Complicit (8 page)

‘Aren’t you going to start? I’ve got to be away by five.’

‘That’ll be no problem.’

‘You’re supposed to be in charge,’ he said. ‘You need to assert yourself from the beginning. Come on, now.’ He clapped his hands in a way that made me feel glad we’d split up and irritated that I’d let him into the band. There was certainly one too many guitars; he was right about that.

‘Quiet,’ he continued. ‘Bonnie’s got something to say.’

There was an ominous silence. I coughed. This was ridiculous. I was used to dealing with thirty hormonal teenagers. I could handle this.

‘I’m grateful you all came,’ I said, ‘and grateful to Sally for letting us play here.’ I looked around but Sally had gone. I’d last seen her running out of the room in pursuit of Lola. ‘This is mainly a chance for us to meet up and get to know each other. I thought we could start by having a go with something simple.’

‘Have you got any music?’ said Amos.

‘We need to talk about what we want to play. Maybe some of you have suggestions. But my first idea is that we could try a tune. I mean a very basic tune that I could play and then everyone can have a go at it on their own instrument. If it works, then it’s a fun thing to dance to and it can go on pretty much indefinitely.’

There was much bustle as people took instruments out of cases and tuned them. Guy knocked one of his cymbals over. Neal switched on his amp, which resulted in feedback that virtually shook the house. I looked at Hayden. He hadn’t taken his guitar out of its case. In fact, he hadn’t noticeably moved. Was he contemptuous? Amused? Bored? Had he finally realized what he’d got himself into? Well, I’d warned him.

With trepidation, I took out my banjo. It was crazy but I would hardly have felt less nervous if I’d removed my shirt and bra. The sight of it was greeted with a murmur of surprise.

‘What the hell’s that?’ said Amos.

‘Are you actually going to play it?’ asked Neal, grinning.

But Hayden finally stood up and came over to me. He lifted the banjo out of my hands and cradled it as if it were a newborn baby. Then he ran his hands over the strings, releasing a high, delicate sound. He smiled at me. ‘Good,’ he said, and returned to the sofa.

‘I’m going to play a tune called “Nashville Blues”. Sorry, Sonia, there are no words to this one.’

‘That’s a relief,’ she said, to general laughter.

‘Guy,’ I continued, ‘you follow me. You’ll just need brushes. And you, Neal, as well. It should be easy enough for you. Then, when we’re done, maybe someone else can pick up the tune and we’ll see how it goes.’ I fitted the picks onto my fingers and fiddled a bit with the tuning. Then I looked at Neal and Guy. ‘Listen to a few bars and then follow me. OK?’

One of the things I love about the banjo is that the first note of a tune sound tentative and when you get going it sounds as if a clockwork motor has started and two people are playing at once. As I got into the tune I saw a slow smile coming over Sonia’s face and she began to nod in time. When I got to the end I went into a vamp. Then I looked around. ‘Anybody?’ I said.

Before anyone else could do anything, Amos stepped forward with his guitar and started to play. It sounded awful, so awful that after a few bars it became literally impossible for anyone to continue and we all ground to a halt in such disarray that everybody was laughing. Amos turned bright red.

‘Well, that was interesting,’ I said. ‘And brave. Let’s start again.’ I looked around. ‘Joakim. You have a go.’

I played through the tune, then looked at him and nodded. He started to play, frowning with concentration, glancing at me. It was all right, not bad, but then he pulled a face, stopped and shook his head. ‘I can’t,’ he said, almost with a scowl. ‘Sorry. I just can’t.’

‘It was good,’ said Hayden, from the other side of the room. He stepped forward and took the fiddle and bow from Joakim’s hands. They looked tiny in his grip. ‘You did this, yes?’ He played the first notes just as Joakim had played them, glanced at me and nodded. I played the tune once more and looked at him. He smiled and played Joakim’s notes once more – then something mad happened. For a moment we weren’t in a sitting room in Stoke Newington, we were in the Deep South on J. J. Cale’s back porch with Ry Cooder and Earl Scruggs and God knew who else. As he played, Neal and Guy clung on, like fallen riders with a foot caught in a stirrup. He glanced at me in the way you do when you play together, keeping in time, signalling tiny shifts with your eyes. When he stopped, there was more laughter, but of a different kind.

