Like This, for Ever

19




LACEY SPENT A long time in the shower. Only when the water was starting to cool did she step out. Seven o’clock on a Friday evening. Less than a year ago, Fridays were the nights she went out, when she dressed carefully, drove across London and spent the evening around the Camden Stables Market. She’d liked to think of it as her hunting ground. A place where no one knew her, where so many people gathered you never saw the same faces from one week to the next. She’d take her time, spot her target, make sure he was alone before moving in. She’d had her stock-lines, some funny, some a bit weird; getting the initial conversation going was always the hard part. After that, no problem. Only rarely did she have to cut her losses and move on.

A few months ago, her life had consisted of hard work during the day, and casual, uncomplicated sex on Friday evenings. Now, she couldn’t work and the very thought of sex was revolting. She hadn’t had much in her life, and now she’d lost what little there’d been. How on earth was she going to get through the next—

No, don’t think about the future. Just concentrate on getting through another Friday evening.

She pulled on her robe and walked through into the living space with its small galley kitchen. For the first time, it struck her that her flat was too plain, too white, too cold. The minimum of furniture, nothing decorative, nothing that was really hers. Nothing in the fridge either – a perfectly normal state of affairs these days. Somehow supermarkets were just too much of an effort.

The Wandsworth Road was busy, people in cars driving home from work, buses offloading, early-evening drinkers making their way to and from the pubs and bars. The Chinese restaurant was quiet, though, she could see through the glass. It was the sort of place that didn’t normally fill till later. The door made a chinging sound and Trevor, the middle-aged Chinese owner with the northern accent, appeared a second later.

‘Alright, Lacey?’ Over the last few months she’d become something of a regular.

‘How you doing, Trev?’

‘Not so bad. Usual?’

‘Please.’

The restaurant was almost empty. A table of students. A couple of men eating alone. In the furthest booth, half hidden by the intricately carved screen, sat a man with his back to Lacey, a man she knew immediately, with broad shoulders and short dark hair. Joesbury.

He wasn’t alone. Directly opposite him sat a child. A boy, around nine or ten years old, with short, dark hair that grew vertically up from his forehead and a heart-shaped face. It was the eyes that gave him away, though. Large and oval-shaped, and even from a distance she could see they were the exact shade of turquoise blue as his father’s. This was Huck. Joesbury had invited her out to dinner this evening. He’d wanted her to meet his son.

Lacey pedalled hard, heading for the river, away from the traffic, hardly aware of how she’d made the decision not to go home, only knowing that four walls around her right now might make her scream.

Trevor would have heard the door chimes as she’d left. All the same, she’d go back later and pay, when she could be sure the two Joesburys had gone. She’d make up some excuse about feeling ill or an urgent phone call. She couldn’t fall out with Trevor. What would she eat?

She rode beneath the underpass, garish with graffiti, where kids were gliding around on skateboards and roller blades, weaving in and out of each other like a strange street-ballet.

Huck? Such a funny name for a child. Why would he call his son Huck? The hair and the eyes had been Joesbury’s but the face was nothing like his dad’s. The boy’s face had been pretty with small features and very fair skin. His mother’s face. Joesbury had fallen in love, married and had a child with a woman whom Lacey had never even thought about before. A woman who would be slim with dark hair and a delicate, heart-shaped face.

Even in the dark, even in the cold, the embankment was busy with pedestrians. Everywhere around her the life of the city was going on. People were crossing the Millennium Bridge, travelling up and down the river on passenger ferries, crossing the water on trains; on the north bank the traffic flow seemed endless. Everywhere around her people moved with a sense of purpose. They knew where they were going and why. No one else looked lost.

The wind seemed to be coming directly from the east tonight, hurling its way up the river, almost throwing her off balance. Lacey tucked her head down and pressed on. Her muscles were trembling, the way they always did when she’d exercised too much, or not eaten enough. Or both.

And she had that feeling again, that sense of a scream building inside. Of something churning and pressing, trying to get out. When it came over her, all she could do was run, or swim, or cycle, or pound the punchbag in her shed until she was too exhausted to think about what it was she couldn’t possibly let come to the surface.

Cycling too fast, but unable to slow down, Lacey passed through an avenue of small trees, their bare branches strung with blue and white fairy lights. Huck had been wearing a blue football shirt with white stripes on the shoulders. What did that make him? A Chelsea supporter? She knew so little about London football clubs. What on earth would she have talked to a nine-year-old boy about?

She was leaving the busiest part of the river behind. Once past Tower Bridge, the lights and colour started to fade quickly. Pleasure craft rarely came this far downstream. The tide was high but going out. When she cycled past boats moored in the water she could see it pulling against them, trying to tug them out to sea. Not so very long ago she’d found herself in the Thames. Twice. The first time hadn’t been intentional, she’d been pulled in, had narrowly escaped drowning. A couple of weeks after that she’d jumped in to try to rescue a young illegal immigrant. The first time had been terrifying, but the will to live, to keep fighting, had taken her by surprise. The second time, though, it had been oddly soothing, as though the river had tried to scare her again and failed. Now there was something about its black, swirling depths that looked almost inviting.

The police notice caught her eye and she stopped before she had time to think about whether it was a good idea. The yellow, laminated card referred to an incident several weeks ago and asked for eye-witnesses to contact a central London telephone number. This had to be where one of the boys’ bodies had been found.

She closed her eyes and could picture her old colleagues, who’d almost become her friends, making their way around the crime scene, working as fast as they could before the tide came in and stole it from them. She could see their faces, white and drawn as the small corpse was taken away. She could feel their anger, their growing sense of helplessness.

The river below the embankment wall was dappled black and silver like the battered shield of a medieval knight, and it seemed to be the only thing she could see clearly. If she looked up for a second, everything lost its focus. Colours became blurred, like lights she’d looked at too long. Edges disappeared, as though her eyes were full of tears.

‘You alright, love?’

‘Dozy cow, she’s going to fall in.’

A hand on her shoulder. Two curious, half-afraid faces staring at her. She’d left her bike behind and was standing on the steps that led down to the river. Below her black water swirled and eddied. The two men stepped back, letting her move away from the top step. Both were looking searchingly into her eyes.

‘You want to be careful, love,’ said the man who’d touched her, the less judgemental of the two, the one who didn’t yet have her down as a drug-addled loon. ‘Fall in here and you’re a goner.’

Lacey smiled and knew she’d lost him too. ‘Well, you know what they say,’ she said. ‘Third time lucky.’