‘Well, that’s
awkward.’
‘It was once. Months ago. But I get
the feeling she’s never quite forgotten it.’
‘Because you are SO GOOD.’ Greg
wipes another pint glass, grinning, and puts it on the shelf.
‘No … Well, okay,
obviously,’ Paul says. ‘Seriously, Greg, I just feel guilty whenever she
looks at me. Like … like I promised something I can’t
deliver.’
‘What’s the golden rule, bro?
Never shit on your own doorstep.’
‘I was drunk. It was the night Leonie
told me she and Jake were moving in with Mitch. I was …’
‘You let your defences down.’
Greg does his daytime-television voice. ‘Your boss got you when you were
vulnerable. Plied you with drink. And now you just feel used. Hang on …’ He
disappears to serve a customer. The bar is busy for a Thursday night, all the tables
taken, a steady stream of people at the bar, a low hum of cheerful conversation rising
above the music. He had meant to go home after he finished at the office, but he rarely
gets a chance to catch up with his brother, and it’s good to get a few drinks in
now and then. Even if you do have to
spend your time avoiding eye
contact with 70 per cent of the customers.
Greg rings up some money and arrives back in
front of Paul.
‘Look, I know how it sounds. But
she’s a nice woman. And it’s just horrible having to fend her off all the
time.’
‘Sucks to be you.’
‘Like you’d
understand.’
‘Because nobody ever hits on you when
you’re with someone. Not in a gay bar. Oh, no.’ Greg puts another glass on
the shelf. ‘Look, why don’t you just sit her down, tell her that she’s
a really lovely person,
yada yada yada
, but you’re not interested in her
that way?’
‘Because it’s awkward. Us
working so closely together and all.’
‘And this isn’t? The whole
“Oh, well, if you ever fancy a quickie when you’ve finished this case,
Paul” thing.’ Greg’s attention shifts to the other end of the bar.
‘Uh-oh. I think we’ve got a live one.’
Paul has been dimly aware of the girl all
evening. She had arrived looking perfectly composed and he had assumed she was waiting
for someone. Now she is trying to climb back on to her bar stool. She makes two
attempts, the second sending her stumbling clumsily backwards. She pushes her hair out
of her eyes and peers at the bar as if it’s the summit of Everest. She propels
herself upwards. When she lands on the stool she reaches out both hands to steady
herself and blinks hard, as if it takes her a couple of seconds to believe she has
actually made it. She lifts her face towards Greg. ‘Excuse me? Can I have another
wine?’ She holds up an empty glass.
Greg’s gaze, amused and weary, travels
to Paul and away. ‘We’re closing in ten minutes,’ he says, flicking
his tea-towel over his shoulder. He’s good with drunks. Paul has never seen Greg
lose his cool. They were, their mother would remark, chalk and cheese like that.
‘So that leaves me ten minutes to
drink it?’ she says, her smile wavering slightly.
She doesn’t look like a lesbian. But,
then, few of them do, these days. He doesn’t say this to his brother, who would
laugh at him and tell him he had spent too much time in the police.
‘Sweetheart, I mean this in the nicest
way, but if you have another drink I’ll worry about you. And I really, really hate
ending my shift worrying about customers.’
‘A small one,’ she says. Her
smile is heartbreaking. ‘I don’t even usually drink.’
‘Yeah. You’re the ones I worry
about.’
‘This …’ Her eyes are
strained. ‘This is a difficult day. A really difficult day. Please can I just have
one more drink? And then you can call me a nice respectable taxi from a nice respectable
firm and I’ll go home and pass out and you can go home without worrying about
me.’
He looks back at Paul and sighs.
See
what I have to put up with?
‘A small one,’ he says. ‘A very
small one.’
Her smile falls away, her eyes half close,
and she reaches down to her feet, swaying, for her bag. Paul turns back to the bar,
checking his phone for messages. It is his turn to have Jake tomorrow night, and
although the thing with him and Leonie is now amicable, some part of him still worries
that she will find a reason to cancel.
‘My bag!’
He glances up.
‘My bag’s gone!’ The woman
has slid from the stool and is gazing around at the floor, one hand clutching the bar.
When she looks up, her face is leached of colour.
‘Did you take it to the Ladies?’
Greg leans across the bar.
‘No,’ she says, her gaze darting
around the bar. ‘It was tucked under my stool.’
‘You left your bag under the
stool?’ Greg tuts. ‘Didn’t you read the signs?’
