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‘Not really. I’ve scribbled down a few thoughts, but why don’t you come up with a list of possible stories and we’ll go over them in the morning?’

Kim agrees. Kim would do anything for her. Catherine is her chance for advancement – the only one who gives her the opportunity to be more than just an efficient assistant.

‘Actually, I did have a few ideas while you were away. I’ll bash them out. See what you think.’

‘Great!’ Catherine smiles. That’s what she loves about Kim. She is motivated, proactive. She doesn’t need to be asked twice, not by Catherine. She wonders what Kim would think if she read
The Perfect Stranger.

Catherine leaves work early. She knows she kept Nancy’s note. There are a couple of boxes still in her bedroom full of things she doesn’t know what to do with. She remembers putting the note in a folder, along with miscellaneous photographs and letters from her mother and old friends. When they’d packed up to move from the old house she’d thought about throwing it out, but had decided to keep it. Her hand grazes the faded pink of the file and pulls it out. She flicks through and yes, there it is. Pale-blue notepaper and blue-black ink. And there is an address in the top right-hand corner. No phone number, only the address. The chances of Nancy still being alive and living at the same address are slim, but it’s worth a try. Her heart races, a shot of adrenalin: the right kind – fight not flight. Face to face, that’s how Catherine prefers things. Whose face she will confront is uncertain, but someone must answer for what she’s being put through. She checks her watch. Four o’clock. Time to get there and back before Robert comes home.

Catherine makes her way up the last flight of stairs and tries to imagine how a woman dying of cancer could have managed them. And if Nancy Brigstocke is alive, how would she manage them now? She knows her own mother would not be able to. She punches the light on the last landing: it doesn’t work. She tries again. Nothing. Someone has neglected to change the bulb. And someone has neglected to water the plant in the pot by the front door. Dead, dried-out and brittle. A mean pinch of light comes through a small, dirty window in the roof, barely enough for her to see the numbers on the two front doors. She stands in front of Nancy Brigstocke’s last known address and presses the bell. There’s no sound. She knocks, two sharp raps with bare knuckles, and, hitching her bag over her shoulder, waits. Nothing. No one there. She crouches down and peers through the letterbox. Green carpet, legs of dark wood furniture, no movement.

She sits on the top stair and opens her bag, burrowing inside for her pad and pen. She must word her note with care.
Dear Mrs Brigstocke
, she begins. She mustn’t be aggressive or defensive. She mustn’t seem angry. She thinks she succeeds in being persuasive and fair. She tears her note from the pad, folds it in half and pushes it through the door. This is mad. The chances of Nancy Brigstocke still being alive and finding her note are less than slim. She rests her head on the door for a moment, and is aware of someone standing behind her. She can hear their laboured breathing from the effort of climbing the stairs. Catherine turns round. A woman with long, white hair is watching her, bags of shopping hanging from her arms, her breath coming in short gasps.

‘Mrs Brigstocke?’ Catherine asks. Could it be Nancy after years of illness, neglect, hair unwashed, too long, thick socks oozing through fraying sandals? Surely this woman is too tall? All the same … Catherine takes a step forward, peering into her face, searching yet not recognizing. The woman pushes past her, shuffling towards the other flat. She puts down her shopping and fumbles a key in the lock.

‘I was looking for Nancy Brigstocke. Do you know if she still lives here?’

The woman mumbles her reply: ‘She hasn’t lived here for years.’

‘Do you know if she is … where she might be living?’ Catherine hears herself stutter. ‘We lost touch – I haven’t seen her for a while … the last time we met she was ill …’

The woman is inside her flat now, the door ajar as she keeps an eye on Catherine, looking her up and down, a rude stare that grazes her skin. A stare full of suspicion.

‘I’m a friend of the family – we lost touch …’ Catherine tries and the eyes drill into her, detecting her lie, making a silent judgement.
Some friend.

‘Are you from social services?’ the woman asks.

‘No, it’s nothing like that … I lost her address and … then I found it … I wanted to talk to—’

‘Has someone been claiming her pension?’

‘I’m not from social services, really … I just wanted to see her again.’

