Precious Thing (11 page)

It was before dawn and a dirty light had settled on the room. I thought I might be the only one awake in the world. Everything silent and still as if the day was out there waiting for everyone else to realise it was ready.

I was in the wardrobe; I’d fallen asleep there, my limbs twisted and achy. My body wanted to move and stretch but I couldn’t summon the energy.

Then – the sound of a phone ringing. My mobile. A noise normally so unwelcome early in the morning, had my whole body tense with possibility. I saw it on my bed, flashing. I leapt out of the wardrobe to grab it. And I answered. Searching for the right words and then I found them.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Is that you?’

‘Rachel?’ A man’s voice, a southern accent like Jonny’s and deep too. For a moment I let myself think it.

‘Jonny?’ There was a pause and then I knew. I knew.

‘Rachel, it’s Nick.’

‘Oh …’ I said. I had no more words.

‘Look, I’m sorry to be calling at this time but I need to speak to you.’ There was a softness to him that filled me with dread. Nick didn’t talk like that; he boomed and bellowed. Whenever I saw Nick I saw Jonny, the pair of them laughing like schoolkids who had never grown up.

My grip on the phone loosened, it slipped down away from my ear. But his voice, I could still hear it.

‘I’m sure there’s a good reason for it,’ he said in a way which made me think he didn’t believe it. ‘But the fixer, we managed to contact the fixer overnight and Jonny isn’t there, he didn’t arrive on Monday.’

‘He must have been delayed on the way,’ I said, recalling his plans to fly into Kabul and down to Kandahar where he was to meet the fixer. ‘You know what it’s like over there, Nick,’ I went on, but even that theory opened up another flurry of possibilities I didn’t want to consider. I heard Nick’s sharp intake of breath on the phone, enough to send me into meltdown. ‘Oh my God, has something happened to him out there?’ The nightmare, the homemade video, masked men surrounding Jonny, forcing him to talk to the camera, to beg for his life. ‘Fucking hell,’ I said, ‘isn’t there supposed to be fucking security?’ I was saying all this and aware at the same time that the prospect of Jonny being kidnapped by al-Qaeda was somehow preferable to the alternative, the collusion with you. The betrayal.

‘He hasn’t been kidnapped Rachel.’ Nick’s voice was firm.

‘How can you be sure?’ There was no way of knowing; how could he dismiss it so quickly?

‘Rachel … we called the police last night when we realised he wasn’t there. They checked with the airline. Jonny didn’t even make the flight.’

Dawn gave way to a fierce blue-sky day from which there was no hiding. The huge folding doors we’d had fitted in the kitchen at great expense let the light flood through. Outside, in the garden, the sun, brilliant and harsh, danced on the patches of frost; inside it reflected off the white gloss units and the stainless-steel worktops. How perfect it looked, how empty its promise. And the brilliance of it, I thought, was so inappropriate, like a brightly dressed guest showing off at a funeral.

There was a cloth in my hand, working its way over the surfaces, the table top, the worktop, the hob. Occasionally I stopped to spray more Dettol, the one that says it kills 100 per cent of all known germs, which was all very well but what about the unknown ones? I shuddered at the thought. Once, twice, three times I went over the surfaces. Then I stood back and surveyed my work. The shine. All clean. I turned to my plants.

There were ten of them, placed around the flat according to their need for sunlight or shade. The peace lilies in the living room were drooping, forlorn, the thin red-trimmed leaves of the marginara in the kitchen were brittle, brown-tinged at the ends. The African violet, my flamboyant, high-maintenance performer, looked like an actress whose hair and make-up needed retouching. Only the spider plant, a gift from a teacher years ago at school, showed no signs of neglect. I watered each one, watching the liquid seep through the cracks in the dry, parched soil. I imagined it soaking down to their roots, reviving them, bringing them back to life. The thought hovered as it always did: they needed me, it was down to me whether they lived or died. Somehow I found comfort in that.

Back in the kitchen the sound of coffee gurgling as it made its way through the Gaggia machine surprised me. I had no recollection of putting it on. For a moment I wondered if Jonny had done it. And then I remembered.
He isn’t here.

One, two, three,
I counted back. Three days since Jonny was standing here, coffee in hand, kissing me goodbye.

‘Do you have to go?’ I had asked pointlessly. ‘Can’t you find a documentary to film in France instead of Afghanistan?’ This was his second trip in three months for a Channel Four
Dispatches
on international-aid money ending up in the pockets of government officials.

