Ли Чайлд - Belfast Noir

The bathroom is full—just humming—with Mr. Knox. There’s his dressing gown hung on the back of the door, his electric razor on the side of the sink, his can of Lynx deodorant on the windowsill. There’s his toothbrush in a mug, and there’s flecks of his stubble in the sink, and there’s his dirty clothes in the laundry basket: I kneel and open it and recognise one of his shirts, a slippery pale-blue one with yellow diamond patterning. I reach over and flush the toilet, so the noise will cover my movements, and then I open the mirrored cabinet above the sink and run my fingers over the bottles on what must be his shelf, the shaving cream, the brown plastic bottle of prescription drugs, a six-pack of Durex condoms, two of them missing. The skin all over my body is tingling, tingling in places I didn’t know could tingle, in between my fingers, the backs of my knees. I ease one of the condoms from the strip, tugging gently along the foil perforations, and stuff it into my jeans. Then I put the box back, exactly as it was, and close the mirrored cabinet. I stare at myself in the mirror. My face looks flushed. I wonder, again, what age she was when he first noticed her. I realise that I don’t know how long I’ve been in here. I run the tap, and look around me one last time. And then, without planning to, without knowing I’m going to until I’ve done it, I find my hand closing around one of the bottles of perfume on the windowsill, and rearranging the others so the gap doesn’t show. You’re not supposed to keep perfume on the windowsill, anyway: even I know that. I slide it into the inside pocket of my jacket and arrange my left arm over it so the bulge doesn’t show, then I turn off the tap and go downstairs where Lisa’s shooting me desperate glances.

* * *

Outside, she can’t believe what I’ve done. None of them can. We catch up with Donna and Tanya still waiting for us on the main road—although it feels like a lifetime has passed, it’s only been ten minutes or so since they left us.

“You’ll never believe what she did,” Lisa says, and there’s pride in her voice as she tells them how we knocked on the door and went inside, inside Mr. Knox’s house, and talked to Davina, and touched the baby, and how I used his bathroom. I take over the story. The condom I keep quiet about—that’s mine, just for me—but I show them the perfume. It’s a dark glass bottle, three-quarters full, aubergine, almost black, with a round glass stopper. In delicate gold lettering it says, Poison, Christian Dior .

“I can’t believe you nicked her fucking perfume,” Donna says.

Tanya stares at me as if she’s going to be sick.

Donna takes the bottle from me and uncaps the lid. She aims it at Lisa.

“Fuck off,” Lisa says. “You’re not spraying that shit on me.”

“Spray me then,” I say, and they all look at me. “Go on,” I say, “spray me.” I roll up the sleeve of my jumper to bare my wrist.

Donna aims the nozzle. A jet of perfume shoots out, dark and heady and forbidden-smelling.

“Eww,” says Tanya, “that smells like fox. Why would anyone want to smell like that?”

I press my wrists together carefully and raise them to my neck, dab both sides. It’s the strongest perfume I’ve ever smelled. The musty green scent makes me feel slightly nauseous. It doesn’t smell like a perfume you’d imagine Davina Calvert choosing. He must have bought it for her; it must be him that likes it. I wonder if he sprays it on her before they go out. If she holds up her wrists and bares her throat for him.

“What are you going to do with it?” Lisa asks.

“We could bring it into school,” I say, and all at once my heart is racing again. “We could bring it into school, and spray it in his lesson. We could see what he does.”

“You’re a fucking psycho,” Donna says, and she laughs, but for the first time ever it’s tinged with awe.

“You can’t,” Tanya’s saying, “I’m not having anything to do with this,” but we’re all ignoring her now.

“Me and Lisa have Spanish tomorrow,” I say, “straight after lunch. We’ll do it then. Right, Leese?”

“What do you think he’ll do?” Lisa asks, wide-eyed.

“Maybe,” I say, “he’ll keep us behind after class and shag our brains out on his desk.” I say it as if I’m joking, and she and Donna laugh, and I laugh too, but I think of the condom hidden in my pocket and the tingling feeling returns.

That night I lie in bed and squeeze my eyes closed and play the scene of them meeting in Granada with more intensity than ever before: and when I get to the part where he undoes her halterneck top and eases her skirt off and lies her down on the bed, my whole body starts shaking.

* * *

The next day in Spanish we did it, just as we’d planned. Before class started we huddled over my bag and sprayed the Poison, unknotting our ties to mist it in the hollow of our throat. We were feverish with excitement. He didn’t know how close to him we’d gotten.

I had his condom with me too. I’d slept with it under my pillow and now it was zipped into the pocket of my school skirt: I could feel the foil edge rubbing against my thigh when I crossed my legs.

Mr. Knox came in, sat on the edge of his desk, and asked us what we’d been doing over the weekend.

My heart was thumping. I suddenly wished I’d prepared something clever to say, something that would get his attention, or make him smile, but I hadn’t and I found myself saying the first thing that came into my head, just to be the one who spoke.

“ Voy de compras ,” I said.

“I’m sure you go shopping all the time, but in this instance it was in the past tense.” He looked straight at me as he spoke, his crinkled eyes, a teasing smile. He seemed surprised, or amused, to see me talking. I was never one of the confident ones who spoke up in class without prompting. “ Otra vez, señorita. ”

Señorita. I’d never been one of the girls he called señorita before. I imagined he’d called Davina señorita . His accent in Spanish was rolling and sexy. Hers would be too, of course. They’d probably had conversations of their own, over and above everyone else’s heads.

“ Fui de compras ,” I said, locking eyes with him.

“ Muy bien, fuiste de compras, y qué compraste ?”

“What did I buy?” The cloying smell of the perfume was making me dizzy and I couldn’t seem to straighten my thoughts.

“ Sí—qué compraste ?”

“ Compré . . . compré un nuevo perfume .”

“ Muy bien. ” He grinned at me. “ Fuiste de compras, y compraste un nuevo perfume. Muy bien. ”

“Do you want to smell it, Mr. Knox?” Lisa blurted.

“Lisa!” I hissed, delighted and appalled.

“ Gracias, Lisa, pero no .”

“Are you sure? I think you’d like it.”

“ Gracias , Lisa. Who’s next?” He gazed around the room, waiting for someone else to put their hand up. I’d said it. I couldn’t believe I’d said it. I felt the colour rising to my face. Lisa was stifling a fit of giggles beside me but I ignored her and kept my eyes on Mr. Knox. He hadn’t flinched.

At the end of class we hung about, taking our time to pack our bags, and wondering if he’d keep us behind, but he didn’t. We left the room and fell into each other’s arms in fits of giggles—but we were both exaggerating, kidding ourselves that we weren’t disappointed. Or at least I was. Maybe for Lisa it was just a big joke. I don’t know what I’d expected, exactly, but I’d expected something: a moment of recognition, something.

My last lesson of the day was maths, where I sat with Tanya—none of our other friends were taking higher maths. We walked out of school together. Tanya lived up by Stormont and it was out of my way, but I sometimes walked home with her anyway. My mum had gone back to work since my dad moved out and I didn’t like returning to an empty house. And today, there was the increased attraction of knowing that this was the way Mr. Knox must drive home.