I know I should be the one to tell him. He deserves to hear it from me. But I’m not too sure how I would even begin to find the words. Words I know will say far too much – and yet, at the same time, nowhere near enough.
39.
Josh
December 2003
One night close to Christmas, I get home from teaching to discover the communal front door to my flat is wide open.
I glance around, expecting to see my upstairs neighbour emptying her bins, or fussing again about the buddleia growing through our gutters. But she is nowhere to be seen.
In the hallway, something feels off. I sense it instantly: atoms, shifting. The tangible, still-warm silence of someone having left in a hurry.
My flat door is open, too.
Inside, everything has been turned over. Drawers upside down, their contents leaking everywhere. Cushions flung from the sofa. The rug a crumple on the floor. Every picture frame dismantled.
I walk gingerly through the flat. Each room is the same: not a single item is where I left it. In the living room, some of the floorboards have even been jemmied up.
I know instantly what they were looking for.
More pills.
Fuck.
I head urgently into the bedroom, squat in front of the fireplace. I feel behind the surround, where my fingers make contact with a little plastic bag, the hard edges of a pill inside it. My shoulders sink with relief.
I decide to leave it in situ, since whoever it is that frisked my flat clearly ruled out this spot as a potential hiding place. So I’m pretty sure that, for now, it’s safe.
I get to my feet and shut all the doors. Then I call Wilf, and Rachel. I have to warn them.
The person responsible for this clearly believes – incorrectly – that there’s a spare stash of pills somewhere. And if they know I was living with Rachel at the time this all went down, it wouldn’t be a huge leap for them to conclude she might have some too.
Neither Wilf nor Rach picks up. So I decide to go to them.
Rachel lives closer, so I head there first. I haven’t yet been to her flat, in the two and a half years since she moved out. I’ve not even felt the urge to drive over there – those fleeting couple of minutes on Valentine’s night aside – since the reality of her new life is not an image I’ve been particularly keen to cement in my mind.
Her building smells brand new, and overwhelmingly of carpet cleaner. The lights are mortuary-bright. It feels the opposite of homely. More like an office block, or the kind of place they send you to sit your driving theory test.
I knock on Rachel’s wood-effect door and wait, heart pounding. But it is not Rachel who opens it.
Lawrence wipes his hands on a tea towel, shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He is wearing one of those irritating Statue of David aprons that was doing the rounds as a prank gift a couple of years back.
Dark hair, and unnaturally tanned for the middle of December. Eyes so green they look almost reptilian. From his wrist glints a giant metal man-bracelet, and I find myself wondering if Rachel gave it to him.
For reasons I will never understand, people are always saying that Lawrence and I look alike. Yes, from a distance, maybe, or if you’d been doing shots. But, up close, he’s far more blunt-featured than me, and overly preened. It’s ironic that he works infinance, since he is exactly how I would imagine a Ponzi scheme salesman to look.
I admit I am slightly envious of his gleaming jawline, though. After I took the pill, Wilf reminded me that if I shaved (I was due, at the time), my stubble would never grow back. So now, for me, it’s between looking permanently as if I’m either en route to a job interview, or crawling out of a tent after four nights at Glastonbury.
Lawrence fake-hesitates, the ghost of a smile crossing his face. ‘Josh, right?’
Nodding, I lie through my teeth. ‘Good to meet you.’
He takes the hand I’ve offered him, then shakes it so firmly he practically shatters the metacarpals.
From behind him drifts a smell I recognise well: frying chicken, garlic and tarragon. The scent of one of Rachel’s favourite dinners, when we were together. We got it from a Naked Chef recipe I pulled out of a magazine, and I cooked it so often I think even now I could probably remember how.
‘I need to talk to Rach. It’s pretty urgent.’
