Thieving Fear

SEVENTEEN

'Anyway, I should be getting back to work. How's yours?'

'I'm working on an idea. I'll say ta-ta. Hugh may be trying to call.'

'Let's hope so,' Charlotte said and looked up from nesting her mobile behind a pile of opening chapters accompanied by letters, most of them addressed to her by name and some of them spelled right, to find Glen loitering within earshot. He took her glance as an invitation to sidle behind her desk, perhaps so as only to murmur 'Problem?'

'I couldn't say.'

'Anything I should know about? Anything connected with us?'

She hoped he meant the pronoun to stand for the publishers. The sooner she satisfied him, the sooner he might leave her to feel a little less boxed in. 'Family matters,' she said.

'They can be the worst. I get the feeling maybe these aren't, no?'

'More like a problem in communication. Families have those.'

'You bet. Remind me to tell you about a bunch of mine sometime. So you don't think it's anything to put our author off her work for us.'

'I was just saying she's shaping up to be a professional.'

'That's what I like to hear. I guess she must have too.'

'I imagine she might, but I wasn't talking to her. It was another of my creative cousins.'

'Sounds like my kind of family. Who's this one?'

'He's an artist.'

'Professional? Can we use him?'

It was partly Charlotte's sense of being trapped in the meagre space behind her desk, not to mention underground and under observation, that made her retort 'I don't think he'd be your sort of professional.'

'Hey, don't be so sure you know what I'm about.'

Charlotte glanced over the top of the box that contained her desk, but none of their colleagues appeared to be listening. Perhaps they were too intent on keeping their jobs under the new regime, unless eavesdropping on a disagreement might help. 'Forgive me,' she murmured, 'I didn't mean –'

'It's OK, I'm not blaming you.' Glen pushed a heap of bound American proofs towards Charlotte, clearing a corner of her desk to sit on. 'Just because I have to focus on what our bosses want,' he said low and aimed it down at her, 'all that means is leaving other stuff at home. It doesn't mean I stop appreciating what else matters.'

Above his head the aura of concentrated light around a fluorescent tube exhibited how low the concrete ceiling was – had always been. 'So who's your artist?' Glen said. 'What's his claim to fame?'

'Rory Lucas. I won't be offended if you haven't heard of him.'

'Wasn't he the guy who made the slide show of a bunch of famous paintings that you had to watch with all the random noises and bits of music?'

'Extra Sense,' Charlotte said, doing her best to hide her surprise. 'You heard about it, then.'

'More than heard. Went to see it when it was at the Tottenham Gallery. I liked the way the soundtrack changed how the pictures felt to you. And then I hung around to watch other people reacting. That was fun too.'

'I'm sorry I didn't see you. I went a few times.'

'Yeah, well, I was there. We missed each other.'

Charlotte hadn't intended to suggest otherwise, but before she could say so Glen said 'Anyway, I'm with you about him.'

'Well, good. I'm glad.'

Glen frowned for the duration of a blink. 'I'm saying I believe you're right, he's not for us. He wouldn't sell.'

Did he suspect her of doubting he'd visited the exhibition? Would the truth have made any difference? He was already saying 'OK, let's try and nail your other cousin down.'

'Have you had a chance to read her chapters yet?'

'Read them a couple of times. Once with dinner and once in bed.' He paused as if inviting a response before adding 'I think they work pretty well.'

'Well enough for us to make an offer?'

'Once you've worked your magic on them. And listen, don't let anyone tell you editing can't be just as creative as writing a book.'

'So we'll make an offer when . . .'

'Have we had her proposal for the next book?'

'She's working on it. She's found a setting for it.'

'Anywhere famous?'

'Maybe it will be by the time we're finished with it,' Charlotte said and couldn't understand why she was wary of saying 'Thurstaston.'

'Where's that? Why did she pick it, do you know?'

'It's on the coast looking out to the Irish Sea past Wales. We spent a night there with our other cousins the last time we camped out.'

'There'll need to be more to it. You're making it sound like a book for kids and a pretty old-fashioned one too.'

'I'm sure Ellen will invent something. She's done a lot of that already, after all.'

'Better make sure. No time like now.'

Even once he headed for his desk and she had room to move the heap of proofs aside, Charlotte still felt shut in. She had to glance behind her to check that the wall wasn't as close as the sense she had of a presence looming at her back. The darkness in the corner to her left was a shadow, not soil seeping through the plaster. It was absurd to delay speaking to Ellen, and she lifted her desk phone. As she began to wonder if the ringing wouldn't end until it snagged Ellen's automatic message, Ellen said 'Charlotte.'

