Chapter 5

In her house in Campden Hill Square, Nerissa Nash was getting ready to go to her parents' for supper. If it had been her mum alone she was going to see, say when her dad was at work, she would have put on jeans and boots and an old jumper under her sheepskin. But her dad liked to see her dressed up, he took such pride in her.

Though she had no idea of this, her life was one they didn't begin to understand. If not everyone could lead it, she supposed everyone would want to. It was bounded by the body and the face, hair‑ lots of it on the head and none anywhereelse‑ clothes, cosmetics, aids to beauty, homoeopathy, workouts, massage, sparkling water, lettuce, vitamin supplements, alternative medicine, astrology and having her fortune told, the images and activities of other celebrities, her mum and dad and her brothers and sisters. Of music she knew very little, of painting, books, opera, ballet, scientific advances, and politics she knew nothing and wasn't interested in them. Taking part in fashion shows, she had visited all the major capitals of the world and seen of them only the studios and changing rooms of designers, the insides of clubs and gyms, the premises of masseurs, and her own face in the mirrors of cosmeticians. But for one lack in her life, she was extremely happy.

From both parents, somewhere in the genes, she had inherited a sunny disposition, a faculty for enjoying simple pleasures, and a kindly nature. People said of her that Nerissa would do anything to help a friend. Almost everything she did she enjoyed. Especially delightful was sitting at her huge dressingtable, a white cotton cape covering her Versace trouser suit, her long hair looped back, making up her face. On the CD player Johnny Cash was singing her favorite song, loved by her because it was her dad's preference over all others, the one about the teenage queen, prettiest girl they'd ever seen, she who loved the boy next door, who worked at the candy store. Nerissa identified with this successful beauty in most respects.

Her dad liked her hair hanging loose, so she left it that way. If only it had been cold, she could have worn her new fake fur that was made to look like Arctic fox. No real fur for her, she loved animals too much. The very thought made her shudder. But no, it had better be something thin and silky. Dropping the cape on the floor, she inadvertently swept off the dressing table the lid of a pot and three earrings. What should she take her parents? She should have bought something but she'd been working out most of the day and hadn't got around to it. Nevermind. Two bottles of champagne came out of the drinks cupboard and a jar of cocktail sticks fell out, scattering everywhere. Next that huge box of chocolates Rodney had given her‑ he was so sweet but was he crazy, thinking she'd so much as look at a chocolate?

Nerissa left a trail of litter behind her through the house. Even the flowers toppled out of the vases. Magazines tumbled out of the rack, handfuls of tissues spilled onto surfaces and under tables, lamps fell over, glasses broke, and odd bits of jewelry glinted from the carpet pile and the windowsills. Lynette, who came to clean, was so well paid she didn't mind. She went about the house, picking everything up, admiring a ring here, a bottle of scent there, and if she was at home, Nerissa would give it to her.

It was raining, the heavy crashing rain of summer. Nerissa put on her white shiny raincoat over her silk shift and leapt into the car with her champagne and her chocolates, her wet umbrella‑ white and with a picture of the seafront at Nice on it‑ slung onto the backseat. She stopped in Holland Park on adouble yellow line to buy flowers for her mum, orchids and arum lilies, roses and funny green things the florist couldn't identify. Luck was with her, as it usually was. All the wardens were indoors watching Casualty on TV: She was going to be late‑ when wasn't she? ‑ but Dad wouldn't mind. He liked eating closer to nine than eight.

They lived in Acton, in a street of semidetached mock‑ Tudor houses, theirs with an extra bedroom over the garage. Nerissa and her brothers had grown up there, gone to the local schools, visited the local cinema, and shopped at the localshops. Both of her brothers were older than Nerissa and both were now married. When she started to make a lot of money, she had wanted to buy her parents a house near her own, perhaps a smart cottage in fashionable Pottery Lane, but they would have none of it. They liked Acton. They liked their neighbors and the neighborhood and their big garden. All their friends lived nearby and they were staying put. Besides, her father had made three ponds in his garden, one in the front and two in the back, and filled them with goldfish. Where in Pottery Lane would he be able to have three ponds or even one? And the goldfish were very active tonight, enjoying the rain.

