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CHAPTER
FIVE

At night, through a motorway spray, it’s impossible to see the faces of those who pass by in the next lane. Scores, hundreds even, of nameless, faceless drones, nothing more than hazards to be avoided, reminders to check your stopping distance. Even when unfettered and unobscured, in the supermarket or in a busy shopping street on a weekday afternoon, they serve only to delay your progress, bumbling around in front of you when they should surely all be at work. In short, strangers seem altogether less than human. They’re just something that gets in the way.

Anyone who’s stood on a crowded corner wondering where so many people are in such a hurry to go has, then, unwittingly uncovered the perplexing irony of human existence. As you stand in idle surveyance, taking a break from the million and one stresses coursing continuously through your mind, it occurs to you that the withered old lady holding up that increasingly irate bus queue has a life not far removed from your own. She has a family who don’t call her often enough, a home she can’t afford to maintain, a pet she feeds before feeding herself. She has a birth certificate and a shoe size. She sees the same sky, the same pavement, the same faceless drones that you see. If you tickle her, she’ll laugh. Sometimes she’s happy; sometimes she’s sad. Mostly, she’s resigned. She has thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears. Eighty-eight years of vivid memories.

Her name is Ivy, and she’s been a widow for almost a decade. Right now she has somewhere to go. You don’t know where that is; only she does. Later, when Ivy gets home, she’s going to feed her cat a tin of store-brand chunks-in-jelly before she unpacks the shopping. The cat, a long-haired tabby named Foggy, will then watch her collapse to the kitchen floor with a breathless gasp, clawing at the center of her chest. In exactly a week, Gemma, Ivy’s granddaughter, makes a rare and unannounced visit to show off her ultrasound photos. There’s no answer at the door; the lights are on, the curtains closed, and the cat screeching to be let out. Through the frosted glass she can make out an untidy pile of letters and bills on the doormat. Naturally concerned, she fetches a spare key from the car and lets herself in. The cat bolts.

For eighty-eight years, the world revolved around Ivy. That which she could see and touch was real to her, everything else a mere figment. Departing visitors, setting off back to their own lives, were swiftly dispatched from her conscious thoughts, taking with them all tangible evidence of their existence. She would lock her doors to the outside world and settle down with a cup of tea, but for Foggy entirely alone in her world. And yet conversely, whilst the conversation in that departing car might revolve around Ivy for a handful of miles, the reality of
her
existence would soon be forgotten in favor of the more immediate stresses and strains pervading the lives of Peter and Janet. Out of sight, out of mind.

Every human being occupies a space at the dead center of his or her own universe. When Ivy’s universe imploded, when she made the transition from leading lady to cat food, the myriad separate worlds occupied by her family and friends were fleetingly altered. Gemma’s world was naturally rocked the most; the sight that greeted her that morning changed her flippant outlook on life permanently. At Ivy’s funeral, thirty-two universes were briefly united in mourning, both for Ivy and for Gemma’s unborn baby.

Right now universes are being created, thrown together and destroyed the world over. Seven billion souls, each preoccupied with their own unique reality, each with a head full of memories, plans, learned knowledge and accumulated trivia; birthdays, telephone numbers, bus routes, passwords. Each one with somewhere to go, something they need to get done. They all have birth certificates and shoe sizes. Every single one has a story.

I wondered what this girl’s story was—not Caroline, though her face was still beaconing through my brain like the terrain warning on a stricken aircraft, but rather the one sitting alone at the bar, fidgeting with her mobile phone and trying to buy a drink. She was hard to read from this angle, being, as she was, so remarkably unremarkable. Average height. Average face. Average bust. Mousy, nondescript hair of average length. Ten-a-penny jeans and a plain black shirt. Even the barman didn’t notice her.

I sat in the corner with a glass of house red and a week-old
Telegraph
, ostensibly ogling the revealingly attired blonde at the next table. The center of almost universal male attention in the bar, her smirk cruised from admirer to admirer as she feigned interest in her companions’ conversation. Having no desire to distinguish myself, I allowed her to see me looking.

By eleven-thirty, Annie Average was one of a mere handful of stragglers left clinging to the bar, stubbornly ignoring all requests to drink up and leave. Seemingly tired of continuously checking her inbox, she had taken to scrutinizing the small print on the back of a train ticket she’d pulled from her purse. Neither her expression nor her posture had altered throughout the evening, save for a gentle swaying that started around ten. Finally, she stood and wrapped herself in the ankle-length black woolen coat she’d been warming all night with her average-size bottom. I drained the last few dregs from my wineglass; I’d dispatched a whole bottle of the wretched stuff, though most of it went in among the shrubbery on the windowsill, conveniently located just beside my left knee. As such, I affected a vacant gaze and a John Wayne swagger as I headed for the door.

