Chapter Seventeen

SEVENTEEN

Theo knocked on Angela’s door again, louder this time. “Carla? Are you in there?” There was an edge to his voice; his mood had been veering all morning between irritation and panic. He’d not been able to reach Carla for two days now—she’d not responded to his messages and if she was at home, she’d not answered the door to him. So, irritation: because she did this sometimes, she dropped out of circulation without thought for the consequences, without caring how much others—he, mostly—might be worrying about her. Once, she disappeared for a whole week. It turned out she was in France; she wouldn’t say who with.

On the other hand, panic: her sister was gone. So too, Daniel. And in a week’s time it would be Ben’s birthday. Would have been Ben’s birthday, had he lived. His eighteenth. Their little guy, an adult. An actual adult. Talking about going off to university, bringing home girls. Or boys. It hurt to think about, who he might have been, who they might have been, if not for the accident.

If not for Angela.

Theo had been to Carla’s home, he’d been to the graveyard, he’d called her friends. If he failed here, he might have to call the police. It had crossed his mind, more than once, that she might be with the police already. That she might be sitting in a room, right now, answering questions. Because if they’d come for his fingerprints, his DNA, then they’d have come for hers too, wouldn’t they? And what might they have found?

He knocked again, more loudly still, and called out, desperate: “For God’s sake, Carla, let me in!”

The front door of the next-door house opened a fraction. An elderly woman poked her wizened face through the crack. “There’s no one there,” she said curtly. “It’s empty.”

The nosy neighbor. Carla had mentioned her; Theo couldn’t remember her name. He beamed at her. “Oh, hello. I’m so sorry to bother you,” he said, stepping away from Angela’s front door and walking over toward the old woman. “I’m looking for my wife. Carla Myerson? She’s Angela’s sister, I was just wondering if you’d seen her at all . . . ?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Carla?” he repeated loudly, enunciating clearly. The woman’s brow furrowed. He had the feeling she might not be quite all there. “It’s all right,” he said, smiling again, “don’t worry, never mind.”

“You,” the crone said, suddenly, pulling the door open, pointing one gnarled finger at his chest. “It was you. Of course! I should have recognized you.”

“I beg your pardon?” Theo said.

“Wait here,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere.” And off she went, disappearing down her hallway, leaving the door wide open.

Theo stood for a moment, unsure what to do. He looked up and down the street. He called out, “Hello? Mrs. . . . uh . . .” What was her name? Senile old goat, he seemed to remember Carla calling her. He stepped into her dark hallway, glancing briefly at the pictures on the walls, cheap prints, naval scenes. Perhaps the husband was into ships? He took another step farther into the house.

Suddenly, out of the gloom, she appeared, and he jumped. With a pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose she peered at him, eyes narrowing.

“It is you! You were here before, you were out in the lane, with Angela.”

“Uh, no . . . I—”

“Yes, yes, it was you. The police officer asked me who the man was and I couldn’t say, I didn’t recognize you at the time, or I didn’t remember anyway, but it was you. You were here, with Angela. You made her cry.”

“I did not,” Theo said emphatically. “You have me confused with someone else, I’m afraid.” And he turned away, heading quickly toward the main road.

“You had a dog with you!” the old lady called out behind him. “A little dog.”

---

Theo walked briskly along the lane, around the corner, and straight into the Sekforde Arms. He ordered himself a whiskey. He drank it swiftly and went outside to smoke. Breaking the rules, no spirits before six p.m., this cigarette disallowed under his own regime. Still. Extenuating circumstances, he thought, crushing the half-smoked cigarette against an ashtray, turning to look back down the road toward Hayward’s Place, as though the old woman might be following him.

Would she tell Carla? he wondered. Would she tell Carla that she’d seen him today, or that she’d seen him before? Jesus Christ. He went back inside and, raising a finger to the young woman behind the bar, ordered another drink. The barmaid raised an eyebrow, almost imperceptibly. Almost. Mind your own business, he wanted to say. She placed the second drink in front of him with a smile. There you go. Maybe he’d imagined the eyebrow. Maybe he was being paranoid.

Maybe he was being paranoid about the old woman too. If she did say something to Carla, then what? Would Carla even believe her? Surely it was paranoid to believe that she would—didn’t she think the old dear was losing her marbles? Wasn’t that what she’d said?

Still. What if she did believe her? What would she think? If she knew that he had been with Angela, in what direction would that take her? Impossible to tell. Theo had known Carla close to thirty years and still, he was never quite sure which way, in any given situation, she might jump. He knew this: He had forgiven her all her trespasses and would continue to do so, always. But he was by no means certain that she would reciprocate.

He pulled his mobile from his pocket and called Carla again. Still, she did not pick up. He was tempted to order another drink, but the buzz from the first was already drifting into the dangerous fog of the second, and what if she did pick up? What was he going to say then? What was he going to tell her?

---

The last time he’d seen Angela, they had been standing out on Hayward’s Place, where he’d just been speaking to the neighbor. A gray day, a heavy sky, all of London monochrome. Theo had been looking for Daniel, but instead he found Angela. The old woman was right, she had cried, although he wasn’t sure it was accurate to say he’d made her cry. She’d just burst into tears the moment she saw him. She invited him inside but he preferred to talk in the street. He couldn’t be in a room with her alone; he didn’t trust himself.

She looked shocking: painfully thin, spidery blue veins tracing their way through papery skin. Her hair was gray and very long; she looked like the wicked witch from a fairy tale. She looked hollowed out, a husk. Theo tried to ignore her appearance and her distress. He tried to speak to her matter-of-factly, to convey as directly as possible why he was there. That Daniel had come to his house asking for money, that he’d said he’d lost his job and had no one else to turn to. He didn’t want to bother Carla, he’d said. Theo thought that was probably a lie; he assumed there was something else at play, but he didn’t want to know what that was. Theo had written him a check for a thousand pounds. A couple of weeks later, Daniel came back—Theo was out, but he left a message.

“Can I listen?” Angela asked.

“Not on the phone,” Theo said. “He pushed it under the door.”

“What sort of note? What did it say?” Angela’s eyes were wide, the whites a jaundiced yellow. She’s ill, Theo thought. She might even be dying.

“It doesn’t matter what he said,” Theo replied. “I just need to talk to him about it.”

Angela said she didn’t know where he was, but that if she saw him, she would talk to him. “Won’t do any good,” she said, shaking her head. “He doesn’t listen to me. Carla’s the one,” she said, eyes filling with tears again. “He’ll usually do what Carla asks.”

Theo stood there for a while watching her cry; he tried to feel pity for her but failed. She clearly felt so much for herself already, his own seemed superfluous. He walked away from her before he could say something he regretted.

That wasn’t the last time he saw her, of course; that was the second to last.