Before I Met You

9


1995




‘IT’S BEAUTIFUL,’ BETTY told her mother in a voice full of forced enthusiasm. ‘Really gorgeous. Lovely modern bathroom.’

Her mother sounded unconvinced. ‘I should hope so,’ she said, ‘for that money. And what’s the security like.’

‘The ...?’

‘You know. Locks on the doors? That kind of thing?’

‘It’s fine. Locks and chains and everything.’ She had no idea if there were locks and chains and everything, she hadn’t really been paying any attention.

‘And what are the neighbours like?’

Neighbours? ‘You don’t have neighbours in Soho, Mum.’

‘Well, the area, then, what’s it like? Is it safe?’

She thought of the group of leering long-haired men outside the pub opposite, who’d just shouted, ‘Hello, blondie,’ to her as she left her flat, and the thumping bass of heavy metal emanating from its open door, and she smiled and said, ‘It feels safe, yes. Safe enough.’

Her mother emitted a long, meaningful sigh.

‘Mum!’ snapped Betty.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘it’s just, Soho. Of all the places. You could at least have eased yourself in with a few weeks at Grandma’s. Got a feel for the place.’

‘I’ve just spent the past twelve years of my life living with an old woman. I love my grandma but I do not want to live with her. Not even for a day.’

Her mother sighed again. ‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘But I can’t help worrying.’

‘Mum, I’m twenty-two years old! All my friends have been living away from home since they were teenagers!’

‘Exactly!’ said her mother. ‘Exactly. They’ve had time to find their feet. Student life is not the same as real life.’

‘I actually think I’m safer here than at Arlette’s house. Out there, on that cliff, all alone. Anything could have happened. At least here I’m insulated.’

‘Yes, but you’re also anonymous. Everyone knew you here. Everyone had an eye open for you. There’s no one there to keep an eye on you.’

‘Well, that’s not true actually ...’ She paused to drop another twenty-pence piece into the coin slot. ‘That’s not true. I’ve already made friends with the man who runs the market stall outside my flat. He’ll keep an eye on me. And the girl from the agency, she knows I’m here. That’s two people, and I’ve only been here a couple of hours.’

‘Hmm, well ...’ Her mother sounded tired. ‘Just be careful, that’s all. Just be careful. You’re my special girl. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you. I love you so much ...’

‘I know, I know.’ Betty swallowed down her distaste for the words. She didn’t want to be loved by her mother, not right now. ‘Look, I’ve run out of coins. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you tomorrow,’ she said, ‘or maybe the day after.’

‘Tomorrow,’ said her mother. ‘Call me tomorrow.’

‘I’ll try,’ she said. ‘Love to Jolyon. Love to everyone. Bye.’

She hung up as the pips signalled the end of her money.

She exhaled and let herself lean heavily against the wall of the booth. The phone call had been an ordeal. She was not in the mood for having a mother. She wanted to spend a few days, maybe even longer, pretending she didn’t have one, pretending to be rootless and unconnected. She had just left an island and now she wanted to be one.

She pushed her way out of the booth and put her hands into the pockets of the lightweight coat she’d packed into her rucksack in the early hours of that morning. She had ten pounds in her purse and was on a mission for basic provisions: milk, a microwave meal, some cereal and some tea.

The world came towards her like a computer game as she attempted to stroll nonchalantly through the streets. She had not taken a map with her. A map would have marked her out as a day-tripper. She would learn the streets of Soho using her instincts and her internal compass. Yes, she would.

She pushed her chest out and she put her hand into her handbag, feeling for the softness of her tobacco pouch, cursing internally when she realised she had left it in the flat. She needed a cigarette now, she needed a prop, she was walking funny, she could feel it, too much to the left, her right foot was dragging a bit. She cursed as she came off the edge of a kerb, her ankle twisting awkwardly. She had to break her fall with a hand on the pavement and she felt the skin come away from the heel of her hand as she did so. ‘F*ck,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Bollocks.’ She pulled herself upright and rubbed away at the scuffed skin, not daring to look around her to see who might have seen her inelegant tumble. She carried on her way, turning left, turning right, wishing for a cigarette, wishing for a friend, wishing for ... a bowl of Chinese noodles in a tiny scruffy café with scuffed Formica table tops and a dreamy-looking waiter standing with arms crossed, staring through the window into the middle distance.

