The Valley (8 page)

Instinctively, I started to unpack my laptop, intending to spend the next few hours scouring the internet for any news about Lucy as I had almost every night for the last week. But then I stopped. A whole new future seemed to be opening up, not just for me, but for everyone. The past did not have to haunt it.

I’m running, always running.

Down the stairs, away from the screams and the crying. I pull back the lock, push the heavy door open and stumble onto the dark street outside.

It’s cold. Half the buttons on my shirt are undone but I have to get away.

I turn left on instinct, splashing through a puddle as I sprint down the street. I don’t know my way around Chelsea and soon I’m lost. But I keep on running.

The dream changes. Sometimes I imagine seeing in the shadows a skinhead like the one in the mugshot that Joy showed me. Other times it’s the lady with a dog that Max’s private detective tracked down, or Joy, or Milburn or even Max. But it doesn’t really matter who it is. It’s the way they watch me as I run past them – their eyes scrutinising my face, reading my guilt, remembering me.

When I wake up, I tell myself it’s just a dream.

But as I nestle back into the pillows, I feel my legs beginning to pump again.

The first wave of Max’s money swept through the PropFace bank account a few days later. Most of it kept on flowing into the accounts of our various creditors. But what remained was more than enough to hire a couple of sales people and a web developer, upgrade our aging IT equipment and guarantee that everyone’s salaries, including my own, would be paid on time for the foreseeable future. We even had enough left over to leave the dilapidated office above the undertakers in Earlsfield and move to new premises near London Bridge, which at least meant we had a base which clients could visit without endangering our hold over their business.

But although clients came to see us, our new owner never did. Max stayed away, and, on balance, I was grateful for this, because I had dreaded him returning to his former company like a king from exile. In his absence, his interests in PropFace were represented by his accountant, Ian Joseph, who became the company’s Finance Director.

Ian was a quiet, intensely private, man in his fifties, with bifocal glasses and a few strands of oiled black hair that covered the bottom third of an otherwise bald scalp. He came in two days a week, and worked at the desk next to mine, arriving at five minutes to nine and leaving at five minutes past five, often without having spoken to anyone inside the office. Max had described him as his nice Jewish accountant, but Ian never gave any clue about his background or beliefs, or his relationship with Max. I once tricked him into admitting he had visited Grand Cayman, but he refused to elucidate and changed the subject as quickly as he could. What he did on the three days a week that he did not work at PropFace, remained a total mystery to us all.

And Ian was not the only stranger I grew accustomed to that Spring. The other, to my surprise, was Angela.

She sent me an email when she arrived in Hong Kong, and a week later, when I had two minutes to spare, I quickly typed a reply, mostly consisting of an apology that I did not have enough time to say more. A few days later, I received a long and very funny account of life in Hong Kong, written, Angela said, because she was bored out of her mind waiting in a transit lounge in Tokyo airport. I read it as I ate a sandwich at my desk and found myself smiling. I was just about to compose a reply when a client rang, and the opportunity was lost. But that night, back at my flat at 10 o’clock, having eaten a bowl of pasta, rather than turn on the TV, I wrote an email to her. It was half as long as hers and a quarter as funny, but it was a real communication rather than merely a rushed excuse for one. A few days later she replied, and before we knew it, we had started a long running dialogue, both of us writing whenever we could snatch a few minutes, and neither of us minding if the other did not respond for a few days.

Angela was very honest in her emails about how lonely she sometimes felt, trapped in a foreign city where she knew hardly anyone and doing a job that played havoc with her personal life. This drew from me a similar confession about the long hours I was working. After living in the country for more than quarter of a century, PropFace was still my only financial asset. It was not just what I did any more: it defined who I was, and I was determined to seize the second chance that Max’s money had given me to make it a success. And yet even I could see that constant twelve hour days and non-existent weekends were a dangerous concoction. Hearing from a fellow workaholic who could sympathise one minute and then gently tease me the next, helped alleviate the pain.

Soon we began to supplement our emails with text messages and then phone calls. On the rare occasions when Angela could grab a flight back to the UK, I would try to meet het. Depending on when she was due to fly out, and how much free time I had, I would either join her for a drink at the hotel bar of the BA roster hotel in West London where she was billeted with all the other flight crews, or we would go out for a quick meal together. She was always on a tight schedule and banned from drinking any alcohol, so our meetings were the antithesis of a romantic date but it was still good to see the fabulous smile and friendly freckles again, if only to remind me that she was a proper person, and not just a voice down the telephone. And afterwards, when she had flown back to Hong Kong, I was conscious of the void in my life that would only be closed by her next visit.

