Rupert Thomson - Soft

There was no security chain in place, no suspicious eye appearing in the gap. Instead, the door swung open, drawing air into the house, and there she was, Glade Spencer, standing right in front of him. When she saw him, she smiled.

‘I thought it was you,’ she said.

He stood on the doorstep, clumsy now, and utterly bewildered. The strangest sensation. He felt as if he was wearing what old-fashioned deep-sea divers used to wear — a helmet like a goldfish bowl, a pair of lead-soled boots.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

She closed the door behind him and then led him up a flight of stairs. He followed her, his eyes fixed on her bare feet, the frayed hem of her dressing-gown. Halfway up, she stopped and looked at him, over her shoulder. ‘You know, you look completely different from what I imagined.’ She noticed the confusion on his face and laughed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t be so rude.’

She showed him along a narrow corridor and into the front room. He recognised the bay window, the red curtains. This was her room. He couldn’t resist moving towards the window. He stared past the curtains and down into the street. He had watched the house for so many hours that he felt he must have left an impression on the air. He could see his own ghost standing on the paving-stones below. That puzzled look, which he knew from the mirror. A man who had been placed in an impossible position. A man with the odds stacked against him. Something seemed to have changed since then, just in the last few minutes, though he couldn’t have put his finger on what it was.

He stepped back into the middle of the room and looked around. A tiled fireplace, its grate heaped with pale ashes. The double bed unmade. He could see the shape of her head preserved on the top pillow, an oval indentation in the cotton. At last his eyes reached hers. She was still smiling. He realised he hadn’t spoken to her yet. Words seemed to have deserted him.

‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that you’ve got theories …’

He had no idea what she meant by that.

She took a step forwards and her voice softened, as if he was slow in the head, or fragile. ‘Perhaps this is the wrong place to do it,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we should do it somewhere else.’

She seemed to know exactly what he had in mind. All he had to do was agree with her. Could it really be that simple?

‘Well?’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think you’re right,’ Barker said. It was so long since he had spoken that he had to clear his throat. ‘I think we should do it somewhere else.’

‘Where?’

‘It’s a long way.’

‘How will we get there?’

‘By train.’

None of this disturbed her in the slightest. If anything, she appeared pleased. ‘Do I need to take anything with me?’

‘I don’t know. A jacket, maybe.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Yes.’

The ease of the exchange unnerved him. She didn’t seem to have any doubts, either about his identity or his intentions. Who did she think he was? This was a question he found himself trapped into not asking — but he thought that if he listened carefully enough, then perhaps she would supply him with the answer. He had so many questions, though, even at the most basic level. He wanted to ask about her hair. Why had she dyed it? And why orange, of all colours? He couldn’t risk that either. It would imply that he had seen her before, that he had some prior knowledge of her and, judging by what she’d already told him, this was the first time they had met.

All of a sudden, her hand lifted to her mouth. ‘The kettle. I forgot.’ She ran out of the room. Before he could follow her, she ran back in again. ‘Would you like some tea?’

He glanced at his watch. Twenty-past nine. Almost half an hour had passed since she opened the front door and he walked in. Time was beginning to speed up. He saw clock-hands spinning, a calendar shedding its pages like leaves in a gale.

‘Is there time?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there’s time.’

He stood by the kitchen window while she rinsed two cups under the tap. He couldn’t help noticing the sticky patches on the table, the dust and rubbish on the floor. It surprised him that she lived in such squalor. He watched her open a box of tea-bags. She used one in each cup, dropping them in the sink when they had yielded their flavour.

At one point she turned to him, steam from the kettle rising past her face. ‘I’m so glad you came,’ she said. ‘Charlie was really worried about you.’

Charlie? He managed a smile. He still had no idea who he was supposed to be, but he thought that if he played along with her, then it would make the whole thing easier — easier than he could possibly have imagined. When she spoke to him, he held his tongue and tried to look as though she was only telling him what he already knew.

She stood in front of her wardrobe, one hand on her hip, the other covering one corner of her mouth. The dull tingle of hangers on the rail, the sprawl of discarded clothes across her bed. She couldn’t decide what to wear. She was even slower than Jill, who often used to take an hour to dress if they were going out, and perhaps because of this odd, skewed sense of familiarity, a feeling of nostalgia, really, he didn’t try to hurry her. Instead, he sat on a chair with his back to the window and sipped his tea, which had long since cooled. He felt the sun reach into the room and touch his shoulder. Gradually, he found himself relaxing. So much so, in fact, that when she finally appeared in a black skirt and a denim jacket and told him she was ready, it caught him unawares and even, for a few brief moments, disappointed him.

Yes, it was easy in the flat, and walking up the road, that was easy too, but as they entered the tube station, a change came over her. She began to mutter under her breath, and her words, when he could hear them, made no sense to him. On the platform he tried to talk to her, to calm her, but she seemed to be listening to something else. There was a buzzing in her ears, no, a fizzing, which she didn’t like at all. Further down the platform a guard’s head turned slowly in their direction, expressionless but inquisitive. Barker began to wish he’d thought of a taxi. What they needed now was to be hidden from the world, invisible.

At Baker Street a middle-aged woman stepped into their carriage. She had a page-boy haircut, which heightened the bluntness of her features. Barker sensed trouble coming the moment he saw her. Some people, you just know. He watched her sit down opposite. Watched her eyes. How they drifted idly towards the two of them, then tightened into focus. She wasn’t frightened of his size or his tattoos or the scar on the bridge of his nose. In fact, she hardly seemed to notice. She just leaned over, concerned, and said, ‘Is something wrong?’

Glade stared into the woman’s face, then she began to shake her head. ‘I don’t know what you’re saying,’ she murmured. ‘I can’t hear you.’

The woman looked across at Barker. ‘Is she ill?’

‘She’s fine,’ he said. ‘Just leave us alone.’

‘Are you sure?’ The woman studied Glade again. ‘She looks as if she needs some help to me.’

Barker lifted his eyes towards the roof. No corners, just curving metal. Cream-coloured. Shiny. In a loud voice, he said, ‘Maybe you’d like to mind your own fucking business, all right?’

Several people shifted in their seats, but he knew they wouldn’t interfere. People don’t, in England.

The woman sat back, her eyes fixed on some imaginary horizon, her lips bloodless, pinched. Barker nodded to himself. That was more like it. If only he’d been paid to get rid of her. Come to think of it, he probably would have done the job for nothing.