The Memory of Midnight (6 page)

‘When I can,’ he said. ‘I specialized in travel – couldn’t hack it on the news desk in the end – but it’s not so easy at the moment. I’ve finally
persuaded Dad to have a carer twice a week, but I still need to be around. I pick up the odd freelance job and joinery helps in the meantime. It beats doing weddings and babies. I won’t touch
those.’

‘Now there’s a surprise.’ The words popped out before Tess could stop them and she took a quick step back as Luke raised his brows at the snippiness of her tone. His frown at
her unthinking reaction had her opening her mouth to apologize before she remembered with a flicker of exhilaration that she could be snippy if she liked. She wasn’t surprised. Why
shouldn’t she say so?

She lifted her chin with an edge of defiance. ‘Well, commitment was never your thing, was it?’

‘Wasn’t it?’

He had unsettling eyes, strikingly pale in his dark face, and when they looked straight into Tess’s the past wavered between them, too far and too murky to see clearly.

And what did it matter anyway? The past was over.

Still, her eyes slid from his, her momentary defiance evaporating into the churning uncertainty that felt so much more familiar. She was used to being wrong now. What if she had been wrong about
Luke too?

Desperately, she drained her tea and scrambled for a way out of a conversation that would take her round in circles if she let it. Forcing briskness into her voice, she changed the subject.
‘How long do you think you’ll be working here?’ she asked.

‘A week or so. It’s a big job, and I need to fit it around various other work I’ve got on. Richard said he’s in no hurry. That’s why he gave me the key so I could
come and go when it suited me.’

Luke slanted a glance up at Tess as he put down his own mug and bent back to the skirting board. ‘I’ll try not to get in your way,’ he said. ‘There might be a bit of
drilling and hammering, but most of the time you won’t even know I’m here.’

Tess just wished she could believe it.

It took a long time for Oscar to settle that night. Exhausted but too hyped up to sleep herself, Tess wandered restlessly around the flat for the remainder of the evening. Her
blood was racing with adrenalin, and her mind kept lurching and swerving through the events of the day. One moment she was thinking about Oscar, the awe on his face as he stroked Ashrafar’s
plushy fur, the intent way he had clambered onto the sofa and made himself at home in front of the television, and the next her mind had tumbled back to Martin.

Martin who hadn’t allowed Oscar to watch television at all. ‘It’s brainwashing,’ he declared. ‘They’re sending out subliminal messages all the time.
I’ve got contacts who know about these things.’

Once Tess had dared to ask why it wasn’t dangerous for Martin himself to watch television in that case and he had looked at her as if she were stupid. ‘Because I’m an adult. My
brain is fully formed. I’m not susceptible the way a child is. Besides, I’m only watching the news. I have to keep abreast of current events in my business.’

She had always been careful to switch off the television long before Martin was expected back. Once he had come home early and the set had still been warm. That had been a bad day.

Tess could still hardly believe how easily she had got away in the end. She had been braced for Martin’s fury, had strategies to cope if he tried to force her back to London, but when he
turned up on her mother’s doorstep, his calm assumption that she would change her mind and go back to him had been almost more frightening. Only a twitch under his right eye had betrayed the
control he was keeping over his temper.

‘I’m not coming back,’ Tess had said. The door pressed into her fingers where she clung to it but she kept her voice steady. ‘I’m sorry, Martin.’

‘You want to spend some time with your mother. I understand.’ He nodded agreeably and smiled the smile that had once made her go weak at the knees with longing. ‘Why
didn’t you say? Anyone would think I was some kind of ogre!’ he said, twinkling at her in a way that made the fine hairs stand up on the back of Tess’s neck.

She had fallen for that twinkle before. She had wanted to believe in the charm, in the protestations of undying love. She had let herself be convinced that she was the unreasonable one.

No longer, Tess had promised herself.

Still, it was hard to break the habit of appeasement and Tess had to swallow and force the conciliatory words back down her throat. ‘My solicitor will be in touch with you.’

It was as if they were having two different conversations. Martin sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, very well. If you’re going to be difficult . . . I’ll come back in a week or
so and take you home.’

