A little rain was falling now, too; a drop landed squarely on the screen, distorting the green and grey boxes of text. She shivered. It wasn’t winter any more, but March in London didn’t exactly seem to be spring, either. Steffi swallowed hard a couple of times. I could do with a drink, she thought. A drink would be nice.
As she rounded the corner onto their street, the noise of the main road fell away as quickly as ever, and so did the big-city feeling. It would have been hard to guess now that it was a Friday night, or that they were so near a major transport hub. Some windows offered glimpses of warmth: a dinner party that had extended its run past midnight, a couple in front of a late movie. Steffi told herself that if James had done anything, there would be some activity, some visual sign of it. Police would already be here. Concerned neighbours would be hammering on the door, like they did on Netflix. But no, not necessarily. He’d sent the text under an hour ago. She could easily be the first actual witness.
She wet her lips with her tongue, went down the four stone steps, took a breath and put the key in the lock.
The place was as neat as ever, James’s hat and coat hanging where they always were, next to the denim jacket that she’d decided was too much like old-school Madonna, and which she hadn’t bothered to pick up from the floor because she was worried about being late for work. That was a good sign; it must be. You didn’t worry about tidying the hall the same day you went and did yourself in. But the odd calm of his message came into her head again. I know what I’m doing.
‘James?’ she called. ‘James? Hello?’
She was almost sure from the dead way her words landed that nobody was here. It didn’t diminish her sense, though, that she was in a TV show, one where a minor-key soundtrack was building subtly under her footsteps. She never liked coming back alone, really, not since the burglary at her old place in Clapham. One of the girls at La Chimère had been assaulted on her own doorstep the other week, violent crime was up in London; although not normally a jumpy person, Steffi had bought a ‘panic alarm’ and a small knife online in the past month. Knowing that James was almost always in – that he was almost certain to be in his room when she got back from work – had always been a little bonus about living here, although this was the first time she’d ever consciously had that thought.
His bedroom door was wide open, giving an unaccustomed glimpse of the bare floor, a neat little pile of books; so was the bathroom door. All clear in the kitchen. Steffi approached her own room with a trepidation she had never felt before. Christ, imagine if he’d done something in there. That really would be fucked-up. She’d have to move, again.
A lean on the handle, and the door was open a crack; she pushed it a little more, then all the way. Everything was where she’d left it. The clothes scattered across the floor like wreckage from an accident, the dormant laptop at the end of the bed. Wherever James was, he was not here.
On the kitchen table was a note.
Hi Steffi. Really sorry for any fuss. I’ve scheduled an email which you’ll get in the morning, re. the flat. You can stay, of course! It shouldn’t be too complicated. Good luck. James.
The fridge was still full of his stuff: the blocky cheeses he seemed to like; the full-cream milk she couldn’t stomach. A big green box of eggs. Again, it didn’t make sense. You didn’t buy eggs and then two days later overdose or something. ‘It shouldn’t be too complicated.’ Was he taking the piss? What was this?
She sloshed some gin into a wine glass, topped it up with partly flat tonic water. The phone lit up with a message and she jumped. No. It was just Emil again. He’d been drinking on his own since he sent the last one, he said, with six crying-face emojis, three winking ones, and a watermelon. He couldn’t believe nobody else was out, he added.
In a series of purposeful swigs, Steffi saw off the drink. She always drank quickly, not out of greed, she thought, but because her brain tended to see it – like everything – as a task she had to complete. She pushed the glass aside and messaged Emil.
You want to do something with me?
She saw him begin typing at once. She and Emil didn’t know each other especially well. His English was poor, nowhere near her level. He was small, with dark eyes and a fluent, almost mesmerizing kitchen technique. Sometimes as she came in with orders, she would watch him for a second, drizzling rings of pesto like green blood onto the ice-white plate, turning a mountain of herbs to confetti in seconds. It was very attractive watching someone do something with such ease. If you didn’t look at his face too hard. Anyway, it was only ever a moment; that was all you got, in the kitchen, before someone screamed at you.
Do what? Emil replied. He followed up with a fusillade of emojis which included a face deep in thought, a couple of drinks, a detective with a magnifying glass, a dancer, a guitar and the flag of Iceland.
Can you meet me Kings X station? Got some shit going on.
Emil accepted the cryptic invite with a line of girls in tutus. Steffi went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Her pupils were dilated; a bit of colour had risen in her normally pale face. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. She was surprised to have invited Emil into this; she was surprised to find herself in any sort of drama. But here it was, and she could hardly just pretend it wasn’t happening – that she hadn’t read the message. She’d get those jeans off the floor, go back out. And see where this took her.
She was worried for James, however passive their relationship. The guy couldn’t be well. He needed help. She was worried for herself, too, because never mind what he said: if he did turn out to be dead, her life was surely going to get all kinds of complicated. She felt the prickly edge of guilt that he had cried in front of her not long ago, and she had taken it as a mere bad night rather than a sign of something more significant.
But there was something else, as she looked in the mirror, some other emotion stirred up by the bizarre turn this night had taken in the past half-hour. Here, at last, was something that was not a game. Steffi felt bad admitting it to herself, but the feeling was a little like excitement.
Branches, like gnarled old trolls’ nails, scratched at the train on its way past; small handfuls of rain were thrown at the windows. The train didn’t sound like it was enjoying it. It was surprising, James thought, how noisy sleeper trains were, given that you were meant to sleep on them.
He’d always loved buses, planes, trains. A train barrelling past, a plane swooping as close as a bird as he negotiated the M25 interchange with some important client: getting right over their heads, so they could see the underside of the fuselage, the little marks in the metal. As children, James and Sally had a whole series of books in which animals bustled around a town, putting out fires or teaching kindergarten classes of smaller animals. The junior-level computer games he wrote as a nerdy child were always about things like being an air-traffic controller (‘press A to reroute the flight; B to never compromise with terrorists’). Even when he