‘What?’
‘Go away for a week or so, go somewhere no one knows, lie low, just until I get back.’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘I’m serious, Nat. Look, you can’t deny two of our former friends have died. Surely you can at least accept the possibility that there might be more to those deaths than meets the eye.’
‘In theory,’ she said, still grudging him the ground.
‘Fine - in theory. So just go away until I find out.’ He could see she’d take more convincing than that, and as a fallback position he said, ‘At the very least, please, be more vigilant, a lot more, just for the next couple of weeks.’
She smiled, perhaps seeing beyond his edginess to the fact that he was concerned for her safety.
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I’ll be more vigilant. And look, I’m due some time off, so I’ll consider that too.’ He smiled and she added, ‘I said I’ll consider it, that’s all. And as it happens, I do think you’re paranoid and I want you to promise me something in return. When you finally accept that no one is trying to kill us, I want you to get help.’
He laughed, saying, ‘Jesus, I think I have a right to be a little paranoid in the light of what’s happened these past few weeks. I’d hardly say it was a case for medical intervention. All I want is for you to be careful until I get back.’
‘If you get back,’ she said, smiling, showing that she still didn’t take his conspiracy theory seriously. ‘Anyway, how will you find him? Do you know where he’s living now?’
‘No, but I know where his family lives - I’ll start there and see how it goes.’
She nodded and then looked absentmindedly at her watch, caught out by the time she saw there.
‘Fuck, I should go.’
She looked for the waiter and Alex said, ‘Leave it. I’ll get this.’
‘Do you mind? Thanks.’ She got up and kissed him hastily on the cheek, then took a piece of paper from her bag and wrote her number on it. ‘Seriously Alex, call me when you get back. We’ll do this again, without the doom and gloom next time.’
He said something but she was already walking away, her mind focussed on work again, as if she’d brought the shutters down on the past, an abrupt closure. She’d been convinced that he was in need of help and yet as he thought about her afterwards, he couldn’t help but think that she was the one who’d changed.
There was a subtle difference in the person he’d just been talking to, like a small but vital circuit had failed somewhere, the damage impacting on everything she said, on her feelings, on who she was. It was still the same Natalie but something inside her had died, a loss to which she was herself apparently oblivious.
He couldn’t pin it down because the change was so slight, but it was there. The Natalie he’d known ten years ago would have been stopped in her tracks by the news of Will’s death. This Natalie had stopped in her tracks too but he wasn’t sure if she’d done it because it had seemed the right thing to do, or even simply because they’d reached the restaurant.
He paid the bill and walked along the street to the tube station, making his way through the mix of business people and foreign tourists. He stood near the edge of the platform, the crowd gradually building behind him, some Italian girls the only people talking.
A train seemed to approach but the noise subsided again, the tunnel mouth remaining black and empty. He heard someone say, ‘Alex,’ and turned to look behind him. No one was looking at him, no one he recognized either. He faced forward and a few seconds later he heard it again, a loud whisper right behind him, ‘Alex!’
He span around, staring accusingly at the other people there, most of them averting their gazes from him. He was embarrassed, realizing he’d imagined it. He turned back but looked down at the track in front of him and got a sudden violent feeling that he was about to be pushed. It gave him the shakes, the fear total and instant, for all his attempts to rationalize.
He heard the rushing wind sound of the train coming and saw it emerge from the tunnel. People began to move around him, a volatile flux of bodies, and there was the track looming up below him, the fierce wheels of the train approaching.
He panicked, turned and pushed back quickly, back towards the curved wall with its glazed bricks and posters, pushing past the people in his way. He was sweating, eyes darting around the faces of the other passengers, some of them staring at him now but looking away quickly as he made eye contact.