Christopher Fowler - Personal Demons

Everyone knows about the Midas touch, right? Those M's are among the few pieces of mythology one still remembers; the Medusa, the Minotaur and Midas – the man with the golden touch. I should have been warned by his name.

My name is Judy Merrigan, another M and no myth, just an ordinary Mrs. I was thirty-two when I moved from Arizona to England to be with my husband for the four inglorious years our marriage lasted. Michael and I met in Phoenix, where he taught classical history at the university. He took me out to dinner and asked if he could take me home. It turned out he meant all the way home. From Phoenix to Sussex, England, quite a culture shock. It was my first trip to Europe, only I didn't see any of the things you're supposed to see. Even Texas boys get to visit Paris when they graduate, but I found myself marooned in a silent English suburb with funny little front gardens and round red mailboxes and bay windows, looking after a man who needed a mother more than a wife.

I had given up a successful career as a graphic artist to do this. There was no way I could keep my clients from my new overseas base, and I couldn't start afresh without contacts. Besides, Michael didn't like me working. We separated because he wanted more children, and I wasn't crazy about the ones he already had.

I had no intention of returning to Phoenix and subjecting myself to my father's barbed remarks about the failure-rate of modern marriages; I decided to stay on in England so long as I could move to London. My divorce papers came through and suddenly I was on my own in a city I hardly knew. Most people would have been thrilled at the prospect of independence, but I was scared. Michael had spent four years bullying the confidence out of me. As I walked down an impossibly crowded Regent Street, I realised just how much I had distanced myself from the world outside.

When my mother died she left me a little money, and as there wasn't much forthcoming from the divorce settlement, I used her bequest to fulfil a dream. I bought my own property. Not the kind of place Michael or my father would ever have approved of – that was part of the charm – a town apartment, cosmopolitan and chic and central to everything. The third floor of a renovated two-hundred-year-old building with polished hardwood floors and large airy rooms, in Great Titchfield Street, part of the area they call Fitzrovia (I loved those names), where the sidewalk cafes and corner pubs and late night stores steeped with trays of exotic vegetables make it the closest you can get in Central London to a New York neighbourhood.

This was the first time I had a place I could truly call my own, and I spent every last penny fixing it up. I thought I could use part of the lounge as a studio and resume my interrupted career. Got myself a deal with an illustration agency, made a few contacts, but the industry had changed while I'd been away – computers had replaced illustration work with photo-composites. I didn't get downhearted. At the start of that hot, thundery summer I leaned out of my window watching the world pass below, convinced that somebody somewhere would still need watercolours, gouaches and pencil sketches, and that I could produce them from my penthouse eyrie.

There were others in the building; a woman in the apartment below, and an old Greek couple in the first-floor flat with its ground-level grocery. There was one more apartment, opposite mine, separated by a small dark landing. The brass sign on the door read Midas Blake, but I never saw him. Maria, the Greek lady, told me he was strange. 'What kind of strange?' I asked her.

'Very quiet,' she explained, 'keeps his door closed. Comes and goes late at night. Doesn't have a job, but always has money.' That didn't sound so bad. 'A nice man, though?' I asked.

'Oh yes,' she said, smiling with her big white false teeth, 'very nice.' And then one night there he was, rattling his key at the lock as I arrived, looking over his shoulder at me. I didn't introduce myself. We just nodded to each other and turned our backs. He closed his door and I closed mine. I didn't see him again for an age. Never heard his latch click, or any sound from his apartment. For a big man he had to be very light on his feet.

Then one hot Monday morning in June I had my bag snatched on the tube platform by this – child – no more than fourteen I swear, but strong and fast enough to break my shoulder strap and hightail it out of the station. The policeman I complained to at Tottenham Court Road took details indifferently, another statistic to be tallied. I cancelled my cards, bought a new wallet, then realised I was missing my spare keys. When I got home, Maria's husband Ari stopped me on the gloomy landing, where he was repairing a junction box. A tiny man, as soft and grey as a waterlogged potato, very gentle. Always giving advice, not all of it good. He told me I should change my locks just in case.

'More expense,' I complained. I was up to my limit for the month, with still a week to go, so the lock stayed as it was.

The good thing about London is you don't get brownouts. The bad thing is, I didn't know how to fix an English fuse. On the Thursday of that week I came home late to find the stairway in total darkness. I managed to grope my way up to the second floor, then heard someone on the landing above, and there was something about the sound that told me it wasn't right. I felt my heart beating faster and set my shopping bag down, listening. There was an angry shout, a scuffle of boots, the sound of someone being punched or slapped, and suddenly that someone was coming toward me at great speed, stamp stamp stamp, crashing past me and downwards, out of the door at the bottom of the stairwell.

'Are you all right?' asked a deep male voice, cultured, out of breath, and I said yes, and in the flare of a match I found myself being introduced to Mr Midas Blake.

He had long dirty-blonde hair to his shoulders, a stubbled chin scarred at the jawline, pale sensitive eyes. My God. Beautiful, but big and crazy-looking, at least a foot taller than me.

'You sure you're all right?'

'Yes,' I said again, puzzled now.

'Your shopping got knocked over.'

'Did it?' I couldn't see – too dark. How could he tell?

'I'll fix the lights. I'll bring up your purchases.'

And that was it. He showed me to my apartment and waited with another match while I dug around for my key. As soon as I was through the door he pulled it shut behind me. A few moments later I saw the hall lights go on and found my shopping stacked neatly on my doormat. No sign of my neighbour. I nearly crossed the landing and rang his bell, but decided to let it go. In cities it's hard to figure out where privacy begins.

The next morning, just after eight o'clock, there was a knock on my front door. Naturally I was looking as unattractive as I could possibly make myself, face cream, bendi-curlers and old sweatpants, and there he was, a big gold god, smelling of something fresh and citrus, standing awkwardly in faded shorts, a grey T-shirt and Nikes, unsure where to place his great hands.

He explained that someone had tried to burgle my apartment last night, and pointed out scratchmarks on the front door. He'd seen the guy off before he could do any real damage. This morning he had reported the matter to the police.

I offered my thanks, made coffee, told him more about myself than I intended. His size was daunting. The palest eyes stared out beneath a heavy brow, so that he appeared permanently angry. I explained about losing the keys, how the police would blame me for keeping my home address in my purse, how I couldn't afford to change the locks let alone install a proper security system.

'You have to do something,' he said. 'These front doors are as thin as cardboard. You could put a fist through them.' When he asked me to come and see the security set-up in his own apartment, I accepted his offer.