has a life not far removed from your own. She has a family who don’t call her often enough, a home she can’t afford to maintain, a pet she feeds before feeding herself. She has a birth certificate and a shoe size. She sees the same sky, the same pavement, the same faceless drones that you see. If you tickle her, she’ll laugh. Sometimes she’s happy; sometimes she’s sad. Mostly, she’s resigned. She has thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears. Eighty-eight years of vivid memories.
Her name is Ivy, and she’s been a widow for almost a decade. Right now she has somewhere to go. You don’t know where that is; only she does. Later, when Ivy gets home, she’s going to feed her cat a tin of store-brand chunks-in-jelly before she unpacks the shopping. The cat, a long-haired tabby named Foggy, will then watch her collapse to the kitchen floor with a breathless gasp, clawing at the center of her chest. In exactly a week, Gemma, Ivy’s granddaughter, makes a rare and unannounced visit to show off her ultrasound photos. There’s no answer at the door; the lights are on, the curtains closed, and the cat screeching to be let out. Through the frosted glass she can make out an untidy pile of letters and bills on the doormat. Naturally concerned, she fetches a spare key from the car and lets herself in. The cat bolts.
For eighty-eight years, the world revolved around Ivy. That which she could see and touch was real to her, everything else a mere figment. Departing visitors, setting off back to their own lives, were swiftly dispatched from her conscious thoughts, taking with them all tangible evidence of their existence. She would lock her doors to the outside world and settle down with a cup of tea, but for Foggy entirely alone in her world. And yet conversely, whilst the conversation in that departing car might revolve around Ivy for a handful of miles, the reality of her existence would soon be forgotten in favor of the more immediate stresses and strains pervading the lives of Peter and Janet. Out of sight, out of mind.
Every human being occupies a space at the dead center of his or her own universe. When Ivy’s universe imploded, when she made the transition from leading lady to cat food, the myriad separate worlds occupied by her family and friends were fleetingly altered. Gemma’s world was naturally rocked the most; the sight that greeted her that morning changed her flippant outlook on life permanently. At Ivy’s funeral, thirty-two universes were briefly united in mourning, both for Ivy and for Gemma’s unborn baby.
Right now universes are being created, thrown together and destroyed the world over. Seven billion souls, each preoccupied with their own unique reality, each with a head full of memories, plans, learned knowledge and accumulated trivia; birthdays, telephone numbers, bus routes, passwords. Each one with somewhere to go, something they need to get done. They all have birth certificates and shoe sizes. Every single one has a story.
I wondered what this girl’s story was—not Caroline, though her face was still beaconing through my brain like the terrain warning on a stricken aircraft, but rather the one sitting alone at the bar, fidgeting with her mobile phone and trying to buy a drink. She was hard to read from this angle, being, as she was, so remarkably unremarkable. Average height. Average face. Average bust. Mousy, nondescript hair of average length. Ten-a-penny jeans and a plain black shirt. Even the barman didn’t notice her.
I sat in the corner with a glass of house red and a week-old Telegraph, ostensibly ogling the revealingly attired blonde at the next table. The center of almost universal male attention in the bar, her smirk cruised from admirer to admirer as she feigned interest in her companions’ conversation. Having no desire to distinguish myself, I allowed her to see me looking.
By eleven-thirty, Annie Average was one of a mere handful of stragglers left clinging to the bar, stubbornly ignoring all requests to drink up and leave. Seemingly tired of continuously checking her inbox, she had taken to scrutinizing the small print on the back of a train ticket she’d pulled from her purse. Neither her expression nor her posture had altered throughout the evening, save for a gentle swaying that started around ten. Finally, she stood and wrapped herself in the ankle-length black woolen coat she’d been warming all night with her average-size bottom. I drained the last few dregs from my wineglass; I’d dispatched a whole bottle of the wretched stuff, though most of it went in among the shrubbery on the windowsill, conveniently located just beside my left knee. As such, I affected a vacant gaze and a John Wayne swagger as I headed for the door.
Stood up and fed up, Annie did exactly as I’d expected and headed for the railway station. She set a moderate pace, allowing me to match my footsteps to her smaller strides without tripping over my own feet. We joined the flow of drunken teenagers migrating to the clubs across the river, a steady bustle despite the bitter cold. Once over the bridge, we would meet head-on the tide of out-of-towners pouring into clubland from the railway station. And since this dimly lit center of jostling confusion headed down the side street in which I’d parked the van, I was anticipating a swift conclusion to an easy hunt. At least until her phone rang.
Her “hello” carried a tone of mock disapproval that belied her grave demeanor, and she met the offered excuses with expressions of humor and sympathy. She clearly wasn’t one for confrontation. I hung back as she slowed to an idle stroll on the bridge, running her free hand along the icy railings and cracking frozen puddles with the toe of her boot. An occasional husky laugh drifted back to me above the passing stream of profane taunts and leering catcalls. Her lovelorn dawdling pleased me somewhat, since I was both optimistic that her improved mood would make my job easier and anxious that she should be finished on the phone when it did so.
In the event it didn’t matter. Lost in flirtation, Annie found the stone stairs leading to the towpath beside the river. One dreamy step at a time, she giggled her way down into the darkness beneath the bridge. I watched her from above as she paced in a circle, distractedly kicking small stones into the water, head tilted over to hold the phone in the crook of her neck, hands thrust snugly in her pockets. At length, I watched her drift ever farther from the bridge. And when she was all but out of sight, I followed.
In the shadows beside the water, the air was heavy and still. The towpath is bordered by a high stone wall, at the top of which is the busy station approach. Most of the traffic noise wafts overhead, making the path a relative sea of calm. The bridges along this stretch of the river are too low for a sail mast but passable by small pleasure cruisers which, at night, occupy every available inch of mooring space. The sounds here are of water lapping against fiberglass, fiberglass rubbing against wood. The only light is that which drifts across from the carvery on the far bank, or down from the streetlights on the road above.
The path was deserted but for Annie and me; the lights of the restaurant faded behind us, the riverbank widened and the horse-chestnuts thickened, and all was impeccably dark and serene. Beyond the far shore, the cathedral spire rose proudly above a blackened tree line, a glowing beacon of humanity against a soulless gray-orange sky.
Annie finally stopped wandering to rest against a life-buoy station; the orange float was long gone, an easy and attractive target for small-minded vandals. I melted into the trees, listening silently to a conversation winding down: can’t-waits and won’t-be-longs, okay-I-promises and hold-that-thoughts. I wondered what Caroline was doing just then. I heard Annie say her goodbyes, waited while she wallowed in the misty-eyed afterglow. I watched her dawning realization of having strayed farther than she’d intended; she spun around and around, taking in the darkness, the silence, her solitude. Her unremarkable eyes flashed disorientation and frustration, and weariness at the prospect of the long walk back.
And then, movement. In the shrubbery not twenty feet away, a dark form, hunched, creeping. Annie sensed it, too; she snapped her head around, peering into the blackness behind her. The dark shape turned statue. I could all but smell the adrenaline coursing through it as it crouched, barely breathing until, after what surely felt like hours, Annie released a long breath of her own and turned back to the path. I remained rigid, upright; I let her pass me, glancing nervously behind her as the figure moved almost silently through the brush. It was among the trees now, virtually on top of me as Annie quickened her pace, and then in a blink it was out on the path and running.
She certainly heard it then. She turned, eyes wide, to face it as it bore down on her, let out a half gasp as it knocked her off her feet. Before I could react, she was in the undergrowth, cursing and spitting, coat ripped open. Her assailant hunched over