Читать книгу White Bodies: A gripping psychological thriller for fans of Clare Mackintosh and Lisa Jewell - Jane Robins, Jane Robins - Страница 14

7

After our disastrous meeting in Regent’s Park, during the following days and weeks, I make calls to check that Tilda’s okay, but her phone is switched permanently to voicemail and with the deepening silence I find myself sinking, constantly worrying about her emotional state. I suppose I’m becoming obsessed, because it’s often the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning. I’m now convinced that Felix is hurting Tilda, physically and psychologically, and while walking to work I invent ways of spiriting her away from him; then, after work, I regularly go online to the controllingmen website to join in the forums, to discuss emotional abuse and coercive behaviours. I even dream about Tilda, specifically about rescuing her, like mothers dream of rescuing their babies from raging fires or angry seas and I repeatedly find myself under water, grabbing her hair with one hand and using the other to swim against the downward force of an almighty current. It’s exhausting.

Occasionally I take the bus into town and spend time at the Caffè Copernicus on Curzon Street, across the road from her flat. I’m not spying on her exactly, it’s more that it feels good to be close. I fantasise that she might need me in some emergency that’s more serious than a few bruises on her arms, and I sit in a favourite spot by the window, which has an uninterrupted view of Tilda’s front door and of the sitting-room windows up on the second floor. Not that anything ever happens. The new blinds stay down, and there’s no hint of what’s going on behind them, so that I’m left with my thoughts drifting off in alarming directions. I find myself concocting bizarre plans for escaping from the flat – jumping out of the bedroom window at the back, for instance, with a glass roof to break the fall rather than risking the long drop from the sitting room to the concrete below.

I haven’t seen Tilda at all and I’m hoping that the day will come when she’ll confide in me and allow me to help her. In the meantime, I stay focussed by writing up my observations. I have to admit that the dossier has changed a lot. In past years it was like an occasional notebook, just recording this and that about Tilda and I’d return to it when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed by her, or she’d said something to upset me. But now I’m writing it almost every day on my laptop, and it’s focussed as much on Felix as on her. I’ve found it useful to make an inventory of all his odd and sinister behaviour, writing more about the way he was tidying all her cupboards when I first met him, the vitamin jabs, that I accepted back then but now seem totally bizarre; the way he organised a holiday without consulting her at all and then had his builders do heaven-knows-what to her flat. And, even worse, the signs of violence – holding her under the water that day on the Thames, those bruises on her arms, and just the way she looks now. Sort of battered and gaunt. And that’s what I’m doing today – re-working my files – and adding my thoughts on how he is isolating Tilda, keeping her from me.

I’m the only customer in the café, so I don’t have any distractions, and I work quietly for half an hour or so, making my hot chocolate last a long time, and taking small bites from a banana that I’ve brought from home. Then I shut my laptop and pick up my book, the Scandinavian crime novel called The Artist that I took to Tilda’s flat. It’s about a serial killer who carves clues in his victims’ torsos with a stencil knife and I’m immersed in it; but I glance up, as though prompted by something, a sound or a nudge, and see that, across the street, the front door is opening. I’m mesmerised, because in all the hours I’ve been spending at the Copernicus, that door has remained shut, like an impermeable barrier keeping me out and Tilda in.

I’m in luck and it’s my sister standing on the pavement across the street, masked fleetingly by the passing traffic. I wait, wondering whether Felix will appear. But he doesn’t. It’s just Tilda, looking around her, up and down the street, and at one point it seems that she’s peering through the café window, right at me. In that second I see that her face is kind of hollow, even thinner than when I saw her in the Regent’s Park café; and her brow is furrowed. But I don’t have time to draw any conclusions, because she walks away.

I put three pound coins on the table, stuff the laptop and book into my plastic bag with my remaining half-a-banana, and rush for the exit, crashing my thigh painfully against the corner of a table. I stand in the doorway keeping my eyes on Tilda, who’s heading along the pavement before turning towards Shepherd Market. Now I’m half-running, and I follow her down a narrow path and into a cobbled courtyard, filled with evening sun and packed with office people standing outside pubs, drinking and smoking. Tilda is ten metres in front of me, weaving through the crowd, keeping her head tucked down so that no one recognises her and I catch up just as she dodges into a newsagent’s shop. I wait outside, beside the door so that she can’t see me, and when she leaves I tap her on the shoulder. She jolts like she’s been stung by a wasp.

‘For god’s sake, Callie, what the fuck are you doing?’

I’m not hurt by her reaction. In the circumstances, it’s understandable.

‘I just saw you. I happened to be on Curzon Street, and I saw you come out of the flat… Are you okay? You look worried… Shall we go to a pub and have a proper talk?’

‘No, I can’t. I mean, I’m in a hurry – I needed to buy some fags, but I’ve got to get back.’

I check her face and body for signs. She’s wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt, so I can’t see her arms, and she has a thin, grey cotton scarf round her neck, so a lot’s hidden, but I can see her bony knuckles and bitten nails. Her hair seems to me more straggly and unwashed than usual and I’m caught up in anxiety about her when she surprises me. ‘Look, why don’t I meet you for lunch tomorrow? I’ll come to your bookshop at one, and we’ll go to that pub you talk about, the one round the corner…’

‘Really? You can do that?’

‘Sure I can.’

‘Shall I walk back with you?’

It sounds like an innocent offer, but really it’s a test, and Tilda says, ‘No. Don’t do that.’

She leans forward and touches my cheek with her lips which, by the way, are dried up and chapped. I don’t like the look of them and make a mental note to look up chapped lips later on, to see if they can be a symptom of stress.

‘It’s okay,’ I insist. ‘I can walk back with you.’

‘Don’t bother,’ she says firmly. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ve lots to tell you.’

She stresses the word lots and I wonder whether she’s planning to come clean about Felix.

‘Okay. I’ll go then.’ I return her kiss, and set off through the crowds, turning down White Horse Street to Piccadilly, clamping the plastic bag to my chest.