There are signs all over the bar.
Do not
leave your bag unattended: pickpockets operate in this area
. Paul can count
three of them just from where he sits.
She has not read them.
‘I’m really sorry. But
it’s not good around here.’ The woman’s gaze flickers between them
and, drunk as she is, he can see that she guesses what they’re thinking.
Silly
drunk girl.
Paul reaches for his phone.
‘I’ll call the cops.’
‘And tell them I was stupid enough to
leave my bag under a stool?’ She puts her face into her hands. ‘Oh, God.
I’d just withdrawn two hundred pounds for the council tax. I don’t believe
it. Two. Hundred. Pounds.’
‘We’ve had two already this
week,’ says Greg. ‘We’re waiting for CCTV to be installed. But
it’s an epidemic. I’m really sorry.’
She looks up and wipes her face. She lets
out a long, unsteady breath. She is plainly trying not to burst into tears. The glass of
wine sits untouched on the bar. ‘I’m really sorry. But I don’t think
I’m going to be able to pay for that.’
‘Don’t give it a thought,’
says Greg. ‘Here, Paul, you call
the cops. I’ll go get
her a coffee. Right. Time, ladies and gentlemen, please …’
The police around here do not come out for
vanished handbags. They give the woman, whose name is Liv, a crime number and promise a
letter about victim support, and tell her they’ll be in touch if they find
anything. It’s clear to everyone that they do not expect to be in touch.
By the time she’s off the phone the
bar is long empty. Greg unlocks the door to let them out, and Liv reaches for her
jacket. ‘I’ve a guest staying. She’s got a spare key.’
‘You want to call her?’ Paul
proffers his phone.
She looks blankly at him. ‘I
don’t know her number. But I know where she works.’
Paul waits.
‘It’s a restaurant about ten
minutes’ walk from here. Towards Blackfriars.’
It’s midnight. Paul gazes at the
clock. He is tired and his son is being dropped off at seven thirty tomorrow morning.
But he cannot leave a drunk woman, who has plainly spent the best part of an hour trying
not to cry, to walk the backstreets of the South Bank at midnight.
‘I’ll walk with you,’ he
says.
He catches her look of wariness, the way she
prepares to decline. Greg touches her arm. ‘You’re okay, sweetheart.
He’s an ex-cop.’
Paul feels himself being reassessed. The
woman’s makeup has smudged beneath one eye and he has to fight the urge to wipe
it.
‘I can vouch for his good character.
He’s genetically wired to do this, kind of like a St Bernard in human
form.’
‘Yeah. Thanks, Greg.’
She puts on her jacket. ‘If
you’re sure you don’t mind, that would be really kind of you.’
‘I’ll call you tomorrow, Paul.
And good luck, Miss Liv. Hope it all gets sorted.’ Greg waits until they are some
way down the road, then closes and locks the door.
They walk briskly, their feet echoing in
the empty cobbled streets, the sound bouncing off the silent buildings around them. It
has begun to rain, and Paul rams his hands deep into his pockets, his neck hunched into
his collar. They pass two young men in hoodies and he is conscious of her moving
slightly closer to him.
‘Did you cancel your cards?’ he
says.
‘Oh. No.’ The fresh air is
hitting her hard. She looks despondent, and every now and then she stumbles a little. He
would offer his arm but he doesn’t think she would take it. ‘I didn’t
think of that.’
‘Can you remember what you
have?’
‘One Mastercard, one
Barclays.’
‘Hold on. I know someone who can
help.’ He dials a number. ‘Sherrie? … Hi. It’s
McCafferty … Yeah, fine, thanks. All good. You?’ He waits. ‘Listen
– could you do me a favour? Text me the numbers for stolen bank cards? Mastercard and a
Barclays. Friend’s just had her bag nicked … Yeah. Thanks, Sherrie. Say
hi to the guys for me. And, yeah, see you soon.’
He dials the texted numbers, hands her the
phone. ‘Cops,’ he says. ‘Small world.’ And then walks silently
as she explains the situation to the operator.
‘Thank you,’ she says, handing
the phone back.
‘No problem.’
‘I’d be surprised if they manage
to get any money out on them anyway.’ Liv smiles ruefully.
They are at the restaurant, a Spanish place.
The lights are off and the doors locked. He ducks into the doorway and she peers in
through the window, as if willing it to show some distant sign of life.
Paul consults his watch. ‘It’s a
quarter past twelve. They’re probably done for the night.’