‘That was amazing,’ Joakim stammered. His cheeks had flushed.

‘You did it,’ said Hayden, handing him back the fiddle. ‘You just need to let go.’

Amos was smiling as well. But not with his eyes.

After

We drove to Stansted in silence. It was three in the morning and the roads were practically deserted. Each time there were headlights in my rear-view mirror my mouth dried and my heart raced at the thought that it might be the police. This was what it must be like to be a criminal, I thought. But, of course, I
was
a criminal now. During the last few hours I had crossed a line into a different world.

At one point, Sonia ordered me to stop in front of a row of terraced houses. She got out of the car and dropped the plastic bag full of everything I’d collected in the flat into a dustbin that was standing on the pavement. She pushed it deep inside and wiped her hands on her trousers before climbing back into the car. I drove on. Later, we stopped at another bin and got rid of the rug.

‘Stop,’ said Sonia suddenly, as we reached the signs to the long-stay car park. I pulled over.

‘What is it?’

‘There are cameras at the barrier. When you take your ticket to get in, you’re staring into one.’

‘Then we can’t go there.’

‘Yes, we can.’ She opened the glove compartment and fished out a pair of sunglasses. ‘Put them on.’

‘But –’

‘Now your scarf. Tie it over your head. Oh, let me.’ She wrapped it tightly around and nearly throttled me with the knot. ‘Nobody would recognize you now.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll lie on the floor. Let’s go.’

She lay down in the back of the car and I drove into the car park. I took the ticket, the barrier rose and signs directed us to Zone G.

‘Hang on!’ Sonia said, from the floor. ‘Wait!’

‘What?’

‘Pull over. This is stupid. It’s not just at the entrance there are cameras – they’re everywhere. We haven’t thought this through properly. I must have been mad.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘On the train, as well. We can’t get the train back into London. We should never have come here.’

‘But we have. Do you want me to turn round and leave?’

‘I don’t know.’ For the first time she seemed confused. ‘What do you think?’

‘What do I think?’

‘Yes. Come on.’

‘Where are there cameras?’

‘Everywhere! On the shuttle – aren’t there? I can’t remember, but I bet there are. And in the airport. And in the station. And on the train. Everywhere we go, there’ll be photographs of us.’

‘Oh,’ I said. My brain was working very slowly. I squeezed the steering-wheel and stared at the rows upon rows of gleaming empty cars stretching in all directions. ‘So, how about if you get out here and go on alone? And I’ll leave the car in Zone G and then –’ I stopped.

‘Yes?’ Sonia hissed from the floor. ‘Then what?’

‘Then we can meet up at the taxi rank.’

‘Taxi?’

‘If I, in my sunglasses and scarf, leave the car here, and you get on the shuttle first and wait at the rank, I’ll follow a little later and we can catch a cab together. That way, nobody can connect us to the car.’

There was a silence.

‘Sonia?’

‘I’m thinking.’

‘We can’t go on sitting here.’

‘So we go separately and meet up again?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right.’

‘I’ll wait at the rank outside the airport.’

‘OK.’

‘Hang on – I haven’t got any money.’

‘We’ll have to get the driver to drop me off at the flat so that I can pick up my card and he can drive us to a cashpoint to get the money.’

‘Right.’

‘If I’ve got enough in my account to cover it.’

‘What if you haven’t?’

‘I’m sure I have,’ I said, without conviction.

As soon as we arrived at Zone G, Sonia climbed over to the passenger seat, opened the door and slid out. I saw her in my mirror walking rapidly away towards the shuttle stop. The car park was full and I had to drive up and down the rows before I found a gap. It felt very strange to be doing this alone. My body felt boneless and alien; my heart felt huge and pulpy. My breath was coming in short gasps. I reversed and then I started to tremble so much that I had to stop and make myself breathe slowly. What if I bumped into another car, set off an alarm?

