A Wayward Game Read online

And I have no answer to that, because there’s a sense in which I recognise that he is right. Nothing can change what has happened. There are so many other things, many of them far more important than what happened to one woman eight years ago. Why this relentless probing, these endless questions? I might as well run after the wind, for all the good that will come of it.

  It’s such an easy thing to think, and such a hard thing to do.

  Later, after Neil has slipped away into the night, I log on to www.whathappenedtodiane.org. I look at the “Welcome” page first, and re-read the newbie Phillip’s post. Several other members of the community have left comments welcoming him. Apart from this, though, he appears to have contributed to no other discussions yet. Of course, forums like this can appear inscrutable, tribal places to outsiders, who generally feel awkward and nervous until, gradually, they become part of the community.

  I read and re-read the various threads until the early hours, but there is nothing new, nothing of note. For once, the internet seems to have exhausted its possibilities. I close the page, turn off the computer, and go to bed. Outside, the dark sky turns silver and then red, and another summer day begins.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I awake early, just a few hours later. The flat is empty, apart from me; Neil never spends the night here, never does anything here apart from play our games. But this is how things are between us: when he walks out of the door, he walks back into his reality, where the things that occur here are as sweet and meaningless as a dream.

  I sit up in bed and glance across at my alarm clock. Seven o’clock. I’ve nothing in particular to get up for this morning – I work freelance, and can usually choose my own hours – but there’s little chance of my sleeping again. I get up, shower, drink some coffee, and go to glance at the room where Neil and I played our games last night. It’s a mess. Handcuffs gleam dully on the floor, and there’s a torn condom packet and flakes of dried wax on the chaise longue. The air is thick with sex, and I open the window. It’s depressing, as it often is afterwards; when lust dissipates, I find, it often leaves you feeling sorry, and besmirched. I can’t face cleaning the room just yet, and close the door on it.

  I live in a flat on the top floor of a Victorian house near Spitalfields Market. There is another flat beneath me, which belongs to the owners of the antiques shop on the ground floor. They spend the night there occasionally, when they’re too tired to travel back to their family home in Surrey, but I usually have the building to myself after dark – a rare luxury, in London. The flat itself is almost Spartan in its simplicity. I horde few possessions, and prefer clean, plain spaces. Belongings, far from giving me a sense of security as they do other people, make me feel trapped and panicky. Only the room in which Neil and I play our games is lavish. There, the walls are red, the floor paved in dark parquet. Thick blackout curtains shield it from the eyes of the world. There is a bondage bed, a St Andrew’s Cross, and various other toys and implements. It is a fantasy space, where reality shrivels to the smallest point and dreams become the dominant force in the Universe.

  When I’ve dressed, I walk out into the grey London morning and over to Liverpool Street Station, where I go down into the tube station. It’s the middle of the rush hour, and at first even squeezing into the train carriage amongst the other commuters is almost impossible. This is one of the things I love about London: the sense of being in the middle of such movement and life that your own existence, your own progress or the lack of it, becomes almost immaterial. They say that London is the place where people come to chase their dreams, and that is often true. But it’s also, and just as often, the preferred destination of those who want to give up and let go. We live in the age of ambition, of course, and London is a monument to aspiration. But if you look beneath the surface you see something else: a city so large and so powerful that its component parts are virtually interchangeable, and individually unimportant. What could be more seductive than a place that allows you to stop, to be insignificant, to embrace your own smallness and mortality? Perhaps this is an echo of the consolation that Neil finds in our games: they allow him to stop trying, to surrender control.