Stood up and fed up, Annie did exactly as I’d expected and headed for the railway station. She set a moderate pace, allowing me to match my footsteps to her smaller strides without tripping over my own feet. We joined the flow of drunken teenagers migrating to the clubs across the river, a steady bustle despite the bitter cold. Once over the bridge, we would meet head-on the tide of out-of-towners pouring into clubland from the railway station. And since this dimly lit center of jostling confusion headed down the side street in which I’d parked the van, I was anticipating a swift conclusion to an easy hunt. At least until her phone rang.

Her “hello” carried a tone of mock disapproval that belied her grave demeanor, and she met the offered excuses with expressions of humor and sympathy. She clearly wasn’t one for confrontation. I hung back as she slowed to an idle stroll on the bridge, running her free hand along the icy railings and cracking frozen puddles with the toe of her boot. An occasional husky laugh drifted back to me above the passing stream of profane taunts and leering catcalls. Her lovelorn dawdling pleased me somewhat, since I was both optimistic that her improved mood would make my job easier and anxious that she should be finished on the phone when it did so.

In the event it didn’t matter. Lost in flirtation, Annie found the stone stairs leading to the towpath beside the river. One dreamy step at a time, she giggled her way down into the darkness beneath the bridge. I watched her from above as she paced in a circle, distractedly kicking small stones into the water, head tilted over to hold the phone in the crook of her neck, hands thrust snugly in her pockets. At length, I watched her drift ever farther from the bridge. And when she was all but out of sight, I followed.

In the shadows beside the water, the air was heavy and still. The towpath is bordered by a high stone wall, at the top of which is the busy station approach. Most of the traffic noise wafts overhead, making the path a relative sea of calm. The bridges along this stretch of the river are too low for a sail mast but passable by small pleasure cruisers which, at night, occupy every available inch of mooring space. The sounds here are of water lapping against fiberglass, fiberglass rubbing against wood. The only light is that which drifts across from the carvery on the far bank, or down from the streetlights on the road above.

The path was deserted but for Annie and me; the lights of the restaurant faded behind us, the riverbank widened and the horse-chestnuts thickened, and all was impeccably dark and serene. Beyond the far shore, the cathedral spire rose proudly above a blackened tree line, a glowing beacon of humanity against a soulless gray-orange sky.

Annie finally stopped wandering to rest against a life-buoy station; the orange float was long gone, an easy and attractive target for small-minded vandals. I melted into the trees, listening silently to a conversation winding down: can’t-waits and won’t-be-longs, okay-I-promises and hold-that-thoughts. I wondered what Caroline was doing just then. I heard Annie say her goodbyes, waited while she wallowed in the misty-eyed afterglow. I watched her dawning realization of having strayed farther than she’d intended; she spun around and around, taking in the darkness, the silence, her solitude. Her unremarkable eyes flashed disorientation and frustration, and weariness at the prospect of the long walk back.

And then, movement. In the shrubbery not twenty feet away, a dark form, hunched, creeping. Annie sensed it, too; she snapped her head around, peering into the blackness behind her. The dark shape turned statue. I could all but smell the adrenaline coursing through it as it crouched, barely breathing until, after what surely felt like hours, Annie released a long breath of her own and turned back to the path. I remained rigid, upright; I let her pass me, glancing nervously behind her as the figure moved almost silently through the brush. It was among the trees now, virtually on top of me as Annie quickened her pace, and then in a blink it was out on the path and running.

She certainly heard it then. She turned, eyes wide, to face it as it bore down on her, let out a half gasp as it knocked her off her feet. Before I could react, she was in the undergrowth, cursing and spitting, coat ripped open. Her assailant hunched over her, alternately swatting away her flailing limbs and working on her belt.

Incensed, I broke free of my incredulous trance and the cover of the trees and, snatching up a fallen branch from the ground, stepped into the open mere feet from the struggle. A clearing of my throat was enough to gain the predator’s attention. He looked up at me sharply and froze, mouth agape, eyebrows hitched up almost to his hairline. A kid, no more than twenty-one, dressed from head to toe in black synthetic fibers, his blazing orange eyebrows a fair giveaway as to the identifying feature hidden beneath his beanie hat. Annie had stopped struggling and stared up at me, her eyes undecided between panic and relief. The kid, small but solidly built, had straddled her, pinning her wrists to the frozen earth with his spidery hands, her ankles with his own. Eyes fixed on the hefty limb I held before me, he didn’t move a muscle.

