He thought idly about how he might contact one of the old friends he’d been thinking of, and about the tattered address book that lay somewhere hidden away at home, beneath photographs and letters and other stored history. It couldn’t be that difficult though to track one of them down, even after seven or eight years.
Thinking of different people, faces, vaguer memories, he was suddenly desperate for the contact, mentally scrabbling around before thinking of Jools and how maybe he could find her even without an address book. He almost remembered her parents’ address, enough to get the number from directory assistance, and beyond that was easy.
It was ridiculous, he knew that, to get in touch out of the blue after all this time and with only a few hours of one evening left in London. And maybe she wouldn’t even want to meet him, her own life moved on as much as his had, a sense of awkwardness that someone like him should want to dig up the past. At the least though he could speak to her, find out.
He got the first number without a problem and dialed, the phone ringing a few times at the other end before her mother answered. The voice sounded familiar but, still unsure that it was her, JJ said, “Hello, is that Mrs. Garland?”
“Yes,” the reply came back cautiously as if suspecting an imminent sales pitch.
“Hi. I’m an old college friend of Julia’s. I was wondering if you had her number. I have one but it’s very old, when she was in North London.”
The woman loosened up, like it was the kind of inquiry she was used to dealing with.
“Yes of course. She is still in North London but probably a different number. Let me see ...” There was a pause and then she reeled it off before saying, “I didn’t catch your name?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. It’s JJ. We did meet once.”
“Yes, I remember. How lovely!” Her tone had shifted again, to one he remembered from his time as a student, as though they were all still precocious children, nothing more. “And what are you doing with yourself now?” Again he liked the sound of the question, the implicit suggestion that he was still too young to have settled into anything like a real career.
“I work for a venture capital company in Zurich.”
“How interesting,” she said, more likely referring to the location than to the catchall job description. “Well it’s lovely to hear from you, JJ. And Julia will be pleased.”
He wound up the conversation and dialed again immediately, encouraged. Her phone rang for a long time, long enough for him to be thrown when she answered, initially mistaking her for an answering machine.
“Hello, Julia Garland.”
“Hello, Jools. It’s JJ.”
Her dumbfounded reply came back one word at a time: “Oh. My. God.”
He laughed and said, “I know, it’s been a while.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said, and then, “Are you in London?”
“Yeah. Yes I am. That’s why I’m calling. I know it’s getting on but I thought, if you have nothing planned, I’d come over for an hour.”
“Of course!” Her response was immediate, insistent, her voice sounding briefly like her mother’s. “Do you want me to come and pick you up?”
“No, don’t be stupid. I’ll get a taxi. I should be there in twenty minutes.”
“Great,” she said, still sounding shocked. “I’ll see you then.”
“Maybe if you give me the address?” She laughed and gave it to him, and though he’d said twenty minutes he took a quick shower and changed before going down and jumping in a taxi.
It was completely dark now, the lit city coming into its own. He felt better than he had earlier, because in going to see Jools he could forget for a while what was going on around him, forget that somewhere out there people were actively trying to find and kill him.
Sitting in the dark in the back of his cab, he didn’t have to think about strategy and what his plans were. He didn’t have to think at all for the next few hours, not about Berg or Holden or the Bostridges or any of the other people whose names would mean nothing to Jools. He didn’t have to think, just reminisce and relax back into easy parts of his past.
The house and the street when he got there were similar to Pearson’s, the same overpriced redbrick uniformity, the bleakness tempered though by the darkroom glow of the streetlights. Her house itself looked dark, but when he rang the bell a porch light came on and a hallway light beyond the door.
There was a peephole, and he sensed her checking through it before the door opened. And then she was standing there, unchanged apparently except for the neat bump showing beneath her lambswool pullover.
“You’re pregnant,” he said, the first words from his mouth.
She smiled and said, “You should’ve considered becoming a doctor.” He smiled too, acknowledging the statement of the obvious. “Come in, she added, stepping aside and closing the door behind him.