The Taxi Queue (24 page)

His mania hadn't returned. He had called in sick on Friday. For the whole of the day he had sat around in his room, setting fire to small bits of paper in the ashtray. For the duration of the flame's flicker he felt alive but inevitably it died and then he was bored. He was also agitated. With him the two went together. Mood was stickiness, or rather, particles of stickiness that adhered to everything he thought and did, and which he tried to shake off. He envied people for whom trouble was a cloud or a blanket. Kirsty used mood as a hiding place. She made it cosy for herself, pretending she was perfect, martyring herself to borrowed goldfish. No, that wasn't fair. For a sister she was pretty faultless.

Abe dropped the notebook and crossed the room to put on some music. He needed to hear something new. He picked up a CD and put it in the player. ‘Gesualdo
RESPONSORIES
' it said on the box. It was one that Declan had left behind before Christmas. The stack was still piled up in a corner. The music's edginess caught in his throat like the fumes from the traffic.
Abe turned up the volume so that the sound went up through the roof and down to the basement. In Iverdale Road no one complained. Abe sat down in the swivel chair with the sleeve notes on his knee.
Spiritus quidem promptus est, caro autem infirma.
The spirit indeed is ready but the flesh
is weak. The words seemed slick – on the one hand, on the other – but the music blew in a different direction, wanting to escape, still on the lookout. Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, had discovered his wife having sex with another man and had organised her murder – and her lover's murder. A bit extreme, Abe thought. Luckily, Carlo had carried on with the composing.

Abe tilted the chair back, letting the sleeve notes slide to the floor. Church music had once been the business. Everyone had been in on it: family men like Bach, excitable types like Gesualdo. The band of sky that appeared above the opposite roofs was cloudless but Abe thought of a corporate golfing umbrella, rolled up, propped in the corner of a room. ‘Are you all right?' was what he had wanted to say to Richard. On balance, the secretary's dependable voice had reassured him – the talk of a client meeting.

A woman on the top deck of a number 52 bus heard beautiful singing. She closed her eyes and listened. The traffic was stationary, waiting at the lights. Pull yourself together, she thought. There aren't angels on the bus. Tamsin Spira opened her eyes and lifted a strand of hair from her face with the self-conscious gesture of someone who used to be noticed. She glanced round to see if there was anyone behind with a leaking iPod. A man was asleep on the back seat. He had a grey hood pulled over his head but no trailing wires. A black kid across the aisle, half hidden behind a large sports bag, had ears empty as a baby's. There were no other passengers. Tamsin looked out of the window straight into a room. A young man was sitting in a huge mauve chair. The house was scruffy on the outside. All the houses along Iverdale Road were scruffy. Behind the mauve chair was a mirror that filled the wall. As the bus started to move, Tamsin caught sight of her reflection, framed by the bus window, staring out. Then, when she could no longer see herself, the singing stopped.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN: 9781407014685

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Vintage 2008

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Copyright © Janet Davey, 2007

Janet Davey has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Chatto & Windus

Vintage

Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

www.vintage-books.co.uk

Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780099506966