Out Late with Friends and Regrets (34 page)

Her own move from Mornington Road to Watson Street was relatively easy, or would have been if it hadn’t been for the weariness saturating her mind and body.
 
Images from a book she had been given one long-ago Christmas, “The Children’s Book of Great Explorers”, came to her, reminding her that once she gave way and lay down in the snow, she was done for.
 
This proved surprisingly helpful, together with a cheese toastie and a mug of espresso-strength coffee.

She delivered her possessions to their new home, locked up, and drove the van back to Rachel and Dave’s for her last night as their guest, hoping that she had allowed enough diesel to get it back to base in the morning.
 
That would be no fun, running dry in the Monday morning rush hour.

Think positive, she told herself, wishing she’d thought to keep the revs lower and the speed down.
 
Oh well, no point worrying about it till tomorrow.
 
She lay down on Miriam’s bed in her clothes without washing or cleaning her teeth, and slept, dreaming busy dreams.

The van hire man shook his head, as he brought a can of diesel from an outbuilding.
 
The Luton had coughed to a halt just outside the chain-link fence of the depot; no amount of positive thinking would get it up the shallow slope from the road and into the yard.
 
The nearest garage was beyond the maze of concrete roads which formed Fairlands Industrial Estate, so Fin had decided simply to go for the depot and pay at the counter for the shortfall. “You women,” grumbled the man, but with a grin, and the satisfied air of being proved right yet again.

“I know, we’re just terrible, aren’t we?” said Fin. At least she hadn’t given the hire firm a handsome gift of more diesel than she’d used.

She didn’t over-clean or tidy at Rachel and Dave’s, as she didn’t wish to imply criticism of the way they lived.
 
On the other hand, she bought the wholemilk and bread as requested, plus a bunch of cheerful flowers which she displayed in a vase, with a thank you card beside it.
 
She spent a little time in consultation with the man at Oddbins, and bought a couple of bottles that he assured her an enthusiastic wine buff might find interesting, and left them beside the flowers.
 
One last check, burglar alarm set, door locked.
 
And off.
 
Off home.
 
Her
home.

Life in a house with no furniture would present a challenge, for the time being, but she really didn’t mind.
 
She could maybe spend a day at the nearest Ikea, though that might involve another van hire, or did they deliver?
 
At least she would have a bed to sleep in.
 

She ate her Polish lunch sitting on the kitchen work surface after unpacking the kitchen boxes and stowing the contents.
 
Delicious.
 
She was going to love living here.

The time moved slowly on to three, then half past, then four.
 
This was irritating – there was so much she needed to go out and get, but she had to wait in for the bed to arrive. She had done everything she could, but was now stuck in until the Radbones lorry turned up.
 
Finally, at quarter to five she rang the store.
 
Enquiries were made at their end, and it turned out that the delivery had been rescheduled for Friday, due to the wrong bed being sent from the warehouse.
 
They were very sorry, of course, especially when she told them that she would be forced to sleep on the floor, thanks to their inefficiency.
 

“Perhaps a kind friend would put you up for a few days?” suggested the woman in Customer Service.

“Thank you,” said Fin.

There was no way she was going to spend her first night in her own home
out
of her own home.
 
She drove to the 24-hour supermarket for a few provisions, cooked herself a meal and made up a makeshift bed on the bedroom carpet.
 
She thought about ringing Ellie, but in the end couldn’t raise the motivation; she was in that catatonic, starey state of tiredness in which nothing mattered except getting some sleep.
 
She pressed a hot face flannel to her face in lieu of a wash (“A lick and a promise” her mother would have called it), and put on her night-time T-shirt.

She had just made the decision not to set the alarm clock, when her mobile rang.
 
Fin had chosen Donna Summer’s “State of Independence” as her ringtone, and she felt rather than heard the plonking of the opening bars from downstairs.

“Hello Fin, thank you so much for the flowers and wine and the card,” said Rachel, “and for leaving the house so clean and tidy.
 
And we noticed that you left a new jar of marmalade, and the other groceries.”

“Least I could do, Rachel,” said Fin, “it was so very kind of you to put me up.
 
I was really comfortable.”
 
Damn.
 
She should have rung to make sure they had got home safely, but had been too caught up in her own concerns.
 
“So how was the Dordogne?”

How the Dordogne had been was actually the last thing she wanted to know about just now, but as with the wine and the marmalade, it was the least she could do.
 
As she listened to Rachel’s lively account, she poured herself a glass of water and plodded upstairs with it, lying down in the ad hoc bed, cradling the mobile next to her ear.

“Anyway, you’re in now, I take it, Fin?” asked Rachel.
 
“No problems, I hope?”

“No, everything went smoothly,” murmured Fin, in the cotton-woolly, coming-and-going stage of imminent sleep.

“Fin? Fin... FIN! Are you there? Speak to me!”

“Huh? Oh, oh, Rachel, I’m so, so sorry, I’m afraid I nodded off.
 
Oh, God, that’s so rude of me.”

“No problem, you just sounded so woozy, I was worried in case you’d taken sleeping pills and forgotten and taken some more – sometimes happens with a person living alone.”

