There was definitely a pattern to Rachel’s dealings with the judge, rather like the patterns of a dance. She would be on the one hand appalled by him, or reports of him, then she would see him and feel attracted first, before being repelled again. She had begun by loathing him on the basis of what he would call hearsay evidence, then she admired, then she was hopelessly attracted, then she was repelled, then she was attracted, and then she was confused. She could not believe he was the good man he seemed to her, and the wicked one he seemed to others who had known him so much of his life. Rachel was a novice in the affairs of the body and mind, but she knew that if she had met him without knowing anything about him, ignorance would be bliss, and she would have admired him. But even something as innocent as respect felt like treachery and she could almost have wished she hated him.
She referred to him as ‘the judge’ in her own mind when she thought of him, which was most of the time during the Tuesday and the Wednesday, simply to put him at a distance, make him a man without a name, and encourage herself to analyse objectively, instead of saying Carl. She tried to put her own feelings in a box marked Anonymous and close the lid, instead of spreading the contents out all over some clean floor, like she sometimes did with work documents, to see what caught her eye, to see a sequence, to see what did not fit, to notice what jarred, undistracted by what should have been there. Look at what she saw with her own two eyes, instead of assuming that what she had been told was true. But then she had never felt like this before. She had never felt drawn to the hideously selfish husband of a best friend before. It skewed everything.
I am so insecure, she wrote in the diary at work, that I fall in love with anyone who pays the slightest bit of positive attention to me. Anyone who takes me seriously. I’m a thirty-two-year-old virgin. Delete.
She looked out of the window of the office, and watched the people pass, far below. Too much time spent doing this. She kept looking because she was sure, early this morning, that she had seen Grace, stepping out with the rush-hour crowds disgorging themselves from the station, and she had been so sure it was Grace, because of the metallic hair and the way she walked, she had wanted to shout, STOP, and then run downstairs and find her, but waited instead for the figure to pass out of sight. Whenever she thought of Grace, she saw her walking with her own shadow trailing behind, the way she thought about Ivy. A person with a tall and elegant shadow.
It could not have been Grace. Grace was at home, mid-afternoon, when she rang, full of tales of the weather, until they began to speak in a strange kind of code, as if Ivy was listening.
Saturday OK, Grace? Oh, yes. But you’re coming Friday, aren’t you? Yes, I think so. Are you sure? If you want … Yes, I do want.
Have you met him? (This was Grace.) No, not actually, but we’ve spoken. How did you persuade him, darling, oh you are marvellous.
I didn’t persuade him, Grace, I threatened him, and then he volunteered. How easy it was to lie.
I shall have a splendid lunch, Grace said. Ernest is not quite himself. I long to see you. Is Ivy as busy as she says? Yes, thank God. Grace, did you ever meet any of Ivy’s friends? No, darling. I don’t think she had any other than lowlifes before she met you, I told you. Can you come soon, on Friday, I’m so nervous. And how’s your father? Truculent and uncommunicative. Oh my God, aren’t they all? Men, bloody men, I love you, dearest. I shall colour my hair scarlet, just to scare him. Take care, talk soon.
Is Ivy as busy as she says?
Two points, which she counted on her fingers. Ivy and Grace clearly chatted like starlings every day, imparted news back and forth in a way she had never guessed and Ivy never said. Ivy had always had friends, but no one Rachel had ever met. Like someone called Blaker.
She took Sam’s inhaler … it was the last straw.
Ivy had been out when Rachel got home on the Monday night. She was back late and left a note next morning. See you at drawing class on Wednesday … be good. Where did Ivy go when she did not come home?
Last class of term, and Rachel could not look forward to it because Ivy would be the model, whereas before it would make the evening. It was the keeping of secrets that made it different, that was all. The spasmodic sightings of Ivy, the communication by note and text which typified their shared existence was only normal flatmate stuff, with one working days and the other, more often, nights, but at the moment it felt as if they were avoiding one another.
Rachel’s father remained aloof, as if he too had something he did not want to tell her. He would like her to visit next week, please, when he had finished renovating the bathroom. And how was that friend of hers? Ivy whatsername?
Fine, Dad, fine.
Don’t you miss that class of yours.
She took Sam’s inhaler … it was the last straw. Things don’t fall out of pockets. She must focus. The week would go in a flash. She was sure she had seen Grace. No, she was not sure of anything.