‘Well, you’re too late. She was dying when they took her off … and that was years ago. Poor soul – all sorts of gubbins she was strapped up to. She’ll be dead now, I’m sure.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Catherine mumbles, turning away. She should have known. Of course Nancy is dead. She walks towards the stairs.

‘He might get it, though – whatever it was you stuck through the letterbox.’

Blood thumps in Catherine’s ears. She turns round.

‘Who? Who might get it?’

The woman assesses her, takes her time to decide whether to answer.

‘Who might get it?’ Catherine repeats, a wisp of fatal panic in her voice. The woman frowns at the question, which doesn’t sound quite right coming from someone who is supposed to be a friend. She begins to close her door and Catherine rushes forward, putting her hand out to stop her, desperate.

‘Please …’

A cat mews from inside the flat – hungry and vying with Catherine for the woman’s attention.

‘Please …’ Catherine tries again.

‘Mr Brigstocke – he comes by from time to time.’

‘Mr Brigstocke?’

‘Her husband.’

‘But her husband’s dead.’

‘I thought you said you were a friend of the family?’ The woman’s eyes narrow, seeing Catherine for what she is. A liar.

‘Of hers. I knew Nancy Brigstocke. She told me her husband was dead.’

‘Maybe she didn’t trust you.’

The words startle Catherine; they could be true.

‘We were friends,’ she tries again. They were not friends. They had never been friends. They barely knew each other and her lie squirms in the air. ‘We lost contact with each other … I’m trying to understand what happened …’ There are tears in Catherine’s eyes now and perhaps it is these which make the woman relent.

‘Haven’t seen him for a while, but he comes by now and again. It was sad at the end. The place was beginning to stink, but she wouldn’t open up, she wouldn’t answer the door, so someone from the Residents’ Association had to phone him and get him over. He had a key, you see. Must have been a terrible state in there. And then the ambulance came and they took her away. That was the last time I saw her.’

‘Didn’t he live here with her?’

‘No. It’s the son’s flat. She moved in while he was off on one of his trips – always off somewhere, he was. That’s what she said. Her husband never lived here, although he looked after her in the end. He was holding her hand the whole time when they took her away. He told her he’d come to take her home so he could look after her. I heard him. I was here watching – in case they needed anything. I like to think they were together at the end.’

‘Do you have his number? Or address?’

The woman tuts. Enough questions. She shakes her head and closes the door. Catherine stands on the other side, knocks, desperate for more.

‘What about his first name? Can you tell me that at least?’ She waits. Knocks again. ‘Please.’

The door stays shut. Eventually Catherine makes her way down the stairs, gripping the cold metal of the banister with a slippery hand. She is shaken by how much she didn’t know and she thinks of her note lying on the other side of the door, written to a woman who is probably long dead. And then she remembers her mobile number written in the middle of it. Shit. How long before he calls her? What will he say? What does he really want? The ‘dead’ husband. And she begins to wonder whether Nancy left the flat willingly. Or was she too weak to resist? Did he force her? Did he make her go home with him? Nancy told her he was dead. Why? Was she scared of what he might do?

‘Stephen …’ The name echoes down the stairs. Catherine looks up at the dark shape leaning over the balustrade. ‘His name is Stephen.’

She continues on down, images from the book flickering through her head. He’d got some things right. The details of what she’d been wearing. How would he know? And then she hears a sound echo from the past: click, click, click.

14

Late spring 2013

So, she and Nancy met. Secretly, without me knowing. I found her note when I went to the flat to return the manuscript. I had to read it several times before I trusted that I had understood it correctly. And when I did, it winded me: a sharp blow to the stomach, twisting my gut and leaving me breathless. Discovering they’d met hurt, but not as much as the discovery that Nancy had told her I was dead. That phrase sucked the life out of me: …
when we met, you had recently lost your husband.
She had been
struck
by Nancy’s
dignity.
It had
stayed with her.
She could not believe that
you could possibly be the author of the book which has found its way into my home.
She even wondered whether Nancy was aware of its existence? Well, of course not. She’s dead, you stupid bitch.