She hurled herself through the door of the café. It was called, somewhat unimaginatively, Noodle Bar.

Here, she thought, I’ll start here.

*

The skies opened above her as she felt her way cautiously homewards an hour later, using her as yet untested internal compass. The rain fell hard as knitting needles, bouncing off the pavements and all over her cherry-red shoes. She had no umbrella. She had not even packed an umbrella. She would have to buy an umbrella. She could not begin to imagine where in Soho she might be able to buy herself an umbrella. Arlette’s house had had an elephant’s foot in the hallway, trimmed with brass and filled with umbrellas of various sizes. Betty had very much taken umbrellas for granted for the whole of her life until this exact moment.

Her internal compass took her to most of the streets of Soho over the course of the next hour. The rain obfuscated the world, turned it into one indistinguishable mass of tarmac, brick and glass, and when finally she found herself standing opposite what she now thought of as ‘her’ phone booth, she almost laughed out loud with joyful relief. She’d made it. Against all the odds and without asking anyone for directions, she had found her way back.

The flat felt unexpectedly welcoming as she turned the key in the lock and let herself in.

Home, she thought, I’m home.

She ran herself a deep bath and lay in it for an hour, feeling the water warming her bones. The bathwater sent rippling shadows across the ceiling, and the steam ran down the windows in rivers, and there it was: peace, solitude, Betty Dean, having a bath, in Soho, as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

Afterwards she poured herself a glass of cider and took three roll-ups and a box of matches onto the fire escape that led off the landing outside her front door. By now the sky was inky dark, but the rain had stopped. The fire escape looked out over the scruffy backs of other buildings. Below her she saw two restaurant workers sitting with their backs to the wall, smoking cigarettes and talking to each other in a language she could not name. She could hear the clank of pots and pans through another open window and smell curry spices toasting. The men below laughed out loud and then made their way back inside. And there, in the diagonal corner, Betty noticed what looked like a proper house: clean brickwork, three storeys, six windows, including one full-length window in the middle, which gave her a view of a funky chandelier and a piece of anarchic art. It warmed her, strangely, to think that among all these pubs and market stalls, restaurants and fabric shops, there lived a human being with nice taste in interiors.

That night Betty slept fitfully and uncomfortably. The street below was loud and unsleeping. When she woke the following morning she felt haggard and ill. But as she pulled open the curtains she smiled.

She had not, after all, come to Soho to sleep.


That morning she decided to find a library. There was no telephone directory in her flat and she wanted to look up Clara Pickle. It was a slim chance, and she was sure that Arlette must have tried directory enquiries over the years, but still, it was worth a bash. As she walked out onto the street she saw the record-seller was putting out his pitch opposite her front door. He was wearing a hat today, a kind of fisherman’s affair, black felt with a small metal badge on the front. Two curls of hair flicked out from either side like dancers’ legs. The silly bits of hair softened his appearance, put Betty at her ease. That and the fact that she suspected that with her hair up, and without Arlette’s incongruous fur, he probably wouldn’t notice her anyway. So she picked up her pace, kept her eyes to the pavement and marched determinedly onwards although she had not a clue where she was supposed to be heading.

‘Morning,’ he said.

She stopped mid-step. Then she turned. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘hello.’

‘How are you settling in?’

Betty couldn’t speak for a moment, so taken aback was she by his friendly interaction.

‘Fine,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Just, er, popping out.’

He nodded at her and looked as though he were about to end the conversation, but then: ‘I know someone you could sell the fur to,’ he said almost nervously, ‘if you’re interested?’

‘Sell it?’

‘Yeah. The fur coat. I assume you want to sell it. It being a bit of an obsolescence and all.’

‘Oh,’ Betty said. ‘Yes. I hadn’t really thought. But, yes. Maybe I should.’

