Helen Callaghan - Dear Amy

I moved my hands through my hair and sighed. ‘It was the same guy that was at the school today. I’m positive. And I think he was probably the same guy who phoned the school looking for me, but I’m not sure about that.’

‘Whoever phoned probably had nothing to do with it,’ she replied with a flick of her ochre-painted nails. ‘Did this guy in the car follow you all the way home from school?’

‘I didn’t go straight home. I went up to the paper first. Then Waitrose.’ I was exhausted.

‘But did he follow you there?’

‘I don’t know!’ I burst out in frustration. ‘I don’t keep a constant lookout for sinister types spying on me!’

Lily frowned at me.

‘I’m so sorry, Lils,’ I said, mortified. ‘I’m bang out of line, I know. I’m very tired and maybe I’m imagining the whole thing.’

She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. ‘Maybe. But you know, perhaps you want to be careful. People see you on TV, and…’

‘How do you mean?’

She opened her mouth, as though about to say something, then shut it again. ‘Did you see his face?’ she asked.

‘I did the first time. It was too dark the second. But it was definitely him.’ I shrugged helplessly. ‘And there’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘but I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve met Bethan Avery before.’

She did not reply, merely stared at me.

I found this unaccountably difficult to discuss. I do not enjoy talking about my past, even to Lily, who doesn’t know the full extent of it.

‘It’s just… I met, well, I met a lot of very, very damaged people in those years with the nuns,’ I say. ‘And now I’m starting to wonder whether she was one of them.’

‘Have you told this to the police? Or that friend of yours, the criminologist?’

I shook my head. ‘Not yet. I mean, I can’t … What would I say? I have no memory of ever meeting her.’

Lily frowned, her jaw jutting slightly. ‘It doesn’t change the fact that this is a man following you, not a woman. You know, I think,’ said Lily, about to pronounce her final word on the subject, ‘that you should phone the police if you see this creep again. Get them to come over and ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing.’

The drive home passed in a strange kind of dream. I reflected not on the man, but instead on the hostel and the girls I had met there, trying to recall any nugget of information that would help.

But mostly I thought about Angelique, the Queen of the Night.

I was sitting in a church the second time I met her.

I had wandered into the church after being shooed away from a library, and then the blissfully warm lobby of a department store. I was huddled in a pew at the back, contemplating the stained-glass window behind the altar.

I still had four hours to kill.

St Felicity’s had strict requirements for those receiving its largesse. First and foremost, if you weren’t back by nine at night, you lost your bed. No ifs or buts.

Furthermore, no single women were allowed to stay in the hostel between eight in the morning and six at night, while the nuns and volunteers scrubbed the cheap linoleum in the rooms and boiled the sheets in their constant and bitterly fought rearguard action against lice and bedbugs.

As a consequence all I remember of that first week, before the nuns took me in semi-permanently, was a cold, dreary nomadism where I shifted from place to place, looking to wear out the hours until I could return – eat, wash, go to bed, get up, eat, leave, and do it all over again.

Now I was in one of those tiny dark churches London is littered with – medieval boltholes overshadowed on all sides by high industrial buildings. This one was dedicated to St Eugenia who, from what I could see, had been some sort of martyr, and perhaps cross-dresser, who had disguised herself as a man if I understood the mosaics correctly.

I’ve never been a particularly religious person, though I have my beliefs. But I was drawn to the church’s shelter and peace, harbouring me against the bitter wind outside. Above my head, someone was practising on the wheezy old organ – some elaborate classical piece – and a trailing fugue of falling notes came from above.

I was thinking about nothing, my habit during such hours, when I was startled by somebody throwing themselves into the pew next to me with such force that the wood creaked and I nearly leapt straight up in the air.

It was my neighbour from the upper bunk, grinning at me, her dark eyes gleaming in the dusty candlelit space. One of the teeth next to her right canine was missing, a spot of blackness in her face.

‘Well, hello there!’ she said, her voice and laughter shattering the calm, clearly very amused by my shock and surprise.

‘Are you mental?’ I snarled, still light-headed and shaking. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack!’

‘Sorry. Sorry. But it was funny. You should have seen your face.’ She offered me a pleased smile, as though contemplating a job well done. She had a strangely refined accent, at complete odds with her appearance. I wondered if it was real, or if she was making fun of me.

I crossed my arms over my chest again. ‘What are you doing in here?’

‘Avoiding people.’ She gave me a cool look. ‘Like you, probably. Are you going to steal that?’

‘What? What are you on about?’

She nodded over to a battered collection box, attached to the centre of a wrought-iron stand containing rows of shelves filled with sand and tea lights.

‘Am I what ?’ I asked in horror. ‘God no. I was just looking at the stained glass…’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’m sure you were.’ She got up, those long legs unwinding endlessly as she did so, and strolled over to the candles. She did not even look round to see if the coast was clear. She tugged at the battered iron corner of the box, which rattled but didn’t move. ‘Bugger.’

‘Stop that!’ I hissed at her, appalled, but also secretly thrilled at her heretical daring. ‘There’s somebody up there!’

‘Who’s that, God ?’

‘No, whoever’s playing the organ, you muppet!’

‘That’s a tape recording…’ She flapped a dismissive hand at me, inspecting the fixture holding the box.

‘It bloody isn’t! They’ve stopped in the middle and restarted at least two times.’

She shrugged and retreated back to the pew after a few seconds. ‘It’s bolted on anyway,’ she said, as though to make it absolutely clear that she had not desisted because I had commanded her to, and that she feared neither God nor the organist.

She was silent for a few seconds, giving me the opportunity to study her out of the corner of my eye while the music continued above.

In profile she had fine features, big black eyes, a petite nose dusted with freckles, and plump, sensuous lips. She could have been beautiful, in fact, but the most obvious thing about her was her state of deep disrepair. Her peroxide-blonde hair was dyed to the point of colourlessness. Angry red spots dotted her brow and cold sores bracketed her mouth. Her lips were slightly feathery with peeling skin, and she was pale, too pale, almost a sallow green.

Her arms, bare from the elbows, were dusted with little blue fingertip bruises, and in the crook of the right nestled an ugly mass of red and purple, pocked with little black marks.

‘If you’re cold you should go to the Southbank Centre,’ she said suddenly.

I threw her a surprised glance.

‘They keep it heated all day. And they can’t throw you out unless they catch you up to no good, like begging.’ She gestured expansively, not looking at me, as though demonstrating that it cost her absolutely nothing to tell me this. ‘It’s, like, one of those public space things.’