The bad thing about being stuck in a rut, and the last thing she had noticed, was the habit of taking the same route to work in the morning and never varying it. How could you ever do that in London? Ivy had said. There’s so much to discover if you go a different way. The habit of extending the route and thinking of more than simply getting there had begun ever since Rachel started the first drawing classes, because she found herself wanting the opportunity to look at faces and bodies with a new, almost prurient fascination. She wanted to linger, checking human proportions, the elegance and the lack of it in all of them, wanted to notice how each one sat differently on Tube or bus, walked at a different angle, how some would relax with a newspaper in a queue, others could not, stood twisted. How some were stiller than models, others in constant movement. Rachel no longer kept her head down, varied the route to and fro to make it longer, and looked, boldly.
Keeping her head down in all senses had become a way of life; she was accustomed to it. She was still isolated in her relatively new job in the offices of Stirland and Co., because everyone knew she had been a whistle-blower in the job before. The smart, sanctimonious bitch who had revealed a major scam and could not be loved for it; the one who refused to ratify a company’s accounts because they were as false as they had been for years, and refused to keep quiet about the fact that a senior consultant had been bribed to maintain a deceit. Management had been ostensibly grateful for the information, received in time to prevent a scandal and to turn what was corruption into a mere mistake, but they had lost money in the process, which was not easily forgiven. And everyone there, and thus everyone here, knew that she had got her lover the sack. She had not been particularly popular before: a beautiful, numerate girl who worked harder and quicker than anyone else, was socially timid but deadly obstinate, with ambition worn on her sleeve. The fact that she had championed the cause of the unqualified females groped and bullied by the overfed male of the species did not make her top favourite with either. She was bred uncomfortably honest; she hated bullies and arrogance, nothing could change it. It was simple conviction. The partners did not like to be reminded that they were only well-paid servants, oiling the legal and financial wheels of larger corporations, and that while vital to the life of the client, they were not as important as the rules they were paid to uphold. Not a good thing to be right all the time. Rachel Doe was too reserved for the men, too severely good-looking for the women, and she had to live with her reputation going before her. It was better at Stirland and Co. since she had lightened up and wore her hair down sometimes. She was more approachable. The firm had a high turnover of staff. Some of them had forgotten she had the makings of a traitor.
‘’Lo, Rache, can you help me with this?’
She had always wanted to make partnership; it was no longer important and it showed. She thought she was easier to get on with than she had been, that the mark of shame on her forehead had faded, but she did not really know what they thought, and while she had once cared so much she had shrunk into herself more and more, she now cared less and less, even though she was exasperated by the corporate refusal to see that long-term profit meant never doing anything underhand. She was still her father’s daughter. It was her weakness and her strength.
A small hangover today. Rachel wished she had been a lawyer, rather than the number-cruncher she was. They were more important. She did not want attention, but would have liked influence. The lift took her straight to her floor, the fifth of ten. The other floors were different capsules, like decks in a ship. From her window she could see the street below, saw people spilling out from the station opposite, near and far, wondering if she would actually recognise anyone from this safe distance. She thought she would, and never had. These days she watched before getting down to work.
It was early. She sat at her desk and considered the personal file on her organiser, labelled DIARY. The débâcle with the dishonest consultant who was also her lover was what had made her keep this in the first place. She, who would never again trust any incriminating or confidential information to an office computer system, had recorded his, printed it out; and when he would not admit it, had called her a silly, treacherous bitch, she had shown them in logical sequence what he had done. The habit of keeping her personal file remained. The diary file was thinking time. As for work, there seemed nothing which could not wait. They all exaggerated their own importance and the need for urgency. It was time to do something else which could not be postponed.
She wrote down all the things she knew Judge Schneider had done. She was enraged by the fact that he was a judge. The more the simple internet research told her about him via the chambers website, the more she was angered. Called to the Bar in 1973. Specialised in family law/criminal law/human rights issues. Judge: 2000.
She knew enough about the system to know that Schneider was not at the top of his tree. He had avoided the brinksmanship of commercial law, as well as the high earnings. Might have taken a judgeship for easier hours and a pension. Not an ambitious high-flyer, so occupied the moral high ground of family law and crime instead. Opted for the anonymous, virtuous role of judge because he had something to hide.
