I couldn't believe I'd gone to bed with the door unlocked, but there was no other way Sophie could have got in.
I didn't follow her down the stairs. I didn't need to. I knew she wouldn't be going far. I stood there listening to her soft diminishing footfall until I heard the door to her own flat slam shut behind her.
'You can't remember any more than the cardigan?' I asked.
'No, I told you,' she said, wrinkling her forehead. 'Wait a minute.' She was thinking hard. 'Something about a man in a mirror? No, I've lost it.'
I was midway through my second cup of tea, and Sophie had gone down to the bathroom to take a shower, when my attention was caught by the back of a drawing board propped against the wall of the living-room. I went over to check it out, and nearly choked on my croissant. The style was unmistakably Sophie's — all that pernickety detail — but I'd never seen her tackle subject matter like this; it appeared to be the aftermath of some sort of battle between humans and unearthly demons. The humans had clearly come off second-best.
I wondered whether Sophie had been drawing in her sleep, as well as walking and talking in it.
Men and women were sprawled broken and bleeding in the long grass as bird-headed monsters sawed at their limbs or foraged in their entrails with sharp-clawed instruments. Other humans dangled naked and helpless from apple trees as mincing skeletons sucked the marrow from their bones or thrust red-hot pokers into contorted mouths. In the background, herds of razorbacked pigs roamed freely while shadowy beasts capered and pranced around a blazing hut, casting long black shadows over the land.
And, right at the front, a twiglike creature was ramming a spear through the eye of a redheaded warrior.
'What in hell is this?' I asked Sophie when she came up from the bathroom, towelling her hair.
'Oh, that,' she said. 'It's my summer garden. The calendar I was doing.'
I looked at the picture in silence. There was a lot to look at. It almost — but not quite — put me off the rest of the croissants.
As I lay awake in bed that night, I couldn't help thinking about Sophie's garden — the men writhing impaled in thickets of thorns, or trapped up to their waists in quicksand while rats and vipers gnawed on their upper bodies — and worrying that I was going to find myself transported there the instant I dropped off to sleep.
But my sleep turned out to be blissfully undisturbed, and it didn't take long to shrug off the feeling of impending doom the drawing had left me with. I didn't find Sophie in my bathroom again, though a couple of nights later I came home late to find her slowly drifting up the stairs towards my front door. I gently turned her around and guided her back to bed.
She didn't seem to be aware of these nocturnal excursions, and I decided not to mention them when, a couple of evenings later, I contrived to string along with her to a trendy new cafe-bar called Prague. The others were there already, knocking back different flavoured vodkas as though prohibition was coming into force at midnight. Isabella, who had just returned from one of her trips abroad, was doling out duty free cigarettes. Grenville, Toby and a pink-eyed friend of theirs called Phineas were arguing about how much a reasonable man might be expected to pay for a one-night-stand with various film actresses and TV celebrities. Eavesdropping on this conversation was like observing the mating habits of a particularly repellent form of wildlife, but when the novelty wore off I turned to the girls, who were talking about their eating disorders. To be specific, they were talking about losing weight, though the only one of us with any excess in the flesh department was me. The others were as skinny as sliced prosciutto.
I wasn't going to be outdone by these stories of bingeing and purging and starving and ridiculous diets consisting of nothing but lettuce leaves and vitamin pills.
'I ate seven doughnuts last week,' I said. 'One after the other. It was exactly like bulimia, only without the throwing up.'
There was a long pause which stretched way beyond the merely pregnant. They regarded me with expressionless eyes. Then everyone started talking again, all at once.
'Don't let those bitches get you down,' said Carolyn, leaning towards me a little unsteadily. 'They're all neurotic as hell about their weight.'
Of Sophie's girlfriends, I had always preferred Carolyn to the others, even though she'd had a gratuitous nose job and her father was a Tory MP who bankrolled the PR company she and Charlotte pretended to run on the days they didn't spend hanging out at the health club or buying up half of Harvey Nichols or Hyperbole. At least Carolyn made an effort to be friendly. 'You should have brought your boyfriend along,' she was saying now in a voice that was slightly slurred.
I looked at her carefully, decided she wasn't taking the piss, and confessed that I didn't have a boyfriend, not at the moment.
Carolyn drained her glass and passed it to Grenville for a refill. Mine was still half-full; the Social Whirligigs fiasco had taught me to exercise caution in this company.
'I meant the bloke you were with the other night,' she said.
I thought back. 'Which one? There've been so many.'
Carolyn's eyebrows shot up. 'So many men?'
'So many nights,' I said.
'Last week at the Rhumba,' she said, as Toby came up with her refill.
'But I was with you lot,' I said.
Toby elbowed me in the ribs so heavily that I nearly fell over. 'Up to no good, eh?' he bellowed.
'Not that I can remember,' I wheezed, rubbing my bruised abdomen and beginning to wonder if I were going mad. This was the second time I'd apparently been paired off with someone who wasn't there.
'You're a strange bird,' said Carolyn, contemplating me with her head on one side. 'But then so was he. I'd say you two were perfectly matched.'
'He was all right,' said Toby in a wistful tone that suggested he was more than a little envious. 'He was a dab hand at Social Whirligigs.'
Yeah,' giggled Carolyn. 'And at least now we know whose is biggest. Lucky old Clare.'
Chapter 8
It was like playing a game, daring myself to see how far I could go. Opening Robert Jamieson's mail was the most excitement I'd had in ages.
Hi Rob,
Loved the latest poem, but afraid I can't help out. You know what women are like — Katie swears she'll quit if I put it in the mag, and some of the girls in the office have threatened strike action. But then what do you expect from college-educated bimbos? Maybe you should pop round one afternoon and soothe them with some of your manly charm.
Hate to have to ask this, but couldn't you pump up the bondage and go easy on the mutilation? Restraint doesn't necessarily mean compromise, you know.
As ever,
Percy
PS. How about that drink?
I thought it was safe to conclude that Robert Jamieson was not a feminist.
I was tickled to death by this letter. I was dying to share it with someone, though since I wasn't supposed to have opened it in the first place I had to keep it to myself. But Robert was beginning to grow on me. He sounded like an incorrigible chauvinist and a refreshing contrast to Graham.
I would sit and look at Sophie and wonder exactly what she imagined she'd got up to with him. Perhaps she had unwittingly glimpsed his photo somewhere, or, like me, she'd opened one of those letters that kept arriving, day after day, and it had been that, coupled with the bust-up with Miles, which had triggered off her elaborate fantasies.