The Sleeper (42 page)

Leon picks me a perfume, carefully sniffing until he laughs and takes a white box to the counter.

‘If in doubt,’ he says, and hands a woman in a white lab coat the Chanel No. 5 box. I pass him a scarf that I have picked up randomly, and he swaps it for a different one, rosy pink, and buys that.

‘Thank you, sir,’ says the woman behind the counter, and I take the bag from him and look into it.

‘Thanks,’ I say. He nods and strokes my wig.

‘We’ll get you back to yourself,’ he says, fingering a strand of it, and I am not sure whether it is a threat or a promise. ‘My Lara.’

I walk along swinging the bag. I have done too little, too late, but this is an attempt at following the plan. I try to tell myself that at least I have some perfume and a scarf, and wonder if I could escape in Delhi. At some point I might be able to get his phone again.

It won’t work. None of it will work. The only way I will get away is by leaping off a mountainside to my death. That will do. That is my next plan. I can’t wait.

We are approaching the queues for immigration when a woman with short hair walks into me, brushes me, and, before I realise what is happening, gently takes my bag out of my unresisting hand and replaces it with another. I look down. The new bag also says Duty Free on it. It looks the same as the old one. I look around. Was it her? I am not even sure that it happened. I could have imagined the whole thing.

All the same, I know what to do.

‘Leon?’

He looks at me, his grey eyes serious. ‘Yes?’

‘Could you take this? Bit … wobbly.’

He smiles and takes the bag without a word, without looking at it. We queue up and present our passports. Nobody stops us. The man who stamps them looks at me hard, but lets us in.

We have the bags, and Leon piles everything on to a trolley.

‘Right,’ he says. ‘Here we go.’

I clutch my stomach.

‘The loo!’ I say. ‘See you in a second. Sorry.’

I walk away from him, carrying nothing but my handbag. I have done this before. I hold my head high, and I walk casually, as elegantly as I can in this state, through the Customs area and out into the airport concourse, pretending that I am hurrying towards a bathroom.

Last time I did this, Rachel never followed.

This time, Leon doesn’t follow. I hardly dare to hope that he will not be along in a moment, taking my arm, steering me to the next check-in.

I wonder what to do. I am on my own. I don’t know where to go. I have no phone and no money, and I might not have time to get anywhere. He is going to come along at any time. But he isn’t here yet.

I try to concentrate. Need to get away. I cannot think what to do, but I need to do it quickly.

Focus.

I turn to look back. Leon is still not there. I cannot go anywhere without money. Leon took everything I had, such as it was. He took my mind and my memory and my lover and my life. I walk in an aimless line, heading approximately for the exit.

I stand still, letting the people pass me. The air conditioning is strong here. The little hairs on my arms are standing on end. He will be here in a moment, and I cannot order my thoughts for long enough to get away.

I stand and watch. People are coming through the door, but not one of them is Leon. He doesn’t come.

And then he still doesn’t come.

I will sit here for a bit. I lower myself to the floor and cross my legs and wait.

A moment later, a hand is on my arm.

‘Get up. Come on. Get up and come with me.’

But it is not his voice. The person taking my hand and helping me to my feet is not Leon.

‘Come on, lovely. Come on. Your insane plan, you nutter. It seems to have worked. Up you get. You’re all right, Lara. He’s gone.’ She puts a hand on each of my shoulders and turns me around so her face is right in front of mine. I stare at her. ‘Lara. You’re going to be OK. We’re going to look after you.’

I look around. Who, I wonder, does ‘we’ include? There are five police officers nearby, looking at us. That scares me.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘You’re not in trouble. Not at all. You’re
out
of trouble. Don’t tell them what we did to Leon, though, OK? That’s a secret. Not something the police need to know about. I made the call and they stopped him. It’s done. Look, this is Alex. Don’t tell him either. He’s from Falmouth. I was trying to call him for ages but he didn’t answer because he was flying out here, to meet me. To find you.’

A tall white man walks over to us. He looks at Iris, who nods.

‘Hello, Lara,’ he says. ‘Alex Zielowski. You don’t know me, but I must say it is a privilege and a delight to meet you at last.’

I look at Iris. We don’t look the same any more, not now that she has cut her hair. That reminds me of the wig. I reach up and pull it off. She takes it from me and puts it into her bag.

‘There you go,’ she says. ‘Lara Wilberforce. Lara Finch. Welcome back. We’re going to take you home.’

epilogue

Iris
September

I am standing in a cemetery in west London, talking, as ever, to a man who isn’t there. I am talking aloud, because there is no one nearby, and I do not feel ridiculous. I have spent years talking to this particular dead man: it is, it transpires, a hard habit to break.

The autumn sunlight is slanted straight into my eyes, and I am squinting, dazzled yet cold. I’m stamping as I speak, trying to keep my optimistically clad feet warm. I cannot bear to stop wearing the sandals I bought in Bangkok, even though it is definitely too cold for them now. In fact I am still dressed for summer. It has been an emotional year so far, but largely, strangely, a happy one.