This was what he had REALLY done.
Seduces young girl/wife.
Neglects child; lets her drown.
Shuns wife, shuts her out. Beats her up. Lets her drown too, in a manner of speaking.
Fixes a divorce.
Neglects grandparents. Denies rights of access.
Prevents son from maintaining/making contact.
Is cruel.
Shame on him.
Tomorrow, she vowed, tomorrow I shall try and find him. Phone? Yes, but why would he speak to me? Now wait a minute. I know Grace wants me to do this, she doesn’t ask, but I know anyway, and I also know she doesn’t want me to alienate him, just get him to … What? Grace really does know Ivy best. She knows Ivy will never be whole until her son sees her for what she is outside the ghastly picture his father has painted of her … Rachel worked on her rage. How dare he do this?
Still she prevaricated. And what would Ivy think? Ivy must want to see her son; Ivy cried in her sleep. There were sketches, pinned to the walls, of a boy child, a boy, the young man he might have become. And what of him? What of the son, what did he want, which no one else knew?
She told herself that all she wanted to do was find the judge and explain, but before all that there was her father, and Ivy, this evening, to which she was not looking forward. It was always like that with her father: she was proud of him, and his ridiculous standards. It made her ache.
As the others filtered in to work, she greeted them cheerfully. The hangover headache was secretly supplanted by a certain joy in being alive, which did not quite stop her noticing that the waste-paper bins had not been emptied since yesterday and the desk and floor bore the traces of yesterday’s dust. Things often went wrong with the contract cleaners who came in at night. It made her wonder, with a smile, what Ivy was doing. Ivy would do better than that.
This was simply not fair. Blaker, the leading joker in a not very convincing pack, was not supposed to be so easy to find. It was meant to take days. Donald put the lid on his frustration. For a start, he did not know what to say to the man, since nothing was remotely rehearsed yet, and he could not think of anything he could do to set the ball rolling. Such as, look here, Terry, there’s a bloke threatening the last judge who sent you down, is it you, by any chance? I don’t really think so, but it makes a good theory, and I’ve got to find someone and it might as well be you, so would you kindly oblige with a confession, and would you mind leaving it until next week? Or at least give me an alibi which takes ages to establish and comes back solid? No offence, mate. OK, do you have access to a computer, knowledge of medieval images, can you draw? There’s a good man.
Donald watched the woman walk away. Not a good handbag, cheap and cheerful. He stood still, watching with conspicuous uncertainty, and then went in the door by the window where the man who was a dead ringer for Blaker sat. He had to do that, at least, to make sure; maybe he was wrong and, hope against hope, it wasn’t Blaker after all. Identification via mug shot photograph was not the last word in reliability, even if blown up on a screen to show the skin pores and the sullen mouth. No one smiled for a mug shot.
The setting made it clearer that it was indeed Blaker, or at least it did to a suspicious mind with an in-depth knowledge of Blaker’s repertoire. This was an upmarket, no-smoking patisserie, redolent with good smells of fresh coffee substances, sweet pastry, anxiety to please, clearly favoured by the better-off of the consumers who used Berwick Street, in preference to the other caff, with its solid sausage rolls and bacon sandwiches, which was the haunt of the stallholders in the cold. The stall men were up with the lark; they were always hungry. No point trying to rob them; they would see you coming out of the back of their heads. This, on the other hand, was the perfect place for Blaker to sit and survey those who had, or were about to spend, money. The ones on the way to buy silk or ginger, pausing to check the list and speak into tiny, shiny mobiles. A stressed-out, multitasking female, juggling the luggage of shopping, job, self-consciousness, ambition; that would be his chosen type. Judged first by clothes and attitude, good handbag next, with cash in it, because that was the coinage here. From this vantage point, a thief like Blaker could seek the quarry, watch them shop, watch them pause with their espressos, and, if he was working, follow. All the short way to Shaftesbury Avenue, Theatreland, which was his other stalking ground, even if he always began here. They would be waving for a taxi, waiting for a bus, when he struck. And, blow me, if it wasn’t an internet café, also. It had to be him. It was.
