White Bodies: A gripping psychological thriller for fans of Clare Mackintosh and Lisa Jewell
her hair with one hand and using the other to swim against the downward force of an almighty current. It’s exhausting.
Occasionally I take the bus into town and spend time at the Caffè Copernicus on Curzon Street, across the road from her flat. I’m not spying on her exactly, it’s more that it feels good to be close. I fantasise that she might need me in some emergency that’s more serious than a few bruises on her arms, and I sit in a favourite spot by the window, which has an uninterrupted view of Tilda’s front door and of the sitting-room windows up on the second floor. Not that anything ever happens. The new blinds stay down, and there’s no hint of what’s going on behind them, so that I’m left with my thoughts drifting off in alarming directions. I find myself concocting bizarre plans for escaping from the flat – jumping out of the bedroom window at the back, for instance, with a glass roof to break the fall rather than risking the long drop from the sitting room to the concrete below.
I haven’t seen Tilda at all and I’m hoping that the day will come when she’ll confide in me and allow me to help her. In the meantime, I stay focussed by writing up my observations. I have to admit that the dossier has changed a lot. In past years it was like an occasional notebook, just recording this and that about Tilda and I’d return to it when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed by her, or she’d said something to upset me. But now I’m writing it almost every day on my laptop, and it’s focussed as much on Felix as on her. I’ve found it useful to make an inventory of all his odd and sinister behaviour, writing more about the way he was tidying all her cupboards when I first met him, the vitamin jabs, that I accepted back then but now seem totally bizarre; the way he organised a holiday without consulting her at all and then had his builders do heaven-knows-what to her flat. And, even worse, the signs of violence – holding her under the water that day on the Thames, those bruises on her arms, and just the way she looks now. Sort of battered and gaunt. And that’s what I’m doing today – re-working my files – and adding my thoughts on how he is isolating Tilda, keeping her from me.
I’m the only customer in the café, so I don’t have any distractions, and I work quietly for half an hour or so, making my hot chocolate last a long time, and taking small bites from a banana that I’ve brought from home. Then I shut my laptop and pick up my book, the Scandinavian crime novel called The Artist that I took to Tilda’s flat. It’s about a serial killer who carves clues in his victims’ torsos with a stencil knife and I’m immersed in it; but I glance up, as though prompted by something, a sound or a nudge, and see that, across the street, the front door is opening. I’m mesmerised, because in all the hours I’ve been spending at the Copernicus, that door has remained shut, like an impermeable barrier keeping me out and Tilda in.
I’m in luck and it’s my sister standing on the pavement across the street, masked fleetingly by the passing traffic. I wait, wondering whether Felix will appear. But he doesn’t. It’s just Tilda, looking around her, up and down the street, and at one point it seems that she’s peering through the café window, right at me. In that second I see that her face is kind of hollow, even thinner than when I saw her in the Regent’s Park café; and her brow is furrowed. But I don’t have time to draw any conclusions, because she walks away.
I put three pound coins on the table, stuff the laptop and book into my plastic bag with my remaining half-a-banana, and rush for the exit, crashing my thigh painfully against the corner of a table. I stand in the doorway keeping my eyes on Tilda, who’s heading along the pavement before turning towards Shepherd Market. Now I’m half-running, and I follow her down a narrow path and into a cobbled courtyard, filled with evening sun and packed with office people standing outside pubs, drinking and smoking. Tilda is ten metres in front of me, weaving through the crowd, keeping her head tucked down so that no one recognises her and I catch up just as she dodges into a newsagent’s shop. I wait outside, beside the door so that she can’t see me, and when she leaves I tap her on the shoulder. She jolts like she’s been stung by a wasp.
‘For god’s sake, Callie, what the fuck are you doing?’
I’m not hurt by her reaction. In the circumstances, it’s understandable.
‘I just saw you. I happened to be on Curzon Street, and I saw you come out of the flat… Are you okay? You look worried… Shall we go to a pub and have a proper talk?’
‘No, I can’t. I mean, I’m in a hurry – I needed to buy some fags, but I’ve got to get back.’
I check her face and body for signs. She’s wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt, so I can’t see her arms, and she has a thin, grey cotton scarf round her neck, so a lot’s hidden, but I can see her bony knuckles and bitten nails. Her hair seems to me more straggly and unwashed than usual and I’m caught up in anxiety about her when she surprises me. ‘Look, why don’t I meet you for lunch tomorrow? I’ll come to your bookshop at one, and we’ll go to that pub you talk about, the one round the corner…’
‘Really? You can do that?’
‘Sure I can.’
‘Shall I walk back with you?’
It sounds like an innocent offer, but really it’s a test, and Tilda says, ‘No. Don’t do that.’
She leans forward and touches my cheek with her lips which, by the way, are dried up and chapped. I don’t like the look of them and make a mental note to look up chapped lips later on, to see if they can be a symptom of stress.
‘It’s okay,’ I insist. ‘I can walk back with you.’
‘Don’t bother,’ she says firmly. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ve lots to tell you.’
She stresses the word lots and I wonder whether she’s planning to come clean about Felix.
‘Okay. I’ll go then.’ I return her kiss, and set off through the crowds, turning down White Horse Street to Piccadilly, clamping the plastic bag to my chest.
I like getting home. My flat feels like a normal place after the mental onslaught of Central London. It’s on the first floor, and has a small bedroom at the back of the building, overlooking a neglected garden that I’m not allowed to use. I don’t mind. I can open my window to let the fresh air in, and I like the clatter of the trains on the railway track that runs behind the trees. Because of its connection with the outdoors, this is my favourite room and it’s a good place for thinking.
The other part of the flat is the kitchen-sitting room, which is dark because of the bottle green walls that I want to repaint, but somehow never do. It has a breakfast bar and a two-seater sofa and a TV (with DVD player), and a little window facing the bricks in the wall of the next-door house. I cook in that room and watch reruns of Miss Marple and Poirot on television, and Scandinavian crime dramas. But I spend most of my time in the bedroom, sitting at a little table that I found in a skip and put under the window. I eat my meals there and use my laptop – which is what I do the minute I get home after my encounter with Tilda, because I’m eager to go online. I have made friends in the internet forum I told Tilda about – controllingmen.com. They are called Scarlet and Belle, and are both experienced with dealing with abusive relationships. Scarlet joined only a week or so ago – but seems to know a great deal. Belle has been around for ages.
I eat the remaining half of my banana, which is squished now, and I log on, seeing that Belle is online already, but not Scarlet. She notices me immediately.
Hey, Calliegirl. Welcome back.
Hey Belle. Interesting day. Need to talk.
Me 2!!!
I realise I’ll have to hear her news before I can talk about Tilda; sure enough, in an instant, Belle is telling me all about meeting her friend Lavender at Starbucks that morning. They had ordered cappuccinos, she said, and granola bars, and had just put their tray down on a table when, before they had even sat down, Lavender’s husband showed up ‘to keep an eye on the conversation’ so that Lavender couldn’t discuss