Dexter picks up her message half an hour later and replies with a string of shocked-face emojis. He says,Take a fucking knife.
She already has. One of Tony’s super-expensive Japanese chef’s knives is tucked into her shoulder bag, and she has a tiny paring knife inside her sock, just in case she becomes separated from her bag. She feels slightlyreassured by her preparations as she exits the tube at Hampstead at 8 a.m., but not entirely. And, for some reason, as she approaches the back end of the Vale of Health and sees the turning to the Blacks’ house ahead of her, the sweep of old fencing, the bulge of the jeep parked on the front drive, she finds herself knocking on the door of the handsome man called Spencer. She wants to see a friendly face, feel a moment of normality, of wholesomeness.
Spencer comes to the door. He looks from her hands up to her face and then registers a look of surprise. “Oh,” he says, “I thought you were from Amazon.”
“Well, no, although I am reasonably tall.”
She sees her stupid joke percolate through him and end in a wry laugh. She likes him for it. “I’m really sorry to disturb you so early. I just wanted to…” She steps from foot to foot, trying to find the words to make this less weird. “The Blacks,” she says, gesturing down the lane. “They’ve invited me for breakfast. And I know it sounds silly, but I feel a bit nervous, and I just wanted to tell someone I was going in there. I realize I’m being a tad dramatic, but I just needed to let someone know.”
He looks at a coat hanging from a hook just to his left. “Do you want me to, er, come in with you?”
“Oh,” says Jane. “No. Gosh. No, not at all. But just… if you’re around today…?”
He nods.
“I’ll come and knock again on my way back? So if I don’t, you’ll know that…”
“They’ve killed you.”
“Well, I mean, yes. I suppose.” She smiles at him, wishing she’d worn her red lipstick and a bit of concealer. “But anyway, I shouldn’t be longer than an hour or two. And I do appreciate it.”
The man smiles. “You’re welcome. And good luck.” He’s about to close the door but then he opens it again slightly and says, “My name’s Spencer, by the way.”
“Yes,” she says. “I know. My name’s Jane.”
“Yes,” he says, with a small smile. “I know.”
Stuart opens the door to her a moment later, Hugo jumping around at his feet. Stuart looks serious, in an off-white T-shirt and jeans. He looks behind her and then toward her. “Just you?” he asks.
“Just me,” Jane replies, crouching down to greet Hugo before straightening up again. “I thought I was going to die here that night, you know. Twenty-six years ago. I thought it was the end of me.”
She leaves this dark pronouncement hanging between them for a second before turning her eye to the detail of the house she’s remembered only as a drunken, panic-stricken blur for so many years. It’s as she recalls, but also not. It was a smart but old-fashioned home when she was here in 2000, but now it’s on the edge of neglect, its faded elegance riven through with the smell of damp walls, dog, stale furnishings, dust, and sadness. She thinks of her own house—does her home have this smell too? she wonders. Do visitors notice it, when she doesn’t?
“Come through,” says Stuart, leading her into an overcast kitchen with terra-cotta flooring and elderly Formica-clad kitchen units. “Sorry about the mess,” he adds. “I tried to do a bit of a tidy up, but really, we’ve let the place go to pot lately. Well, for a while.”
“It’s fine,” says Jane, looking around at the piles of recycling, the sink full of washing up, the clothes dryer hanging by the back door. “I’m used to it.”
“Bacon sandwich?” he asks, waving an unopened packet of bacon at her. Under normal circumstances, there’s nothing Jane would enjoy more than a bacon sandwich, but right now her stomach couldn’t cope.
“I’m fine, thank you. I had breakfast at home.” She clears her throat and pulls out a chair to sit down. “Don’t let me stop you though.”
Soon the kitchen is vibrant with the smell of frying bacon and innocuous small talk about Jane’s temporary living arrangements in CoventGarden. Stuart is telling Jane that he once lived in Covent Garden, in a squat just behind the Strand, when he was a hairdresser. She’s expressing surprise at his former career while staring through the door of the kitchen into the dank garden beyond, at the wall of the outhouse where it protrudes menacingly into view. Finally, he returns to the table with two cups of tea, one for her, one for him, and his bacon sandwich cut into two pieces and oozing ketchup from its edges. She notices a second bacon sandwich sitting on the kitchen counter but doesn’t mention it.
“I’m really grateful you came,” he says, lifting the sandwich halfway to his mouth. As he does so Jane notices fresh scratches along the inside of his wrist.
“No problem,” she says. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”
He puts the sandwich down again and sighs. “Listen,” he says. “I don’t want you to freak out. But there’s something you need to know. And I think—well, we all think—it would be better coming direct from the horse’s mouth.” He turns then and directs his voice toward the hallway outside the kitchen. “Are you there?”
A young woman’s voice replies: “I’m here.”
“Come on then, come in and sit with us.”
Jane catches her breath and waits. A moment later a girl walks in. She has badly bleached hair, wide-set eyes, and a terrified look on her face.
“Hi,” she says to Jane. “I’m Daisy.”
chapter sixty-eight
