Perhaps Charlotte felt as if Rory and now Hugh were threatening her professional relationship with Ellen, although why should that work on her nerves so much? Somehow Ellen's remark seemed to aggravate the sense of earth pressing against the walls, staining the lights dim, creeping closer and livelier at Charlotte's back. 'So what's Hugh's contribution?' Charlotte had to ask.
'He says where we slept out that night, it's where someone used to live.'
'And how does that fit in?'
'I think he must have told me because it sounds like a magical name.' After a breath that Charlotte found unnecessarily hard to take, Ellen said 'Arthur Pendemon.'
It appeared to have power. Charlotte saw three of her colleagues stand up and retreat at once. In a moment she realised they were vacating their desks for the weekend. Rather than lending the basement a little more space, the exodus made her feel abandoned in a cell that was far too airless and not nearly light enough. She was absolutely not about to look behind her, even when two more people left their desks. Her job required her to stay on the phone and ask 'What do we know about him?'
'That's all Hugh did, I think. I haven't looked yet.'
Charlotte could perfectly well search for the name while talking to Ellen, and she made to transfer the receiver to her left hand. It had to be the shadow of her movement that fell across the computer screen; nobody had reared up out of the darkness at her back. Her colleagues would have noticed, however few of them remained. She raised the phone again as Ellen said 'Do you remember seeing anything?'
Charlotte found she had no great wish to learn 'Such as what?'
'Maybe we all slept where his house was, except I didn't notice any bits of it, did you?'
'That's my dream.'
'I don't understand. Why would you want that?'
'I didn't. Anything but. I mean it was – Glen, oh thanks.'
He'd veered to her desk on his way to the lift to return Ellen's chapters, dog-eared now. 'Monday,' he mouthed and left Charlotte with a brief squeeze of her upheld wrist, so that for a second she thought he meant to take the phone. She couldn't help wishing he had. The conversation had begun to feel like a trap into which she and Ellen were leading each other with no sense of its limits, let alone of a way to escape. 'What are you saying about him?' Ellen urged.
'Nothing. I'm saying I dreamed I had to go down under where there used to be a house.'
She felt as if the nightmare were poised to continue. The cellars might consist of rooms barely large enough for her to stand upright or move her arms away from her sides. The one to which she was led down unlit steps treacherous with soil, and then narrow sloping passages so lightless that her eyes felt caked with earth, would press her head and shoulders low with its cold stone roof. Even before the cell shut with a dull thick slam that resounded into the underground distance, she would feel like a crippled child. For an endless moment she scarcely knew she was hearing a voice. 'Anyone there?' it said or finished by saying.
Charlotte glared around the office, which was almost deserted. 'I still am.'
'No,' Ellen said and seemed to wish she could leave it at that. 'I asked was there anyone with you in your dream.'
Why had Charlotte thought the room was only almost deserted? Nobody was visible in front of her. Everyone else had sufficient intelligence to leave while there was air to breathe, before the walls collapsed inwards as their age proved unequal to the weight of earth. Meanwhile Ellen's question had revived the sight of eyes no longer buried, blinking away earth to peer gleefully up at Charlotte. 'This isn't getting us anywhere,' she said more sharply than Ellen deserved. 'We'll have to cut it short. They're locking up.'
Having felt desperate enough to invent this as a reason, she was irrationally afraid that it might prove to be true – that she could somehow be imprisoned in the subterranean room all weekend. 'See what you can find out,' she said and struggled to believe that her next breath didn't taste of earth. 'The sooner we've got your synopsis the better, all right? And if you need to call me don't hesitate.'
She would never have expected to be so briskly professional with Ellen. Perhaps her tone was why Ellen didn't answer, instead giving way to a silence that felt not just deep but dark until Charlotte cut it off. She shut down the computer before leaning left to retrieve her bag. A dark shape, vague but eager, swelled out of the corner in response – her own shadow. She grabbed the canvas bag and shoved Ellen's chapters into it, followed by three sets of bound proofs. She was already on her feet, and didn't spare the restlessly shadowy area behind her desk another glance. All the movements that she was unable to avoid glimpsing under desks as she hurried out of the basement room had to be her shadows. No wonder they seemed to be imitating her as they kept pace.
She wasn't anxious to use the lift, even if she would have such space as it offered all to herself. She almost ran along the corridor narrowed by lockers to the stairs. Such was her haste to reach the street that the door was creeping shut on its inexorable metal arm before she was fully aware that the staircase was unlit. Someone must be working on the lights; she heard activity above her – it couldn't be below her – in the dark. Shouldn't the electrician be using a flashlight? Presumably the scraping, like nails on the concrete, showed that he was applying some tool to the problem. She thought of asking how long it would take to fix, and had opened her mouth when she realised that the clawlike sound was approaching out of the dark as the wedge of light around her dwindled to nothingness. Barely in time she blocked the door and dodged into the corridor. She would use a lift after all.
One was waiting behind its doors. It hadn't finished opening when she darted in and jabbed the button to send it upwards. As the doors faltered and set about meeting again, a Ram editor emerged from the Women's and sprinted for the lift. She'd shoved her handbag between the doors when a fellow editor called for her to wait. 'Sorry,' she said to Charlotte and withdrew.
'Sorry,' Charlotte responded, having automatically retreated into a corner, and lurched forwards. She'd said it without thinking, but to whom? She hadn't backed into anyone tall and thin, let alone taller than she was and considerably thinner. The dry jagged sound beneath the nonchalant hum of the lift was too faint to define; it certainly wasn't the clicking of teeth bared in a delighted grimace or already far too bare. Nevertheless she twisted around to see that she was utterly alone, unless someone had sneaked behind her as she moved. The sight of the lift was oppressive enough, the windowless grey cage little wider than her outstretched arms and so indefinitely lit that she couldn't tell how many shadows were sharing the space.
As soon as it lumbered to a halt she dragged the doors apart, bruising her fingers, and ran across the unguarded lobby. The crowd outside on New Oxford Street made her feel hemmed in, particularly at her back. If a smell of earth seemed to linger in her nostrils, it must be as imaginary as it had been in the first place. A bus to Bethnal Green and beyond was approaching, but before she could risk a dash across the road she saw that it was too full to stop. She wanted to be home, up on the roof. Hugging her stuffed bag as if it were an emblem of her ability to function, she struggled through the crowd to Tottenham Court Road.
The stairs to the Underground were so packed with commuters that she took a firmer grip on her bag, though the gesture helped the crowd to pin her arms against her sides. Whoever was immediately above her seemed anxious to travel, but did he really need to press against her back? She could imagine he was eager for his dinner – he felt famished to the bone. He was forcing her downwards step by helpless step, but nobody would notice, since she appeared to be acting just like them. As she reached the circular concourse at the foot of the stairs she opened her mouth to release some kind of noise and swung around. There was nobody in sight who resembled the person she'd sensed behind her. Everyone looked well-fed and entirely unaware of her, and she couldn't be sure that she'd turned to face a loitering smell of earth.