From the Inside Read online

  Please God, let him take the bait, I silently plead. Please let him come over.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I look at the twenty-four clock in the bottom righthand corner of the screen as I aimlessly scroll. Crystal has been gone three minutes already. I start to panic that this isn’t going to work, that I’m going to have to rethink my strategy. The only problem is, I’m flying by the seat of my pants and I don’t have any other bright ideas that doesn’t involve me being really obvious. Because I want him to come to me.

  Just when I think that my plea to God is going to go unheeded – probably because He’s pissed at me for being an atheist – I sense, rather than see, movement at my right shoulder.

  I don’t dare look up, lest I break the spell. The faintest trace of aftershave drifts under my nose – something that smells expensive and spicy, a mix of woods and cinnamon. I discover that I am trembling.

  “Hello,” says a deep, male voice, a voice that is accent-less and well-spoken, not unlike mine.

  His voice.

  It’s a voice that I know intimately, even if I have only ever heard it from afar. But it is a voice that speaks to me in my dreams.

  I make the screen of my phone go black, in case he should guess that I was doing exactly nothing on it. I look up with what I hope is a bland, faintly surprised, yet polite half-smile.

  “Hello,” I say, hopelessly stunned by his nearness. By the fact he is, at long last, talking to me.

  “Forgive me, this isn’t a line, even though it’s going to sound so much like one, but have we met?”

  I openly scrutinise his face, as if genuinely giving his question some serious consideration, when inside I’m dying of nerves.

  I start to panic that he does actually recognise me, that I haven’t been as invisible as I thought I was, all those times that I have followed him.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think so. I guess I must just have one of those faces,” I say with a smile, but, to my horror, I can feel my lips trembling.

  “Are you sure that we haven’t met? It’s just that you look so damn familiar.”

  “Yes. Quite sure.” And then, boldly, “I’m pretty sure that I would remember a man that looks like you.”

  He laughs at this, and I find myself mesmerised by the hard lines of his face. He’s a slim man, but he’s big-boned and square-jawed. I like how his Adam’s apple is barely visible in his throat, that his neck is nicely shaped, neither scrawny nor too squat.

  My gaze flickers to the five o’clock shadow that darkens his jaw. Josh was blonde, unable to grow a beard. I wonder if Luke is hairy; I’m a sucker for a hairy chest. I see that his large, but shapely wrists and hands are covered with a smattering of dark hair, and my stomach flips. In every single sense, he is even more attractive up close, if that’s at all possible. There is something so utterly compelling about him – something that stems from more than mere good looks. He is magnetic. Masculine. There is a look in his dark eyes, a twinkle, for want of a better word. That look is somehow mocking. Full of humour, yet cruel, all at the same time. This is clearly a man who knows what he wants, and takes what he wants.

  “Is that a good, I’d remember a man that looks like you statement, or is it thinly-veiled repulsion?”

  I find myself pinned in place by his gaze. His brown eyes are rimmed by a near-black limbal ring, and his irises have golden flecks, likes specks of gold leaf. “Thinly-veiled repulsion? That’s rather strong. Are you fishing for compliments now?”

  “Compliments from such a beautiful woman are always welcome.”

  If any other man were to spin me such a line, I might well have rolled my eyes heavenward at the sheer cheesiness, but he manages to not sound really lame. He’s looking at me with such intensity behind the predatory smile, I’m horrified to discover that my heart continues to hammer painfully hard and that I’m trembling to boot.

  “Really?” I say with a shaky little laugh that makes me inwardly cringe. “Next you’ll be asking me if I come here often.” As soon as the words exit my mouth, I regret them. I sound too glib. Dismissive. “Which I don’t,” I hastily add, in case he thinks I’m being cold. “This isn’t really my end of the city.”

  “Oh? And where is your end of the city?”

  “Brixton? You?”

  “Kensington.”

