Deborah Crombie - Necessary as Blood

Gemma went back through the house once more, checking that the lights were off, shutting doors. As she returned to the hall, the emptiness of the house seemed to close in behind her. Hurriedly, she let herself out and locked the dead bolt with the key. The thought of home, warm and light and cluttered from the boys’ Saturday activities, was suddenly almost irresistible, but first she had to return Naz Malik’s keys.

She stood on the pavement, feeling the thick, damp evening air, slick as butter, slip round her bare arms and legs. If she got the tube from Old Street, it was only one stop on the Northern Line to the Angel in Islington, and from there a ten-minute walk to Tim’s.

She turned left, then left again, deciding to walk up Brick Lane rather than Commercial Street. At the corner, the smell of curry was enticingly strong, but even if she’d had the time, the Brick Lane curry houses didn’t seem places a woman would comfortably go in for a meal on her own.

But as she walked northwards, the curry palaces quickly gave way to small shops and businesses-textiles, barbers, hairdressers, travel agents, moneylenders-all catering to the Bangladeshi community, and all closed except for the newsagents or grocers. From the open door of a newsagent’s came the wailing chant of Asian music, monotonous but oddly appealing to her unaccustomed ear. The street signs were in English and Bengali, and the streetlamps, their delicate tracery in red and green metal inspired by Indian design, festively framed the narrow street.

Gemma stopped, puzzling for a moment, then realized she’d seen that same design in some of Sandra Gilles’s work.

By the time she reached Hanbury Street, notorious in Whitechapel lore as the site of the grisly death of Jack the Ripper’s second victim, Annie Chapman, the Banglatown part of Brick Lane had begun to recede. Here, the walls of the old Truman Brewery made a canyon of the narrow street, the smokestack a darker shadow against the night sky. But at street level, music boomed from the Vibe bar, and the pedestrians who jostled past her were young and for the most part white, clubbers dressed for a Saturday night on the town. This once-disreputable part of the East End had become a destination spot, a mecca for the hip and affluent. There was still enough of an edge, she thought as she passed a DJ setting up turntables in a makeshift stall on the pavement, for the West End patrons to feel they were living a bit dangerously.

More shops were open here, now offering vintage clothing, records, books, coffee and Wi-Fi, and as she neared the old Bishopsgate railway line, the graffiti became more visible.

Then she caught the scent of freshly baked bread and her steps quickened. She saw two bagel bakeries ahead on the left, both with lights on and doors open. As she drew closer, her mouth watered and she felt a bit light-headed. Warmed-over pizza at home seemed light-years away. She would need something to get by on.

Gemma chose the second bakery, Beigel Bake, simply because the queue was longer-usually a good sign that the food was worth the wait. But the service was friendly and efficient and the queue moved quickly, just giving Gemma time to take in the no-nonsense interior, the huge steel ovens in the back, and the two Royalty Protection Command officers in full gear ahead of her. They were enormous, like nightclub bouncers on steroids. She’d have expected some of the pierced and tattooed clubbers, or the obviously homeless man on the pavement, to give them a wide berth, but Beigel Bake’s cheerful atmosphere seemed to erase boundaries.

With a cup of stewed tea in one hand, and a salt-beef bagel with mustard in the other, she came out again into the street, munching as she walked. She thought she had never tasted anything quite so good.

The sandwich lasted her almost to Old Street Station, and as she neared the tube stop, she tossed her empty polystyrene cup in a rubbish bin. She stopped for a moment to look at the Banksy painting high on the side of a commercial building on the far side of the Old Street roundabout. It was called Ozone Angel , she knew, and was a tribute by the anonymous street artist to a friend who had been killed by a train. But she’d never before quite realized how haunting the androgynous child was, with its angel wings and safety armor, a death’s-head, a memento mori, held in its outstretched hand.

She thought suddenly of Charlotte Malik, with both her parents missing, and shivered.

Hazel sat curled in a corner of her rose-printed sofa, arms wrapped tight round her chest even though the bungalow windows were still open to the warm evening air. She hadn’t bothered turning on the lights, or eating, although she knew she should do both.

Her irritation with Gemma for having so patently wanted rid of her at Naz Malik’s house had lasted her the first half of the way home. Her smoldering resentment towards Tim for having searched out an old friend because it was thought his wife might have betrayed him had fueled the remainder of her drive.

But by the time she’d reached the bungalow-she still couldn’t think of it as home, in spite of the enthusiasm she had manufactured for Gemma-even that had flickered out. Hazel was self-analytical enough by training and by nature to see her anger for what it was-a transference of her own guilt. How could she blame Tim for seeking out someone with whom he could sympathize?

Now she felt shocked and more than a little sickened by her behavior that afternoon. A family in the midst of trauma, a child in distress, and rather than doing what she could to help, as Gemma and Tim had done, she had sniped at them both.

What sort of person had she become? She seemed to have lost her compass, and with it, any confidence in her ability to make the right decisions. She’d convinced herself that coming back to London was the best thing, convinced herself that she and Tim could work together to do what was best for Holly, but now she doubted her resolve.

Hazel thought of the house in Islington, of Tim tucking in Holly and the little girl, Charlotte, as she used to tuck in Holly and Toby, and she trembled with longing. It was her place, and she had forfeited it. She could see no way back. Despair rose in her, black, bitter as bile.

A woman’s voice came clearly from beyond the wall of the darkened garden. The words were unfathomable, the intonation so familiar it struck to the bone. She was calling her child in for the night.

He heard the sound of water falling. It came and went in rhythmic susurrations, like the curtains of rain that had swished across the rice fields of his childhood. His mind wove in and out of memory-smells of cooking combined with the warm, ripe scent of farmyards; the light, green filtered, always; the air thick as syrup. Air so thick it pressed on his chest…He opened his mouth in a gasp, trying to expand his lungs, and the movement brought him close to consciousness once more.

The faint recollection of pain made him keep his eyes shut tight, and he began to drift again.

Then there was movement. Hands pulling at him, the grunt of someone else’s effort. Space spun and he flailed out as arms gripped him, lifting. He forced his eyes open but the movement made him queasy, and he saw only shifting, tilting shadows he couldn’t grasp. His glasses-what had happened to his glasses?

He groped at his face, but a vaguely familiar voice was urging him forwards. He stumbled-his feet seemed disconnected from his brain-but the hands and voice kept him moving.

There was a click, and the feel of the air changed-fresher, damper-and he suddenly knew he was outside, although he hadn’t realized before that he’d been inside.

The sharp scent of petrol exhaust tickled his nose. He heard the muted sound of traffic, saw moving flashes of light. Then the hand shoved him down, his forehead cracked against something hard, and blackness descended.