The other thing about her is that she keeps her eyes on me throughout our conversation. I’m so distracted by how seldom she blinks that I almost forget my next line.
‘That’s wonderful, Mrs Hooper. My name is Tom Byrne, I’m a representative of the church down the road, the church of Christ Geographer – do you know it? – and although I’m sure you’re terribly busy, I was wondering if I might talk to you about our organ pipe campaign? It’ll only take a few moments.’ I clasp my hands as if in silent prayer that she’s free.
‘There isn’t a church down the road, as far as I’m aware.’ She looks at me in a rather discomfiting way. There’s a ghost of a European accent in there, but I can’t tell for sure which one.
‘Forgive me. A figure of speech – we’re about three roads over. We find it helps our fundraising efforts to stress that we’re local, you see!’ I give a little vicarish laugh.
‘I didn’t think people in the Church were allowed to fib like that. Isn’t there a headline somewhere about bearing false witness?’
I get the strangest impression just then that this woman knows exactly what I’m doing. But I also get the impression that she’s doing the same thing, that she knows that I know, and that while she doesn’t mind us continuing this game, we’re both well aware that a game is all it is. It’s a bit intoxicating, to tell you the truth. And that’s when something else strikes me.
‘Mrs Hooper, I hope you don’t mind my asking, but is there a chance you and I have met before?’
She smiles then, a wide, knowing grin which has absolutely nothing in common with the demure smile she gave me a minute ago as she opened the door. ‘I’m not much of a churchgoer.’ I’msureI’ve seen her before. When?
Just then, another woman calls from behind her. ‘Em? Are you there? We’ve found the stopcock—’
She turns, and says rather sharply to the unseen person in the hall, ‘I’m just speaking to this gentleman from the local church. I won’t be a minute.’ The other recedes, and a door slams on their footsteps. The woman turns back to me. ‘You were saying, about the organ?’
‘I was. It’s just … Oh, excuse me.’ I look down at my notes. ‘I seem to have got muddled here. Mrs Olive Hooper actually lives next door, at number nineteen.’
That gives her a knock. She looks at me with a bit of doubt for the first time, paws her hair behind her ear again. So itisan anxiety tic.
‘And your friend just there called you another name. Em, was it?’ I allow the gentlest note of ‘sorrowful clergy’ into my tone. ‘I wonder – is there something going on here that I should know about, madam?’
And that’s the point at which she leans out, grabs me by the collar and hauls me into the house.
3
‘All right. Who thefuckare you?’
The hall – spacious, wood-panelled, permanent aroma of mothballs – is not quite as I remember it. I know, I know, I should probably only be thinking of the young woman half-throttling me, but I’m good at taking in a lot on a first glance, and it seems like someone’s done up 17 Balfour a bit since I left it. No debris on the ground, floor tiles scrubbed and sparkling … Is that mirror new?
The one thing that’s stayed the same is the main feature – a gorgeous old box chair. It’s the kind that used to be used for sedans – it still has the iron brackets on the side for the poles. Whenever I come here, I like to spend half an hour sitting in the thing, imagining the total privacy it would have given you. Must have been rare even two hundred years ago. But that’sthe rich all over, I guess. The whole aim is to shield yourself from the world.
Decor aside, I have to concede I’ve lost a bit of authority here, given that the girl currently slamming me against the wall is about four inches shorter than I am and slightly built to boot. I break her hold by the undignified ‘thrash around’ method until she lets go of my shirt, but she keeps her face right up to mine.
‘Who are you?’ I glance down, because something is pricking my ribs. She’s holding a brass blade – how did she get hold of that? – which I dimly recognise as the old-fashioned letter-opener I admired but didn’t steal the last time I was staying here. Honestly, you try to have principles about personal property, and this is how the world rewards you.
‘Come on. Name? Tell me or you get this.’ The letter-opener is pretty blunt, but I don’t really fancy learning the hard way whether it can break human skin.
‘You won’t be able to stab me with that,’ I say. ‘It struggles with thick card.’
She twists her head and bellows, ‘Guys! Intruder!’
Footsteps; then two people enter the scene, respectively stage left and balcony.
The newcomer at stage left is another young woman. There’s no polite way of saying it, but she looks like a photocopy of the woman currently waving the letter-opener at me. Her hair is longer and tied up in a bun, and she’s slightly shorter, but all the same features are there in different proportions. She’s also wearing jeans and a jumper, whereas the onethreatening to slit me for my contents is a bit more glammed up. Maybe it’s because she’s not waving a weapon in my face, but I instantly warm to the second woman more than the one in front of me. I’m prone to that sort of snap judgement.
Up on the first floor – looking over the balustrade – is a tall black guy, broad too. On his top half he’s wearing a hoodie that saysMACRO DATA REFINEMENT(no idea). He’s holding an open laptop plus an extra power pack wedged into his left hand, and two phones in his right.
Both the newcomers converge on centre stage. The tall guy pockets his phones and carefully deposits the laptop on a side table – it’s running about eighteen programs, I can see from here – before returning to where the rest of us are standing.
‘Em, what is this?’
Em (Letter-Opener) stands back now her friends are here. Unhelpfully, she’s still between me and the door. If she wasn’t, I’d bolt in a second.
‘He tried to trick me into admitting I was the homeowner, and then he told me he knew it wasn’t my name. I think he’s a cop.’