She read a newspaper she found lying around, for distraction, and then put it down. Full of the usual crap. Death in ambulance unsolved. It was easy to read about London being a dangerous, violent place, and ignore it entirely and effortlessly when you lived in the heart of it. She threw the paper away. That was the London her father feared, not the London she knew.
Towards the end of the long Wednesday afternoon, Rachel was called down to the front desk of her office building, two floors down, with a message that that there was a delivery for her, and the delivery person would like a signed receipt. Unusual, but she went, anything to move.
In the foyer of the building she saw a bright bouquet of flowers on the desk, and beside it, dwarfing it in colour and size, stood Sam Schneider, dressed in white and looking dazzling. She could not help it: his presence created a frisson of shock and a feeling of being intruded upon on her own territory, but he was also instantly familiar, and he made her smile.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’
He made an exaggerated bow, scooped the flowers off the desk, handed them to her, and spoke as if he was running in a race.
‘Dad sent me. He’s got me doing errands, since I’m freed up and he never is. In return for which he may have to pay me back with menial work, such as washing and ironing, at which he excels, did you know that? And basically he trusts me slightly more than Interflora.’
‘They’re lovely,’ she said, burying her nose and her embarrassment in the sweet scent of the flowers. There were jasmine and roses in there. She did not know what to say.
‘Or rather,’ Sam said, ‘he trusts my taste in choosing floral tributes for beautiful women better than his own, done over the phone. Do you really like them?’
‘Of course I like them,’ she laughed. ‘How couldn’t I? Can I buy you a drink or a coffee, or would you prefer a more conventional tip?’
Sam doffed an imaginary cap and grinned at her.
‘I’m not allowed to take bribes, miss, honest, and I don’t usually demean myself with errands either, except when I’m curious. The old meanie hasn’t sent flowers to anyone except his clerk in a million years, so please don’t send them back.’
‘I shan’t, I promise, but surely I can give you some reward?’
Sam winked, ludicrously.
‘Nope. I’m off on holiday. You could, you know, look after him while I’m away. You’re definitely in with a chance.’
Then he waltzed away, leaving her extraordinarily light-headed. She never knew quite what to do with someone who was pleased to see her. There was a note with the flowers, which said, Thanks for being yourself. See you Saturday at twelve, or before?
Better not before. When she phoned Carl to thank him, half hoping not to reach him, they talked for an hour, about very little other than the flowers on her desk. What a pity she could not take them home. Ivy would want to know who they were from.
She stayed late at the office and got to the drawing class early, light in heart. The corridor leading to the designated room through the labyrinth of the college was cool and dusty, but the room itself was hotter than an incubator. The flowers would have wilted. Sweaty, bad-tempered, hot-from-malfunctioning heat, left on for the last model with no clothes, still going full blast hours later. Rachel switched it off. She wanted to open the windows, which were set high in the wall, and unable to find a way, left the door open for a faint draught to flow through. In spite of her distractions and the ridiculous heat, Rachel looked at the unkempt, scruffy, paint-smeared place with great affection. In those black old days when she had first sidled in, it was a place she had loved on sight, so much so she liked being early, breathing it in and being the good girl who put out the chairs for the majority who were late, as long as she could avoid the Plonker, who was often early too, on account of not having much more of a life than she did then. It was the last day of term; she did not know if she would ever come back, but she thanked this room for what it had done for her in the dog days of winter and the darkest days of gloom. In this ugly, beautiful space, she had discovered a talent and a whole new world. She began to put out the plastic chairs, looked around for the equally filthy plastic stands on which they would balance the boards, and then she noticed that the room was even more untidy than usual. Chairs had been knocked over by the last class in a stampede to leave; must be the heat. Rachel was back on familiar, if borrowed territory, saying tut, tut, tut, under her breath, laughing at herself, looking at the clock, which told her she had ten minutes before the teacher came in, and why was she always such an early bird? It had been nerves, at first.
She heard him before she saw him. A moaning sound, coming from the makeshift little cubicle where the model disrobed behind a limp curtain and came out, into the heat, waiting for instructions. The cubicle was nothing but a corner, conveniently close to the washbasin and its single cold tap, behind the same curtain. The moaning went on. Rachel yanked back the curtain.
