The Last Time I Saw You (34 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I wish I’d taken more with me when I left. The contract, which looks shop bought, reveals little more: she rented the apartment in May, three months before she died, from someone with handwriting even more unintelligible than her own. I weigh the keys in my hand, wishing I could go straight round there, wondering if I should call William. “Your husband”—perhaps he did know about this all along, and the use of her maiden name is nothing more than some kind of minor tax dodge? But then I think of the forensic attention he gives the broadsheets, or the righteous analysis he gives me of world affairs, and I’m sure that he’s not a person who would brook even a small dishonesty. Besides, there’s something about that
For You x
—it’s not a
For You
for a husband, it’s a playful invitation to a lover. I’m going to go, find out all I can, and then decide if it’s a hurt that he needs to have inflicted on him.

My fingers are still tracing the words when the cab draws up outside Pastis, an achingly trendy French bistro in what
I’m told is known as the Meatpacking District. Meatpacking really doesn’t seem to be the point anymore—the street is lined with eye-wateringly expensive-looking clothes shops and boutique hotels—but there’s no time to gawp, I’m nearly half an hour late.

Flynn’s got a prime corner table, and is taking up an entire velvet banquette, the hapless interviewee perched on a stool opposite him. She’s a slight, dark-haired little thing, who looks a few years younger than me. Heavy, dark-framed glasses dominate her face, a cunning piece of kit that lulls you into thinking she’s a plain, earnest type, rather than the pixie-featured beauty that’s revealed on closer inspection. I introduce myself, hoping she won’t notice how much my hand is shaking. I turn gingerly to Flynn, who flashes me the kind of big, leonine grin that never quite reaches those famous green eyes—they remain as cold and lifeless as a dank pond.

“So sorry to be late.”

“Get yourself comfortable, Livvy, I’ll grab us the waiter back. Fancy a glass of the bubbly stuff?”

I can’t think of anything I’d like less, apart from the fact that I feel the very opposite of celebratory; it seems faintly icky when we’re discussing a film about women living in abject poverty. I take a couple of tiny sips and try and engage with the meeting, one hand tracing the outline of the keys in my handbag.
For You
—the phrase keeps pinballing around my head, its meaning as soft and fluid as melting wax.

Kirsten is a first assistant director. While this means that she is extremely good at bossing people around, it doesn’t mean that she’s actually directed anything of her own, a fact I accidentally root out of her in the first five minutes,
earning myself a glare from Flynn. The two of them had a “to-tal ball” on
Sh*t Happens 2
, the nature of which I’m starting to wonder about, as I notice the flirtatious looks they seem to be casting each other when they think I’m not watching. I ask her what kind of films influence her, and then surrender myself to a verbal barrage.

“
Taxi Driver, Chinatown, GoodFellas
 . . .” she says, striking them off on her fingers, nasal New York drawl landing like machine gun fire, Flynn hanging off her every word. She seems to have entirely missed the point, this film bearing absolutely no relation to a gangster movie, but I’ve most definitely resigned from fighting a battle I know I can’t win.

“Great,” I say, trying not to fixate on my watch. Couple more questions, another toast to Flynn’s general munificence, and then I should be able to get myself to the apartment. A cold, damp chill suddenly spreads through me: what if the
You
is actually resident there?

“Livvy?” snaps Flynn.

“Yes, no. It’s great,” I say, trying to focus.

“What, you actually think it’s right that one percent of the population control ninety-nine percent of America’s wealth?” says Kirsten, her lips, painted an unusual shade of hipster brown, pursed in sanctimonious astonishment. She wraps them around the champagne glass and awards herself a generous swig to deliver her from the shock. I’ve had enough of pretending. I stand up, reaching for my coat.

“I’m so sorry, I know I’m not doing this meeting justice. I’ve had some rather shocking news from home, and I need to go and deal with it. I’m sure you’ll do a wonderful job, and you’ve got Flynn here to tell you all you need to know.”

I hoped he’d be relieved—after all, they clearly want to get a room—but me walking away is like the equivalent of
the Emperor’s New Clothes, and this particular emperor does not want to be exposed as the naked fraud he really is.

“We still need to interrogate what this film is really saying.”

I should probably try for a lightning save, but I’ve got nothing left to give.

“I can only apologize.”

“There’s two more candidates.”

What joy to think I won’t have to go through the charade of meeting them. I’m probably going to lose my job, but I don’t much care about that either. Not right now at least.

“Lovely to meet you, Kristen,” I say, ignoring him.

“It’s Kirsten.”

“Kirsten! I’ll call you later, Flynn.”

The cab draws up outside a gloomy-looking seventies apartment block, the frontage peppered with a handful of lit windows. I scan the second floor, that sense of cold dread tracking its way through my veins like an injection. I ring the buzzer for 211, but there’s no response, and I tentatively turn the key in the lock of the outside door. The lobby smells musty, the dingy beige carpet covered in a patchwork of stains. Why would Sally want to cross the tracks to somewhere like this?