‘Darling …’ He came up behind me and wrapped his arms round my waist. His words tickled as they landed on my neck. ‘I came back last time didn’t I?’ he said as if that was a guarantee it would happen again. ‘And I promise I won’t talk to any masked men, you don’t get rid of me that easily. I’ll try to call midweek but don’t panic if you don’t hear, OK?’

‘OK,’ I said even though it wasn’t. The lack of communication was the worst thing. Not knowing, imagining.

His kisses crept up my neck and on to my lips. I could still taste them as I ran out the door, late for work.

Friday
. I hadn’t seen Jonny since Friday. All this time I had imagined he was thousands of miles away, in a brutal Afghan winter, putting himself at risk. And yet he had been close by and I hadn’t known. It was that single thought that tormented me the most.

Did I ever tell you about the first time I saw him, Clara? I’m at the bus stop on Ladbroke Grove. I’ve been at the Electric with friends from work and I’m drunk, but not so drunk I can’t feel the cold because I can feel the cold and I feel the rain, hammering against the shelter. Number 138 is the one I want but it doesn’t come. Not forever. I’m not aware of him at first, too busy shaking my head and swearing under my breath about the fucking rain and the bus and then finally I turn round and there he is, smiling as if to say, it’s only a bus, it’s only rain. It’s the smile and the face and everything, just everything, that pulls me in. I think I could look at it forever and still want more. And I don’t know how we started talking or who said what first because it felt like there had been so many words between us already.

After a while I don’t want the bus to turn up any more; I want to stay there in the cold and rain and talk to the man with the smile and the face all night. My hair is like rats’ tails and my mascara is smudged from the wet but none of it matters. It’s just him and me and possibilities stretching out ahead of us. It was that quick, Clara, lightning-fast.

The newsroom was ripe with the smell of last night’s microwaved dinners and overtired nightshifters. Empty crisp packets abandoned on desks and half-empty cups of tea left in open defiance of laminated signs that warned people to clean up after themselves. Stacks of newspapers strewn across the desks and on the floor, and the noise, the noise; the phones were ringing, never silent. People shouted about trucks and headlines and clips for packages and
fuckwits who don’t do their jobs properly
and slammed down phones and answered them, dispensing – always – with hellos and goodbyes.

I waded through all this like treacle, moving at a different speed to everyone else. There had been no question of staying at home, the home I shared with Jonny, surrounded by his clothes and belongings, all taunting me in his absence. The constant churn of questions in my mind:
where was he? Where had he gone?
I needed to escape, to find some normality, but as I walked into the newsroom I realised it didn’t matter where I was; my thoughts followed me everywhere.

I threw my bag down on the desk, startling Jake. He turned to see me.

‘Jesus,’ he said, and he looked at me through pinched eyes, ‘hard night?’

I picked up an old letter on my desk and pretended to read it.

‘Coffee?’ I asked. He nodded.

‘I’ll come with you.’

Crossing the newsroom he talked about a court case that was happening later on in the week, about filming a backgrounder, about setting up interviews. The white noise of his chatter drilled into my brain. I nodded and looked at the wall of TV monitors to distract myself. Picture feeds coming in from different locations and countries; one showed soldiers in Iraq, another one had footage of last night’s football game. And then, a square in Brighton. Where you lived, Clara. Your flat. The recognition hit me like a jolt. Even when I didn’t see your face I couldn’t forget.

On another screen I saw Jane Fenchurch, one of the new reporters, getting ready to go on air, doing her make-up in the camera lens, unaware that half the newsroom could see her. She looked like she was in a cave, bathed in an eerie orange light and dressed, alarmingly, in a leopard-print fur jacket.

‘Fucking hell,’ Jake said, looking at the same screen, ‘Robbie’s going to love that.’

The coffee bar was breakfast-busy, people toasting bread, stuffing croissants into their mouths, serving watery bacon and beans. I saw the girl from online who never washed her hair leaning into the vat of porridge, examining its consistency in the ladle and then shaking her head. Even she wouldn’t eat it. All that food congealing under hot lamps, breathed on, coughed on, stirred and fingered, it made my stomach turn over. Still, couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten so I grabbed a muffin in cellophane wrapping. Clean, sterile.

