SIX

There was loud music and laughter outside on Holloway Road, as if there was a slightly sinister late-night street party going on. Somebody was clapping wildly. A car horn blared. The hot air held all the smells of the night together: spice, frying onions, exhaust fumes, patchouli, garlic, cinnamon, and the unexpected drift of roses. Occasionally a feeble twitch of wind fluttered the half-open curtains through the wide-open window, but otherwise the heat was thick and deep and saturated. It was the middle of the night but there were no stars, no moon, only the street lamps that cast a dirty orange glow round the room. And noise. People. Cars. I felt for a moment I’d like to be out in the middle of a forest or desert or on the open sea.

I didn’t close my eyes. I looked at Fred and he looked back, slightly smiling, sure of himself, while the sweat from his forehead dripped on my face, my neck, and our hands slipped on each other’s drenched bodies. He was still strange to me: his high forehead, full mouth; his long, slim, smooth, rather soft body. Even after an evening of dancing and then sex he smelled clean, yeasty. Lemon soap and earth, grass and beer. I pulled the damp sheet off us and he stretched out on the narrow bed and put his arms under his head and grinned at me.

“That was nice,” I whispered.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You’re not meant to say that,” I said. “You’re meant to say something like, Yes, it was nice.”

He shook his head.

“Have you ever had sex that’s as good as that?”

I couldn’t help giggling. “Are you serious? You want me to say, Oh, Fred, I never realized it could be like this.”

“Shut up. Shut the fuck up.”

I looked at him. He wasn’t smiling. I’d hurt his feelings. He looked humiliated and angry. Men.

I sat up, legs crossed, shook two cigarettes out of the pack lying on the floor, lit them both, and handed one to him.

“I’ve never had sex with a gardener before.”

He took a drag and blew a perfect smoke ring into the air, where it hung for a second before dissolving.

“I’m not a gardener. I garden. I help out.”

“Like: I’m not a teacher, I teach?”

He blew another smoke ring and watched it.

“You’re a teacher. I’ll be out of this job as soon as I can.”

“Oh.” I felt a surge of resentment. “Thanks a lot. Well, have you had sex with a teacher?”

He raised his eyebrows at me. His face broke into a leer.

“Never with a famous teacher.”

I didn’t want to think about that. All evening I’d been drinking and giggling and dancing and getting stoned and trying not to think. I’d had enough of stupid jokes about watermelons, and of newspaper articles calling me petite, blond Zoe, and weird letters on the doormat. Of people whom I’d never met thinking about me, having fantasies about me. Maybe there was someone standing outside the flat at this moment, looking up at my open window, waiting for Fred to go. I felt completely sober now.

I dropped my cigarette into the glass by the bed and heard it sizzle.

“Those last letters…”

“Ignore them,” Fred said briskly. He closed his eyes. “What are you doing this weekend?”

“They scared me. They were… oh, I don’t know, purposeful.”

“Mmm.” He stroked my hair lightly. “We were thinking of a picnic on Saturday. Out of town. Want to come?”

“Do you do everything as a group?”

He leaned down and kissed me on my breasts. “I can manage some things on my own. And what’s the problem?”

“Nothing.” There was a silence. “Would you stay the night, Fred? I mean the whole night. If you’d like to, that is.”

It was as if I’d told him there was a bomb under the pillow. His eyes snapped open and he sat up.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got to be at some old lady’s house near Wimbledon first thing tomorrow.” He stepped into his boxer shorts, his cotton trousers. God, what a speedy dresser he was. Shirt on, buttons done up, socks, shoes from under the bed, patting his pockets to make sure his change was in there. Jacket from the back of the chair.

“Your watch,” I said dryly.

“Thanks. Shit, look at the time. I’ll ring you tomorrow, make plans.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t worry about things.” He ran his hands over my face, kissed me on the neck. “Beautiful woman. Good night.”

“Bye.”

After he’d left I got up and closed the living room window, in spite of the dense heat. The room felt more claustrophobic than ever. I looked out at Holloway Road. It would be light in a few hours. I checked the landing window, which I’d already checked several times that evening, got my watch from the bathroom: 1:45. If only it were morning already. I was tired, but not sleepy, and time creeps when you’re scared. My sweat prickled on my skin, suddenly chilly, and I picked up the sheet from the floor and wiped down my body with it, before wrapping myself up in its thin folds and lighting another cigarette. I wished I had tea in the flat. Maybe there was some whiskey somewhere. I went into the kitchen and pulled a chair up to the high cupboard. There were a load of empty bottles, which one day I was going to take to the bottle bank, and no whiskey. But there was some peppermint liqueur that a parent had given me at Christmas and I’d never touched. I poured a slug of it into a mug that had lost its handle; it was green and viscous and cloyingly sweet, and rolled in a burning ball down my throat.

“Ugh,” I said out loud, and noticed suddenly how quiet it had become; just the occasional minor earthquake of a passing lorry, the slap of someone’s feet passing under the window. It was 2:15.

I shuffled to the bathroom in my sheet; cleaned my teeth and splashed water on my hot face. Then I lay down in bed and tried not to think about it. I couldn’t help it. I turned over the two last letters in my mind. The first, of course, I’d thrown away. But I remembered most of it. The second I had put on my desk. The police obviously weren’t convinced it was by the same person; I knew it was. They weren’t treating it seriously; they didn’t know how it felt to be a woman lying alone in a shabby flat on Holloway Road, fearing there was someone out there, watching.

Despite myself, I got out the letter and read it again, lying in bed. I knew this man had looked at me; I mean, really looked at me. He’d seen things that even I hadn’t bothered to notice about myself: like the stained finger. He was learning me, the way we never learn even lovers. Maybe he was memorizing me, like for an exam. He’d been in here, I knew he had, whatever the police said, and looked at my things, touched them. Maybe he’d gone through letters, photographs, clothes. He might have taken things away. He’d seen me asleep. He wanted to see inside me, he said. Not be, see. I felt nauseous, but maybe that was just the peppermint liqueur, which still lined the inside of my mouth like glue, and the drink I’d had earlier, and the sweaty sex, and the tiredness, and-oh fuck it.

I closed my eyes and put one arm over them so I was in complete darkness. London crouched outside my window, full of eyes. I heard a drop of rain, then another. My mind wouldn’t stop; I couldn’t make it slow down. I went over and over the letter in my mind.

“As I said before”: That was the funny thing. What was it? He would like to see inside me. As he had said before. But he hadn’t said it before, had he? I tried to reconstruct the first letter, the one I’d thrown away, in my mind. I could remember only fragments. But I would have remembered. What could that mean?

A thought stirred, something I wished I could ignore. I sat up, dry-mouthed, swung my legs out of bed, and went into the living room, where I dragged the cardboard box out from under the sofa. There were dozens of letters in there, some not even opened. This could take ages. I went back into the bedroom, pulled on my tatty old tracksuit; then I poured myself another horrible mug of the liqueur, lit a cigarette, and began.