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She didn’t remember
him.

Her mind was wandering now, but there was no point trying to rein it in. She’d been here often enough to know resistance was futile.

Like other clichés about firsts; first impressions counting, not judging a book by its cover … Well, they did count, didn’t they? People did judge, didn’t they? But there really weren’t any first impressions with Art. She hadn’t judged the book by its cover, because she hadn’t even noticed the book, let alone read the inside flaps.

God knows she wished she had.

Things might have been so different if she’d only paid a bit more attention.

She’d been the only woman in Baghdad, that time, in a group of seven. They took three groups of two each out that day. Inevitably there was an odd one out; inevitably it had been her, the only woman. It was a coincidence, the colonel had explained, nothing to do with her being female.
Yeah, right.
She was the girl, she got left behind, on more than one occasion sent on a coffee run. So she’d got used to finding other ways. She always did. As usual she was too hell-bent on getting her picture, getting the picture, with or without permission, to notice anyone who might have been trying to make an impression. Art said later it was the fact she seemed not to notice him that caught his interest. He was put out when she said there was no
seemed
about it. She hadn’t noticed him.

People always said there were two sides to every story. They had certainly said that about them. Art encouraged it, which struck her as odd, now she thought about it. Either way, his version always emerged on top. That was how it was. His version became fact. Love at first sight across a crowded diplomatic bar in a city of ruins after almost a decade of unrequited yearning.

How romantic. How false.

It was thinking of Art that made her do it. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe some insane part of her thought there’d be something from him. That the reports were right and he was still alive.

No, he couldn’t be. He was there. She knew it. She’d seen his body, twisted, naked … she swallowed … burning. She’d seen it with her own eyes.

Art was dead. And Helen felt … she felt nothing. Just numb.

Opening her eyes, she raised her head gingerly, and when the pain was no worse than it had been lying down, she swung her legs round and sat up. Washing down another three aspirin with the dregs of her cold tea, she woke the laptop and, going via the VPN connection, logged on to her email. Not the new, anonymous ones she’d just set up. The old one. The real one. She knew it was stupid, she did it anyway.

Reams of junk scrolled down her screen. Newsletters and digital updates. People trying to flog her Viagra and watches and give her a million pounds if she’d only send them her bank details right now. It was just a matter of time until someone cracked it, Helen thought as her mouse hovered over the list ready to delete. Suddenly she stopped. If someone was looking for her and saw her Gmail had been emptied they’d know she was there, even if the VPN did mean they couldn’t find her. Instead, her eyes roved the list, searching for emails from a single address: [email protected].

Dead men didn’t email, she knew that. But still she was relieved when she drew a blank.

Relieved.

Guilt washed in. Her husband – ex-husband – was dead, and all she could muster was relief. Her sister was a different matter. There were eight emails from Fran on the first page alone. Trying to ignore the migraine tightening its grip behind her eyes, Helen clicked on the most recent. Sent an hour earlier, subject line: Something else
.

The email seemed to start mid-sentence:

… Sorry Helen, pressed send too quickly, bloody hate this new track-pad thing.

I meant to tell you – or rather, I would have done, if you hadn’t hung up. Tom Bretton came to see Mum.

Helen frowned. That couldn’t be right. Why would Tom visit her mother?

He said you called him late at night from Paris. There was a fire. You were crying, hysterical. You asked him what to do. He said report it and you said there were sirens and they already knew. He tried to get a number off you but you just hung up.

Helen read the paragraph and then read it again. She’d called Tom? In the midst of whatever had happened that night, she had called Tom. A pain stabbed her right temple and her hand flew to her forehead. The veins flared at her touch. Migraine or confusion, Helen no longer knew.

They’d been in touch over the years, had the occasional drink. But not since she’d started seeing Art. Art hadn’t been big on old boyfriends. Why the hell had she called him?

