The Disappearance of Emily Marr (4 page)

‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s see how the other half live. Think of the free booze.’

Finances being painful and Matt an uncomplicated sort, this was all the enticement he needed. I bullied him into the shower while I dried my hair and did my make-up in the Fifties style I liked: dark brows, curled eyelashes and liquid liner, soft and dewy pink lips. Then I costumed myself in a dark red silk dress I’d found in the vintage shop near work. The style was off-the-shoulder and the skin of my chest and shoulders glowed white in the bedroom mirror – I felt like a strawberry dipped in cream.

‘That’s a bit revealing,’ Matt said, with neither approval nor disapproval – with little sense of relevance to him whatever, in fact. After five years of steadily decreasing sexual attraction between us, we were flatmates, not lovers, our recent signing of a new lease together an act of apathy, like failing to switch from an underperforming bank or a negligent GP. Better the devil you know. We were friends who shared a bedroom because we could not afford one each. And we
were
friends, I want to be clear on that. We may have stopped sleeping together, but we had not stopped liking each other.

As we walked down our front path and up the Laings’, I felt ashamed of the contrast on behalf of our landlord. While our garden was a horror of neglect – dirty bins with the flat numbers daubed on them in yellow paint, the dead remains of lavender in borders rife with weeds – theirs was artfully stocked and professionally maintained, dustbins out of sight in a timber pen painted some heritage shade of green and at the door two potted firs encrusted with fairy lights. More Christmas lights blinked at the first-floor window, where beyond the ceiling-skimming tree the party was taking place, and the contained boom of conversation behind the glass quickened my blood a little. I know now that while Matt genuinely doubted the value of the entertainment on offer that night, I had different motives. Though I liked to believe I opposed all that the Friends stood for, I secretly craved membership of their elite society. To possess one of these narrow black Georgian houses with their rows of high sash windows, to own a piece of a street scouted frequently by the makers of period drama, to have a marriage, a social life – a Christmas party! – like that of Marcus and Sarah Laing: what a declaration it made to the world that you were
someone
.

After an unnerving delay, the door was answered by a short, muscularly built man I guessed must be Marcus. Though losing his hair, he was youthful for his age, which I judged to be about fifty, and bounced on the balls of his feet with enthusiasm. ‘How nice, some young blood at last!’ he cried, speaking over the rush of party sounds in the tones of a pantomime actor. His wife, materialising on the crowded stairs behind him, was younger by five years or so and not quite tall enough to carry off the flowing, full-length dress she wore – I feared a tripping as she approached. But she arrived smoothly enough, a cold smile cast in my direction. She greeted only Matt, seizing him from my side as if agreed in advance, and the two of them vanished into the throng without a backward glance. I was left feeling as if my bag had just been snatched from my hands.

‘Right, alcohol,’ Marcus shouted into my ear, ‘give me one second,’ and he promptly disappeared into one of the ground-floor rooms. I worried he’d never come back, was just contemplating turning on my heel and fleeing home when he was by my side once more, pressing a glass of champagne on me and proposing to lead me upstairs for introductions. Already I could think of nothing to say; for the first time in weeks, I craved a cigarette.

In the sitting room, the furniture had been moved to the edges of the room to make way for the central mob of Walnut Grovers, the space above their heads dominated by an enormous chandelier that hung white and motionless, like a fountain frozen at the point of eruption. I could not see Matt. Surveying the crush, Marcus turned to me with a mock-helpless expression, before spotting a group of middle-aged men near the window at the back and launching me towards them.

‘A treat for the menfolk!’ he announced, to my embarrassment. ‘Meet our new neighbour Emma!’

‘Emily,’ I corrected him, blushing under my make-up.

‘Emily, forgive me. Sarah must have misheard.’

He stayed to supervise the introductions, standing very close to me and making me excruciatingly conscious of my cleavage (what had I been thinking, choosing this dress? It was so
burlesque
). There were three other men in the little cluster, each of whom emitted the body heat of one who’d been drinking for some time.

‘What do you all do?’ I asked, shyness making my voice too bright.

Marcus was a City solicitor, Arthur a consultant at the nearby hospital, Ed a journalist, and the last, whose name proved one too many to remember, a voiceover actor whose voice I did not recognise. I’d been told by the rental agent about the vibrant mix on the street, which was close enough to the hospital to attract senior staff, costly enough to interest City lawyers and bankers, and romantic enough to draw the artistic type. (As a web developer for a bike retailer and a glorified shop assistant, Matt and I scarcely qualified for the final category.)

