Hold Back the Night Read online

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, Billy, I just don’t think…’ She took another breath. I could feel my face set tight against her. I was wound up now, wound up tight, and I could feel myself ready to pounce on the next thing Sharon said, whatever it was. She must have felt it too. She sat back.

  ‘Listen, Billy, I’m sorry. I’m probably just being stupid. I’ll think about it. I will. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ll probably want to go when it comes to the day. I just…I’m sorry, Billy, I’m probably just being stupid.’

  ‘Sharon—’

  ‘Please, Billy, don’t. Just let me think about it some more, OK?’

  ‘OK, but—’

  ‘Billy!’

  I shrugged my shoulders and drained my wine glass.

  Sharon didn’t want dessert, or coffee. I ordered an espresso, but just so that we didn’t leave the place feeling the way we were feeling. I didn’t really want it. I took my time sipping it, trying to ignore Sharon’s occasional glances at her wristwatch. She obviously wanted to leave but I wanted to talk, about Luke, and the launch of the volume of poems that Sharon and I had collected together from the ones he had already published in magazines, and others she had found in his notebooks. This had to be the reason she was behaving like she was. I thought I’d better wait until we were back in my flat though, where Sharon didn’t have to worry about making a scene, or letting go of the clenched knot of doubts I could see inside her. I wanted her to tell me the reason why she didn’t want to go. Then I could argue it with her, we could scream at each other and then she could tell me what the real reason was, the reason she probably didn’t even know herself yet. Then we could talk about that and there wouldn’t be this sheet of ice between us any more.

  Once outside, however, Sharon told me that she wanted to go home.

  ‘Billy, I’m just so tired.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, not that it was. ‘OK.’

  ‘And I’m sorry about before.’ Her eyes tried to find mine but I pretended not to notice.

  ‘It’s all right. I know it must be hard for you. It was just a surprise, that’s all.’

  Sharon took my hand and squeezed it. We stood for a second. I felt very defensive towards her but told myself I was being stupid. I met her eyes and then went to kiss her, but she turned her head towards a cab coming along the Liverpool Road. She put her free arm up and it slowed. The cab stopped beside us and Sharon climbed in the back.

  Sharon gave me that closed mouth smile again as the cab moved off.

  I stood outside the restaurant for a while, gazing blankly at the shapes inside the all-night supermarket opposite. Just as I had done any number of times since I’d first heard from Sharon that Luke’s book of poems was going to be published by Faber, I pictured myself standing at a party, cheap Chardonnay in hand, without him. Only the week before the publicist had called to tell me when the event would be.

  Luke had never really spoken to me about his writing, he’d never told me that it was his burning ambition to get his work published. I’d always just assumed it was his acting that meant the most to him. But when I read the proofs of the book Faber had produced, I knew how proud Luke would have been to stand in front of a display of the finished work, as its author. That Luke could not come and do that simple thing was something that I had to live with. I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to stand there in place of him. That much I owed him at the very least. I didn’t care about all the shit I might get. I knew what questions I’d be asked and I knew what the answers I’d give would be.

  ‘And, Mr Rucker, can you tell me again the circumstances of your brother’s accident?’

  ’I was a member of the Metropolitan Police. I was on a case when, through various circumstances, my life was in danger. My brother found this out and he tried to warn me. He borrowed my car and drove across London, but he was followed by some of the people I was investigating.’

  ‘Who were these people, Mr Rucker?’

  ‘They were never caught by the police. Anyway, they must have thought that my brother was me, and the car was rammed from the side, sending it over a flyover. Luke sustained the injuries that have left him in a persistent vegetative state. A coma, if you like.’

  ‘And where is your brother being cared for now?’

  ‘I can’t really see any need to tell you that.’

  ‘Finally, Mr Rucker, can I ask you about Luke’s fiancée?’

  ‘His former fiancée.’

  ‘Yes. Sharon Dean. You and she have remained friends since the accident, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, we have remained friends.’