He wanted to know if we’d heard from you. If we knew how to get hold of you. He seemed worried, said you were displaying classic symptoms of shock. He’s a doctor so I assume he knows. He asked if you still had the same email address. I told him you did, but I didn’t think there was any point emailing it. After all I’ve sent you dozens of emails since we heard …

Skimming the rest to check there was nothing else, Helen closed the document. The migraine was screaming for attention now, refusing to be ignored. One more, Helen promised, just one more. Then I’m yours. She opened the one below, presumably the one Fran had sent too soon. Subject: Please open me.

Dear Helen

Sorry I sounded angry earlier. I didn’t mean to scare you, but you must understand what an impossible situation we’re in. Can you imagine how we felt when the police turned up? Terrified. Mum’s in a real state. I’m sorry, I had to tell her I’d spoken to you. She needed to know you were OK. Ian thinks I should tell the police you phoned, but I wanted to check with you first. I tried to call you back but the phone number you called from was dead. Was it a call box? It didn’t sound like it. Please reply, Helen, or call again.

We’re worried about you. I know you say you’re good at being on your own, but if it’s Art, the body in the flat, well, you must be devastated. You know I’m here don’t you? Come home, we can get this all sorted out. Then you can start to grieve properly. I know you were splitting up, but you were together five years. You married him for God’s sake. That must count for something …

Pushing the laptop away from her, Helen winced as it skittered across the table, teetered on the edge, and hit the floor. There was no need to read on. She knew what it said. She’d heard it all before
. Lovely Art, charming Art, what took you so long Art, so good for you Art, give him another chance Art …

From its spot on the rug, the laptop screen flickered, its colours pixelating and fragmenting like the lights that radiated across her vision. Helen crawled over and slammed it shut. There was a smell too. One that hadn’t been there before. Not rancid or especially repugnant, just an undertone. It was familiar, but Helen couldn’t place it. A musky, dusky fragrance that she knew she’d smelt before. Smoke, brick dust, cordite, burning meat … Helen winced, felt her gorge rise. Everyone had their own personal migraine experience, or so Caroline said. Smell was Helen’s.

Shuffling backwards on her bottom towards the sofa, Helen propped herself against it and closed her eyes, forcing herself to breathe through her mouth. She’d long since learnt how to close her nose. A fractured constellation played both inside her eyelids and out. Inky patches in negative where the viscose smear would be if she opened them. The scent was stronger now. Even keeping her breaths shallow, she felt her stomach swell and a cold sweat break out on her forehead.

Blindly, she leapt up, scrambling over the armchair between her and the door. It wasn’t far to the bathroom, but she’d barely reached the landing before the tea found its way back up her throat. She lunged towards the bathroom door, thrusting it open as fatty undigested toast splattered through her fingers and across black and white tiles. Slumping on the floor, she rested her forehead on cold plastic and scrabbled for the loo-roll holder. Spinning it until paper spooled on the floor beside her she began to mop blindly at the mess. She knew where she’d smelt that smell before.

She’d smelt it for the first time in Baghdad.

10

Sleep hadn’t come. Gil had given it plenty of opportunity, putting off going to bed for as long as possible. He sat up watching television until the only things to watch were repeats of things he’d already seen, now with sign language. He’d drunk one pint too many in the hope of boozing himself to sleep, then knocked back two Nurofen with a shot of whisky when he got through his front door, then another two with another whisky. He’d read until his eyes drooped, the crime novel tumbling from his chest to the living-room carpet.

None of it helped. With his eyes open or shut, Gil saw the same thing. Bloody Helen Graham and a flash of something he couldn’t explain as her beat-up old Peugeot vanished into the rain. At one a.m. Gil gave up and went to bed.

Even though his eyes had shut of their own accord as he tried reading on the sofa, the second his head hit the pillow he found himself wide awake. For an hour, maybe two, he stared through the dark at the unseen ceiling. When he wasn’t staring at that he was watching the inside of his eyelids, where neon seemed to flicker. It didn’t help that he ached like hell from being run off the road. The knee he’d twisted as he leapt out of her way throbbed in time to some unholy music, while his hands stung from grabbing the branch, its thorns having ripped his flesh. Kath at The Bull had insisted his cheek needed a stitch or two when he’d gone in there this evening, but he’d shaken off her suggestion and told her butterfly plasters would do.