It was not that I did not see other people: Every day I went into an office that, thanks to Max’s money, was now full of lively colleagues; I saw Karen and my children regularly; and I played tennis at a local club nearly every week, often joining the other players for a drink or a curry after the game. But Angela seemed to be the only person I ever talked to about subjects that were not merely transient or logistical or connected to work. Among other things, we discovered that our backgrounds were similar: she had moved from New Zealand to the UK at about the same age as I had emigrated from South Africa, and we had both grown up without a father because hers had walked out on the family when she was aged eleven.

Angela was also the only person with whom I felt I could discuss the Lucy Grainger case. Right from the moment I had first met her, she had known about my involvement, and the police interest in me, so there was nothing to hide. I knew the press still ran stories about it from time to time, and I wanted to know if I was ever mentioned. Angela agreed to act as my filter, eventually reporting back that I had nothing to worry about. Although the police refused to make any official comment, a consensus seemed to have emerged that Lucy was simply the unlucky victim of a burglary that had gone disastrously wrong. Her body had not been found but no one doubted that she was dead.

In May, my relationship with Angela took another unexpected step. She had rung me up at short notice, saying she was going to be in London and would have about an hour free around six o’clock as she crossed from Heathrow to Gatwick. She assumed I would still be in the office but I was already in Balham, having taken a rare day’s holiday because I had the boys staying with me for part of their half-term. Not wanting to miss out on my one chance of seeing her for over a month, I asked whether she would mind coming over to my flat, warning her that Tom and Jack would be there, but promising she would barely notice them as they would be glued to a DVD – a promise that immediately evaporated into thin air when she arrived in her co-pilot’s uniform, bringing two British Airways model airplanes as gifts.

‘You’re a pilot?’ Jack said, his eyes growing ever larger ‘In true life?’

He was mad about planes and could not have been more impressed if the queen herself had popped in for a cup of tea. In the end he spent nearly half an hour on her knee, clutching a pretend joystick, as she taught him how to land at Heathrow, whilst simultaneously answering a constant stream of questions from his younger brother about all the jet fighters in his sticker book.

When she had to leave, I apologised for all the unplanned childcare I had inflicted on her.

‘I enjoyed it,’ she said. ‘They’re lovely children.’

I smiled. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Well, I enjoyed meeting them. I miss out on things like that.’

‘So do I,’ I said and she smiled back,

Yet for all this emotional intimacy, Angela showed no sign of wanting to rush into a physical relationship. This did not overly surprise me, given how we had first met: not many girls immediately jump into bed with a man suspected of murder, and it was hard to accelerate a relationship when we only met about once every six weeks or so, and usually when she was jetlagged or banned from touching alcohol or surrounded by other British Airways staff. And so reluctantly I accepted it, because I feared losing her as a friend if I tried to move more quickly than she wanted.

Then in June, whilst we were chatting on the phone one Saturday lunchtime, I mentioned that I had just come back from my weekly tennis match at the club where I was a member. She said she sometimes played, and on a whim I invited her to the club’s open day tournament, as it coincided with her next visit to the UK, which rather than being a simple overnight stop, extended into the weekend.

She initially said ‘Yes’, but in the run-up to the event, I received a stream of emails, bombarding me with questions about it.

‘What sort of club is it? How long have you been a member? Who do you play with? How good are they? Are we going to play together or apart? What time would we leave?’

Her final worries all seemed to be about clothes. I told her that more or less anything sufficed. But this did not reassure her at all and I was relieved to see her when she actually turned up at my flat, ten minutes before we were due at the club, wearing a brand new tennis shirt, and very thick, heavy and slightly torn tracksuit trousers.

‘Is that your hockey tracksuit?’

She looked at me. ‘Oh God, it’s too scruffy, isn’t it? I knew I’d get it wrong. Your instructions were hopeless.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘you look wonderful. But if the sun keeps shining, you might get a little hot, that’s all.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said defensively. ‘I’ve got a skirt on underneath. ’

‘A hockey skirt?’

