Authors: Sam Baker
Helen knew better than to look like a person who didn’t feel safe.
She didn’t scan the street when she left Caroline’s surgery. She didn’t hug the wall. She didn’t obey the voice that wanted her to keep one eye in the back of her head at all times. She walked down the middle of the pavement, she smiled politely but disinterestedly at strangers coming towards her, and she prayed like hell for rain and an excuse to put her hood up and her head down.
How much did anybody know?
Now a British paper had run the story it was only a matter of time before someone else latched on to it. Mark Ridley was a journalist. She should have known someone who knew Art – who knew her – would try to hunt her down.
It hit her like a bus careering out of nowhere side-swiping her off the pavement. One moment she was walking down the street, the next she was curled in on herself by iron railings, hands cradling her head as if attempting to hold in the tears that began washing over her in great, painful gasps.
She had no idea how long she huddled there, fighting to silence the wails that threatened to burst from her. Finally she caught her breath and steeled herself to glance up. No one was looking. Or, if they were, they were pretending not to. Certainly her side of the pavement was suspiciously empty. The crying jag had come from nowhere. It wasn’t sadness, or despair, it was sheer bloody fury and impotence. Fumbling the pills from her rucksack pocket, she pushed one from its bubble through foil, looked at it, and then tried to put it back. When it dropped at her feet she had to resist the urge to pick the precious thing up, instead kicking it into a gutter and watching it tumble into a grate. Then she stood up, hooked her rucksack on to her back and made herself put one foot in front of the other. It didn’t occur to her to worry about the state of her face.
They said dogs could smell fear on you.
Well, Helen thought, dogs had nothing on people. There was a type of person, usually a man, in her experience, for whom fear was a magnet. That man could spot fear from the other side of a packed room, from the other side of a packed city. If you were really unlucky, he might be the type of man who liked to nurture fear, create it where previously there was none, then feed it to amuse himself.
A man who was attracted to light, only to snuff it out.
Art Huntingdon was that type of man.
Mark Ridley was Art’s best friend. If she and Art had separated in the usual way, then she would have lost contact. That was the way it went; friends divided down the middle like belongings, the friends that came with you into the relationship left with you. Mark came with Art. His sidekick, his partner in crime. At least he had been. Helen hadn’t seen him for over a year; couldn’t recall Art mentioning him in months.
She wandered the backstreets of Marylebone and Bloomsbury for the next hour, trying to find her fleeting sense of wellbeing and belonging. She scoured the pavements in search of them. They weren’t there. London felt lost to her now. Her insane plan of maybe visiting a gallery – Tate Modern; she’d entertained ideas of the Turbine Hall – finding a restaurant and being
that woman
, the one who sat in the middle of the room, not at the edge, paperback propped on the salt cellar … Her plan was as hollow as her gut.
It was impulse that made her do it. That and the pain in her ankle. As she turned the corner on to Euston Road from Coram’s Fields, a modern block loomed on her left. A sign in the Premier Inn’s window advertising rooms for £39. She knew it would end up costing more, it always did, but she could stretch to that. Exhaustion overwhelmed her. The promise of hot water, Wi-Fi, walls that weren’t stained with damp and carpets that didn’t feel sticky under her feet, the silence of a new build with nothing to say, was too much to pass up.
Six months ago – even six weeks – she couldn’t imagine having considered this place a sanctuary, but she’d stayed in far worse. The receptionist was polite but disinterested, heedless of her absence of luggage and the puffy redness that must have ringed her eyes; paying cash didn’t pose a problem and he didn’t demand a credit card for extras since extras weren’t an option. She paid a £10 surcharge to guarantee a room with a bath. It was worth every penny.
The room, when she reached it, at the far end of the corridor by the fire escape, was basic but comfortable. A small rectangular window, like every other small rectangular window in the building’s façade, looked out on to Euston Road and the British Library on the far side. Below, traffic snarled and she cranked shut the double-glazed panel, pulling the blackout blind to shut it out, and with it what remained of the daylight. Slipping her laptop from her backpack, she put it on the desk along with the
Evening Standard
, and scoured the instructions for getting online. The luxury that was Wi-Fi, she’d almost forgotten.
