The cold is biting my back against this wall and my instinct knows I must move and keep the blood flowing. I see the boarded café ahead of me and though it is shut, I make for it at a run. By the time I reach it, I know that I will be warmer. The ground beneath my feet is hard and shocks my bones into life. I start slowly and build the pace gradually, then before I know what is happening, I am running full tilt into the night. Running like a schoolboy, freely, urgently and without any thoughts of conserving energy. I pass the café and keep running.
I run until I can run no more. My lungs are burning hot and screaming for air. Then in my mind Grace appears and she is opening the gift. She unwraps the badly taped and papered package and pulls out the sleeve. She is smiling as she takes the record out of the cover and out of the paper slip, handling it by the edges, and drifts over to the record player. The stylus is up with a gentle microphoned thud and then down once more.
Silence.
A hiss.
Then a rhythmic beat until finally the vocal kicks in.
And there is her face once again. Her eyes are shut and she is swaying to the music, lost in the mood.
35
Thursday
I need a fire. I jump back over the wall and follow a routine I once knew well. I stoop to the pavement, scrabble around for cigarette ends. When I’ve collected a dozen or so butts, I put aside the largest one and deposit the remainder in my pocket. Now I need paper. Newspaper is best but now with smartphones you can only find them stacked in metal bins outside tube stations. Eventually I find a discarded half by a bus stop. The edges are damp with something but the main body is still dry. Next, fuel. Wood is really the only thing you can use. Paper or cardboard burns too quickly and smokes heavily. I climb back over the wall again and hunt around for dead branches and twigs. After about an hour of foraging, I have the makings of a decent fire. I drop them in a small heap behind a hedgerow that carves out space for the rose garden. Here at least the orange glow won’t be visible to passers-by or to passing traffic.
I light it with the lighter in my pocket and soon it becomes a fire that crackles, taking hold and settling in. The ashes from the paper blow away finally and then I relax. I sit on the ground and warm my hands against the icy night.
The flames make me feel as I always feel when looking into flames. I’m a child after a bath on a cold November night, sitting on a towel being dried by my father. Rory is next to me. The smell of hot coals is in the air. The nostalgia here – at this precise spot in the historical reel – is safe. Mum is nearby making notes for an academic paper. Dad hasn’t begun to mutate yet. I’m not old enough yet to poke those fires in him. I lie back and listen to the snap of burning twigs. The randomised patterns settle me. My eyes flicker open and shut.
Then I am in that room, lying behind the sofa. The flames are sending their shadows high up the walls. There’s music playing. The argument begins. She has darted to the other end of the room; the man follows, trailing his voice behind him.
If you sorted out your issues, she says. With your dad.
My heart thuds like dropped iron.
Her hair isn’t the same as Grace’s honeyed blonde. But now that I know it is her – must be her – it is so simple. She has coloured it, as people do. People change themselves. And then there is the song that is playing. Have I remembered it faithfully or has my memory been reverse engineered? I drop into a slippery sleep. Then the gloaming.
Morning arrives and I sit up to see that the fire has completely burned out. There are only ashes left. I stand and rub my arms down for warmth and then kick away the fire-dust. The night seems to have swept my head clean and now I am purposeful once again. I hurry over the wall and start walking steadily down the road towards the bus stop. I need to cross the river again and head for Mayfair. The bus comes and within moments I am sitting in its manufactured warmth, grinding across the city.
There are commuters heading in rivulets to stations and bus stops, faces muffled against the cold. One is wearing shoes with red soles and for a second, I’m reminded of Ebadi and I think about how only a day or so ago, I was in a cemetery convinced that he had buried the girl there. Mishal. A part of me remains convinced of this even though it now cannot be true. Thirty years ago she died. Grace. Michelle.
I reach the library and find that it is just opening up. I make my way over to the computer terminals and fight off the sense of bafflement that creeps over me. I push a button or two to try and get the Google going but I am doing something wrong. There are laminated instructions and I try to follow them but they too are confusing. I’m wary of being seen to be floundering before these screens. I don’t want to feel like a child, not now.
I prod around at the machine for the next twenty minutes, coaxing it without luck. I am about to get up and just find a person to ask.
‘Xander.’
I see a face I know.
‘Amit?’ Then I remember something with a feeling like dread.
‘Hazel called. I asked her to call me when you come,’ he says, but keeps his distance. He is hesitant around me, wary after our last exchange. His tie is loose for a change and with his long hair, it has the effect of making him look rebellious.
‘Hey, look. About last time. I was worried about you. And, well – I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have behaved like that.’
‘It’s fine,’ he says, looking down.
‘Here.’ I hand him the Proust that is still in my pocket. ‘To make up for the one I took from you.’
He looks uncertainly at it, but then takes it.
‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘I didn’t go back there in the end. You were right, it was dangerous.’ He smiles at me but there is sadness in it. ‘So, how are you?’ he says, brightening.
‘I’ve been better.’
He stands in the pause, his arms at his sides, not knowing what to do. I don’t know what to do either so we hang there awkwardly until I say, ‘Can you help me with this?’ I indicate the terminal.
He smiles and sits at the screen, completely at home. His fingers dance across the keys with no effort.
‘I need to send an email to my solicitors, but I don’t know where to start.’
‘Solicitors? What happened?’ he says, turning his head round to face me in concern.
‘Long story,’ I say in a way that shuts off any more questions.
He pauses. ‘What’s the name of the company?’
‘I’m not sure – I know her name – Janine Cullen,’ I say, without much hope.
He taps around for a second or two before looking meaningfully at the screen again. Every now and then he hmms and nods to himself, absorbed in what he is doing.
‘Okay, got it. Here, you can send her an email from my account. Or I can do it.’
I’m dazzled by the speed at which he navigates this world. ‘Can you just say that I’m coming in to see her? Today? Like maybe now?’
He gives me a look of amusement. ‘I’m not sure that’s exactly how it works but okay – sent,’ he says.
‘Thanks, Amit,’ I say.
‘It’s fine.’
As I get up to leave he calls after me, holding up the Proust in one hand, ‘Hope it all works out.’