Strangers (3 page)

She was still holding his hand. He tucked it in his pocket, and they continued along the riverside. She had walked here last May, past the concrete maze of the South Bank, enjoying the
early summer sun, watching the crowds sitting at the tables in front of the National Film Theatre. They were deserted now. The wind blew and an empty can rattled its way across the paving stones. Behind her, a boat sounded its horn.

She could feel the touch of Joe’s fingers on her hand, the gentle pressure of his thumb as he circled it in her palm. Gulls were flying overhead, their calls echoing in the chill air. They didn’t speak again as they walked up the steps at the end of the bridge and paused to watch the water again. ‘What do you want to do now?’ she said.

He leaned back against the parapet and drew her towards him. ‘You’re cold.’

‘Everything’s cold.’

He opened his coat and wrapped it round her. ‘Not this,’ he said. She could feel the wind buffeting her ears and blowing her hair around his face as he kissed her. His lips felt icy as they touched hers, and just for a moment, she thought about the dead lips of drowned women under the water.

It was time for a decision. She could step back and draw the line that would define the path of their relationship, but she didn’t want to. She could feel the warmth of him pressing close to her, feel the slight roughness of his skin against her face. She had been standing in the shallows for too long, had been too frightened of stepping into the current, of getting her life back again. As Joe kissed her, she could feel the current start to lift her, start to carry her away. ‘Joe?’ she said.

He looked down at her. His face was warm and intent. ‘Let’s go back to your flat,’ he said.

As they wended their way back through Bloomsbury, she reminded herself that he was leaving, that by the autumn he would probably be gone, but it didn’t matter any more. What mattered was now.

It was a summer Roisin would never forget. In her memory, the sun always shone and the sky was cloudless. The forbidding river glittered as it flowed through the city, and the concrete of the South Bank warmed in the mellow light. She and Joe spent their lunch times wandering along the riverside, their evenings exploring the lanes and byways of London, and their nights at Roisin’s flat. She barely saw her friends, spent as little time at work as she could get away with. After a few days, he moved his possessions in, and stayed. It was as if they knew that their time together was short, and they didn’t want to lose a moment of it.

When she came home in the evenings, she’d pause for a moment with her key in the lock, wondering if he would be there, if the door would open to a waft of warmth and the smell of coffee brewing. ‘Joe?’ she’d call.

‘Hey, babes.’ He would come out of the small
box room that masqueraded as a second bedroom, now converted into a makeshift office, and scoop her off the floor to kiss her. They would go out to eat, or take Shadow for a walk along the tow path, or spend the evening in the flat. They lived quietly in their own personal bubble that was completely absorbing, but so fragile and impermanent.

They never talked about the future, because very soon they would have to go their separate ways. She knew she had a decision to make, and kept putting it off. Each week, she looked at the jobs available all over the world for someone with her skills, and each week, she found a reason to reject every one.

Joe worked long, irregular hours and sometimes vanished for days if he was sent out of town. She got used to hearing his key in the lock in the small hours, feeling the mattress give as he slipped into the bed beside her.

It was after one such return towards the end of the summer when she woke suddenly. The display on the radio told her it was almost four. She could tell by Joe’s rigid stillness beside her that he was awake as well. ‘Joe?’ she whispered. ‘Are you all right?’

He didn’t reply. He just rolled over towards her, and pressed his face between her breasts. She could feel him shaking. ‘Joe?’ she said again.

‘A bad dream,’ he said. ‘Go back to sleep, sweetheart. It was just a bad dream.’

London, September 2004

The water gleamed in the moonlight, black and impenetrable where it surged between the standing stones of Tower Bridge, translucent brown where it washed against the banks. The office and apartment blocks were dark and silent.

The river was old here, close to the end of its journey to the sea. Now it carried the filth and detritus of the city, away from the slow meander through the fields of Wiltshire, past the bridges of Oxford and the gentle lawns of Henley.

The tide had turned. The river was in ebb, receding from the banks, leaving a waste of mud and shingle behind. Narrow steps led down to the river’s edge where water washed against wooden piles. The moon was setting, and the first light of a grey dawn was gleaming through the clouds. The light caught the water, turning it to opaque steel, reflecting off the frameworks of glass that towered above the old city. The air carried the bite of frost.