Double-locking the door, Helen checked under the bed and in the wardrobe before turning on the TV; dozens of channels and a reception so sharp it was startling. The normality calmed her. A bed, a bath, four walls, only one door. Magnolia paint and mass-produced paintings. What could be safer? In the time it took to run what would have been an hour’s worth of hot water at Wildfell, she kicked off her trainers and socks and sat on the loo seat massaging her swollen ankle and cursing herself for not thinking to buy a support. When the bath had run, Helen sank gratefully into the bubbles and tried to push the day’s events from her mind, everything but the white noise of a game show cackling from the TV next door and the occasional ping of the lift.
When the water started to chill, she dragged herself, waterlogged but still pink with heat, from the tub, wrapped herself in a warm towelling robe, made herself a cup of faux posh instant and ate both packets of complimentary biscuits. Flipping open her laptop she logged into her VPN via the hotel Wi-Fi, before downloading Helen Graham’s two webmail accounts. There was nothing, of course. Why would there be? Nobody knew the accounts existed. And yet the spam was there. How did they do that?
There was no alternative, she’d have to go back into her own Gmail account. Chewing the inside of her lip, she double-clicked.
Fran’s name leapt out at her, dated yesterday. Subject line: News.
Hi Helen
I don’t know whether to assume my emails aren’t reaching you, or you’re just not replying. I guess I prefer to go with the former. Anyway, something happened that I thought you’d want to know. You remember Art’s friend Mark?
Helen spilled lukewarm Kenco on to the white towelling robe. Mark. Twice in one day? Even twice in two days, it didn’t add up.
… He said we’d met at your wedding, not that I remember to be honest, I was so pregnant. Anyway, he was ever so cut up about Art and seemed desperately worried about you, so I emailed to say I’d spoken to you …
Closing her eyes, Helen did the distraction thing Caroline had taught her, counting as she pushed the nails of her right hand hard into the flesh of the palm until she felt them begin to cut.
Apparently he has some stuff of Art’s you might want? Anyway you should call him. Call me, email me, something. I’m worried about you.
Love Fran x
Helen’s first urge was to run. She could throw on her clothes, check out and be at King’s Cross in less than five minutes. Safe back at Wildfell by one a.m. Two at the latest. Indoors, with the doors locked … The hotel dressing gown was on the floor; one leg in her jeans, before Helen caught herself.
What, precisely, would that achieve?
Barricaded in Wildfell, where, she hoped, no one could find her – and even that was feeling less certain by the moment. Forcing herself to sit on the bed, Helen breathed slowly. Started counting down from one hundred, intoning the numbers aloud into the room.
Ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six …
A documentary about food burbled to itself from the small, flat screen above the desk.
Eighty-nine, eighty-eight, eighty-seven
. A siren wailed on Euston Road.
Seventy-six, seventy-five, seventy-four …
The person in the room above turned on the shower.
Gradually her voice grew louder, more confident, drowning out the babbling in her head, the blood roaring in her ears. Flight not fight. When had that become her default response? What would teenage Helen say if she could see her older self now? Sitting alone in a hotel room, repeatedly checking the locks and scared of her own shadow.
She wouldn’t recognise me, Helen thought.
I
don’t recognise me.
By the time she reached zero, Helen was in control. She would spend the night here, as planned, and try to regroup. Art was dead, it was entirely reasonable for Mark to be upset; upset and worried. The way Tom was worried for her. Tom had dropped in on her mum, then called her sister. Mark had emailed her. Of course he had, he was a journalist, getting people’s contact details was second nature.
Both sachets of instant coffee gone, Helen resorted to PG tips and turned her attention to the laptop, typing in two words for the first time since the fire: ‘Art Huntingdon’
.
