Cannon Street Tube station is full of suits. I weave through the crowded platform until I’m nearly at the tunnel; the first carriage always has fewer people than any other, and when we reach Whitechapel the doors will open directly in front of the exit.
On the train I pick up today’s Gazette, abandoned on the grimy ledge behind my seat. I flick straight to the back pages, where the classifieds are, and find the advert with its invalid phone number: 0809 4 733 968. Today’s woman is dark-haired, the hint of a full bust visible at the bottom of the picture, and a broad smile showing even white teeth. Around her neck is a delicate chain with a small silver cross.
Does she know her photograph is in the classifieds?
I haven’t heard from PC Swift, and I tell myself her silence is reassuring, rather than unnerving. She would have called straight away if there was something to worry about. Like a doctor, ringing with worrying test results. No news is good news, isn’t that what they say? Simon was right; it wasn’t my photo in the newspaper.
I change at Whitechapel, to take the Overground to Crystal Palace. As I walk I hear footsteps behind me. Nothing unusual in that; there are footsteps everywhere on the Tube, the sound bouncing off the walls, amplifying and stretching until it sounds as though dozens of people are walking, running, stamping their feet.
But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something different about these footsteps.
That they’re coming after me.
When I was eighteen I was followed on my way home from the shops, not long after I fell pregnant with Justin. Impending motherhood had made me hyper-aware, and I saw danger at every corner. The cracked pavement that could trip me up; the cyclist that would surely knock me over. I felt so responsible for the life inside me that it seemed impossible I could even cross the road without putting him in danger.
I had gone out for milk, insisting to Matt’s mum that I needed the exercise; wanting to do my small bit to thank her for taking me in. It was dark, and as I walked home again I became aware I was being followed. There was no sound, no sensation; just a certainty that someone was behind me, and worse, that they were trying not to be heard.
I feel the same certainty now.
Back then I wasn’t sure what to do for the best. I crossed the road: the person following crossed too. I could hear their footsteps, then; gaining on me, no longer caring about being heard. I turned and saw a man – a boy – not much older than Matt. A hooded top; hands thrust deep into the front pocket. A scarf covering the bottom half of his face.
There was a shortcut to Matt’s house; a narrow street that ran behind a row of houses. Little more than an alleyway. It’ll be quicker, I decided, not thinking clearly; just wanting to be safely home.
As I turned the corner I broke into a run, and the boy behind me ran too. I dropped my shopping bag, the plastic top bursting off the milk container, sending a giant white spray across the cobbles. Seconds later, I fell too, stumbling to my knees and immediately putting a protective arm across my stomach.
It was over in a moment. He leaned over me, only his eyes exposed, and reached a hand out, searching roughly through my pockets. He pulled out my purse and ran off, leaving me sitting on the floor.
The footsteps grow closer.
I pick up my pace. Stop myself from running, but walk as fast as I can manage, the unnatural gait throwing me off balance and making my bag swing from side to side.
There’s a group of girls some distance in front of me and I try to catch up with them. Safety in numbers, I think. They’re messing around; running, jumping, laughing, but they’re not threatening. Not like the footsteps behind me, which are loud and heavy and coming closer.
‘Hey!’ I hear.
A male voice. Rough and harsh. I pull my bag in front of me, keep my arm over it so it can’t be opened, then panic that if someone snatches it they’ll drag me with it. I think of the advice I always give the kids; that it’s better to be mugged than injured. Give it up without a fight, I always tell them. Nothing’s worth getting hurt over.
The footsteps come faster. He’s running.
I run too, but panic makes me clumsy and I twist an ankle, almost falling. I hear the same voice, shouting again, and now the blood is pumping so loudly in my ears that I can’t hear what he’s saying. I can only hear the noise of him running, and of the breath I’m forcing out in loud, painful bursts.
My ankle hurts. I can’t run, so I stop trying.
I give up. Turn around.
He’s young; nineteen or twenty. White, with baggy jeans and trainers that pound on the concrete floor.
