I don’t know what I am expecting to find. Maybe I am hoping to find nothing. Maybe Jane got it wrong. It is a popular club. Rachel could have just gone there sometimes.
The rain has lessened to a drizzle by the time I reach it, passing the scruffy wall outside, with its blocky graffiti, bill poster upon bill poster. On Friday and Saturday nights, there’s always a queue along this wall, but today is Tuesday, and the club won’t be open for hours. I push the door and am surprised to find it opens.
There is no one in the black-painted entrance, where the bouncers usually stand. The little window to the cloakroom is closed, the shutters pulled down. I walk down the steep steps, clinging on to the banister. How did I ever do this while drunk? I wonder. I haven’t been here for a while. I know Charlie has started to get fed up with it. He’s even been talking lately about getting a proper job. I’d told him it was about time.
There is a girl at the bottom of the steps, mopping the floor. She looks like she’s barely a teenager. She is wearing a Goldfrapp T-shirt, scissored off just below her breasts, exposing a skinny navel. Her trainers are metallic, her jeans ripped, her hair long on one side and shaved on the other. Her face looks familiar – I wonder if she was at the bonfire party.
The girl looks up at me with a bored expression. ‘We’re closed.’
‘I know. Sorry. I’m … I’m a friend of Rachel’s. Rachel Wells. She used to work here?’
The girl sighs, twisting the mop to squeeze the greyish water out of it.
‘You a journalist as well?’ She rolls her eyes, doesn’t wait for my answer. ‘None of us know anything about Rachel,’ she says. She is chewing gum, transferring it from one side of her mouth to the other. ‘None of us have seen her in ages. The police came round already. You should speak to them.’
She picks up her mop and bucket, turns away from me.
‘You shouldn’t really be here,’ she adds, speaking over the clatter of the metal bucket. ‘If you want Paul, the manager, he’ll be back around nine.’ She pushes the double doors through to the bar with one hand, swings the mop and bucket through in front of her, then follows them.
I stand glued to the spot, unsure what to do. All right, just because Rachel worked here, it doesn’t necessarily mean she knew Charlie, I tell myself. Maybe they never met each other. Maybe they worked here at different times. I’m sure there’s an explanation. Because if he knew her, he would have said. Wouldn’t he?
I turn to leave. I should just ask him, I think. It suddenly feels wrong, coming here behind his back.
I take one last look through the windows in the double doors, and a flash of colour on the wall catches my eye. A noticeboard, behind the bar, covered in pictures.
When I am sure the girl is out of sight, I follow her through the double doors into the bar, holding on to them so they don’t swing back and make a noise. The girl is nowhere to be seen – she must have taken the mop and bucket around the back. I slip the latch off the gate and sneak behind the bar to get a closer look.
The pictures have been stabbed to the board with red and yellow pins: clubbers with their tongues out, their faces pressed up to the camera; girls dancing on podiums, the bar on fire, cocktails pouring with dry ice. I flinch when I first see Charlie’s face, but then I see he is in several of the pictures – his arms around different guys, and girls. One with his top off, neon paint on his face.
And then I see it. Right in the corner, in a section dated last year. Pin-sharp, unmistakable. Charlie, grinning away, his arm around a girl.
And the girl is Rachel.
HELEN
I set the mug down on the coffee table. ‘Please, have a seat,’ I tell Rachel’s dad. But he does not sit, or smile.
I open the shutters, but the light is fading fast, and it still feels dark in the room. I lean over to switch on the lamps, my bump pressing awkwardly against the side of the sofa. The glow illuminates the swirls of dust in the air. I should really tidy up, I know. The place is such a mess. It smells of unwashed dishes, unwashed floors. My enthusiasm for cleaning has waned with my increasing exhaustion, my preoccupation with Rachel. And I’m tired. So tired.
I couldn’t sleep last night. I was up watching TV until late. As I pass the armchair, I snatch up the packet of chocolate digestives and the pair of ski socks wedged in the side of the armchair, where I left them. The nerves in my back protest at the effort of straining to reach.
Rachel’s dad – John, he said his name was – is marching around the room, as if looking for clues, things to write down in a notebook he grips in one hand. A pencil is lodged behind his ear. He’s not a tall man, and is slight, like her. Everything about him seems to be constantly in motion.