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  I froze, staring down at her window.

  The woman wrenched around, turning about the waist to glare up through her window.

  I saw the red plastic bag lying on the rug in front of her, its contents spread in a semi-circle. She was not holding a newspaper or magazine or book. In one hand she held half of a thick, red steak. The other hand was up to her mouth, and had evidently been engaged in pushing raw minced beef into it when she turned.

  The lower half of her face was smeared with blood. Her eyes were wide, and either her pupils were unusually large or her irises were also pitch black. Her hair started perhaps an inch or two further back than anyone’s I had ever seen, and there was something about her temples that was wrong, misshapen, excessive.

  We stared at each other for perhaps two seconds. A gobbet of partially-chewed meat fell out of her mouth, onto her dress. I heard her say something, or snarl it. I have no idea what it might have been, and this was not merely because of the distance or muting caused by the glass of the window. It simply did not sound like any language I’ve ever heard. Her mouth opened far too wide in the process, too, further accentuating the strange, bulged shape of her temples.

  I took a couple of huge, jerky steps backward, nearly falling over in the process. I caught one last glimpse of her face, howling something at me. There were too many vowels in what she said, and they were in an unkind order.

  I heard another sound, from up the street, and turned jerkily saw two people approaching, from the next corner, perhaps fifty yards away. They were passing underneath one of the lamps. One was taller than the other. The shorter of the two seemed to be wearing a long dress, almost Edwardian in style. The man — assuming that’s what he was – had a pronounced stoop. In silhouette against the lamp light, both their heads were obviously too wide across the top.

  I ran.

  I ran away home.

  I have not seen that supermarket man again. I’m sure I will eventually, but he’ll doubtless have forgotten the corned beef incident. Out there in the real world, it was hardly that big a deal.

  Otherwise, everything is the same. Helen and I continue to enjoy a friendly, affectionate relationship, sharing our lives with a son who shows no real sign yet of turning into an adolescent monster. I work in my study, taking the collections of words that people send me and making small adjustments to them, changing something here and there, checking everything is in order and putting a part of myself into the text by introducing just a little bit of difference.

  The only real alteration in my patterns is that I no longer walk down a certain street to get my habitual morning latté. Instead I head in the other direction and buy one from the mini-market instead. It’s nowhere near as good, and I guess soon I’ll go back to the deli, though I shall take a different route from the one which had previously been my custom.

  A couple of weeks ago I was unpacking the bags from our weekly shop, and discovered a large variety pack of sliced meats. I let out a strangled sound, dropping the package to the floor. Helen happened to be in the kitchen at the time, and took this to be a joke — me expressing mock surprise at her having (on a whim) clicked a button online and thus causing all these naughty meats to arrive as a treat for the husband who, in her own and many ways, she loves.

  I found a smile for her, and the next day when she was at work I wrapped the package in a plastic bag and disposed of it in a bin half a mile from our house. There’s a lot you can do with chicken, and even more with vegetables.

  Meanwhile, we seem to be making love a little more often. I’m not really sure why.

  Different Now

  She was out of the door before Chris had time to grasp what was going on. What started as a run of the mill argument had suddenly escalated out of control, bored misery giving way to alarm. Then the flat seemed very empty, and she was gone.

  Until moments before, it had just been the usual depressing bickering, the holding up of past hurts for inspection, and he’d been wondering how much longer he was going to defend his corner. There had been a time when he’d been prepared to stay up all night, feeling bound to hang in there until the swapping of grievances could be steered towards a new compromise. A time when he could not have contemplated sleeping next to her unless they did so as friends.

  But so many nights.

  For a few months or weeks things would be all right, and then the familiar slow spiral towards confrontation would start. She would shout, and he would mutter: both completely in the right and both utterly in the wrong. These days he didn’t have the energy to argue until dawn when he knew any truce was only temporary; or the stomach to put up with melodrama when what they needed was discussion. When the point of diminishing returns had been reached he usually went to bed, to be joined an hour later by Jo, vicious and sniffling. The next day would be very unpleasant, the day after less so. Sooner or later both would apologize so they could start living their lie for a little longer, go on inhabiting the same fragile world.

  Chris grabbed his keys and ran for the door. He tripped over the pile of newspapers stranded in the middle of the floor by leave-it-where-it-drops Jo, and almost fell, but his beat of irritation was perfunctory. This was very bad. He’d looked at her and for the first time seen that he didn’t know her any more, as if he was in the room with an utter stranger. Suddenly it hadn’t been just another row, a chance for both to be flamboyantly hurt: the cord which had always somehow remained between them had lain naked and exposed, waiting for the axe.

  Fumbling to lock, the door Chris dropped his keys and swore. He didn’t like the note of hysteria in his voice. It wasn’t like him. However loud the shouting, he always stayed distant enough to watch, even when he was center stage. Stuffing the keys in his jeans he leapt down the steps to the hall four at a time.

