Maybe he was being paranoid about the old woman too. If she did say something to Carla, then what? Would Carla even believe her? Surely it was paranoid to believe that she would—didn’t she think the old dear was losing her marbles? Wasn’t that what she’d said?
Still. What if she did believe her? What would she think? If she knew that he had been with Angela, in what direction would that take her? Impossible to tell. Theo had known Carla close to thirty years and still, he was never quite sure which way, in any given situation, she might jump. He knew this: He had forgiven her all her trespasses and would continue to do so, always. But he was by no means certain that she would reciprocate.
He pulled his mobile from his pocket and called Carla again. Still, she did not pick up. He was tempted to order another drink, but the buzz from the first was already drifting into the dangerous fog of the second, and what if she did pick up? What was he going to say then? What was he going to tell her?
* * *
The last time he’d seen Angela, they had been standing out on Hayward’s Place, where he’d just been speaking to the neighbor. A gray day, a heavy sky, all of London monochrome. Theo had been looking for Daniel, but instead he found Angela. The old woman was right, she had cried, although he wasn’t sure it was accurate to say he’d made her cry. She’d just burst into tears the moment she saw him. She invited him inside but he preferred to talk in the street. He couldn’t be in a room with her alone; he didn’t trust himself.
She looked shocking: painfully thin, spidery blue veins tracing their way through papery skin. Her hair was gray and very long; she looked like the wicked witch from a fairy tale. She looked hollowed out, a husk. Theo tried to ignore her appearance and her distress. He tried to speak to her matter-of-factly, to convey as directly as possible why he was there. That Daniel had come to his house asking for money, that he’d said he’d lost his job and had no one else to turn to. He didn’t want to bother Carla, he’d said. Theo thought that was probably a lie; he assumed there was something else at play, but he didn’t want to know what that was. Theo had written him a check for a thousand pounds. A couple of weeks later, Daniel came back—Theo was out, but he left a message.
“Can I listen?” Angela asked.
“Not on the phone,” Theo said. “He pushed it under the door.”
“What sort of note? What did it say?” Angela’s eyes were wide, the whites a jaundiced yellow. She’s ill, Theo thought. She might even be dying.
“It doesn’t matter what he said,” Theo replied. “I just need to talk to him about it.”
Angela said she didn’t know where he was, but that if she saw him, she would talk to him. “Won’t do any good,” she said, shaking her head. “He doesn’t listen to me. Carla’s the one,” she said, eyes filling with tears again. “He’ll usually do what Carla asks.”
Theo stood there for a while watching her cry; he tried to feel pity for her but failed. She clearly felt so much for herself already, his own seemed superfluous. He walked away from her before he could say something he regretted.
That wasn’t the last time he saw her, of course; that was the second to last.
EIGHTEEN
In the corners of the room, bodies formed from gathering shadows, faceless, shifting, approaching and receding, dissipating back to nothingness. Irene lay awake, listening to her breath come short and ragged in her chest, the sound of blood thick in her ears, dread weighing on her, pressing her body down into the bed.
Something had woken her. A fox in the churchyard? Or some drunkard out in the lane, shouting at nothing, or—there! No, there it was again, a sound. A creak on the stair? Irene held her breath, too afraid to reach over and turn on the light. A few seconds passed, a few more. Perhaps she had imagined it? Perhaps she had been dreaming? She exhaled, slowly, turning onto her side. There! Again! A tread. No doubt about it, and not—thankfully—on her stairs, but next door. She knew the sound well; she’d listened to Angela go up and down those stairs at all hours for years.
Was it an echo she was hearing, of Angela’s footsteps? Was this a normal response to grief, just like her visions of William, coming whistling along the lane in the evenings or standing over by the window when she woke, always on the point of turning, always on the point of saying, Fancy a cuppa, Reenie?
Around the edges of her vision, something moved; Irene gripped the bedcover so tightly her fingers ached.
How would Angela appear to her, Irene wondered, if she came? Would she be herself, always a little jittery, her knee forever bouncing as she sat, one skinny leg crossed over the other, chatting about the book she’d just finished, her hands always working away at something, rolling a cigarette or pulling at a thread from her linen shirt? Would she be herself, or would she be something else, would she come crooked, her neck broken, her sweet wine breath mingling with rot?