The body of the woman had caught against the mooring and had been left on the bank as the water retreated. She was still wearing the remains of a black dress, sodden and skimpy. Her feet were bare. Her long hair lay in wet, dark lines across a face that the river had battered beyond recognition, the features almost gone.

She had been young. The men from the Marine Support Unit, the river police, could tell that much
as they lifted the body, already pronounced dead by a doctor called from his bed in the small hours, short-tempered and abrupt. They had been expecting to find this body since the week before, when a witness had reported seeing a young woman jump from the riverside walk into the icy water.

Suicide, accident, foul play–bodies dragged from the Thames had different stories to tell. Some of them had families–grieving, frantic, knowing their loved ones had been lost. Others had no one, or no one who wanted to claim them. Drunks, the homeless, addicts, asylum seekers, the desperate with nowhere else to run. Some were old, some were, like this girl, young, and some were no more than children.

A clawed, blackened hand slipped from the body bag and hit the ground with a thud. Through the mud, a gleam of metal was visible from the ring on her finger. One of the men gently tipped some of the river water over it to clean away the dirt. It was etched with a distinctive pattern.

Maybe this girl would have a name.

Coroner’s Court, London, September 2004
Post-Mortem Report, Dead Body 13
Body found in river, 7 September, at Stoners Quay

The coroner’s court of East London is all too familiar with river deaths. The curve in the river around the Isle of Dogs means that bodies are often left aground there as the water retreats with the tide.

Dead Body 13 was the stark designation of the
thirteenth body to be taken from the river in a year that was shaping up to be much as standard. The few people attending the inquest stood as the coroner entered. The court had little to do in this case. No one had been able to establish an identity for the dead woman, or trace the origins of the unusual ring she had been wearing on the middle finger of her right hand. The ring bore an inscription in Arabic, lines from a poem or other literary text:
take what is here now, let go of a promise. The drumbeat is best from far away
.

Her origins were in the Indian subcontinent. Whether she was a recent arrival, or a runaway from home, it was impossible to tell. No one had claimed her and no one seemed to be looking for her.

She had drowned. She had been alive when she went into the water–the presence of algae in her liver and kidneys confirmed that, and a witness had seen her fall. He was a man called Joe Massey who had been on the river walk near St Paul’s. He gave his account, telling the court that he’d spent the evening in a bar and was on his way home when he had seen a woman standing on the wall looking down at the water. There had been a strong wind blowing and her balance had been precarious. He had called out a warning to her, but she hadn’t heard, or hadn’t listened. He couldn’t say if she had deliberately jumped, or if she had fallen, but she had seemed heedless of the risk she was taking.

Someone or something had hurt her before she died. There was evidence of half-healed but extensive bruising on her back and legs, and at some time in her past her wrist had been broken and had healed poorly. But none of this had contributed to her death. Whether or not it had driven her to the dark waters of the Thames, no one could say. The damage that the river had done to her body had blackened her skin and obliterated her features. To the uninitiated eye, she looked as though she had been burned. Her body was battered and broken by tides, currents and river traffic.

The coroner gave the only verdict he could: an open one. ‘It is not possible to say if this unfortunate young woman committed suicide, or if she fell into the water by accident.’ Police enquiries as to her identity were ongoing.

Joe Massey attended the inquest as the only witness to the girl’s last moments. Later, he went back to the riverside to the place where she had fallen in. He stood for a while, watching the water, then he swore, not quite under his breath. Two women walking along the path towards him stopped as they heard the obscenity, then walked quickly back the way they had come.

It was the end of September before the summer came to its inevitable end. Roisin was at work when Joe called her and suggested that they meet. He had seemed preoccupied for the past week and
he was quiet as they followed their familiar route to the riverside. She could feel the slight tension in him. They walked past the bridge and the café tables outside the film theatre, crowded and cluttered with empty glasses, wrappers, and discarded food that the pigeons fought over.

They leaned against the parapet and watched the boats go by. The air was cooler, and she could feel the first touch of autumn. Summer was coming to an end. She looked across the water to the iron stanchions of the bridge. She could remember that grey day when they’d first walked along the river together.

