Annie Robinson isn’t answering. I press the intercom again and give her another few seconds before walking back to my car. A horn toots. Annie is pulling into a space. She has bags of groceries.
‘If you’re busy . . .’
‘No, you can help me carry these.’
She drapes me in plastic bags and I follow her inside. She’s wearing shrunk-tight jeans, leather boots and a concho belt that dangles below a fitted black shirt. My eyes are fixed on her denim-clad thighs as she walks ahead of me. I remember them wrapped around me and I get that feeling again.
Annie unlocks the door and leads me through to the kitchen, where she begins unpacking the bags, talking constantly.
‘I know I said I was sorry about the other night, but I really mean it. I never do things like that.’
Does she mean she never gets drunk or never knocks on a man’s door and abuses him for ignoring her?
‘It’s a little blonde of me, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe just your roots showing.’
She smiles back at me. ‘Have you eaten?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Sit down. Have lunch.’
She heats up two small quiches and opens a plastic bag of washed salad leaves. She’s used to cooking for one, buying prepackaged, ready-made meals.
I look around the flat.
‘This is a nice place.’
‘Rented. I couldn’t afford it otherwise. I can’t really afford it now, but I’ve spent my entire life waiting for things. I don’t do that any more. The only point of waiting is if you have something worth waiting for. That’s a good kind of waiting.’
‘I didn’t know there were different sorts of waiting.’
‘Oh, there are. That’s the mystery.’ She laughs and her thin blonde hair sways.
‘Let’s eat in the garden.’ She points through the glass doors to a small round table inlaid with blue and white tiles. She sets out two forks and knives, two plates and two napkins.
‘Do you ever think about your ex-husband?’ I ask.
She’s drizzling dressing on the salad. ‘No.’
‘Not at all?’
‘David Robinson. There you go - that’s the first time I’ve said his name in months. I did think of changing back to my maiden name when we got divorced, but I couldn’t be bothered getting a new passport and driver’s licence.’
Annie is about to light a candle. ‘Is this too much?’
‘Probably.’
‘OK, no candle.’
She opens the oven door. They’re still not ready.
‘You mentioned a photograph of Gordon Ellis and Novak Brennan.’
‘Yes. Come look.’
I follow her into the bedroom where she pulls out an old photograph album from the shelf in her wardrobe. We sit side by side on her bed, leafing through the pages.
‘That’s me there,’ she says. ‘I’m with my friend Jodie and that’s Heidi and her boyfriend Matt. You see Gordon? He’s with Alison. They went out for about three months and then he started dating Jodie. She’s the blonde. They went out for almost a year. The longest of anyone.’
Jodie’s hair is cut short and she has a long slender neck and big eyes.
‘She looks about twelve,’ I say.
Annie laughs. ‘Jodie was always getting carded when we went out.’
She turns the page. ‘There’s Gordon again.’
He is wearing a trench coat cinched at the waist, which he probably bought from a charity shop because he thought it made him look urbane and cool. Instead he looks like he’s dressed in his father’s clothes.
The photograph was taken at a party. Ellis is grinning at the camera with his arms draped around Jodie and Annie, his outspread fingers suspended above their breasts. There’s nothing wolfish about the pose, but he’s a man who knows what he wants.
‘This is the photo I was talking about,’ she says, pointing to another image taken in the same series. A person hovers at the edge of the frame, trying to avoid the camera - a younger Novak Brennan with longer hair and fewer lines. His face is partially obscured by Annie’s raised arm holding a beer glass. Only one eye is visible and the camera flash has turned it red.
‘Did you know him?’ I ask.
‘I didn’t remember him at all until I saw the picture. I think he shared a house with Gordon. They were always hanging around together.’
‘But if you were friends with Gordon . . .’
‘He dated my girlfriends, remember?’
‘Where were these taken?’
She shrugs. ‘Some party. You’re not supposed to remember them - that’s the whole point of college.’
Annie turns more pages of the album. There are photographs of a holiday in Turkey, Annie in a bikini, lying on the deck of a sailing boat. She looks good.
‘You don’t want to see these old things,’ she says, not closing the page immediately.
We’re sitting close enough for her breast to brush against my forearm.
‘Maybe those quiches are ready,’ I suggest.
Annie cocks her head, having read the signal.
‘Do you have to be somewhere?’
‘I promised I’d take Emma to the park.’
It’s a lie. Annie knows it.
‘Well, at least have something to eat.’
She leaves me in the bedroom. I keep turning the pages of the album. There are more photographs from college. Foundation Day celebrations. Theatre productions. A charity car rally with a customised VW beetle. A black-tie dinner on a bridge.
Gordon Ellis features in several more images, often in the background. One particular shot stands out because two girls are dancing in the foreground. Behind them, to one side, Ellis can be seen kissing a girl on a sofa, twisting her head towards his. Both their mouths are open, an inch apart, and he looks like a bird about to deposit food in a chick’s beak.
The glass coffee table in front of them is littered with drug paraphernalia and traces of white powder in smudged lines.
I study the girl on the sofa. Gordon’s hat obscures most of her face, but she has a small dark mole on her shoulder blade, just below her neck. I have kissed that spot. Felt her pulse quicken beneath my lips.
Annie calls from the kitchen. Taking the photograph with me, I slip it on to the table next to her plate. She glances at it but says nothing. Instead a strange transformation seems to take place. Rising from her chair, she walks around the garden, examining the shrubs and new blooms.
‘It’s not just the parties you forget,’ she says. ‘A lot of things about college are best left alone.’
‘You’re kissing Gordon Ellis.’
‘I’m snogging him, to be exact.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I dated him twice. That’s as far as it went.’
Annie sighs and her eyes grow brighter as though a generator is spinning inside her.
‘What about Novak Brennan - how much more do you know about him?’
‘He had a reputation on campus for dealing.’
‘Dealing?’
‘Hash. Ecstasy. Speed. Cocaine. Novak could get it. He was always very mysterious. People said he’d been to prison, but I don’t know if that’s true.’
Annie takes the photograph and tears it into pieces, letting the scraps fall into the garden. She keeps her face turned away from mine.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘The past is the past.’
The chemistry of our conversation has changed. Annie picks up her wine glass, her hand trembling slightly. The quiches are growing cold.
‘Sienna tried to commit suicide on Friday. She took an overdose. ’
Annie doesn’t react. Dissected by the afternoon sun, the skin on her face looks coarse and grained.
‘Is she going to be all right?’
‘She’s out of danger. Before she went to hospital she told me something that puzzled me.’
‘What was that?’
‘She said you asked her if she was seeing Gordon Ellis outside of school. It was late last year.’
Annie holds the glass to her lips for a beat. Her eyes meet mine over the rim, a private thought buried within them.
‘I heard she was babysitting for him.’
‘You suspected something?’
‘I thought it was inappropriate.’
‘But you didn’t say anything to the school or to Sienna’s parents.’
A sharper edge in her voice. ‘You think I covered it up.’
‘I think you knew. I think you protected Gordon. I want to know why.’
She puts down the wineglass. All remaining warmth has gone.
‘It’s time you left.’
‘Explain it to me, Annie.’
‘Go now or I’ll call the police.’
Taking my coat from the lounge, I walk to the front door. Annie unlocks it for me. I want to say something. I want to warn her about getting too close to Gordon Ellis because everything he touches begins to rot and perish. Suddenly she grasps my forearms through my shirt and plants a kiss on me, hard but not mean, whispering into my mouth.
‘That’s what you’re missing.’