Emily Barr - The Sleeper

‘Yeah, sorry. Have to concentrate. Um. So, your friend. They sat at that table over there.’ He pointed to where the out-of-towners were sitting. The woman looked back at us with a startled face, wondering why we were talking about her. ‘They knocked back cocktails. Talked to each other. Laughed a lot, as I recall. Listened to the singer. They didn’t do anything weird or unusual. Weird to think that he was dead the next night.’

‘Nothing unusual at all?’

‘No. Nothing. Sorry. Hey, you should grab that table!’

Alex was already there, sitting down the moment the Japanese couple got up, clearly happy to be away from the conversation.

Hours later, the room was spinning. I was drinking what I thought was my fourth martini, eating popcorn in an attempt to soak up the alcohol and leaning on Alex, who had pulled his chair around so he was next to me. We were talking about Cornwall, and art, and what it was like to be a policeman. I was telling him random facts about myself.

‘I don’t have many friends,’ I informed him. ‘I used to. But I don’t now. It’s nice that you’re here. Why are you here anyway?’

‘Because I like you,’ he said.

‘As a friend.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s good.’ I nearly started to talk about Laurie, but decided not to. It was definitely a better idea not to mention him. I didn’t want to cry. The singer was a tall, slender black woman, and she was giving the crowd exactly the right sort of undemanding singalong songs, and trying to engage everyone in banter.

‘Who’s going to get up for this one?’ she demanded, surveying the extremely small amount of floor space optimistically. ‘You all know it, so you can all help me out with the singing. It’s called “Hey Jude”.’

And somehow, after the first few bars, Alex and I were on our feet belting it out drunkenly. It was, of course, a song that went on and on, and by the end, the whole bar was singing along. I nearly tripped over while attempting to perform a little dance, and Alex grabbed me and stopped me from crashing into our table. He held me tightly around the waist until I pulled away.

We stumbled out into the night. I had no idea what time it was, but the city was still busy. Taxis and buses thundered by, and people were walking around, and the lights were on everywhere. I could feel my heart rate picking up. The evening had suddenly turned into more than I could handle.

Alex took my hand and held it, even when I tried to pull away.

‘Iris,’ he said. ‘This is a weird thing for me. To come to London, to follow you here. I’ve been telling everyone for so long that I’m self-sufficient and I don’t need to be in a relationship. I completely believed myself. I couldn’t bear it when people tried to set me up. The idea of being somewhere on a “date” seemed so artificial. When I met a woman I half liked I’d run a mile. And then I meet you on a work day, and something about you, and being with you – just everything about you – turns my world on its head. Could you tell? Could you tell I was hiding it when I turned up at your house? I mean, I had no reason to do that, really. I should have called you into the station and got someone else to take your statement. But I wanted to see you. It was such an overpowering feeling that I went with it. And then …’

‘Shh. Please stop! Please.’

I did not want him to be saying these things. He put a hand on my shoulder and I turned to look at him, to tell him again to shut up. He had been my friend, and now he was close to ruining it.

His face was close to mine, and then closer. He was so much taller than I was that he had to lean right down to reach me. I should have pulled away, but at the crucial moment, I didn’t, and his mouth was on mine.

I had forgotten completely what it felt like. Kissing a new person was so strange, and assaulted me with so vicious a slap of newness that I joined in with it, suddenly curious. It was like being thrown into icy water when you are very hot. It was horrible and astonishing and wonderful, all at once. This was real. It was happening. I had left Laurie in Cornwall, and I was kissing the detective. I was kissing another man.

As soon as that thought solidified in my mind, I pushed him away, and ducked under his arm.

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I just can’t, Alex. I have a boyfriend. You know that. I’m sorry, but I just really, really can’t.’

He held me by the upper arm and turned me around, gently, to face him.

‘Iris,’ he said. ‘Come back. Iris. Look. I’m not really sure how to say this, but … I know about Laurie. I know. It’s OK.’

I tried to get away, but he tightened his grip.

‘You don’t,’ I informed him. ‘You don’t understand a thing.’

It was freezing. I felt drunk and sick and I wanted to be away, alone again.

‘I do. I’m so sorry, Iris. I really am, but I know. I looked him up when you told me his name, but I knew already, because after I met you at the Finches’ house I went home and looked for everything I could find about you. And then I discovered that this friend of mine, Dave, an old colleague – he was in the Met at the time of the accident. He was at the scene. So I know what happened. I’m so sorry, but Iris, you are amazing. And I will of course back right off. But I want you to face the world, and that’s what you’re starting to do. I want to help you.’

‘No.’

‘Iris?’

‘No.’

‘Iris – Laurie Madaki is dead. You know that. I know it. He was knocked off his bike five years ago. And he was killed instantly, pronounced dead at the scene. I know you haven’t felt able to let him go …’

The moment he loosened his grip, I ducked away while he was still speaking. He had spoken the unsayable words and I could never forgive him. I ran around Aldwych to the bottom of Kingsway, and set off along Fleet Street heading for St Paul’s, not caring about the people staring. I hoped he would not chase me, and after a while I managed to hail a taxi and get back to the hotel, where I fell, still sobbing, into a drunken, heartbroken sleep.

chapter twenty-three

The day I met him, I knew it would happen. I knew we had to be together for ever, and that I would do everything in my power to achieve that. I knew that if I ever had to be without him, my life would be in tatters. I knew there was nobody else for me. If I could not be with Laurie, I would never be with anyone. I had clung on to him far, far longer than I should have done, but I was going to have to let him go.

Everything Alex had said was true. The cracks had been getting wider for more than a year, and finally they were wide open. The house I had built from denial and delusion had crumbled around me.

I lay half asleep in my hotel bed, the morning light shining through the net curtains as I had forgotten to close the thick drapes, and forced myself to revisit the day I met him. Until that moment I had been perfectly independent, with a job at a publishing house, a rented flat, friends and family and a life that was contented by anyone’s standards. I never had quite enough money, and I perpetually felt that I should have been making plans for the future, but I was fine.

Then, at a friend’s birthday party in a bar, I saw him. We were both twenty-seven, and the last thing I was expecting was to meet the love of my life. I nearly didn’t go: I’d had a long day at work and I just wanted to get back to my flat and run a bath. The only reason I forced myself to put some lipstick on and head into Covent Garden was because I had Alice’s birthday present with me, a bottle of champagne in a box that I had just managed to squeeze into my biggest handbag, and I didn’t want either to leave it at work or to cart it home with me.