After a moment, he spoke. ‘I got a letter this morning. From McMaster…’

The Canadian university where he hoped to join a research team. This was it. Their timeless summer was over. She opened her eyes wide and stared across the river. She couldn’t trust her voice. It was a moment before she could take in what he was saying.

‘…wanted someone with more experience in the field.’ He was watching the river as he spoke. ‘If this had happened three months ago, I’d have been gutted. Now–it’s almost a relief.’ He looked at her. ‘I just need to decide what to do next.’

‘You aren’t leaving…’ Roisin blinked fast to clear her vision that had blurred and distorted and felt the tears spill out and run down her face.

‘I’ll go, if you feel that badly about it,’ he said.

She tried to laugh, and wiped her face with the
back of her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I just…I’m sorry you didn’t get it.’

‘Don’t be. I’m not. I’ve had some more news. They want me to go back to the Gulf. They’ve been putting the pressure on for weeks and I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. The offer’s too good to turn down. Roisin, I’ll go, but only if you’ll come with me.’

‘Come with you?’

‘To Riyadh. I’ve been looking into it. You could work–they need qualified women to teach English at the university. They’ve been short staffed for months. With all the troubles, they’ve been losing more people than they can recruit. I’m in a strong position. I can dictate some terms. Oh, hell. We can sort this out later. Roisin, I love you. Will you marry me?’

It was as simple as that. He produced a bottle of champagne from his bag and they sat on the parapet watching the river flow by, drinking champagne out of the bottle–he’d forgotten to bring glasses–planning their lives together.

Not everyone was as pleased with the news as Joe and Roisin were. Her friends were cautious in their response. They barely knew Joe, and the word ‘rebound’, unspoken, hung over the congratulations.

Her mother was more frank. ‘Saudi Arabia? Rosie–that’s so far away.’

The anxiety in her voice pricked Roisin’s
conscience. Maggie Gardner had greeted her plans to go to Warsaw with a resigned acceptance, but Saudi was an alien environment in her mother’s eyes, a veiled and dangerous place where Westerners could be–were–shot on the streets. ‘It’s only for a year,’ Roisin said.

‘And married. Rosie, you hardly know him.’

‘I’ve known him for three months.’ It didn’t sound long–it felt like longer. ‘I knew Michel for two years and it turned out I didn’t know him at all.’

She heard her mother sigh. ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing,’ she said, in a tone that suggested she thought the opposite.

Old George was the worst. ‘Him?’ Joe was still ‘the man who kicked Shadow’. George had never warmed to him. When she told him she was leaving, moving to the other side of the world, he said, ‘What you want to go out there for?’ Then he turned away so that she wouldn’t see his face, and shuffled back into his flat, Shadow looking back at her as the front door closed.

The day before the wedding, while Joe was at work, she took out her photograph album, her collection of pictures that marked, for her, the major events of her life. There was a dim, unfocused picture of two strangers holding a toddler–her birth parents, unknown to her and long gone. There was her mother and father holding her up to the camera on the day the adoption became official. There were photographs of
schoolfriends, youthful sporting triumphs, photos that marked private moments that meant something only to her. ‘Why have you got a photo of that dreadful boy?’ her mother had asked once when they looked at the album together.
Because he was the first man I ever had sex with
was what Roisin hadn’t said.

And there were photos of her and Amy, one taken in the red-eye darkness of a rave, both of them high as kites on E’s or some similar chemical, and another, more sober, of the two of them sitting on the steps outside college, smoking.

Amy. Her best friend through a large part of her adolescence. They had had an instant affinity that may have come from the fact that they both had disjunctures in their past. Amy’s parents had died when she was thirteen, and she had grown up in care. Like Roisin, she had lost a sister in the events that had taken away their families, and they had found something in each other that came close to filling that–in Roisin’s case–almost subliminal gap.

And then Amy had gone, years ago now. Roisin sighed and closed the book.

Snapshots.

A wedding: a bright gold autumn morning, Joe, looking at her in the pale green dress she had bought for the day, smiling that private smile he gave her when they were together in a crowd.

Her mother, half proud, half anxious as she
watched the daughter she had had to fight so hard for say the words that were going to take her away:
I do solemnly declare
…

Her friends, laughing and talking as they came out of the register office, falling silent before they shook hands with Joe and congratulated him.