The Pure in Heart (22 page)

‘No. Do you take sugar?’

‘Don’t you remember?’

No, actually, and if I did, I would not own to it, those are the personal details I do not want in my head.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, I don’t. I like that drawing.’

She nodded towards the portrait of his mother which he had done earlier in the year and put up to see if he thought well enough of it to have in his next exhibition.

‘Thank you.’

‘Your mother?’

That is nothing
to do with you. My family is not your concern, that is a part of my life in which you will never belong.

He remembered how quickly Freya had become friends with both his mother and with Cat. Diana held her coffee cup and looked at him. Simon had taken a chair some distance from hers.

‘All right, Simon, might I be told what happened between us? I called you a couple of times – you weren’t here,
but you didn’t respond. Either time.’

He couldn’t answer.

‘I don’t think we parted on bad terms, did we? I’ve tried to remember …’

‘No, of course we didn’t.’

‘So …’

He hesitated, about to make excuses, to blame work … then recovered himself. That was unfair. Diana deserved the truth, or a version of it. And once he had told it and things were clear, then she would go, and there would be no
possibility of a misunderstanding.

‘I had a fairly traumatic year … someone I was becoming close to died. I’m not sure what would have happened between us. And then of course nothing could. But it wouldn’t have been fair to you for me to come to London and … seeing you isn’t something I feel I want to do now.’

‘By “now” do you mean “yet”?’

He saw a look on her face, in spite of her effort to
remain aloof, a look of hunger or need which he recognised and which made him want to open the shutters and the window and throw himself out to get away from it.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Ah. You mean “at all”.’

He was silent. Diana stirred her coffee and sipped it. He saw that her hand trembled.

‘I have hated this year,’ she said, ‘I’ve missed you. Your visits. Going out with you. Going to bed with
you. I’ve been busy as hell. I hardly seem to have been off the road between the restaurants.’

‘Are they doing well?’

‘Oh yes, they’re doing well and making me rich. It doesn’t mean much. It stops me from thinking, that’s all.’

‘Rubbish. You love your empire.’

‘I’d give it up tomorrow …’

Simon got up. ‘I have to ring in to the station,’ he said.

‘Please have the decency not to lie to me,
Simon. If you were needed, you would be called. Wouldn’t you? If you are waiting for me to leave, say so.’

‘No … finish your coffee, of course you must.’

Diana stood up and looked slowly round his room.

‘I longed to come here,’ she said quietly. ‘I longed to see where you live. I imagined it. I longed to be in this room – this flat – with you. It’s perfect.’

He stood in silence.

Go. Go, please,
go now. This is my room. I hate people coming here, I don’t want this. I don’t want to know anything of your feelings, your hurt, you.

Please.

‘I don’t want to leave. There now, I’ve no pride left, have I? Don’t make me go.’

The silence in the room was like the seconds before some terrible explosion or act of violence, electric as a high-voltage wire.

But it was a silence and it was not broken
by any blast.

Diana took up her coat and put it on quickly before he could move to make the polite gesture of helping with it, picked up her bag, and walked out of the room. She did not speak to him either there or at the door, but went down the stairs without looking back. After a moment he heard a car start, turn on the gravel far below, and roar away.

The room settled back, as if dust had
been disturbed and was falling quietly again, to lie invisibly over the chairs in which they had sat, the tray of coffee things, the picture she had looked at.

Simon closed his eyes. He could smell her scent though he had no idea what it was. He had never bought her anything so personal, just taken flowers or a bottle of wine.

Relief warmed him. He went across to the cupboard and poured himself
a second whisky. His supper would be inedible and he had nothing else to eat in the flat. But in any case, his appetite was gone.

‘Who the hell’s sending you a parcel?’ Michelle threw the brown box at him as he came into the room.

Andy took it and turned it over twice. His name was on a printed label, with the correct address. ‘CIM-communications.com’ was the name of the sender.

‘I ’ope it ent a bleedin’ bomb.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Well, what is it then?’

‘How do I know?’

‘You expectin’ anything?’

He wasn’t.
Michelle watched him closely. ‘Open it, why don’t you?’

