“That’s right. All legit. Nothing illegal about it. She brings in some good pieces, too, knows her stuff.”
“Who? Who is she?”
“I’m not so good with names. I have her card here somewhere.” He shuffles behind a small desk. I can see that despite his dapper appearance, he is still wearing his slippers. “Here you go, I’m happy to recommend her, she’s very good.”
I stare down at the card he has put in my hands, not able to stop them from shaking as I read the name printed on it.
Maggie O’Neil.
It can’t be.
“Can I buy this picture?” I can’t hide the tremor in my voice.
“Of course,” he says with a grin. I give him my credit card, not caring how much he plans to charge me, and remove the photo from the frame before I’ve even left the shop. I turn it over, unable to take another step when I read what is written on the back of it in a childlike scrawl:
John Sinclair. Age 5.
Sixty-eight
Maggie lets the phone ring and doesn’t answer.
Whoever it is calls three more times without leaving a message.
She is sure it is Aimee calling. It’s as though Maggie knows it. She holds the three smallest fingers of her left hand inside her right and squeezes them hard, until they hurt.
The ringing starts again. The caller has perhaps thought of something to say now, and Maggie leans right down, until her face is next to the answerphone, her ear turned and tuned to the little speaker. Pleasure ripples through her entire body when she hears that beautiful voice coming out of the machine; it’s like a song she’s missed hearing.
“Hello, my name is Aimee. I wonder if you could give me a call back…”
Maggie listens to the whole message thirteen times. She turns her face to kiss the phone, leaving red lipstick all over it, and starts to moan a little, as though the sound of the voice in the recording is caressing her in return. Giving the girl elocution lessons might not have been her idea, but it was a good one.
She pictures Aimee’s face crinkling with confusion, dripping in disbelief. She is tempted to return the call, but she knows that she mustn’t. She’d be willing to bet that Aimee will come to find her now, and the odds of that happening soon are quite high. She just needs to wait a little while longer. Some conversations are better had in person.
Sixty-nine
I let myself back into Jack’s house and head straight for the shower, doing my best to wash the sweat and fear away.
I thought Maggie and John were dead but this is too much of a coincidence, it all has to be linked, I just don’t know how. The police have already confirmed that John survived the shooting. Why did he never get in touch? I thought he cared about me, in his own way. Did he blame me for what happened? The memory of John’s face had smudged over the years, but now that I’ve seen his name written on the back of the black-and-white photo, I know it is him, I recognize his eyes. Why would the man I married have a picture of John as a child and pretend it was him? I should go to the police, but I can’t trust them. I can’t trust anybody. I try to think it all through, but none of it makes any sense to me.
My husband was pretending to be Ben Bailey, but that isn’t who he was.
I’m pretending to be Aimee Sinclair, but I’m not really her either.
Someone is pretending to be Maggie O’Neil; at least I think they are pretending. If John is alive, then what if she is too?
We’re all just pretending to be someone we’re not, but I still don’t know why.
The bathroom fills with steam, and I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t hear the door open. The shampoo stings my eyes, so I close them. I don’t see somebody walking into the room, or hear them climbing into the shower behind me. A hand touches my body, I scream and the hand covers my mouth.
“Hey, it’s only me, no need to wake the neighbors.” Jack wipes the suds from my face, allowing me to see again. My heart is beating so hard I can hear it inside my ears. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” I turn and he kisses me. The whole thing seems deeply inappropriate at first, as though last night didn’t happen and this is somehow unexpected. I suppose I just didn’t think this far ahead. His hands move down my body, and the feeling they generate is so good, I give in to it. I turn around, so that I am no longer facing him, and I love that he seems to know exactly what I want him to do without saying a word. I lean against the glass and let myself forget everything else except this. I’m enjoying things I thought I might never again experience, as though thirty-six were somehow old, and I were past my prime. He doesn’t make me feel like that, he makes me feel new.
We eat breakfast afterwards, and when I say I need to pop out for a few hours, he doesn’t insist on me telling him where. He doesn’t act as though he owns me, and this newfound sense of freedom makes me feel hopeful about the future for the first time in a long time. I know I should tell him where I am going, but I can’t. I don’t want anything to spoil this, whatever this is. We all have secrets. Secrets from ourselves as well as from others. We bury them deep down inside because we know if they were to slip out, they have the power to destroy not only us, but everyone we care about.
I make some more coffee and pour him a cup.
“What did I do to deserve meeting someone as nice as you?” he says, before kissing me again. I can still taste our kiss goodbye as I leave the room, hoping it won’t be our last.
I take my gun, my phone, and what little courage I can summon, then leave the house.
Nobody is nice all of the time.
Seventy
The address on the business card the antique dealer gave me should have been enough.
But it wasn’t.
I never knew the name of the road until now. The journey through East London and into Essex gave me plenty of time to think, but until I stood in front of the building, I was still trying to convince myself that I was wrong; that this was just another coincidence.
It isn’t.
It’s been thirty years, but I still recognize this place, I still visit it in my dreams.
The little parade of shops is still here, but everything has been boarded up and closed down, except for the launderette. No more video rental, greengrocer’s, or corner shop, nothing but bars on broken windows and graffiti; a consumer ghost town.
The betting shop is still here, too, boarded up, but with a hand-painted sign above the door:
BRIC-A-BRAC & ANTIQUES
There is also a CLOSED sign, sellotaped behind the frosted window. I hold my hands up to the glass to block out the light and try to peer inside, but all I can see is black.
I knock. Twice.
There’s no answer, so I move to the door at the side of the shop, the one that leads to the flat. The paint has peeled and someone has sprayed the word LIAR on it in red. It always seemed so big when I was a little girl, but now I can see that it’s just a regular door. I knock again, but nobody answers.
I bend down and push the rusted letter box open. “Hello?” I peer through the tiny rectangle, but am unable to see anything more than a huge pile of unopened mail and takeaway flyers. I bend my neck a little lower and can see the bottom of the stairs, covered in the old red carpet and new dark stains.