“Leave,” I said. “Now.”

The kid, to his credit, didn’t need telling twice; he was off, vanishing into the darkness from whence he came minus his wallet and one of his shoes.

“You okay?”

“Oh, my God.” Annie lay there, coat spread, shirt hitched up, belt unbuckled. “How stupid am I?”

“Not your fault,” I lied, tossing the branch back among the trees. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, reached up to take my outstretched hand. “No, I’m a mess, though.” I helped her to her feet, and she straightened out her clothes, fastened her belt, shook out her hair. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” she mused. “Christ, if you hadn’t come along—”

“Yeah, I did, though, so don’t think about it.” I gave her space to gather the few contents of her bag from where they’d exploded across the path. “Do you want me to take you to the police?” I offered. “I’m just parked up at the train station.”

“God, I don’t know whether I can go through all that tonight.” She slung her bag over her shoulder, gave her pockets one last check. “I do need to find a train, though, so if you’re walking that way...” She finally looked up at me, puppy eyes at the ready. She seemed remarkably untraumatized.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m sure,” she said. “I just want to get home.”

I conceded. She turned off her phone and dropped it into her bag, and I spitefully kicked the kid’s shoe into the river as we set off briskly back toward the lights and the noise. “So,” I asked her, “what’s your name?”

“Annie,” she said.

What were the odds on that?

CHAPTER
SIX

Annie made a hell of a mess.

I’d convinced her that the last train had probably gone and that even if it hadn’t, I was going her way and could get her home sooner and in greater comfort. On the basis that I’d saved her from an unpleasant mauling and was therefore to be trusted, she happily accepted a ride.

To be quite honest, when she invited me in for tea, I fully intended to just drink it and leave. In spite of my earlier intentions, I found Annie’s company pleasant and her conversation lively and interesting—sufficiently so to distract me from looking out for deserted lanes and vacant lots along the route. I also felt an unexpected pang of protectiveness, and by the time we reached the coast, my only urge was to see her home safely.

However, one cup of tea became several, and Annie matched every one I drank with a tumbler of vodka. As we talked, it quickly became apparent that this was no one-off, that the dismissive actions of the man in her life drove her most nights into the arms of a bottle.

His name was Jeremy and by two in the morning, when I finally removed the last of the stains from the carpet, I’d grown to dislike him intensely. He seemed to me grossly egotistical and of low moral standing.

“He wouldn’t tell me where he lived,” Annie recounted as she filled her glass for the third time, halfway with vodka and topped with a splash of cranberry juice. “Said he had nosy neighbors and they were friendly with his ex-wife, and that she’d make life difficult for him if she knew he was seeing anyone. I know, I didn’t buy it, either. So I followed him one night.” She took a long gulp of her drink, one that took her three attempts to swallow. “I did that thing, you know, ‘follow that taxi!,’ and I followed him right to his front door. I was expecting to see... Well, I don’t know
what
I was expecting to see, but it was just this crappy little two-up-two-down, nothing like as posh as he said it was.”

Contrary to the impression her flowery telephone manner had given me, she wasn’t painting an endearing picture of Jeremy. She told me that he’d lied about his home, his job, his background. Christ, she wasn’t even sure Jeremy was his real name. “He stands me up all the bloody time,” she continued. “Usually when I complain, he tells me he was stuck in the office finishing a report or his Jag wouldn’t start, which is bullshit because he hasn’t even got a car—he gets buses everywhere because they’re free because he’s a bloody bus driver, not a
regional transport coordinator
, which is what he said he was. And the stupid thing is, I’ve never let on that I know that because
I
don’t want to look like a psycho. Why, I don’t know. It’s only been six weeks, and half the time I actually resent the fact that I even bother.” Gulp. “But hey, it keeps me on my toes, right? And to be honest, when he’s not being a lying toerag, he’s quite a nice guy. And I’m grateful for the distraction—I mean come on, my life is just so...so...”

“Average?” I suggested.

She nodded and emptied her glass. “That’s right,” she said. “Annie fucking Average.”

As much as I admired the simplicity of her explanation, she was clearly deluding herself. We both knew that she put up with it because she was drunk.

By 1:47, it was all over for Annie. She’d pulled a spicy beef pizza from the oven and promptly dropped it facedown on her cream sofa. Recoiling in horror, she’d then knocked the open cranberry juice carton from the coffee table.

Overcome with exasperation, she rushed to the kitchen sink and, without first removing the dirty dishes, liberally threw up.

So it was, then, that I came quite literally to undress Annie and tuck her into bed. She was asleep before she hit the pillow.