  “Oh. That’s posh.” I know where he resides, of course – I’ve been there often enough. He and his wife and daughter live in a huge, beautiful, Georgian terraced house on a reasonably quiet, residential street with a postcode to die for.

  He smiles modestly, shrugging imperceptibly. “I guess. So, what brings you to Liverpool Street?”

  “Nothing earthshattering. It’s just a random stop-off on the tube with a girlfriend. We fancied a change, and my friend said that this was a good pub. How about you? I take it you work around here?”

  He grins at me, and my stomach leaps. “The suit’s a giveaway, huh?”

  I smile back. “Maybe just a little bit.”

  Crystal takes that moment to reappear, and I curse loudly in my head. She slithers back onto her stool, her skirt riding all the way up as she does so. Luke, to his credit, doesn’t openly stare at the sudden flash of white knickers.

  “Hello,” he says.

  “Hi, I’m Crystal. I work in PR. I used to date Alice’s brother.”

  “Hello Crystal. And hello Alice. I’m Luke. It’s a pleasure to meet you both.”

  But it is me that he is talking to. It doesn’t stop me from inwardly cringing in horror, though. What is wrong with this girl? She sounds like she’s reading from a damn script. Either that, or a complete moron. I decide that she sounds like a bit of both.

  And her name is just plain ridiculous, too – it sounds every bit like a prostitute’s alias. For the purposes of this evening, I should’ve renamed her Jane, or some such thing. Too late now.

  I glare at her, and, by some miracle, she seems to understand the look that I am giving her. She slithers off her stool, grabbing our empty glasses and clattering them together. “I’ll get the drinks in then, shall I?”

  A wave of gratitude washes over me, and I experience a strong urge to hug her. Maybe she’s not so stupid after all.

  When she is safely over at the bar, Luke smiles at me, and my stomach twists into a tight knot of apprehension. I feel jittery, and my heart is slamming hard in my chest. It is more than just nerves I am feeling, this man is giving me some bad butterflies.

  “Look, I’ll level with you before your friend comes back,” he says. “I don’t normally do this kind of thing, but I was wondering if you’d like to for a drink with me sometime?”

  I can feel the way my mouth is hanging open, and I promptly shut it. This isn’t going at all how I expected it to. I thought Crystal and I would be invited over to his table. I was so hoping for an invite over to his table, but maybe that was expecting too much. Maybe some of those men know his wife. Maybe he promised to get home at a reasonable hour, and there’s no way he can go back with me tonight.

  “I… Yes. Thank you. I’d love to.”

  He grins broadly at me, and his wide smile cracks open his face in all its mischievous, boyish, devastatingly sexy glory.

  I realise then how dangerous this man is to me, and not just because of his bitch of a wife. I have to keep my feelings in check. It would complicate things no end if I went and developed some idiotic crush.

  I’m not going to do that, I remind myself.

  “You will?” he asks. “That’s amazing. And I’m serious, I never do stuff like this, but there’s just something about you… What if you walk out of here tonight and I never see you again? I don’t think I could bear that.”

  I feel like I’m dreaming as he reaches into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and pulls out his phone. I notice that he’s not wearing a wedding band. Not that I have ever seen him wearing it, neither in the pictures that Tanya has of him on Facebook, nor the times I have spied on him in the flesh. I know that him not wear
ing it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, that plenty of men don’t wear wedding bands. It didn’t automatically follow that they were ripe for straying.

  But it would appear that in Luke’s case, it does.

  This is too easy, I think. I was expecting to have to work for this magical moment.

  “What’s your number?” he asks me, his phone poised and ready, his back to his work colleagues and blocking me from their view, lest they should see what we are doing.

  I too, open my phone to where its number is stored and read it back to him. He types it in, then calls it. My phone buzzes on the table.

  “I guess we’re hooked up, now,” he says. “I know that this is a more forward way of going about things, but I’m afraid that I don’t believe in social media.”

  I know, I almost blurt out, only just managing to bite it back in time. “It’s fine. I appreciate your directness. I don’t have a Facebook or anything, either.”

