How To Make Friends With Demons Part 13

I peered down the long corridor. The entire building was deserted. The cleaners hadn't yet reached the Lodge in their daily rounds, and all of the other students were at lectures, except for me and Fraser.

"Fraser?" I shouted. I went downstairs to his room and knocked on the door. "Fraser?"

There was no answer. I pressed my ear to the panel of the door but I could hear nothing at all from inside. Then I thought I heard a tiny footfall on the stairs behind me.

There was no one there. A second set of stairs led up from the back of the Lodge, obviously a hangover from the days of servants in the old house, and I thought that if I nipped up that way smartly I might be able to catch whoever was messing around. But when I reached the top of those stairs, the landing was clear and the house remained in silence. Further down the shadowy corridor the door to my own room stood slightly ajar, as I'd left it.

I heard another tiny creak of steps. This time, though, it was from the winding staircase leading up to the attic. I went to the foot of those stairs and looked up. The gloomy stairwell was clear. My head was throbbing now in compet.i.tion with my pulse. I set a nervous foot on the first step and began to ascend the attic stairway.

I hadn't been in the attic since I'd gone up with d.i.c.k Fellowes, after which the door had been securely locked up all over again. Now the door stood open a tiny crack. I touched my finger to the door, but I didn't apply any pressure. Instead I listened.

I listened hard. What I heard from behind the door was the most terrifying sound I have heard in my life. I had to strain hard to hear it.

The only possible way I can describe it is to say that it sounded like grains of sand. A very few grains, falling on a plastic or metal sheet. A faint sprinkling, and then a sudden spitting of the gritty sand at its target. Then it would stop altogether. In that moment I had the horrible impression that something was listening to me on the other side of the door: listening to me listening. The sprinkling of sand resumed again. Then stopped.

I turned on my heels and hurried back to my room. I grabbed my jacket and my keys and I locked my door behind me. Then I dashed out into the sunlight, and went looking for Mandy.

Chapter 18.

This is nice!" Sarah said, sitting down and unwinding her long, long scarf in a manner that reminded me of myself. She wore a pullover, threadbare at the elbows and with the over-long arms reaching down to her black-painted fingernails. My eldest daughter, home from Warwick University, was very keen to see me. She also wanted me to meet her boyfriend, who was called Mo. I tried not to think about why. Anyway, I offered to treat them to lunch in town. I suggested a Thai place in Soho.

Sarah was a joy to be around. Always was. Always will be. I think I'm in love with my own daughter-not in any erotic sense, my name's not Sigmund Freud-but in the sense that I love her company best of all people and miss her when she's gone.

"Is it okay for you, Mo?" I said "It's more than okay," said Mo, settling in and grabbing a menu card. "It's good of you to bring us here."

Mo didn't look like Nosferatu at all. Well, he had the shaved head and either he'd been working down a coal mine or he applied a bit of black eye-liner. But so what? Same with the two silver rings through his eyebrow: so what? He wore what we used to call a donkey jacket over a white t-s.h.i.+rt; that and some very impressive Dr. Martens boots, just like Antonia did at GoPoint.

"I'm ordering wine," I said. "I bet you'd rather have a Thai beer, Mo."

"No, wine's good for me."

"You've got something in common," Sarah said. "Mo is a connoisseur of the grape."

I set down my chopsticks in surprise.

"I pretend to be working cla.s.s," he said apologetically, "but my dad owns a vineyard in France." There was something wonderfully kissable about Mo, the way puppies are kissable.

"He is working cla.s.s," Sarah said. "His dad's a bookie. Shall we get loads of dishes and share?"

"Really? A bookmaker? They are kind of the aristocracy of the working cla.s.s, aren't they?

Yes, order loads. I'm all for it. How's Mum?"

Sarah shook her head rapidly and made a vibrating noise with her lips. Mo snorted. A tiny, sweet waitress with scintillating black eyes came, and Sarah sang out the names of several dishes. "Is it too much, Dad?"

"No, keep going. You both look like you need a good meal. Ah, here comes the wine.