  I change lines, and the crowds grow thinner as the train emerges from Central London. Eventually it rattles out of a maze of underground tunnels, and daylight floods the carriage. We begin to cut through Limehouse, and I glance out of the window at the towers of Canary Wharf rearing up on the horizon. I sit down and surreptitiously study my fellow passengers. A middle-aged woman in a business suit is immersed in a book; her face betrays the nagging, low-level anxiety so common in London. An elderly gentleman stares out of the window with eyes that seem to have seen everything and understood it all, too much. A young Asian man slouches in a corner seat, long legs stretched out, listening to music on an iPod. His face is melancholy and curiously tender; I like the gloom of his downturned mouth, the kindness in his eyes. He looks up, sees me watching him, and gives me a faint, wary smile. When he gets off the train at the next station, I feel a dim sense of loss.

  I stay on the train until it reaches Greenwich. The world into which I emerge is a quieter, almost genteel part of London. This area has something of a village atmosphere, complete with a country-style pub and a parish church. I see these things without really noticing them, though; they are like the backdrop on a stage, significant only insofar as they give context to the human drama that is played out in the foreground.

  I walk to the gates of Greenwich Park. Inside, away from the noise and traffic of the street, I break into a light run. This is an almost daily ritual for me; even on raw winter mornings I make an effort to run at least a short distance. I rarely come here, of course, to Greenwich. Usually I stay in Spitalfields, pounding through streets lined with off licenses and curry houses. The surroundings are less important than the activity itself. Running improves both my physical condition and my mood, providing me with that precious endorphin rush so beloved of athletes – and masochists.

  I’ve worked hard on my body since I became a Domina, not so much for aesthetic reasons as for the illusion it gives me of being in control. Besides, a strong and supple body is a great advantage when you play my kind of games. I put myself through a daily routine of running, stretching, yoga and weights, toning and trimming my body so that it now bears little resemblance to that of the chubby, clumsy teenager I once was. That frightened, lonely girl, however, has not disappeared; she lives on within, looking out at the world through my eyes, questioning, not quite comprehending.

  I pound onwards, beginning to sweat and breathe heavily as the distance behind me mounts up, driving my body through discomfort and aches, willing it to reach the profound state of acceptance and inner calm that lies beyond. The park is quiet at this hour, apart from dog-walkers and a few fellow runners. I prefer it like this; it enables me to still my mind, and see the place in a new light.

  To see it, perhaps, as Diane Meath-Jones might once have seen it.

  Diane did not always go to Bucklock Wood for her morning walk; often, she came here, just a short distance from the apartment that she and James Sallow shared. I imagine her walking slowly along these paths and through the clumps of trees, with the dog trotting at her side. I picture her pausing as something – a flower in bloom, birds erupting from the treetops in a flurry of beating wings – catches her attention. I think of her blue eyes gazing out over the grass and trees, as though she is searching these things for some meaning. I think of her wavy brown hair blowing in the wind. In the months before her disappearance she often wore it like that, flowing down to her shoulders in an artless, unaffected way: a natural, earthy style that suited her mood as she faced motherhood. She forgot money and ambition in those months. James Sallow, I feel sure, never did.

  Distance, spatial and temporal, lends perspective. Diane was as complicated and mercurial as any of us. She was not the trusting innocent idolised by a handful of internet fetishists, but nor was she a bitch. She was kind, loving, intelligent and charming – not an i
nconsiderable collection of qualities, when you think about it. But it was ambition – that, and a stubborn streak of conformity – that proved the deepest flaw, the most serious fissure, in her character. Had she been otherwise in that respect, she would probably have ended up living a life of mildly prosperous, mildly bohemian contentment: a life that, whatever its inadequacies, did not end in mystery and misery one June morning in Bucklock Wood.

  But Diane wanted more. She wanted money, in part; like many a person born into poverty, she had a healthy regard for the kind of happiness that money could buy. It was more than that, though. It was, rather, a touching faith that the majority viewpoint could never be truly wrong, that such a large number of people could never be mistaken or at fault. It was a belief in a world as comforting and enduring as the rich soil of the Home Counties, the turning of the seasons, and Carols at Christmas. An urge to see a man like James Sallow not as the product of naked venality, but as someone who typified a kind of soft, sentimental conservatism: industry, stability, the preservation of all that is good and worthwhile. And perhaps Diane came to these places – Greenwich Park, Bucklock Wood – to glimpse this world that has almost disappeared, or never really was. Walking along these quiet paths, with just her dog for company, that world must have seemed so close, so tantalisingly real, that she could not fail to find it. Instead she found only danger, and death.