  “I should be getting back to my work friends,” he says.

  “Sure,” I smile. “I’m glad you came over,” I add impulsively. Am I being too forward? I wonder. And then I tell myself to stop overanalysing everything – whatever it is that I’m doing, it seems to be working, because I’ve got exactly what I want.

  “I’m glad, too. I hope you and your friend have a lovely night.”

  He goes back over to his friends, leaving me wondering if I have dreamed the whole encounter.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Crystal and I leave ten minutes later, as soon as we finish our drinks. We walk together to the tube station. There is a chill in the early evening air, and I pull my brown-leather jacket more tightly around myself. Crystal, whose arms, shoulders and legs are bare, doesn’t appear to notice the late winter/early spring weather. I remember a dumb, sexist joke I saw floating around somewhere on social media, something about how whores and polar bears are the only two creatures impervious to the cold.

  “Are you sure that there’s nothing else I can do for you, tonight?” Crystal asks me.

  I am faintly insulted that she’s still offering me her sexual services. Surely she’s twigged by now that I’m not gay, that I was only going to jump into bed with her out of sheer necessity rather than desire?

  “Thanks, but it’s okay. I don’t need you anymore.”

  “But I’m still getting paid the amount we agreed, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” Her voice is flat, giving away nothing.

  We have now reached the beginning of the station, where the vast interior merges seamlessly with the outside world, and together, we ascend the escalator. I still need to pay her. I probably should’ve done it back at the pub, but it didn’t seem right, somehow. If someone had seen us exchanging that amount of money in the toilet, it may have looked like a drug deal. The chances of anyone that worked there seeing us was admittedly slim, but I didn’t want to risk it. If Luke had somehow caught so much as a sniff of me paying her hundreds of pounds in cash, it would have ruined everything. Besides, the toilets were at the back of the pub, and I didn’t want Luke to see us going there together. I mean, I’m not twelve, or even in my early twenties and off my face in some nightclub. I think that there is something inherently tacky or juvenile about women going to the toilet in pairs or in groups.

  We have reached the edge of the outside perimeter of the station, and together we ascend the escalator. We walk straight across the vast, gleaming space rimmed by glossy chain-shops, over towards the turnstile gates. All around us, footsteps clatter and voices hum, and a distant, mishmash of tinny muzak plays. Every so often, the electronic voice of the female announcer comes over the tannoy, listing an endless string of station names that I’m sure no one ever properly hears or even tries to listen to.

  As we push through the metal turnstiles, the skin at the back of my neck tightens. I spin around on the spot as soon as we’re through, that prickly, skin-crawling sensation of being watched washing over me. But there is no one looking at me, just Crystal with her customary blank expression.

  I let out a shaky little breath. I’m just being paranoid and I sternly push the bad feeling to one side.

  I look around myself – the rush hour has eased, but it’s still busy. I love how London, never truly rests, the anonymity it offers me. I am completely alone in the world and London highlights this fact. I take a perverse comfort in this anonymity, this invisibility. In this city, I can shed the skin of my old life, and become a brand-new person; one that I don’t even recognise myself. This is the main reason that I moved here – that, and the fact Tanya was here, of course. Even before I consciously recognised that I wanted to move to London to destroy her, it must have been a subconscious desire, colouring my decision to live here.

  The people stream around us as we stand there before I pay her, before we depart to our separate platforms, with Crystal going South, and me heading North. I gesture with the faintest flick of my head for us to retreat to the side wall, next to a brightly-lit snack machine. Once there, we turn our backs to the bustling crowd.

  Discretely, I zip open my shoulder-bag and rummage around inside it, locating my wallet and the bundle of notes within. I pull them out and hand them to her, where they are quickly swallowed by her own bag.

  “I guess this is goodbye, then,” she says. “You know where to find me if you need my services again.”

