Ghosts Know (25 page)

They don’t quite halt, but Linley turns his head just enough to let us hear him say “Not by themselves.”

I see the police to my door while Christine lingers in the main room. As I return along the hall I’m working out my next words. “No more secrets,” I tell her, only to wonder if this could be wrong. I can’t grasp the thought that made me, and who’s to say it was true? “If there’s anything else I don’t know it,” I declare and hug Christine until she gasps for breath, and do my best not to feel I’m trying to squeeze any doubts out of us both.

An hour of wandering around town has brought me back to the Palaces. Surely Christine has had time to finish reading what there is of
You’re Another.
If I carry straight on I’ll have to pass the BBC, while turning right beside the railway would only bring me to Waves. I could make a detour to the Dressing Room, but I’ve no idea how Benny feels about me, and I don’t want to find out just now. As I hesitate outside the theatre, where posters advertise the Bleeding Feet Troupe in
Giselle,
people dressed for the sultry dusk glance at me and in some cases rather more than glance. I never used to expect to be recognised in the street, and now it infuriates me to hope I’m not. I stare at anyone who might be wondering about me, and then I head for home.

The streets near Christine’s flat are crowded too. A sound of brittle splintering is muffled by the hubbub outside a bar, where a drinker has crushed a plastic glass in his fist. Cyclists beyond the first-floor window opposite look desperate to pedal into the distance. They’re in Christine’s gym, and their artificial silence makes them seem unreal, as if they don’t exist without their voices. By the time I reach my building I can hear just my own footsteps, which sound bogged down by the muddy dark. As I take out my keys the action seems to trigger the street-lamps like ranks of security lights. I’m making to unlock the street door when a face looks down at me.

It’s Walter Belvedere. He stays at his window until I’m out of sight beneath the lintel. Christine is reading my novel because she wants to
encourage me to continue, but I suspect she’ll try whatever she thinks of it, and the literary agent’s judgment is bound to count for more. I’m on the stairs when I hear his door open, and I’m unexpectedly abashed at the thought of approaching him. I don’t need to mention the novel just now, and I tramp upstairs with some determination. “Hot one, Walter,” I remark.

He’s in his doorway, rubbing his shiny brow as if he wants to erase a few more greying hairs and extend his forehead even higher. He has fallen into his habitual stoop that makes him look incapable of holding up his large-boned frame, a posture that goes with his usual expression—eyebrows on the way to being raised, lips slightly parted in anticipation, prominent ears at the ready. As I leave the stairs I notice he isn’t alone, and could my comment have seemed to refer to the young woman behind him? “Hot night,” I try explaining.

They could misinterpret this too. Perhaps they have, since they seem ready to frown. Walter’s companion is a slim girl in a pale grey lightweight suit. Only her round face appears to have resisted whatever diet she has applied to herself, and her eyes are intent on looking resolute. “Here’s someone who’s been waiting to meet you,” Walter says and makes way for her.

“Are you one of Walter’s stable?”

My words have let me down again, to judge by how her inconspicuous eyebrows pinch together. “A writer, I mean,” I assure her. “I’m one myself.”

This isn’t how I imagined telling Walter, who seems less than impressed. He has retreated into his hall, which is narrowed by shelves loaded with books, several copies of every one. “I’m Graham Wilde,” I say and hold out a hand.

Of course she knows that. Presumably she doesn’t take my hand because she finds the introduction redundant, leaving me to say “And you are…”

“Alice Francis, Mr Wilde.”

“Call me Graham by all means.” I know her name, but from where? Perhaps it’s on some of the books in Walter’s hall—and then, just as she makes to speak, I have it. “That isn’t all you’ve called me, is it?” I say and feel my fingers start to crook away from her. “Thanks to you I’m known as the suspect presenter.”

“I’m from the
Clarion,
Mr Wilde.”

“Don’t talk yourself down. You’re front-page stuff,” I say and turn my rage on Belvedere. “This is how you treat your neighbours, is it, Walter? Set traps for them. The others ought to know.”

“They already do.”

He means about me, presumably the tabloid version. As I take a step towards him he takes several back. He’s so anxious to shut the door that his elbow blunders into a clump of identical books, which knock against the wall as if they’re rehearsing the slam, and then I’m alone with the reporter in the corridor. “Well,” I say, “there’s another job you’ve lost me. What do you want to do to me now?”

