56.

Homecomings and sadness. The sweet and the sour.

That evening, I go back home with Buzz. We go to bed together, eat together, renew our acquaintance, like a couple of blind people each tracing hands over the other’s once-familiar face.

I had intended to do this tomorrow, but when Buzz starts talking about dates for the wedding, I have to tell him. Have to say the truth.

‘Dearest Buzz, I have something to tell you. Something difficult. And I’m so sorry. I always wanted to be the best girlfriend in the world for you, because you deserve nothing less. But I’m not that person. I’m not …’

I don’t quite know how to say the things I need to tell him. Buzz is so intact, so sure of himself, of who he is, what he wants, the things he likes, that it’s hard communicating with him sometimes. I’m his opposite in too many ways.

I say, ‘I’m a mess, Buzz. More of a mess than you understand. I’m not very good at knowing anything about myself. I’m not very good at being a human being, it just isn’t one of my strengths.’

I say more than that too.

I tell him that being Buzz’s girlfriend and then fiancée have been just about the best things in my life. My highest accomplishment.

I tell him that I love him and respect him and have depended utterly on his love and straightness.

Tell him that I wouldn’t be as much of a human as I am had it not been for him. It was Buzz, more than anyone else, that first helped me tread the soil of Planet Normal.

But there are things I don’t tell him. Don’t, because I can’t, because he wouldn’t understand if I did.

I don’t tell him that Fiona Grey was mostly happier than I am. That her milieu of homeless shelters and divorced bus drivers and single-parent Somali immigrants and richly bangled mental-health workers was easier for her to navigate than the one I live in. That Buzz’s remarkable strength, patience and simplicity are almost problematic for me. He’s too good for the person I am.

I say, ‘I think I need to find myself more before I can commit to anyone. Even to you, my best and dearest Buzz. And I’m so sorry, because I owe you so much more than this. I will always love you and always want your happiness. But I’m not the woman who will make you happy. I can’t marry you. I’m incredibly sorry.’

It’s not as simple as that, of course. Buzz cries. I don’t because, apart from one time, I’ve never cried in my adult life. But I feel the emotion. Keep telling Buzz he’s the best of men, and yes I’m sure, and yes, this feels like the ultimate, ‘it’s not you, it’s me’.

As we talk all this out, Buzz understands what I’m saying, or almost. Understands it in a Buzzian way, which is all I can hope for. He’s not happy. Not reconciled. He looks broken-hearted, in truth, and the worst thing about all this is that I’m the one doing the breaking. But I don’t have any doubts, not even now.

I had wanted to spend the night with Buzz, this night of reunion. Spend one last night with Buzz and tell him tomorrow of my decision. But it doesn’t work like that and we both realize it’s impossible for me to stay under his roof tonight. To share a bed together.

So I leave. I don’t have my car with me – it’s at home – so Buzz calls a taxi for me instead. We wait, cuddling, till we get a call telling us it’s arrived.

I say, ‘Buzz, promise me you’ll seek your own happiness. Don’t let this be more than a road-bump. You deserve the best.’

He nods, but that isn’t good enough.

‘Buzz, I need you to promise. Get over me. Find someone else. Not straight away, but do it. Please. Promise me.’

He nods and this time it counts. We kiss each other lightly on the lips. My giddiness is so great now, I have problems with ordinary movements.

‘You’re OK, are you?’ says Buzz. ‘Sometimes those painkillers …’

‘I’m on aspirin, nothing else. And my feet are fine. It’s my head. It’s – not well. But it’s my problem. I should never have tried to make it yours.’

He walks me downstairs, an awful sadness in his step.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

I give the taxi driver my home address. He drives up into the town center then out on the Newport Road towards Eastern Avenue and Pentwyn.

My house, my life.

A world without Buzz.

I’ve got too many things in my head and I don’t know how to sort them out.

When we’re no more than a minute from home, I ask the driver to turn around. Ask him to head back in towards Cathays, to the office. The driver does as I ask. It’s been a good fare from his perspective.

I pay him and he goes.

Roll myself a cigarette and smoke it, a dark shape against the pale glass.

Then go inside and sign in. The desk officer doesn’t know who I am, doesn’t care. It’s not so usual for detectives to work through the night, but it’s not so unusual either. I left my crutches with Buzz. They’d been annoying me, a hindrance more than a help.

I take the lift up to Jackson’s floor.

Go to the cleaning cupboard opposite the lift. It’s not locked. There’s a trolley there, a good one. Different cleaning products from the ones I’m used to, but good enough. A vacuum cleaner. I drag everything out. Look for a tabard. I like those, when they fit. But there’s nothing there, so I do without. Hoover the carpets first. Long sweeps of grey, changing color slightly as I work. Do Jackson’s room with care. Move the sofa and hoover underneath. The skirting board hasn’t been touched for ages, so I sponge-wash it, scrubbing till I bring out the white. Dust the window sill. Squeegee the window. Do a careful job on the pot plant, picking off all the bits that are brown or heading that way. His keyboard is disgusting really. Needs a proper clean with the right sort of fluid, but I don’t find any in my trolley, so Jackson will just have to suffer.