  The sky darkens, threatening rain, and a chill breeze springs up, ruffling leaves and bending branches. I shiver and increase my pace, turning back in the direction of the park gates.

  Leaving the park behind, I run in the direction of the Thames. After a few minutes, I reach a quiet road that runs alongside the river, and emerge into yet another world. Here, the gentility of the older parts of Greenwich is swallowed by the raw ambition of modern developments: luxury flats that hold their heads high over the city, interspersed by expensive restaurants and bars. An urban playground for the young, wealthy, and upwardly mobile. It’s a world you either love or hate, and which is easy to mock. But for Diane, refugee from a rough estate and a broken home, it must have seemed representative of security and stability, all the things she had not had herself and wanted for her child.

  I slow down as I approach the building where Diane lived, and where James Sallow still lives. Lexwood House is an immense, ten-storey development, surrounded by windswept concrete and neat rows of trees, planted with almost mathematical precision. I stop opposite the main doors, and look inside towards the lobby, where a concierge sits day and night at a desk. I lean against a lamp post, pretending to stretch my calves and hamstrings, but quietly watching the building instead. It is neat and clean, with no traces of grime or decay. There wouldn’t be, of course: residents here pay a fortune toward the upkeep of the place, and teams of painters and carpenters and electricians regularly turn up to maintain it. Sallow, like most of his neighbours, also employs a maid to come and clean the flat for him. The effect of all this cleanliness is, in this place, an absolute blotting out of personality. There is little room here for the individual or the particular. I don’t doubt that every last trace of Diane’s existence has been stripped away from the place, wiped out so thoroughly that it might as well never have been. Of course, she wasn’t here for long enough to leave much of a mark, but I wonder if anything of her – a flake of her skin, a strand of her hair – survives. I doubt it, for there is little room in Sallow’s life for sentiment.

  For a relatively young man, Sallow has already made his mark in the City, and his ambitions extend further still. He is an active, high-profile member of a major political party, and was once talked of as a prospective parliamentary candidate – until, that is, the rumours surrounding Diane’s disappearance undermined his reputation. The party hierarchy could, after all, hardly be seen to endorse a man who was suspected of being involved in such a scandalous case, and all talk of his potential candidacy was quietly shelved. It must have been a galling and humiliating experience for a man of Sallow’s status and drive. Nowadays, I suspect, he views this failure as a minor setback. He dabbles instead in real estate, the financial market, and the media. Superficially, he is charming, with the curious, impersonal affability of the privileged. His voice evokes public schools, country houses, and comfort. Yet there is another side to him, lurking just beneath the surface: a dark, insatiable hunger, a destructive greed. It is present in the reptilian coldness of his gaze, the line of his expensive suits, his neatly groomed hair. He represents the avarice of an era, the cold-blooded desire to possess, to exploit, and to impress.

  Diane, by contrast, did not truly belong in Sallow’s world. She tried hard to be accepted there: she changed her appearance, her accent, and even her outlook and opinions. But she lacked Sallow’s self-confidence, and his ruthlessness. Her vision of the world was altogether more sentimental. She either did not see, or chose to ignore, the dark underbelly of Sallow’s milieu. If she had any doubts, she stifled them when she became pregnant. She saw the child she was carrying as Fate’s answer to her questions, and put her qualms to one side. She moved in with Sallow, and for the better part of six months they lived in his apartment together, behind those spotless windows that stare out over the Thames.

