The Hunger Trace Read online

  ‘Lou? You in?’

  A few moments later Maggie was at the window, hand to her brow, squinting into the living room. Louisa knew that Maggie would not be able to see her, because of the dusky light outside and the darkness within the house. She sat there in the shadows with immunity, her pupils blacking out the colour, until Maggie took two steps back, and then turned away.

  She saw the man arrive at the big house again, shortly after Christopher had left for his Sunday afternoon session in the Hart. The last hope that she had witnessed a strange one-night stand was gone. He parked his red Volkswagen Golf at the back of the house. It was almost dark, and impossible to discern his features from that distance anyway, as he walked through the beam of the outside light. He moved with the stoop of a tall man, and had a youthful bounce in his step. He gave a tap on the side door, which presumably led to the seedy little room. The door soon opened.

  Louisa turned away from the window. Women like Maggie, they could marry, bury their husband, and find another man within – what? – two years. All that talk of grief: what did it mean?

  She paced around her living room for half an hour, tempted to walk across the fields and face Maggie with her accusations. But she admitted to herself that those accusations – when put into words – amounted to little of rational substance. She could not, however, stay in the house, and so she got in her van, rolled it down the hill, and parked across the road. She waited.

  In the van she picked over the last few months, trying to think of signals she had missed. She could recall nothing. All of this had clearly been happening on her doorstep and, despite the watchful eye she kept on the house, she had missed it. I confided in that woman, she told herself, and she took me for a fool. She wondered about the nature of the relationship between Maggie and the man. She wondered if she had the power to destroy it.

  When the Golf reached the junction at the bottom of the hill, she could see the man through the windscreen. His lips were pursed as he surveyed the road. He was young, maybe mid-thirties. Maggie’s age. He rubbed at his short hair, which stood up in spikes like the comb on a set of hair clippers.

  He turned left and she followed him through Detton to Fulbrook, a cheaper little village a few miles away. He parked on a quiet terraced street. Park Avenue, it was called. Louisa snorted. She pulled over a hundred yards behind, by the take-away on the corner. She watched him get out of his car and walk into his narrow mid-terrace. After a few moments she drove slowly past his door, which was painted with black gloss. The windows were clean, but she could not see into the living room for the wooden blinds – a sensible precaution, she thought, in a house with a street-level window. She stopped a little way down the street.

  It was 6 p.m., and the lights on the dashboard were glowing. Louisa felt a warm satisfaction, a sensation which had disappeared from her life in the past few days. She thought of Maggie back at Drum Hill, and of her own proximity to the man. A light came on inside the house, and Louisa drove away.

  * * *

  It was not long before she was back on Park Avenue, waiting for him after dawn. Sleep had deserted her again. She parked by the take-away. Her mouth was dry, and her hands shook slightly, but she felt better than she did at home.

  Fortunately, he left the house early, in a green uniform, and she followed him to a golf course out in the countryside. When he turned into the entrance, Louisa drove by, made a u-turn at the next roundabout and positioned the van at the back of the car park, far away from his car.

  She could see him out in the rough which bordered the fairway. He had a strimmer buckled to his hip, and wore orange ear defenders and a visor of plastic mesh. He looked like a giant insect. She watched him work in a cloud of grass cuttings and smoke. He spent the morning alone, breaking once to raise his visor, drink from a flask and smoke a cigarette. He massaged his shoulder and wiped his face, then coughed.

  For the next few days Louisa could find no real comfort unless she was tracing the man’s movements. When she followed him, time seemed to pass with merciful speed, and she found that she was no longer alone with her wretchedness. There was comfort in abandoning oneself to the life of another.

  She watched him for three days, and the plain rhythms of his life emerged quickly. When the first golfers arrived, he would go into the clubhouse for a few hours, and leave for Fulbrook soon after lunch. After spending some time at home, he would come out drinking pink liquid from a container that looked like a child’s beaker.

