Alex thanked him when they got to the Furloe and Jeff wished him luck with his antique-shopping. He went in then, the area by the fire quite crowded now and noisy with four or five different conversations going on. The same receptionist gave him a smile, apparently failing to notice that he looked like he’d been swimming in his clothes.
He took a shower and ordered soup and sandwiches from room service, sitting in his robe as he ate them, no light on, the daylight failing to struggle past the window and into the room. It was already growing dark anyway, the gloom merely heightened by the weather that had swept in over the past hour.
He tried to call Kate but she wasn’t in yet. He sat with the phone on his lap then, telling himself to dial Matt’s number but not doing it. If he didn’t make that call there was no reason for him to have come to Garrington but he was nervous about doing it, and not because of some intangible fear for his own safety.
The real apprehension lay elsewhere, in the fear that everything that had happened over the past few weeks had been shaped and fashioned by his diseased imagination. What he feared most from this meeting was a realization of his descent into confusion and paranoia.
Matt would smile and be friendly, but he’d be puzzled that someone he hardly remembered had come all this way just to surprise him. And as Alex stuttered and stumbled through his recollection of their joint past Matt would grow increasingly uncomfortable, sensing that this friend’s spirit had crumbled, wondering how they could ever have been friends in the first place.
Part of what had brought Alex here was the need to tell him things about that night, things that he thought it important for Matt to know, but maybe Matt didn’t want to know. Like Rob had said, Matt had probably long brushed off any memory of that night. Maybe. Sitting there now he couldn’t even remember who Matt was, let alone imagine who he’d become.
He put the phone back, switched on the bedside lamp and walked over to the window. It had stopped raining though the sky still looked threatening. There were people walking along the street again, lights from shops and from passing cars. The thought of the night ahead dragged his mood down into the shadows.
He thought back to hearing that thump against the side of the train and was astonished at the ingenuity of the tricks his own mind played on itself. He let his focus shift then from the street to the faintly lit image of the room behind him and imagined briefly the stirring of air, the reflected face, the movement seen from the corner of his eye.
It was enough to spur him into action. He drew the curtains and got dressed. He sat back down on the edge of the bed then and picked up the phone, dialling the number without giving himself chance to put it off again. It had hardly rung at the other end when a woman answered.
‘Hello?’ She sounded puzzled, as if already owed an explanation for the call.
‘Hi, is this the MacAndrew house?’
‘Yes, who’s calling please?’ She sounded young, not Matt’s mother but his sister perhaps; Alex remembered him having a younger sister.
‘My name’s Alex Stratton. I was a friend of Matt’s at college. It’s out of the blue, I know, but I wondered if you had contact details for him, or if he was there now.’
There was a pause, perhaps long enough for a quick silent consultation, and then she said, ‘No, he isn’t here.’ She paused again. ‘Look, why don’t you come over?’
‘Well I don’t want to bother you if...’ He stumbled to a halt as he realized what she’d just said. She knew he was there, in Garrington. ‘How do you know I’m nearby?’
The puzzled tone was there again as she said, ‘Caller ID.’
‘Oh, I see.’ He felt now like he needed to explain why he was there and so he resurrected the story he’d told Jeff Clinton. ‘Yeah, I’m visiting a friend in New York - New York City, I mean - and I came up here to look at antiques, so I thought while I was in the neighbourhood...’
‘I understand. I’ll expect you shortly then.’ He agreed and said goodbye but something was troubling him about the way she’d sounded, as though she wasn’t being straight with him, or as though she’d been expecting his call, something in her tone that he couldn’t quite pin down. She talked too as though she was alone in the house but he’d got the feeling she wasn’t, those pauses, the feel of someone standing in the background.
He went down to reception and got them to order a cab from there. He was relieved to see a different receptionist, a middle-aged woman who engaged with him and took note of where he said he was going, saying even that she knew where the house was.
He’d do the same in the cab too, ask the driver for a card, tell him to expect a call later in the evening for the return leg. It was unlikely Matt would try to pull anything there on his own doorstep but it did no harm to be cautious. Possibly it did no harm to be paranoid either.
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