The Fall (27 page)

He didn’t ask why she wanted to see him again, and in the long pause she could hear her own heart beating.

‘Thing is, I’m about to go away for a while. Mate of mine’s getting married out in Australia.’ She heard him sigh. ‘Or dinner?’ he said finally. ‘If we can do it before I go – tomorrow, maybe? I know somewhere not far from you.’

She couldn’t breathe. ‘That would be lovely. Will you text me the place?’

No one in London made last-minute plans like that. But he’d offered and she’d said yes. She started walking again, on shaky legs.

Charlotte’s latest job was in a homeless shelter, and she was nervous. Odd to think of this place being here, just behind all the nice shops and the shiny company offices. It wasn’t far from her old office, in fact. Imagine seeing Chloe or Tory or someone on her way into a homeless shelter.

Then there it was. Just as it had hit her when she’d passed the engagement restaurant, she’d turned a corner and the bar was there. That was the problem with always working and going out in the same area – soon the streets became almost haunted, crawling with the ghosts of old lovers and friends, old nights out. Old kisses. And she’d forgotten, in all her worries, she’d forgotten that she had to avoid this street.

Although the morning was muggy, Charlotte shivered in her white work shirt. Let’s go to Q, he’d said. I’ve got a card. We can have a nice quiet chat there. And she, God help her, only a week in her first big PR job and still excited at having a desk and an in-tray and an email address, she’d thought he was gay – if she’d even thought of it at all. He wore cardigans, for God’s sake. He drank Vodkatinis and called everyone ‘sweetheart’. And then when she realised she was wrong, well, it was too late, and she was staggering to the tube the next day in her heels and dress, making up some lie to Dan about having to stay at Chloe’s.

Oh God. There it was, shuttered and closed, and the space in her mind was as raw as ever, like the soft bit in her jaw where the tooth was missing. Oh God, bloody hell. But she was already late, so she had to swallow the shock of the memory and walk on, thinking,
The bastard, the fucking bastard
.

Outside the homeless shelter people were gathered, a group of men and women with cans of Stella in plastic bags. She kept her head down, walking fast, and heard one of the woman saying something like, ‘Can I borrow your Visa card?’ and they all laughed. Blushing, she buzzed in, wishing she could lose whatever it was about her that so screamed middle-class. Whatever she wore and even if she tried not to say things like ‘Pardon’, they could always spot it a mile off.

The woman who came to meet her, ‘Just call me Trina’, clearly thought Charlotte was middle-class too. Like many of the clientèle she had dreadlocks, even though she was white, and tattoos on her arms. ‘What happened to Irina? We always get Irina.’

‘Er, she went back to Poland, I think.’

‘Oh.’ Trina looked Charlotte up and down. ‘Well, come on.’

She’d moved into the dining room and the noise was so loud Charlotte couldn’t hear her. ‘Pardon?’ Oh, crap.

Trina glared at her. ‘You’re on lunches, I said. Ever been in a homeless shelter?’

‘Course,’ Charlotte lied, following her into the bleach-smelling kitchen. She was a bit sick of people like Trina disapproving of her, to be honest. It wasn’t her fault she’d gone to nice schools, was it?

Lunch was beans, of course, it was always beans, the better to ruin your good Oasis shirt with. It was like any other job, really, putting out bread rolls, ladling gloop, emptying and washing all the massive pots till her hands were raw and stinking of detergent. She tried to be nice, like on every job, smiling and saying, ‘Would you like beans? Bread roll?’

Also like on every job, she was doing everything wrong, apparently. They weren’t allowed butter
and
jam, Trina said. She shouldn’t smile at them. ‘It’ll create attachment. They need boundaries, yeah?’

A great queue of people passed her ladle of beans, skinny shaking men (drugs, abuse), loud women with dirty hair and no teeth (drink, family breakdown). After an hour her hand ached and her face was sweating. All in all, a long way from happy Charlotte Miller, the girl who’d gone to the club that night just a few months ago. About to be married, so happy she was sure the world ought to spin round on her axis. So it wouldn’t be surprising if someone who’d seen her before didn’t recognise her. But then, she didn’t know him either, not really. After all, she’d only seen him in a blurred picture from a phone, and maybe, once, pushing past her into an alley.

He was far down the end of a long straggling line, when Charlotte was long past gagging at the smells of bad breath and unwashed clothes, and had already lost all feeling in her hand from ladling. ‘Beans or sweetcorn?’ She wasn’t even looking up. ‘Beans or sweetcorn?’ A bit more impatient this time, since there were still about twenty people waiting.