  And if I thought the questions would end there I was kidding myself. If they didn’t I would answer them truthfully and without any apologies or embarrassment, because to deny something I wasn’t ashamed of would have been wrong. Not to answer would have been to tell them what they were hoping for anyway. That some years after Luke’s accident the friendship that had helped both Sharon and myself get through what had happened had changed into something else, and even though we both tried, neither Sharon nor myself could do anything to prevent that change. Or stop ourselves being glad about it. I knew that the questions would come, perhaps veiled in concerned-sounding crap about the closeness that helped sustain us, or perhaps not. Whatever, I was ready for them, and the self-satisfied newspaper articles that could very well follow. No newspaper article could do anything to hurt my brother, and if what they said was the truth then how could they hurt me either? The sanctimonious glee might be hard to stomach but I knew I’d get over it.

  One thing I hadn’t anticipated, however, was that I would have to go and answer these questions on my own; that Sharon wouldn’t be there to answer them with me. I didn’t think this was like her, she was not the sort of person to run away from things. In all the images I had of the event, Sharon had always been there, standing beside me, or giving me a look from across the room. But now it looked like she wouldn’t be. I didn’t think it was fair, either, that she’d run off back to West London rather than talk about it.

  I didn’t really want to go home yet. I’d had the image of a different ending to this evening in mind and I wasn’t ready to go and deal with the less than appealing alternative just at the moment. I thought about a drink down at the Old Ludensian, but Nicky would only ask where Sharon was. Instead, I decided to go back to Camden, to hang around the Lock or outside a pub until it shut, and then sit in a late cafe or stand outside a hotdog stand. I crossed the road and walked down St John Street before turning right into Chadwell Street, towards Middleton Square.

  The night was quiet and I could hear the muted sound of my Salomons on the pavement as I strolled along, as well as a sharper sound behind me, given a slight resonance by the neat brickwork of the imposing flats and houses of the square. I stopped opposite the big, sombre box of the church, to tie my shoelace, and the steps behind me came to a halt. This surprised me; I hadn’t stopped on purpose. I didn’t think too much of it, but when I moved off again the steps started up again, not getting any nearer to me, even though I wasn’t walking very fast. Then, when I sped up a bit, this time definitely on purpose, they didn’t get any further away.

  Now, I was thinking much of it. I went the wrong way round the square before turning back on myself a little and crossing over Amwell Street. The footsteps stayed directly behind me. I tried to snatch a look over my shoulder, but I couldn’t get round far enough. If they got any closer to me then I’d definitely turn round. I took a left out of Lloyd Baker Square down a cut-through passage towards Margery Street, and walked through Wilmington Square.

  My car was parked outside my flat. I rolled the window down, started it and waited. After a second or two I heard another engine come to life, back up on Exmouth Market. I pulled the Mazda up towards Rosebery Avenue and then out towards the lights. I could have made the lights but I didn’t want to. I waited while they went through red again, as an electric-blue Peugeot 205 pulled up behind me. Then, when the light turned gree
n I turned right onto the last stretch of the Farringdon Road and then made sure I arrived at the next set of lights just as they turned red too. I stopped. I checked my wing mirror. I waited.

  And then I backed my car up fast so that it was right up to the grille of the blue 205 behind me and I got out quickly. I managed to reach the other side of the car before the person in it could either back up or lock the passenger side door. I pulled the door open fast, got in and looked to my right. It was an impulsive thing to do and I really don’t know what I expected to happen after I’d done it, but there was one thing I certainly wasn’t prepared for.

  Lucy Bradley was sitting behind the steering wheel.

  Chapter Five

  My hand was on the gear stick, keeping the car in neutral, and I was about to reach over and take the keys out when I stopped. I stared at Lucy Bradley. My mouth opened stupidly and my mind did several of the gear changes I was preventing the car from doing. A horn behind me sounded and I looked up to see that the lights had turned to green.

  ‘Put your hazards on,’ I said.

