Watching You (20 page)

R
uiz is sitting at a pavement café in Chelsea waiting for his ex-wife, Miranda, who will be twenty minutes late because 12:30 means 12:50 and everybody knows that except men like Ruiz. They’ve been divorced for eight years, but Miranda still acts like they’re married, choosing Ruiz’s clothes and occasionally letting him sleep with her. The sex is better since they divorced—dirtier and more spontaneous. She’s a good stepmother to the twins, who are grown up now, but still need someone to remind them about family birthdays and anniversaries.

Ruiz scours the menu for something with a carbohydrate. The salads will come drizzled in balsamic and feature strange leaves that look like nettles. The “wedges” are sweet potato and advertised as a “healthy treat.” Why is everybody so determined to help him live longer?

Miranda skips across the street. She’s wearing a mid-length floral skirt and dark blue top with shoestring straps. Her hair is cut shorter than he remembers, brushing her pale shoulders. She moves with such grace and sensuality, her feet barely touch the ground.

The sun is slanting across half the table. Miranda chooses the shade, dropping her handbag on the chair. Leaning forward, she accepts a kiss to each of her cheeks, then holds Ruiz’s face and pecks him on the lips.

As she lowers her arms, he gets a glimpse of exposed skin below her navel before her top slides over her flat stomach. Instantly, he conjures up images of running his tongue down her torso.

“Did you just smell me?” she asks.

“Might have done.”

“That’s creepy.”

“Well, don’t smell so good.”

She rolls her eyes and takes a seat. A waiter appears as if by magic. She contemplates the wine list. He’s looking at the edge of her silken top where it loops beneath her breasts. Ruiz distracts him.

“Do you have any lager on tap?”

“No, sir.”

“Well then, bring me something foreign and over-priced in a bottle.”

Ruiz notices how women at the other tables are taking an interest in him now, whereas five minutes ago he’d been invisible. Why is it that men become more interesting to the opposite sex when they’re with a beautiful woman, but that same woman is treated with suspicion by her peers because she’s considered to be fishing with too much bait in the water?

Miranda orders a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and a chicken salad. She can’t stay long. She’s meeting a friend at John Lewis to help choose a set of curtains.

“How have you been?”

“Good.”

“What have you been working on?”

“Why the sudden interest?”

Miranda runs the tip of her tongue over her upper teeth. “I had a strange phone call this morning. I don’t know how this person got my number.”

“What do you mean ‘strange’?”

“He said he was a friend of yours. I’m supposed to give you a message. Stay away from Marnella Logan.”

“Is that it?”

“The gist of it.”

A basket of bread has been delivered to the table. Ruiz breaks the warm bun apart and decides that not everything about modern restaurants can be faulted.

“Are you sleeping with this woman?” asks Miranda.

“No.”

“So it’s not a jealous husband?”

“I’d like to meet her husband. He’s been missing for more than a year.”

“Who is she?”

“One of the professor’s patients.” Ruiz chews slowly on the bread. “Tell me about this caller?”

“He sounded insolent. Angry.”

“Threatening?”

“Worrying.”

“Did you take down the number?”

“It didn’t show up on the screen.”

Ruiz doesn’t like the idea that somebody knows about the people in his life. It’s something Hennessy would do, but he’s no longer in a position to threaten anyone.

Their meals have arrived. Miranda toys with her salad, occasionally picking up a morsel of chicken or a green leaf. Ruiz looks at his tiny lamb cutlets and wonders if the animal ever gamboled.

Miranda talks easily, asking about the twins, wondering if Claire is thinking about starting a family.

“That would make you a step-grandmother,” says Ruiz.

Miranda frowns momentarily.

“A glamorous one,” he adds.

“Thank you.”

She reaches across the table and picks up one of Ruiz’s wedges, biting it in half.

“I have to go.”

“This is my treat.” He takes out his wallet.

“I’m a cheap date.”

“You were
never
cheap.”

Her laugh is drier than a martini. Ruiz hugs her and holds on this time. “I want you to tell me if you get any more calls.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Just be careful.”

Something fragments in her eyes. Ruiz strokes strands of hair off her neck. Miranda looks directly at him. “Do you ever take your own advice?”

“I’m always careful.”

“Don’t get hurt.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t hurt anyone.”

“If you say so.”

Ruiz decides to walk home along King’s Road, past boutiques, brand stores, and galleries. This is a different world from most of London, full of beautiful people who are beautifully dressed with no word for austerity in their phrasebook.

He cuts north through Parsons Green, stopping at the White Horse for a palate cleanser. His phone is ringing. He doesn’t recognize the number.

“How is your ex-wife?” asks the voice.

“Do you know her?”

“
Everybody
knows her.”