'Just me. Not a reason to sound like that, I hope.'

'If you say so.' With no discernible lessening of nervousness Ellen said 'Had we better talk about Rory?'

'Why, what's the matter with him?'

'Nothing if you say not.'

'I don't know why I'd say anything was.'

'I thought he'd been, I suppose we'd have to call it interfering a bit over my book. I hope he didn't annoy you. I didn't tell him to, say anything, I mean.'

'He was just being Rory. We all know how he can be. He didn't do any harm. Your book's just between us,' Charlotte said, then had to append 'And the publishers, of course.'

'All right, no more Rory.' After at least a second's silence, which Charlotte found close to ritualistic, Ellen said in her original tone 'What about them?'

'We just need a little more from you.'

'I can send some more chapters over the weekend. That's all I'm doing now, the work you asked me to.'

'Well, I hope that's not your entire life.' Charlotte had the oppressive notion that in order to live her image of a writer Ellen had become a literary hermit locked away with her book. Another silence made her add 'We're waiting for an outline of your next one, and we think . . .'

'Go on. Whatever it is, you'll help me deal with it, won't you?'

Ellen's voice dwindled as Charlotte glanced over her shoulder again. Of course the slanting mass of shadow in the corner hadn't grown, and it was even less likely to have become more solid. It was certainly incapable of concealing a watcher. Nobody was spying on her from where the corner met the floor, and she needn't glare at the dark niche to convince herself. Once she began to feel she was putting off answering Ellen she turned back to the phone in a rage at her irrationality. 'All it is,' she said, 'the place you told me you wanted to use, we'd like there to be a reason for using it.'

'Thurstaston.'

Why did people keep saying the name? It was beginning to resemble some kind of invocation. 'I know you chose it because we were all there,' Charlotte said, 'but that won't be enough for your book.'

'I'd like to talk to you about that night.'

'Not now.' As she hastened to say this Charlotte had to wonder which of them was more on edge. She wasn't going to look behind her, but the view ahead was bad enough. She'd never realised how much the office brought to mind an underground bunker or an air-raid shelter that might collapse with a direct hit, the walls caving in beneath the weight of countless tons of earth. She tried to fend off these fancies by adding 'Unless it's for your book.'

'I don't know if it is.'

'Better leave it for now, then.' Charlotte wished it felt like more of a relief to ask 'Have you thought of anything that could be?'

'Hugh may have.'

'Sorry, what's this to do with him?'

'He wants to help. Between ourselves I think he's a bit sweet on me. Mind you, he hasn't seen me since we all met, and I'm sure –' Ellen trailed off or interrupted herself with a surge of determination. 'I do appreciate you all rallying around my book,' she said.

Perhaps Charlotte felt as if Rory and now Hugh were threatening her professional relationship with Ellen, although why should that work on her nerves so much? Somehow Ellen's remark seemed to aggravate the sense of earth pressing against the walls, staining the lights dim, creeping closer and livelier at Charlotte's back. 'So what's Hugh's contribution?' Charlotte had to ask.

'He says where we slept out that night, it's where someone used to live.'

'And how does that fit in?'

'I think he must have told me because it sounds like a magical name.' After a breath that Charlotte found unnecessarily hard to take, Ellen said 'Arthur Pendemon.'

It appeared to have power. Charlotte saw three of her colleagues stand up and retreat at once. In a moment she realised they were vacating their desks for the weekend. Rather than lending the basement a little more space, the exodus made her feel abandoned in a cell that was far too airless and not nearly light enough. She was absolutely not about to look behind her, even when two more people left their desks. Her job required her to stay on the phone and ask 'What do we know about him?'

'That's all Hugh did, I think. I haven't looked yet.'

Charlotte could perfectly well search for the name while talking to Ellen, and she made to transfer the receiver to her left hand. It had to be the shadow of her movement that fell across the computer screen; nobody had reared up out of the darkness at her back. Her colleagues would have noticed, however few of them remained. She raised the phone again as Ellen said 'Do you remember seeing anything?'

Charlotte found she had no great wish to learn 'Such as what?'

'Maybe we all slept where his house was, except I didn't notice any bits of it, did you?'

'That's my dream.'