I normally do a room like this in eight minutes, but because of the sofa and the skirting board, and because I took extra care with the other bits, and because my hobbled gait and painful feet make everything slower, it takes me sixteen. I do two other offices, and one set of bathrooms, the women’s ones. The longer I work, the more I relax. I would do more, but my feet won’t let me.

It’s only when I’m just about done on the bathroom that I dare to look at myself in the mirror. Look properly, I mean.

Jessica’s gone. It’s only me and my sister-Fiona here now. We’re relieved to be left alone.

I can’t quite tell what I see in our face, but it’s OK, I think. It’s scary letting go of Buzz. I know it’s the right thing to do, but it’s still a very big deal for me. Trusting that I’ll be OK on my own.

Anchored enough. Sane enough.

I give the sinks a final wipe. I like the shine of ceramics under halogen.

Put the cleaning stuff away. Call a taxi.

I’ve cleaned three offices this evening. One of those belongs to a superintendent, the recently promoted Gethin Matthews.

Before I go downstairs, I re-enter Matthews’s office. Turn on his computer. I can’t log in as him without stealing his password, and since I can’t be bothered to wait that long, I just log on using the default login details, the one any copper can use to access the basic databases. Then I go to my fake Hotmail account. Download the Trojan horse software that poor, dead Ian Shoesmith gave me. Load it onto Matthews’s computer. Close down. I feel a little ripple of Jessica-ishness rise in me as I do all that. I didn’t get on with her, but I liked her coolness. Her brassy don’t-give-a-damn quality. Enough to forgive her the odd push-up bra and questionable top.

Gareth Glyn went missing in 2002. There are, broadly speaking, three possible explanations for that. One, he just got tired of his wife and wanted to make a clean break. You don’t usually do that by simply vanishing, but still: stranger things have happened.

Two, he was indeed murdered, as his wife alleges, albeit for a crime of whistle-blowing which he committed some fifteen years earlier. Again, not obviously likely, but you can’t rule it out.

Or three, that request for information from the security services could have related to something, some current inquiry, which was threatening to resurrect the ghosts of the past. Ghosts that might have called for Glyn to have entered a witness protection service.

There isn’t, as of 2012, a single systematic witness protection service covering the whole of Britain, but there have always been local programs, administered by each regional police force. As superintendent, Gethin Matthews will have access to all that information. He’ll be able to request further data without arousing suspicion. And now, thanks to the software I’ve planted, I’ll be able to send that request on his behalf. I’ll be able to monitor the reply, delete it once I’ve read it, and will be able to do all that remotely, from my own computer. From home, or anywhere else.

If it comes to that, I’ll be able to access any information that a superintendent can command. Which is a lot.

It’s a nice feeling.

I won’t rush into anything. I need to get my own head straightened out before I plunge into all that again. But that sense of gathering excitement which came to me that day in Hayley Morgan’s cottage is here again with me now. Here, amongst these neatly hoovered floors, these tidily dusted surfaces.

Fiona Grey came to be a pretty damn good cleaner, I reflect, but her partner, Miss Griffiths, is a pretty useful investigator. Somewhere down that Gareth Glynian road lies a clue which will take me closer to my biggest and most urgent mystery. The mystery of me.

A different taxi takes me home.

Magnolia paint. Stainless steel kitchen. A garden that is a blank strip of nothing. A living room without decoration.

My house. My home. Even Fiona Grey had more care for her interiors than this.

I walk around my living room and kitchen. Feeling things. Opening doors and closing them. Feeling the presence of what used to be my life. A castaway on the shores of normal.

I don’t feel sleepy, though it’s now very late. But I act as though I am. Brush my teeth. Take off my clothes. Look at the dressings still oozing blood on my feet. Put on a nightie, a scoop-necked thing with a blue bow and a pattern of tiny blue flowers. Like bilberry flowers, I think. Tiny bells.

I’m intensely aware of the lack of surveillance. No video, no audio. I walk past power sockets in my underwear weirded out by the realization that no one is watching.

And I realize that Fiona Grey is not dead. An undercover identity is never ended. It survives the operation, ready to be used again. I don’t need her now and she doesn’t need me, but if life gets challenging for me, Fiona Griffiths, I can always walk into the hostel again. Play table football with Clementina, stand outside and smoke ciggies with Gary.

I think too of the wedding dress I almost bought. Glossy stripes and a nipped-in waist. I wanted to be that person. The one who could have worn that wedding dress with authenticity. With a sense of belonging. I wanted that more than almost anything.

I hope Buzz finds happiness.

I hope I do too.

I make a cup of peppermint tea, plump up my pillows, and turn out the light.

 

 

THE END