‘I’m serious,’ Ash says. He blows out, as if the power of Manon’s pregnant beauty has actually winded him. ‘It’s … you’re so … radiant.’ He’s blushing. She’s witnessing turbo-fuckwittage in motion and she couldn’t care less. It’s like holding up a stick of kryptonite to Superman. ‘I’m so glad you got in touch,’ he is saying, while she laughs on the inside. ‘I missed our friendship.’ Big, howling single-lady laughter on the inside.
‘Ah, thanks Ash,’ she says. Then, after a decent pause, ‘Anyway, Paddy Driscoe – d’you know him?’
He looks down, adorably, fingering a napkin. She considers heading for the toilet, just to cut down the amount of time she must spend in the presence of this idiot. The hubbub of the North London Tavern seems louder, New Zealand voices, then booming male laughter; cutlery on plates. The walls are navy and the tasselled lampshades ironically askew.
It was really good sex, she remembers, looking at him and marvelling at how boring he is. He is saying something about how hard it is to meet people with whom one has a connection and she’s thinking, yeah, especially when you’re not remotely interested in who they are. She wonders why she put herself through all that emotional masochism, the tears when he told her ever so regretfully he couldn’t see her any more because he really was devoted to Natalie/Hannah/Meredith. Until his next lapse, of course, when Manon would open the door to him at 11 p.m. She realises he’s a sad specimen. It’s not a crime, she thinks now, to be a shagger who pretends to like women but whose main aim is to make them miserable. If only she could inform all girls at birth about men like Ash. She’d save them so much time.
He is yawning on. ‘We had a connection, you and me, Manon. Y’know?’
‘Sorry, I really have to get this,’ she says, noticing Davy Walker lighting up the screen of her phone.
Out on the Kilburn High Road, the wind is unruly, whipping the rain up as if she’s being spat at. Her coat flaps chaotically.
‘Phone data’s come in on unknown 618,’ Davy says.
‘Right.’
‘Just been topped up. I’ve got an address.’
‘Go on.’
‘The Payless Food & Wine, Kilburn High Road. She might have only popped in there to top up, but there might be CCTV which could give us an ID, or the shopkeeper might remember her and to be honest, it’s all we’ve got.’
‘OK, I’m right by it actually. I know Payless. It’s where I used to buy my Quavers. Did you go and see Fly? Is he all right?’ Davy’s voice is faint, intermittent. ‘Hello? Davy? You’re breaking up …’ Perhaps it’s the wind or her hair flapping about her head.
‘I said yes, I went there. Yes, he’s all right. Eating well, you know, following the rules. No need for you to worry. I’m on it.’
‘Oh thank God. I’m so relieved to hear that, Davy. Davy? Hello?’
She frowns at the phone. Must’ve lost the signal. She notices she’s down to one bar of battery, and she hasn’t brought her charger. Still in her hand, the phone vibrates.
A text message from Mark.
Found pathologist at UCH. Showing him café CCTV tomorrow.
Back inside the North London Tavern, she sits again with Ash. Heart rate’s up at the thought of Fly in Arlidge House. Bump tight as a drum. She must stop doing things that appear to be so physiologically exerting.
‘So, you want to trace Paddy Driscoe?’ he says, sitting up straighter. He looks hurt and defensive. Hasn’t had enough attention, poor little baby. ‘What d’you want him for?’
‘He was in contact with …’ Manon hasn’t mentioned Fly, because – she realises, revelation after revelation – Ash has never been interested in anything about her. ‘He’s connected to a case I’ve got going on in Huntingdon.’
‘Why don’t you just look him up on the system?’
‘He’s absconded. Thought one of your contacts might know how to raise him.’
He nods. He’s not going to help her. She can see that. She watches him tear up the napkin. Is that a tan mark left by a wedding ring on his finger?
‘Sorry, I’ve got to go,’ he says. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Can you claim this on exes?’
While she settles the bill, her phone dies. What if Arlidge House needs to reach her? No, Davy said Fly was fine. He is probably, at this very moment, making the most of all the woodworking and cookery and literature appreciation courses on offer.
What if her colleagues need to reach her? She’s not on duty. This is not official police business, there are no pre-existing protocols for this situation. She doesn’t allow herself to contemplate whether danger lies ahead or whether her baby might put in a very unwelcome appearance. No, being without a mobile phone is OK. It’s the modern malaise, this inner quaking at being out of reach for a nanosecond: not having a phone to check is like being a baby without a breast.
What if she misses the call that would tell her Fly has been released, that the case has been dropped? Can’t happen, even in her wildest fantasies. Only a judge can throw out this case and Fly won’t go before a judge for weeks. She remembers Mark telling her he preferred an acquittal to a case being thrown out, because at least then he gets the trial fee. Their best interests not quite aligned. Sometimes, processes are set in train, which cannot be derailed even by good sense. Curse you, Harriet Harper.
She wonders, then, whether Davy has been telling the truth about Fly being fine in Arlidge House. She wants it to be true, but she wonders whether it is possible for Fly to keep his equilibrium – to manage under the strain of being wrongly accused. She knows what a terrible feeling it is to be held inaccurately in the mind of others, taken as baser and meaner than you are. She is thinking that this sensation is particularly awful for children, who rely so much on the good opinion of powerful adults.
She thinks of Ash and realises she has stopped caring about the good opinion of idiots, which is progress of a sort – like stepping out of some really uncomfortable clothing that one doesn’t need to wear any more.
She has turned, is walking to the lower part of the Killy High Road, towards the Payless Food & Wine. As she walks, a conversation with Mark comes to mind from last night. He came home late from the police station (home, he had called it himself, as if they were playing at a new situation without talking about it); pulling his tie side to side to loosen it and telling her about the client he’d just seen. Then he said, ‘I’m shattered. Can we watch a bit of telly before bed?’ And she had felt content/cautious/overjoyed/exhausted. All at once.
They slumped together, bodies glued side by side on the sofa in front of a dating show in which a 40-year-old man told the camera that his longest relationship had lasted a couple of months.
‘Rings alarm bells,’ said Manon.
On the television show, the man’s date asked him what he was looking for in a woman and he said, ‘Someone easygoing, Just y’know, someone who’s a laugh, someone to hang out with, who’s really easygoing.’
‘That’s the second time he’s said easygoing,’ said Mark. ‘Think we’ve identified why he’s single.’