’; ‘you’re not a careful kind of person’. No shit, Sherlock.

That reminds me to fetch my tablets. I go up to the bathroom on the half landing and pack my wash bag, including my disposable contact lenses and little box of Ritalin capsules. In my hurry, had I remembered to take one this morning? I think not. I quickly pop one from the blister pack and wash it down with a gulp snatched from under the running tap. It’s supposed to help my concentration but, to be honest, I’ve not noticed much improvement since I started the course, not unless I take a couple and I’m not supposed to exceed Charles’ prescribed dose. Tempting though. I find myself staring blankly at the green glass bottles arranged on the windowsill for a drifty moment. What am I doing? Oh yes, packing. Getting the hell out of Dodge, as they say in American novels.

Pocketing the pills, I enter the bedroom and step over Michael’s holiday clothes. How have we become the couple where he expects me to pick up after him? It’s the not-having-a-proper-job thing that’s done it to us. Or maybe he was always heading that way but I’d just not woken up to my expected role? Next he’ll be leaving me housekeeping money on the table like my dad used to do for Mum and expecting dinner on the table.

Speaking of money.

I go through Michael’s bedside drawer, looking for his wallet. He has a travel one – currently with him in Berlin – and the one he carries at home, stuffed with loyalty cards. I find it and borrow forty pounds. As I put it back, I can’t help but notice the framed photo of his wife, dead now just over five years, smiling up at me in her perfect pose of windswept black hair and sultry smile, forever young. He says he doesn’t keep it on display out of consideration for me, despite the fact that I’ve no problem sharing my life with her picture. I never met Emma, she’s dead; so why should I feel bad? It would be healthier to have her out in the open. Instead, I’ve had to put up with the knowledge that she’s snuggled down next to us at night. He usually lies on his side, turned towards her, presenting his back to me.

The lovely Emma. I’ve begun to call her that in my mind, sometimes chatting to her when I’m on my own. Was Michael such a bully to you too? Were you ‘an ironing sort of person’? You don’t look it. I bet you made him do his own shirts. He might’ve even done yours. Did he nag you about forgetting to put the sharp knives away at night? He has this hang-up about preventing someone breaking in and using them on us. It’s all that reading about psychopaths. Michael has such dark expectations that even a kitchen is first and foremost a potential crime scene.

I rarely delve beyond the photo as Michael has snapped at me several times for prying but I decide to have a proper root through the bedside shrine. You know how it works, while the cat’s away…

A little blue box with a wedding ring. I’ve opened that up before. You clearly had something I don’t, Emma, if you brought him to the point where he got down on one knee. Only way I’d get him there would be if I set a trip wire for him to fall over and that wouldn’t end in a proposal.

There’s a bundle of cards tied with a ribbon. Variations on ‘Happy Anniversary, darling’ followed by a row of big kisses. Her writing is a surprise – large loopy words in turquoise ink. A risk taker on the pen front. I conclude that she felt confident about covering more space than most of us do. Some photos. Emma at work. A couple of nice studio ones in the little album from their wedding in the US. I approve of her dress. She looks so glamorous. Very very sexy. No wonder I don’t measure up.

Right at the bottom there’s a new addition to the shrine: a Moleskine notebook. I wonder where that’s come from? I have a soft spot for that brand myself, a hangover from the teenage diary days, and I usually have several on the go at the same time, one for work, one for my random thoughts. I flick open the cover and find that it is filled with Emma’s, rather than Michael’s, handwriting. Unlike my notebooks, hers is meticulously kept – dates, neat little anecdotes, not my jottings, highlighting and underlinings. I read a couple of sentences. ‘Michael took me to Venice for a surprise weekend to make up for the bad news. I love that man more and more each day.’

Romantic Venice? I should be so lucky.

Before I have time to quash my own impulse, I’ve pulled out my phone and begun capturing any page that takes my fancy, just snapping, not taking time to read. I can’t remove something so personal to Michael, even for a day, but I have to know more about this woman – this wife – who haunts our relationship. If I understand her, then maybe I’d get a better handle on what she was to him and I’d know where I’ve been going wrong?

At least that’s what I tell myself. Maybe I’m just plain nosy and what I’m doing is way out of line? It’s a bit like grave-robbing, isn’t it? My jury is out and decided to go for a long lunch break while I carry on taking photos.

I make myself stop at twenty images. More would be obsessive, wouldn’t it? I bite my lip, seeing another entry that appeals. OK, now that really is the last. No more. Step away from the diary, Jessica.

The last page, handwriting no longer so exuberant, some of the words illegible, I see that she mentions getting a cat to cheer Michael up. It was a nice thought, to give him something to live for afterwards. My mind takes another swallow dive off the top board. The cat. I’ve forgotten the cat. Lizzy had fed her while we were away, but Michael will not be pleased if I abandon his beloved Colette to fish her dinner out of food recycle bins. Pocketing my phone after a last photo, I hurriedly put the Emma shrine back exactly as I think I found it. I then make sure I walk on Michael’s dirty boxers on my way out of the bedroom.

I fill up the kibble bowl and change the water. Radar ears alert for the rattle of food, the cat flap slaps and Colette winds round my ankles, a black-and-white silk scarf of a creature. I stroke her. I am a cat kind of person, one of my few remaining plus points as far as Michael is concerned. I wonder if that’s the only reason he’s not evicted me. Who could he get to feed Colette at such short notice? He can’t keep asking Lizzy. She has her own life to lead and we can’t expect her always to pick up the loose threads of ours. The old lady next door, Mrs Jessop, is grounded with a bad hip, waiting for the op. The rest of the street are nodding acquaintances only.

‘I’ll be back, Colly. Don’t eat it all at once. And don’t answer the door to strangers.’ I grab my bag and head out, leaving her in regal charge of the house. She does it so much better than me.