chapter forty-one
CLAIRE
It was one of those days, one of those perfect days. I felt pretty. I felt on. I felt as if I had the city at my feet. I’m not a Londoner, I’m a northern girl, and it’s taken me a long time to feel as though I belong here. But that day I felt like a native. I did my yoga on the tiny patch of grass outside my Kentish Town apartment that is laughingly called a garden. I made myself a smoothie. No hangover that day as I’d stayed in the night before updating my CV, watching music documentaries, and playing the guitar. The sun was shining. I was shining. I put on jeans and a smock top, a loose denim jacket, and my Converse.
I tucked sunglasses into my bag and I walked all the way from my apartment into Soho, my feet instinctively knowing how to get me there without once having to consult my road map.
I went to the guitar shop on Denmark Street where the cute boy worked. I irted with him in a way I’d normally feel too shy to do, but like I say, I was on that day. Fully. I bought some new strings for my guitar and a purple glitter plectrum. The cute boy put them in a paper bag for me that he folded neatly at the top before passing it to me with a smile.
I walked home and changed out of my jeans and into my favorite Top Shop dress. The temperature was rising, and I wanted to be in something loose, something that let the air circulate.
My friends texted me to tell me they were meeting up for drinks in Hampstead. I replied that I would join them there later. I wasn’t in a hurry. I wanted the day to sweep me along in its perfect arc. I’ve always been what I call spontaneous but what my friends and family might refer to as “Claire doing a no-show.” I like to keep my options open, my phone at home—sometimes I like to disappear.
I made my bed so that it would be all nice and fresh for me when I returned, and I lifted the window just a crack, enough to keep it aired during the day, but not enough to allow some murderous monster to get in and hide under my bed
awaiting my return.
And then I walked to Hampstead.
The Heath fascinated me. How, I always wondered, did this exist? In the middle of a city? How could I feel that I was cut o from the world, miles from anywhere, nothing around but rustling treetops and dusty paths, when I was a ten-minute walk from a tube station? I stopped that day at the point on the Heath where the shiny silver towers and spires of the City suddenly loom into view on the horizon and I caught my breath. It’s miraculous, I thought. London is miraculous.
And then as I passed the edges of the Vale of Health, I heard the sound of a cat crying.
I followed the pathetic noise to the fence at the back of someone’s property. I crouched down in the tangled undergrowth to pull away some weeds, and there was a beautiful gray cat, its collar caught on a spiny branch, its body contorted into an uncomfortable position. I put down my bag and tried to free the cat, but it fought and struggled. And then I heard voices oating dreamily over the top of the fence. It sounded like a group of people conversing sociably; a party maybe? I called out: “Excuse me? Hello? Excuse me?”
A man’s voice responded.
