We’re in Carnaby Street, walking towards Covent Garden, looking for a café for lunch. We sit outside and a waitress takes our order. While I have Tempe talking, I keep asking questions. Normally, it is the other way around. Sometimes when she speaks, an extraordinary stillness comes over her body, as if she’s hearing her own voice being played back to her and she’s trying to moderate her tone and pitch to make it more agreeable.
She reveals that she was partially deaf until the age of four because of meningitis and that she grew up with three sisters. Her father was a soldier and was away from home a lot, fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was transferred to Belfast, which is why they moved. I want to ask her about the rumours at St Ursula’s, but I figure that she’ll tell me if she wants to, and it hardly matters any more.
Tempe’s two older sisters left school early and worked to support the family. Tempe stayed at school with Elizabeth, the youngest, who had asthma and ‘succumbed’ during the first wave of the pandemic.
‘When you say succumbed … ?’
‘She died.’
I’m shocked. ‘How old was she?’
‘Twenty-seven.’
‘That’s my age.’
I’m surprised at how unmoved Tempe seems to be. Not cold, but accepting, as though bad luck is inevitable and there’s no point complaining.
‘Were you close?’
‘She was my sister,’ says Tempe, as though that says it all.
‘Your parents must have been devastated. It’s so rare … someone so young, dying of Covid.’
Our food arrives and we decide to share, cutting sandwiches and sliding them between plates. Tempe keeps talking about her older sisters, who are both married. She doesn’t mention her father and I sense they didn’t get on. She reaches across the table and wipes mayonnaise from my cheek.
‘I’m such a messy eater. Mum says I eat like a hungry hippo.’
‘A what?’
‘That game. Hungry Hippos. Didn’t you ever play it?’
Tempe shakes her head.
‘That’s one of the reasons I always wanted a sister – so I could play board games on rainy days. Every Christmas, we made a special trip into Hamley’s toy shop, and I’d sit on Santa’s knee and tell him that I’d been a good girl and ask him to bring me a baby sister for Christmas. I stopped doing it when I realised how sad it made my mother.’
‘Did she try for more?’
‘For years. There were false alarms and miscarriages.’
‘What about IVF?’
‘The Catholic Church believes babies should be conceived by the beautiful sexual union of a husband and a wife, rather than in a test tube.’
‘That’s archaic.’
‘Don’t get me started on contraception.’
Tempe glances over my shoulder, scanning the square. I turn and see a man watching from the edge of a crowd that has gathered around a busker.
‘Do you know him?’ I ask.
‘I think I’ve seen him before.’
‘Is he following you?’
‘I don’t know.’
When we leave the café, I notice the man again. We lose sight of him for a while, but he reappears when we cross at the next set of traffic lights.
‘Wait here.’
‘Please don’t go,’ says Tempe.
‘I want to find out who he is.’
I turn quickly and jog back, confronting the man, who is in his mid-fifties, wearing old-fashioned baggy jeans and a blazer.
‘Are you following us?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I keep seeing you.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He’s carrying shopping bags. ‘I’m waiting for my wife,’ he says. ‘She’s having her hair done.’
He points along the street.
‘Why are you staring at my friend?’
‘Who?’
I point towards Tempe.
‘I’m sorry.’ He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and finds his glasses. After fumbling with the case, he unfolds them and puts them on his nose. ‘Can you show me again?’ he asks. ‘I’m blind as a bat.’
My cheeks grow hot. ‘I’m sorry. My mistake.’
I turn away and glance over my shoulder as I leave. I imagine that he’s going to tell his wife that he was accosted in the street by a woman who accused him of being a stalker.
‘What did he say?’ asks Tempe.
‘False alarm.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘He’s nobody,’ I say, and then correct myself. ‘I didn’t mean nobody, but he’s harmless.’
Tempe is looking at her phone. ‘I took a picture of someone standing outside my flat. Later, I saw him at the supermarket.’
‘Show me.’
I try to enlarge the blurry image, but the face isn’t clear. At that moment, a message pops up on her screen.
You know how to make this stop.
She tries to take the phone back.
‘What is this? Are you getting messages?’
‘A few.’
I begin scrolling. There are dozens of text messages. The sender’s number is hidden. The first one I read is a verse:
Forget the future, Forget the past.
Life is over:
Breathe your last.
Others are written in capital letters:
LATE AT NIGHT, WHEN YOU’RE ALONE, I AM THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR.
TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK, TIME IS RUNNING OUT.
HAVE YOU LEARNED ANYTHING YET?
I look up at Tempe, who is biting her bottom lip, leaving teeth marks in her lipstick.
‘You have to tell the police,’ I say.
‘And what will they do?’
‘They can trace the source.’
‘He’s not that stupid. And he won’t let them.’
‘How did he find you?’ I ask.
She shrugs and I begin thinking out loud. If Goodall has used the police database to search for Tempe, he has broken the law.
‘He’s harassing you,’ I say.
‘And I’m ignoring him,’ she replies.
‘You have to change your number.’
‘I have a business to run.’
‘Does he know where you live?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘What about the man outside your flat?’
‘It wasn’t Darren. It could have been anyone.’
‘This is wrong,’ I say. ‘There are laws …’
‘Please, don’t do anything. You saw what happened last time.’
Inside I’m silently fuming.
‘What does he want?’ I ask, not expecting her to answer.
‘What he’s always wanted. Me.’
23
Unpacking our new purchases, we spread them on Tempe’s bed and begin mixing and matching outfits. Her flat is on the first floor of a red-brick block that was built between the wars. It has a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and a sitting room with a large bay window looking out on the branches of a plane tree with a mottled grey trunk.
‘They should rename this place Divorcee Hall,’ says Tempe. ‘It’s full of separated husbands. I keep bumping into them in the basement.’
‘Why the basement?’
‘A shared laundry. They’re always asking my advice about what they can tumble-dry and when to use a cold wash.’