I’m moving, searching for my mobile. I must have left it in the library last night. I find it on the drinks cabinet. I have a dozen text messages. Only one from Tempe.
I didn’t mean to hurt you, but everything I did was out of love. I hope I can make things right. Remember me. Goodbye.
I try to call her, but it goes straight to her voicemail.
‘Where are you going?’ asks Constance as I dash up the stairs.
I search for my car keys and then realise that I don’t have any. My Fiat is at the garage and the police have impounded the VW. Moments later, I’m running across the lawn towards the old stable block where large sliding doors secure the garage. The Range Rover is missing. There are three other cars parked side by side, all expensive and beautifully maintained.
Tony has a small tea-room in one corner of the stables, behind a wall of tools. The car keys are hanging on a corkboard above the desk. I choose the Alfa Romeo, which must belong to Constance because the driver’s seat is pushed forward and I can smell her perfume.
The engine rumbles rather than purrs, but I give it no time to warm up. Swinging out of the garage, I accelerate down the gravel drive, pausing as the electronic gates open. Minutes later, I’m heading north along Hawley Road towards Dartford, overtaking where possible. The smell of late summer fills the car and strands of mist are handing over the river like wisps of smoke. A single sculler is moving across the water, creating ripples that widen in his wake.
My phone is on my lap. I try Tempe again but hear the same pre-recorded greeting. I leave her a message: It’s me. If you can hear me, pick up the phone. I pause, hoping to hear her voice. I try again, demanding she answer. Pick up the fucking phone, Tempe. Answer me.
I keep trying her as I drive east along the A2, through Bexleyheath and Eltham and Forest Hill and Dulwich Park. Twenty miles. Fifty minutes. It feels longer. Outside her ugly red-brick block, I double-park and run up the steps, pushing my thumb on the intercom. Tempe doesn’t answer. I press all of the buzzers, hoping someone will let me inside. The door unlocks. I push it open. I’m halfway up the stairs when a woman screams. It’s not coming from Tempe’s flat, but lower down. The basement has a communal laundry and a utilities room. I follow the sound, letting gravity carry me down the stairs.
The screaming has stopped. A woman is covering her mouth, backing away from the laundry door. She has a little girl, a toddler, who is hiding between her legs, covering her ears from the noise. I recognise them. They live in the flat opposite Tempe.
The laundry door is partly ajar. There is a sign stuck to it with Sellotape.
Do not enter. Call the police.
I try to push the door open, widening the gap, but something is leaning against it. Reaching inside, my fingers touch fabric. I take hold of a leg. Hanging.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask the neighbour.
‘Alice.’
‘OK, Alice, I want you to go upstairs and call 999. We want an ambulance and the police. Tell them it’s an emergency.’
Alice doesn’t move. She’s in shock. I touch her shoulder. She flinches but comes back to me.
‘The police and paramedics. Understand?’
She nods and leaves, taking her little girl. I take two steps back and charge at the door, slamming into it with my shoulder. Each time, I sense a body swinging on the far side like a pendulum before it crashes back against the door. I wedge myself into the gap, first my arm, then leg, my shoulder, half my chest, forcing it open. Groaning with the effort, I squeeze myself through and drop onto my knees.
Tempe is hanging above me. A thin nylon clothesline is wrapped around her neck and looped over a lagged water pipe. I grab her around the thighs and lift her, taking the weight off her neck. I reach up with one hand and try to hook my fingers under the noose, but the weight of her body is making it tighter.
Her skin is still warm. Her eyes are open.
I look around the laundry. A small stepladder is lying on the floor near her feet. I need to cut her down, which means letting her go. I release her gently and begin flinging open drawers and cupboards, searching for a knife or scissors or a box-cutter. I find a set of rusting garden secateurs with curved handles and short blades.
Picking up the stepladder, I climb high enough and start scissoring at the nylon cord, using both hands to force the blades open and closed, slowly fraying the rope. Her face is close to mine. Her eyes are accusing me, saying, You did this. This is your fault.
The rope unravels and breaks. Tempe topples to the floor. I manage to catch her top half before her head hits the polished concrete.
Turning her onto her back, I check her airways are clear and begin mouth-to-mouth and heart compressions. I know where to put my hands and how hard to press down, keeping a steady rate of at least a hundred compressions a minute. After every thirty, I give her two breaths, trying to remember the CPR beat. I talk to Tempe, telling her to hang on because I don’t want to be responsible for this. I don’t want to sit bolt upright in the night, with my heart hammering, unable to breathe, reliving this moment.
I already have my nightmare – the bus bombing at Tavistock Square. The bomber that day, Hasib Hussain, was only eighteen. He looked so ordinary and unassuming when I saw a picture of him later. I tried to remember if I’d seen him on the bus, if we’d made eye contact. Hasib was born in Leeds and grew up in Holbeck in West Yorkshire, the youngest of four. His father worked in a factory. His mother was an interpreter. Both had emigrated from Pakistan. Hasib went to Ingram Road Primary School, and later to South Leeds High School. He did his GCSEs in English language, English literature, maths, science, Urdu, and design technology. He was supposed to set off his bomb on the Underground that day, but the earlier explosions had closed down the stations, so he chose to board the number 30 bus carrying a home-made bomb in his rucksack. The explosion killed thirteen people, but it could easily have been more. The bus had changed its normal route because of a police roadblock and fifty passengers stepped off only moments before the blast.
Hasib Hussain was among the dead. I didn’t know him, or see him, so I couldn’t yell at him like I’m yelling at Tempe. The paramedics can hear me when they arrive. They take over the resuscitation, using drugs and a defibrillator machine, but I can tell they’re going through the motions and that Tempe won’t be coming back.
Eventually, a police officer leads me to a car where I’m told to wait. I don’t know how long I’m there, sitting inside the patrol car, watching police and forensic officers come and go. Neighbours are being interviewed. Statements taken.
Martyn Fairbairn arrives. It must be his day off because he’s wearing old jeans and a rugby jumper that hangs from his skinny frame. He barely glances in my direction before he disappears inside the flats. Each time I close my eyes, I see images of Tempe’s lifeless body hanging from the pipe. I feel the weight of her body as I tried to hold her up. I search again for a blade to cut her down, frantically opening drawers and cupboards. The shelves were lined with bottles of bleach, turpentine, detergent, drain cleaner and acid.
Everything becomes a sign. The red paint spatters on Tempe’s white shoes. The half-full bottle of acid on the shelf. The threatening text messages. It was always Tempe. Whenever I was drifting away from her, she dragged me back by conjuring some new threat or outrage; or she became the victim of another injustice.