‘I haven’t seen you since . . . well, since the trial,’ Brian said.
Jamie took a deep breath. Should he tell his former upstairs neighbour that he had been homeless for a while? That he had finally found a place at a hostel and got a job, rented a bedsit?
Should he tell him about his obsession?
‘I set up my own business,’ he said. ‘Online security. And I figured I could run it from anywhere in the world – all I need is my laptop and an internet connection – so why not live somewhere beautiful?’
Somewhere beautiful on the edge of the earth. About as far from Britain as it was possible to get.
Brian raised his pint. ‘That’s great. And is there . . . Is there anyone special in your life?’
‘It’s just me.’
‘Young, free and single, eh? I’m envious.’
‘Sounds like you’re doing pretty well.’
Brian waved a hand. ‘Ah, I’m doing okay. I got lucky with the last book. Do you know, they tried to get me to dress up like some kind of street magician? I wasn’t allowed to be seen out without a black hat.’ He frowned. ‘Maybe that’s where I went wrong today.’
‘You wrote a book about us, didn’t you?’ Jamie tried to keep his voice neutral, not wanting to reveal how much pain that book, One For Sorrow, had caused him. Brian had made him seem like a massive wimp who eventually went nuts, a kind of suburban Rambo without the muscles or the big gun. But a lot of it had been horribly accurate. The psychological torture inflicted by the Newtons. The surveillance and invasion of privacy. The miscarriage.
Brian cringed. ‘I tried to contact you, Jamie. I wanted to check you were okay about it. I mean, I changed all the names.’
‘Yeah, you called me Joshua.’
Brian lifted his eyebrows. ‘You read it?’
‘Of course. It was impossible to resist. I particularly enjoyed the part where Chris – or Craig, as you called him – burned to death.’
Brian squirmed in his seat.
‘I enjoyed the sex scenes too,’ Jamie said, deadpan. ‘Brought back happy memories.’
‘Jamie, I’m—’
He decided to let Brian off the hook. ‘I’m messing with you. I actually thought it was a great book. I was flattered.’
He didn’t tell Brian that he’d burned his copy shortly after finishing it.
‘I often wonder if Lucy read it,’ Brian said.
‘Probably. She’s a narcissist.’ Jamie took a big gulp of beer. His pint glass was almost empty already. ‘I bet she reads everything written about her.’
‘You know . . . You know she’s got a book out too?’
‘Yeah. An Innocent Woman.’ He was unable to keep the disgust out of his voice. ‘Have you read it?’
‘No. I was going to buy it, just to see what lies she told, but Linda advised me against it. She said it was time to move on.’
‘Linda always talked a lot of sense.’
‘You haven’t read it, have you?’
‘No.’ That was the truth, though he’d been tempted many times. He’d found himself on the book’s Amazon page, his cursor hovering over the 1-Click button. He knew that if he bought it and read it, it would be like falling off the wagon. Going back down that dark tunnel.
‘I wouldn’t want to give her the royalties,’ he said, finishing his pint.
‘Let me get you another.’
Jamie stopped him. ‘I’d better not. I need to get back. I’ve got a couple of business calls to make.’
Brian appeared to swallow the lie. ‘Oh. Okay.’
They left the pub. The sun was going down, twilight creeping through the still-busy streets. When Jamie first moved here, the autumn weather surprised him. It would be blazing hot during the day, like the finest summer day in England, then darkness would fall at teatime. He liked it. Some nights, after a bottle or two of wine, he found himself wandering along the beach beneath the moonlight, feeling truly that he had reached the end of the earth. There was nothing here to remind him of all he’d lost.
Nothing until today.
And Brian wasn’t finished yet.
As they were about to part, Brian said, ‘I saw Kirsty a while back.’
This wasn’t just stroking the scar. This was jabbing at it.
Brian went on. ‘I had to go into hospital for a check-up and saw her when I was coming out. In her uniform.’
So she was still a nurse.
‘How . . . How was she?’
‘We only spoke briefly but she seemed fine. In good spirits. She said she needed to get home to her daughter. Something about the childminder . . . I got the impression she’s a single parent.’
‘Oh.’
The last Jamie heard, Kirsty was with some loser called Andrew. There had been times during the hard years when he’d looked Kirsty up on Facebook. She had her privacy settings pretty high but her current profile photo was of her and a pretty little girl who was unmistakably Kirsty’s daughter. She had her mother’s almond-shaped eyes, the same thick, dark hair. Jamie had to tear his gaze away, unable to resist the idea that his and Kirsty’s daughter would have looked just like this.
If Lucy and Chris hadn’t murdered her.
‘She gave me her phone number,’ Brian said, tilting his head, apparently studying Jamie to gauge his reaction. Jamie swallowed again as Brian took out his mobile. ‘It’s on here. Would you like it? If you give me your number I’ll forward hers to you.’
He shouldn’t. He mustn’t. It would be a terrible mistake to contact Kirsty. It would undo all the years of recovery.
He had to say no.
‘Yes, please,’ he heard himself saying. ‘That would be great.’
Two
Jamie drank three more beers when he got back to his apartment, hoping it would knock him out, but sleep was an impossibility. He searched his bedside cabinet for sleeping pills but he’d taken the last one months ago.
Why had Brian had to come here? Why did Jamie have to stop outside the book shop, go for a drink with him?
Why did he have to accept Kirsty’s number?
He sat up in bed and picked up his phone, staring at the new contact. Kirsty Phillips. Her maiden name – he knew from Facebook she’d ditched her married name.
It was 2 a.m. here so it would be 7 p.m. in London. What would Kirsty be doing right now? Putting her daughter to bed, reading her a story? The little girl would be, what, four now?
He wondered if Kirsty ever thought about him or if he was, in the words of that song, just somebody that she used to know. Even now, five years after he’d chosen to stay in the flat rather than go with her, choosing pride over love, he missed her. Last week he’d read that U2 were touring and thought ‘I must tell Kirsty’. Occasionally, a certain scent – lavender was the worst – threw him back in time and he would look round, expecting to see her. Spiders, too, reminded him of her. He smiled. She’d hate Australia.
He dreamed about her too. Sometimes they were scenes from the past which made him wake with a pang of yearning. More often, though, he dreamed of the future they never had, the family that never was.
And although it made him sad, he liked thinking about Kirsty, remembering the times they’d had. Thinking about Kirsty wasn’t a problem – the problem was what it led to.