The Girl Below(32)

It did seem like strange behavior, though I could guess what book he’d gotten out—along with a few decoys. “Did you see what he was reading?”

“He wouldn’t show me.”

Making my way to Notting Hill that night with my suitcase and a key, I felt like a gypsy. My sense that London owed me something had vanished. Maybe if I’d been born in another part of the world I could have returned there and felt like a native, but London wasn’t like that. It was too full to take back a stray who had carelessly given up her place.

And yet, for now, I had a key to our old building. It was shiny, freshly cut, and turned easily in the well-used lock. The heavy front door had a rubber skirt and shushed across the carpet in a satisfying, moneyed way. When I stepped into the lobby, a bright chandelier lit up overhead, and the brass central heating grille gleamed like a new Rolls-Royce.

I climbed the wide staircase one flight at a time, and just before I reached each new level the landing would be illuminated, the lights triggered by an invisible sensor. At first I was grateful for the ease—my hands were full with heavy suitcases—but as I climbed higher up the building, my pace slowed, and the lights began to time out before I reached the next floor and the next sensor. For half of every flight—then gradually more—I was plunged into a darkness that my eyes found hard to adjust to and was forced to walk blind up the stairs. I looked for a switch but found none. To keep abreast with the lights, I tried to pick up my pace, but the more I tried to rush with my heavy bags, the more out of sync I seemed to get. Finally, when I arrived at what I thought was Peggy’s floor, the lights didn’t come on at all.

In the dark, I put down my suitcases and groped in my bag for the key. It fit easily enough into the lock, was only a little sticky, but when I tried to turn it, the thing wouldn’t budge. For almost a minute, still in darkness, I persisted, twisting the key back and forth and trying to shift the door slightly in its frame to see if that would help. I looked up and down the shadowy staircase and out the window at a stand of muscular oak trees, their wide trunks dappled in the moonlight, and that was when I realized something was wrong. From Peggy’s floor you looked above oak canopies at the sky. Once more, I studied the door. It had no number, just a tiny metal eyehole in the center.

It wasn’t Peggy’s door. This was Jimmy’s floor. A spasm of fear radiated from my stomach and I tried to pull out the key, but I must have already turned it too far in one direction, and the jaws of the lock had clamped around it. Jimmy’s name hadn’t been on the list next to the buzzer and I had taken it for granted that he had moved out—but what if he hadn’t? My fingers plucked uselessly at the key as voices issued from the belly of the flat behind it, quiet at first, then shouting. Loud music started up, as rowdy as a fairground ride, and I jumped back, letting go of the key. It sat in the lock, reproaching me. I was being a scaredy cat, but knowing that didn’t help.

The music then changed abruptly to classical—the sound track to an ad I recognized. It was only the TV, rocking through a commercial break. Of course Jimmy didn’t live there anymore. The realization calmed me enough to have another go at the key, to tweak it with more patience until it released.

Halfway up the next set of stairs, the blessed lights came on, and stayed on until I reached the landing outside Peggy’s flat. My hands on the key chain were shaking, but I found the right key and turned it in the lock.





Chapter Eight


London, 2003





Once I had gained entry to Peggy’s apartment, what came over me first was relief. The lights worked, and the tatty interior was comforting, lived in. A hearty soup or stew had been warming in the kitchen, and the aroma of it was still in the hallway, canceling out the usual unpleasant smells. Pippa’s instructions had been to call out to Peggy as soon as I arrived, in case the old woman thought someone was trying to break in. Peggy was expecting me, but she had a leaky memory for comings and goings, and Pippa said it defaulted to paranoia if she was taken by surprise.

I put down my suitcases and called out her name once or twice, first in a quiet voice, then a little more loudly. When there was no answer, I assumed Peggy had gone to sleep. The door to her bedroom was closed, and I carried on down the hallway in search of a room that was empty—Pippa had told me to sleep in whichever one I could physically get into. Some rooms, she’d warned me, were entirely full of boxes. First, I came to what I thought had once been Peggy’s bedroom, and pushed open the door, or tried to, but something was blocking it, a small trunk or a piece of furniture. The door gave a little, but I didn’t want to force it open. I made my way down the hall and crossed the drawing room to get to Harold’s room, switching on as many lights as possible along the way. I meant not to look at Madeline, nor to think of her, to focus only on where I was heading, but before I could stop myself, I had looked in her direction—and looked again, because she wasn’t there. In the place she normally sat there was only a dark square on the floorboards where her dais had prevented the wood from fading.