Donald sat with his coffee in the seat level with the window, with his back to Blaker and a sideways view of his reflection in the glass. The pavement outside was slippery underfoot as the rubbish increased.
The tall woman came back. There was a parcel of asparagus she had forgotten. Not so efficient then. This time she did not wave. Donald could allow staring at her to be his alibi. It was her height and strength which was interesting, rather than any hint of glamour. Amongst the discarded rubbish of the busy market stalls, she seemed conspicuously clean, like a polished apple. He could not have guessed her age. Ever since his own daughters grew into adults, he had lost his knack for gauging the ages of women. They came in swathes of the eighteen-to-thirty, thirty-to-over-forty, when they all looked the same. He told himself he could still tell something about their lives, from the faces and the hunch of the shoulders, the way his wife had taught him, what they shopped for and what they wore, but never how old they were. The coffee was good. He would settle for that for now. He could smell the man behind him, made the mistake of checking the reflection to see if he was still there, almost jumped out of his skin.
‘She’s a piece of work, isn’t she?’ Blaker said. ‘I wouldn’t try, if I was you.’ He turned sideways in his chair, presenting a broken-nosed profile and a waft of dirty hair. ‘She’s a model, you know.’
Donald turned his own, harmless face with its fine, clean hair, glasses, combed moustache and caught a glimpse of brown teeth. It was a mistake to imagine that a con of Blaker’s experience could smell a copper from forty paces, because they simply couldn’t. Or if they could, which was as likely in Blaker’s case, they simply didn’t care, because they had nothing to fear. Or they were the sort who got on fine with those who hunted them so ineffectually, most of the time. They were simply two men, caught in the act of staring at the same woman.
‘I thought she must be,’ Donald said. ‘Figure like that. I wouldn’t mind bumping into it, slowly, if you see what I mean, but I’d be too scared she’d eat me alive. Model, is she? Since when do they do their own shopping?’
Blaker sniggered. ‘She’s not like that,’ he said. ‘She’s the down-to-earth kind. She’s come up in the world. You wouldn’t want to know what she did before that. We were an item once. Still friends. She bought me this coffee. Buys me a drink now and then.’
There was a lingering note of pride in his voice. He tapped long, horny nails on the table.
In your dreams, Donald thought. Why would that shining woman with the figure of stone buy anything for an odorous loser like Blaker, but then there was such a thing as simple kindness. Donald scratched his head, adjusted his glasses, grinned. He knew it wasn’t his open face. The man was lonely and bored; he would talk to anyone. He needed to protest that he was better than he looked; nothing to boast about and therefore needing to boast.
‘I never get to meet women like that, not in my line of work,’ Donald said. ‘How come you get so lucky?’
Blaker sniggered again. He tapped his coffee spoon on the table. He smelt musty and his thin thighs were pressed round the leg of the table as if somehow restraining it from moving away.
‘I tried to rob her once, matter of fact. Not slowly, either. I was good then.’ He smiled sadly. ‘But she saw me coming, belted me round the head. Then she gave me some money. She said, if you need it enough to do this, you’d better have it. Turned out she’d even less of it than me. We got to be mates. I used to read the newspaper for her. Those were the days.’
The clock on the wall said eleven thirty. Between the stalls, Donald could see the stallholders’ pub on the other side of the road.
‘How about a drink?’ he asked. Oh God, it was so clichéd, it was a giveaway.
Blaker smiled, showing more of the teeth. ‘If you want information on our lady friend, copper, it’ll cost you more than that.’
Donald sighed. It was so galling to be wrong, and so nice to be given an opportunity, even when you did not want it. Always take the sideways option. They could talk about his lady friend, someone, something else, work backwards to him.
‘Such as what?’
‘A really good fuck up the arse,’ Blaker said, and roared with laughter. They both did, as if it was really witty. Blaker wiped his eyes with a grubby fist. The dirt was ingrained. Donald could not see those fingers tapping on a computer keyboard. Blaker leaned forward.