  The outside door was open, swaying from the strong wind outside. Rain spattered the familiar black plastic bags habitually left in the hall by the tenants of the downstairs flat, who he suspected were also responsible for the grey camper van which had sat outside on four flat tires since before he’d moved in.

  He shouted at their door with all his strength, throat rasping: ‘Oh what a surprise: someone’s left some fucking rubbish in the hall!’

  Frightened by his fury he bolted out of the door and ran to the end of the path, wildly looking up and down the street. All he could see was waving branches and wet moonlit patches. He’d hoped that she would grind to a halt just outside the house, but clearly she’d got further. Swearing desperately, he trotted back and pulled the door shut before heading out onto the pavement.

  She couldn’t have much more than two minutes’ start on him, which made it probable she’d gone right. Though it was theoretically possible that she could have covered the two hundred yards or so to the end of the road on the left, it seemed unlikely.

  Chris jogged to the nearer corner and stood at the insignificant crossroads, straining his ears for the sound of footsteps. All he heard was the sound of distant traffic on the Seven Sisters Road: the featureless cramped streets of terraced houses facing him were silent apart from the sound of rain on swaying leaves. He called her name and heard nothing more than the thin sound of his own voice.

  Head down and shoulders hunched against the wind-whipped rain, he trotted out of Cornwall Road, across the small junction, and into the road that began the most direct route to the station.

  After a few minutes he stopped, panting. There was still no sign of Jo, and there were now a couple of different ways she might have gone. Assuming she’d have been walking towards the station to head for home, she should have taken the left fork – but she had only walked the route a couple of times, and always with him. Chances were she wouldn’t have had a clear memory of the route, and the alternative road was slightly wider than the one which led to the station. Chris had a sneaking suspicion that — faced with the choice — she might have assumed that was the best way to go. Not that there was any way of telling: he didn’t even know if she’d he
aded for the station at all.

  Shivering, simultaneously wishing he’d thought to bring a coat and realizing that going back for one would lose him any chance of catching up, Chris headed for the wider road, walking quickly.

  It was impossible to see very far down the road, as it curved sharply round to the left, presenting a blank face of wall broken by occasional squares of light. From his level all Chris could see was patches of ceiling and snatches of curtain. It seemed easy to believe there was no one in any of the rooms, that they were empty and always had been. In one ground floor room a television flickered by itself, somehow making the sight even less hospitable than the windows that were dark and reflective black. Disturbed, Chris turned his attention back to the pavement. Somewhere, a long way off, a car horn sounded.

  Suddenly he glimpsed movement some way ahead, and hurried forward. It was difficult to see clearly in the steadily falling rain, and hard to see what might be there against the pocks and puddles in the pavement. A shape moved out from behind a car, but it was only a small dog, white and shivering. Wiping rain from his face, Chris trotted up to the next junction.

  The streets all looked the same. All bent slightly, all had pavements torn apart through years of patching, and all looked orange and shiny black with water, the patterns of light changing as branches of grey leaves slashed in front of the streetlights. There was still no sign of Jo, no sign of anyone. Chris picked a road at random and headed down it.

  He was far from sure what would happen when he found her. Nothing like this had ever happened before. If she’d headed for home, which would involve a tube to a mainline station and then an hour on a train, that was bad. If she’d not even been thinking that clearly, but had just set off, that was even worse, given her paranoia about walking any streets late at night. Either way it seemed possible that things might finally have broken down, and he realized suddenly that he didn’t want them to. However bad things might be between them, she was the only person who really knew him. And more than that, he loved her.

  Another turning, another road. Chris felt increasingly desperate now, felt an already bad situation getting away from him, and he was now far from sure where he was. Not having a car meant he didn’t know the area very well, his movements restricted to walking to the station and the nearest shops. He thought that the station was probably still over to the left, but when he started to choose left turns the roads bent and doglegged, bringing him back or taking him in the wrong direction, through rows and rows of three-storey brick punctuated by sheets of dark glass.

  Finally he stopped and rested, hands on his knees and chest aching.

  After a few moments the pain felt at once less urgent but more deep-seated, a feeling he remembered from horrific cross-country runs at school. Then, too, the rain had sheeted down, as if settled in forever. Chris raised his head, squinting into the lines of water.

  Someone was standing at the top of the street.

  Chris straightened, and took a pace forward. About fifty yards away, motionless and grey behind the rain, stood a woman of Jo’s size and shape. It had to be Jo. Feeling a lurch of compassion, Chris walked quickly towards her, and then started to trot.

  As he neared her he slowed to a walk. She was facing away from him, shoulders slumped, heedless of the rain which coursed down her soaking hair and clothes. She made no movement as he approached and Chris felt tears welling up: Jo hated the rain, and there are always things about someone which, however trivial, make them more themselves than anyone else.

  He stood at her side for a moment, then gently touched her shoulder. For a moment there was no response, and then she looked up slowly, timidly.

  It wasn’t Jo.

  Chris took a step backwards, confused. The woman continued to look at him as rain ran down her face, not staring, just including him in her gaze.

