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I’d wanted to give him a chance. Surely he would have a go at persuading me to buy something I didn’t need. But he was hopeless. A complete waste of space. I doubt he would be considered the right material for the management training scheme. A couple of days later I returned with a thank-you gift for him and left it with the girl at the cash desk. Tell him it’s from an appreciative customer, I said.

Having delivered my first two books, I had to wait, frequently checking my laptop for a review, a message – anything. I wasn’t surprised there was nothing from him, but I had anticipated some feedback from her. Heartless bitch. I had wanted to remain anonymous for as long as possible and to tease her out, but now I felt compelled to go back to her house and see what the hell was going on.

Such a nice house. Recently painted, front garden well planted. This was a home. A nice home, yet a home into which I would not be welcome. I had been standing there for about an hour. It was cold, a bitter spring day. At last a car pulled up. The rear doors burst open and children piled out. Three of them in varying sizes. That wasn’t right. Followed by a woman. The mother. The wrong mother. Perhaps it was the wrong car too. Just because it had stopped outside the right house, didn’t make it the right car. The wrong mother walked up the path of the right house and unlocked the front door and went inside. I crossed over. This was the house where I had dropped my grenade, but it had fallen into the wrong hands.

I took a step on to the path, and saw a face looking at me from a downstairs window. Another joined it. Two small faces looking at me. Then a third, trying to get in on the act. I smiled at them and they shot away from their post, the curtain swinging back into place. I kept smiling as I walked up to the front door and rang the bell. I could hear their squeally voices inside, excited, I suppose, by the idea of a stranger at their door. The three little pigs.

It was the mother who opened the door. It was teatime, but she had the chain across. It wasn’t midnight, for goodness’ sake, it was teatime. Broad daylight. And I was smiling at her. I wouldn’t be smiling if I meant them any harm.

‘Good afternoon. I’m so sorry to bother you …’ Pause for emphasis. To demonstrate I really was sorry. ‘I’m trying to get in touch with an old friend – Catherine Ravenscroft. She used to live here, I believe …’ Blink. Refresh smile. ‘I popped a birthday present through the door a few weeks ago, but haven’t heard anything and … well, that’s not like her.’

‘They moved,’ she said. Not returning my smile even slightly.

‘Aah, that explains it. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her and the family. I wonder …’ Pause again. Don’t want to appear pushy. ‘Do you have an address for her?’ Another blink. I am old, frail. And it’s cold out here. Be kind to me.

She shook her head.

‘No,’ and she began to close the door. The bloody cheek of it. Quick as a flash my foot went in.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be a pest, but it is important I get in touch with her.’

The three little pigs were now twitching behind their mother.

‘Get your foot out of my house,’ she said. And she meant it. Cold as you like. Of course I withdrew my foot immediately. And apologized. And she slammed the door on me. I hadn’t intended to frighten her – that was the last thing I wanted. Frankly, it was counter-productive. I couldn’t just leave it there, though. I needed to know whether she had forwarded on my package. So I settled down on her doorstep, on my aching knees and pushed my fingers through her letterbox.

‘Please. At least tell me whether you forwarded on my gift.’ And then a stroke of genius. ‘I’m her godfather, you see. I’d hate her to think I hadn’t remembered her birthday.’

‘Muuuuuum,’ an appeal from one of the piglets. Actually, I’ve always been fond of pigs. Intelligent, loyal creatures. Mummy wasn’t being very kind to this old man.

‘Yes, I sent on a package. Now go away. They asked us not to give out their address. Go away or I’ll call the police.’

Up I got again. A creak, an ache, but all was not lost.

‘Thank you so much,’ I murmured as I moved up past the letterbox. I’d got the wrong house, and my little missile had taken a more circuitous route than I would have liked, but it sounded as if it might have gone off after all.