‘No, a tennis skirt,’ she said smiling. ‘A rather nice designer one, actually.’ She shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another and mumbled. ‘It’s just a little short to wear walking down Balham High Street, that’s all.’

She was still nervous when we arrived at the club. We all had to fill in a tournament entry form that doubled as a raffle ticket. Whereas everyone else spent ten seconds completing it, she took ages, asking me when the raffle would be drawn and what the prizes were, and then diligently answering all the questions on the form before tearing it up when she realised she’d written down her old address in the mansion block, rather than her new one in Hong Kong.

As she looked around for a non-existent bin, I grabbed a replacement form and scribbled in her name and mobile number.

‘That’s all you need to fill in,’ I said, handing it to the Club Secretary.

She smiled. ‘I didn’t know you knew my mobile number off by heart.’

Now it was my time to feel embarrassed, and I was relieved when we were called up to play almost immediately. On court she was inconsistent: one moment hitting a shot that a professional would envy, the next missing a simple volley, and turning around and mouthing ‘fuck’ at me, before turning to the opposition and saying ‘well done’ in a voice so polite that she could have been a nun. I tore around the court trying to impress her, and for a while, we started winning games, until the sun came out and she slipped off her tracksuit bottoms to reveal a skirt that was very short, and two long and very shapely legs; and now it was me who was the inconstant one, my focus distracted by the smooth toned thighs that sashayed in front of me.

After playing two matches, we ate lunch sitting down on the grass in the midday sun. She told me about her childhood which had many similarities to mine. She had been born and brought up New Zealand, in a small town near Auckland. Her parents had got divorced when she was thirteen and she and her mother had moved to London.

During a natural lull in her story, she held up her old tracksuit bottoms by the hem and inspected a hole that had appeared just above the knee.

‘I think these trousers have had it,’ she said. ‘I’m going to throw them in the nearest bin.’

‘It might get cooler in the evening.’

‘I’m not sure I can stay that late.’

I was keen to head off any premature decision about when she would leave, so I persuaded her to stash the tracksuit bottoms in my club locker. I rarely used this and when I opened it, an old torn fleece that was in even worse condition than her trousers, fell out it.

‘Are you sure this isn’t the Club rubbish bin?’ she asked, laughing.

The tennis resumed and carried on until seven o’clock. In my emails to Angela this was when I had told her the event would end. But instead of leaving, we lingered for drinks and then supper, finding a space where just the two of us could talk. After a while, we were joined by a larger group, becoming part of an impromptu party. Bottle after bottle of wine was ordered and I became joyously tipsy, conscious of how happy I was, not least because Angela seemed so happy too.

As more and more people joined us and crowded around our table, the same smooth thighs that I had admired on the court pressed against mine, and I could feel the warmth of her body as we were wedged closer and closer together. It was midnight when the club closed, and we walked outside to search for a taxi that could take her back to her hotel. It seemed natural to put my arm around her waist, and stroll with her, holding her close, hoping that by the time a taxi appeared, I would have persuaded her to alter her plans. But one trundled up to us almost immediately, its yellow For Hire sign glowing in the dark.

After a second’s hesitation, Angela hailed it.

‘Don’t go,’ I said to her, my arm still around her waist. ‘Stay. I will sleep on the sofa if you want, but please don’t go.’

‘I can’t. I’m sorry,’ she said.

She sounded so unhappy, that I started to apologise.

‘No – it’s me, not you,’ Angela said. And when she stepped into the taxi, I saw she was crying.

I was too frustrated to sleep that night. My brain was flooded with images of the legs that had rubbed against mine, the waist I had put my arm around, the lithe body that had been pressed into me, and the freckled, smiling face that I had wanted so much to kiss. And it was not just physical attraction: I wanted to know what she thought, what she liked, and what she really wanted from me.

She called early in the morning, on her way to Heathrow. We both instinctively started apologising to one another like we had done the night before, and then laughed at the way we both blamed ourselves. Emboldened by this, I asked her if she would come and have supper with me in my flat when she was next in London.

‘Are you giving proper dinner parties nowadays?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’ll be just you and me’.

There was a long pause. I then told her that she had cooked for me once, when she lived in the flat upstairs, and I simply wanted to repay her. But, of course, we both knew that this would be a very different occasion because we would be alone in my flat, and we would be eating just yards away from a bed that I had already once invited her to stay the night in.