The Plonker was behind it, sitting there with his head between his hands and his elbows on his knees, keening to himself. His summer uniform for a hot day was baggy shorts and sandals, exposing large white thighs and hairy calves, and he was a man who should never have worn shorts in public. Winter and summer, he always wore the wrong clothes. Too many, too much, or too few. The wrong clothes, chosen with care in furtherance of a long-dead image taken from a film he had loved featuring a hero with a different figure, and jazzed up by a silly scarf.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Agghhhhh!’
It was a loud yell in the quiet room. Norman put his hands round his neck and jumped to his feet, then slumped back down heavily on to the stool on which he sat. He wound the silly scarf tightly round his neck with trembling fingers, and coughed loudly. Then he removed one hand from his neck and waggled his fingers. Rachel did not know if this was an apology for the scream, or what it meant. She had a sudden image of what her father might have looked like as a young man. He would have been the sort everyone labelled fusspot or plonker, or something of the kind. It didn’t make him bad. It gave him a futile bravery. Norman, the Plonker, looked sad.
‘What’s the matter?’
He looked up at her beseechingly and made a pathetic attempt to shrug.
‘I thought it was Ivy coming back,’ he whispered.
‘What do you mean, coming back? She’ll be here any minute, along with everyone else. What are you doing in there? Come on out.’
He shook his head.
‘You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know. You don’t know anything. I’m glad it’s you, I thought it was her, coming back. She came ten minutes ago. She told me if I said anything she’d kill me, and she would, I know she would, I …’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I was with her that night,’ he gabbled. ‘She ran away from me, she got in the thing, she did it. It had to be her. You’ve got to tell her I’ll never tell anyone, never, ever, ever. She put her hands round my neck and she squeezed.’ He fingered the scarf, scratching at it. ‘She said …’
They could hear footsteps coming towards the open door. He began to stutter. ‘You’ve got to know what she’s like. She said if I ever …’
Rachel hauled him to his feet and out into the room. ‘Don’t you mean,’ she said, ‘that Ivy said she wouldn’t go out with you or sleep with you at the point of a gun? Isn’t that what she said when she found you hanging round, waiting for her? Isn’t it?’
He looked at her helplessly. He had the expression of a man who was never believed.
‘Tell her I won’t tell,’ he muttered.
Ivy and the teacher swept into the room together, he small and squat, she tall and lithe, an incongruous couple. Ivy knew all the gossip and could talk the teachers’ talk. Ivy could talk anyone’s talk; she remembered everything they said. She beamed at Rachel and Norman, embracing them both with her smile, stepped across to Rachel and kissed her on the cheek.
‘Hello, hello, here we are again, end of term too. Fun time. We’ve got crisps and wine for the interval. It’s a very cheap and refreshingly nasty red. We’ll have to make up for it later.’
The Plonker turned away and picked up one of the fallen chairs. He was trembling again. Ivy caught Rachel’s eye and raised her own eyebrows, as if to say, what’s this about? and Rachel responded with a ‘search me’ shrug.
‘I’ll think about that,’ Rachel said, grinning back. They had always been conspirators, Ivy and she. It was good to feel that way.
There was a clatter of more footsteps, the main posse arriving with a minute to spare, bringing in a draught of sound and the reassuring presence of the outside world, sorting out easels and stools and boards. Rachel found her familiar place. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ivy detour on her way to the cubicle, to touch Norman on the arm and smile hello. He flinched away from her, then smiled back. Nothing wrong then. Just besotted.
She tried to will herself back into the state of utter concentration on the class and the sheer exercise of drawing which had so beguiled her in the first place, and the magic worked, as the still overwarm room fell silent, apart from distant outside noises and the shuffle of bodies and paper. She was sitting opposite the Plonker, who had deliberately placed himself at the far side of the room, not close to anyone else for once. He seemed to have pulled himself together.
‘Three-minute poses, please.’