Thank G.o.d."

I let Mo taste the wine and imitated the thing she'd just done. s.h.i.+vering my lips. "What does that mean?"

Sarah shrugged. Mo p.r.o.nounced the wine acceptable and said, "Sarah's Mum gave me the impression you were a kind of down-and-out. You don't look like that to me."

"A down-and-out?"

Sarah shot him a warning look, but he ignored it. "So did Lucien. Well, he said you were a loser."

"Mo and Lucien didn't exactly hit it off," said Sarah.

"No?"

"Lucien keeps having a go. About his clothes, anything he says. He can't seem to resist having a dig."

The food arrived, steaming, scented with glorious spices. I wondered if the pair of them were doing a number on me. Mo liked wine. Mo didn't like Lucien. I do tend to gulp at my first gla.s.s of wine, and I noticed that Mo was carefully keeping pace.

"Well, tuck in," I said.

We all did, and were pretty soon emptying our second bottle of wine. Behind us one of the Thai waitresses attended to the spirit house at the rear of the restaurant. She rearranged the model birds on their perches, relit a candle and put a tiny vase of flowers inside it. Mo was interested. I told him that in Thailand most people have a spirit house somewhere in the garden, and that tending it regularly keeps the spirits in good favour.

"So are there spirits in this restaurant?" Mo asked lightly.

"Yes, several," I said. "In fact there's one standing right behind you at this moment."

Mo dipped his fork and looked behind him. Sarah glanced up at me and shook her head quickly, a warning.

"Ha!" said Mo. "Ha ha!"

"Do you know what that tattoo on your forearm represents?" I asked Mo.

"What, this one?"

"Yes, that one."

"No. I just thought it looked good."

"It's a protective amulet."

Mo looked at it now as if someone had tattooed it on his arm without his permission. Sarah stepped in. She didn't seem keen on the way this conversation was going. "Mum thinks you're having some kind of breakdown. I'm supposed to report back."

"Well, as you can see I'm a fully integrated, high-functioning human being who is ready to order another bottle of wine. With the approval of you young things, of course."

Mo drained his gla.s.s, and so did Sarah. I only had to mention more wine and they behaved like it was their birthdays. Though neither of them could hold it well. By the time we hit the fourth bottle Sarah was getting her gang kiew wan gai all over the tablecloth.

Suddenly she tossed down her fork. "For f.u.c.k's sake, Dad, we can't stay a f.u.c.king day longer with that f.u.c.king awful pastry chef. We'll just have to crash at your f.u.c.king place. Won't we, Mo?"

Well, that was that. I must have agreed. Then this lunch that was going so well, so swimmingly, took a nosedive when Sarah blurted out, "Mum says you've got a fancy woman."

I said nothing.

"Have you?"

Mo, who was less pulled around by the wine than Sarah, registered the irritation on my face.

He looked a little nervous.

"Well? Have you?"

"No, I haven't. Okay?"

"It's no big deal, Dad. If you have or you haven't."

"Can we drop the subject?"

"What's to drop? I mean, it's not like it's a big deal either way! I mean, why be so cagey?

Why be so secretive? I mean, fine, if you have you have if you haven't you haven't; I mean, it's not like world news; I mean it's not like anyone gives a d.a.m.n; I mean, I'm old enough to be told, but if you don't want to tell me what the h.e.l.l do I care if you tell me or not?"

Mo kicked her under the table, but in a way that I was meant to see.

Sarah turned on Mo. "Why are you kicking me? He's my f.u.c.king dad! He's always like this.

Big secret out of nothing at all. Am I in the wrong now? Am I?"

I threw down my napkin. "I'm just going to the loo," I said.

On my way back to the table I went to the cash register to settle the bill. My credit card failed. I hadn't made the repayments. I had to pay on my debit card, and every time I did so I was going deeper into overdraft. When I got back they were both silent. I explained I had to get back to work.