Ruiz is outside, glancing across the green, scanning the street. There is a man with a briefcase and a black umbrella. He’s talking on a mobile phone. A young black kid is waiting to cross at the lights. A motorbike with a broken exhaust waits for the green signal. A white van is parked on the corner.

“She has incredible tits, Miranda. Are they real?”

“All natural.”

“And you divorced her. Are you gay?”

“No, but I could make an exception for you. I’ll shove my foot up your arse. I bet you don’t even jump.” Ruiz is moving, looking into cars, studying pedestrians. He hears a horn sounding: once in his left ear and again through the phone. “How about we talk this over? I’ll buy you a drink.”

“I’m not a drinker.”

The voice is a gentle monotone. Cocky. High-pitched.

“How was your lunch?”

“If you’re hungry…”

“No, I’ve eaten.”

“What should I call you?”

“You don’t need to know my name.”

“Make it easier.”

“That’s not on my list of priorities, you just need to listen. I want you stop putting your nose into other people’s business.”

“Pot, kettle, black,” says Ruiz, who is walking toward Parsons Green station.

“I’m only saying you should look after things at home before you insert yourself in someone’s life. A pretty ex-wife, a daughter in Primrose Hill, retirement, you have a nice thing going. Leave Marnie Logan alone.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Why so antagonistic? That time of the month?”

“Full moon.”

“You should tell your friend the psychologist to do the same. He’s not helping Marnie.”

Ruiz can hear a train rattling above his head. Scratching steel. He looks up at the overhead bridge. A train is pulling into the station. Swirls of graffiti cover the windows. That’s where the voice is coming from. The platform.

He leaps the barrier and sprints up the stairs, forcing his way past the people streaming toward the exit. He stumbles, holds out his hand. Someone steps on his fingers. He wrenches his hand free and rights himself. The doors are closing. He can’t get his fingers in the join. He hammers on the glass. The train is moving. He runs along the platform, trying to keep up, peering into the windows.

The last carriage passes him and disappears toward Putney Bridge and onwards to Wimbledon. Holding his mobile to his ear, he listens to the dead air.

He calls Miranda. She’s shopping in John Lewis. He can hear laughter and voices.

“Are you missing me already?” she asks.

“That call you got this morning—the guy who said he was a friend of mine?”

“Yes.”

“He called me when you left.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think you should go home.”

She chuckles down the line. “Are you trying to get me to spend the night with you?”

“I’m serious. He knows about you and Claire.”

There is a long pause. “I thought you retired from all this.”

“What?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m doing a favor for Joe O’Loughlin. I owe the guy.”

“No you don’t. You owe me. You owe your family.”

“It seemed harmless.”

“And now it’s not…” She makes an audible tut-tut sound. “I was a parole officer, Vincent. I’ve dealt with my share of freaks. I have deadlocks on the doors, locks on the windows, mace, and a panic button. I think I can handle myself.”

Ruiz remembers the post-mortem photographs of Patrick Hennessy and wants to argue, but he decides not to frighten Miranda. She’s angry with him, but at least she’ll be careful.

“Can you talk to Claire?” he asks.

“Why not you?”

“She’ll take it better.”

“Coward.”

“Guilty as charged.”

She hangs up. Ruiz clenches the phone in his hand and descends to street level. He retraces his steps and stops at the White Horse, nursing a pint in the outside courtyard. He has had his cage rattled by pros, but it’s been years since a disembodied voice on the other end of a telephone made his pulse quicken and mouth go dry. For some reason this caller has struck a discordant note that hums in his mind, making him feel uncomfortable. Vulnerable.

His mobile rings again. His heart skips. He sets down his pint glass and looks at the screen. Answers.

“Hey, pal, where have you been?”

“We need to talk,” says Joe.

“You just read my mind.”

Z
oe sits on the steps of the library, her thumbs moving on a mobile phone that is nestled in her cupped hands. Dressed in a black skirt, white blouse, and black school blazer, the knot of her tie is pulled down and her top button undone.

She looks at the time. He’s late. A bus pulls up opposite. A dozen students pile out, pushing between shoulders. They go to another school. Belong to another tribe. Zoe doesn’t make eye contact, but watches just the same. Ruben is the last person to get off the bus. He crosses the road and stands two steps below her. She keeps her knees together, tucking her skirt beneath her upper thighs, self-consciously.

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

“Have you been waiting long?”

Zoe shakes her head.

“You seem upset. Is everything all right?”

She nods, not wanting to meet his eyes.

“Any luck finding your dad?”

Zoe looks at him. “How did you know…?”

“I saw you updating your website at the library.”

“No news.”

“How long has he been missing?”

“Over a year.”