I continued to check for reviews, but still nothing. I kept track of her with the help of my laptop. I’d become addicted, needing an ‘online’ fix every few hours. Occasionally I was rewarded with something new. Moving pictures with sound. A talky. Goody goody. There she was with her husband. What a comfortable-looking man. They were all dressed up on a night out. Clever girl. She’d won an award:
Catherine Ravenscroft’s brave documentary exposing the grooming of young girls …
Oh, the delicious irony. I couldn’t wait to hear her voice. I closed my eyes and let the sound wash over me:
‘I would like to thank the brave children who spoke out, who trusted me, because without their courage, without their willingness to tell the truth about what happened to them …’
God, she was convincing. Yes, those children were brave indeed. She would have sacrificed them without hesitation for her own glorification. They really had no idea what she was like, did they, those people who’d rewarded her? I wanted to silence her, I couldn’t bear to hear her voice. I would make her disappear. A cross in a red box. Click. Exit. Now you see her, now you don’t. Simple.

13

Spring 2013

Buried beneath the earth, deep underground, at least thirty feet between her and natural light. Catherine isn’t alone: there are scores of others like her. But are they really? Is he here? Is she here? She clutches her bag to her stomach and snatches a look behind her, to her right, to her left. Eyes meet hers then flick away.

…
she felt a gentle stroke across her back and turned around. A sea of faces met hers, but she wasn’t interested in any of them. She glanced up at the platform indicator and saw the train would be arriving in three minutes – what she didn’t know was that it was also announcing how long she had left to live …

She begins to panic. This was a mistake. A foot treads on her. Someone trying to trip her? She pulls her own foot away and glares at the owner of the trainer, who mumbles an apology and stares ahead, eyes on the prize, wanting to beat her on to the train, not to push her under it. Breath on her neck, the smell of aftershave to her left; she holds her breath, can’t breathe in that nauseating smell. Steals a look. A man, taller than her, leers down. Shit. She should have taken the bus. Fuck it, when she’d left the house she’d been determined not to let that book cripple her, and the bus meant three changes, too long to get to work. Too difficult. Catherine the brave, that’s who she is, not a whimpering coward. She is trying to be Robert’s Catherine. Since her late-night book-burning he has started to believe in her again. He has been so careful around her, so considerate. She kept her promise and made an appointment with the doctor and Robert has seen the small yellow pills that sit beside her bed. They help her sleep a little, and help him believe she is getting back to her old self.

They are pushing her and she cannot allow herself to be pushed closer to the oncoming train. She has inched forward each time a train has passed, moving a little closer, ready for the next one, but not too close. She has discovered a new respect for the yellow line. Her body twitches with the fear that a psychopath will pick her out at random and push her on to the track. It has happened to people before, and she believes it could happen to her too. Except it wouldn’t be random. She would be chosen. It would look like an accident and Catherine knows how easy it is for accidents to happen.

She fixes her eyes on the track, and sees parts of herself splattered on to it. The train arrives, she stands her ground and pushes forward. Her turn to go over the top. She makes it. The doors close. No seat, but for once she is grateful for the bodies pressed around her, keeping her upright. Eight stops and she will be there.

Eight stops and she gets off and up out into the street. She keeps walking, doesn’t look back. Onward to work, onward to the desk which she needs to get behind. The closer she gets to it, the safer she feels. She almost forgets that, a short while before, she had suspected perfect strangers of watching her, waiting to push her. Not now though. Now she is safe. She swipes her pass, goes through security and joins the few already waiting for the lift. They know her here. And she knows them.

‘Hey, how was the move?’

Catherine smiles at Kim, lovely Kim, lovely, young and vibrant Kim. She dumps her bag on the desk with a thump and takes out the ugly metal lump she’d won and holds it up in self-mocking triumph, placing it on the shelf behind her. It’s open-plan here too, just like home.

‘Went well,’ she says and settles into her chair. This is a place where she is in control, where she can manage things, start them, stop them even, if she wants.

‘Isn’t it hideous?’ Catherine says, looking at her award.

‘Useful blunt instrument though. We’ll be glad of it when Simon comes in,’ Kim quips.

‘Yes, and so easy to clean off the blood with one of these handy wipes …’ Catherine whips out a screen cloth and cleans the dust from her computer, surprised at how easy it has been to join in with Kim’s murderous banter.

‘Coffee?’ ask Kim.

‘Please.’ Catherine smiles.

