Laying the Ghost (9 page)

‘Smash your side window and the bag would still be in reach,’ Steve commented, watching her.

‘Only by an orang-utan,’ Nell snapped. ‘It’s miles from the window.’

‘But that jar full of spoons and stuff by the sink isn’t. Any burgling scumbag could use those spaghetti-scoop things and grab the handle, no problem.’

‘Ah yes, but they’d have had to break the window first, and that would have Ed from next door round here in seconds,’ Nell argued.

‘Brave sort, is he, this Ed next door? You should bring him along to the classes. It might save his life. If you go in all confrontational and back someone into a corner it can too easily turn dangerous, and the next thing you know there’s blood everywhere. Probably not the scumbag’s, either.’

Nell looked hard at him. What was he up to? Why was everything down to the worst-case scenario? And wasn’t it a good thing that Kate hadn’t chosen this moment to call round – she’d be bouncing with unconcealed delight,
grinning
and winking and making unsubtle enquiries about whether he lived alone and so on. Steve was quite an attractive sort, if you fancied the wiry, athletic type. And he had all his (presumably own) hair, eyes as blue as Steve McQueen’s and, in spite of the subject matter, a smile that could charm dragons.

‘So, you haven’t told me yet … what made you come calling on me?’ she asked again.

‘Ah … yes. It’s not a big deal, just that Tuesday’s class will start half an hour later, that’s all. I just wanted to make sure you knew, to save you rushing there and having to hang about. Advanced Yoga are doing a special meditation session with a guest mystic that’s going on a bit so they can achieve maximum cosmic depth or whatever they do.’

‘But I gave you my mobile number.
Not
my address. Don’t tell me you’re doing house calls round the whole class?’

Steve looked, for once, mildly uncomfortable. ‘No – I emailed or phoned the others. But … I think you missed out a digit when you wrote your number down. Don’t know whether you were doing it on purpose – on grounds of security, maybe?’ he teased. ‘But either way, I couldn’t get through. So … er … I looked you up and found where you lived.’

‘You
what
? Looked me up
where
?’ The astounding nerve of it!

‘Sorry – and your number was ex-directory, so …’

‘Yes! Exactly! Ex-directory for a reason!’

‘I’m sorry.’ He put his cup down and pushed the chair backwards. ‘I’ll go, shall I? I am sorry, truly, I honestly didn’t intend to …’

‘No … no, it doesn’t matter.’ It did, a bit, but not that much, she supposed, not really. What had she got to be so privacy-crazy about? Too far down that road and she’d end up living in the kind of gated community where even your own children were screened for entry, and the residents were convinced the world just beyond the railings held an eternal threat of terrorism, drive-by shootings and a loitering army of hooded teen thugs.

She softened a bit, saying, ‘Actually, to be honest I can’t recall why we ever
were
ex-directory. It was probably something to do with Alex being in the communications business and not particularly wanting anyone to communicate with him!’ Her laugh sounded more than slightly bitter.

‘He’s your ex, is he? Alex?’

‘Yep. That’s him. The ex.’ It sounded odd, applied to Alex. The term ‘ex’ had only figured in her head with regard to Patrick before now. Not a massive total in her life (so far) was it? Only two major exes and a mostly forgotten selection of very short-term minor ones. Some people with far more adventurous lives must have a whole extra address book full of them. She wondered if having
so
many meant that it became less painful after a certain number, if each addition diluted the angst.

‘How did you know he was an “ex”?’ Nell suddenly asked. ‘I hadn’t said anything about that, either.’

Steve leaned closer and smiled in the manner of a doctor assuring a patient that it really
was
, for once, more than just a cold. ‘You didn’t need to. Though you did put down “divorce” as a reason for coming to the classes – that was a bit of a giveaway. My classes tend to attract three sorts of women: the ones who’ve been on the wrong end of crime, the ones who come with their mates from work for a social giggle and those who are suddenly living on their own and realize they feel newly vulnerable.’

‘But I also told you I was a crime victim. Surely that puts me in category one?’

‘You’d just come back from a holiday with your daughter, in term-time, and you didn’t mention a partner who might have been some use seeing off a mugger.’ He shrugged. ‘I just figured. And I could have been wrong.’

‘Are you sure you’re not a detective on the side?’ Nell laughed.

