to smoke in the studio.’
‘You’re allowed to be nervous. You won’t swear. People will call. The station will filter out the hostile callers. You will help people who need help. The station will pay you. You can smoke outside during the commercial breaks.’
‘You think? You really think all of that?’
‘And as soon as you’re in it, you’ll remember what you know.’
Self-Help for Cynics. Millicent’s books had no truck with self-pity. They didn’t propose chanting, or detoxes, or relentless positivity as solutions to relationship breakdowns and bereavement. They were tough and funny, but had at their core an understanding of real emotional pain.
Make your play and move on. Books for people like us, a generation of people who layer themselves in irony, people who would never be seen buying a self-help book because that would be absurd. Then, suddenly, the same eternal question: what to do? Or, as Millicent put it:
‘Which version of you are you planning to be, when you climb out the well you just filled with your shit? Sooner or later you’re going to have to swim to the top and drag yourself out. Make your play, and move on.’
Millicent’s cynicism, of course, was a well-constructed front. She could speak the language of the cynic, but she knew – and I know she still knows – that she’s an idealist to the core. She believes in love, and she believes that people are redeemed through loving each other. She could never allow herself to say as much – Millicent knows it would destroy the brand if she did – but Self-Help for Cynics worked because it was one bruised romantic talking to other bruised romantics, using the language of the disaffected.
People began to write to Millicent. ‘I don’t know why they’re thanking me,’ she said to me when the first letters had begun to arrive. ‘It’s pretty obvious. Get some sleep for Chrissakes. Consider not taking drugs. Go for a walk. Try to remember sex.’
Millicent had followed Self-Help for Cynics with Adulthood for Cynics and Parenthood for Cynics. Bereavement for Cynics won a minor award and got her invited to the Hay Festival; Marriage for Cynics had won a major award and was sold at the checkouts of upmarket supermarkets.
I took my hands from Millicent’s breasts, leaned against her chair. ‘I’m married to a brand,’ I said. ‘What more could a modern man want?’
‘I’m a moderately successful author. Of self-help books.’
‘You’re a brand,’ I said. ‘We can move to Crouch End.’
‘I make forty pence a copy. I’m on probation at the radio station. We can’t afford to move any time soon.’
She stood up from her chair, turned around, stretched, stood on the balls of her feet, yawned and kissed me.
I turned her around again, crossed my arms across her chest and slid a hand into her dressing gown, holding her very close. She leaned into me, asked me why I was so sweet to her.
‘I’m not,’ I said.
‘And yet somehow you are.’
You see, I thought, she needs you too.
I sat at my computer. I logged four hours of city landscapes in ninety minutes. Maybe my workload was manageable. Maybe my work was just another logistical brick in our plan for Max. Maybe Millicent was right. Maybe this was no more than a scheduling problem.
At ten to eleven two police officers appeared on the other side of the street, watching our house. I put the man at around fifty, and the woman at thirty, maybe thirty-five. Dark suits, but definitely police. They looked different from the other officers we had met, but I couldn’t immediately say why. Something about their bearing.
I pulled on yesterday’s jeans and t-shirt. Millicent splashed water across her face, came downstairs in a white linen dress that came halfway down her thigh.
‘Interesting choice,’ I said.
‘Too short?’
‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘How do you dress for the police?’
She beckoned me downwards, reached up and did something to my hair.
‘I guess this is pretty much who we are,’ she said.
‘You ready?’
‘You’d better believe it, you handsome fuck.’ She held my hand in hers, and I could feel that she was trembling. She was trying to build me up. She was as nervous for me as I was.
I could hear the officers’ voices outside the front door now.
‘Are they, like … hovering creepily?’ Millicent’s voice was hushed now.
‘Looks like it,’ I said.
‘Do you think they …’
‘No,’ I said. ‘They heard nothing. You’re beautiful and poised, and they’re here to talk to me. And we have nothing – nothing – to hide.’
The man said something to the woman, and both laughed. How relaxed they sounded. How unlike us.
‘Yeah,’ said Millicent. ‘Easy to forget. I don’t like this at all, and it hasn’t even started.’
I opened the door barefoot: this is us at home, as we always are. But as soon as the door was open it felt like a mistake.
The two officers were as neat as we were wild of hair. Their eyes scanned us up and down, this straight-backed man and this straight-backed woman in their exquisitely tailored plain clothes. They were a little older than I had realised. She was forty perhaps; he was sixty. They were different in other ways, too, from the police we had met so far: their clothes were expensive and they carried themselves with a confidence that comes with high rank. I looked past them out into the street. Probably an unmarked car. Almost certainly something fancy and German. If Mr Ashani had seen them he would have guessed what they were about.
How did we read to them? Me in t-shirt and jeans; Millicent blowsy in her short linen dress. Both of us barefoot. Parents. It was eleven o’clock.
Could they come in, did I think? No. I looked round at Millicent. No. I turned back to them, looked down at my feet, laughed a self-conscious laugh.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course.’ No.
‘We could give you five minutes.’
‘No need,’ I said.
‘Right then.’
‘We don’t wear shoes in the house. But you are welcome to, of course.’
No reaction.
‘You have to understand,’ I said, ‘that we’re under quite a lot of stress.’
They handed me their business cards. They were detectives of some sort. I glanced at the cards and handed them to Millicent, instantly forgetting their ranks. Millicent would remember if necessary. Derek and June.
Now that I had gathered myself I was angry at the intrusion.
‘Coffee?’ I said. The woman shook her head.
‘No, thank you, Mr Mercer,’ said the man. Derek.
‘Coffee, Millicent?’ I asked.
‘Coffee, Alex.’
In the kitchen I unscrewed the coffee-maker. Tapped the old grounds into the sink. Filled the reservoir with water from the tap. The detectives stood awkwardly, looking around, taking in the disarray of our lives. I put coffee into the little funnel, and screwed the coffee-maker back together. I lit the gas and set it on the hob.
Millicent sat down at the table, produced a packet of Marlboro and offered me one. I watched the she-detective, enjoyed her irritation as I nodded yes. June, she was called. I was short on sleep and long