Taillight, taillight.
The door opened fluidly and closed behind her with a slight echo, as if she needed reminding that she was alone in the house. The silence embraced her like a frozen coat, a chill smother of mothballs. She would cook up some mushrooms in wine and tomatoes, and eat them hot with rice or pasta. Rice probably. There was no pasta in the house.
In the kitchen, she noticed that one of the chairs had been pulled from the small table. It hadn’t been that way this morning. She always pushed it in after she finished breakfast. Always. She felt her stomach constrict and her face begin to tingle. Oh God, she thought, oh God. There were sharp knives hanging on hooks above the stove. She lifted one down and clutched it to her breast, looking around her for other signs of ingress. Hearing a cough from the living room, she took a deep breath and started out of the kitchen.
When the living-room door flew open, the man started up from his seat, ready to do battle with almost anything except the wild-eyed harridan who, teeth bared, held a glittering carving knife before her in striking position.
‘Jesus, missus, there’s no... I can explain...’
She was only a yard away from him, and she looked huge, fear pumping her up to twice her normal size.
‘No need to explain,’ she hissed.
‘No, I can explain, really I can. Your husband...’
She was moving toward him, needing only the excuse of a wrong movement to send the knife plunging down. Two feet from him, then a foot, her breath as loud as any wild animal’s...
‘Sheila?’
Miles came clattering down the stairs.
‘Sheila?’
He was dressed in the blue terry cloth robe she had bought last Christmas. His hair was wet and stringy, his eyes trying to pierce the blurred air. His glasses had been left behind in the bathroom.
‘Oh, Miles.’
They embraced, pulling each other inward hard.
‘Oh, Miles, where have you been? I’ve been so worried.’
‘No need,’ he whispered, stroking her soft hair, feeling her weight against him, and then, in embarrassment, remembering the presence of Collins, he pulled away from her, but slowly, tenderly.
‘How did you get in?’ she asked. ‘You left your keys behind.’
‘Through the back garden. My friend here is a dab hand with a locked door. This is Mr. Collins, by the way. Will, this is my wife, Sheila.’ Miles examined the knife, which was still trapped in Sheila’s fist, as incongruous now as some cheap joke-shop toy. ‘It looks,’ he said, ‘as though you’ve already been introduced.’
Sheila smiled toward Collins, her face as red as a funeral wreath. Collins shrugged and smiled back, a little humiliated at his own show of cowardice. It surprised him that he could feel humiliation without any concomitant anger. Something was changing inside him, but what?
They ate the mushrooms, which Sheila had cooked from her special recipe. During the meal, Miles and Collins glanced at each other, smiling conspiratorially. Both were thinking how strange this food seemed after the huge Irish breakfasts, the solid and comforting amounts of fatty meat, the potatoes and veg. While they ate, Sheila asked her questions, and Miles tried to parry them, feigning tiredness and artlessness. He had introduced Will Collins as a friend of long standing, but Collins was no actor and Sheila, sensing that here was the weak point in her husband’s armor, had begun, gently but skillfully, to interrogate Collins. At last, some scraps of rice still untouched on her plate, Sheila put down her fork.
‘You’re lying through your teeth, both of you. It’s quite transparent. Miles, I thought we had some kind of an agreement. Truth in marriage and all that. Is our agreement at an end?’
Miles chose to stare at Collins. ‘Not here, Sheila, not now. Later.’
‘Why don’t you trust me, for Christ’s sake? Why does there always have to be this screen between us?’
‘Of course I trust you, Sheila. Don’t make a scene.’
‘Am I making a scene, Mr. Collins?’
‘No, Mrs. Flint, you are not.’ Miles looked at Collins in silent horror, while Sheila turned to her husband in victory. ‘Your husband,’ Collins continued, ‘likes to think that he’s armor-plated. That much I do know. But’ — he paused to sip some wine — ‘I never set eyes on him until last week. I don’t know why he’s lying to you, frankly I don’t care, but I don’t see what point there is to it. He... we need all the friends we can get. You’ve got to see that, Flint. Else we could both be corpses by the morning.’
Sheila put her hand to her mouth, her eyes dancing with shock.
‘For God’s sake, Collins,’ spat Miles.
‘It’s true, though, isn’t it?’ asked Sheila quietly. ‘Isn’t it? Tell me.’
‘Over coffee then,’ said Miles, placing his napkin on his plate. ‘The dinner table is no place for a horror story.’
So they cleared the table, mouthing pat phrases and stock responses, and Miles poured out the last of the wine into their glasses and found a bottle of Bowmore whiskey.
‘Take this through, will you?’
‘All right.’
‘And some glasses.’
‘Will these do?’
‘Yes, fine.’
‘Coffee ready?’
‘Just about. Do you take sugar, Mr. Collins?’
‘Three, please.’
‘And two for me, dear.’
‘But you don’t take sugar, Miles.’
‘I’ve changed.’
It was all very civilized, but it was fake, too, and they all knew it.
‘Will you help me?’ Miles asked.
Collins sat in the corner, realizing that he could be nothing more than an onlooker here. He smoked a cigarette, but Miles had refused the offer of one.
‘Not unless you tell me what’s going on.’ Sheila had folded her arms, such an obvious gesture of defiance that Miles was forced to smile.
‘I need your trust,’ he said, ‘and I need you not to ask questions.’
‘Then I simply won’t help you, Miles. I want to know what it’s all about.’
‘So do we,’ muttered Collins to himself. He stubbed out his cigarette and drew another from the packet. Miles signaled that he would like one, too. Collins had already started to place both cigarettes in his mouth to light them when he realized what he was doing. They both laughed, and he first offered Miles the packet, then threw across the lighter. Miles lit and drew on the cigarette as though it would be his last.
‘Sheila,’ he said, ‘I’m a spy.’
‘Of course,’ she said calmly.
‘You had an inkling?’
She laughed at this.
‘More than an inkling, darling. You didn’t marry a wooden doll, you know, you married me. And I wasn’t born yesterday.’
Miles sat back, not daring to look toward Collins, who might be smiling a little too happily. Had it always been like this? Had he always been slower and more naive than those around him, standing outside the door listening while Sheila heard his every breath?
‘Yes,’ he said, playing for time, ‘of course.’
‘That reminds me actually,’ said Sheila.
‘What?’
‘A man’s been pestering me. Said his name was James Stevens and that he wanted to see you on business. I know who he is, though.’
‘Who?’
‘He’s a journalist on one of the Fleet Street — or should I say Wapping? — dailies. Investigative reporting is his forte, I believe.’
‘What the hell does he want?’
‘I rather thought you’d know that. Or perhaps Mr. Collins does?’
‘Not me, missus. I don’t even like reporters.’