Outside the restaurant they asked me to direct them to a decent pub. I suggested coffee might be more in order but since they were having none of that I showed them the French House on Dean Street, where Dylan Thomas once famously inserted his middle finger up the a.n.u.s of someone's pet monkey. No, that doesn't sound right. Anyway, before I left them and without saying anything about our spat, Sarah embraced me mightily. I left them wobbling along Dean Street, having doubtfully entrusted them with a key to my place. They had threatened to return home to get their stuff.

I promised I'd square it all with Fay.

Well, that's one way to describe the shrieking, high-decibel telephone call I got from Fay later that evening. It seemed that Sarah and Mo had returned home in a state of total inebriation, airily gathering up their bags while making insulting remarks about Lucien's pastry. Words were exchanged. Doors were slammed. Parting shots turned into grenades.

I was to blame, apparently, for "winding Sarah up." I protested that this was unfair. Fay asked me what I thought of "Nosferatu" and when I reported that I found him to be a very personable young man she became even more enraged. She wanted an apology, from someone, and so did Lucien.

I promised that I would ask Sarah to call Fay when she and "Nosferatu" had slept off their afternoon.

In fact, I'd arrived home from work to find my kitchen looking like a badger had rifled through the rubbish bin. A half-finished attempt to make a sandwich lay on the floor along with the knife used to b.u.t.ter it. A quarter-pound of cheese lay on the table bearing the impression of someone's teeth. Sarah and Mo had found their way to my bed, upon which they both lay snoring heartily, having been unable to remove their boots. I felt not unlike I was in that story about the girl and the three bears.

I wasn't too bothered by this mess in my otherwise rather obsessively tidy home. In fact, the sudden appearance of a little chaos was almost welcome. It reminded me of the time in my life when the kids were toddlers and I couldn't get out of bed without screaming as my foot descended on a sharp Lego brick or some other unnecessary plastic toy. But what did upset me was that my bookshelves had been ransacked.

When I say ransacked, I mean that four or five books had been pulled out of the middle shelf and had been opened or casually tossed on the sofa. The secret hiding place for the scribbled exercise book written by Seamus had been disturbed and the exercise book itself dislodged. It lay on the sofa, open, on the third page. Whoever had started reading it-Sarah or Mo-had abandoned it early before dragging their monkey boots onto the snow-white duvet of my bed. I returned the books-and the exercise book-to the shelf. Then I made some strong arabica.

They were still fast asleep when I went into the bedroom with the steaming coffee.

Who shall I rouse first? I thought. Yes, Nosferatu.

He woke with a sudden snort and sat upright, sweeping a large hand across his shaved head.

Sarah blinked her eyes open, too. "Oh G.o.d," she said. "Oh G.o.d."

Mo looked deathly. He blinked at me. "I'll leave this here," I said. "See you downstairs."

About half an hour later Sarah appeared having showered. She was wearing my white towel-robe and she'd fas.h.i.+oned a turban from another towel, in that provoking way that women do. She blinked at me.

I raised my eyebrows at her. "Your mother wants you to call."

"Oh G.o.d."

"Something about an apology."

"Oh G.o.d."

Mo joined us. He didn't say much. Just kept touching the ironwork in his eyebrows, as if to check no one had removed them while he'd been sleeping.

"You've tidied up," Sarah said. "You shouldn't have. We left a mess."

"It's fine."

"No, it's not. I know you: you'll put us in a taxi and send us back to Mr. Pastry."

"Really, it's okay. Look, I have to go out."

"Where to?" Sarah whipped off her turban towel and started to vigorously dry her wet hair.

"Help yourself to anything in the house. There's wine under the stairs. Just don't touch my books, okay? I'm very fussy about my books."

"Cool," said Mo.

"That was me," Sarah confessed. "Sorry."

"What made you go for those books in particular?"

"No idea. Where are you going?"

"I have an appointment. I mean, why grab those books out of all of them? I'm just interested."

She shrugged. "Maybe they were sticking out. What appointment?"

"They don't stick out. Not a centimetre. I'm an obsessive and I keep them all in line. It's a kind of illness."