‘It’s my sister. She runs a clothing agency. For TV and film and stuff. She’s always looking for furs. Hard to find these days, apparently.’

‘Wow,’ she said, ‘what a brilliant job to have.’

‘Well, yeah, our dad’s an antiques dealer, our mum’s an auctioneer – old stuff kind of runs in our blood.’ He smiled and Betty noticed that when he smiled his crow’s-feet fanned out like peacocks’ tails and the groove between his eyebrows completely disappeared. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, his smile straightening out, the crow’s-feet regrouping, the groove resetting, ‘think about it. She’s only up the road. Let me know.’

‘I will, thank you. Yes.’ She turned away first, slightly flushed by the encounter. She was about to head on her way when it occurred to her that this man might be a good source of local knowledge. ‘I’m looking for a library,’ she said. ‘Do you know if there’s one round here?’

He raised a curious eyebrow. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘Not much of a reader. Toff,’ he called to the man on the next stall, ‘is there a library round here?’

‘Yeah,’ Toff said, ‘of course there is.’ And he gave Betty directions.

The route to the library took her past the front of the house she’d seen from behind the night before, facing out onto Peter Street. She stopped for a moment and appraised it. Its windows were taped over with opaque film and the front door was painted shocking pink, with the number 9 nailed to it. Betty extinguished a roll-up beneath the heel of her trainer and put her hands into her pockets. She studied the building for a moment or two, trying to gauge its significance. It meant something to her, in some odd way, either from her past – had she seen it when she was in Soho with her mother all those years ago? – or in her future. She was sure she’d seen that door before, seen that oversized ‘9’, those obscured windows.

She shook her head slightly and carried on her way. In the library she thumbed her way through twelve London telephone directories. In a small notepad she wrote down the numbers of seventeen people called C Pickle. She didn’t even bother with the C Joneses. Then she bought chocolate bars, tobacco and chewing gum in three separate shops, paid for with notes, breaking them up for change.

When she got home, she came upon a man in logoed polo shirt and a matching fleece doing something to the telephone in the hallway.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘hello.’

The man did not return her greeting, just looked up at her and then back again to the wires trailing from the innards of the phone unit.

‘Are you fixing it?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said dully, ‘I’m vandalising it.’

She peered at him through squinted eyes for a second, silently measuring his tone.

‘Ha ha,’ she said, ‘but seriously? Are you?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am attempting to fix your telephone. In fact,’ he plucked a red wire and then plucked a yellow wire and then leaned back and appraised the situation, ‘I’m pretty sure I have just fixed your telephone.’ He pulled a mobile phone from his bag and pressed in a number. The phone in the hallway rang. He smiled. Then he pulled a twenty-pence piece from his pocket, punched a number into the payphone and the phone in his other hand rang.

‘Sorted,’ he said. ‘All yours.’

Betty stared at the phone in some surprise for a moment or two after the engineer had left. She had a phone. And seventeen phone calls to make. What a piece of luck.


Betty dialled all seventeen numbers for C Pickle that morning. Of the thirteen people who answered not one had ever heard of Clara. The other four numbers were either disconnected or had not replied. But Betty had suspected as much. There was no way it could have been that easy. If it had been that easy, she mused, then Arlette would have tracked Clara Pickle down years ago. Betty appraised the five twenty-pence pieces left in her hand and called Bella.

‘Guess who’s calling you, live, from their Soho penthouse?’

‘What?’

‘Berwick Street. Top floor. Just around the corner from the Raymond Revuebar.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yes! I just moved in! Yesterday!’

‘Wow! I don’t believe it. Finally!’

‘I know, at the ripe old age of twenty-two.’

‘So, how is it?’

‘It’s ... fine, it’s ...’ Betty was about to say, ‘it’s amazing’ but as she started to form the words in her mouth she felt tears suddenly overwhelm her.

‘Oh, Betty, sweetheart, are you OK?’

‘Yes!’ said Betty, trying to pull the tears back down inside. ‘Yes! I’m fine. It’s just all a bit, you know ... Arlette dying, the funeral, coming here, everything’s changed so quickly, after being the same for so long.’