There is a headstone with his name on it: Laurence Jonathan Madaki. There are the dates of his birth and, thirty-two years on, his death. I have brought him some flowers, and it is strangely comforting to see them here. Remembering him in the conventional way gives me a huge feeling of solidarity with the unseen visitors who tend to the other graves, who remember all these other people.

‘And so,’ I tell him, ‘I’m going away. You don’t mind, do you? I know you don’t. You’d want me to do this.’ I politely leave a space for him to talk. ‘It’s all fixed up. Well, it’s kind of fixed up. Actually, I’m terrified. But it’s going to be incredible. Why do you buy a lottery ticket if you’re not going to do something life-changing with your prize? I know that. I need to do it. I’ll always miss you, Laurie. Always. You’ll always be the love of my life. But since you’re not here, and since it’s all short and definitely unpredictable, I think I’d better carry on living it.’

I sense his approval. Even if it’s not really emanating from his grave, I know that the Laurie I loved would have wanted me to do this.

I have moved out of the house in Budock, and the furious Shakespearean cats have moved in, grudgingly, with Sam Finch, who is just beginning to discover how desirable a single, childless man in his thirties really is. Last time I spoke to him he said, ‘Can you believe it, Iris? I’ve got dates lined up for the next three Fridays and Saturdays. Different women each time! Amazing ones! What the hell do they see in a boring twat like me, hey?’

‘Oh, women like a boring twat,’ I assured him.

‘Cheers.’

‘Broody women who’ve been done over by boyfriends in the past. They love a … well, a stable man who’s not going to turn on them. That sounds better, doesn’t it, than a boring twat. It’s the same thing, though. I mean that affectionately.’

He laughed. ‘Thanks. If at some point I do settle down with one of them, I’ll get you to vet her first.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I will do my best to be utterly terrifying.’

Lara is living back in London: she and Sam spoke awkwardly and unhappily a couple of times when she got home. They will never speak again unless they have to to finalise the divorce. Some relationships will never have a happy-ever-after.

I have spent much of the summer with Lara, talking to her, wandering around London with her, looking at paintings, going to the cinema, walking by the river. She is wobbly, and she will be for a long time to come: she is only just beginning to contemplate the idea that one day she might get over Guy. She is eaten up with guilt and horror, and the renewed media frenzy when she was discovered was as much of an ordeal for her as anything that had gone before it. People still point her out on the street, even ask for her autograph. She is living in a studio apartment and taking things one day at a time; yet there are green shoots that I don’t think she can see yet. She has distanced herself from her parents, which she needed to do, and as a result she has become oddly close to Olivia, particularly in the months since baby Isaac was born on the first of May. He is an adorable baby: he makes me yearn for one of my own, and that has never happened before, not even when Laurie was alive.

Motherhood has changed Olivia. She is softer and gentler, but still one of the most formidable women I know. She and Isaac fill her Covent Garden flat perfectly, and she goes everywhere with him strapped into a sling on her stomach, gazing up at her with adoring eyes. ‘He’s the best thing I’ve ever done,’ she said the other day, watching him lying on the rug on her sitting room floor, cooing and gurgling for attention. ‘Whoever would have thought that? Isaac, would you like Auntie Iris to change your nappy? Or Auntie Lara?’

Lara did it. She still feels she owes the world everything, that she will be atoning for what happened to Guy and Rachel and Sam for the rest of her life. I hope she will move past that one day.

I walk out of the cemetery and into the busy London street. I have said goodbye to Laurie, and now I am free.

I call my mum. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour,’ I tell her, and she says happily that she will put the kettle on. It has been odd coming back into my family’s lives, and I, like Lara but differently, am forever trying not to be obsessed with my own feelings of horror at what I inflicted on them. They loved Laurie too; and when he died, they lost me as well. Now I am back, and although things are weird, they are good. We are nervous around each other, and my sister Lily is resentful of my strolling back in like the prodigal daughter when she has held my parents together for five long years, but things are better like this, at least, than they were before.

Lara and I never told anyone that we planted the heroin on Leon. Her addled plan to do to him what Jake had done to Rachel had actually worked. He was arrested for smuggling, and then, when everything else came to light, he was extradited to Britain and charged with murder too. One way and another, he will not be out of prison for a long time. Lara is dreading having to give evidence at his trial, but I know she will do it: she will look him in the eye and tell the world everything. Then, perhaps, she will move on.

As I approach the bus stop, I decide to make a phone call. Alex answers at once.

‘Iris! Are you OK? Been to the grave?’

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘And yes, of course I’m OK. That was good to do. I told him we’re going away. I said we’d be gone a year or so, at least. I know he can’t hear me, but I’m glad I did it.’

I step on to the bus and pass my Oyster card over the reader. It beeps, and I walk up the narrow staircase, still talking. I sit beside a window, turning to the view so the other passengers won’t have to listen to me.

‘No qualms, then?’ he is asking. I picture him, on his way to London, in his red jumper, his face newly shaven and eager.

I laugh. ‘Are you joking? A trip across the USA, and that’s just for starters? Of course no qualms at all. You?’

‘Oh my God. I can’t wait. I’ll see you at your parents’ place in a few hours. OK?’

‘I can’t wait either,’ I tell him, and I put the phone in my pocket and watch a flock of birds far away in the distance, heading south for the winter.