Felix.
‘Well you’d have to travel on trains the whole time, planning to fall into conversation with another person who also wants someone murdered. It’s not going to happen.’
‘Oh, everyone wants someone murdered,’ she says.
Felix rearranges Tilda so that her legs lie over his lap, his hands resting on her skinny knees, and I notice that they are beautiful people, with their fine bones, white skin and blonde hair, looking like they are the twins. They pause the movie to open another bottle of the same French wine and Felix says, ‘Of course you’re right, Callie, about the murder plot, but these days you wouldn’t have to travel on trains to meet another murderer, you could just find someone on the internet, in a forum or a chat room.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘I suppose it’s true,’ says Tilda. ‘The internet is where psychos find each other.’
We watch the final scenes, and afterwards I say I need to get home, but I’ll go to the bathroom first. It’s an excuse; I don’t really need a pee. Instead, once I’ve locked the door, I ferret around, and find that there are two toothbrushes in a plastic tumbler, and a man’s shaving gear in the cupboard over the sink. Also, the bin is full of detritus; empty shampoo bottles, little nodules of old soap, wodges of cotton wool, used razors, half-used pots of lotion. I realise that Felix has been tidying up Tilda’s bathroom mess, just as he was organising the kitchen; I’m happy that someone’s looking after her, sorting her out. I reach further into the bin, and pull out a plastic bag wound around something hard. Sitting on the toilet, I unwrap it, expecting something ordinary, an old nail polish or lipstick maybe. Instead I extract a small used syringe, with a fine needle and I’m so shocked, so perplexed, that I head straight back into the sitting room, brandishing it, saying, ‘What the hell is this?’ Felix and Tilda look at each other, faces suggesting mild embarrassment, a shared joke, and Tilda says, ‘You’ve discovered our secret. We’ve been having vitamin B12 injections – they help us stay on top of things. Intensive lives and all that.’
‘What? That’s crazy. You should be ashamed!’ I’m incredulous, and am still holding the syringe in the air, defiantly.
‘Welcome to the world of high finance,’ says Felix.
‘Really!’ Tilda’s laughing at my stunned face. ‘Really… There’s nothing to be alarmed about. Lots of successful people do it. Actors do it… Bankers do it… Google it if you don’t believe me.’
Then she adds, ‘Hang on… Why the fuck are you going through my bin?’
I can’t think of an answer, so I shrug helplessly and say that I’d better be getting home. Tilda gives me a wonky face that says You’re incorrigible! And she fetches my coat.
Felix says he hopes to see me again soon and as I leave he gives me a quick affable hug, the sort that big rugby-playing men give to nephews and nieces.
At home, I open up my laptop and start Googling vitamin injections. Tilda’s right, it turns out, and I’m amazed at the weird things professional people do in the name of ‘achieving your life goals’. I decide to let it go and to accept that Tilda and Felix live in a different world from me. Then I start to make notes on both of them, working in the file I call my ‘dossier’. It’s a habit that I’ve had since childhood – monitoring Tilda, observing her, checking that she’s okay. I write: Felix seems like a special person. He has a way of making you feel like you’re in a conspiracy with him, sharing a joke about the rest of humanity. I’m astonished that she let me meet him and, now that I have, I’m pleased that she’s met her match and that he is looking after her so well.
On Wednesday, my sister phones and invites me to supper. I’m surprised because I thought she might be angry about the bathroom bin incident, but she doesn’t mention it, and on my return to Curzon Street, I discover that Felix has made venison stew with juniper berries and red wine, and also a lemon tart.
‘You’re a genius!’ I say, and he rewards me with a sexy Get-me! grin.
‘Felix did the pastry himself,’ Tilda says. ‘He has pastry-making fingers, long and cold.’
He flutters his fingers while we assure him that we’ve never attempted pastry in our lives; we always buy ready-made. I notice that Felix has a knack for cleaning up the kitchen as he works, so that when I go to help out after the meal, there’s nothing to do. The surfaces are clearer and cleaner than I’ve ever seen them, all the pots and pans dealt with and back in the cupboards. ‘How do you do that?’ I ask. ‘It’s like magic.’
‘It comes naturally… Now, Callie, forget about cleaning, and tell Tilda that it would be a romantic idea to take a boat down the Thames on Sunday. Up towards Windsor and Bray, where the swans are.’
‘What sort of boat?’
‘Something simple and wooden. Kinda English.’
‘It’s okay,’ says Tilda. ‘I’m sold.’
She’s looking at him upwards through her hair, a soft dewy gaze, and I feel a stab of pain, realising that she’s totally in love with him. She notices me watching her and says, ‘You should come too, Callie. Won’t it be lovely?’ This sort of sentimentality is entirely unlike her, and I can’t help making fun of her as I reply, ‘Oh yes, it will be very lovely… very lovely lovely.’
Felix hires a sporty red Peugeot, and on Sunday we pack a picnic to take to Berkshire. It’s not far, an hour’s drive, and when we arrive we’re in another world – the river so wide and brooding, the tangled woodland coming alive with buds and the first tiny leaves of spring. The boat is just as Felix wanted, a little wooden tub, chipped red paint on the outside, all open, with a motor on the back. ‘It’s perfect,’ I say, admiring the way it’s bobbing on its rope, checking out the three benches, the emergency oars. We clamber in and chug along the river, turning our faces to the sun, and it’s glorious to feel the fragile warmth. One minute a golden caress, then gone again. I lean over the side, trailing my fingers in the black water, and shiver. ‘God that’s cold!’
We pass by open fields and then Windsor castle, by whitewashed suburban mansions with lawns that run down to the water, and I spot a heron on the far bank.
Felix is steering from the back, and he says, ‘Let’s swim.’ We’re on a wide part of the river now, dense woodland on one side, a flat, empty field on the other. I look around, for people, but there’s no one.
‘It’s too cold!’ I protest. ‘And not safe. Don’t people drown in the Thames?’
But Felix and Tilda aren’t listening. Instead, Felix ties the boat to an overhanging branch, and the two of them are ripping their clothes off, frantically, like they’re in a race. Then they’re standing up, totally naked, the boat rocking madly as they position themselves to jump out. Two spindly white bodies, Tilda gripping Felix’s arm and screeching, ‘I’m bloody freezing already! I can’t do it’.
‘Oh
