of the phone. “Cathy. You are okay? Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, putting a smile into my voice, “of course I am. I just want to get this out of the way so that I won’t be worrying about it all night.”
“All right,” he said. “Take your phone with you.”
“I will. I’ll see you later.”
“I love you.”
“You too,” I said.
When I hung up I stood for a moment, thinking about what I’d said and what it might have sounded like to anyone who might have been listening. I’d avoided speaking to Stuart in my flat before, just in case Lee had bugged the place, and was listening in. I wondered how long I could keep it up.
I found a bus that was going in roughly the right direction, South of the river. Traffic was starting to get lighter, and it was completely dark by the time I got to Sylvia’s street. I walked from the station where the bus had dropped me off, trying to remember which of the almost identical streets was the right one. It was nearly an hour since Stuart had rung me in the flat.
The painted black door was shut fast this time. I rang the buzzer for Flat 2. I could hear it ringing all the way from the back of the house, but there was no answer. I waited a moment, then rang again. I checked my watch. Ten past nine. Surely she should be at home? Most people were on a Sunday night, even in London. I rang again, and this time the intercom crackled into life. Not Sylvia, though—someone else.
“Look, she’s clearly not at home. Why don’t you piss off?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m supposed to be meeting her, would you mind letting me in?”
No reply—the intercom was silent.
Well, I couldn’t just sit here all night. I walked to the end of the street, turning left, following the gable end of the terrace to the inevitable alleyway running along the back of the houses. It was pitch-dark down there, no doubt full of dog shit, overturned trash cans and all sorts of horrors—but at least, somewhere down there, was the back of Sylvia’s flat and the backyard where we’d sat and drunk mugs of tea in the sunshine.
Two hundred and ten steps across rough ground, exactly the same number as it had taken me from the front of her house to the end of the street, and I was faced with a gate, overgrown with weeds at the bottom, and a dilapidated wall. I felt the rough bricks, ran my fingers along the top, shoulder-height, and pulled myself up, scraping my knee, trying to get a toehold with my sneakers.
Once I gotten my elbows up on the wall I could see into the yard, and the downstairs windows—all in darkness. Upstairs on the first and second floor all the windows were brightly lit, and wide open to the warm night. I’d have to be quiet.
I pulled myself up onto the wall, balancing my behind precariously on the top, and debated what to do. It was more than likely that she just wasn’t home. She’d gone away for the weekend, gone to visit friends somewhere, or even her parents back up in Lancaster. She’d escaped from him, maybe for good, the way I never managed to.
Or else she was inside. With all the lights off.
Well, I’d come this far—I couldn’t just go home without checking. I scissored my legs over the side of the wall and lowered myself down, scraping the backs of my legs down the brickwork and cursing myself for not wearing something more sensible than a sundress.
I could hear voices, laughter, from the flat upstairs. Some sort of classical music—a piano, soothing, melodic. Perhaps they were having a dinner party.
I trotted down the backyard, lit up bright as day by the lights from upstairs, hoping to God that they wouldn’t choose that moment to cast a glance outside. Only just remembering in time the low wall that dropped down onto the patio, shrouded in shadow.
Once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness I peered in through the glass to the living room beyond. It was much as I remembered—the prints, the misshapen sofa covered in satiny throws, books, magazines piled haphazardly. Through the doorway and into the gloom I could just about make out the doors in the hallway, bathroom on the left, bedroom on the right as far as I remembered.
Both of the doors were ajar.
That was it, then. Wherever