It was her father who answered the door. Nerissa threw her arms around him, then around her mother, presented her gifts. These were, as always, received rapturously. She never touched alcohol, she drank bottled water, but now she accepted with pleasure a large cup of Yorkshire tea. You could get very fed up with water thrust at you wherever you went. Her mum always announced dinner in the same way, and uttered it in an atrocious French accent. Nerissa would have wondered what waswrong if she had deviated from this practice.

" Mademoiselle est servie. "

She only ate food like this when she went to her parents' house. The rest of the time she picked at grapefruit and Japanese rice crackers at home or green salad in restaurants. It was a miracle, she sometimes thought, that her insides could weather with no ill effects the shock of digesting thick soup, rolls and butter, roast meat and potatoes, batter pudding, and Brussels sprouts. Her mother thought this was her normal diet.

" My daughter can eat as much as she likes, " she told friends.

" She never puts on a scrap of weight. "

When they had reached the apple charlotte and baked Alaska stage of the meal, Nerissa asked her mother about their neighbors. These people were great friends, as close as cousins.

" Fine, I think, " her mother said. " I haven't seen much of them for a few days. Sheila's got a new job, I do know that‑ ‑ oh, and Bill's got the all‑ clear from the hospital. "

" That's good. " Nerissa trod warily. " And the son? He's stil lliving at home? "

" Darel? " her dad said. " Such a nice well‑ mannered boy. He's still at home, but Sheila told me he's buying a flat in Docklands. Time to move on, he says. "

Nerissa was unsure whether this was good news for her or bad. While she was having dinner with her parents, she always hoped Darel Jones would come to the door to beg a couple of teabags or return a borrowed book. He never had, though accordingto her mother, they and the Joneses were always " in and out of each other's houses. " She thought of him next door, watching television with his parents or maybe out somewhere with another girl. The latter was more likely for a very handsome and charming young man of twenty‑ eight. She sighed and then smiled to stop her parents noticing.

Guilt seldom troubled Gwendolen. To her mind she led, and had always led, a blameless life of absolute integrity. Entering a tenant's flat in his absence and exploring it seemed to her a landlord's right and if she enjoyed it, so much the better. The only drawback was her need to rest and take deep breaths between flights.

What a lot he drank! An empty gin bottle and one which had contained vodka and four wine bottles had been put into the recycling box since she was last up here. It was evident he didn't eat much at home, the fridge was again nearly empty and smelling of antiseptic. A large leather‑ bound book lay on the coffee table. Because she could hardly pass a book without opening it, Gwendolen opened this one. Nothing but photographs of a black girl in very short skirts or swimming costumes. Perhaps this was what they meant by pornography; she had never really known.

A copy of the previous day's Daily Telegraph was beside the book. Gwendolen rather liked the Telegraph and would have bought it herself if it hadn't been so ruinously expensive. It puzzled her that Cellini had bought it. One of those tabloids was surely more his mark, and she wouldn't have been surprised to learn that he had been given this copy. Ed had seen an article in it about fitness machines, which especially singled out Fiterama for mention, and passed it on to Mix.

Just as she couldn't pass a book without opening it, so Gwendolen found it impossible to see the printed word without reading it. Some of it, that is. Ignoring the fitness machine article, she read the front page, then the next page, managing fairly well but wishing she had her magnifying glass with her. When she reached the births, marriages, and deaths, she laid the paper down and went to the door to listen. He hardly ever came back in the middle of the day, but it was as well to be careful. How tidy everything was! It amused her to think that of the two of them he with his cleanliness and fussy ways would be called an old woman while everyone saw her as cultivated and urbane, more like a man really.

She wasn't much interested in marriages and births, she never had been, but she ran her eye‑ pushed and strained her eye really‑ down the deaths column. People no longer had any stamina and many younger than herself died every day. Anderson, Arbuthnot, Beresford, Brewster, Brown, Carstairs‑ she had once known a Mrs. Carstairs who lived down the road, but it wasn't her, she was called Diana, not Madeleine. Davis, Edwards, Egan, Fitch, Graham, Kureishi. There were three Nolans, very odd that, it wasn't a common name. Palmer, Pritchard, Rawlings, Reeves‑ Reeves!

How extraordinary and what a coincidence. This was thefirst time she had looked at the Telegraph for months and what should she find but the announcement of his wife's death. For it certainly was his wife.