All the men were in their forties or fifties, which validated Marcus’s opening claims of my relative youth. Though I’d seen a handful of teenagers on the stairs and noticed one or two small children in the doorway now and then, presumably visiting from a more diverting zone elsewhere, I could find no one else here in their twenties or thirties. The music was from the decade of my birth.

‘Are
you
a Friend?’ the voiceover actor asked me, a little doubtfully.

I swallowed. ‘Well, we haven’t joined the association or anything, no, but we live next door. We just moved in a few weeks ago. Flat B.’ There were still times when I clung to the plural of Matt and me, and this was one of those times.

‘Flat B,’ the guy repeated, as if sharing a joke with the group, ‘we’ll have to remember that.’

His neighbour, Ed, sniggered. ‘What, next time you lose your keys and need a bed for the night, try Flat B?’

‘I can’t think what you mean,’ I said, smiling. ‘Besides, it would be a tight squeeze: there’s my boyfriend as well.’

‘There are some on this street who’d say that made it even better,’ Ed said, chortling. The instantly risqué turn to the conversation could only be explained by the speed with which they were all guzzling the Laings’ champagne. It was high-quality stuff, creamy and soft as it effervesced on my palate. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d tasted something so expensive.

‘Careful Nina doesn’t get wind of that sort of talk,’ Marcus said. ‘That’s Ed’s wife,’ he added, for my benefit. ‘She’s not someone you’d want to cross.’

I didn’t want to cross anyone, but the conversation was moving much too fast to allow me to protest.

‘Nina writes for the
Press
,’ the voiceover artist explained. ‘She’s claimed more scalps than the Comanches.’

I did not often read the
Press
, a national tabloid, and had not heard of the Comanches, but it didn’t matter because ignorance was expected of me, I saw. I’d already been judged lacking in the sphere that counted the most: connections (or perhaps money). I was only decorative, the quintessential dumb blonde; perhaps by dressing in the style of a bygone era, I attracted bygone attitudes. ‘What do you mean, scalps?’

‘You know, all the people she’s hung out to dry over the years. Ministers, actors, pop stars. Oh, that TV presenter with the red hair – she’s in the Priory now, right, Ed?’ He crowed at my blank expression. ‘The TV presenter, I mean, not Nina. Sarah’s friendly with her, isn’t she, Marcus?’

‘Not as friendly as she’d like,’ Marcus said, and given his wife’s cool reception of me I couldn’t help thrilling to this small disloyalty. Raising an eyebrow at Ed, who remained modestly silent on his wife’s behalf, Marcus sought the opinion of the only one of the men yet to contribute. ‘But Arthur’ll tell you, won’t you, mate? His wife Sylvie’s a founder member of the feared Grove coven.’

But Arthur remained aloof from the banter, absorbed in his thoughts; it wasn’t clear that he’d been following the conversation at all. Unlike the others, he did not press physically, or
im
press particularly. He was no taller than me in my heels, with a boyish slightness to his build and a pronounced weariness in both posture and expression. Whereas the others ogled my neckline in exactly the manner I deserved, his gaze moved only reluctantly across me, as if over a display in a shop he’d been forced to enter when he’d expressly stated a preference to wait outside.

‘I’d love to be able to write,’ I told Ed. ‘That’s my ambition. But if I did, I don’t think anyone would want to read it.’

‘That’s not a million miles away from how I feel myself,’ he replied. ‘Let’s swap jobs, eh?’

‘What
do
you do?’ Marcus asked me. ‘I don’t think I know.’

‘I work in the pottery café on Linley Avenue. We do children’s birthday parties, half-term classes, that sort of thing.’

But Earth, Paint & Fire was below their radar, evidently. Ed’s was the only face to clear and he was not quite fast enough to conceal his contempt: ‘Is that that place where kids paint spots on an egg cup and the parent gets charged twenty quid for the privilege?’

‘God, is that what it is? I’ve always thought someone who actually enjoys working with small children must be a bit
touched
,’ the voiceover artist said.