I liked Annie a lot for some reason, and so on my way back through the city, acting on information copied from her address book, I stopped by to pay the weasel Jeremy a visit. She was right; the house was crappy—paint peeling from the doors and window frames, guttering cracked and loose, garden overrun with weeds and nettles.

Getting in was easy; the kitchen extension at the back had a flat roof, above which a boxroom window had been left open—presumably on the assumption that the fresh air would combat the condensation running down the walls. Helpfully, I closed it.

Jeremy’s bedroom was at the front of the house. The thin curtains were no match for the streetlight right outside the window, which made the ceiling and the flock wallpaper glow fluorescent orange. The dresser, a mahogany-look junk-shop special, was strewn with hair gels and torn envelopes and half-empty coffee cups, some of which showed signs of life. In the opposite corner, the matching wardrobe sagged under the weight of bulging black sacks and sports bags, piled so high that the shirts didn’t hang straight and the doors wouldn’t close.

The bed, on the other hand, looked new. A full six feet wide, with an antique-brass-effect frame in an overdone neo-Gothic style. The bedspread was patterned counter-contextually with meaningless stylized Chinese characters and, I was less than surprised to note, concealed two distinct forms in repose.

I chose to let Jeremy sleep, not out of consideration but simply because I hadn’t thought to ask what he looked like. This would not normally have been an issue, since the majority of couples are distinguishable by clear, simple and universal gender-specific identifiers. Put simply, the clue is in the cock. This couple, however, quite obviously had two.

Judging by the collection of photographs on the mantelpiece downstairs, Jeremy’s predilection was clearly not a recent discovery. The hairstyles on display dated right back to a New Romantic flick and were unerring in their attachment to one hirsute, muscular torso or another. This was a man who knew his own mind.

In the void beneath the stairs, opposite the mantelpiece and the tasteless log-effect gas fire it so shamefully highlighted, was a computer. The desk it sat on was strewn with scraps of paper carrying scribbled tidbits of personal information: email addresses, first names, hometowns, occupations, pets and vital statistics. Aliases like “Hunnybunny” and “Lucyluvsit.” Some had telephone numbers. A handful noted dates and times, names of pubs and restaurants. One, sadly, said “Burger King.”

Tacked to the small triangle of wall above the desk were a dozen photographs printed on copy paper. A dozen women sat at a dozen corner tables, alone, staring into their drinks and fingering their mobile phones.

I was glad I’d taken the time to stop by. That Jeremy should devote his leisure time to stalking straight girls seemed like a new twist on something I’d encountered a hundred times before and couldn’t be bothered to try to understand. In any case, his motivation was none of my business, but that he might have a photographic record of the recent movements of every desperate, lonely woman in the county most certainly was. God alone knew how many of them I might be in.

Affirmative, proportionate action was therefore the order of the night, and so by the time Jeremy awoke in the morning, his hard drive and memory cards were blank, his printer was out of ink and the only photograph above his desk was of himself, naked and asleep, with a pair of pinking shears artfully arranged about his under-endowment.

* * *

To those of us startled into forgetting what we went shopping for, and perhaps hoping, subliminally or otherwise, for a second attempt at a first impression, the 24-hour supermarket must surely rank alongside tea bags and ambiguous social-network privacy tools as one of modern mankind’s most useful inventions.

In the early hours there are no screaming children to contend with, no half-hour queues at the checkout. There are hundreds of empty parking spaces, and you can always find a trolley.

For the most part, the only activity you’re likely to encounter is the gaggle of fellow insomniacs charged with the unenviable task of restocking the shelves. These people are paid a reasonable wage and are therefore usually polite and unobstructive. They’ve always got what you’re looking for, and it’s always fresh.

Unfortunately, however, the fish counter was closed, and the acute sense of disappointment this brought about came as something of a shock. I was distracted and listless as I pushed my express trolley from aisle to aisle, supplementing my earlier haul of melted coconut ice cream and two defrosted salmon by randomly tipping in anything and everything purporting to be free of meat. Carrots, olives and limes. Carnaroli rice and a can of lima beans. All sense of direction and purpose again fled to the outer reaches of my mind, beaten away by the horde of metal roll cages obstructing every aisle. A blanket of frustration fell over me then, obscuring my vision and blocking my ears. The back of my neck bristled with the distinct sense that I was being watched, and I felt an overwhelming desire to be somewhere else.