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought...’ Chris stopped, unable to finish the obvious sentence, transfixed by her face.

  It wasn’t Jo, but it so nearly was. The face was so similar, so equal to Jo’s, and yet something was different. He took a few more steps back, shrugging to show his harmlessness, and started to turn away.

  As he did so the woman turned too, and he caught a glimpse of her face in three-quarter view. She began slowly to step through the puddles, heading up a road he’d already tried. Chris stared after her, and knew what it was about her face.

  It was the face of someone he didn’t know.

  The face of someone you’ve caught sight of across a room for the very first time, the face of a stranger you don’t yet understand, a face before you’ve seen it thousands of times, loved and kissed every inch of it, seen its every smile and frown. It was the face Jo would always have shown had he not plucked up his courage on a night four years ago, and walked across the room to timidly make her acquaintance.

  Had he not met her and loved her, had she not become his world, she would always have had that face. The woman’s face was Jo’s in a world where they’d never met.

  Chris started up the road after the woman, just as she turned the corner. Anxious to keep sight of her, he slipped on a patch of lurid moss glistening blackly on the pavement. Narrowly avoiding a sprawling fall, he awkwardly maintained his balance, twisting his knee. Slowing to a fast lurch he painfully rounded the corner in time to see the flap of a coat disappearing from sight. He rubbed his knee and then set off in pursuit.

  He hadn’t tried this particular road, and didn’t recognize it or the turning. Wiping water from his face, he trotted into the sheets of rain, feeling the silence behind the hissing patter of drops. He slipped once more navigating the turn at speed, but managed to keep his feet.

  At the end he stopped, chest heaving again. She had disappeared.

  There was no obvious direction she could have gone. The other three roads all stretched straight for many yards before curving, and it should have been possible to see her whichever way she’d taken. Chris glanced about wildly, peering into the rain. Then he noticed something.

  The road opposite was Cornwall Road.

  Bewildered, he took a few steps forward into the middle of the road. He turned and looked the way he’d come. The road was unfamiliar, curving a wholly different way to the road he walked down to the station. The road that cut across was different too: it was narrower and had more trees. The whole junction was different, and yet...

  He walked slowly into Cornwall Road. There, about ten yards up on the left, was the familiar white gateway, the entrance to Number 7. Light fell weakly down from the upper window. Proceeding like a nervous gunfighter, casting frequent glances behind, Chris tried to marry the two views in his mind. But they wouldn’t gel, couldn’t.

  Cornwall Road now joined with different roads, and the grey camper van was gone.

  He pushed open the dark green gate and stepped up to the door. Through misted glass he saw the hallway was clear, with no sign of rubbish bags. He turned and looked at the entry-phone. The label by the topmost buzzer said ‘Price’, which was not his name.

  He wondered briefly where Jo was now, but already the name seemed unfamiliar, ordinary, like that of someone he’d met once at a party, some years ago. His key did not turn the lock, and was made for a different door.

  Chris took a last look at the house and then turned and faced the rain, pausing for a moment before stepping out into it. He had no idea where he lived, whom he loved, or where he should go.

  Things were different now.

  Unbelief

  It happened in Bryant Park, a little after six o’clock in the evening. He was sitting by himself in lamp shadow amongst the trees, at one of the rickety green metal tables along on the north side, close to where the Barnes & Noble library area is during the day. He was warmly dressed in nondescript, casual clothing and sipping a Starbucks in a seasonally red cup, acquired from the outlet on the corner of 6th, opposite one of the entrances to the park. He queued, like any normal person. Watching through the window you’d have got no idea who he was,
or the power he wielded over this and other neighbourhoods.

  He had done exactly the same on the preceding two evenings. I’d followed him down from Times Square both times, watched him buy the same drink from the same place and then spend half an hour sitting in the same chair in the park, or close enough, watching the world go by. Evidently, as I had been assured, it was what this man always did at this time of day and this time of year. Habit and ritual are some of our greatest comforts, but they’re a gift to people like me.

  He might as well have tied himself up with a bow.

  On the previous occasions I had merely observed, logged his actions, and walked on by. The thing had been booked for a specific date, for reasons I neither knew nor cared about. That day had now come, and so I entered the park by the next entrance along, strolling into the park casually and without evident intent.

  I paused for a moment on the steps. He didn’t appear to be there with protection. There were other people sparsely spread around the park, perched at tables or walking in the very last of the twilight, but there was no indication they were anything more than standard-issue New Yorkers, taking a little time before battling the subway or bridges and tunnels or airports, heading home to their family or friends or partner for the holidays. Grabbing a last few seconds’ blessed solitude, an un-witnessed cigarette, or an illicit kiss and a promise not to forget, before entering a day or two of enforced incarceration with the people who populated their real lives.

  Their presence in the park did not concern me. They were either absorbed with their companions or something within themselves, and none would notice me until it was too late. I have done harder jobs in more difficult conditions. I could have just taken the shot from twenty feet away, and kept on walking, but I found I didn’t want it to happen like that.