  Louisa followed him to a gymnasium. She parked outside but caught sight of him occasionally, through the large windows. On the second day she could see him buckled into some complex contraption, straining against himself, his image reflected in the mirror beyond.

  Through the afternoons and evenings, he visited various houses in the villages around Detton. Never the same ones. Were it not for his casual clothing, Louisa would have guessed that he was a salesman.

  On the Tuesday night, he stayed late at a block of flats in Fulbrook. The night was cold, the streetlights a sickly red. Louisa went home before he came out.

  Driving back to the hill, she saw Christopher making his way back from the White Hart. She passed him quickly and did not look back. The sight of him made her feel ashamed about what she was doing, although she could not work out why. She told herself she would not follow the man again.

  That night, in the moments before sleep, she saw him on the golf course – the green insect – rubbing his face beneath the black grid of his face guard. She imagined the fibres of grass that he spat into the sink when he arrived home, and the sad face which met him in the bathroom mirror. The noise of her boiler became the motor of his brushcutter. Her eyes remained open.

  She stayed away until Wednesday tea-time. Children were playing football by streetlight on Park Avenue, and his car was still outside his house. He came out at 7 p.m., and she followed him to the Black Swan, a pub on the outskirts of Derby. She resolved to go in; her pulse was so strong she could feel it behind her eyes. The feeling was different from when she had spied on David, watching a life she already knew everything about, featuring a man who probably wouldn’t have been surprised to find her in his garden. There was danger in this pursuit. If he spotted her, or Maggie found out, it would be the end of Louisa, a humiliation from which she would never recover. She would probably have to leave the hill. Somebody would. At the thought of Maggie, she got out of her van and entered the pub.

  Thankfully, the place was crowded and dark. Early twentieth-century streetscapes and pictures of old boxing champions hung on the walls. Louisa sat down by the anomalous red pool table on the other side of the bar and watched him drinking lime and soda alone at a table with a red candle melting into a port bottle. He removed his jacket and she could imagine the heat coming from him as the sweat of his earlier exercise resumed. He blinked slowly, and looked – for one second – as though he might cry. He opened his eyes and shook the expression of sadness away. It was a private moment, but Louisa could not stop herself from looking. She felt a wish to console him, a sudden sense that she could console him, better than Maggie, better than anyone. Someone pressed the button to release the balls in the pool table behind her, and in the silence following that deep rumble, Louisa was reminded of the sad fact of what she was doing. She thought about leaving, but at that moment the door opened, and a woman came in. The draft made the gig notices flutter. She wore a black coat and a shapeless silky dress. Her hair was reddish, and Louisa could detect the smell of a recent dye-job – like washing-up liquid – as the woman walked hesitantly past and scanned the room.

  The man stood, his face restored to the serious pursed-lip look. He moved purposefully now, in much the same way as he walked the fairways at the golf club. His tall man’s stoop had confused Louisa, because now, in a room filled with other men, she could see that he was quite short. It was the closest she had been to him, with no windows in between.

  Louisa watched the woman register his presence, saw the fee
ling hit home. He greeted her with a firm hand placed above her hip. He kissed her. The woman went to his table, while he ordered at the bar. Louisa could not hear his voice, but she saw a bottle of wine in a metal ice-bucket placed before him.

  The woman looked at him, and then caught Louisa’s eye and smiled. Her lipstick shone. Louisa turned away and left the pub, aware of some laughter over by the pool table.

  So he was a cheat, Louisa thought as she drove home. She thought of his hand on the woman’s hip, and she thought of Maggie. What she felt was a surge of power. She could not help it.

  Arriving at the top of the hill, she watched the shadowy shape of the big house emerging. It seemed to tilt in the sky as she drove past. Floodlights trained on the façade picked out patches of stone in the darkness. Louisa knew she could not tell Maggie what she had seen without revealing secrets of her own. She liked the feeling the knowledge gave her.