‘Oh.’ Even without their comments, mine had already sounded an insignificant way to earn a living next to their grand careers, and I thought it best to accept my inferiority with a good grace. ‘It’s not for ever,’ I said, smiling. I imagined myself in a year’s time – same party, different house – but with a raised status. I’d be a trainee reporter or a novelist with a work in progress. I’d be one of them.

Marcus left us after that, and as Ed and the voiceover artist returned to the subject of Nina’s latest victim, I waited for the opportunity to make eye contact with Arthur. I felt an urgent need to redeem myself, to see something finer reflected in his eyes than the top half of my own breasts. ‘So which number are you?’ I asked him, when at last our glances intersected.

He paused, as if judging the meaning of my question from an extensive list of options. ‘Eleven. Right at the other end of the street.’ It was the first time he’d spoken since giving his name in greeting and I loved his voice instantly: it was low-pitched and earnest, a voice designed for discretion.

‘Have you lived on the Grove long?’ (This was how you referred to it, I had learned, as if there could be no other.)

‘Since before the children were born, twenty years, something like that. They’re much too old for your egg cups, I’m afraid.’ So he
had
been listening.

‘That’s OK. I’m not here to drum up business. I get no share of the profits, more’s the pity.’ ‘More’s the pity’ was not the sort of expression I used often, but, as I say, there was something about Arthur that made me want to try harder. I was pleased when he gave a little smirk in response.

‘Is your wife here too?’ I asked.

‘Somewhere, yes.’

With the famous Nina, presumably, co-founders of the Comanches or whatever the clique was that the men found so amusing. Everyone here knew each other, by definition, of course: if you put a finger in the air you’d be able to touch the threads of the entanglements, the cat’s-cradle of private connections and presumed knowledge. There was a smugness in the room’s energy, a self-satisfaction bordering on glee. No one was casting about for a better bet in that way you often find at parties, all were utterly fixed on the person or people they were with. I felt sure that if my little group disbanded I’d be left alone, ignored until I left. Indeed, Ed and the voiceover artist were already drifting from Arthur and me. Did he hope to follow? I had the unsettling impulse to reach for his hand.

‘I don’t know a soul here,’ I told him. ‘I feel like a gatecrasher.’

‘Well, if you’ve just moved into the area,’ he said. Now we were out of earshot of the others he had lowered his reserve somewhat, eyeing me if not in appreciation then with encouragement.

‘I haven’t even met anyone in my own building yet – I’ve not been home much since we moved in, still got half the boxes to open. My dad’s very ill, you see, and I visit him after work whenever I can, then when I get back I just feel so tired the last thing I want to think about is unpacking, let alone decorating.’ Though I always tried to be friendly with new people, it was not like me to pour forth to a stranger in this confessional way, and I couldn’t understand what was making me do it; the champagne, I decided at the time – by then I’d dispatched my second glass and accepted a third. Later I understood that it was Arthur’s bedside manner, a mild-mannered charm common to many hospital consultants. Designed to calm and reassure, it acted on me as a reverser of inhibition.

‘What’s wrong with your father?’ he asked. His eyes met mine with deeper interest and I saw the colour of the irises properly: acorn brown flecked with amber, like tortoiseshell.

‘He’s got Alzheimer’s. It’s pretty advanced. They don’t expect him to make it to the end of next year.’

He raised his brows a fraction. ‘They’ve said that to you?’

‘Not in so many words, but reading between the lines, you know.’

‘He’s in a care home, I assume?’

‘He was until recently, yes, but now he’s been transferred to the hospital unit. He’s not eating enough, he keeps getting infections.’ Feeling distress rise in my gullet, I took a gulp from my glass to wash it back down. ‘But I hope he’ll go back to the nursing home. It was nicer there.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Sixty-two.’

‘That’s pretty young.’

‘Some of the people I’ve met there are a lot younger. It’s such a sad place.’ I felt suddenly very low, both for the poor patients in Dad’s unit and for my situation as a whole. I had nothing, I thought with sadness, no one. Looking down at the strawberry dress, the garment seemed to me to symbolise the mistaken nature of my position; it was not the statement of arrival I’d hoped for but the announcement of a permanent error of judgement. Compared with the tailored black dresses of the other women here, the expensive, heavy fabrics designed to skim and conceal, not cling and expose, it was out of place. I’d done it again: come somewhere I didn’t belong. And, as was becoming customary, I might as well have come alone. When I’d said I felt like a gatecrasher, what I’d really meant was I felt lonely.