Zoe takes a lip-gloss from the zipped pocket of her school satchel and paints the stick across her lips. She’s trying hard to be cool, but doesn’t like the way he looks at her. It’s as if he knows what she’s thinking or what she’s going to say before she even decides to speak. And his eyes seem to be laughing at her, but not in a cruel way.

“Did you bring the laptop?”

He nods. “Did you tell your mother about it?”

“No.”

He takes it from a pouch. It’s not new or sleek, but neither is it old and boxy.

“It’s got a fast processor and four megabytes of RAM. I’ve cleared my stuff off the hard drive. If you come across anything I missed, just delete it. It doesn’t have a password. Where do you live?”

Zoe hesitates. “Up the road.”

“You should be able to find an unsecured network, or you can use your mobile phone as a hotspot. Don’t download any big files or surf the web for too long or your data bills are going to bankrupt your mother.”

“What do you do, Ruben?”

“I’m an analyst.”

“What do you analyze?”

“People. Companies. Countries.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“It has its moments.”

“Really?”

“No.”

Zoe laughs. She can’t tell when he’s being serious.

He changes the subject. “I could move your page higher on the search engines so it reaches more people.”

“How do you do that?”

“I link it to other sites.”

“What would I have to do?” she asks.

“Let me be an administrator for the website.”

“That’s all?”

“Yep.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I’m a dangerous pervert who preys on teenage girls.”

Zoe looks at him. “Yeah, right!”

When she gets home, Zoe goes straight to her room and slides the bolt across her door. She opens the laptop on her bed and waits for the operating system to load. Then she searches for an unsecured wireless connection. There are so many flats in the vicinity she discovers nearly twenty wi-fi networks. Two of them are open. Zoe thanks them for their generosity and gets herself online, calling up her Facebook page and updating her status, before setting up bookmarks for her favorite sites. The laptop has a built-in webcam. Zoe turns it on and poses, pulling funny faces and taking photographs. She posts one on her Twitter page, telling people that she’s “plugged in and connected.”

A message pops up on screen from her friend Steph, who has been teasing Zoe about Ryan Coleman, but not in a nasty or jealous way.

Zoe types back:

T
he consultant has maroon-colored trousers, two-tone shoes and tight coppery clown hair. A bright red bow tie completes the ensemble. His name is Dr. Cole and he moves across the consulting room like a robot, jerking his mechanical arms. Elijah laughs and wants him to do it again.

“Only if you tell me what you had for breakfast,” says the doctor, talking like an android. “And how often you poop? And if it hurts?”

Elijah laughs at the word poop.

Dr. Cole lifts the boy’s arms and legs, looking for skin rashes on his elbows and knees. He presses Elijah’s abdomen, making him giggle.

“Open your mouth.”

Elijah opens wide, dimples creasing his cheeks.

“Wow, I can see all the way to your toes. Wiggle them for me.”

Elijah wiggles.

“Now jump down and step on the scales.”

Elijah looks down at the glowing red digits between his feet. “How much do I cost?”

“It tells me how big you’ve grown.”

“Am I bigger?”

“You’re getting there.”

Marnie is sitting on a chair next to the desk, feeling as though she’s holding her heart in her clammy hands. She can see the river from the window. It triggers a memory of Niall Quinn. She pushes it away and concentrates on the doctor’s face, trying to read his thoughts.

Dr. Cole produces a bag of jellybeans from behind Elijah’s ear, making it seem like a magic trick. Afterwards, Marnie takes Elijah to the reception area where they keep a box of toys and books. She goes back to see the doctor, preparing herself for bad news.

Dr. Cole begins using medical terms and Marnie tries to concentrate. Then she hears the word biopsy and her mind starts to scream.

“We’ll take a tissue sample by inserting a long thin tube called an endoscope through Elijah’s mouth and stomach, into the small intestine. We’ll sedate him first. The results will tell us if the villi in his small intestine are still being damaged.”

“But I’ve changed his diet.”

“It might be something else.”

“Like what?”

“That’s what we’ll try to find out.”

“When?”

He studies his desk calendar, turning the pages. “How about the twenty-fourth of October?”

“But that’s weeks away.”

“It’s the best I can do.”

Marnie stares at him glumly. She doesn’t want cheerful reassurance. She wants a healthy little boy. The consultant has another patient waiting. Elijah gets a helium balloon as an extra reward. Marnie ties it to his wrist so it won’t drift away. On the journey home, she tries to pretend that everything is normal when she fears nothing will
ever
be normal again. Her life is crumbling and she’s holding it together like a child protecting a sandcastle from the waves.

