desperate. ‘I don’t really want a new car,’ I whispered faithlessly to the dashboard as the Ford lurched unhappily backwards and forwards in the middle of two opposing lines of traffic. I turned the key again. The engine coughed and purred into life. Now what was I going to do?
I followed him. He drove to Highbury Corner, turned into Holloway Road towards Archway and then up Highgate Hill. Then a Pizza Hut moped rider overtook me and I lost sight of the Ford. I was looking around for the car when I turned and found myself staring him in the face. I hadn’t noticed that he had pulled in to the side of the road, and now I was driving past him. He had parked outside the little house in Waterlow Park where on summer nights people have parties. But now it was dark and cold, cheerless and threatening and he seemed to be speaking angrily on a mobile phone.
I drove on, casually slowing down, throwing anxious glances in my rear-view mirror. Headlights were coming up behind me and I couldn’t make out if it was his car. As the lights drew closer I was dazzled and quickly looked away. Suddenly there was a bang and I shot forward. My seat belt clicked firmly and thrust me back. I could hear the revving of an engine very close behind me. Something large had made damaging, buckling contact with the back of my car. Automatically, I switched off my engine. I had no fear, just an enormous sense of fury and protectiveness for my small, unassuming car which had never hurt anyone. Certainly not since I’d had it, anyway. I unbuckled my seat belt, ready to jump out to look at my bumper and confront the bastard who had done this, when suddenly the door was wrenched open.
I was conscious of a narrow, pointed face with pock-marks and thin pale lips leaning towards me. I could smell garlic and something meaty, like pâté. A hand came round my neck and I was being dragged out of the car.
I was outraged, choking and gagging, repeating, ‘What? What?’ and clawing at the hand. There was a swish of material and something came towards me very fast. It was a fist, which punched me hard in the right eye. As my head jerked back a thin, harsh voice hissed, ‘Just keep your fucking nose out of things,’ and something that sounded like, ‘Fucking lesbos – you’re all the same,’ but perhaps I was just feeling sensitive. Then he threw me on to the ground and my face landed in gravel. I lay still for a couple of seconds, hoping he would go away, but he was standing there moving back and forth on shoes that in the half-light looked suspiciously as if they might be brown. I stretched out my left arm and groped along the ground, trying to get my bearings, trying to find something to hold on to, when a foot landed in my stomach. The impact flung me against the edge of the open car door. I snaked my hand round until I felt the door compartment with the reassuring cassette tapes, then eased my forearm up to the arm rest and began to pull myself up, using the door as protection.
Somebody was breathing heavily, which could have been me, but when he coughed a laugh I knew it wasn’t. ‘Got a bit of a headache, have we?’
As I stood up I smelt pâté breath from the other side of the door. I swayed slightly, my face and in particular my right eye were stinging.
As he advanced towards me I pulled the door quickly towards myself, then thrust it back hard against him. From his groan I guessed the edge of the door had hit the target. He bent forward and I came round the door. Raising my right knee and flipping my foot sharply, I kicked him very quickly between the legs. ‘That’s for all the lesbos,’ I said. He staggered backwards clutching his groin, and I contemplated doing it again, but decided to leave while I was ahead. As I slid behind the steering wheel I watched him in the rear-view mirror, limping over the gravel. I locked myself in with my elbow as a car door slammed behind me. There was a sound of violent revving and squealing into reverse, and I heard a car roar past me, but by then I had my head in my hands, leaning on the steering wheel, so I saw nothing.
Had that really happened? I’d been following a man and then he’d beaten me up? I hate that kind of clichéd situation. And keep my fucking nose out of what? Saskia? Kay? One of my other cases? Could Kramer have something to do with a family case of mine? Had he been hired by the husband of one of my clients? Most of the men in the cases I did would probably want to say that to me. The man in the case today might well have felt like that when he was served with the papers. Then I heard a car labouring up the hill. Was he coming back? Had he even gone? I lifted my head, conscious of a pounding pain behind my right eye. I turned the key in the ignition, prayed, and the car sparked into life. I jerked into first gear, pulled away from the kerb and across the road in one movement and sped into Hornsey Lane. I wanted to get away from the place, away from the man, away from the pain as soon as possible. I put on a cassette of Motown Greatest Hits. The low cello introducing Brenda Holloway singing ‘Every Little Bit Hurts’ seemed appropriate, the slow, deep notes solicitously filling the car, taking my mind off the throbbing in my head.
My mind was still scrambling over the events of the last few minutes. I was trying to remember all the details. Should I tell the police? Something niggling in the back of my mind said I shouldn’t. What would I tell them? I saw him in court. ‘And then you were following him, madam? A man you say you’ve never met … I see. And then he assaulted you? Well, sounds like we’ve got a bit of a domestic here, madam.’ If I missed out the part about seeing him in court – and I was beginning to wonder if I had seen him, perhaps I’d just imagined that part – they’d probably say it was a road-rage incident. ‘Don’t you worry, madam, we get a lot of this: attractive young lady in a small car, meandering slowly up the hill, gentleman behind gets a little bit impatient, a bit aggressive. Unfortunately that’s the modern world of today. Perhaps you should try keeping up with the speed limit, madam.’ But it wasn’t just road rage, he knew me, and that meant he might try it again. Surely I should at least get the assault on the record.
Then it came to me, the reason why I couldn’t go to the police. I was drunk, that was why.
Brenda Holloway was wondering why her lover treated her so, when I had to stop the car and be sick in the gutter. It didn’t last long, but it was a very intense experience. When I stood up I leaned on the railings of the viaduct and looked down at the traffic rushing along the Archway Road below and wondered if he was down there looking up at me. I shuddered and turned back to the car. As I opened the door, I glanced up at the sky which was clear and filled with stars and a crisp crescent moon. My eye hurt and my stomach ached.
I drove home carefully, wincing at every bump in the road. I was driving so slowly I worried I might be stopped, but it was still only nine thirty and the police obviously hadn’t started looking out for Friday-night drunk drivers.
I went into the flat, shut the door and considered who I could ring. I couldn’t ring Lena because she was in France, and I definitely couldn’t ring Kay because she had very clearly warned me to leave well alone and I couldn’t bear to hear the unspoken ‘I told you so’ in her voice when she sighed, ‘Oh, Frankie.’ I did a mental run through my address book and realised there was no one I could ring at ten o’clock at night and say, ‘I’ve just been punched in the face, it hurts like hell, will you be nice to me?’ Feeling alone and extremely sorry for myself, I fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and took two aspirin.
I trailed into the living room and put on the Four Tops, who said I could reach out and they’d be there.
And I wondered, as I so often had, if the idea was to reach out now while I was listening to the song, which would be fairly unproductive since I was quite obviously on my own, or if I should wait till I was at a really good party and then reach out and it would all fall into place. Except at parties you can never be sure how good the music will be. That’s why I like sixties nights – they do both, play the song and it’s usually a good party, so you can reach out without anxiety. Except, of course, the last one I’d been to, I’d reached out to Kay and she wouldn’t dance. The Four Tops said I just had to look over my shoulder. You do that, of course, and you’re doing the Hitch Hiker – not my favourite dance. It was time to go to bed.