What a self-satisfied, smug fool she is. Her tone is respectful, though, I’ll give her that. She described my wife as a woman of
integrity
, a woman with
great depth of understanding
. She’s right about that. Nancy really did understand people. She said she thought she and Nancy
should meet up and talk
and she thoughtfully left her telephone number.

It’s my own fault I was taken by surprise. If I hadn’t dismissed Nancy’s notebooks as idle scribbling and taken them when I took her manuscript, I would have known about their meeting a while ago, because it’s all in there. The notebooks weren’t merely filled with ideas for a novel, they were much more than that. It was only after I’d read the note that I turned to the notebooks, and there it all was, the detail of their meeting: the date, the time, the place, even the weather. And Nancy’s delicious description of CR:
I recognized her from the moment she walked towards me, and the sight sickened me. She had no idea I had seen her before. She was cold, as if things washed over her without leaving a mark – as if she has been Scotchgarded. Nothing seems to stick to her. She’s wiped herself clean – not a trace of dirt on her
… Nancy saw right through her, and she hadn’t liked what she’d seen.

I took those notebooks home with me and read and re-read them, finding much to comfort me. I am grateful she kept them. Like the photographs, they are pieces of a puzzle. I have sucked up every word in them; I have tasted the ink on their pages; I take them to bed with me and sleep with them under my pillow, dreaming that the words swim off the page into my head so that Nancy’s most private thoughts are absorbed into mine. I have eaten those pages and swallowed them down. She is in me now, my darling girl. Now we are one. She has given me strength: the outside world can’t touch me, but I can touch it whenever I choose.

It is surprisingly hot. April had been bitter but May is a scorcher. I don’t want to open the windows even though the air would cool the atmosphere. I prefer them closed and the curtains drawn. I have sealed myself in, bricked myself up. It is midday. My only concession to the heat is that I have removed my socks, my bare feet tucked under my desk, where I don’t have to look at them. They are not a pretty sight. I have been rather lax with my hygiene lately and my toenails have grown long. They are curling at the ends, confused about which direction they should be going in. Hard, like bone. I bite my fingernails to keep them short, spitting them out and leaving them where they stick, brittle and sharp around my desk. I am not a bloody circus performer, though: I can’t do the same with my toenails. Besides, I suspect my teeth wouldn’t be up to the job.

A knock on the door. I am not expecting anyone. I get up from the desk and peer through the window. It is my printer friend, Geoff. I let the curtain fall. Shall I let him in? The house is a mess. I take my time. If he leaves before I get there, so be it.

He is still there when I open the door.

‘Wondered how you were you doing,’ he says.

‘I’m all right,’ I reply.

He is holding up my book.

‘I read it, he says. ‘Not what I was expecting at all, to be honest.’

I raise an eyebrow, but he smiles and so I risk it. I stand aside and let him in. He walks through and I watch him look round in surprise. I still haven’t cleaned up properly after my tantrum at finding the photographs.

‘I had a break-in,’ I say.

‘Oh God, Stephen, I’m so sorry.’

I shrug. ‘They made a mess, but they missed the valuables,’ I say, nodding towards my laptop safe and sound on the desk. I offer him tea and he accepts, following me into the kitchen. I am aware of the scratch of my nails on the linoleum as I walk. Does he notice? My slippers are under the kitchen table and I stop on my way to the kettle and pop my feet into them.

‘So how’s it been going?’ he asks again.

He is nervous, his tone over-cheerful. I wait to finish filling the kettle before I answer.

‘I’m doing all right,’ I say, and glance over my shoulder at him.

‘And with the book? How are sales?’

‘Ah, well, slow but steady,’ I reply. I’m not interested in sales, although he doesn’t know that. I wait for the kettle to boil then warm the pot. I wonder whether he knows I have shifted only two copies, but am sure that I alone am privy to that information.

‘Thing is, if you’re going to sell online you’ve really got to get a profile – start a blog or something, you know … and I wasn’t sure you’d be up for all that. I could help you, if—’

‘So what did you think of it?’ I interrupt. I keep my back to him, nervous as a schoolboy. ‘You said you read it. What did you think?’