After lying on his back, Gil rolled on to his left side and damned his swollen knee. Then on to his right side, via his front. When his cheek stung, he wished he hadn’t. He even tried Jan’s side of the bed. Something he never did.

He didn’t really know what he’d seen. Probably nothing but a trick of the light in torrential rain at dusk. But he knew, suspect eyesight or no, that he couldn’t have seen a child. Who was he to talk about children anyway? Fat lot he knew. Truth was, he only knew one thing about kids. He’d got it wrong. Whatever the magical
it
was.

Karen. That was it. The last time he’d seen his youngest daughter she’d been staring at him through the rear window of Jan’s car, dark eyes brimming with tears. God, he was a silly old sod. He had too much time on his hands and not enough to do with his brain. Time to rectify that.

Before the light even started to change, before the very first early bird called the first note of that day’s dawn chorus, Gil gave up fighting his insomnia, rolled himself out of bed, wincing as his knee took his weight, padded down to the kitchen and filled the kettle.

Opening the kitchen window, he lit his first cigarette of the day and inhaled. Then he leaned forward and blew the smoke out of the window into the morning mist. Another Jan-induced habit. Who cared if his house reeked of nicotine these days?

Spooked, that’s what he’d been.

No other word for it. Common sense said,
Nothing to see here.
Only a bunch of old women with over-active imaginations and too much time on their hands. He was as bad as they were, Gil thought, stubbing his cigarette on the outside windowsill, something Jan definitely wouldn’t approve of – and flicking the butt across his uncut lawn to fall with the others. Two weeks into retirement and he was giving credence to old wives telling tall ones, while fixating on a woman young enough to be his daughter, who clearly had no interest in having anything to do with any of them. He should be ashamed of himself.

Trouble was, there’d been something about the way she’d had to fight the urge to run when confronted by Margaret Millward’s nosiness that caught his attention. Fists clenched so tight he could see half-moons cut in her palms, breathing so carefully controlled she could be counting away panic … There was a story there. He just knew it. Call it instinct, call it too much time on his hands. He’d never been wrong yet.

Well, not often.

He’d had a gran given to seeing things. Seeing things, hearing noises, agreeing with her cats that the spare room was best given a wide berth. As a teenager, he wasn’t having any of it. Granny O’Donnell could keep her Hail Marys and her rosary. Her Mass every day and twice on Sundays. Her plaster saints and restless spirits. How his ma had ever been allowed to marry a non-believer was a mystery. More than once Granny O’Donnell had walked into a room, shuddered and walked out again.

Gil never paid much heed to all that until he and Jan went to Venice.

It was meant to be romantic. Four days off when Jan dumped the girls with her parents for a long weekend. Lyn had complained like hell, Karen had been too small to care. It would be nice Jan said, like old times. Not that they’d had the money for minibreaks in those days. Nothing to do except eat, drink, walk, have time for each other. It might have worked too, if the horse hadn’t already bolted, emotionally at least. And if not for that ruddy monastery. Palazzo something or other.

No way was he ever going there again.

Jan liked a bit of history and Gil, keen to get in her good books after too long out of them, agreed to take her for her birthday. Turned out you could have too much history. For a start, the manager had double-booked the room they’d chosen. So instead of a first-floor suite reached by a sweeping stone staircase, with ten-foot ceilings, four-poster beds and antique, if mouldering, brocade curtains covering the Romeo and Juliet balcony overlooking an off-shoot of the Grand Canal, they got a door he had to bend in half to get through, a ceiling so low it scraped his head even in bare feet, and a room heavy with potpourri and dark wood furniture that dwarfed its proportions. If he’d been cynical, Gil would have said they’d been shoved in servants’ quarters on a mezzanine above kitchens. It certainly smelt like it.

The room’s ill-humour worked its sorcery within minutes.