The Girl Below(19)

I set out almost immediately in sneakers and jeans with the idea that I’d walk to Old Street tube station, where Alana and I were to meet, no matter how far away it was. But after an arduous hour of motorway avoidance and sprinting across arterial routes, I limped onto Camden High Street, cashed the last traveler’s check, and splurged on an off-peak bus pass. If only I’d bought one at the outset . . .

By the time I got to Old Street to meet Alana, I was a disheveled wreck but bang on time. In the station foyer, I eagerly scanned the thousands of surging commuters for a wistful schoolgirl in gray skirt, blazer, and pumps, her long hair swept artfully to one side. I was still scanning when a sharp-suited woman with a blunt, practical bob approached me and said, “Suki, is that you?”

I couldn’t believe this woman was Alana. She looked old, her worn face making it seem like more than a decade since we had last seen each other. “Wow,” I said. “You look so grown up.”

“And you still look like a student.” She looked me up and down. “I’m so jealous.”

She couldn’t be. Looking scruffy at almost thirty was nothing to be envious of.

An awkward hug ensued, during which Alana’s briefcase swung round and thumped me on the back. “Well, I can tell you haven’t been living in London for long,” she said, stepping back to examine me. “You still have a tan, and you seem sort of athletic, like someone who goes to the gym.”

“I can’t think why,” I said, keeping mum about the tramps across London to save tube fares and that I’d subsisted for weeks on a diet of chickpeas and rice. “Do I really still have a tan?”

“Maybe more of a healthy glow,” she said. “There’s a girl at work from New Zealand who has the same thing. Australians have it too.”

“Oh that,” I said. “That’s from having no ozone layer. You get so fried in the summer that your skin basically never recovers.”

On the way to a bar in Hoxton, Alana filled me in on her post-school life, and I listened, enchanted by her private school accent, still as high and fluty as mine must once have been. After A levels, she’d studied economics at Bristol, and gone back to do a postgrad diploma in number crunching when a research job didn’t come her way. Since then she’d worked for a multinational accounting firm, but not as an accountant, and although she explained it well, and I tried hard to understand, I failed to grasp exactly what it was she did. She was single, she added, but had her eye on some bloke from work. When she asked if I had a boyfriend, I told her I was happily unattached. We were making excellent small talk, I thought, until halfway down a cobbled side street she exclaimed, “What happened to you after you left? You just sort of disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“I went to live in New Zealand. And I ended up staying.”

“I know where you went, but apart from a few postcards I never heard from you again.” Her tone was reproachful. “I didn’t even know if you were still alive.”

“I wanted to keep in touch,” I said, fumbling for an excuse. “But after a while, everyone seemed so far away. The longer I left it, the harder it was to write. And then it seemed like too much time had passed and I didn’t know where to start.”

“I thought that’s what must have happened,” she said. “But it seemed so unlike you to be silent.”

There was a note almost of contempt in her voice that I didn’t understand. “I know. I’m useless, and by the time e-mail came along I didn’t have anyone’s address.” I’d been lucky to even find Alana again. Her parents still lived in the same house they’d lived in when we were at school and their number was listed. But other friends had been untraceable. “I’m sorry,” I said. “After my mother died, it was a weird time.”

“I’m sure it was,” she said, a flicker of sympathy in her eyes. “Anyway, it’s all ancient history now.” She grinned. “But you’re buying the first round.”

And just like that, I was down to my last forty quid.

The bar was hidden down an alley and decorated with mismatched velvet furniture and draped antique shawls, enough touches to suggest a 1920s speakeasy but not so many that it could ever be accused of being themed. At this hour, it was crammed with suits and noisy with the furor of after-work relief.

“I hope you don’t mind, but we’re meeting some friends of mine here, colleagues, actually,” said Alana as we elbowed our way to the bar. Then she yelled out, “Chris! Over here!” and disappeared behind a ridge of corporate shoulders.