At the far end of the canteen there was a small TV with the sound down. Pictures of cars skidding on ice, kids sledging down snowy hills were being played under the strapline: BREAKING NEWS – FROZEN BRITAIN.

‘Breaking news, my arse,’ Jake said.

We sat down at a free table, me flicking the crumbs away with my napkin. My coffee was too hot to drink so I stirred it, clockwise, anticlockwise, making dark swirls in the foam, avoiding Jake’s stare. I was buying time, thinking, rehearsing the words. ‘
Oh by the way, Jake, you know that girl who’s gone missing, she’s a friend and my boyfriend was the last person to see her, more sugar?
How was I to parcel up my bombshell and deliver it with coffee and croissants in the canteen?

But he met me halfway.

‘Soooo …’ he said, his mouth forming an O. ‘Before that car pulled out, you were about to tell me something.’

‘I was?’ I asked, finally looking up. He was sitting back in the chair, hands clasped round his head, the short sleeves of his T-shirt showing his muscles stretching. The contrary nature of NNN’s heating system meant you had to dress for summer when it was freezing outside and vice versa.

‘Come on, Rachel, I don’t bite,’ he said, and then, ‘Is it Jonny, are you two OK.’

I smiled at that – the way he thought we’d had a tiff, or split up. How innocent that would have been. So ordinary and fixable.

‘Yes and no.’ And then I closed my eyes and jumped in, like diving into a cold pool of water, ‘I don’t know where he is.’

His eyes narrowed into slits, his face a puzzle.

‘I thought he was out in Afghanistan filming? You can never get hold of anyone there, you know that.’ He was trying but he knew there must have been more. His lips settled into a half-smile.

‘Nick, his friend, his colleague rang last night. Jonny didn’t get on the flight.’

‘Oh.’ It was all people could think to say to me. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘You’re not supposed to, I’m not supposed to, it’s all hidden and twisted and I can’t see what’s going on, I can’t see anything.’ My hand banged on the table, shaking the coffee cups. And then his hand was on mine, gripping it.

‘It’s OK, it’s OK, he’ll be fine, he’s only been gone a day or two, he’ll turn up,’ he said as if Jonny was a cat who had strayed too far.

‘It’s three,’ I said. ‘It’s been three days.’ His grip loosened but his hand remained on mine. I glanced around, suddenly aware of how it might look. Jake’s stare didn’t leave me though, searching for the answers to his questions on my face. For a moment he said nothing and I thought I had said enough.

‘What else, Rachel?’

And then I saw it from the corner of my eye, your face on the TV screen. Your timing, always impeccable. Clara.

‘That,’ I said, nodding to the screen. And somehow everything loosened and the words flowed, like I couldn’t stop them even if I wanted to. ‘Jonny was with her on the night she went missing.’

‘Her?’ Jake was incredulous, eyes saucer-wide. ‘What the fuck … why? I mean how do you know?’

‘I went to see the police in Brighton, they showed me the CCTV, Jonny and Clara walking along the promenade, then they’re gone.’ I laughed a jittery laugh. ‘Just like that.’

‘Why would he have been with her, Jesus Christ?’ He was shaking his head in disbelief.

‘He knows her,’ I said as if that explained everything. I knew it explained nothing.

‘Oh,’ he said, his words eluding him. And I could hear the thought turning over in his head:
he knows her, he knows her
. It made everything darker, murkier.

‘Clara,’ I said, pausing to make sure I had his full attention, ‘Clara O’Connor is my best friend.’

‘I pay you all that fucking money and you turn up on air looking like you’ve escaped from a zoo?’ I was standing at the news desk next to Robbie and watched as a bit of spittle flew from his mouth and landed on his computer screen. I heard a muffled voice on the other end. Jane must have been trying to explain. Always a mistake.

‘Jane … Jane, listen to me, dear. I haven’t got a fucking clue what you were saying about the champion potholers down the cave. It could have been a Bafta-winning fucking commentary but I did not hear a word of it. NOT A FUCKING WORD. And you want to know why?’ He paused and I looked around to see the rest of the news desk smirking, waiting for Robbie to finish the assassination.

‘Good. I’ll tell you why, Jane. I couldn’t take my eyes off the monstrosity you were wearing. I wouldn’t let my gran go down the bingo with that on. And here’s the thing I’m guessing Jane, just hazarding a wild fucking guess from the e-mails we’re getting, is that ninety-nine per cent of our viewers felt the same.’