The Four Last Things. Andrew Taylor

happy; she hoped this was not wishful thinking.

      While she and Carla discussed the arrangements, Lucy feigned an interest in the twenty-four-inch television set, which was glowing and mumbling in a recess where there had once been a fireplace; she pretended to be absorbed in an episode from Thomas the Tank Engine, a programme she detested.

      ‘Why don’t you leave her for an hour or two? Trial run, like.’

      Sally nodded, ignoring the sudden surge of panic. Lucy lunged at her arm.

      ‘You just go, honey.’ Carla detached Lucy with one hand and gave Sally a gentle push with the other. ‘Have you ever made gingerbread robots with chocolate eyes?’ she asked Lucy.

      The crying stopped for long enough for Lucy to say, ‘No.’

      ‘Nor have I. And we won’t be able to unless you can help me find the chocolate.’

      Sally slipped out of the house. She hated trusting Lucy to a stranger. But whatever she did, she would feel guilty. If you had to list the top ten attributes of modern motherhood, then guilt would be high up there in the top three.

      Sally Appleyard could not say when she first suspected that she was being watched. The fear came first, crawling slowly into her life when she was not looking, masquerading as a sense of unease. Her dreams filled with vertiginous falls, slowly opening doors and the sound of footsteps in empty city streets.

      Rightly or wrongly she associated the change in the emotional weather with the appearance in mid-September of Frank Howell’s feature in the Evening Standard. In his idiosyncratic way the balding cherub had done St George’s proud. Here, Sally was interested to learn, was the real Church of England. Two photographs accompanied the piece: one of Derek equipped with dog collar, denim jacket and Afro-Caribbean toddler; the other of Sally. In the text Howell described the incident at Sally’s first service.

      ‘Pity he had to choose St George’s,’ Michael said when he saw the article.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because now all the nutters will know you’re there.’

      She laughed at him but his words lingered in her memory. There was no shortage of rational explanations for what she felt. She was tired and worried. It was not unnatural, particularly for a woman, to equate a sense of unease with being watched. She knew that a solitary and reasonably attractive woman was vulnerable in parts of the parish. To a certain type of male predator her profession might even add to her allure. Perhaps Michael had inadvertently planted the idea in her mind. Besides, to some extent she really was under observation: she was still a novelty in Kensal Vale: the woman with the dog collar was someone to stare at, to point out, sometimes to laugh at, and occasionally to abuse.

      She-devil. Blasphemer against Christ. Apostate. Impious bitch. Whore of Babylon. Daughter of Satan.

      One evening near the end of the month she was later home than expected. Michael was watching from the window.

      ‘Where the hell were you?’ he demanded as he opened the door to her. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she snapped, her mind still full of the room she had left, with the bed, the people, the smells and the chattering television and the view from a high window of Willesden Junction beneath an apocalyptic western sky. ‘Someone was dying and there wasn’t a phone.’

      ‘You should have sent someone out, then. I’ve phoned the Cutters, the hospitals, the police.’

      His face crumpled. She put her arms around him. They clung together by the open door. Michael’s hands stroked her back and her thighs. His mouth came down on hers.

      She craned her head away. ‘Michael –’

      ‘Hush.’

      He kissed her again and this time she found herself responding. She tried to blot out the memory of the room with the high window. One of his hands slipped round to the front of her jeans. She shifted back to allow his fingers room to reach the button of the waistband.

      ‘Mummy,’ Lucy called. ‘I’m thirsty.’

      ‘Oh God.’ Michael drew back, grimacing at Sally. ‘You go and see her, love. I’ll get the drink.’

      The following evening, he came home with a personal alarm and a mobile phone.

      ‘Are you sure I need all these?’

      ‘I need you to have them.’

      ‘But the cost. We –’

      ‘Bugger the cost, Sal.’

      She smiled at him. ‘I’m no good with gadgets.’

      ‘You will be with these.’

      She touched his hand. ‘Thank you.’

      The alarm and the phone helped at least for a time. The fact that Carla could now contact her at any time was also reassuring. But the fear returned, a familiar devil. Feeling watched was a part of it. So too was a sense of the watcher’s steady, intelligent malevolence. Behind the watching was a fixed purpose.

      But there was nothing, or very little, to pin it to. The evidence was skimpy, almost invisible, and capable of innocent interpretations: a small, pale van which one afternoon followed her car round three successive left turns; someone in a long raincoat walking down Hercules Road late at night and glancing up at the windows of the flat; warm breath on the back of her neck in a crowd swirling down the aisle of a supermarket; Lucy’s claim that a man had winked at her in the library when she went there with Carla and the other children. As to the rest, what did it amount to but the occasional shiver at the back of the neck, the sense that someone might be watching her?

      To complicate matters, Sally did not trust her instincts. She couldn’t be sure whether the fear was a response to something in the outside world or merely a symptom of an inner disturbance. This was nothing new: since her teens, she had trained herself to be wary of her intuitions partly because she did not understand them and partly because she knew they could be misleading. She lumped them together with the uncomfortably vivid dreams and the moments when time seemed to stand still. They were interesting and disturbing: but there was nothing to show that they were more than freak outbreaks of bioelectrical activity.

      The scepticism was doubly necessary at present: she was under considerable strain, in a state which might well induce a certain paranoia. In the end it was a question of degree. Carrying a rape alarm was a sensible precaution against a genuine danger: acting as if she were a potential terrorist target was not.

      In November, leaves blew along the pavements, dead fireworks lined the gutters, and mists smelling of exhaust fumes and decaying vegetables softened the outlines of buildings. In November, Uncle David came to lunch.

      The ‘Uncle’ was a courtesy title. David Byfield was Michael’s godfather. He had been a friend of his parents and his connection with Michael had survived their deaths and the cooling of his godson’s religious faith. An Anglo-Catholic, he was often addressed as ‘Father Byfield’ by those of the same persuasion. The November lunch in London had become a regular event. In May the Appleyards went to Cambridge for a forbiddingly formal return fixture at the University Arms.

      This Saturday was the worst yet. It began badly with an emergency call from Derek, who had gone down with toothache and wanted Sally to take a wedding for him. Sally abandoned the cooking and Lucy to Michael. Neither the service nor the obligatory appearance at the reception did much for her self-esteem. The bride and groom were disgruntled to see her rather than Derek, and the groom’s mother asked if the happy couple would have to have a proper wedding afterwards with a real clergyman.

      When Sally returned to Hercules Road she found the meal over, the sink full of dirty plates, the atmosphere stinking of David’s cigarettes and Lucy in tears. Averting his eyes from her dog collar, David stood up to shake hands. Lucy chose this moment to announce that Daddy was an asshole, an interesting new word she had recently picked up at Carla’s. Michael slapped her leg and Lucy’s tears became howls of anguish.