“I’d like to ask you some questions if it’s convenient.”

“You’re after my side of things, are you?” I don’t know when the hand I offered her became a fist, but the other one has followed its example, and they’ve begun to ache. I’m aware of standing between her and the stairs, because she glances at them, which helps to provoke me to say “It’s a bit late.”

“If you’d prefer to be interviewed tomorrow—”

As a journalist she ought to be persisting, but perhaps she’s daunted by my look and the emptiness around us. “That isn’t what I meant,” I say and step towards her.

Though I’d think it wise of her to try and dodge around me, she stands her ground. Perhaps she has remembered she’s supposed to be a reporter. I’d be happy if she panicked; she ought to if she thinks of the rubbish she wrote about me. Her stubbornness makes my fists quiver and tingle, and I feel as if they’re directing me. She glances at them, and I’ve no idea what effect this may have; I’m close to being unable to think. She raises her eyes to mine, and I’m about to react to her expression—it seems uneasy, but not enough—when Christine says “Come inside, Graham.”

I was so intent on Alice Francis that I didn’t notice Christine opening my door. She reminds me of a parent summoning a child, which aggravates my rage. “I haven’t finished this,” I tell her. “The
Clarion’s
here.”

“Oh,” says Christine and blinks at the reporter. “Are you delivering the paper?”

I haven’t time to be amused by her untypical slyness. “She’s Alice Francis. She put me on the front page.”

“What a gentle name.” This seems craftier still, and I can’t quite judge Christine’s mood. “So what brings you here, Alice?” she says.

“She’s here to set the record straight, is that right, Alice?”

“It’s a pity you didn’t before you wrote about Graham,” Christine objects. “You work for Frugo too, you know. I wouldn’t expect to be attacked in public by anyone I worked with.”

Alice Francis glances around, perhaps in case this is being overheard. “We aren’t supposed to know about the takeover.”

“We don’t have any secrets here, do we?” When Christine doesn’t respond I try saying “I expect she has to do what her editor tells her.”

“You’ll know what that’s like,” Alice Francis retorts. “I don’t suppose you’d have taken that test on the air if you hadn’t been told to.”

This would enrage me more if I didn’t sense that Christine is angry too, which lets me unclench my fists as she says “So what are you looking for now?”

“I think I’ve formed my impression,” Alice Francis says.

“Don’t be so sure of yourself. Come in and talk to us.” When the reporter doesn’t move Christine says “I give you my word you’ll be safe.”

My rage is back, with reinforcements. “There’s no need for that.”

“It sounds as if you think there might be,” the reporter says to Christine.

“Then it sounds wrong.” For a moment Christine seems inclined to leave it there, and then she says “I’ve never seen Graham so much as threaten anyone with violence, no matter what the provocation.”

“You’re saying you’ve seen him provoked.”

“Yes, by people accusing him of things he’d never do. Believe me, if he was at all violent I wouldn’t be with him. I used to be in a relationship like that, and you won’t find me anywhere near one again.”

“I’m glad if that’s so.” They appear to have reached a feminine agreement until Alice Francis says “Some people seem to have to repeat a relationship over and over.”

“Perhaps you have.”

“I’m not here to discuss my life. So you’re saying you absolutely trust Mr Wilde.”

Christine takes a breath. “I’ve said so once. Now can we go inside and you can ask us whatever you came to ask.”

“I think I’ve learned all I need to,” the reporter says and turns towards the stairs.

“No, you haven’t learned enough.” As quickly as I’m speaking I step in front of her. “Just look me in the eye and say if I was telling the truth to the polygraph.”

“Or else you’ll do what, Mr Wilde?”

I can’t find an immediate answer, unless clenching my fists is one. Alice Francis stares at them and then at Christine before walking slowly and deliberately around me. I’m turning to keep her in sight when Christine says “Graham.”

She sounds more parental than ever. I watch Alice Francis strut downstairs until she’s out of sight, and then I confront Christine. “What did you think I was going to do?”

“I couldn’t say. It must be one of your secrets.”