‘I’m going out.’

In the front room
Coronation Street
was just ending.

‘I hate that bloody tune … waaw waaw waaw …’ Michelle bounced out of the kitchen. Three seconds later, the tune changed to gunfire.

Andy grabbed the brown box and went out before she could come after him, demanding to know more.

The only place he could take it was
the Ox, and that was packed for a darts final, but he found a seat by the door to the lavatories, got a half-pint and looked at the parcel and the people around him. But those who were not round the darts board were in front of the television watching Chelsea go one up on Arsenal.

He ripped the box open with the edge of his front door key. A new mobile phone nestled among the wrappings. He took
it carefully out and weighed it in his hand. It was very small and very light. Silver. ‘Cool,’ his nephew would have said.

Andy knew where it had come from and it felt like a ticking bomb in his hand.

He drank slowly from his glass. The box contained a charger, instruction booklet, guarantee. Nothing more.

A roar of approval went up from the darts watchers.

He didn’t dare start to fiddle with
the keypad or try to find out how it worked. He didn’t want it near him. Having it meant a commitment to Lee Carter and his job and for days Andy had been having second and third thoughts about that.

He thought back to prison. He had a glimmer of understanding why people sent themselves back there. Not that he would, not ever. But the world was difficult. Freedom was difficult. Nothing was as
he’d expected it to be, everything, once the novelty of being out had worn off, was either a shock or a disappointment. He felt aimless and frustrated. He
wanted to get on with something … life, he supposed. Was this life? Hanging about the Dulcie, spending hours making half a pint of cheap beer last in places like this, sleeping crammed in with his nephew whose trainers smelled?

He rewrapped
the mobile phone, finished his beer and looked across to the darts board. Boring. Andy had played them all in prison. Darts, ping-pong, pool … and darts took the prize for being the most deadly boring of them all.

The arrows flew, and hit the right segments of cork, thwack, thwack, thwack. Another cheer.

Andy went out into the drizzle, the package tucked away inside his jacket.

Nothing happened
for two days. When he had an hour alone in the house he read the instruction booklet through and set the phone on to charge, hiding it under his camp bed. No one would look there. Michelle never seemed to tidy in here, just made the beds every so often, and opened the window for a bit.

A lot had happened in his time away and mobile phones were one of them. Then they had been mainly fixed inside
cars, now they were everywhere. Ten-year-old children rollerbladed along the street talking into them. The world had lurched forward and not taken him with it.

At quarter to nine that morning his nephew came downstairs carrying the mobile and threw it at him. ‘You got a text,’ he said, and carried on out of the back door.

He went upstairs, consulted the instruction booklet, and opened the first
text message of his life.

Apprentice Rd. 2.30am. Slvr jagXK8. cntct Dnny
.

He reread it a number of times. He did not know Danny. He only knew that picking up a Jaguar XK8 in the early hours of the morning from a smart residential road on the outskirts of Lafferton was unlikely to be legit.

So, he wouldn’t go then. Simple. Lee Carter couldn’t make him. He wasn’t going to come banging on Michelle’s
door asking for him at that time in the morning, was he? He just wouldn’t go. Bloody stupid to expect a kosher job from Lee, even for five minutes, and even though he said it was all different now. Of course it wasn’t different. Did it look different? Had the house and the lawn and the in-corner bar and the fridge stocked with booze looked legit?

He put the mobile in his trouser pocket and went
out. The streets were empty. Kids were in school, most people who worked at work, those who didn’t watching telly or in the pub or hanging about town. Like him. He caught a bus and went to hang about town.

The bus took him to Dino’s corner. The steamed-up windows and the name in curly neon, the same as ten and more years ago, came from another world, the old world, one he felt at home in. Below
the neon sign, the face of the missing schoolkid looked out at him from the poster.

Andy pushed open the café door. Fredo was at the espresso machine.

‘Andy … you come in for a Knickerbocker Glory?’

Those were the days. Andy laughed.

‘Espresso, cappuccino, mocha, latte?’

‘Tea.’

‘OK, I give in. How are you, Andy? Gotta job?’

No. Yes. He wasn’t sure.