I’ll give him my phone – that’s what he’ll be after. And cash. Do I have any cash?
I start to pull the strap of my handbag over my head but it catches on my hood. He’s almost on me, now, grinning as though he enjoys my fear, enjoys the fact that I’m shaking so much I can’t untangle myself from the leather strap of my bag. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut. Just do it. Whatever you’re planning, just do it.
His trainers slam against the floor. Faster, louder, closer.
Past me.
I open my eyes.
‘Hey!’ he calls again, as he runs. ‘Bitches!’ The tunnel curves to the left, and he disappears, the echo of his trainers making it sound as though he is still running towards me. I’m still shaking, my body unable to process the fact that what I thought was a certainty didn’t happen at all.
I hear shouting. I start walking, my ankle throbbing. Round the corner I see him again. He is with the group of girls; he has his arm round one and the others are grinning. They’re all talking at once; excitable chatter that builds to a crescendo of hyena-like laughter.
I walk slowly. Because of my ankle, and because – even though I can see now that there’s no threat – I don’t want to pass this gang of kids, who have made me feel so foolish.
Not every footstep is following you, I tell myself. Not everyone who runs is chasing you.
When I get off the train at Crystal Palace Megan speaks to me, but I’m slow to respond. I’m relieved to be out in the open air; cross with myself for getting in a state over nothing. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘what was that?’
‘I just said I hoped you’d had a good day.’ There are still fewer than a dozen coins in her open guitar case; she told me once how she scoops the pound coins and fifty pence pieces out throughout the day.
‘People stop giving if they think you’re doing too well,’ she’d explained.
‘It was okay, thank you,’ I tell her now. ‘See you in the morning.’
‘I’ll be here!’ she says, and I find her predictability comforting.
At the end of Anerley Road I walk past our open gate and through Melissa’s painted railings. The door swings open, a response to the text I sent as I walked from the Tube station.
Time for a cuppa?
‘Kettle’s on,’ she says, as soon as she sees me.
At first glance Melissa’s and Neil’s house is the same as mine; the small hall with the lounge door to one side, and the bottom of the stairs facing the door. But the resemblance stops there. At the back of Melissa’s house, where next door you’d find my poky kitchen, is a vast space extending into the side return and out into the garden. Two huge skylights allow the light to flood in, and bi-fold doors run the whole width of the house.
I follow her into the kitchen, where Neil is sitting at the breakfast bar, a laptop in front of him. Melissa’s desk is by the window, and even though Neil has an office upstairs, if he isn’t working away he’s often in here with her.
‘Hi, Neil.’
‘Hey, Zoe. How are things?’
‘Not bad.’ I hesitate, not sure whether to share what’s going on with the photos in the Gazette; not sure I can even define it. Perhaps talking about it might help. ‘Funny thing, though – I saw a photograph in the London Gazette that looked just like me.’ I give a little laugh, but Melissa stops making the tea and looks at me sharply. We spend too much time together fo
r me to hide anything.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine. It was just a photo, that’s all. An advert for a dating site, or something. But it had my picture in it. At least, I thought it did.’ Now it’s Neil who looks confused, and I don’t blame him; I’m not making any sense. I think of the kid on the Tube, running to catch up with his friends, and I’m glad no one I knew was there to see how I overreacted. I wonder if I’m having some kind of midlife crisis; having panic attacks over invisible danger.
‘When was this?’ Neil says.
‘Friday evening.’ I glance around the kitchen, but of course there isn’t a Gazette lying about. In my house the recycling box is permanently crammed with newspapers and cardboard packaging, but Melissa’s bin is neatly tucked away, and emptied regularly. ‘It was in the classifieds. Just a phone number, a website address, and the photograph.’
‘A photograph of you,’ Melissa says.
I hesitate. ‘Well, someone who looked like me. Simon said I must have a doppelgänger.’
Neil laughs. ‘You’d recognise yourself though, surely?’
I go to sit at the breakfast bar, next to him, and he closes the laptop, moving it so it isn’t in the way. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? When I saw it on the Tube I was convinced it was me. But then by the time I got home, and I showed it to the others, I wasn’t so sure. I mean, why would it be there?’
