Jessica
I am expecting to have to face dealing with the alarm and bins on my own but Drew insists on driving me over there. He has a moped with lots of shiny accessories, so we set off like Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, except this is West London and it’s raining, but I have a good imagination.
We reach my home to find the light on the alarm flashing, indicating that it has indeed been tripped. Leaving Drew on the scooter, I knock on Lizzy’s door. She opens it, penning in her excitable spaniel, Flossie, behind bars of denim. As usual she’s looking very together, tawny hair neatly styled, make-up perfect even though she’s having a day in. I wouldn’t have bothered if I were her.
I give her a hug, made awkward by the fact that she was trying to stop Flossie escaping. We laugh as we bump heads. ‘Michael rang me. So, so sorry about the alarm, Lizzy. What am I like?’
‘No problem, Jessica. First time it’s happened in weeks.’
‘So, no break-in?’
‘Not unless you count your live-in cat burglar.’
I think I’m relieved, but part of me wanted to discover it wasn’t my fault. ‘Well, OK, sorry once again.’ I turn to go.
‘Don’t worry, Jessica. We all have our moments.’ She looks past me and raises a brow. ‘Hi, Drew.’
‘Hello, Jessica,’ he calls. ‘Sweet-peas are looking good.’
‘Thanks. Grew them from seed. Do you want to come in? I can make coffee.’
‘Another time. We’ve got plans. Jess is just going to do a quick walk-through.’
‘Right, I’d better put Flossie in the garden before she keels over with the excitement of visitors.’ She closes the door and I hear her shooing Flossie out the back.
‘Won’t be long,’ I tell Drew, secretly pleased that he has turned down the chance to be with Lizzy to stick with my agenda for the night.
I let myself in the front door. The entry to the kitchen is now firmly closed. Had I really forgotten to shut it? I thought I’d stopped doing that. When I’m inside, I like to be able to see through from the front to the back of the house, it helps me not to feel trapped, but I’d trained myself to leave in a certain order: keys, phone, kitchen door, alarm, front door. I can see myself doing that this morning but evidently it’s a false memory.
I go into the kitchen. Colette isn’t there. There’s a second alarm pad in case we want to go out the side entrance. No sign of any break-in at the back. It must’ve been me. I don’t linger, thinking of those bins waiting for the dustmen. I don’t want to stay here anymore. The place no longer feels like home.
‘Everything OK?’ asks Drew as I join him outside.
‘Think so.’
‘Did you close the kitchen door this time?’
‘Yes, I closed the kitchen door.’ I resist the temptation to check. I did. I can see myself staring at it a few seconds ago. Shut. The problem is, I also can see myself closing it when I left at midday. My brain has become accomplished at filling in gaps with plausible images, an inventive liar. If it does it over something so trivial, is it doing it at other times when I don’t realise? And if my mind is rewriting my reality, what does that make me? I’m like the actress who finds her role replaced by a CGI character, her actions just discernible as the foundation for the pixels.
‘Jess, don’t beat yourself up. No one’s been hurt; problem dealt with. Let’s go.’
‘Yes, you’re right. Perspective.’
He pats the back seat and I get back on. Revving the little sewing machine of an engine, we scoot off through the evening traffic.
It’s getting dark by the time we reach Dean Street. 5a and the surrounding buildings are in a much quieter stretch than the parts further north towards Oxford Street and south towards China Town with their pubs, clubs, theatres and restaurants. I’m relieved that I have Drew with me. These streets make me cringe, especially after dark. Come on, Jessica. Don’t go there. Concentrate on why you are here. Many of the premises have already put out their bins for collection the next morning, making the road look like it’s in the middle of an invasion by square green Daleks, victims reduced to slumped heaps of black plastic beside them, innards of non-recyclables leaking out where a dog or urban fox has attacked. The pile outside 5a is encouragingly big, a massacre of bags.
‘What are we looking for?’ asks Drew, wrinkling his nose as he crouches down beside me.
‘Anything – everything.’
‘Great. Glad you were able to narrow that down for me.’
I tug open the top of the first bag. Yuck. Marek appears to live on takeaways. The next includes some empty paint cans – ‘White with a hint of apricot’ – I totally missed that hint. I take them out and find only paint-stained plastic beneath.
‘What about this?’ Drew lifts up a corkboard leaning against the wheelie bin in the hope of being free-cycled.
Thank God. ‘Yes, that’s ours.’ I undo the ties to another sack and hit the jackpot. ‘Drew, my notebooks.’ I fish them out. They’re a little swollen with damp. Under them are two mugs, one chipped, the other with such a faded design that no charity shop would take them. I recognise them as they were my contribution to our kitchen. I dig in my shoulder bag for the foldaway carrier Mum gave me last birthday – a disappointing gift to open but, hey, isn’t it proving useful? I load up my treasure.
Drew, meanwhile, has been searching the last bags and the wheelie bin itself. ‘Nothing obvious. Do you want to check in case you recognise anything?’
He’s right. No computers or office equipment, just the things belonging to me. Unless Jacob drank out of my mugs that last day and only swilled them out rather than washing them, I wouldn’t even have a physical trace of him.
‘It’s like he never existed,’ I say.
‘I guess he must be a pro at that. But why leave your notebooks?’
I flick through them. These are the ones I designated for my missing persons research so I’d kept them at the office. My handwriting is atrocious and I have a methodology of highlighting and footnoting that only I seem to be able to understand.
‘He didn’t need these. I typed up my findings in the computer records. This is just the background stuff.’
Drew knuckles my forehead lightly. ‘You are so analogue, Jess, actually writing things down.’
‘But it’s a good thing I do, as I can reconstruct most of what I found out from here.’
Two police officers turn into the street and approach us at a leisurely pace. Drew begins furtively resealing the bin bags.
‘Everything all right?’ asks one, a twenty-something blonde with her hair tied back in a no-nonsense ponytail.
I show her my mug collection. ‘Yes, just looking for my things. Got chucked out by my old landlord.’
‘Good luck with that.’ As I predicted, the officers aren’t that interested in people stealing from bins. ‘Try not to make a mess.’ They walk on.
Drew sits back on his heels. ‘You weren’t the least bit worried, were you? Why am I the one to feel instantly panicked when confronted by anyone in uniform?’
‘Guilty conscience?’ I’ve been moved on for far worse than ferreting through stuff that no one wants. This is nothing.
We stack the sacks more or less how we found them.
Drew sniffs