Girl Seven (19 page)

I gestured at the body. ‘But—’

‘Trust me, this part of my job isn’t a spectator sport.’

I spent the day sleeping and pacing and feeling lost, really fucking lost, in the sparse flat that Mark had taken me to, and didn’t go into work the following night. I’d wanted Mark to get back to me but when he had, in the early afternoon, he had nothing to say and nothing to add. He didn’t tell me what he had done with the body or what state the flat had been left in.

I’d showered, dressed in clothes that would cover the bruises running up my sides and down my arms, and walked to the Underground in time to watch Daisy leaving, but not locking up.

That was a sign that Noel was still in there.

It was never Ronnie at this time of night. He had too much to return home to.

For the first time in a while I felt fragile. I’d become all too aware of everything that could break, shatter, puncture, die. My eyes were hot and loaded with fatigue.

Consciousness was a bitch.

I crossed the road to the front entrance and let myself in through the black featureless doors.

The Underground was so calm and welcoming when it wasn’t polluted with sad and desperate men. Nearing four in the morning it had the sweet smell of the aftermath of a wedding reception, hopeful and innocent.

Noel was sitting on the floor with his back against the bar, mixing himself a Whiskey Mac. He looked up and, thank fuck, his first instinct was to smile.

‘Thought you were Daisy,’ he said, patting the floor. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Fancied someone to talk to.’ I sat down on the floor also.

The walls, tables and drapes loomed around us.

‘Daisy made up a new word for me today,’ he said, snorting. ‘It was getting busy about midnight, and she comes up to me and says, “It’s totally rammo-jammo in here.” You ever heard that phrase?
Rammo-jammo.
It really tickled me, that one.’

‘That’s not new,’ I said, prodding one of his feet with mine. ‘You’re just old.’

‘Watch it, whippersnapper. You’re not too old to put over my knee.’ He smirked and shot a filthy grin in my direction. ‘Darsi speaks very highly of you, by the way.’

I adopted my best impression of coyness. ‘Why did you think that with Darsi I’d make an exemplary house call all of a sudden? You know me, I make small children cry.’

‘I could tell you’d make grown men cry. Too smart-arse for your own good.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you, you’d never get your head back out the door.’

‘Oh, go on!’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Honestly, he didn’t really want me to send anyone, even though I definitely owe him a couple of favours... and he said it was because I wouldn’t be able to send anyone intelligent enough. If I could send someone who could hold up a proper conversation for more than ten minutes he’d accept. That was the bet, and apparently I won.’

‘And you sent me? To win a bet?’

‘Seven, come on. Who else was I gonna send? Coralie mixed up “paediatrician” and “paedophile” when she was trying to read the paper the other day... though her English isn’t that great.’

‘What about Abigail? She’s the history student.’

‘Seven.’ He looked serious all of a sudden. ‘
Obviously
I sent you.’

I accepted the compliment and changed the subject. ‘To be fair, if I looked like Coralie I wouldn’t even have bothered learning to speak. I’d just wait around for people to keep turning up and offering me stuff. Why would you want any­thing audio distracting people from a face like that?’

He shrugged. ‘Meh, she’s all right. She’s just... French. They all look the same.’

After an intense stare, Noel picked up his drink and held it up next to his face for me to observe.

‘Does this look like a problem to you?’ he asked, as if the question had been bothering him for a while. ‘Does this look like a suicide?’

‘Um... no. Not yet anyway. I’ve never seen a suicide up close.’

He looked sideways at the glass and put it down in front of him. ‘Do I look out of control?’

‘No. I’m not sure. What are you talking about?’

‘Just some bad stuff.’ He shook his head, and unbuttoned his shirt a little more. ‘Something happened with work and we’ve fucked up a bit. But it’s weird how your personal and professional lives start to mirror each other after a while. No, not weird, I mean... fucking sad.’

‘What do you mean,
does this look like a suicide
?’

He picked up the Whiskey Mac and drank it in one. ‘Caroline says I’m trying to kill myself with it. That I’m just too much of a pussy to do it another quicker way and put a gun in my mouth or something.’