The man on the other side was thin, and had a shaved head, but he didn’t have that engrained grime of the streets, the teeth rotting and falling out. Trina had said not everyone who came to eat was on the streets; sometimes they were ‘experiencing negative financial situations’. She really did say things like that.

‘So . . . beans?’ She tried again. The guy’s hands were trembling, maybe he was a druggie. He was staring at her and she began to feel uncomfortable. Maybe Trina was right about not being too nice. His eyes were very blue, she noticed. Had she seen them before somewhere?

‘Naw . . . naw. Sorry.’ Muttering, he pushed out of the line, spilling some of his tea onto the floor.

Charlotte looked round at the hovering Trina, who was tutting at the spillage. ‘Someone’ll have to clean that up, it’s against health and safety.’

‘What was all that about?’

‘Who knows?’ Trina was dialling for cleaners. ‘Had a guy once who thought I was his mother. Convinced of it, he was. Never mind, just get the rest served.’

The thing was, she thought she’d seen him somewhere before. That smell, like sweat but something sweeter, a type of cologne. She’d smelled it before. It stood out among the reek of boiled food and unwashed clothes like a streak of glitter in the air. When she’d finished serving and went to clear the dirty plates, she searched the room for the guy with blue eyes. But there was no sign of him at all.

The next thing that happened was Sarah came.

Charlotte was exhausted after her shift at the homeless shelter. On top of the usual bodily tiredness she had from every job, aching right down her back and into her feet, there was something else. She had never understood just how much hopelessness there was in the world. So many people with hands shaking, eyes staring, teeth falling out. And what was she even doing in that place? She’d been to a good university. Her father worked in banking. Just two months ago she’d had a job in shiny offices a stone’s throw from the shelter. From the place where all hope had drained away like fat down the sink.

Charlotte dragged herself off the tube, then stopped. It was afternoon, the days long and gentle, summer at its height. Had she heard something? She paused at the turning to her street and looked over her shoulder. She could have sworn she’d heard footsteps.

The road was empty behind her, a summer breeze rustling in the trees. But she thought of the man with the blue eyes, and walked quickly away. There was something about his smell – why couldn’t she remember?

She reached her flat bone-weary and scrabbled around in her bag for the keys. She noticed that the strap on her Mulberry bag, so lovely when new, was fraying from being scuffed around on kitchen floors and bundled into staff lockers. Was it hopeless for her too? Or did having a trial date mean hope of Dan’s release? Ten years at least, he’d said. And although DC Hegarty hadn’t told her much about his visit, she guessed Dan hadn’t been in a good way then either.

Keisha was in the kitchen when she went in, yawning and boiling the kettle. Charlotte registered that she was still in her work T-shirt.

‘You’re late back,’ Charlotte said. ‘It’s three o’clock.’

Keisha didn’t meet her eyes. ‘You wanted me to hang about, didn’t you? The boss, he’s showing me cooking.’

‘That’s this Ronald guy? The brother?’

‘Huh? Yeah.’ Keisha fiddled with the tea bags.

Charlotte thought of the man with blue eyes, and considered for a moment telling Keisha. But what was the point in scaring her? It was no one, just some loser, just her imagination. ‘Listen. Dan’s trial date’s through. It’s in October.’

Keisha stopped with a mug in her hand. ‘So what now?’

Charlotte sat down on the sofa, struggling under the weight of it all. The hopelessness. It was like she’d carried it home on her skin. ‘Need to find a lawyer, persuade Dan to plead Not Guilty . . . And your statement.’

The kettle shut off with a snap and Keisha poured the water out, ignoring Charlotte. ‘You want one of your smelly perfume teas?’

Christ, it was never going to end. She’d be forty and still here in this flat, with Keisha moaning about the tea bags. ‘I need your statement.’

‘Eh?’

‘Keisha – will you just stop for a second? It’s been months now. Are you going to help or not? Can you not even just write it down, to have like a dossier?’

‘A what-ier?’

Charlotte glared at her – she knew by now that Keisha was about ten times quicker than she acted. ‘You want Ruby back, don’t you?’

‘You know I do. For fuck’s sake. S’complicated.’

‘Well, then you have to tell your side. Explain about Chris. We should both write down everything we know, before we forget. Look, they won’t want to keep Ruby, will they? Not if they think it’s OK to turf her back to you. Cheaper, isn’t it?’