‘Oh, Bets, of course you’re feeling weird. Are you alone?’

‘Yes, just little old me.’

‘No flatmate?’

‘No,’ she sighed, ‘no. It’s a studio.’

‘Wow,’ said Bella, ‘that must be costing you a fortune.’

‘Kind of,’ said Betty. ‘I guess. Arlette left me a thousand pounds. This place is four hundred a month. I’ve paid for two months up front ...’

‘So you’ll have blown the lot on rent by the summer? And then what?’

‘Oh God, I don’t know. I’m going to get a job. And ...’ she paused. She’d been about to say, if I can’t find the woman in Arlette’s will I’ll be getting ten thousand pounds, so I don’t need to worry too much about money, but kept the thought to herself. She would find the woman in the will. She was determined to. ‘I’ll get a job,’ she said.

‘No! Betty Dean, getting a job. No way!’

‘Well, it’s about time.’

‘Good grief, what sort of job?’

‘No idea. Maybe an art gallery? A boutique? An auction house? Somewhere I can start at the bottom and work my way up.’

‘Excellent,’ Bella said. ‘Have you even got a CV?’

‘Ha,’ Betty laughed, ‘and what would it say if I did? “1990–1995: Squeezed an unexceptional B.Tech Diploma in General Art and Design in around caring for crazed old lady. The End.”.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t think I’m really a CV type of a person. I think people will just have to take me as they find me.’

‘Hmm.’

Betty groaned. She hated it when people said ‘hmm’. ‘Hmm, what?’

‘Nothing. Just, you’re in London now. As amazing as you are, I’m not sure just being “you” is going to be enough to get you the job of your dreams.’

‘Urgh, God,’ Betty groaned. ‘You sound just like my mother.’

‘I am just like your mother. That’s why you love me so much. And she’s right.’ Bella paused. ‘Well, maybe we’re both wrong and you’re right. But either way I agree with her. It wouldn’t hurt to put something in writing. Talk yourself up a bit. Maybe you could say you were, God, I don’t know, Arlette’s personal assistant?’

Betty laughed. ‘Not too far from the truth, I suppose.’

‘Exactly!’

‘I know what you’re saying. But I think I’ll try it my way first.’ Betty smiled.

‘Yes,’ said Bella, ‘of course you will. You always, always do.’ They fell quiet for a moment. ‘So,’ said Bella. ‘When are you coming to visit?’

‘Was just about to ask you the same thing. Have you got any holiday coming up?’

‘Not until next month. Why don’t you come down here?’

Betty paused and pondered the suggestion. She envisaged Bella’s bleak lodgings in a tumbledown cottage in a remote village just outside the zoo. She thought of cold fingers wrapped around chipped mugs of tea and condensation-covered windows looking out over tangled gardens and cool, flagstoned kitchens and early morning birdsong. She shuddered. She’d only just arrived in the kingdom of sirens and neon and filth and chaos, and double yellow lines as far as the eye could see. She could not yet countenance the prospect of a return to the countryside, even if it was to see her oldest, most-loved friend.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘maybe.’





10




THE STALLHOLDER WAS outside when Betty left the house the next morning.

She glanced at him awkwardly, and was taken aback when he smiled at her. ‘Morning, neighbour,’ he said.

‘Oh. Hi.’

‘Any more thoughts about the coat?’

‘Oh. Yes, definitely. Yes. I want to sell it.’

‘I mentioned it to my sister. She said to take it round to her studio. Any time.’

‘Any time, now?’

He shrugged. ‘Yeah, now would be OK.’

Betty hurtled back upstairs to retrieve the coat.

‘Here ...’ He was feeling his pockets rather randomly. She watched him as he did so, noticing that his fingers were long and slender, that he had a tattoo on the inside of his wrist and that his eyes were so brown they were almost black. ‘Here.’ He pulled a small card from the inside pocket of his jacket, and handed it to her.

She glanced at it.

Alexandra Brightly.