‘Looking for a job. You know anyone wants
to set up a market garden?’

‘No. Maybe I know someone who wants a hedge cutting. Me.’

‘Yeah, right. Thanks, Fredo.’

He took the mug of tea, hesitated, then added a doughnut from under the glass dome on the counter.

As he set them down on one of the marble-topped tables by the window the mobile phone made a buzzing noise. He looked round. No one had taken any notice. Well, they wouldn’t, would
they?

Andy took it out of his pocket. ‘Gunton,’ he said. Silence. He hesitated then pressed the green rubber button and tried again. ‘Gunton.’ Bloody stupid object. He bit into the doughnut and jam squirted sideways on to his cheek.

Fifteen minutes later, as he was finishing his second mug of tea, the phone buzzed again and, this time, as he lifted it to his ear he caught sight of the square
display.
Message
.

It took him five minutes. He didn’t have the booklet with him. Alfredo was polishing spoons by the handful and watching him. The schoolkid on the
poster was watching him. A woman stared in through the misted-up window at him. Shit.

In the end he got there.

Reply
.

Jesus.

‘You OK, Andy?’

‘OK.’

‘You keep cheerful, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Know what you want?’

‘What do I want,
Fredo?’

Fredo bent under the counter, took out a small leather photograph wallet and handed it across. Inside were two pictures, one of a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl with gold hoop earrings, one of the same girl dressed as a meringue with Alfredo on their wedding day.

‘Great,’ Andy said, handing back the wallet. ‘Terrific, Alfredo. Good for you. How much?’

‘One pound.’

‘Nah, come on.’

‘I
can’t make it free, Andy, but only a pound.’

For a split second, Andy felt a surge of anger roaring up through him, so that he almost slammed Alfredo’s hand full of spoons down on the counter hard and told him he didn’t want favours. He looked into his old school friend’s face. Alfredo looked back, still smiling.

‘Thanks, Fredo,’ Andy said, ‘only next time, I have to pay the whack or I can’t
keep coming in and I want to keep coming in.’

‘Deal,’ Fredo said, putting the pound coin in the till. ‘I want you to keep coming in.’

As Andy reached the door, Fredo shouted after him. ‘Any time you wanna cut a hedge, Andy?’

He found a bench in the new pedestrianised shopping square. Two old men were sunning themselves. One looked asleep. How could they stand it, day in, day out, nothing to
do, sitting on benches?

So, what was he doing? He took out the mobile phone. The message had gone from the screen. He wondered what would happen if he just didn’t reply. He could pretend he hadn’t received the phone at all, that he’d never worked one so he had no idea there had been any message, that …

Yeah, right.

He’d have to go, that was all. He had to pick up a car at two thirty in the
morning. If he didn’t, Lee would come to him and then what? He knew what.

Michelle and another woman were eating sandwiches and drinking out of cans of cider when he got back.

‘What you been messing at?’ She didn’t offer him a sandwich.

The other girl had a stud in her nose and black-painted fingernails.

‘Just out.’

‘Not out where you should have been. Bleedin’ probation officer rung up,
didn’t she?’ Michelle
wiped her mouth and reached across the table for her cigarettes.

Shit. He’d forgotten, because the appointments were a waste of time like Long Legs was a waste of space. Where had the chats got him? A job? Somewhere to live?

‘What she say?’

Michelle shrugged. ‘Ring her and find out.’

‘Great.’

‘Then if you don’t mind, we was having a girl talk.’

Black fingernails giggled.

The bedroom smelled stale. Andy opened the window wide, stuck two pairs of Matt’s trainers on the ledge to air, and then sat on the edge of his camp bed reading the mobile phone booklet until he had the instructions for sending text messages by heart.

The Dulcie estate was quiet and would be until half past three when the schools turned out and then bedlam until one in the morning. It wasn’t
like prison, it was worse. His sister was no nicer to him than any of the screws and at least there he’d had a room to himself. Under his nephew’s bed he could see rolls of grey fluff and a pile of porn magazines.

So what was the answer? There was one. He took out the phone, found the message in the inbox, and carefully pressed out a reply.