I would have taken his hand but he was too far away. Mov­ing towards him would seem too self-conscious a gesture. I just let him talk.

‘When I was about your age I tried to top myself.’

I couldn’t disguise the sharp intake of breath.

He looked up at me and I was embarrassingly close to crying. ‘What?’

‘Just...’ I looked down, locking my jaw and tightening my throat against the tears. ‘Sorry, I just... You can’t just tell me stuff like that, you know.’

‘Oh, love.’ He reached out an arm for me. ‘Don’t get upset about it, it was ages ago.’

I pulled myself forwards with my feet and wedged myself under his arm as he mixed another Whiskey Mac several inches from my face. It wasn’t where I wanted to be most in the world, but it was damn close. He smelt like his office and smoke; his clothes smelt like four in the morning, when the drink and sweat, drugs and shouted conversation had soaked into them.

However much I didn’t want to, I realized he probably wanted to talk about it, and asked, ‘Why did you do it the first time?’

‘Why did I try?’ He shrugged, putting the bottle of whiskey down between my legs. ‘It’s hard to say really, cos I was young and when you’re young everyone just thinks you’re being dramatic. I even thought I was, when I woke up and I was on the way to hospital. I thought it was a bit pathetic.’

I looked up at him but he wasn’t looking at me.

‘I, um...’ He smiled. About what, I wasn’t sure. ‘I wish I was a bit more working class growing up. It would have given me an excuse to say it’s been a struggle, but it hasn’t been. I had everything I wanted. Money always came easily... My parents had this holiday home in Devon and I was staying there for a long weekend with them. The first night I was on my own and I went down to the beach and into one of the caves while the tide was out... and I necked a load of paracetamol.’

‘Right.’ I nodded, as if it was nothing.

‘I mean, I didn’t realize at the time that that’s the worst of the ways to do it. Especially if it was a cry for help or what­ever. Because paracetamol is weird, it fucks you up slowly from the inside, so you wake up in hospital, think you’re OK, but get told you’re going to die in a couple of days anyway.’ He took a smaller sip of his drink. ‘But mine wasn’t a cry for help, I really tried. But it’s hard, much harder than you’d think. I threw most of everything up and a sea swimmer who saw me go into the cave found me and called someone.’

Alongside all my other aches there was a physical jolt of pain in my chest.

I choked out, ‘Why?’

He rubbed his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose, beneath the slight monobrow that Daisy always made fun of. ‘I... think I just find it all hard. I find living really hard. They never tell you how hard it’s going to be, do they?’

I swallowed.

He hugged me a bit tighter and met my eyes. ‘I think that’s why we get on. You know what I mean, don’t you?’

I nodded, gritting my teeth.

‘I thought it was just a young-person thing, but it’s not. It never went away. Sometimes I wake up and I’m just fucking... crushed under how fucking difficult it is to be
here
.’

‘And you’re always asking me why I’m into
all that medi
­
tation shit
?’ I didn’t manage to smile for very long. ‘Fuck, Noel, I’m... sorry, it’s just hard for me to hear you say things like this. What’s brought this on?’

‘Argh.’ He waved a hand in front of my face. ‘Work stuff, and a bit of Caroline stuff. But at least the work stuff can be sorted out.’

‘Yeah?’ I repressed a shudder.

‘Yeah, luckily we can hire people to sort stuff out for us.’

I searched for the best way to ask. ‘People like Daisy’s fella? Whatsisname...? Nic?’

He laughed in a way that made my skin crawl and he hug­ged me. ‘Ha! Yes, precisely.
Exactly
, in fact. We’ve got him staked-out and... It doesn’t matter, you don’t wanna know about all that bollocks.’

Fuck.

I wanted to extricate myself from his embrace but it would look wrong, so I sat there, tense and certain he would be able to feel the lies.

‘I need to stop,’ he said, handing me the other Whiskey Mac. ‘You have it.’

‘Come on, you
know
I don’t. Jeez.’

‘Yeah. Why is that?’ He cocked his head. ‘Are you like me? Is it your
thing
?’

‘No. I just don’t like things that make me feel out of control.’