Others start arriving: producers, researchers, production people. There are hellos, congratulations, general goodwill towards her and her towards them. Even Simon, who breezes in bursting with entitlement, is almost tolerable. Simon is her contemporary – another documentary director – who came from the newsroom so sees himself as a serious heavyweight, but this morning Catherine doesn’t care. It’s the contrast between how she has been feeling and how she feels now. Almost normal.

‘Well done, by the way.’ Simon winks, giving Catherine’s award the once-over.

She ignores him and opens a new notebook.

‘So what next?’ he says. Oh, chirpy, chirpy, irritating man.

‘Someone’s interested in turning my documentary into a feature film,’ she lies, and enjoys seeing him struggle to keep the smile on his face.

‘That’s great,’ he says.

‘Isn’t it,’ she replies, her eyes locking on his.

‘Well, if you want to talk about it, let me know – I’ve had a bit of experience with some of those film guys,’ he smirks.

‘Oh, I will, Simon.’ She gives him a wink then turns her back and picks up a pen, drumming it on her notebook. A list, that’s what she needs to do. A list is always a useful starting point.

The book:
The Perfect Stranger.

The author: Friend of … Relative of … Witness of …?

Catherine stabs at her list with the pen and remembers when she met Nancy Brigstocke. It was 1998. It had been just the two of them and they’d met only once. Nancy had got in touch with Catherine. She remembers the stab of guilt she’d felt when she received her letter, knowing that Nancy may have been waiting for Catherine to initiate a meeting. It would have been easy for her to track Nancy down, but it couldn’t have been that hard for Nancy to find her. Who would have the heart to refuse passing on her details? The letter was written in fountain pen, blue-black ink. She can still see the slant of the script, the loop of the capital letters at the beginning of each sentence. The note had left its mark. Catherine had felt compelled to meet her.

It had been a Friday afternoon in October. The sky was white, the air was muggy. Muggy in October? It couldn’t have been muggy in October, but that was how it had felt to Catherine. Suffocating. She remembers taking her hat off and stuffing it into her pocket. She’d put it on when she’d left work, thinking it would be cold; instead she’d felt hot. The heat had built up in her head until it felt as if her brain was being slowly cooked, turning her thoughts into a mushy stew. She’d pulled off her hat and undone her coat. Nancy Brigstocke had kept her coat buttoned up. It swamped her. She was a tiny woman. She wore gloves; no hat. Catherine remembers looking down and seeing the pink of her scalp through her thin white hair. She had guessed that she would be about her own mother’s age, but she looked older. She had cancer. That’s what she had written in her note, and she had looked like a woman losing a battle. She’d told Catherine that she had lost her husband recently – another reason Catherine had agreed to meet her. What if Nancy Brigstocke hadn’t died? Could she still be alive? Living with cancer? She adds her name to the list.

Their meeting had been strained. There was so much Catherine had wanted to say but couldn’t, so she had let Nancy speak. She had heard the hunger in her voice – probing, trying to nudge Catherine into opening up. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. ‘There is nothing I can say that will help you,’ she’d said. And then Nancy had asked to meet Nicholas, and Catherine had had to say no. She’d tried to make her refusal gentle, saying she couldn’t allow it, he was too young. Catherine had taken the frail woman’s hand and she is sure she had felt death in it. She had seen it in the woman’s eyes, too, as they looked up at her; Catherine had turned her head, unable to face it. She said goodbye and walked away, and she had kept on walking, not looking back. She didn’t want Nancy to see that she was crying. She didn’t want her to misunderstand her tears. She was crying for all the things she hadn’t said and for this tiny woman, shrunken inside her smart, herringbone tweed coat. Her leather gloves. Her thin, combed hair, her comfortable shoes. The effort she had made with her appearance was heartbreaking. The effort she’d made to appear stronger than she was. But perhaps Catherine had underestimated her strength and she had triumphed over death and was now marching on Catherine too. Perhaps it hadn’t been death at all in her eyes, but something else, something equally cold. Was Nancy Brigstocke capable of producing the poison in the book?

‘Anything you need doing?’ Kim is looking over her shoulder. Catherine shuts her notebook.