The Other Side of the Door

Everything was wrong. But what was my alternative? And who else could I ask? Who else could I trust to tell me what to do? I smoked a second cigarette, more successfully this time, and ground out the stub with my heel for an unnecessarily long time.
At last she was there, in a grey cardigan with her long black hair tied back.
‘Thank God,’ I said.
Sonia took my arm. ‘You’re trembling. What’s happened?’
‘You have to come with me.’
We didn’t talk as I led her down the lane. She was walking more slowly than I was, and I had to stop to urge her on. I kept expecting to see someone, although Liza’s flat stood at the dead end of the road, just in front of the railway line, and people hardly ever went down there. Sometimes a group of teenagers would be hanging around, up to something out of view of the main road, but now there was nobody. I unlocked the street door but when I reached the door to the flat I stopped.
‘Bonnie?’
‘I didn’t know who else to turn to,’ I said. ‘Please don’t make a sound.’
I unlocked and opened the door and Sonia and I stepped inside. I shut it behind us and drew the bolt.
Sonia managed somehow to stay silent. I didn’t even hear an intake of breath. She stood just inside the room, the body spread out in front of her, and stared at it. Her arms hung loosely by her sides, her chin was jutted forward slightly, her feet were planted slightly apart as if she was scared she might topple, and her face was blank. It was as if someone had taken a damp cloth and wiped away all traces of emotion and thought. I didn’t speak or move either. I waited. All I could hear was the sound of my breathing.
At last she shifted her position slightly and spoke in a whisper. ‘It’s . . .’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Yes.’
She looked around the room as if she was expecting someone else to be standing there. I could see her taking in each separate item: the smashed guitar, the upturned vase and heap of tulips, the chair lying on its side. Her gaze returned to the body. She hadn’t looked at me yet, her eyes darting everywhere but towards me. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Sorry?’
‘That it was you I called.’
Finally she turned to me. Her eyes flickered. She dropped them from my face to the bruise on my neck.
‘Were you and he . . . ?’
‘Involved?’ I said. ‘Kind of.’
She gave a long, deep sigh, as if she had been holding her breath since she stepped over the threshold. Her voice came out in a soft wail. ‘Why am I here?’
Before
‘I don’t know, Bonnie.’
‘That means you might?’
‘I hardly touch the guitar nowadays.’
‘That doesn’t matter!’
‘Are you going to tell me it’s like riding a bicycle?’
‘Would that persuade you?’
Neal gave me a smile, which made him look more like the man I remembered from university. We hadn’t seen each other for nearly ten years and even then I hadn’t known him well. He had been a friend of Andy’s and had been hauled in to play bass guitar, reasonably competently. In fact, that was how I used to think of him—as competent, practical. His hair was darker than I’d thought, but not long as it had been then when it had fallen to his shoulders. He had filled out, was no longer the skinny young man everyone in the band had liked because he was always ready to help out, fix things when they broke, ferry things when they needed ferrying. Liza had taken a bit of a shine to him in those days; maybe she had even made a drunken pass. But it had come to nothing, and after university he had slipped out of our lives. I hadn’t really thought about him since.
We were sitting in the small garden of his tiny house in Stoke Newington. I’d told him, when I’d found his number in the phone book and rung, that I could meet him outside his workplace, but apparently he worked from home, supplying garden sheds to people who didn’t want to move but needed more room. I had an example of the shed in front of me, at the bottom of the garden. He had erected it himself and apparently it served as his office and a demonstration to interested clients of what they could get for their money. It was really just a simple extra room or a large version of a child’s playhouse, with a pitched roof, two windows, a door, and enough space inside for a sofa, a desk and a bookcase.
It was mid-morning, and we were drinking coffee in the warm sunlight. Clematis was climbing one wall and the flower-beds were crammed with plants. A bee buzzed above my head. I took a sip of coffee, leaned back in my chair and sighed. ‘This is good,’ I said. ‘I’m not surprised you work from home.’
‘It’s not always like this.’
‘I’ve got a flat that’s about as big as your shed, but not nearly as nice. Maybe I should get one to live in.’
He laughed. I saw a faint scar slanting from the corner of his left eye. His eyebrows were thick and dark. I found myself wondering if anyone lived with him in his little house, helped him water his flowers and do the accounts.
‘All right,’ Neal said.
‘Sorry?’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘You will?’
‘I’m not going away until the end of September this year. It’ll brighten up my summer.’
We looked at each other. Both of us were smiling.
After
We were speaking in frantic hoarse whispers.
‘I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘Oh, shit.’
‘I called you because I trust you.’
‘For what?’ Sonia’s eyes returned to the body, darted away again; went to my face and then away, as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at me full on. I saw she was clenching and unclenching her fists.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t know what else to do. Sonia? I need help. I