‘I hate control. When I drink it makes me feel like I don’t have that pressure to remember to keep breathing. Otherwise it’s just like... in and out, in and out, in and out...’

Sometimes I had been afforded a glimpse, a real sign of the struggle, but I’d never known before how unhappy he could be. I thought of him now, walking into a cave with a bottle of pills and a bottle of something else. As suicide methods went, it was very him. He wasn’t exhibitionist or callous enough to do it in a way that would traumatize too many innocent people, like jumping in front of a train or hanging himself for a friend or family member to find.

I opened my mouth to tell him everything. I knew it was the right thing to do. But there was too much everything to even start.

My heart sped up.

But there was no opening sentence that would make him understand, no singular phrase that could adequately excuse everything I’d done, and I doubted I’d be given the chance to elaborate much beyond that.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ I said, instead of anything important. ‘Maybe you should stop then.’

‘My dad was an alcoholic.’

I didn’t know what to say to that.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, buttoning his jacket up. ‘I’m starting to over-share. It’s weird, sometimes I feel like if I tell you everything you’d be able to sort it out. Basically I think you’re the Oracle.’

He stood and pulled me up with him into a fierce hug, so fierce that my back began to hurt. When he loosened his grip a bit he held my face in both his hands and I started praying so hard that he would take me home.

‘Want to come stay at mine?’

It felt as though he was holding me upright, stood there with his forehead against mine, so close that the flaws in his face blurred.

‘Yeah, yeah, I’d really like that.’

I’d considered taking the daggers with me in my bag, but they mattered less if I was at Noel’s. I went back to his flat and slept and woke up and fucked with my eyes half closed and no one tried to kill me. I thought about going back to Mark’s temporary safe house, carrying on living, and it made me feel so empty inside I wanted to die. But Noel reached out for me in his sleep and made everything seem OK, for this one night at least.

In the morning I awoke before Noel and paced around his flat, anxious to move about in space, oddly claustrophobic. I was a rat in a corner spitting and scratching and hissing but it didn’t make a difference, because now I knew Nic Caruana was going to kill me anyway, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I dressed and sat down in the middle of Noel’s living-room floor and tried to meditate, remind myself of myself. I still had control. No one else was master of this body, so I could still find a way out of this.

Don’t die, I thought, deciding it should become my motto, my one rule to live by.

Don’t die.

Noel had asked about my bruises and I told him I’d had a scrape with a car.

‘You’re lovely,’ he’d said anyway.

I wanted to speak with Leo Ambreen-King again, but I had to wait for Mark to call.

I wanted to know whether the Russians wanted or needed my help any more.

I wanted to leave, just leave, but that was out of the question.

I was sick of waiting for everyone.

Standing up, I went back through to the bedroom and looked at Noel from the doorway. His expression was serious and scowling in sleep. I took a step forward, as though I was going to kiss him on the forehead or something, but then left, resisting the urge to rifle through his flat looking for... something.

I closed the front door quietly and walked down the cor­ridor feeling lost.

At the elevators I stopped, waiting for one to rise, and the doors opened.

A woman hesitated in front of me for a moment, wearing a pencil skirt and blouse, with bare legs and a leather shoulder bag and dark red hair that looked dyed, but I knew it was natural, because I knew her, and I was certain she knew me. She was pale, gamine, blue-eyed with a fierce stare: the sort of woman who wore her intellect on her face.

She only hesitated for a moment, then stepped out of the elevator. She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring but she saw me look for it.

We swapped places.

I looked over my shoulder and she looked over hers before disappearing from view.

Forgetting to press a button, I stood there staring at the wall outside, feeling short and awkward and plain and sick. I’d never been interested in comparing myself to other women before. As far as I was concerned, most people looked the same. I didn’t attach much importance to exceptional facial features, so this particular brand of shame and inadequacy was unfamiliar.

Caroline was so beautiful I felt like a pre-pubescent idiot looking up at the adult they wanted to be when they grew up.

I came to and smacked the ground-floor button too hard, leaning against the back mirror as the doors closed, wondering what the fuck I was doing here. What the fuck had I ever been doing here really? As if I was seriously competing with her, the woman who looked like
that
.