us more than it’s worth. Her name will go on a list, and if she tried to get back into this country she’d be in trouble, but I imagine she’s too smart to risk that.’
The senior of the two bailiffs came into the room and said to him, ‘We’re finished here, then.’
Hall looked around the room and nodded towards the window. ‘What about the curtains? A nice bit of material.’
‘They’re not on the inventory,’ the bailiff said. ‘They don’t belong to our client.’
‘No, they belong to my wife,’ I said.
Hall laughed. ‘How’s that?’
When I explained he said, ‘I know that shop, in the Rialto mall, isn’t it? Good-quality stuff. Why don’t you take them?’
I thought: why not? The material, a rich velvet brocade in tones of red and black, could be used for cushion covers. Hall didn’t seem to want any proof or receipt - just my name and address - and he helped me to stand on the window ledge to unhook the curtains from the runners.
I was putting the curtains into the boot of my car when a Volvo estate came into the parking lot at some speed and drew up in the space vacated by the bailiffs’ van. Colin Butterworth got out of the car and gave a start as he recognised me. He looked pale and tense, and he was unshaven, though he was dressed in one of his smart suits. He said something as he came up to me.
‘You’ll have to speak louder,’ I said. ‘I’m not wearing my hearing aid.’
‘Where’s Alex? Is she all right? I just got back from Paris this morning and found a message saying she was going to kill herself.’
‘Me too,’ I said.
I related to him briefly what had happened. He almost crumpled to the ground with relief. ‘Thank God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Thank God.’ He fumbled in his jacket pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, lit up, and inhaled deeply. ‘Is it possible that little bitch is out of my life for good?’ he wondered aloud. ‘It seems too good to be true.’ Then a dismaying thought struck him. ‘Suppose she’s written emails to other people?’
‘You mean, to the chairperson of the Staff-Student Relations Board, for instance?’
‘Exactly.’ He dragged on his cigarette.
‘Well, you’ll soon find out,’ I said unsympathetically. He shot me a resentful glance, but said nothing. I relented a little, and said: ‘Anyway, as I understand it, she can’t return to this country to give evidence against you without being arrested for debt.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I wonder what she’s going to do next? Talk her way into another university and fuck up some other poor bugger’s life I suppose.’
‘She might try writing fiction,’ I said. ‘She’s got the imagination for it. It wouldn’t surprise me if we both turn up lightly disguised in a campus novel one of these days.’
I was joking, but he seemed to take the threat seriously. ‘Christ, I hope not,’ he said. If I had felt before that he got off lightly, with my help, from his involvement with Alex, I now saw that he would never be entirely free from the fear that one day she would pop up again to cause him trouble.
I am of course, as relieved as Butterworth at Alex’s sudden removal of herself from my life, and my disapproval of his conduct is not as righteous as he thinks. If I turned down opportunities for kinky shenanigans with her, that was as much out of timidity as principle, and even so I wove a web of deceit around my dealings with her from which I have been lucky to escape unscathed, with my wife’s trust intact. When Fred comes home this evening, I shall be able to tell her the story of the morning’s events without compromising myself - or Butterworth, for that matter, since it’s entirely plausible that Alex should have sent a fake suicide note to him too. She will be shocked and astonished by Alex’s conduct, of course, but I think she was already beginning to have reservations about her character. And she will be amused by my resourcefulness in recovering the curtains. I am a lucky man.
As for Alex, it is hard to know whether she is mad, or bad, or a bit of both; but now that she has gone I can feel a little sorry for her, and hope that somewhere, somehow, her unquiet soul will find some peace.
20
7th March. I’ve been down in London for a couple of days,