‘No,’ she said, stronger this time, irritated by his certainty. Irritated by how often she had given in, ensuring that he would always get his own way. ‘No, I’m not
coming home.’

‘Of course you are,’ said Martin. ‘We’re married. You promised we’d be together forever.’

God help her, she had. Nobody had forced her to marry him. She had chosen Martin. She had promised: for better, for worse. It was all her own fault, just as he was always telling her.

But she had Oscar. Tess held onto that. It was worth it all to have her son. She had stayed for Oscar, and now she was leaving for Oscar. She would hold firm for him.

In the end she had let Martin believe that her stay in York was temporary. It had seemed the easiest way to get him to go, but then he had come in and sat down and had tea while Tess and Oscar
sat silently and her mother tried to make amends for Tess’s stupidity by smoothing over any cracks and pretending that they were just an ordinary happy family on a visit home. It had been
ghastly.

Tess had been desperate to move out before Martin came again. Richard’s offer was too good for her not to stay in York, but she knew it would make her easier to find. She stood in the bay
window and watched a busker braving the rain in a doorway below while she gnawed at her knuckle, a bad habit Martin had done his best to break her of. What would she do if Martin turned up
here?

When
he turned up. ‘I never give up,’ Martin was fond of saying. ‘That’s why other businesses fall by the wayside but Nicholson’s just keeps getting
stronger. I ride the bumps and I keep on going. I never, ever give up.’

Tess had made her mother promise not to tell him where she was, but even if she kept her word, Martin had the resources to track her down. Nicholson Electronics gave him access to some shadowy
contacts. He was always boasting about the importance of the company’s government contracts and the secrecy of his negotiations. He had spent some time in the army, he’d told her when
they first met.

‘I know guys who can get things done,’ he had said and he’d smiled and she, she had been impressed. Tess hated remembering how pathetic and naive she had been.

Digging her nails into her palm, she turned away from the window. She would never sleep if she started thinking about Martin. She would read one of Richard’s books instead, but even as she
reached for a battered paperback lying on an even more battered sideboard her mind was already jumping onto bookshelves and from there careening straight to Luke and the shock of seeing him again.
She had thought she’d forgotten him, but one look and the memories had come slamming back – of his hard hands on her flesh, of the heat of his mouth. Of the contemptuous curl of his lip
when he had turned and walked away.

Abandoning the idea of reading as hopeless, Tess let her arm fall and she rubbed it absently. It wasn’t exactly hurting, but it hadn’t felt
right
since that strange jolt
from the beam. She kept jiggling it around to try and find a comfortable position to hold it.

And that, of course, sent her mind to the place she had refused to let it go all day – the back bedroom and that dreadful roil of anguish she had felt when she stepped inside. She had
pushed the memory back down every time it threatened to surface, but there had always been a good excuse not to go in there again. She couldn’t put it off any longer, though. There was a
perfectly good bed waiting for her there. She could hardly spend the next year sleeping on the sofa.

Abruptly she switched off the lamps in the front room and walked back to the bedroom. From the threshold, her eyes darted round the room as if she could see the dread uncoiling in the air, but
the room stayed still, almost sullen.

Tess took a tentative step inside, then another. Nothing happened. She made it to the centre of the room before realizing how ridiculous she must look. Her shoulders unlocked and she laughed.
‘See?’ she said to Ashrafar, who had padded companionably down the passage after her. ‘There’s nothing here.’ She patted the bed, glad of the cat’s warm
presence. ‘Come on, puss,’ she said.

Trying not to think about how quiet it was, she opened her suitcase. Unpacking didn’t take long. She had brought hardly anything from London, where Martin had bought her the frilly,
feminine clothes he liked her to wear. Most of her T-shirts and tops were ones she had left at home when she first moved to London. They could be quickly shoved in the chest of drawers rather than
hung up or immaculately folded as Martin insisted.

When she had finished, Tess pushed the bottom drawer closed and stood with an armful of sheets to make up the bed. It was only then that she noticed Ashrafar. The cat hadn’t followed her
into the room. She was crouched at the open door, tail twitching, and the fur slowly stiffening on her back.