'I don't understand. Why would you want that?'

'I didn't. Anything but. I mean it was – Glen, oh thanks.'

He'd veered to her desk on his way to the lift to return Ellen's chapters, dog-eared now. 'Monday,' he mouthed and left Charlotte with a brief squeeze of her upheld wrist, so that for a second she thought he meant to take the phone. She couldn't help wishing he had. The conversation had begun to feel like a trap into which she and Ellen were leading each other with no sense of its limits, let alone of a way to escape. 'What are you saying about him?' Ellen urged.

'Nothing. I'm saying I dreamed I had to go down under where there used to be a house.'

She felt as if the nightmare were poised to continue. The cellars might consist of rooms barely large enough for her to stand upright or move her arms away from her sides. The one to which she was led down unlit steps treacherous with soil, and then narrow sloping passages so lightless that her eyes felt caked with earth, would press her head and shoulders low with its cold stone roof. Even before the cell shut with a dull thick slam that resounded into the underground distance, she would feel like a crippled child. For an endless moment she scarcely knew she was hearing a voice. 'Anyone there?' it said or finished by saying.

Charlotte glared around the office, which was almost deserted. 'I still am.'

'No,' Ellen said and seemed to wish she could leave it at that. 'I asked was there anyone with you in your dream.'

Why had Charlotte thought the room was only almost deserted? Nobody was visible in front of her. Everyone else had sufficient intelligence to leave while there was air to breathe, before the walls collapsed inwards as their age proved unequal to the weight of earth. Meanwhile Ellen's question had revived the sight of eyes no longer buried, blinking away earth to peer gleefully up at Charlotte. 'This isn't getting us anywhere,' she said more sharply than Ellen deserved. 'We'll have to cut it short. They're locking up.'

Having felt desperate enough to invent this as a reason, she was irrationally afraid that it might prove to be true – that she could somehow be imprisoned in the subterranean room all weekend. 'See what you can find out,' she said and struggled to believe that her next breath didn't taste of earth. 'The sooner we've got your synopsis the better, all right? And if you need to call me don't hesitate.'

She would never have expected to be so briskly professional with Ellen. Perhaps her tone was why Ellen didn't answer, instead giving way to a silence that felt not just deep but dark until Charlotte cut it off. She shut down the computer before leaning left to retrieve her bag. A dark shape, vague but eager, swelled out of the corner in response – her own shadow. She grabbed the canvas bag and shoved Ellen's chapters into it, followed by three sets of bound proofs. She was already on her feet, and didn't spare the restlessly shadowy area behind her desk another glance. All the movements that she was unable to avoid glimpsing under desks as she hurried out of the basement room had to be her shadows. No wonder they seemed to be imitating her as they kept pace.

She wasn't anxious to use the lift, even if she would have such space as it offered all to herself. She almost ran along the corridor narrowed by lockers to the stairs. Such was her haste to reach the street that the door was creeping shut on its inexorable metal arm before she was fully aware that the staircase was unlit. Someone must be working on the lights; she heard activity above her – it couldn't be below her – in the dark. Shouldn't the electrician be using a flashlight? Presumably the scraping, like nails on the concrete, showed that he was applying some tool to the problem. She thought of asking how long it would take to fix, and had opened her mouth when she realised that the clawlike sound was approaching out of the dark as the wedge of light around her dwindled to nothingness. Barely in time she blocked the door and dodged into the corridor. She would use a lift after all.

One was waiting behind its doors. It hadn't finished opening when she darted in and jabbed the button to send it upwards. As the doors faltered and set about meeting again, a Ram editor emerged from the Women's and sprinted for the lift. She'd shoved her handbag between the doors when a fellow editor called for her to wait. 'Sorry,' she said to Charlotte and withdrew.

'Sorry,' Charlotte responded, having automatically retreated into a corner, and lurched forwards. She'd said it without thinking, but to whom? She hadn't backed into anyone tall and thin, let alone taller than she was and considerably thinner. The dry jagged sound beneath the nonchalant hum of the lift was too faint to define; it certainly wasn't the clicking of teeth bared in a delighted grimace or already far too bare. Nevertheless she twisted around to see that she was utterly alone, unless someone had sneaked behind her as she moved. The sight of the lift was oppressive enough, the windowless grey cage little wider than her outstretched arms and so indefinitely lit that she couldn't tell how many shadows were sharing the space.

