Anne Billson - Stiff Lips

I was left feeling unaccountably anxious, as though there were an express train hurtling up out of the dark inwards me: I could sense its approach but couldn't work out which direction it would be coming from. I was so on edge that, in the market one Friday afternoon, when someone tapped me gently on the shoulder, I leapt in the air as though someone had poked me in the kidneys with a cattle prod.

I whirled round to find Sophie looking at me in amusement. She always seemed to be amused these days, as though she were getting a kick out of watching me slowly going to hell. I frowned back, trying to work out what was different about her; there were so many changes these days it wasn't easy to keep track. This time it was her hair — no longer blonde, but an extraordinary flame red which glinted wickedly in the sun.

'The stress must be getting to you,' she said, and suggested a drink to soothe my nerves. I thought it was a bit early to start drinking, but didn't say no; alcohol was probably just the thing to soften the pneumatic-drill pounding of my latest hangover.

'Stress? What stress?' I asked. I did indeed feel stressed, though I had no idea why. My career, though in its usual state of creative atrophy, was at least reasonably remunerative. My love life was plodding along nicely. But Sophie gave me a meaningful look, as though the two of us shared a dirty little secret. Something inside warned me not to pursue the topic, so instead I asked her what she'd done to her hair.

'Henna,' she said. 'I had it done this morning at Mane Event. Like it?'

I told her I thought it was very striking, but in truth I didn't care for it much. I didn't see the point; when you had hair like Sophie's natural wheaty blonde, I couldn't understand why you'd want to change it to some brassy hooker hue.

'What made you take the plunge?' I asked her.

'Don't know. Maybe I got tired of being tasteful. Maybe I just wanted to shock everyone. It's not as though it'll be like this for ever. It'll grow out.'

We bought drinks in Baldinger's and sat down at a quiet table near the back of the bar and she said, 'I've been meaning to talk to you for some time about this sleepwalking thing. It's rather embarrassing.'

I glanced sideways at her. She was staring down into her kir. 'That's all right,' I said. 'You don't have to explain. I didn't realise you were aware of it.'

Sophie did an almost imperceptible double-take, like a society lady checking to see if the tart sitting next to her was wearing the same frock. 'How could I not be aware of it?' she asked. 'Last night makes it three in a row. Last night you even got into bed with me.'

I said, 'I beg your pardon?'

'Don't you think you should see a doctor?'

'You think I'm walking in my sleep?' I asked, desperately backtracking.

'Why yes,' said Sophie. 'I thought you knew. Last night I woke you up, and you apologized and scuttled back upstairs.' She paused and lit a cigarette. 'I assumed you'd woken up, anyway. Maybe you just seemed awake. It's sometimes difficult to tell with you, Clare.'

'I don't remember any of this,' I said. 'Are you sure it's not the other way round? Are you sure it's not you walking in your sleep?'

Sophie sighed, 'Don't start that tit for tat thing again. What I want to know is how you got hold of my spare key.'

'I didn't even know I had your spare key,' I said, beginning to feel prickly and paranoid. I wouldn't have put it past Sophie to be playing some elaborate trick just to make me look stupid.

'Try your keyring,' she suggested.

I got out my keyring, and counted off the key to my flat in Hackney, the key to number nine, the key to flat number four. And stopped counting. There was one key left. I turned it this way and that.

'See what I mean?' asked Sophie. She held up her own key. The two matched perfectly. 'Nothing to worry about,' she said cheerily. 'Maybe it's your diet. You should stop stuffing yourself with junk food. If your GP can't help, I could always give you the name of my homeopath.'

I nodded, too stunned to reply. My head filled with a vision of Hampshire Place, after dark, coming alive as somnambulists wandered in and out of each other's flats, narrowly missing one another as they ambled up and down stairs with outstretched arms and unseeing eyes.

I tried to prise the extra key from its place on my ring, but only succeeded in breaking a nail. 'I have no idea how this came to be in my possession,' I said, and wondered whether to tell Sophie about the night I'd discovered her in my bathroom, but she seemed eager to change the subject.

'I'm sure it's not serious,' she said in a tone that suggested it was a symptom of terminal cancer, at the very least. 'Now, what are you wearing to Carolyn's bash?'

I was going to be wearing my new velvet jacket, but I didn't tell Sophie in case she accused me of playing copycat games again. The jacket had been acquired at terrible cost to my nerves as well as to my purse, but I wasn't about to share this information with her either. I wasn't sure I was capable of sharing it with anyone.

For years I'd been thinking velvet was hopelessly infra-dig, but now that Sophie had given it her seal of approval, it had rocketed to the top of my shopping-list. I had hunted through the head-shops and neo-psychedelia stores of Portobello Road, but the garments I found there all had folksy little touches such as smocking or embroidery. I had no intention of looking like a Norwegian goose-girl. I wanted something that could pass, in a dimmish light, for debonair.

It was a fine autumn day, cool but sufficiently bright to allow me to get away with wearing prescription sunglasses without feeling too pretentious. I felt stylish and in control of my life as I strolled through the market, despite having to elbow my way through the usual sightseers cluttering up the place. W11 belongs to me, I thought, feeling sure the visiting rubes would perceive me instantly as one of the chosen few — not just another face in the crowd, but a local, a Notting Hill resident .

Eventually I spotted what I was looking for on Portobello Green — a stall packed end to end with fifty-seven varieties of black velvet jacket, most of them unencumbered by unnecessary trimmings. The area beneath the Westway was wreathed in shadow, and I had to remove my sunglasses to ensure I was looking at black rather than bottle green or midnight blue. I found one I liked and slipped out of my tweed to try it on before stepping back to study myself in the full-length mirror propped up against the side of the stall.

'Suits you,' said the stallholder, a skinny youth with a wispy soul patch and single earring. He stared straight over my shoulder, and added, 'Doesn't it?'

I did up two buttons on the jacket and blinked, several times, eyes still adjusting to the gloom as I continued to gaze at myself in the mirror.

Time stood still. The only sound was the sound of my own breathing. I'd been looking, but only now did I see .

It was the first time I'd seen him.

It was his reflection I saw. He was standing just behind me, blending with the shadows, and it wasn't easy to pick him out against the background because he was dressed in black, just as Carolyn had said — like an undertaker, black coat and trousers and shirt, so that his face, by contrast, stood out a whiter shade of pale, whiter than a junkie's complexion, whiter than white bread, whiter than milk, whiter than white.

But then your skin would have been pale too if you'd been dead all those years.

He was noticeably taller than me, taller by at least a head, but he was stooping, shoulders hunched forward like a vulture's, as if to get a better view of what was in the mirror.

Which was me. It was my reflection he was looking at. He was trying to get a better view of me .