‘Well actually, I was once. I got on the wrong side of a sawn-off and when I was lying there in the hospital, all full of holes, I decided never again.’

At least he wasn’t offering to show her the scars, Nell thought. A few embryonic cells of an idea were occurring to her, though.

‘Um … so how
did
you find me? I don’t have a website. I probably should, for work, but I have an agent for that. What did you do? Googling Eleanor Hollis isn’t likely to find me.’

‘Oh, it was easy. If you know more or less the area someone lives in, you just go to this fantastic search site on the Internet. I’ll show you, if you like. Obviously with anyone you want to find, if you don’t quite know where they are, the first stop is Google or Friends Reunited.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know that, but if you can’t find them that way …’ Nell murmured vaguely. She took her computer from the worktop and put it on the table between the two of them, moving aside a small pile of Patrick’s old letters. She’d been reading through a few of them after Mimi left for school to remind herself of the personal spark that was contained in them, and to see if she’d find a reason
not
to look for him. Mostly, she’d only found a young, confused man who despaired that the world was out of sync with his thinking and who was forever impatient and halfway to furious. Had he mellowed or was he now the ultimate Grumpy Old Bastard? She wanted to know.

‘Thank goodness for broadband,’ Steve said as he tapped the address into the bar. A menu came up instantly, offering the choice of searching for a business or an individual or a map. Steve pressed ‘individual’ and looked at Nell.

‘OK – who do you want?’ he asked.

Nell held her breath. This was definitely going to be one she’d prefer to try when she was safely on her own. But for now … ‘Let’s try my friend Kate. Type in Catherine Perry.’

‘And the area she lives in?’

‘Ah – you definitely need that?’ That was a disappointment. For some ridiculous reason Nell had assumed the computer would immediately know exactly which ‘Catherine Perry’ she would mean. Of course it wouldn’t – and in turn it wasn’t going to know which ‘Patrick Sanders’ she meant, either. There must be thousands of them. And without having a clue where he was living it was going to be next to impossible to find him. And she
definitely
wanted to. She had a sudden painful thought that she might already be too late. Suppose he was dead? Or (and ridiculously it seemed worse) in the process of dying? Time could be running out, fast. For the more than twenty years since they’d split, she’d assumed he was still there, living a parallel life somewhere. Possibly he wasn’t, or wouldn’t be for much longer. When he vanished into the eternal dark they would never, ever speak to each other again. Why had this never crossed her mind before? It should have.

‘Oh – Kate’s only a couple of miles away. Try London SW13,’ Nell told Steve. She wanted him gone, then she could think about how to play with search sites.

All the same, when, in a few moments, he had found
not
only Kate, her address and phone number but also the names of all her neighbours along the avenue, Nell was both horrified and impressed.

‘Is nothing sacred any more?’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t we be more able to press a key to opt in rather than have to register to opt out?’

‘Depends on how you look at it,’ Steve pointed out. ‘It depends on whether you’re the one doing the searching or the one doing the hiding. And it’s all based on the electoral register, which is public anyway.’

‘Hiding’s nothing to do with it. It’s all an unacceptable gatecrashing of privacy, surely.’

‘Only if you’re looking where you shouldn’t be,’ Steve said. ‘Or if you’ve got something you’d prefer not to be known.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Nell said, closing down the computer. ‘It’s all a bit identity-card discussion for me. I think I find it all too Big Brother – and not in the television sense, I mean.’

‘You’re probably right,’ Steve agreed. ‘But anyway, thanks for the coffee and apologies again for invading your territory like this. I hope I’m forgiven?’

‘I suppose so!’ Well of course he was forgiven. Hadn’t he just taught her a possible way of tracking down Patrick?

Nell went with him to the front door. In her mind was the possibility that if she didn’t actually see him go, she might later find him upstairs in a cupboard, from where
he’d
unapologetically point out her mistake in not watching him leave the premises.

‘And don’t forget …’ Steve turned back at the gate.

‘I know – half an hour later on Tuesday,’ she called.

‘No … I meant get that doorbell fixed!’ He waved, unlocked a mud-splattered blue Audi and drove away.