As soon as it lumbered to a halt she dragged the doors apart, bruising her fingers, and ran across the unguarded lobby. The crowd outside on New Oxford Street made her feel hemmed in, particularly at her back. If a smell of earth seemed to linger in her nostrils, it must be as imaginary as it had been in the first place. A bus to Bethnal Green and beyond was approaching, but before she could risk a dash across the road she saw that it was too full to stop. She wanted to be home, up on the roof. Hugging her stuffed bag as if it were an emblem of her ability to function, she struggled through the crowd to Tottenham Court Road.

The stairs to the Underground were so packed with commuters that she took a firmer grip on her bag, though the gesture helped the crowd to pin her arms against her sides. Whoever was immediately above her seemed anxious to travel, but did he really need to press against her back? She could imagine he was eager for his dinner – he felt famished to the bone. He was forcing her downwards step by helpless step, but nobody would notice, since she appeared to be acting just like them. As she reached the circular concourse at the foot of the stairs she opened her mouth to release some kind of noise and swung around. There was nobody in sight who resembled the person she'd sensed behind her. Everyone looked well-fed and entirely unaware of her, and she couldn't be sure that she'd turned to face a loitering smell of earth.

She was heading for the Central Line when she faltered at the ticket barrier. The relentless escalator would carry her down to a platform almost as overloaded as the train was bound to be. All at once she couldn't live with being borne into the subterranean dark amid a press of bodies and increasingly less air. Before she could step aside someone shoved her forwards – a businessman intent on finishing a mobile call. As she fought her way up to street level, against a descent of commuters so implacable it seemed as mindless as earth collapsing into a pit, she kept having to suppress the notion that a hand was about to seize her by the shoulder or the neck.

At last she stumbled out beneath the sky, which was too distant and too overcast to offer much relief from the pressure of the crowd, and battled along Oxford Street to the stop ahead of the one opposite the publishers. She was just in time to catch a bus, although she would have said it was full even before several passengers joined her in the aisle. As it made its ponderous halting journey to Bethnal Green, her view out of the windows was restricted to a parade of shops and bars supporting older architecture on their backs, a spectacle occasionally varied by a glimpse down a side street of a church or some other venerable building. The view made her feel all the more shut in, as though the windows were no better than antique panoramas exhibiting an artificial progress. Once she was off the bus she would breathe more freely. Had somebody behind her been gardening? That might also explain why they were so thin.

As soon as the bus reached Bethnal Green Road she left it, three stops short of hers. It sailed away before she could identify the passenger who'd stood so close. The pavements were crowded with homecomers, and even though the traders were packing up their stalls of clothes and discs and jewellery and groceries, the route still felt constricted. Charlotte took a side street that bordered a park, which accommodated several haphazard games of football and more supine forms of recreation. As she crossed the park she hesitated only once, distracted by the twitching of an elongated shadow beside her. It belonged to a young tree that must have shifted in a breeze she hadn't noticed. The tree was far too slim for anyone to have sidled from behind it or to be using it for cover.

An alley between gentrified four-storey tenements led from a gate in the railings to the pavement opposite her flat. She unlocked the door at the top of the steps and tramped up the stone stairs. Even the passage that enclosed them as they climbed from balcony to balcony felt unappealingly narrow just now. Without pausing to dump her bag in her second-floor flat she continued up to the roof.

She dropped the bag on the faded sunlounger flanked by potted plants – Susie's from the top floor – and leaned on the wall beside the communal barbecue shrouded in plastic. A train whined along the viaduct parallel to Whitechapel Road, beyond which an airliner as bright as a sunlit knife was sinking above the Thames towards Heathrow. Charlotte raised her face to the tattered sky and had taken several increasingly deep breaths when her mobile rang.

She recognised the number, though she had only ever used it to say that her train to Vivaldi was delayed. She thought it best to put on a voice as professional as it was amiable. 'Glen?' she said with a hint of surprise.

'Sure. Sorry if I'm calling when it's not appropriate, but I don't know if you need to hear the news.'

Whatever she might have expected of him, it wasn't this, especially his wariness that sounded close to nervous. 'I don't either,' she said.

'I guess that means you haven't. OK. Sorry.' His pause might have been meant to express further sympathy before he added 'I'm afraid it's about your cousin.'

'Oh, Glen, come on. Not more afterthoughts about her book,' Charlotte blurted, and then his silence gave her time to hold her suddenly tense breath.