‘If you’re looking to bump into that one slowly, don’t even think of it,’ he whispered. ‘She’s a judge’s wife. A fucking judge, I ask you. We get all sorts here.’
Donald felt his world begin to spin.
‘I’ve got fuck-all to do,’ he said. ‘Let me buy you that drink.’
He was the man.
Rachel’s father arrived at six, resentfully early, out of place and feeling outmanoeuvred by the invitation in the first place, slightly sullen and anxious to get it over with. He carried his worry like a sack on his shoulders, looked like someone who had never gazed up at the stars and waited instead for them to fall on his head. Ivy bore his coat away to her room out of the way; he seemed to miss it. She towered over him. Dislike settled on his features. He said he was not feeling well. The preponderance of flowers in the small living room made him sneeze. He had bought a plant. He stared at Ivy, dwarfed by her, then stared at her again, as if she was a specimen.
The occasion was less disastrous than uncomfortable at first. They ate roast chicken, new potatoes, and asparagus which he did not like because he knew it was expensive, and he stared at Ivy.
‘I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere before,’ he said.
‘Must have been my starring TV role,’ she answered.
She was making an effortless-looking effort; she could have charmed blood out of a stone with the way she fussed over him. He forgot to ask questions. Mid-meal, he put down his knife and fork, turned to Rachel.
‘I bought my stuff so I can fix that tap in the bathroom. It was leaking last time.’
‘Oh, Ivy fixed it.’
‘And that dicky cupboard in the kitchen, the one with the hinge …’
‘It’s OK, Dad, it’s been fixed. Ivy …’
Silence fell. There was the scraping of cutlery on plates.
‘Place could do with a coat of paint,’ he said at last. ‘I expect Ivy could do that too.’
They removed from the dining table to the living end of the room, with coffee and chocolate. His temper had gone.
‘She needs a man about the place,’ Rachel’s father said to Ivy, still staring. ‘Only she can never get them to stop still. She puts them off. And now she’s living with a lesbian,’ he said, choking on his words, talking about Rachel as if she was not in the room. He was bitter with hurt. ‘That’s not how me and her mother brought her up. I know where I’ve seen you before. At Euston, wasn’t it, a few years since? Begging. Not many tall, blonde beggars. I never forget a face. I try not to look at beggars, never give them anything, but I noticed you. I thought, she’s young, she looks fit, why doesn’t that girl get a job?’
‘Dad …’
‘I think it might have been King’s Cross,’ Ivy said smoothly. ‘And I’m ever so respectable now. On my way out to work, as a matter of fact. Can I get you more coffee before I go?’
He seemed surprised by his own outburst, shocked by his anger but unable to stop it.
‘At least you work,’ he said. ‘That’s something. At least you’re not living on handouts. Unless you’re sponging off my daughter. What is it you do again?’
‘Clean floors and lavatories, mainly, wait on tables, and strip,’ Ivy said.
‘You what?’
Ivy got up and cleared the table. They could hear her in the kitchen beyond, then her footsteps going towards her room, scarcely audible in her rubber-soled shoes.
Rachel sat, stunned by her father. He was like a small child, shrill with temper. She was so angry she could not speak. He turned to her, moved by feelings he could neither understand nor control.
‘You fool. You silly fool. You always were a fool. You don’t know good from bad. You’re green as grass, you. She’s a bad ’un. A sponger.’
She left him sitting, and moved the few paces to Ivy’s room, where she knocked at the half-open door. Such simple rules of privacy had been easily established without discussion: knock before entering. This was the room where Ivy confined herself. Apart from the little improvements, the fixing of the tap, the cupboard hinge, and the influx of flowers, her presence was difficult to detect in the rest of the flat. An untidy nest in here, everything left tidy elsewhere, her own space deliberately small. Ivy was sitting on her bed, looking at the timetable she made each week to remind herself of which job to go to next, all written out in messy block capitals. She was crying. Rachel’s father’s unnecessary coat lay on the bed where Ivy had carried it when he first arrived. The first action of a hostess: take the coat, make him comfortable without it.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m really sorry. I don’t know what’s got into him.’