Blood pounds through my ears as I turn the key in the second lock, but as soon as the door is opened I know the apartment is deserted, the stillness eerie in its completeness. I step into its force field, calling out a meaningless hello to try and slice my way through it. I’m in a narrow hallway, with an ugly little galley kitchen coming off it. I open the door of the tiny cube fridge, and find a lone
carton of milk. I pick it up: it’s heavy, the milk long since curdled into yogurt. I look at the date stamp, June 11th, the week before Sally died. Nausea rises within me, the smell worsening its waves. I shake it out down the sink, running the tap on full force, flecks of soured milk flying up at my face. Why am I even doing this? I twist off the tap and blunder on, switching on all the lights to try and break up the gloom.

The small, square living room looks out over the river; there’s a portable TV balanced on an ancient, dusty chest of drawers and a tasteless, pinky velour sofa. I sink into it, needing a moment’s respite. I look around at the room, remembering how Sally would sneer at the full-on student houses our friends lived in, smug about the chic little bolt hole she’d found us. What would draw her to this fetid prison?

I look outside to the gathering darkness, holding my coat a little closer around me, feeling more alone than I can almost ever remember. No one knows where I am, no one in the world. But then my eye catches an empty tumbler, a desiccated piece of lemon barely recognizable at the bottom, an ashtray with a single Marlboro Light butt lying by its side. Now I’m less alone. I don’t know which is worse.

I get to my feet, pushing open the next door off the hallway. It’s like stepping into a different apartment. There’s a big, comfy-looking bed with a deep red bedspread on it, and a copper lamp on the white, painted bedside table, which gives out a warming glow when I flick the switch. There’s a chaotic heap of clothes lying on a squidgy little armchair, almost as if Sally’s just stepped out of them and slipped between the sheets. I know immediately that
this room is the heart of the place, the reason for its very existence.

A tiny top note of Chanel No. 19 catches in the back of my nose, the smell taking me everywhere and nowhere, more a feeling than a specific memory. Just for a second I’m eighteen again, smelling that smell for the first time, ready to be taken on a magic carpet ride of someone else’s making. I look down at the bones and sinews of my thirty-something hands, the turquoise ring that I always wear on my right middle finger, needing to reassure myself of my own solidity, of the fact that I can no longer be dissolved, like a soluble painkiller that’s dropped into water and fizzes its way into nothingness.

There’s a pile of things lying on the bedside table: I sit, shakily, on the bed and pull it toward me, suddenly feeling like a thief. Have I any right to do this, to be here, unpicking what she left behind? Some stubborn bit of magical thinking is still insisting that she led me here, but maybe that’s no more than my own need for closure dressing itself up as something noble and brave.

It’s a jumble of stuff, reminiscent of the permanent chaos of Sally’s student bedrooms. A cheap-looking phone flies out and lands on the bed, the screen blank. There’s what looks like a prescription, and an A5 hardback book which, when I open it, turns out to be an address book. A strip of passport photos fall out—it’s Sally with her arms wound tightly around Madeline, both of them sticking their tongues out, laughing so hard they’re unable to pose properly. My tears fall onto the page at the sight of them, that freeze-frame that tells you so much about what it is that Madeline’s lost—she’ll never get that exhilarating silliness with William, the joy of laughing until you have to
cross your legs and hope for the best. I think of how he stood there, sober, at the side of the dance floor, politely waiting for me to return to my senses.

I find a charger inside the bedroom cabinet and, while it’s powering up the phone, take a closer look at the prescription. “Sally Atkins” it says, the doctor’s address also in New Jersey, with an instruction that I can’t read. Now the phone is spluttering into life, giving out a few beeps.

I need to pee and, perhaps, I just need a moment to prepare myself for what more I might find. The bathroom is as small and poky as the rest of this place, the toilet shoved in close against the plasticky shower. There’s a roll of paper at least, abandoned halfway. I tear off a piece, absurdly spooked. It’s so strange, all these fragments of an unfinished life.

I wash my hands, looking at my white, drawn face in the smudgy glass of the bathroom cabinet. I swing open the mirrored door; moisturizers, lipsticks, baby wipes—and a pair of pill bottles. I hold one up, peering at the typed label: lithium. The word rings a bell, but I can’t quite place it in my panicky state. I go back next door and retrieve the charging phone. Despite its cheap look it seems to have e-mail capacity.

Whether or not there was someone else, I get a profound sense of Sally’s loneliness here; it doesn’t feel like a room or an apartment that was filled with love or affection—the chaos isn’t built from two people slamming against each other, it’s peculiar to her. It was always so, I suddenly realize; she swung between those intense connections, but when the pendulum finally stilled at center, she’d sloughed them all off, ready for the next clean swing.

I drop the phone like it’s red hot, bile rising up in my throat. I feel worse than a Peeping Tom. There aren’t that many messages at least; did she edit them down, keep only the ones that were most meaningful?

I hate RiskiWager already; I hate his stupid, self-regarding e-mail address and I hate the way he thinks of himself as some kind of macho sex god. And who is M? It can’t be Madeline, surely?

I can almost taste her desperation and so can he. H must be his child, surely. The gaps between the e-mails are
frustrating, other messages surely deleted. I can’t shake the feeling that she’s laid it all out—
For You
. Perhaps the You is William after all. Perhaps she intended him to find all this after she was gone.