  The girl beside me reached forward and touched a button. More gear changes. The cars behind began to make a detour round us. I looked at the girl’s face again.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ was the best I could come out with.

  It really was incredible. If her hair had been shorter than her sister’s and not longer, I wouldn’t have even begun to doubt that she had had it cut that day, and redyed black from its glam blonde. But as you can’t make your hair three inches longer in the space of a few hours, the only conclusion I could come to was that the girl I was suddenly sitting next to wasn’t Lucy Bradley at all but someone else, and the only person she could possibly have been was her sister. Maybe, if I’d seen her after speaking to her mother properly, then I would have been prepared. I would still hardly have believed it though. Identical doesn’t seem anywhere near strong enough.

  I sat with my hand on the gear stick of the 205 staring at the girl. The girl herself didn’t look too frightened but she did look caught out, like a sixth-former found smoking dope by the deputy head. I wasn’t about to tell her off though. I was still stunned by her physical resemblance to her sister, even though I’d only seen the girl once in the flesh, and once in a photograph. I finally did get it together to reach over and take the keys out of the ignition, though I didn’t really think it was necessary.

  The girl who wasn’t Lucy relaxed a little when she realized that I wasn’t going to give her a lot of shit for following me. She reacted to my astonishment with a weary, though understanding smile.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, slight sarcasm trying to cover up her nerves. ‘Everyone’s like that. At least to begin with. Then they’re just confused. After that they can tell us apart but its only because of what we wear, and the kind of things we like doing.’

  ‘And your hair,’ I said.

  ‘And our hair.’ She pushed a wedge of it behind her left ear, releasing a pocket of fresh, Body Shop perfume. Her hair was a deep, lustrous black, softer than her mother’s but without so much of a shine. She smiled nervously, not a big smile but still showing me columns of straight, firm teeth. ‘Although I don’t know what Lucy’s done to hers recently. It could be anything, knowing her.’

  I didn’t tell her that I knew exactly how her sister was wearing her hair these days.

  ‘There’s also the fact that your sister probably doesn’t go around following people to restaurants and out again, halfway round Islington and then along the Farringdon Road.’

  ’No,’ the girl said. ‘There’s that too, I suppose.’

  Her name was Emma. I told her to take a right and then park the 205 at the bottom of Lloyd Baker Street. We then walked back to my car and I drove up to my flat again. My space was gone, but there’s a delivery bay nearby that’s safe overnight so I left the car there. We walked back down Exmouth Market towards Fred’s, a cafe at the Farringdon end of the street that’s open late from Thursday through the weekend. As we walked in the door I nodded hi to Alberto, who was leaning against the bar as usual, and he waved and walked over. He looked at Lucy’s sister.

  ‘Hello again,’ he said, surprised.

  Emma looked embarrassed.

  ‘I was in here earlier,’ she said to me. ‘You get a good view of the top of the street you live on.’

  ‘Some more coffee?’ Alberto asked her.

  We took a table by the window and Alberto sauntered off to forget about our drinks for a while. I eventually drank the top third of a glass of syrupy Belgian beer while Emma sipped nervously at a Coke. As we spoke I tried to dredge up the image of Lucy from the morning, but I couldn’t get any further than the face in front of me. Emma had a long, geometrical jawline. Her nose was impressive with a slight ridge that made her eyes seem set back a little too far. Her eyes were two dark almonds that I could tell were stinging her. Unlike her mother, Emma’s face was younger than her body which, though it was perfectly well advanced, she still carried like a teenage girl, covering her breasts with her arms, relaxing her posture into a hunch that belied her height. From the brief glimpse that I’d had of her sister I had the impression that while they were physically interchangeable, she’d had an older, more confident bearing.

  Emma played nervously with her straw.

  ‘I’m sorry I followed you, Mr Rucker.’

  ‘Billy.’

  ‘I’m really sorry I followed you, Billy.’

  ‘That’s all right. There’s only one thing worse than being tailed.’

  ‘What? What’s that?’

