Emily Barr - The Sleeper

I knew where Olivia lived, so finding her was going to be easy. I was not going to run into anyone from my previous life in London. That would be so unlikely as to be impossible. Like winning the lottery.

I had absent-mindedly eaten half my breakfast. Now I knocked back the coffee and went up to the counter to pay the bill. Olivia lived in Covent Garden, Sam had told me that, in Mercer Street, just off Long Acre. She had a job in PR, which presumably involved normal office hours, and I knew she was back at work, in spite of everything, because I had seen her in the paper. I would stake out her street at approximately the right time of day, and sooner or later she would come home. That was my scientific plan, at least. It involved my going nowhere near Putney, or Notting Hill.

By the time I was loitering near Olivia’s flat, I was almost feeling comfortable. It was the anonymity that did it. It would be difficult not to be at ease in a city in which nothing you did, or wore, could cause anything more than a raised eyebrow.

I had not been to this city for five years, yet I was instantly back at home. I lived, now, in a world in which you generally said hello to people when you passed them out walking, in which you knew not just your neighbours, but the names and temperaments of their dogs. Here, I could have been anyone, could have done anything. Nobody had looked at me in my short skirt and biker boots, and no one was looking at me, now, in my brand-new skinny black trousers and a bright blue top that I had secretly bought because it was the kind of thing I felt Lara would have worn. I was going to get a serious haircut next, and lose the blond ends that had entertained me for a while. Then, if I could overcome my distaste for that sort of thing, I would go to a department store and get somebody to do my make-up so it suited me, and then I would buy everything they had used. Meanwhile, though, I had put on the tiny amount of make-up that I still possessed (black mascara, some clumsily applied eyeliner, and a dark pink lipstick that I felt certain made me look like a vampire with bad table manners). I was trying to be the most ordinary Londoner I could possibly be.

Going to the passport office had been a good way to start. It was all forms and queues and officialdom. There was nothing to do but follow the rules, tick the boxes, hand over the evidence and the money.

I felt sick with guilt, but I pushed that from my mind. All I could think about was the task at hand. The rest of it I would deal with later. I needed to phone Alex and talk to him about my lost passport, but I knew that making contact with him would be treacherous.

I paced outside a vintage clothes shop for a while, and then went in and lost myself in the racks of old dresses and wonderful shoes. I wandered across the road and into a courtyard that certainly hadn’t been there last time I was in Covent Garden: it was new and moneyed, containing a Jamie Oliver restaurant, a shop that only sold expensive ballet pumps, an upmarket-yet-funky florist. However, being away from Olivia’s street made me nervous in case I missed her.

At the bottom of the road there was an appealing-looking pub, a print shop, and, often, passers-by on their way to Pineapple Studios in the next street. Some of them were indisputable ballerinas. They held themselves gorgeously, heads poised upon swan-like necks. Others were much cooler than that: they were the kind of people who appeared in the background of music videos, casually performing the kind of moves I would not even be able to come close to naming.

I stamped my feet and walked back along the street, looking up, occasionally, into a sky that was leaden with clouds. It was freezing and I was bored.

I headed to the other end of the road, to see what was happening there. People were strolling along Long Acre. That was what was happening there. I walked to the middle. Nothing was happening there, either. Every time anyone came into the street, I would give them a good look, but for a long time none of them was Olivia Wilberforce; right up until, suddenly, one of them was.

She was walking and tapping on an iPhone at the same time, but although her head was bent and I could barely see her face, I knew it was her. She was visibly but not massively pregnant. My pulse quickened as she walked towards me. She had black hair, cut in a chic and geometric style, short at the back and longer at the front, with a fringe that would have looked ridiculously short on most people, but which worked for her. Her jeans were so tight they were probably leggings, and over them she wore a military-style coat that somehow looked wonderful.

I tugged at the velvet jacket I still had on over my new clothes. It was threadbare and stupid, clearly an item from a charity shop hundreds of miles from London.

‘Hello,’ I said, as she walked past me. She stopped and gave me a look of the most phenomenal disdain.

‘No thanks.’ She walked on. Her features were spookily even. She looked like a china doll, or a sexy assassin from a film. Somehow, in Olivia Wilberforce, those two looks were able to coexist. The bulge of her fertile stomach made her more unsettling still.

‘I’m not from the press.’ She kept walking, and I turned and trotted after her. ‘I’m a friend of Lara’s.’

That made her stop, but only for as long as it took her to say, ‘Sure you are.’

‘Well I am. I live outside Falmouth. I was with Sam straight after she went missing. I stayed with him until the police took him for an interview. I called his brother.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘What are his family like?’

‘His brother was horrible and aggressive. I was surprised, actually. Sam’s so … Well, he’s so unaggressive, so gentle, that I hadn’t expected that at all. His mum looked like a sweet old lady, but she was incredibly tough.’

She looked into my face for a moment, then suddenly relaxed. Her whole demeanour changed, though she was still guarded.

‘Well, that’s true enough. They were vile at the wedding. It was dysfunction city. What’s your name?’

‘Iris. Iris Roebuck. Lara and I met on a ferry to St Mawes one day and we got chatting, and after that we were friends.’

Olivia laughed a sudden and odd laugh that stopped as abruptly as it had started.

‘If you wanted to speak to me, couldn’t you have called? You know, you don’t get to just show up and stop me in the street. The world may be fucked, but it doesn’t mean no one needs manners any more.’

I liked that. It was what I would have said, in her place.

‘Sorry, Olivia. You’re completely right. Truly. I am sorry. I just – well, I happened to be in London. And I was thinking of Lara, obviously. I’m sure she didn’t kill Guy. I know it looks as if she did, but …’ She looked at me, not helping me out at all. ‘Well. I knew that when she first came here she was living with you, and I knew where you lived, and …’

I was not used to this. No one made me beg for anything.

‘I can go away again. I mean, the last thing I want is to upset you or disturb you.’

She was looking into my face. Her blue eyes were piercing.

‘The thing is, Iris,’ she said, ‘she never mentioned you. You apparently know all about me. But I know nothing about you. And everyone knows all about my family, because the papers have been obsessed with us. I’m not exactly hard to research at the moment. Any old nutter can stop me in the street. Believe me, you’re not the first.’

‘Oh.’ I struggled for credentials. ‘Would she have mentioned me to you, though? She wouldn’t, would she?’

‘Well, not to me. No. She wouldn’t have done to me . I’m sure she never mentioned you to Mum and Dad either, though. We were talking about her friends. You know. The world implodes and you go over every detail. We thought she didn’t have any close friends in Cornwall.’