  * * *

  Oh, the numb comfort of afternoons in a village nobody has ever heard of. Louisa sat in her van at the bottom of Drum Hill and watched the light fade as though the trees were growing at five inches an hour, the branches closing like latticed fingers over the road. She watched the windows of the nearby houses turn yellow like crocus buds bursting out of season. Louisa knew the man was with Maggie, on one of his visits, and she expected his car to descend at about 3.30 p.m. She had the heater on full blast.

  The Golf arrived at the junction, as usual, but this time things were a little different. He wore a light grey suit, a white shirt and a red tie like a tugged-out tongue. Louisa could tell that he had showered. As usual, the car was pointing to the left, but this time he swung it to the right at the last moment and then disappeared over Jack O’ Darley Bridge. Louisa made a three-point turn, to the displeasure of two sides of oncoming traffic.

  She caught up with him on Eaton Bank, where the sun shone – a last blast before it went down. Louisa kept her distance, unsure about the change of territory. Eventually, he turned left up Woodlands Close. She didn’t know the road, and by the time she took the same left, he was out of sight.

  It was a narrow hill, a steep incline with cars parked on both sides. Louisa took it in second gear, looking along the rows of cars. She reasoned that he couldn’t have had time to parallel park. As she reached the mid-point of the climb, she saw that the road widened at the brow into a turning space; it was a cul-de-sac. The houses looked incredibly tall. He must have parked somewhere up there, she thought.

  But he had not parked. He had turned his car around, and was now descending, quite deliberately, towards her. Stop then, she thought. Let me by. But he made no move to accommodate her van, and Louisa realised that she had been rumbled. There was only room for one vehicle between the stationary cars. She was trapped. He came down slowly, releasing the brake until they were just feet apart. Louisa could see the droplets of water from his shower soaking through his shirt. She could see the two-tone of his tie. His face was obscured by the glare of the sun on the windscreen. She let the van roll backwards. Her descent was halting. The light glinted off her wing mirrors, causing her to squint. She twitched the steering wheel, guiding the van through the narrow gap. When she reached the bottom of Woodlands Close she saw that the main road was now teeming with cars. The school run. She put on the handbrake. ‘Back off,’ she shouted. ‘Just back off.’ Then she stopped, knowing that he could not hear her, and that he’d probably be pleased if he could.

  He stepped out of his car, leaving the motor running. He looked at the ground, his lips pursed, hands in pockets, the flaps of his jacket up and out. His suit had a cheap purple lining. He rubbed the flat of his hand across the top of his head, as she had seen him do before. Water came off and his short hair was immediately dry. He signalled that she could roll down her window, but mercifully approached the passenger side.

  He bent down. She glanced at him long enough to notice the little gap between his teeth, and then stared forward. He seemed poised to knock on the window so she hit the button twice, letting in the noise and cold air and his breath.

  ‘Alright?’ he said.

  Surprisingly wry. A strong North Derbyshire accent.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Bit blocked in, are we?’

  She shook her head stiffly as he smiled.

  ‘You a dick?’ he asked.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said, turning to him.

  ‘A PI. Private dick.’

  ‘No I am not.’

  ‘Working for one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Doing a bit a snoopin’ about for a friend?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘For a fella?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ His tone became lighter. ‘Well, in that case.’ He patted his pockets, brought out his wallet and offered a card to Louisa. ‘Adam,’ he said. Adum. He dropped the card accidentally into the footwell of the passenger seat, and so pulled out another one. She took it, reluctantly, and put it in the pocket of her fleece. She felt him notice the bird smell, intensified as it was by the heat pulsing from the dashboard.

  ‘Is it you?’ he said.

  ‘Is what me?’

  ‘The friend you’re snoopin’ about for. Is it you? No shame in it.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said. She was relieved that he had not connected her to Maggie.

  ‘Alright, alright. Fair-do’s.’

  ‘Are you going to let me out?’

  He looked back at his car and laughed. ‘Oh aye. Give us a minute.’ He tapped the van twice.

  In spite of herself she called out to him as he walked to his car. ‘Never seen you in a suit before.’

  ‘Well how long have you been following me?’