Keisha narrowed her eyes. ‘She’s safe where she is,’ she muttered. ‘Anyway, you still didn’t tell me what you saw that night.’

Charlotte pushed away the thought of the man. ‘I told you, it’s hazy.’

‘Just seems weird, you still wouldn’t remember, after all this time.’

‘Well, that’s how it is. Come on. PR them a bit,’ said Charlotte, handing her a pen. ‘I don’t know much, but I know how to do this.’

That was when Sarah arrived. They weren’t expecting anyone – obviously, no one ever dropped in on you in London. So when the buzzer went, Charlotte’s heart thumped, thinking of the paint on her step, the footsteps behind her . . .

Keisha froze too. ‘Who’s that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, get it.’

‘Hello? Hello?’ Charlotte’s heart slowed when she heard Sarah’s bossy tones on the intercom. Then she thought,
Oh crap, Mum’s sent her to check up on me
. She buzzed the door open and peered down as Sarah climbed the stairs. ‘What are you doing here? What a surprise.’

Her step-sister stomped up and hugged her efficiently. She was in her cycling gear and carrying her ugly helmet under one arm. ‘Gail said she called here and some girl answered. You know, she worries.’

Keisha was managing to blend into the cupboards. ‘Er, yeah. That was me.’

‘Keesh, this is my step-sister,’ Charlotte said. ‘Sarah, Keisha’s staying with me. She’s like, a friend.’ A friend? Flatmate? How the hell would you explain what it was that brought them together? Sarah was looking at Keisha in an imperious way that was about five seconds from pissing her right off, Charlotte could see. ‘Keisha just made some tea.’

Sarah was peering round the flat. ‘I’ll take mint, thanks. Did you get rid of your cleaner or something, Char?’

‘Sarah – sit down, will you? I just heard that Dan’s trial date’s come through.’

‘I know. That’s why I came.’ Sarah plonked down her helmet and Keisha brought the mint tea, at arm’s length.

Of course, Sarah always knew everything through work, that was her thing. And bloody annoying it was too. ‘How was Bangladesh?’

‘Hot. Smelly.’ Sarah kept staring at Keisha, blowing on the tea to cool it. She swallowed, and made a face. ‘Hard to go back after real mint tea.’

Charlotte didn’t dare look at Keisha. ‘Work’s OK?’ That was usually good for a half-hour rant.

‘Don’t have time to draw breath, as per. One a.m. I got home last night.’

Once Charlotte had tried to play this game with Sarah, totting up how many extra hours she did and how busy and important she was. Now, through Keisha’s eyes, she saw how stupid it was. She raised her eyebrows at Keisha in a silent apology. ‘Listen, now you’re here, Sarah, I had an idea. The trial’s coming up, and there’ll probably be a lot of media interest, yeah?’

‘Yep. It’s on our calendar.’

‘So, I was thinking about doing some counter-PR. To tell my side. I know you’re not allowed to be biased about the case, but you could interview me, couldn’t you?’

Sarah put down her cup barely touched. ‘Is that such a good idea? Dan’ll be crucified by the press. Everyone hates bankers just now. They blame them for the recession. Even us – we laid off twenty reporters last month. And for God’s sake, he killed a black guy. You must see. Gail said you already got fired over it, and most of your friends won’t talk to you.’

‘I didn’t get fired. And he’s not been convicted, so can you please not say he killed someone?’

Sarah was giving her a pitying look. ‘They have his prints, and the CCTV. I’m sorry, but you need to face it. Didn’t he tell you himself to let him go?’

With difficulty, Charlotte kept her voice calm. ‘Keisha was there that night. She’s got evidence. Really, we don’t think Dan did it.’

‘Hmm. So that’s why she’s here.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Finally Keisha spoke, from where she was backed into the kitchen corner.

Sarah laughed. ‘Nothing. Just that Gail may have been right for once.’

Charlotte said, ‘Sarah, please . . . I need your help. Please help me. It’s Dan, for God’s sake. You know Dan.’

‘OK.’ Sarah sighed. ‘Bloody hell. Send me what you have and I’ll see. But I can’t go out on a limb, OK? Even for you, I can’t.’

Charlotte felt awful. ‘I know. I know. But I have to at least try, do you not see that?’

‘I suppose.’ Sarah patted her shoulder awkwardly. ‘We just hate to see you do all this for him, when he might be a killer. Your job, Charlotte! Doesn’t that matter to you? I mean, are you really working as a waitress now?’