I left the trolley and wandered to the entertainment aisle, where bored husbands congregate to inspect cheap laptops and watch football. It was blissfully empty, quiet but for the bank of televisions, each one tuned to a different channel, muttering to me as I passed:...
according to Inca lore, once rail operators pledge to iron lace while damp, a real icon like Elvis Presley is likely to command the council to loan Eric an electric wheelchair. Detective Chief Inspector Lowry made the following statement. “Whilst we will never give up hope of finding Sarah and Erica alive, we have to face the reality that with every passing week, our chances of doing so continue to fade. I am, therefore, again appealing to anyone in the local community who thinks they may have any information, no matter how trivial you might think it is, to pick up the phone and call us, either directly to my team here in the incident room, or anonymously via Crimestoppers. Somebody out there knows something, and only with your help can we hope to bring Sarah and Erica home, or to track down the person or persons responsible for their disappearance.”

This wasn’t any better.

At night, the checkouts are deserted. In the absence of queueing customers, there is no sense in paying the staff to chew gum and stare into space. I was alone as I loaded the conveyor; the echo of cage doors, dropped boxes and idle chatter was disembodied and distant. I nudged the trolley to the end of the belt, folded my arms and turned around to rest against the counter, idly reading the covers of the leaflets on the stand opposite. Car insurance. Home insurance. Pet, travel and life insurance. Broadband internet and pay-as-you-go mobile phones. Banking and credit cards. I thought back to a time when supermarkets simply sold groceries; when a loaf of bread was a loaf of bread, and beans really did mean Heinz. A time when, on a Friday afternoon, I’d obediently follow my mother through a fluorescent maze of checkered tiles and bright white freezers in the hope of being rewarded with a Crunchie bar and a—

“Hi. Are you all right with your packing?”

There was something in the voice, something so barely there that the question of what it was kept me from turning even after the effect had passed.

“Hey!” Masked now by a broad smile, a teasing melody: “Hello! Wake up! I’m over here!”

I could feel those eyes playing on the back of my neck and spiking my hair before I turned clumsily to face them.

Blue and green and aquamarine, like pools of sunlit gasoline. The kind of eyes that make men like me walk into doors and spill our tea.

The base of my spine wound itself into a twitching, tingling knot. “Hello,” I croaked. “Yes, thank you, I’m well versed in the art of packing my bags.”

Caroline pursed her lips, narrowed her startling eyes at me. Studied me for a split second with the intensity of a prowling panther before her face softened to a bemused smile. “Nope,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going to ask.”

“Sorry, long night. Very tired.” Dry, oilless fingers were making hard work of separating the slippery plastic bags. I could feel the frustration welling again inside me as I grasped and fumbled vainly at the neck of each in turn.

“I know, me, too.” She gathered up the fine cascade of dirty-blond hair from her shoulders and threw it into a careless ponytail, held in place with a simple black band from around her wrist. As she did so, her name badge rode up under her chin. “Rachel,” it said. “Here to help.” She caught me looking, and a fragment of a smile told me she knew I’d been reading “Caroline” in taillights all night.

I hoped, then, as she set about swiping my pitiful collection of rabbit food through the scanner, that she’d blindly pass each item in front of her without pausing to read the labels; that she had no interest in judging me by my shopping list. Sadly, though, I had her full attention. “Tell you what,” she remarked. “It’s a nice change to meet a herbivore who hasn’t got that pale, scrawny thing going on.”

I smiled, absurdly willing myself to believe it a greater compliment than it really was. Maddeningly, the food was coming thick and fast and I still had nothing to put it in. “Actually, I think I do need some help here.”

“Here...” She slid gracefully from her chair and reached over the counter, her plain white blouse tightening across a modest bust, sleeves riding up to reveal the faint specter of symmetrical scars adorning the underside of each wrist. Her approach to the separation and opening of carrier bags was swift and effective, though I unfortunately failed to note her precise method before she melted back into her seat, distracted as I was by the lithe twist of her hips.

“You can’t learn by watching,” she said, presumably just to let me know that she could read my fucking mind, though which part of it I wasn’t quite sure. “You’re not a conscientious objector, are you?” she noted, eyebrows raised behind an upheld fillet of cod. “Clearly, you can’t get enough white meat.”

“No,” I agreed. “I lapse just about every other day.”

“Ah, well, we all need at least one vice. Nobody’s perfect.”

My eyes fell to the loose, flowing cuffs of her blouse as she passed tuna steaks and potato bakes from hand to hand. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe the perfection is in the flaws.”

Her hands trembled then, barely perceptibly and for the merest sliver of a moment as she overrode the impulse to tug at her sleeves. She reddened half a shade, and her eyes drilled into mine, luring them away from the door to her self-consciousness. “Meaning?” she pressed, with a challenging smile.