Ivy stepped out of the cubicle, jumped up on to the wooden podium and smiled at them all. She stood stock still with her legs apart, one hand on her hip, the other hanging by her side, head in profile, looking away from Rachel. They had agreed a long time ago that whenever Ivy was the model in this class, she would never look directly at Rachel, because it made them giggle, and when that started it could not be stopped, like laughter in some holy place. Ivy always looked away. Rachel began to draw quickly, get down the outline and place it on the page. It was an easy pose, Ivy knew to begin with easy poses. A quick glance to memorise it, mark the outer dimensions of head and feet and centre body, then go. She glanced up, past Ivy, and saw the Plonker’s face, gazing up. His mouth was open; the gaze was one of fear and adoration, like someone imploring a favour from the effigy of a cruel saint. His scarf had slipped; in the harsh light, Rachel could see that his neck was red and his face was pale. She looked away.
‘Change pose.’
Ivy moved slightly, changed the angle and let both arms drop by her sides, head flung back. She flexed her fingers but was otherwise still. Rachel could see scratches on her upper arms, red against her tanned skin, shockingly bright scratches which must have bled. The words road kill came into her mind, Ivy washing blood from her hands. When and where had she got those? Where had she washed the blood away? Not in their bathroom, surely. Looking at the whole figure, Rachel had a sudden, alternative picture of her, startlingly different from the first. Not an animal, not the hunted running creature she had first seen, but a fighter, curling and uncurling her fingers, ready to do battle, poised and trained. A Boadicea who would cut off her own breast the better to hoist a weapon. A ruthless physical opponent, something merciless. For one brief moment, watching those large hands moving slightly, and the back held taut, Rachel was frightened of her.
The class went on. The image faded in the long poses, when Ivy knelt and leaned forward, exposing her long back, her face concealed, her arms stretched before her, like a supplicant making an obeisance, utterly defenceless. Abused, waiting to be kicked, the scratches on her arms making her victim rather than predator. That was the image Rachel wanted to keep and treasure. The class went on. The interval was spent drinking bad wine; the temperature cooled and Ivy made them laugh. When they resumed their seats for the delayed second half, the Plonker had gone.
‘Good,’ Ivy said, passing Rachel’s seat. ‘Are we having a drink? I feel like getting absolutely plastered. Let’s.’ She held out her arms. ‘Look at this. We had to take out some hideous dead plants from the back of an office. Prickly stuff, the bastards. Look what it did.’
The words echoed in Rachel’s head. I don’t believe you. I just don’t believe you. You were fighting. You don’t get nail scratches at work, not even your work.
She found herself repeating to herself the words I don’t believe you, to stop herself saying them out loud, and saying instead, ‘Honestly, Ivy, if you go round hitting people, you’ve got to make sure they don’t fight back,’ and turning away to gather her things, feeling a huge sense of loss because it was such an obvious and glib lie. Ivy grabbed her by the arm. She could feel her hand burning into her bare skin, like being held by hot steel.
‘I didn’t say anything about hitting people,’ she said angrily. ‘I said I was moving prickly rubbish.’
‘Well I don’t think you should be asked to do that on what you get paid,’ Rachel said briskly. ‘Five pounds an hour does-n’t include danger money. Or having fifteen people in a class wondering if you’ve been snuggling up to a tiger.’
Ivy’s eyes lit up with delight at the very idea.
‘That’s what I hoped they’d think,’ she said. ‘But they’re so polite, aren’t they, they didn’t even ask, not even Teacher. C’mon, let’s go and forget the taste of that red stuff. Drown it in something better. Did I tell you I get ten pounds an hour for the next weekend? Three days solid, they want. I’ll be worth a fortune, so I’m paying.’
Go with the flow, it would all be fine. Get down a bottle of wine, wish the week away, stop consulting that little nag in the heart which felt like a stone, the feeling she had seen something she should not have seen, and wished she hadn’t. They went out into the light sky and the traffic sound, lulling now at nine at night, with the imprint of Ivy’s vice-like fingers still on her arm, and the temperature rising again with the pressure of hundreds of people out there, hunting for a good time.
And there, by the entrance, was DS Cousins, with his droopy moustache and a cigarette in hand, waiting to one side and leaning against the wall like a person waiting to catch a bus from the nearby stop. Rachel recognised him instantly, saw his face and somehow heard again his voice on the phone. He was not looking at her; he was looking across the road. Her response was instinctive. At first she had the absurd desire to barge into him and push him out of the way, and then all the protective urges she had ever felt towards Ivy came in to play and the rest was forgotten; she linked arms, pulled down Ivy’s cap, and marched her forward, staring ahead herself, talking hard, until they were well past him. Then she shuffled Ivy along even faster, until the West End pavement crowds swallowed them. Ivy allowed herself to be carried along, laughing that Rachel’s enthusiasm for a decent glass of wine was a bit extreme, wasn’t it, had the end-of-term class been that bad, and what was the matter with the Plonker, until they detoured left and right and then into the basement bar where Ivy had taken her first.