Fin laughed, now awake, if not exactly alert.

“Rachel, I’ve never taken a sleeping pill in my life, and I certainly don’t need one now – it’s been a hectic couple of days.”

“And you were in bed when I rang.
 
And there I was, rabbiting on about France.
 
Oh I am sorry, Fin.”

“I actually did get most of it.
 
It sounds wonderful, I’ve never been to France.
 
I’m glad you had a lovely time.
 
You must show me your photos sometime.”

“Yes, well, I’ll leave you to it, I hope I haven’t woken you so thoroughly you can’t get off again.
 
Is the new bed comfy?”

“Er, yes.
 
Don’t worry, I’ll sleep all right.”

The last thing she remembered was the faint slightly dusty smell of the pinky-beige carpet, and the feeling that it would have to go.

She awarded herself a lie-in, and had breakfast sitting on a cushion on the back step.
 
The sun was warm, and the leaves on the trees were just beginning to turn; sly autumn creeping up on spent summer.
  
     

She was looking forward to today. No pressure, just the pleasurable prospect of a trip to John Lewis for some furniture basics: a desk and chair, a sofa, and maybe a television.
 
Ikea was really too far to go today; and despite their excellent bed department Radbones was quite expensive, and their furniture old-fashioned.
 
She could top up over the months once she got the feel of the house.

Shopping done, she met Ellie, and Rachel’s friend Tilda for lunch, and enjoyed an hour of gossip and bawdy laughter.
 
This was such a civilised, lovely way to live.
 

On her way to the bus stop she spotted a glass-fronted building with chrome lettering across the first floor: Harfordleisure.
 
That was it, the missing element in her new city life; she would get back into exercise and reclaim her fitness.
 
She had noticed a little roll of flesh beginning to make an appearance above the line of her hips, more a bicycle tyre at present than the traditional bulky spare, but things could only get worse if she didn’t heed the signs.
 
And the health club might be a good place to meet women, for friendship, maybe more, as the lonelyhearts ads coyly put it.
 
She went in, wondering if she would see Michael.
 
A friendly male member of staff gave her a tour of the facilities and a timetable listing the classes offered.
 
She swallowed slightly on seeing the fee mentioned on the membership form, but told herself she would come regularly, and not let the investment go to waste as so many people did.

And then home.
 
A lovely, lovely day, with the promise of many more to follow.
 
She wandered about the house, measuring and visualising, then spent the rest of the lazy afternoon reading the local paper on a bench in the small park which bordered the Triangle.
 
Apart from the familiar dusting of litter it was a beautiful park, different in character from the big park down by the river. This one had a patch of woodland, and apart from the soft hum of traffic from beyond the trees, it could have been miles from the city.
    
On her return she thought she would ring Petra, to see how she was settling in.

“Hi, Petra, how’s it going? Did your stuff arrive from storage, and have you it all sorted out yet?”

“Ahmm, yes, things are looking quite good, though I’ve still a lot to do, obviously... ”

“What’s up? You sound a bit preoccupied.
 
Is anything wrong?”

“Mmmm.
 
Fin, you know you said you’d had a strange note through the door, when you were at your other place?”

“Oh no, don’t tell me.”

“Yes.
 
And from what you told me, it looks as if it could be from the same person.”

On her way over to Petra’s, Fin reflected that the day had darkened; the sun had become thinner, paler.
 
Quite normal, for a September evening, but Petra’s news had put a damper on everything.

Fin was torn between feelings of guilt that the note must have been intended for her, and an even guiltier one of relief that the stalker appeared not to know where she lived.
 
Yet.

She accepted a glass of wine, even though she had driven over.

“When did you find it?
 
Was it put under the door of the flat?”

“No, it was in the letter box.”

Beside the massive front door there were four brass letter boxes, beside each of which was a numbered bell-push and the occupant’s name.
 
Only Petra’s was as yet unlabelled, as she had only just moved in.
 
Easy.
 
The stalker would hardly have been baffled by the choice.

“Have you touched the box, from the outside, I mean?
 
I was thinking if there were fingerprints-”
 
If, of course, the police had the time and inclination to check it out, considering that it was only a couple of notes, so far at least.

“Actually, the firm that cleans the public areas comes on a Tuesday, and they’ll have done all the brass.”

Fin turned the flyer over a couple of times, examining it front and back.
 
It was the same cheap paper as the other two, in peach this time, with the same content as the last one, the exhortations to self-improvement, with the bottom torn off.
 
On the reverse, the red biro had written: “Still watching”.

Bastard.
 
Why was there no message on the previous one? Had the stalker been short of time?
 
Just a mind game?

She looked hard at the writing.
 
It was fairly neat, but the lines of the letters were perceptibly shaky.
 
She had read somewhere that right-handed people writing anonymously sometimes wrote left-handed, to disguise normal characteristics; this could be a case in point.

“I wonder if it was that guy in the hoodie down the street?” she said.

“I didn’t even see him,” said Petra.

“I’m trying to think of anything I can remember,” said Fin, “height, colour of the jacket, that sort of thing.
 
If we’re going to the police, they’ll want any information we can give them.”