On 15 June, at home, Eileen Margaret, aged 78, beloved wife

of Dr. Stephen Reeves of Woodstock, Oxon. Funeral 21 June

at St. Bede's Church, Woodstock. No flowers. Donations to

cancer research.

This small print was terribly hard to read but there was no doubt about it. Would he notice if she cut it out of the paper? Possibly, but what could he do about it if he did? Now to find the scissors. Her own might be in the bathroom cabinet or the oven‑ seldom used, it made a useful cupboard‑ or somewhere in the bookshelves, but an old woman like him would keep his in a neatly arranged drawer along with such gadgets as potatopeelers and bottle openers. He would be sure to have several of those.

Gwendolen poked about in Mix's kitchen, paying particular attention to the microwave, whose function was a puzzle to her. Did toast come out of it or music? It might even be a very small washing machine. She found the scissors exactly where she thought they would be and cut out the announcement of his wife's death. Downstairs she would be able to study it at leisure with the aid of her magnifying glass.

She was only just in time. As she was descending the bottom flight he let himself in by the front door.

" Good evening, Mr. Cellini. "

" Hiya, " said Mix, thinking about her getting pregnant and going for help to Reggie. " How are you doing? All right? "

When he phoned the spa the girl called Danila told him Madam Shoshana agreed to his servicing the machines. Perhap she would like to come along some time and bring one of his contracts with him. Mix concocted on his computer a contract with Mix Maintenance as its headline‑ he was ratherproud of that‑ and printed out two copies.

Instead of being modified by the passage of time, his fear increased as the days went by. He had never seen the figure on the stairs again, though he fancied sometimes that he heard noises that shouldn't have been there, footsteps in the long passage, a curious rustling sound like someone taking crushed paper out of bags or stuffing it into them, once a strain of music, though that might have come from the street. By night he had to screw up his courage in order to let himself in. And those stairs he had always hated were worse.

Reaching St. Blaise House, he forced himself to put his key into the lock and enter the hall, the dim light coming on. Try not to think about it, he told himself as he began to mount, think about Nerissa and about getting fit, the way she'd like you to be‑ why not get yourself an exercise bike? Fiterama will let you have it at cost. Go for walks, lift weights. He was always telling clients what marvelous physical benefit they'd get from using the machines. Tell yourself, he thought. And try to be glad about these stairs. Going up them is good exercise too.

Like a kind of therapy, this worked until he came to the landing below the tiled flight. Feeble light, filtered through tree branches and foliage and the grime on the glass, seeped through the Isabella window and touched him with spots ofcolor as he walked up. It lay on the top floor like a pattern donein smudged chalks and quite still on this windless night. Two long black passages stretched away from the landing, emptyand silent, all the doors closed. He switched on the light once more, staring fearfully down the left‑ hand passage as the cat appeared from out of a door which came open and closed of its own accord. He saw its green eyes glinting as it walked in unconcerned fashion toward him, hissed as it passed him and made for the stairs.

Who or what had opened the door? He plunged into his flat, fumbling for the lightswitch but at last turning it on. The sudden brightness made him let out his breath in a long, relieved sigh. He'd heard of cats learning to open doors, though these in the flat had knobs, not handles. It might be different out there. Going to look was out of the question. The door in question must have a handle, and Otto, who was clever if evil, had learned to stand on his hind legs and apply to it the pressure of his clawy paw. Who had closed it? Doors close of their own accord, he told himself. It happens all the time.

A cheerful film on television, a not‑ so‑ old Hollywood musical, a mug of hot chocolate with a drop of whiskey in it, and three Maryland cookies finished the job of reassurance. Still, once he started on his fitness regimen, all that sort of eating and drinking would have to stop. It was warm in the flat but not too hot, 27 degrees. That was the kind of temperature he liked. Warmth, sweet filling food, a thick soft mattress, lazing around, doing nothing‑ why were all the nice things bad for you?

The cat and its eyes were banished for the duration of the musical. Above his head, outside his front door, he could hear no sound, and when the television was off the silence was disturbed only by the sighing of traffic on the Westway. He feltbetter. He congratulated himself on his‑ what was the word? ‑ resilience. But in bed, with the bedside lamp off, he thought ofthe cat and the door again and, although there could be nothingto see, kept his eyes shut against the darkness.