Chapter 12

Stella had expected the lecture to be well attended but it had never occurred to her it could be sold out. With any luck, if she attached herself to a group, the ticket checker would lose count of how many people she had let through. But the gimlet-eyed woman looked like she was well up on that ploy.

Now what? If she waited there were sure to be a few empty seats. People who had failed to turn up. Even so, they might not let her in and she would have to walk about in the wind and rain until it was over, and could well be wasting her time since there was no guarantee he was there.

A voice behind her called her name and she spun round, nerves jangling, even, for one irrational moment, thinking it was him. But whoever it was had been talking to someone else whose name wasn’t even Stella.

‘Bella!’ the girl yelled again. ‘Sorry, can’t make it. That guy I told you about.’ She broke off, giggling. ‘See you.’

Her friend looked daggers and Stella jumped in with an offer to buy the spare ticket.

‘Have it.’

‘How much?’

The girl called Bella shrugged. ‘Forget it. I didn’t pay, she did.’

‘Thanks.’ Stella waited in the queue and entered the hall, eyes darting about until she spotted an empty seat in the back row where she would have a clear view of the whole audience. Would she recognise him? He could look different, but she doubted he would have changed very much. His clothes perhaps, but even those were likely to be the same. Jeans, jacket, white T-shirt or, at this time of year, it was more likely to be a dark sweater. A creature of habit. One of the things she had both liked about him, but also found a little irritating. As people grew older they tended to become more fixed in their ways. Was that how she had become? Surely not.

Once the majority of people were sitting down, she focussed her eyes on the front row, tracking from left to right, pausing at any likely candidate, making sure no one was missed out. When she reached the third row, she thought he saw him but the head turned and “he” turned out to be a middle-aged woman with an aquiline nose. The hall smelled of people who had come in from the rain and Stella wondered idly how many umbrellas would be left behind, calculating it would be at least a dozen. Most of them would never be claimed since their owners were too busy, or too rich. Her head had started to throb and when she pushed up her sleeve to check her watch she found the lecture should have started six and a half minutes ago.

In the fourth row from the front, a bunch of students were standing up, changing places. People waved to friends in other parts of the hall. An obese man immediately in front of her kept roaring with laughter and tipping his chair back until it was as much as she could do not to tell him to shut the fuck up. The guy sitting next to her smelled of sweat. He whispered an endearment to his girlfriend and she responded by squeezing his thigh through his filthy jeans. A passably attractive girl with pale hair and eyes to match. Surely she could have done better than that.

Two men rose from the front row, one slightly built and dressed in a suit, collar and tie, the other broader and taller, an archetypal professor with unkempt hair, steel-rimmed spectacles and a beard. As soon as the room was quiet, “the suit” introduced the great man, providing a glowing biography and informing the audience, how lucky they were to be in the company of a world famous authority on the subject.

For all Stella knew, the lecture was cutting edge neurobiology. As well as being delivered in a deep, gravelly voice, the words came up in power point on a giant screen at the front. Stella took in little, giving all her attention to the audience, checking each row again, this time from right to left.

The great man had a carefully perfected style of speaking, sometimes slow, ponderous, sometimes bursts of gunfire. Stella shielded her eyes from the white screen, afraid it’s changing messages, picked up by her peripheral vision, would bring on a migraine. Every two months or so her vision became distorted by a semi-circle of jagged lines that prefaced a debilitating attack. Two quickly administered painkillers usually knocked it on the head before it got a hold, but now and again she was laid low for hours, even days, the last thing she needed just now.

Once she had scanned all but two of the rows, she realised she would have to start at the front all over again, and the thought that he might not be there made her face and neck grow hot with frustration. He must be. Why wouldn’t he be? It was his kind of lecture, his area of expertise. How had she missed him? Maybe she needed her eyes tested. She pictured herself with gunmetal rimmed designer glasses and rather liked the image. Concentrate. Try the front rows again. Knowing him, he would have arrived early.

When the lecture finally came to an end, “the suit” announced that there was time for a few questions. Hands shot up and a woman in the front row was selected. Her question – she had a high-pitched upper class voice – was concerned with functional circuits in the brain. Searching in her pocket for a couple of painkillers – she never left home without them – Stella popped them in her mouth, swallowing hard, a technique she had acquired for times when no water was available, and experienced the familiar, mildly unpleasant after-taste.

The body odour guy on her right had started to cough and a moment later he stood up, and so did his girlfriend, and so did Stella, ostensibly to let them pass but her aim was to squeeze behind her chair and lean against the wall. It was fortunate she was so tall.

One question followed by another, until the guy in charge announced that he could only take two more. No hands went up and a ripple of conversation broke out. Any moment now, proceedings would be brought to a close, the audience would make a stampede for the exit, and it would be impossible to spot him. What did it matter? He wasn’t there. She had endured and hour and a half of boredom for nothing.

Then she saw him.

Halfway up the hall, sitting between two girls. As she watched, he stood up, waiting patiently, characteristically, for the people on his left to move. How the fuck had she missed him? Because the girls had kept leaning across him to talk to one another. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to change places? He was alone and that was a relief, but in a few minutes’ time he would go out in the street where he would merge with the throng and she would lose him. Snatching her beanie from her coat pocket, she pulled it down over her eyebrows, wound her scarf round the lower half of her face, and pushed her way out of the main door, moving quickly to the place she had selected earlier, round the corner of the building, where she would be hidden but still have a near perfect view.

The rain had stopped but he was walking fast while looking all about him, almost as if he had anticipated being followed. Had he seen her? Plenty of people had red hair and she had been right at the back, out of sight. It was dark, and she was the last person in the world he would be expecting to see. Her car was parked on a meter, it had taken all her change and was still in danger of running out, but his could be anywhere, in a multi-storey or several blocks away where there was no need to pay. Or he might be within walking distance of where he lived, or he might jump onto a bus. With her eyes fixed on his receding figure, she climbed into her car, did a lightning U-turn, and began slowly moving up the hill, ignoring the hooting drivers behind her.

Ahead of her, he crossed the road and started down a side street, where she was in time to see him unlock a bike, attached to a lamppost. Now what? She had gone past the turning and the traffic was far too thick to risk another U-turn. Perhaps he lived on the other side of the gorge, in Leigh Woods or even in a village a few miles out of the city. If it was a village, surely he would use his car, except he had always been a fitness fanatic. Before she left the basement, she should have studied her map more carefully. Now, she had lost her sense of direction.

Because of the traffic lane she had selected, she was obliged to take an exit to the left. Did it lead to the Suspension Bridge? She crossed a mini-roundabout and carried straight on, following the car in front for want of anything better to do. Quite soon, it turned to the right and a few minutes later a large expanse of grass came into view. The edge of the Downs? Ahead of her, she thought she could see the back light of a bike, and beyond it, the bridge. The city was overflowing with cyclists, but fewer of them at this time of night.

When she reached the bridge, she discovered there was a toll and she was forced to hold up other drivers as she searched for some money. Come on, come on, if it was him, he would have reached the other side by now. Dropping a coin in the box, she crossed over, glancing down at the eerily lit up water, then drove on, taking the next turning on the left, which she calculated would take her back to the centre. A waste of time, but not quite since she now knew for certain he was in the city and rode a bike, and those two small pieces of information were enough to convince her she was going to accomplish her mission.