which was sandwiched between Wandsworth Common and Clapham Common, a street of large, comfortable semi-detached Victorian houses. Volvos and Range Rovers lined both kerbs.
Karen Cunningham let her in. They kissed on both cheeks, hugged, left the holdall in the hall and made their way through the house to the garden at the rear. A dozen people sat around a wooden table. Smoke rose from a dying barbecue in a far corner of the garden.
‘Stephanie!’
Her fourth name of the day.
From the far side of the table Mark was coming towards her. He wore the collarless cotton shirt she’d bought for him, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. They kissed. She noticed he was barefoot.
They made space for her at the table. Someone poured her a glass of red wine. She knew all the faces in the flickering candlelight. Not well, or in her own right, but through Mark. After the welcome the conversation resumed. She picked at the remains of some potato salad as she drank, content not to say too much. Gradually the alcohol worked its temporary magic, purging her pain. Purging Petra.
From Marrakech to Clapham, from Mostovoi to these people, with their careers, their children, their two foreign holidays a year. From a steel spike to a glass of wine, from one continent to another. Two worlds, each as divorced from the other as she was from any other version of herself.
It was after midnight when Mark leaned towards her, frowning, and said, ‘It’s not the hair. It’s something else …’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘There’s something … different about you.’
‘You’re imagining it.’
He shook his head. ‘Got it. It’s your eyes.’
For a moment there was panic. Then came the recovery, complete with a playful smile, while the lie formed. ‘I was wondering how long it would take you to notice.’
‘They’re blue.’
‘Coloured lenses. Found them in Amsterdam. Pretty cool, don’t you think?’
Mark Hamilton was lying on his front, snoring into his pillow, one foot hanging over the end of a bed that wasn’t built for a man of six foot four. Stephanie looked at the scar tissue running across his central and lower back. She had scar tissue of her own – on the front and back of her left shoulder – but, unlike Mark’s scars, hers were cosmetic, surgically applied to mimic a bullet’s entry and exit wound.
She glanced at Mark’s bedside clock. Five to six. She tiptoed to the kitchen to make coffee. A bottle of Rioja stood by the sink, two-thirds drunk. Which was how they’d felt by the time they’d returned to Mark’s flat shortly after one. Despite that, he’d opened the Rioja, put on a CD, Ether Song by Turin Brakes, and they’d talked. About nothing in particular. After three weeks, it was enough simply to be together again. Normally her trips abroad only lasted a few days.
When he’d said he was going to bed, just after three, she’d said she wouldn’t be far behind. But she’d waited until he was asleep, even then keeping her T-shirt on as she lay beside him; she was too tired to answer the questions he would inevitably ask when he saw her naked.
Mark owned a place on a corner of Queen’s Gate Mews, off Gloucester Road. The ground floor was a garage, which he used for storage. A steep, narrow staircase led to the first floor, where he lived, and a stepladder that doubled as a fire escape led to the roof, which was flat, and which was where Stephanie took her mug of coffee, having pulled on a pair of ripped jeans.
Above, in a pale pink sky, intercontinental flights lined up for Heathrow. Below, an Alfa Romeo rumbled over cobbles. In the distance, an alarm bell was ringing. She cupped the hot mug with both hands and smiled.
One year to the day.
She’d gone to the Dolomites to unwind. Stephanie had always found that climbing cleared the mind of clutter. It had become part of her routine after a Magenta House contract: a few days away by herself, the local climbing guides her only source of social interaction. By the time she returned to London, more often than not, she’d rinsed the contract from her system.
Mark was staying at the same hotel in a party of six. She noticed him the first day they arrived, her ear drawn to the group by language; they were the only English in the hotel. Over two days, she crossed them in the dining room, at the bar, in the lobby and outside on the observation deck. He was the tallest and least obviously attractive of them, with a storm of dark hair and a perfect climber’s face: craggy, marked with ledges and ridges.
On the third day Stephanie lost her grip during an afternoon traverse of an uncomplicated face. The rope snagged her, twisting her sharply to the right. Her left toe was still locked into a small hold. She felt a sharp pinch in her left hip and chose to walk back to the hotel to try to work off any stiffness. Later she took a cup of hot chocolate onto the wooden observation deck. Mark was in a deckchair, reading a Robert Wilson paperback.
Not wanting any conversation, Stephanie walked to the far end and leaned on the rail. It had been a hot, sunny day, but late afternoon brought with it the first hint of a sharp chill. She drank the chocolate and the mountain air, and watched shadows creep as the sun slid. When she’d finished, she walked back along the deck. They were still the only people on it and he was looking straight at her. Not at her eyes, but at her body. Without any attempt to disguise it.
Irritated, Stephanie said, sharply, ‘You’re staring.’
‘You’re limping.’
Not the apology she’d anticipated. ‘Hardly.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘It’s nothing. It’s just my hip.’
‘Actually, it’s your sacro-iliac joint.’
‘Sorry?’
‘To you, your lower back.’
‘What are you? An osteopath?’
‘A chiropractor.’
‘And a man with an answer for everything.’
‘Do you want me to prove it to you?’
She tilted her head to one side. ‘Are you for real?’
‘Are you?’
Half an hour later they were in her bedroom; stained floorboards, thick rugs, ageing cream wallpaper with rural scenes in a pale blue print. She could smell the dried lavender in the frosted glass bowl on the chest of drawers. Beside a lacquered table there was a full-length mirror. Stephanie stood in front of it with Mark behind her. Only now did she appreciate how large he was. He completely framed her in the reflection. She’d pulled off her jersey and shirt, and could see her black bra through the thin cotton of her T-shirt.
Mark reached out and touched her, two fingers pressing softly at the base of her neck. It was barely contact, but it sent a pulse through her. Slowly, he walked the fingers down her spine.
‘Why do you climb?’
‘It’s in my blood,’ Stephanie said, her voice no more than a murmur. ‘My mother was a fantastic climber, more at home in the mountains than at home. What about you?’
‘To relax. And because I have friends who climb.’
‘I don’t have any friends who climb.’
‘Then you’re worse than us. In a monogamous relationship with the rock-face? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anything so self-centred.’
‘You might be right.’
To relax, he’d said. Not for the thrill, or the sense of achievement. That was how she felt. Besides, as Petra, Stephanie found herself