‘Did you call the number?’ Melissa says. She leans on the island opposite us, the coffee forgotten.
‘It doesn’t work. Nor does the website; the address is something like find the one dot com, but it just takes you to a blank screen with a white box in the middle.’
‘Want me to take a look at it?’
Neil does something in IT. I’ve never been sure exactly what, but he explained it once in such detail, I feel bad for not remembering.
‘It’s fine, honestly. You’ve got proper work to do.’
‘And lots of it,’ Melissa says ruefully. ‘He’s in Cardiff tomorrow, then at the Houses of Parliament for the rest of the week. I’m lucky if I see him once a week at the moment.’
‘Parliament? Wow. What’s it like?’
‘Boring.’ Neil grins. ‘The bit I’ll be in, anyway. I’m installing a new firewall, so I’m unlikely to be rubbing shoulders with the PM.’
‘Is your October paperwork ready?’ I ask Melissa, suddenly remembering why I needed to pop in and see her. She nods.
‘On the desk, just on top of that orange ring binder.’
Melissa’s desk is white and glossy, like everything else in the kitchen. A huge iMac dominates the surface, and a floating shelf above holds all the files for the cafés. On the desk is a penholder that Katie made in woodwork at school.
‘I can’t believe you still have this.’
‘Of course I do! It was so sweet of her to make it.’
‘She got a B for it,’ I remember. When we first moved in next door to Melissa and Neil, money was horribly, frighteningly, tight. There were more shifts on offer at Tesco, but with a school run at 3 p.m. it just wasn’t possible. Until Melissa stepped in. At the time she only had the one café, and she closed after the lunchtime trade. She’d pick up the kids for me and bring them home with her, and they’d watch TV while she did the food order for the next day. Melissa would bake with Katie, and Neil showed Justin how to add RAM to a motherboard, and I was able to pay my mortgage.
I find the bundle of receipts on top of the orange file, beneath a folded Tube map and a notepad filled with bits of paper, Post-it notes, and Melissa’s neat handwriting.
‘More world-domination plans?’ I joke, gesturing to the notepad. I catch a look passing between Neil and Melissa. ‘Oh. Sorry. Not funny?’
‘It’s the new café. Neil’s not quite as keen on the idea as I am.’
‘I’m fine about the café,’ Neil says. ‘It’s bankruptcy I’m less enthusiastic about.’
Melissa rolls her eyes. ‘You’re so risk averse.’
‘Listen, I might skip that tea, actually,’ I say, picking up Melissa’s paperwork.
‘Oh, stay!’ Melissa says. ‘We’re not going to have a domestic, I promise.’
I laugh. ‘It’s not that,’ although it is a bit. ‘Simon’s taking me out tonight.’
‘On a school night? What’s the occasion?’
‘No reason,’ I grin. ‘Just a spot of Monday-night romance.’
‘You two are like a couple of teenagers.’
‘They’re still in the first flush of love,’ Neil says. ‘We were like that, once.’ He winks at Melissa.
‘Were we?’
‘Wait till the seven-year itch hits them, Mel, then they’ll be watching TV in bed and bickering about who left the top off the toothpaste.’
‘We do lots of that too,’ I laugh. ‘See you soon.’
The front door’s unlocked when I get home, and Simon’s jacket is thrown over the end of the banister. I climb the stairs to the loft conversion and knock on the door. ‘What are you doing home so early?’
‘Hey, beautiful, I didn’t hear you come in. Good day? I couldn’t concentrate in the office, so I brought some work home.’ He stands up to kiss me, careful not to knock his head on the low beam. The conversion was carried out on the cheap by the previous owners. They worked around the original rafters, so even though it’s a big room you can only stand up in the middle.
I look at the pile of papers nearest to me and see a typed list of names, each with what looks like a brief bio below it.
‘Interviews for a feature I’ve got to do,’ he explains, seeing me looking. He picks up the papers and dumps them on the other side so I can perch on the edge of his desk. ‘It’s a nightmare trying to get hold of them.’