  ‘Not being tailed. Oscar Wilde.’

  Emma smiled and I was glad. I was actually annoyed at her for trying to follow me, but the nerves she had shown at being discovered by me, and the fear that I’d be angry about it, had slowly begun to wear off to reveal a far deeper concern beneath it. I could guess what it was. ‘How did you know where I live?’ I asked.

  ‘I looked you up in—’

  ‘I’m not in the phone book. Listen, I don’t give a fuck, OK? You followed me and I caught you, end of story.’

  ‘All right,’ Emma said. ‘I’m sorry. But I don’t want you to think that my mother had anything to do with this.’

  ‘I see. I think I see.’ I went through it quickly. ‘You were waiting outside my office?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you followed me back from there to my flat. I have to say you did a much better job that time.’

  ‘There was loads of traffic. I thought I’d lost you a few times.’

  ‘And then you waited here, watching my street, and then tailed after me on foot up to the Angel.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did. I was really worried. I thought you’d be bound to look round.’

  ‘I had other things on my mind.’ I sat back in my chair and took a sip of beer. ‘You mentioned your mother.’

  ‘She doesn’t know,’ Emma insisted. ‘I didn’t tell her. I just knew when she was meeting you. She didn’t know I was going to follow you. It was my idea that she employ you. Mine and my dad’s.’

  ‘But not your mother’s?’

  ‘No. The policeman told Mum that you wouldn’t tell us where Lucy was. Mum couldn’t see the point of that. Dad could, he just wanted news of her, any news.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I thought that if Mum employed you, then maybe I could follow you and if you did find Lucy, well then I could wait till you left and then talk to her. I could maybe persuade her to come home. I really want to talk to her.’

  A swell rose up in Emma very suddenly, like a wave of nausea, which she just got under control.

  ‘You must want to very badly.’

  ‘I do. I do.’

  ‘Apart from obviously wanting to see her, is there any particular…?’

  ‘I made my sister run away,’ Emma said, before the next wave crashed through and out of her, and over the table all around us.

  Emma leant over forwards with her head in her hands, pressing her el
bows into her ribs. Her dark straight hair hung forwards on both sides like two meat cleavers and began to sway gently. Emma had large, strong hands, and when she didn’t stop crying I reached forward and gently prized one away from her, holding it on the table top, squeezing it tight. At that moment Alberto walked past and was about to come over to chat when he noticed what I was doing. He saw that Emma was in tears and he stopped, giving me a shocked half comic grimace as he walked through into the kitchen.

  Emma held on to my hand, crying like a very young child, and then, when she had calmed down, she took hers back self-consciously. She used it to dust away some tears from her eyelashes, which didn’t smear because, contrary to appearances, they were not made up. She straightened her back, set her jaw against a few dying tremors, and breathed in deeply through a nose that I’d noticed was red even before this bout of tears. Her hair was bothering her and she pushed it off her face again.

  ‘Bloody stuff.’

  I stayed still for as long as it took her to focus on me.

  ‘Tell me all about it,’ I said.

  Emma and I sat in Fred’s for an hour while she told me why she thought she was responsible for her sister’s sudden disappearance. I sat listening, nodding my head now and then and thinking how ready the human mind is sometimes to heap guilt upon itself. Guilt that hangs in the air because no one else seems to be claiming it.

  ‘Lucy messed up her exams,’ Emma said, as if that was the explanation for everything. ‘Then she just disappeared, about two months ago. We weren’t too worried for a day or two because she often stays out, never telling anyone where she is. After a while Mum phoned a couple of old boyfriends, the few she knew the names of. They hadn’t seen her, so she phoned the police.’

  ‘And then a big detective agency.’

  ‘She told you?’

  ‘She did. But she didn’t tell me she was still employing them, which I imagine she is.’

  Emma looked uncomfortable. I didn’t want her breaking her mother’s confidence so I didn’t push it. It was annoying though, knowing I might get my toes trodden on by the big boys.