Liv stands and bites her lip. She turns back
to him. ‘Perhaps she’s at mine. Please can I borrow your phone again?’
He hands it over, and she holds it up in the sodium light better to see the screen. He
watches as she taps a number, then turns away, one hand rifling unconsciously through
her hair. She glances behind her and gives him a brief, uncertain smile, then turns
back. She types in another number, and a third.
‘Anyone else you can call?’
‘My dad. I just tried him.
Nobody’s answering there either. Although it’s entirely possible he’s
asleep. He sleeps like the dead.’ She looks completely lost.
‘Look – why don’t I book you a
room in a hotel? You can pay me back when you get your cards.’
She stands there, biting her lip.
Two
hundred pounds.
He remembers the way she had said it, despairing. This was not
someone who could afford a central London hotel room.
The rain is falling more heavily now,
splashing up their legs, water gurgling along the gutters in front of them. He speaks
almost before he thinks: ‘You know what? It’s getting late. I live about
twenty minutes’ walk away. You want
to think about it and
decide when we get to mine? We can sort it all out from there if you like.’
She hands him his phone. He watches some
brief, internal struggle take place. Then she smiles, a little warily, and steps forward
beside him. ‘Thank you. And sorry. I – I really didn’t set out to mess up
someone else’s night too.’
Liv grows progressively quieter as they
approach his flat, and he guesses that she is sobering up: some sensible part of her is
wondering what she has just agreed to. He wonders if there is some girlfriend waiting
for her somewhere. She’s pretty, but in the way that women are when they
don’t want to draw male attention to themselves: free of makeup, hair scraped back
into a ponytail. Is this a gay thing? Her skin is too good for her to be a regular
drinker. She has taut legs and a long stride that speak of regular exercise. But she
walks defensively, with her arms crossed over her chest.
They reach his flat, a second-floor
maisonette above a café on the outskirts of Theatreland, and he stands well back
from her as he opens the door.
Paul switches on the lights and goes
straight to the coffee-table. He sweeps up the newspapers and that morning’s mug,
seeing the flat through a stranger’s eyes: too small, overstuffed with reference
books, photographs and furniture. Luckily, no stray socks or washing. He walks into the
kitchen area and puts the kettle on, fetches her a towel to dry her hair, and watches as
she walks tentatively around the room, apparently reassured by the packed bookshelves,
the photographs on the sideboard: him in uniform, him and Jake grinning, their arms
around each other. ‘Is this your son?’
‘Yup.’
‘He looks like you.’ She picks
up a photograph of him, Jake and Leonie, taken when Jake was four. Her other arm is
still wrapped around her stomach. He would offer her a T-shirt, but he doesn’t
want her to think he’s trying to get her to remove her clothes.
‘Is this his mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re … not gay,
then?’
Paul is briefly lost for words, then says,
‘No! Oh. No, that’s my brother’s bar.’
‘Oh.’
He gestures towards the photograph of him in
uniform. ‘That’s not, like, me doing a Village People routine. I really was
a cop.’
She starts to laugh, the kind of laughter
that comes when the only alternative is tears. Then she wipes her eyes and flashes him
an embarrassed smile. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a bad day today. And that was
before my bag got stolen.’
She’s really pretty, he thinks
suddenly. She has an air of vulnerability, like someone’s stripped her of a layer
of skin. She turns to face him and he looks away abruptly. ‘Paul, have you got a
drink? As in not coffee. I know you probably think I’m a complete soak but I could
really, really do with one right now.’
He flicks the kettle off, pours them both a
glass of wine and comes into the living area. She is sitting on the edge of the sofa,
her elbows thrust between her knees.
‘You want to talk about it? Ex-cops
have generally heard a lot of stuff.’ He hands her the glass of wine. ‘Much
worse stuff than yours. I’d put money on it.’
‘Not really.’ She takes an
audible gulp of her wine. Then, abruptly, she turns to him. ‘Actually, yes. My
husband died four years ago today. He died. Most people couldn’t even say the word
when he did, and now they keep telling me I should have moved on. I have no idea how to
move on. There’s a Goth living in my house and I can’t even remember her
surname. I owe money to everyone. And I went to a gay bar tonight because I
couldn’t face being in my house alone, and my bag got nicked with the two hundred
pounds I’d borrowed from my credit card to pay my council tax. And when you asked
if there was anyone else I could call, the only person I could think of who might offer
me a bed was Fran, the woman who lives in cardboard boxes at the bottom of my
block.’