‘I don’t know how you find anything.’ My drawers at work might be a mess, but the top of my desk is almost empty. A photo of the kids and a plant sit next to my in-tray, and I make sure everything is tidied away before I go home. At the end of each day I write a list of everything I have to do the next day, even when some of them are the things I do on autopilot, as soon as I get into work. Open the post, listen to the answer-phone messages, make the tea.
‘Organised chaos.’ He sits down on the swivel chair in front of his desk and pats his knee for me to sit on his lap. I laugh and sit down, one arm around his neck to keep my balance. I kiss him, letting my body relax into his before I reluctantly pull away.
‘I’ve booked a table at Bella Donna.’
‘Perfect.’
I’m not a high-maintenance woman. I don’t waste money on clothes and beauty products, and if the kids so much as remember my birthday, that’s good enough for me. Matt wasn’t one for hearts and flowers, even when we were young, and nor was I. Simon laughs at my cynical nature; says he’s slowly bringing out my softer side. He spoils me, and I love it. After years of struggling to put food on the table, a meal out is still a luxury, but the real treat is time together. Just the two of us.
I have a shower and wash my hair, spraying perfume on my wrists and rubbing them together, letting the scent fill the air around me. I put on a dress I haven’t worn for a while, and am relieved to see it still fits, and pull out a pair of black patent heels from the tangle of shoes at the bottom of my wardrobe. When Simon moved in I squashed up my clothes to make room for his, but even so he has to keep some of his belongings in the loft conversion. The house has three bedrooms, but they’re all tiny: Justin’s is a single, and Katie barely has room to move around her double bed.
Simon’s waiting for me in the lounge. He’s put on a jacket and tie, and he looks the way he did when I first saw him come into Hallow & Reed. I remember him meeting my polite smile with something far warmer.
‘I’m from the Telegraph,’ he told me. ‘We’re running a piece about the rise in commercial rental prices: independents being priced off the High Street, that sort of thing. It would be great if you could talk me through what’s on your books at the moment.’
He met my
eyes, and I hid the ensuing blush in the filing cabinet, taking longer than I needed to find a dozen or so particulars.
‘This one might be interesting for you.’ I sat down at my desk, a piece of paper between us. ‘There used to be a gift shop there, but the rent went up and it’s been empty for six months. The British Heart Foundation will be in there from next month.’
‘Could I speak to the landlord?’
‘I can’t give you his details, but if you give me your number I’ll pass it on.’ I blushed again, even though the suggestion was perfectly legitimate. There was a crackle in the air between us I was sure I wasn’t imagining.
Simon wrote down his number, his eyes creasing into a frown. I remember wondering if he normally wore glasses, and if he had left them off through vanity, or forgetfulness; not knowing then the frown was simply a side effect of concentration. His hair was grey, although not as thin as it is now, four years on. He was tall, with a lean frame that fitted easily in the narrow chair by my desk, legs crossed casually at the ankle. Silver cufflinks just showing below the sleeves of his navy suit.
‘Thank you for your help.’
He seemed in no hurry to leave, and already I didn’t want him to.
‘Not at all. It was a pleasure to meet you.’
‘So,’ he said, watching me intently. ‘You’ve got my number … may I have yours?’
We hail a taxi on Anerley Road, even though we’re not going far, and I catch the fleeting look of relief in Simon’s face as the cab pulls over and he sees the driver’s face. Once, when Simon and I were first dating, we jumped in a black cab, our coats pulled above our heads against the rain. It was only when we looked up that we saw Matt’s face in the rear-view mirror. For a second I thought Simon was going to insist we got out, but he stared out of the window instead. We sat in silence. Even Matt, who could talk the legs off the proverbial donkey, didn’t try to make conversation.
The restaurant is one we’ve been to a few times, and the owner greets us by name when we arrive. He shows us to a booth by the window and hands us menus we both know off by heart. Fat strands of tinsel have been draped over the picture frames and across the light fittings.