  I should imagine that I am one of the easier clients that she’s ever had to deal with, and I feel a wave of pity for her, which catches me off-guard. Safe to say, empathy for others isn’t exactly an emotion that I have to deal with all that much of late. “Yes, Crystal. I do.”

  I offer my hand for her to shake, and she looks at it in puzzlement for a moment, before accepting it.

  “Good luck with whatever game it is that you’re playing.” Her expression suddenly turns solemn. It may even be sincerity. “And be careful. These things never end well.”

  I can’t think of a reply quick enough, and I just stand there by the snack machine, watching her departing figure in the faintly bizarre clothes before she is swallowed by the crowd.

  *

  I feel on edge during the twenty-minute tube ride home. Jittery and unsettled. I remember feeling like this once before, back in my old life, back when I had been another person. I’d had a tooth abscess, and the dentist had prescribed me Codeine-based painkillers. I had drunk too much wine the night before in an attempt to self-medicate the pain, and in the morning I had washed down a couple of those pills with some coffee, thinking that I would cure my hangover and my toothache in one fell swoop. Instead, the pill and coffee combination had left me feeling like I am feeling now. Jumpy and jittery, edgy and paranoid. I haven’t drunk enough to warrant feeling like this – just three gin and tonics – and I can take my booze. Occasionally, it might make me maudlin, but drinking has never made me feel like this.

  The carriage isn’t full to bursting point, but I am one of the few standing as every seat is taken. As the train lurches and shudders through the tunnel, I stare dead ahead at my reflection in the sliding train doors. My face, transparent and deathly pale in the black glass, stares back at me. I feel as if I am looking at a ghost, and a sick shiver courses down my spine. My back flashes hot, then cold, and I am suddenly bathed in sweat.

  I close my eyes for a second and cling on tight to the yellow pole, which is now slippery in my grip. My breath is too quick, too shallow, and my mouth is sucked dry of all moisture. My heart is thumping painfully hard, and I realise that I am in the throes of a panic attack. I don’t have these often, but when I do, they’re obliterating.

  Oh please, I think. Not here. Not now.

  The carriage floor lurches beneath my feet – partly because of the rickety old tracks of the underground, and partly because of my private mental breakdown. I count to five very slowly, concentrating on my breathing. Deep and slow, deep and slow…

  When I open my eyes again, I cast my gaze frantically around myself, telling mysel
f that I am just another passenger on the London Underground. I remind myself that I am not having a heart attack, I am having a panic attack. I am not going to die.

  Clickety-clack, a panic attack, clickity-clack, a panic attack… I repeat this idiotic ditty over and over in my mind, until it becomes a meaningless mantra that leaves me doubting my own sanity.

  In my appraisal of the carriage, a man over on the other side of the compartment catches my eye. Like me, he is standing next to a yellow pole, opposite the train doors.

  And he is looking right at me.

  The hissing scream of hydraulics reverberates in the air, the carriage lurching, then plunging into pitch blackness for a couple of seconds. Panic claws at my chest, my throat. Fear prickles at my brain, before it trickles down my spine in the manner of a thousand, lightly stabbing needles.

  The man is no longer looking in my direction but staring dead ahead at the doors. Perhaps seven or so standing commuters separate us, and for seconds at a time he disappears from view, obscured by the swaying bodies.

  There is nothing extraordinary about him. He neither looks young nor old, rich nor poor, business type, nor creative, alternative type. He is just…nothing. I frown at the strange thought, then, before I can agonise over it anymore, the train shudders, jolts, then slows. The screeching hiss of the brakes punctuate the air in the carriage and there is a flurry of movement. The doors hiss and slide open, and I cling onto my pole as bodies leave, then pile in. In this flurry of movement, I have lost sight of the man – the stranger who may or may not have been watching me.

  I tell myself then that I was imagining it, or, if I wasn’t, then he was merely checking me out. It’s not as if men never look at me, for I’m always getting the side-eye. But it felt different when that man was doing it – if he even was – and I don’t know why.