The browser spun for a few seconds and then screeds and screeds of links started to appear on screen. Art’s journalism, reports and front-line notes from Afghanistan had been syndicated the world over, Iraq less so, Syria not at all. But still the hits went into the hundreds of thousands. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, Foursquare. He even had a LinkedIn page. When had he set that up? None of the photographs were recent. Six, seven years old or more. Showing him younger than she remembered. Thinner, with more hair, before age and career disappointment removed the arrogant flash of good looks.
An arresting black-and-white image brought her up short. He was leaning against a tank, in fatigues, wiry dark hair sticking up, hooded eyes staring directly into the camera. It was his expression that unsettled her, mocking, combative. There was no softness in his gaze, no flirtation. Only confrontation. Helen knew the picture all too well. She’d taken it. Although she hadn’t felt entirely comfortable about it even then.
After ten pages and a glance at all the social media pages she could access, she’d confirmed what she’d already known. There was nothing at all for the last three weeks. For the weeks before that, she could tell you what he’d eaten for breakfast and what colour socks he’d worn.
How exposing it was to live life on the web was one of the things they’d argued about. Not argued, exactly. Arguing with Art was unwise. More, disagreed. Art believed his Internet presence was a sign of his place in the world, a way of recording his true worth. His accumulated value was not in the zeroes on his bank account (although he prized those too), but in digital dollar signs. Helen thought differently. Still did. There had been a time when she’d agreed with him. Not about money, she’d never cared very much about that; obviously, or she’d have had more. The status, though. Professional respect. Winning awards. That much had mattered.
They said war reporters were the surgeons of the newspaper world. It was the adrenalin surge of having other people’s life stories in your hands, she supposed. Her response had always been the same: if reporters were the surgeons, then photographers were the snipers; high maintenance, aloof, riddled by doubt and driven by certainty.
And she hadn’t known back then, hadn’t worked out for herself, that there were two types of war reporter anyway. Maybe more, but she’d definitely met the two. There were front-line journalists that were out there to make a difference and the war junkies. Art had always been good at selling himself as the first …
The balance of power had been off from the start. Not the very start, as Art saw it, back when Helen was a rookie photographer and Art, ten years her senior, was already on his way to greatness. In his head, that was the start of everything. Seven years before they actually did. And it was that … time-lapse, that made him superior. She owed him, he joked, that night in Baghdad, for her very first front page. Without him, she’d never have been in Soho the day the nail bomb went off and never got that image. Beginner’s luck, he insisted on calling it. Just as she owed him for the one she’d got earlier that day. It passed him by that there had been dozens, if not hundreds, of front pages for her in the intervening years. But he was so convincing, she’d half believed him.
He never tired of telling people how they met on her first job, casting himself as her champion and mentor. It was a role he relished. Within weeks of that first meeting, the one she barely remembered, he got his longed-for move to the foreign desk. Then 9/11 happened and Art became a name. A picture byline. Beating off job offers, industry accolades and sexual favours with a stick.
Or not beating them off. With the benefit of that telescopic lens known as hindsight, Helen finally understood why, after they got together, his sheets were always fresh the morning she returned from a trip.
By the time they met again, seven years later, Helen had gone from ‘lucky beginner’ to front-page regular. They’d make a great team, Art said, as he lay in her bed that night, painting a picture of mutual glory. But Art hadn’t wanted a partner, not really. He wanted a handmaiden. As Helen’s Google pages grew and his faltered, their relationship took the strain. The only difference being that when you searched ‘Helen Lawrence’ you didn’t get her. Well, not much. You got her pictures.
It was around then Helen had started to wonder if the true mark of success wasn’t invisibility. If the seal of a good journalist or photographer wasn’t obscurity. How can you tell a story if the story simply becomes you? Art’s growing obsession with social media tipped her over the edge.
You had to be
a force
to live life off-line, she told Art one evening. It required power to erase yourself from the world’s search engines. They were sitting in the window of a bistro he liked behind Rue de Rivoli. In her head, Helen could still see the frontage, the stainless-steel tables covered with white paper tablecloths. She’d erased its name though. Imagine, she’d said, waving her fork as she warmed to her theme. Imagine having a lasting body of work that existed entirely beyond the name attached to it.