Betty smiled. ‘Is that your name, too?’ she asked. ‘Brightly?’

‘Yeah,’ he smirked. ‘John Brightly. I know. Not exactly fitting. Or maybe,’ he continued, deadpan, ‘I’ve deliberately played against type all my life.’

Betty laughed. ‘It’s nice,’ she said. ‘I like it.’

He smirked again and then turned, almost abruptly, away from her.

‘Thank you,’ she said to his back. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘No problem,’ he said.

And that appeared to be the end of their exchange.

She stood, for a moment, suspended in an air pocket of uncertainty, wondering what she should do next. A propos of nothing she turned left, and then left again. She found herself outside the nice house on Peter Street. As she passed by, she noticed across the street a man with a large camera in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other. He was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, although the sky was far from blue. As she watched, another man joined him, also carrying a camera and a cup of coffee. They seemed to know each other, and made a few words of low-key conversation. Then they both turned and faced the house on Peter Street, as though waiting for something to happen. She watched them both for a moment or two, before realising that she now looked as strange as they did and hurrying on her way.


Alexandra Brightly’s studio was called 20th Century Box and was next to the Oasis Sports Centre in Covent Garden. It was up two flights of scruffy stairs in a soulless building shared with a tailor and a photographer.

‘Yes?’

‘Hi, my name’s Betty, your brother, John, gave me your card. I’ve got a fur to sell.’

‘Oh. Cool. OK. Come in! Second floor!’

The woman greeting Betty at the top of the stairs was tall and painfully thin, with long white-blond hair and a rather beaky nose. She was so pale, the blue of her eyes so watered down, that she almost gave the impression of albinism. She was dressed in a black chiffon shirt, a large crucifix on an overlong chain resting in the wide valley between her small breasts, and baggy jeans held together at her waist with an old leather belt. She held a fake cigarette in her right hand.

‘Wow, wow, wow,’ she said as her gaze fell upon the fur held like a slaughtered animal in Betty’s arms. ‘Wow,’ she said again, resting the fake cigarette on a pattern-cutting table and putting an arm out towards the coat, running fingers as long as chopsticks through the fur. ‘This looks f*cking awesome. F*ck. I f*cking love fur.’

Her voice was husky and smoky and her accent was half public school, half East End. She smiled at Betty, revealing smoker’s teeth. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I get a bit carried away sometimes. Especially by the fur. It’s so wrong, yet it’s mm,’ she caressed the fur again, ‘sooo right. Let’s have a look then.’ She pulled half-moon glasses from the pattern-cutting table and rested them halfway down her aquiline nose. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, now that the fur was unfolded on the table, ‘oh, yes. This is amazingly good. Where did you say you got it from?’

‘It was my grandmother’s.’

‘Class act,’ she said, opening it up and feeling the lining. ‘Oh yes, it’s a Gloria Maurice. I thought it would be. They always put an extra couple of animals in, just for the hell of it, you know.’ She peered at Betty over the top of her glasses and smiled. ‘Yeah,’ she said, turning back to the fur. ‘I could definitely buy this from you. Definitely. I’m working with a production company right now, as it happens, on a period drama – nineteen forties – they’ll love this. Let’s have a proper look at it.’ She swivelled an Anglepoise lamp over the coat and began to examine it in minute detail.

Betty glanced around the studio as she did so. It was jammed full of free-standing clothes rails, each one packed with plastic-wrapped clothes, divided into themes by laminated signs: ‘30s dresses’, ‘Flapper dresses’, ‘50s Cocktail’, ‘70s/Hippy beach-wear’. There were cabinets full of sunglasses and silk scarves, and mannequins in silk ball gowns and bondage punk. There were clutch bags and corsages, stilettos and bovver boots. The walls were hung with framed stills from films and TV series, and there was Alexandra snuggled up against Colin Firth and with her arm around the shoulder of Emilia Fox.

‘So,’ said Alexandra, turning the coat over, ‘how do you know my brother?’

‘Oh. No. I don’t know him. Not in that way. I live in the flat next to his stall. On the market. He just mentioned you, said you might be interested in the fur. I think it was fairly obvious to him that I’m not really a fur kind of girl.’