  She shrugged. He laughed and shook his head. ‘Going to court, aren’t I?’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said, a flash of anger in his voice. ‘And you shouldn’t be doing this, you know. It’s not on.’

  She flushed, but he was quickly in the car, reversing up the hill with that satisfying whiz. She followed him and turned the van around. He watched her do it and let her go without pursuing. She managed not to cry until she got over the bank, but she was helpless then, her chest jumping so hard she could barely hold the wheel.

  By the time she arrived back at the house the tears had ceased. She remained in the van, took the card out of her pocket. Adam Gregory. Home visits and public accompaniment. The conversation she had with him shifted into place, along with his late-night movements. She experienced a new feeling of disgust. But her thinking, as she looked over at the big house, became cloudy. Disgust had always been a simple emotion for Louisa, but that – she realised – was because she had always known, quite firmly, with whom she was disgusted. These days, she wasn’t so sure.

  THIRTEEN

  The night before the staff meeting, Maggie set off to Louisa’s cottage again. She needed an ally, and hoped that Louisa would fill that position. In the dark, the bordering fields had become wild again; the wind animated the black shapes around her. It had been a while since she had thought of a border between them, but now – even as she imagined the reasonable explanations for Louisa’s recent absence – she could feel those old walls coming up. The van was parked outside the cottage. Iroquois strained against her leash, screaming.

  ‘Are you the bouncer?’ Maggie said to the eagle.

  She did not bother with the door this time, but stepped across the lawn and knocked on the window. She looked inside; the living room seemed untouched, but she could only see along the tunnel of moonlight which burrowed into the smooth sofa, half of the coffee table, and a section of the white wall. The corners of the room were invisible to her. It had been almost a week since she had last spoken to her friend. A couple of times she had seen Louisa in the mornings, coming out of the cottage to deal with the birds, but she was too far away to call out to. More often, the van was already gone when Maggie rose. She tried
to tell herself that the unanswered phone calls were a result of the bad signal on the hill, and hoped that Louisa was not relapsing into those old hermitic habits. ‘Lou?’ she shouted, one last time. ‘Are you okay?’ She turned and walked back to the house.

  Maggie spent the night – as she spent many of the lengthening nights – in the office, filing papers and working on funding applications. When she was too tired to continue, she visited a deer webcam set up on a farm in Norfolk. It was empty now, as it was most of the time – just a grainy clearing in the bramble – but it was worth the wait for the occasions when the stags came into view, and wallowed in the steaming mud, their tines like writhing fingers in the mist. Maggie watched the seconds pulse on the digital clock in the corner of the screen.

  It was the weird collisions she had loved, back in Greenwich. The Greenwich deer had a bloodline dating back to the time of Henry VIII and yet, out in the enclosure, the low grey ghosts of aeroplanes yawned overhead; you could hear the laser chirp of green parakeets and see the top deck of a bus sliding above the brick wall that shut them off from the wind-scoured roads of Blackheath. She had loved the physical signs of their seasonal desires, too, the antlers growing as the hormones raced, the blood-rich velvet nourishing the hard bone beneath and then peeling raggedly. She loved the ugly, aching bellow. It was an unmajestic, hurt sound. During the rut, the neck of a red deer stag increases exponentially in muscle mass; such spontaneous gains are unrivalled in the animal world. And at the end of the season, the antlers fell off, one by one.

  Her own desires had waned now. The empty physical longing she had felt throughout the autumn had begun to subside. She had cancelled her last two appointments with the man from Fulbrook. It wasn’t what she needed any more.

  The deercam was best in the early hours, when a hind would sometimes turn and face the camera, pulling her hooves through the grass, eyes like molten metal in the floodlights. But tonight, the camera showed nothing but a tangle of briars. She knew how crazy it was to sit there watching for an elusive glimpse of a wild animal when there were hundreds in her garden, but there were no deer at Drum Hill, and deer made her nostalgic for her early moments with David. These days, and these nights, nostalgia was the feeling she longed for.