People LIke Her(14)

All the way down the final escalator, I keep my eyes fixed on Coco, as if some very basic part of my brain believes if I take my eyes off her for a second, even to blink, she will vanish too. Thankfully, there is no one on this escalator between me and the bottom. I quick-shuffle down the steps as fast as I can, one hand hovering over the rubber banister in case I stumble.

The last three or four steps I jump.

I land with a grunt.

It is about twenty feet from the end of the escalator to the entrance to the bookshop. I skid it in three long, sliding strides.

“Ooof, Daddy,” says Coco.

I’m aware that I am squeezing her too hard, but I can’t stop myself, just as I can’t stop myself lifting her up and swinging her around in my arms.

“Daddy,” she says.

I put her down. She straightens her dress.

My heart is still thumping.

“Coco. What have we told you, what do Mummy and I always say, about wandering off like that?”

My aim is to sound calm but firm. Stern but not angry.

It is that age-old dilemma: the simultaneous urge to tell them off for scaring you versus the overwhelming desire to let them know how much they are loved.

I do my best to catch my daughter’s eye, have attempted to squat down to her level, the way the advice manuals all tell you to do when you are trying to have a serious conversation with someone Coco’s age.

“Do you hear me?” I ask her. “You must never, never, never, never do that again, darling. Do you understand?”

Coco nods, very slightly, half her attention still on the window display.

She is safe—that is the main thing. My daughter is okay. As for what I thought I saw from the escalator . . .

It must be raining again outside, because people with anoraks are everywhere. Some are old. Some are young. Some of them still have their hoods up. I look around, but no one seems to be paying us any special attention. None of the anoraks looks familiar. They are black, blue, green, yellow.

Perhaps I was mistaken, I think. Perhaps Coco was not standing with anyone. Perhaps someone just happened to be looking at the window display at the same time as her, happened to be passing. Perhaps—perhaps—what I thought I saw was just a trick of the light, a glitch of the brain, the reflection of a reflection.

I think it is fair to say I am not doing very much sophisticated joined-up thinking at this precise point in time.

I give Coco another hug, a longer one this time. After a while I can feel her starting to lose patience, to squirm a little in my arms. It takes a few seconds for me to work up the will to let her go.

And that’s when I finally notice what my daughter is holding.





Chapter Four


It is astonishing how much you can find out about someone, once you know their address.

14 Chandos Road.

Once you know someone’s address you can easily go online and find one of those property websites, see how much the house last sold for and have a look at some photos, even check out the floor plan if you are lucky. The last time 14 Chandos Road was on the market, back in the late noughties, it went for five hundred fifty thousand pounds. Emmy has written quite a bit on her blog about the changes they made to the place after she moved in—in addition to the conservatory and extension they added to the back, they knocked a wall through in the living room, got rid of the three-bar fire with fake plastic coal, the carpet in the bathroom, and the turquoise tiles in the downstairs loo, and set up the back room on the first floor as a children’s bedroom. Which means that room in the front upstairs must still be the master bedroom, the one with the en suite. It’s all so easy. It’s all just there in the public domain. Two clicks, three, and as you trace your finger on the screen it feels as if you’re walking through their house, invisible, a digital ghost. Emmy always talks about wanting a larger garden. I can see why. Goodness knows where they had room to fit a writing shed.

Once you know someone’s postcode, you can easily figure out where their local coffee shop is, the one they talk about stopping by on their morning walk every day, the one their husband sometimes goes to to sit in and write. You can click on Street View and you can follow the route they would walk on their way to the Tube in the morning, on their way to the park. You can make a reasonable guess where their daughter goes to nursery, the quickest route for them to take to get there in the morning. You can work out pretty quickly which is the little playground Emmy talks about passing on the way and the shop where Coco always wants to buy sweets.

It is a very strange feeling. A little dizzying, even.

There are times when it feels like you are looking down into a pond—a fish pond, I guess, like the one we used to have at school, in front of the entrance to the science block—and all the fishes are swimming around it blithely, obliviously. You can see them going about their business, doing their thing, and a part of you knows that at any moment you could drop a stone or start poking around with a stick and see them all scatter and panic. Or you could bend down and pluck one out of the water and into the choking air, just like that, if you wanted to, and all the others would be nosing urgently around the weeds, tails flicking, turning this way, turning that. And there are times when you know that you would not be able to do that sort of thing to another living being, not really, not you.

And then there are times when you are not so sure.

I used to be such a nice girl, back in those days, back at school, all those years ago. Such a polite girl. Such a kind girl. Those were the words that always got used to describe me.