‘Aw,’ said Alexandra, facetiously, ‘bless.’

Betty recognised the dynamic; it was the same as the one between Bella and her younger brother, the grudging affection, the condescending praise.

‘Is he younger than you?’ she asked knowingly.

‘Yeah. He is my baby brother by a matter of eighteen months. And one day. And, yes, I know, we look nothing alike. He is a carbon copy of our father and I am a carbon copy of our mother. And our older sister sneakily managed to take the best of both of them and is about the most beautiful person I know.’ She raised her eyebrows sardonically.

Alexandra pulled the coat closed and fiddled with the hook-and-eye fastenings. Then, rather dramatically, she plunged her hands into the pockets of the coat, with a facial expression reminiscent of that of a country vet examining a pregnant ewe. ‘Lovely deep pockets,’ she said. And then: ‘Oh, this must be yours.’ Alexandra pulled out a piece of folded paper.

‘Oh,’ Betty said, taking the paper from Alexandra’s hand. ‘Wow. Let me see ...’

She opened the paper to see Arlette’s handwriting. It was her pre-stroke writing, neat and controlled, spelling out a name and address:


Peter Lawler

22a Rodney Gardens

London

SW5 3DF


Her heart leaped with excitement. ‘Any idea where that is?’ she asked, showing the paper to Alexandra.

‘Ah,’ Alexandra said knowingly, ‘South Ken. Very smart. Friend of your grandmother’s?’

Betty shrugged. ‘Not that I know of. But then I think there are a few things we didn’t know about my grandmother.’

‘Ooh,’ said Alexandra, ‘a mystery, then. I do love a good mystery. You’ll have to go and check it out. Might be a long-lost love. God, might be a long-lost relative.’ She winked over her glasses and then removed them, rubbing gently at the bridge of her nose. ‘Anyway. Lovely coat. Lovely condition. I can give you two hundred and fifty pounds for it.’

‘Oh.’ Betty felt her heart plummet with disappointment.

Alexandra looked at her kindly. ‘Not much of a market for fur these days, sweetheart. I mean, you could hold on to it for a few years, see if they come back into fashion, but even then,’ she shrugged, ‘it’s a good offer. I’d take it, if I were you. Well, if money’s the issue?’

Betty paused and considered the suggestion. She pictured Arlette, standing in the doorway of the house on the cliff, all those years ago, in her remarkable red shoes, looking at her with that inscrutable gaze, making Betty feel like she could be anything she wanted. She thought of the smell in Arlette’s boudoir, of the dull, exotic light cast through half-drawn chintz, the sense of another time, another place, another world. The coat summed it all up: obsolete, out of fashion, but still alive with glamour. She would never wear it again. No one in their right mind would ever wear it again. Maybe she would keep it for ever, keep it for an imaginary unborn daughter, keep it for posterity. But then she closed her eyes and imagined the coat on the back of a famous actress, lights, music, action, clapperboards, make-up artists and dry ice.

‘No,’ she shook her head, ‘money’s not the issue. But I’d like to sell it, anyway. If that’s OK.’

‘That is OK, yes. Cash OK?’

‘Cash would be great. Thank you.’


Betty’s arms felt oddly empty as she left Alexandra’s studio a moment later, as though she’d just handed over a child or a pet. Her shoulder bag, however, felt ripe and heavy with the twenty-pound notes that Alexandra had just counted into her hands. And there, nestled against the palm of the hand in the pocket of her coat was the paper with the mysterious address on it.


Rodney Gardens was, as Alexandra had suggested, very smart indeed. Twin terraces of oversized red-brick houses with stucco pillars and tiled steps, each house immaculate.

Number 22a was in a house in keeping with the rest of the street. Doorbells were housed in a recently-polished brass plate, steps were trimmed with potted palms, the door was painted mirror-shiny black.

Betty pressed the button.

Peter Lawler.

He sounded like he might be a financial advisor. Or a solicitor.

The intercom crackled and the sound of an elderly lady’s voice emerged.