Halfway down Elgin Avenue she senses someone following her. Gripping Elijah’s hand a little tighter, she crosses the road. When he stumbles on the curb, she lifts him upright before he falls. Someone calls her name. She turns. Penny’s husband is standing beneath a tree, waiting for a break in the traffic.

“We need to talk,” he shouts.

Marnie has been squeezing Elijah’s hand too tightly. He wants to pull away. She bends and kisses his fingers.

Keegan catches up to her. Short and overweight with the makings of an extra chin, he has a mouth that creases permanently downwards. He has always struck Marnie as the sort of man who suspects that everybody else is happier than he is, with more money, better friends, and more fruitful lives.

Instead of kissing Marnie on each cheek, he grabs her arms, pushing Elijah aside, spilling his sweets. The Winnie the Pooh balloon bobs jerkily on his wrist.

“Is she
my
daughter?” he yells.

A fleck of spit lands on Marnie’s cheek. “What?” she asks.

“Abigail…Is she mine?”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“Please tell me.”

His bottom lip is quivering and his voice sounds almost comedy posh. Penny must have told him about Daniel. Maybe she feared that Marnie would say something first. Payback. Friendship means nothing anymore.

“Penny said she was drunk and Daniel took advantage of her. I’d kill the bastard if he was still around.”

“Grow up, Keegan,” says Marnie. “It takes two to have an affair and we both know what Penny used to be.”

“And we both know what
you
are now.”

Marnie wants to slap him like she slapped Penny, but Elijah is watching. His jellybeans are scattered on the concrete path among the acorn husks. Marnie bends and begins picking them up. They’ll have to be thrown away.

“I’ll get you some more. You don’t like the black ones anyway.”

“I was going to give them to my friend.”

“He doesn’t need your sweets, baby.”

Despite being matron of honor at Penny’s wedding, Marnie barely knows Keegan. Once or twice she and Penny had organized weekend breaks to the country, but Daniel and Keegan usually hung out together while Penny and Marnie enjoyed spa treatments. Keegan once invited Daniel on a shooting weekend at a Scottish estate. Daniel didn’t like guns, but Keegan wanted to impress the host by bringing a hotshot journalist along.

“I warned Daniel to stay away from Penny.”

“What?”

“He was always flirting with her. Undressing her with his eyes. Brushing up against her.”

“That’s a lie.”

“You think he’s so perfect.” Malice curls the corners of his words. “On our hunting weekend, Daniel bragged about shagging some photographer at the paper whenever they went abroad. Said she went off like a firecracker.”

Marnie remembers a photographer called Jill Edridge who often traveled with Daniel. Small, pixie-faced, she dressed like a man and was always lurching around under the weight of her camera bag. Daniel talked about her being gay. Marnie can’t picture them together: Penny, yes, but not Jill Edridge.

Keegan is trying to hurt her because he feels betrayed.
Join the club, you arsehole, we’ve
both
been betrayed!

Straightening up, Marnie wipes her hands on her jeans. “Is that why you came here, Keegan, to hurt me? Or maybe you just like beating yourself up.”

They look at each other, sharing a moment of bleak futility. Elijah tugs at Marnie’s hand, wanting to go home. Keegan seems to deflate, sitting on a low wall, his anger having blown out like a passing squall. “Can you tell me something honestly,” he asks. “Am I really that hard to like?”

“Penny loves you…so does Abigail.”

“How do
you
feel about me? Do I make your skin crawl?”

“No.”

“You didn’t remember me,” he says. “We met years ago…way before I started seeing Penny. You were interning at the advertizing agency. One of my friends was opening a bar in Covent Garden. You came along with one of the account managers.”

“I remember the bar,” says Marnie.

“I talked to you. It was before you met Daniel. You came right out and told me about Zoe. I thought you were testing me—to see if I was the type of guy who would run at the first mention of you being a single mother. I asked for your phone number.”

“Did I give it to you?”

He smiles sadly. “You gave me a fake one. I thought maybe I just had a digit wrong, but I tried a dozen different combinations. Then I realized what you’d done.”

Marnie grimaces slightly. It’s the sort of thing she used to do. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it,” he shrugs. “I was just another guy in a bar trying to chat you up.”

“It wasn’t like that. Why didn’t you say anything before now?”

“Say what? I once bought you a drink and you blew me off.”

“I don’t remember it.”

“That’s exactly right. I bet you were the same when you were at school—just like Penny: pretty, popular, cruel…”

“I wasn’t like that,” says Marnie.

Keegan chews at the inside of his cheek as though trying to draw blood. “She married me for my money, I know that.”

“Penny loves you.”

“She loves the lifestyle I provide: the holidays, the Botox injections, the frocks and spa treatments.”

“Have some faith.”

“Faith in what?”

“People.”

“I would have looked after you.”

“I don’t
need
looking after.”