Ivy dashed tears from her cheek with her fist, attempted to smile. The room was tidier than it had been that morning, Rachel noticed guiltily. Ivy was up at five, while she herself slept, out again to work at nine forty-five tonight, shopping and cooking in between, only to be insulted. She had taken her sketches off the wall, replaced them with a poster of Matisse’s Leda and the Swan.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ivy said. ‘Please don’t. It’s not such a bad thing to be reminded of a past life. Any right-minded person would be suspicious of me.’
‘I could kill him,’ Rachel said.
‘Enough,’ Ivy said. ‘He’s maybe just a bit jealous.’
‘Jealous of what?’
‘You’re all he’s got, Rache. Try and understand. Don’t be hard on him on my account. He’s nice. At least he says what he thinks. He’s not very well. I’d better go.’
She slung her bag across her body and began to whistle, stuffed the timetable into the bag and left the room. Rachel followed slowly, returning to the living room to see her father cowering, as if waiting to be hit, hating him for that too.
‘Don’t get up,’ Ivy was saying gaily, bending to touch his shoulder. ‘It was nice to meet you, Jack, honest it was. Don’t mind me, will you? I look worse than I am.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Sorry.’
Rachel was dumbfounded. She had never known him say sorry before. About anything, ever. The door closed behind Ivy, leaving them alone. He looked small, hunched and miserable and he was not going to say sorry again.
‘Well, Dad. You were on good form. Are you all right to get home?’
‘Course I am. What time is it?’
There was no losing face in front of a daughter. He looking distressingly pale. No point discussing it. She fetched the coat and walked him to the Underground station in silence, watching dark fall around them. Wishing it was different, annoyed, wanting to run after him as he moved out of sight. He was so stupid and so small.
The theatre at the north end of Shaftesbury Avenue was showing a musical, with a Pop Idol guest star whose name was on the lips of everyone under twenty. The small cleaning team for backstage had arrived on foot, their arrival timed for shortly after the audience and the last of the cast were gone. They stood around smoking fags, waiting for everyone to disappear so they could get in. The show had overrun; it was the last night; there was a crowd of autograph-hunters and semi-frantic fans crowding round the stage door, jostling and chanting one of the songs, half hysterical with anticipation. Fuck them, one of the cleaners murmured under his breath, moving forward. If we can’t get in, we’ll still be here after the last train. Come on, shove through. The fans did not like it. They, too, were kept waiting.
The cleaners were undistinguishable from the other, larger crowd at first sight, which was why there was trouble. There were the same hoodies and hat-wearers. Closer up, the working group were generally older, scruffier, and free of the adrenaline rush that follows watching a performance. They were not as lightly dressed; no music beat in their ears. The chanters could not see why anyone else should be allowed inside as they waited. Their number was swelled by others drawn by the sound and the spectacle of a crowd. The night had not yet started.
They had to get in; they had a timetable; they would not be paid for being kept late. The cleaners were jostled and abused. One man in particular, shielding a half-clad girl who bellowed out the last song of the show, pushed forward. Where the fuck do you think you’re going? It was hot.
Aided by the stage-door staff, the group slipped through, jostled as they went, the man pulling at clothes. Only as the last of the six disappeared into the lighted doorway, and the loud girl began bellowing louder, and the Idol appeared, and the noise turned into hush and then into applause, did she notice her bloke, saying again, what the fuck, slipping to the ground and staying there as they surged forward and lost him in the roar of welcome.
Tomorrow’s headline. Man stabbed to death by rival fan.
Rachel went back into Ivy’s room. Looked around its smallness. It was not fair. It wasn’t bloody fair. Too many people had spat upon Ivy. Her father’s reaction was the same as many. It was not fair. Ivy deserved better.
Rachel’s father felt bad. What the hell had got into him, except a feeling of being made redundant all over again? At his age? It would have been the garlic in the chicken; he could have sworn there was something in it. She was a bad lot. He felt ill.
One train cancelled, a crowd on the next. It was later than he liked it to be. The crowd in his carriage were carefree and singing. The windows were stuck shut. He was sick and old and tired and ashamed, and horribly breathless, overheating in the coat. He fumbled in the pockets for the inhaler, then for the pills.
There was nothing there.