Ivy pushed through to the front of the crowded room; people made way for Ivy. Rachel grabbed a seat, sat down heavily with the drawing bag banging against her knees, and drew breath. She felt less rage than disappointment. Judge Carl’s tame policeman, his sad-looking jackal, had been sent to wait for them. He wanted Ivy; he had been primed, twice, as to where he might find her. And if DS bloody Cousins was to get to Ivy now, whatever innocent thing he wanted to ask, Rachel’s underhand dealings with Carl would be revealed. Sure, they would have to come out sometime, but not yet, not until there was a tangible result.
Why hadn’t she asked Carl about that damn man? She had simply forgotten. DS Cousins could ruin the plan. Rachel looked towards the door. No one had followed them. DS Cousins in his shirt and tie would stick out a mile in here, and still she felt they were both pursued.
She was so tired, so very tired. Anxiety sapped energy, but more exhausting still was the solid knowledge of what she had observed in Ivy’s naked, speechless body, in Norman’s face: that Ivy might be sweet, generous and kind, but she was also a savage; she had never been entirely powerless, and she had done something terribly wrong and was revelling in it.
Ivy was as high as a kite, sailing on nothing but city air and two hours of being admired, pushing her way back to their table with a bottle of wine and two glasses, in party mood, the way she often was after modelling. She sat down and leaned forward confidingly, full of mischief.
‘Now, shall I tell you what really happened with the Plonker? What an idiot! Why are we feeling sorry for him?’
‘What happened? Why’s he so scared of you?’
‘Oh, pooh, he’s not scared, just embarrassed. I dropped my kit off in the room before class. I was going to go and get a coffee. And he was in the damn cubicle. Waiting for you.’
‘For me?’
‘Yes, darling, for you. Wanted to leap out and say boo and charm you, I expect. You’re the only other one who’s always early. He was waiting for you. A joke. He wanted to play a joke. Fancy him waiting for you. You’ve got a major fan there.’
Despite herself, Rachel laughed.
‘What is it he wants you to know he’ll never tell?’
Ivy’s expression changed, fleetingly, and then she grinned.
‘He knows my dark secret. He hangs around. He saw me,’ here Ivy put her hand to her brow in a gesture of profound and dramatic shame, ‘pinching the stationery. Yes, I confess it, I also pinched a pen. And do you know his sad secret?’
‘Nope.’
‘He wants to be a … model.’
There was a sudden common vision of sad, slack Norman standing on the podium with no clothes and everything pointing down. Cruelly, they both laughed. I don’t believe you still echoed in Rachel’s mind, but she laughed and searched for oblivion via Chardonnay.
Donald watched them go. He nodded to Blaker across the road. Blaker made a thumbs-up signal. ID confirmed. She’s going to kill him, and she has someone to help her. Well, God help the poor sod, with two furies like that after him. Donald could no more have tried to split up those two than he could have climbed Everest, and it had never been his intention. All he had done was gone in and enquired if a model of that name worked at the college, to be given the information that yes, she did, she would be here later; and then he had gone away, and come back just to get a look at her, and he’d been lucky in that. Rachel Doe being there as well had surprised him. Were they inseparable, as well as living together? She didn’t look like a dyke, Miss Doe, but you never could tell. What kind of a bitch was it cosied up to a man and his ex-wife, and pretended to the man she didn’t know where the ex-wife lived? For what?
The depth of Donald’s wife’s friendships with other women never failed to surprise him. Women, it seemed to him, would do anything for one another when push came to shove. It was what made them so radically different to men. Men had limits.
Better get along and keep his appointment with the judge. Sorry about the lateness of the hour, sir, but I’ve got to be doing this in my own time now. There’s another panic on.
Thank you, said the judge, I appreciate it.
But I bet he won’t listen to me. I must temper what I say, keep it to facts and questions.
Such as why does your wife want to kill you, and who is it who is going to help?
It looked like Rachel Doe. Shame about the evidence.