Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

They did a short interview over lunch, which they ate on the floor of a room at the back of the house.

“We’re surrounded by images which are momentarily potent and carry no resonance whatsoever,” Barker was saying in transatlantic Scouse. “Advertising, the pop video, a thing which seems to mean an awful lot and is in fact absolutely negligible.”

Maddox noticed the hairdresser carrying a paper plate and a cup. She sat cross-legged on the floor next to another crew member and they talked as they ate.

“What frightens you?” he asked Barker.

“Unlit streets, flying, being stuck in the tube at rush hour. Places where you have to relinquish control.”

Once they’d finished, Maddox hung around awkwardly, waiting for a chance to talk to the hairdresser. When it came – her companion rising to go – he seized it. She was getting up too and Maddox contrived to step in front of her, blocking her way. He apologised and introduced himself. “I was just interviewing Clive. We’ve known each other a couple of years. I was in one of his plays.”

“Linzi,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m only here for one day. The regular girl called in sick.”

“Then I’m lucky I came today,” he said, smiling shyly.

She was wearing a dark green top of soft cotton that was exactly the same shade as her eyes. Her hair, light brown with natural blonde streaks, was tied back in a knot pierced by a pencil.

“Are you going to stick around?” she asked.

“I’ve done my interview, but if no one kicks me out . . .”

“It’s a pretty relaxed set.”

He did stick around and most of the time he watched Linzi, promising himself he wouldn’t leave until he’d got her number. It took him the rest of the afternoon, but he got it. She scribbled it on a blank page in her Filofax, then tore out the page and said, “Call me.”

The chances of finding the house in darkness were even less than in daylight. He’d been up to Dollis Hill a couple of times in the last few weeks, once in the car and once on foot. Lately, he’d been thinking more about Linzi, and specifically about the early days, before it started to go wrong. He’d spent enough time going over the bad times and wanted to revisit the good. He wanted to see the house again, but couldn’t. He needed to locate it for his book. He’d rewatched the film, which contained enough shots of the house’s exterior that it should have been easy to locate it, but it didn’t seem to matter how many times he trailed these suburban avenues, the house wasn’t there. Or if it was, he couldn’t see it. He’d begun to think it might have been knocked down, possibly even straight after the shoot. It could have been why the house had been available. In the film there was a No.55 on the porch, but that would be set dressing, like the renumbering of 25 Powis Square, in Performance , as No.81.

He looked at his watch and calculated that if he was quick he could get to Ladbroke Grove in time for coffee and to drive Christine home, thereby reducing the amount of grief she would give him. Negligibly, he realised, but still.

In the morning, he feigned sleep while she dressed. Her movements were businesslike, crisp. The night before had been a riot, as expected. When he had turned up at the dinner, two and a half hours late, she had contented herself with merely shooting him a look, but as soon as they left she started. And as soon as she started, he switched off.

It didn’t let up even when they got home, but he wasn’t listening. He marvelled at how closely he was able to mimic the condition with which Karen, his lip-reader, had been born. Thinking of Karen, moreover, relaxed him inside, while Christine kept on, even once they’d got into bed. Elective deafness – it beat hysterical blindness.

When he was sure Christine had left the house – the slammed door, the gate that clanged – he got up and showered. Within half an hour, having spent ten minutes pointing the DVD remote at the television, he was behind the wheel of the car with his son in the back seat. South Tottenham in twenty minutes was a bigger ask by day than by night, but he gave it his best shot. Rush hour was over (Christine, in common with everyone who worked on weekly magazines, finished earlier than she started), but skirting the congestion charge zone was still a challenge.

He parked where he had the night before and turned to see that Jack was asleep. He left him there, locked the car and walked up. He had decided, while lying in bed with his back to Christine, that it would be worth going up into the loft. Somewhere in the loft was a box containing old diaries, including one for 1986. He had never been a consistent diarist, but some years had seen him make more notes than others. It was worth a rummage among the spider’s webs and desiccated wasps” nests. His size meant he didn’t bang his head on the latticework of pine beams.

The loft still smelled faintly of formalin. He suspected it always would until he got rid of the suitcase at the far end. He shone the torch in its direction. Big old-fashioned brown leather case, rescued from a skip and cleaned up. Solid, sturdy, two catches and a strap with a buckle. Could take a fair weight.

He redirected the torch at the line of dusty boxes closer to the trap door. The first box contained T-shirts that he never wore any more but couldn’t bear to throw away. The second was full of old typescripts stiff with Tipp-Ex. The diaries were in the third box along. He bent down and sorted through: 1974, a shiny black Pocket Diary filled mainly with notes on the history of the Crusades; 1976, the summer of the heatwave, Angling Times diary, roach and perch that should have been returned to the water left under stones to die; 1980, the deaths of his three remaining grandparents, three funerals in one year, coffins in the front room, all burials; 1982, his first term at university, meeting Martin, his best friend for a while. Martin was a year older, which had impressed Maddox. The age difference hadn’t mattered. Everything was changing. Leaving school, leaving home. Living in halls. Martin was a medical student. They would stay up late drinking coffee and Martin would smoke cigarettes and tell Maddox about medicine, about anatomy and about the bodies he was learning to dissect.

Maddox could listen to Martin for hours. The later they stayed up, the more profound their discussions seemed to become. Maddox watched as Martin dragged on his cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs for an eternity, stretching the moment, before blowing it out in perfect rings. When Martin talked about the bodies in the anatomy lab, Maddox became entranced. He imagined Martin alone in the lab with a dozen flayed corpses. Bending over them, examining them, carefully removing a strip of muscle, severing a tendon. Getting up close to the secrets, the mysteries, of death. Martin said it didn’t matter how long he spent washing his hands, they still smelled of formalin. He held them under Maddox’s nose, then moved to cup his cheeks in an affectionate, stroking gesture.

“You don’t mind, do you?” he said, as his hand landed on Maddox’s knee.

“Could you get me in there? Into the lab?” Maddox asked, shaking his head, picturing himself among the bodies, as Martin’s hand moved up his thigh.

“No. But I could bring you something out. Something you could keep.”

Martin’s hand had reached Maddox’s lap and Maddox was mildly surprised to discover that far from objecting, he was aroused. If this was to be the downpayment on whatever Martin might fetch him back from the dissection table, so be it.

“I’ve got something for you,” Martin said a couple of days later, “in my room.”

Maddox followed Martin to his room.

“So where is it?” Maddox asked.