Ed backed the Fiesta into the minuscule slot that the local Waitrose car-park designers had grudgingly allocated for the undeserving subspecies of ordinary folk who didn’t qualify for either disabled parking or a generous parent-and-child space. There was, he noted as he switched off T. Rex’s ‘Metal Guru’ and opened the car door, barely room to squeeze his normal-size body out between the concrete pillar and the car alongside his. To escape from the tiny gap, he bent the wing mirror inwards and noticed that the driver of the car beside him had done the same. Now he also wished he hadn’t gone in backwards, leaving himself no access to the boot so he could load the shopping. Stupid, he thought. So much for being a bright and brainy academic. He could come up with topics affording hours of debate, such as whether Juliet was the one calling the shots with Romeo, or the significance of motherhood as a theme in
Macbeth
, yet couldn’t figure out the right way to park at a supermarket. He hoped this wasn’t a senior moment. He wasn’t ready for those yet; he surely wasn’t anywhere near old enough. If Charles was
with
him he’d be standing over by the trolleys, hand on hip, tutting and smiling in the quiet triumph that only an older sibling can get away with.

Inside Waitrose was the usual bustle of after-work customers hurriedly flinging goods into trolleys and fuming at the slowness of the schoolkids’ shift on the checkouts. Ed, his trolley quickly stocked with smoked salmon, steaks, half a dozen special-offer bottles of Wolf Blass Cab. Sauv. and enough fruit and veg to keep the health police happy, chose his checkout with care. At the end of a working day he didn’t particularly want to have to make conversation over the bag-loading with one of his own A-level students, pleasant enough bunch though they were. He could find plenty to talk to them about if the subject was Hardy’s take on the Industrial Revolution, but he didn’t really want to answer polite questions about what he was doing tonight. Especially as the answer, as too often, was Nothing Special.

Across by the cakes counter, he could see Mimi from next door with one of her schoolfriends, and he wondered what Nell would be doing. There he’d be in his (well, his and Charles’s) house and there she’d be in hers, only the thickness of a wall away. He wondered if she fancied going out sometime, just as mates. She might. Most nights there was a band on at the Bull’s Head in Barnes. He’d been there several times with colleagues from the college. He’d even been on his own. Maybe she’d like that, not that
he
had a clue as to what sort of music she liked. She might be a folkie, or have fond memories of punk. He’d ask her. It would have to be in a way that didn’t give her the wrong impression, though. He understood from staffroom chat that a newly single woman would be wary of being circled by predators. What was it someone had called it, that approach to a woman who’d been left? Going for the mercy fuck, that was the crude version. That was absolutely not the idea at all.

‘God, Mum, what are you doing? It’s all dark in here!’ Mimi came clattering in through the front door, flung her schoolbag down on a chair and flipped all the light switches on at once. Nell blinked up at her, her startled eyes seeing nothing but silvered stripes and flashes.

‘Mimi – hi! What time is it?’

‘Mum! It’s gone seven! What’s for dinner? Where is it? I’m starving!’ Mimi opened the fridge and scanned the contents, picking up a half-bar of Fruit and Nut chocolate and biting off a square. ‘Jeez, you haven’t even started cooking. It’s going to be
ages
.’ She crashed around the room, picking up the newspaper, the box of cat food, an empty biscuit pack, slamming them down again, moaning, ‘What are you doing?’ She peered over Nell’s shoulder at the screen.

Nell quickly closed down the computer. ‘I got involved looking something up and lost track of the time. I’ll fix us
some
pasta and salad and stuff. And where’ve you been till now? Why didn’t you call and tell me you’d be late?’

‘Like you’d have even noticed?’ Mimi smirked. ‘Me and Tess went to the school play auditions. They’re doing
Midsummer Night’s Dream
,
again
. They only did it about two years ago, I’m sure. Anyway I’m Mustard-seed. Tess is Moth. She wanted to be Titania and is
well
fucked about it.’

Nell ignored the choice language in the interests of peacekeeping. ‘Will I have to make a costume? If you need wings, you’ll have to buy some from the fancy-dress place where all the hen-party women get them. I can’t do wings.’

‘Yeah, that I do remember,’ Mimi laughed. ‘You made rubbish ones from a wire coathanger when I was five. I got laughed at, big-time, at that party. It’s probably one of those things I’ll have to tell the psycho when I’m being analysed in rehab about my broken home.’