Very slowly, I reversed into the space, pulled on the handbrake, switched off the headlights, turned the key, got out. It was nearly dawn. There was a stripe of paler sky on the horizon and the shapes of trees were beginning to emerge. I shivered, suddenly cold. I pulled off the sunglasses and left them on the passenger seat; took the scarf off my head and wound it around my neck, over the bruise, instead. I sat in the car and waited for the first shuttle bus to arrive and leave, taking Sonia away. Not until another car had arrived did I get out and walk over to the stop.

I got onto the bus at the far end, away from the driver, so that he wouldn’t get a good look at me. At first it was just me and a middle-aged man in a suit, puffy-faced with tiredness. Then, a few minutes later, the bus stopped and we were joined by a family of five, towing enormous suitcases on wheels and squabbling. I was very conscious that I didn’t look like someone about to go on holiday or to a business meeting. I had no luggage; I was wearing light clothes and didn’t even have a jacket. Surely I stood out, looked outrageously suspicious. I stuck my hands into my pockets, stared straight ahead, tried to appear nonchalant. I wished my hair wasn’t so short and spiky; I wished I’d taken the stud out of my nose and wasn’t wearing ripped jeans that were sodden around the hem and a damp T-shirt.

When we arrived at the terminal, I let everyone out of the bus before me. I was overwhelmingly tired and, as I stepped into the jostling crowds, felt as though I was under water. Everything was happening to someone else, someone who wasn’t me, who hadn’t done the things I had just done.

I waited for a couple of minutes, then went to join the queue for taxis. There weren’t many people in it yet – night flights were only just now arriving – and Sonia was the third in line. I went and stood beside her and she gave me a brief nod.

‘The centre of London,’ I said to the driver, when we climbed into the cab. I gave him Sonia’s address.

‘We can drop you off and then go to mine.’ I leaned forward and said, through the partition: ‘Is it all right if, when we get to my flat, you wait for me while I run and get my card, and then we go together while I get money out?’

He gave a shrug. ‘As long as I get the money,’ he replied.

‘I know,’ I said. I was looking at the meter that clicked forward every few seconds. I already owed him £5.60 and we hadn’t left the airport.

‘How come you’ve gone on holiday without your card?’

‘We weren’t on holiday,’ I said. ‘We were meeting someone.’

I wanted to be as vague as possible. And uninteresting. I didn’t want him to remember us. I sat back in my seat. Sonia had her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes were closed, but I could tell she wasn’t asleep. I opened my mouth to say something to her, but closed it again. After all, what was there to say? The night was behind us now. I closed my eyes too, and let the journey jolt through me. When I opened them again, we were turning into Sonia’s road.

Forty-five minutes later, I had paid the driver a hundred pounds and was in my nasty little flat, gritty with tiredness, buzzing with anxiety.

Before

We clinked glasses. Neal’s arm was almost touching mine on the table, and I could feel his warmth beside me. If I put my hand behind his head, fingers tangling in his dark curls, pulled him towards me and kissed him, I knew he would kiss me back. He would look at me with his crinkle-eyed smile, say my name as if he was learning it. Maybe we would go into the bedroom and he would unzip my very short green dress (three pounds from the local Oxfam shop) and lift it over my head, and we would be late for the rehearsal and everybody would guess, and Neal would be embarrassed but he would be happy, very happy. I knew that. A little shiver of apprehension went through me.

‘Cheers,’ I said.

‘Cheers.’ He didn’t smile but shifted imperceptibly in his seat so that our arms touched. For a second everything hung in the balance, but then my mobile rang and it was Sally, sounding busy and excited and also rather bossy, asking me to buy some lemonade on the way over because she had decided to make us some Pimm’s, just weak ones. It was such a lovely summer evening and Lola was at her mother’s for once so she needed to celebrate.

‘We should go,’ I said to Neal, and held out my hand to pull him to his feet. We stood for a moment, hand in hand, smiling at each other. Then he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the back, and when he let it go I touched his face very gently with the tips of my fingers. We could wait. I had all summer before me.

Walking towards Sally’s house, he said: ‘For a long while there was someone else.’

‘Yes?’

‘We lived together for almost three years.’ He wasn’t looking at me but straight ahead.

‘In your house?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought it looked as if a woman had lived there.’