‘Don’t be silly.’ Tess clutched the sheets to her chest. Her voice sounded thin and high in the silent room. ‘It’s fine. You were in here before.’ What was
she doing, trying to reason with a cat? ‘Come here, puss.’

But Ashrafar only backed away, cautiously at first, and then with a sudden burst of speed turned and bolted down the passage. ‘Be like that,’ Tess shouted after her childishly.
‘See if I care.’ A few seconds later, she heard the clatter of the cat flap.

There was nothing wrong with the room.
Nothing.
Tess kept telling herself that as she lay rigidly under the duvet, her ears straining into the silence, her scalp prickling. She
didn’t know what she was listening for. The builders had long gone from next door, and back here there were none of the muted sounds from the street you could hear in the front room.

Come to think of it, there ought to be sounds in an old building like this, surely?
Tess would have been glad to hear the comforting click of pipes, the creak of timber settling, or
even the hum of a fridge, but the silence was oddly thick, broken only by the uneven sound of her breathing.

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

Out of nowhere, the noise rasped through the darkness and Tess sat bolt upright in bed, her hands clutching the duvet, her heart banging high in her throat.

Thud, thud, thud.

‘Stop it,’ she whispered, not sure who she was talking to.

It was a horrible sound, a scrabbling, scratching, clawing sound alternating with a pounding, with such a desperate undercurrent to it that Tess whimpered and covered her ears to block it out.
She sat like that, her hands clamped to her head and her eyes squeezed shut, praying that it would stop, until a picture of herself cowering in the bed filtered into her brain. This was what she
did when she didn’t like what was happening, wasn’t it? She closed down and pretended that it wasn’t happening at all. It was what she had done with Martin, and it was what she
was doing now she was on her own. When had she become so pathetic?

Slowly, Tess dropped her hands. She couldn’t just sit here being frightened. Reaching out, she switched on the bedside light. The sudden glare made her screw up her eyes.

Scrape, thud, scrape, scrape.

It was more of a scratching sound now, and the answer hit Tess so suddenly that she slumped back against her pillow with relief.

Rats. Of course. It must be rats. Didn’t they say that no one in a city was more than six feet from a rat at any time? Rats would have been breeding in these old roofs and drains for
centuries.

Did they live in walls? Tess sat up again and looked at the fireplace. She was sure the sound was coming from there. They must be behind the plaster. First thing in the morning, she was going to
contact the pesticide people. Oscar was only five. They would have to do something.

Scratch, scrape, scrape. Scrape, scrape, SCRAPE.

Feeling a little embarrassed by her fear now, Tess got out of bed, stomped across to the fireplace and banged on the plaster.

‘Stop it!’ she shouted, but not loud enough to wake up Oscar. ‘Go away!’

The noise stopped.

‘OK.’ Oddly deflated by her success, Tess climbed back into bed and huddled into the duvet. May or not, she was going to get a radiator the next day. The room was so damp she could
almost smell the river. Her face above the duvet felt clammy, and she fell asleep at last with the air clinging to it like fog.

Nell groped her way down Water Lane towards the staithe. She could barely see a few feet in front of her. All day the fog had hung dense and low, muffling the city in an eerie
light. The air was thick, white, clammy. It wrapped itself around her face, stifling her, pressing against her nose and mouth. It made Nell think about the way the darkness had squeezed around her
in the kist that day in Mr Maskewe’s closet, and remembered panic squirmed in her belly, making her breath stutter.

Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she made herself breathe in and out, the way she had learnt to do.

There was nothing to fear. She was not shut in a chest. She could breathe.

Above, the sun was a bright disc trying to break through the blanket of fog. Nell kept her eyes fixed on it. There was a blankness to everything that day. The familiar sounds of the city, the
bangings and shoutings and clatterings and clangings of everyday life, had been swallowed up by the mist and even the birds were silent. One of her clogs skidded on the damp cobbles and she thrust
out a hand to the warehouse wall to steady herself while the basket in her other hand swung wildly. Her heart was beating high in her throat.