In a moment the street door slams, and some kind of a grin tugs at my face. “Well, now we’ve given her just what she wanted.”

“I’m glad you’re taking some of the responsibility at least. Shall we continue this indoors?”

“Wherever we need to.”

As my door shuts behind us with an enthusiastic thud I feel as if I’m chasing Christine along the hall. She goes straight to a chair, and it’s plain that she wants me to stay at a distance. I sit opposite and can’t help being aware of my computer at her back. “Am I going to hear what you thought of my tale?”

“Which of them is that, Graham?”

“What do you mean?” Swallowing some rage, I say “My novel.”

“I don’t know what I think about it just now.”

“I can thank the bitch from the paper for that as well, can I?”

“Don’t blame her for too much, Graham.”

“Who would you like me to blame?” Her sad look makes this unmistakable, and so I demand “Am I going to hear about it or are you keeping secrets now?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have let me read your novel.”

This is so unexpected that it makes me wary. “What do you think you’ve found in it?”

“Nothing” Before I can grasp whether that’s a criticism she says “What did you tell the police about it?”

I can’t help feeling warier, which enrages me. “I don’t believe I told them anything. When?”

“You said you’d been thinking about it down by the canal.”

“Yes, and I have. Where’s the problem?”

“Just this month, you said.”

A thought flickers like a warning in my mind, and then it’s extinguished. “So I did,” I have to risk saying.

“Graham, you started it months ago.”

I’d rather not speak, but her gaze doesn’t leave me the option. “What makes you say that?”

“The dates are all on the computer.”

If I hadn’t kept the chapters separate the onscreen properties wouldn’t show the individual dates, just the most recent. The blank screen of the monitor reminds me of the polygraph, and that’s not my only reason to be furious. “You thought you’d better check up on me, did you?”

“It was there in front of me.”

This is hardly an answer, but perhaps I can take it as one if I try fiercely enough. I don’t want the argument to estrange us, particularly when I’ve already lost so much. I’ve begun to shake, surely not with rage but with the effort to contain it. I’m about to confess that I didn’t want Christine to think I’d been hiding my novel from her all that time when she says “You didn’t bother to cover your tracks.”

My fists have started to ache again. “Unlike what?”

“I don’t understand you, Graham.”

“I thought you wanted the bitch from the paper to think you knew all about me. When are you saying I did cover them?”

“Oh, Graham.” Christine seems about to stop there, but then she blurts “Why are you making it so hard for me to trust you?”

I’m not sure what my hands have been roused to do until they shove me out of my chair. “All right,” I say, perhaps the most inappropriate words ever to escape my lips. “Give it up.”

Christine isn’t shrinking back in her chair; she’s simply lifting her head to watch me. When I turn away, flexing my fingers as if I don’t know what to do with them, she says “Where are you going, Graham?”

“That’s my new secret,” I tell her and stalk down the hall to close the door as quietly as I would act at a funeral.

In fact I’ve no idea where my rage may take me. I give the street door a slam that I hope shakes Belvedere’s apartment and reverberates painfully through his skull, I think of heading for the Clarion. I’d just be acting as the paper would expect me to behave and demonstrating it to witnesses. It’s equally pointless to make for Waves—I don’t imagine Paula will have stayed so late, and even if she has there’s nothing more I want to say to her. That’s true of Hannah Leatherhead as well, and so I won’t be humiliating myself further at the BBC. I could spill my secrets at the Dressing Room, but on a night as suffocatingly hot as this the place is likely to be crowded and besides, our last encounter has left me unsure about Benny. I’m best off ranting to myself as necessary, and I ought to be closest to alone by the canal.

Somebody shouts as I reach the nearest bridge. I don’t know if the aggressive yell relates to the brittle crunch of an object trampled underfoot. One of the drinkers outside a pub has trodden on a plastic bottle, and there’s no need for me to look back. I follow my jerky shadow down the steps to the towpath.

Humidity settles on my skin at once. At least I’ve no company beside the canal. A few dim ripples spread to meet me as I head towards Oxford Street. The confused uproar outside the pubs fades behind me like a radio that’s being turned down, having drifted off the station. Soon the only sounds are my plodding footsteps and my voice. “That’s enough now,” it keeps saying. “That’s enough.”