  I look up at the top floor, and wish that this place would give up its secrets. Instead, there is only silence, and doubt. If Diane lingers anywhere now, she is not here. If any answers are to be found, I’ll have to look elsewhere for them. Or will I? This is, after all, ultimately just a block of flats, if an expensive one. There are neighbours on either side, and on the floors beneath. There’s a concierge sitting at the desk in the front lobby at all hours of the day and night. There are eyes that might have seen, ears that might have heard . . .

  The clouds overhead have thickened, and a light drizzle begins to fall. I turn and begin to walk back to the tube station, and a grey depression steals further over me with every step. I am no closer to solving the riddle of Diane’s disappearance than before; but a seed has been sown. Someone, somewhere, I am convinced, knows more than they have ever told. If I can only find that person, I might just grasp the key that will unlock this mystery.

  ~

  “Of course,” the estate agent, Lorraine, says as we get into the lift, “it’s a very exclusive development. Residents pay for, and get, a high level of service. A concierge is available twenty-four hours a day. Communal areas are cleaned daily, and any maintenance problems – electrical faults, problems with the plumbing – can usually be dealt with within a matter of hours.”

  “Very impressive,” I say, and on a certain level it really is. Lexwood House is a yuppie’s playground, a monument to the particular pleasures of the young, wealthy urbanite. There’s a gym in the basement, free Wi-Fi access, and an optional laundry service. Each individual apartment is protected by polished wooden doors and intercom, and boasts balconies and terraces. The communal areas – the lobby, the corridors, and the lifts – are minimalist, and almost ruthlessly neat and clean, decorated with potted palms and abstract paintings. It’s a perfect place for those, like Sallow, who are rich in money but poor in time. I do not really belong in this world, but I’ve been amongst its citizens for long enough to imitate them, and I doubt that Lorraine believes me to be anything other than what I have told her I am: a successful businesswoman, fiercely independent and frequently exhausted, who is willing to pay for comfort and convenience.

  The lift begins to glide down to the ground floor, and Lorraine clutches her clipboard more firmly to her chest, and crosses one leg in front of the other. She’s young, certainly no more than thirty, and well-spoken, but curiously timid. I guess that, like me, she’s essentially an alien in this rarefied universe, and is nervous. The difference between us is that she has not yet learned to disguise her nerves, and her soft brown eyes frequently betray her panic. When she showed me around the apartment on the ninth floor, she could not quite hide her awe of its glacial, spacious calm. I affected near-indifference. I hadn’t yet made up my mind, I told he
r as the viewing drew to a close; I had to think about it.

  “If you have any further questions,” she says now, as the lift nears the ground floor, “then please do call me.”

  “I will.” A last, desperate push for a sale, but I don’t hold it against her. Seeing such values as these in their proudest and most obvious form could hardly fail to make an impact on her, and she no doubt spends a lot of time plotting her own career trajectory and measuring it against these impossible standards. I smile. “I wonder, might I be able to speak to the concierge on duty? There are a few things I’d like to know about. Practical issues.”

  Lorraine’s bright smile falters slightly. “I’m sure that if you’ve any questions, Miss Hollis, I can answer them.” Her tone is aggrieved.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it,” I say soothingly. “You’ve been very helpful and informative. But, you know, the concierge is surely something of an authority on the day-to-day running of the place. And these practicalities can sometimes be of great importance.”

  Lorraine considers this for a moment, and then nods, though her eyes are full of reproach.

  “I don’t suppose there can be any harm in it,” she says.

  “Thank you.”

  The lift jolts slightly as we reach the ground floor, and the doors slide open to reveal the cold, airy lobby with its veined marble surfaces and floor-to-ceiling windows. The duty concierge – a young and rather shy man, with fluffy brown hair and the remnants of adolescent acne on his cheeks – looks at us as we get out, and then looks away again. Looking without seeing, listening without hearing – he cannot have been in the job long, but he’s already learned the importance of discretion.

  “Thank you, Lorraine,” I say, taking her hand before she can protest or play for time. “You’ve been extremely helpful. I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I’ve made a decision.”