‘Yes?’

‘Oh, hello. I’m looking for a Peter Lawler.’

‘Who?’

‘Peter Lawler.’

‘Peter Morler?’

‘No, Lawler. Peter Lawler.’

‘Hold on, dear.’

She waited a moment and then a male voice boomed through the metal box, ‘Who is this?’

‘My name is Betty. My grandmother was called Arlette. I found this address in her coat pocket. Along with the name Peter Lawler. Does he live here?’

‘Never heard of him. Lawler?’

‘Yes. Peter Lawler.’

‘Rodney Gardens?’

‘Yes, 22a Rodney Gardens.’

‘Well, that’s us all right. But I’ve never heard of this other chap. Could be someone who used to live here, I suppose, though we’ve been here for more than ten years.’

‘Oh, well, never mind. I’m sure it’s nothing important.’

‘Tell you what. Try Flat D. Mr Mubarak. He’s the landlord. He’s lived here since the house was converted. He’ll know.’

‘Oh, OK. Great, thank you. I will do.’

Mr Mubarak answered his intercom so fast it was as though he had been sitting next to it praying for someone to buzz.

‘Hello.’

‘Oh, hello. The gentleman at Flat A said you might be able to help me. Do you know if someone called Peter Lawler used to live here?’

‘Peter Lawler?’

She sighed. She was growing tired of repeating the name. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘him.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I remember Peter. He moved out a long time ago. Who is it who’s looking for him?’

‘Well, it’s me. I think.’

‘You think?’ He sounded partly amused.

‘Well, yes.’ She explained once more about the address in the coat pocket and finally Mr Mubarak sighed and said, ‘I’m coming to the door. Wait there.’

Mr Mubarak was attired in a dressing gown and smoking a pipe. His hair was waxed away from his face and he had deep acne scarring. He looked simultaneously suave and decrepit. His face went from stern to lascivious when he saw Betty standing on his front step.

‘Good morning,’ he chirped, pulling his pipe from between his lips. ‘I apologise for my appearance. I am trying to save on laundry bills.’ He beamed at her. His teeth were yellow and misshapen. ‘Now, yes, Peter Lawler. He moved out about ten years ago.’

‘And do you know where he went?’

Mr Mubarak smiled, as though Betty had just asked him a suggestive question. And then he stopped smiling and looked a bit sad. ‘Ah, well, yes. Poor old Peter. Such a nice man. Always used to stop and talk with me. A loner, but a friendly loner, if you see what I mean. But then, well, he was plagued by demons.’

‘Oh.’ Peter Lawler was beginning to sound a little more interesting than his rather serious name might have suggested.

‘He was a drinker. A big drinker. He was in hospital for weeks. His liver. Had to let the flat go in the end, and I never found out where he went after that. I think he might have gone to live with his mother. Or I suppose it’s also possible that he may have passed away.’ Mr Mubarak sighed melodramatically and puffed thoughtfully on his pipe.

‘What did he do?’ asked Betty. ‘I mean, as a job?’

Mr Mubarak pulled the pipe from his mouth again and narrowed his eyes at Betty. ‘That is a good question. I do not know. He did not appear to do anything.’

‘How old was he?’

‘Hard to say. The drink had probably aged him. But I’d say he was anywhere between thirty and forty. Possibly a little older. He was a good-looking fellow, I’d say. Quite blond. Very English. But, you know, not kind to himself, if you see what I mean. A bit ragged. Around the edges.’

‘Did he ever say anything to you, about a family. Or anything like that?’

Mr Mubarak shook his head. ‘No. Most definitely not. No family. No lady friends. No nobody. A true loner.’

Betty nodded. There it was. The end of the line. She sighed. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘thank you, anyway.’

‘You’re most welcome. And please,’ he pulled, with some panache, a business card from the top pocket of his dressing gown, ‘if you need anything else, anything at all, please do not hesitate to call me here. I hope you find what you are looking for.’

‘Yes,’ said Betty, taking the card and sliding it into her shoulder bag, ‘yes, thank you. So do I.’