A Wayward Game Page 9

  “I know,” I reply.

  “You know it as a fact, but you don’t know what it really means.”

  I awake in the early hours, feeling both tired and restless, and terribly hot. I throw off the covers and lie still in the darkness, listening as a car whooshes past on the road outside and a distant siren blares. Otherwise, London seems as still and silent as a graveyard. And that, of course, is precisely what it is: a city built on bones and tombs, and the decay of centuries. Walk in almost any street, and you are stepping over the bodies of plague victims and Roman centurions and infants who died of cholera or smallpox. Sometimes it seems that there are so many dead people in London that they might at any time rise up and throw off the yoke of the living, thus returning their vast crypt to its proper state of serenity and silence.

  Diane, for all that I know, might be one of them.

  I think of her as she was when we first met. She was eighteen, and I was a year older. I had recently arrived at the immense college in central London where I was to study for the next three years, and the noise and turmoil and sheer importance of the place both thrilled and intimidated me. I lived in a grimy Hall of Residence south of the Thames, in a narrow whitewashed room with a hard single bed and a sink in the corner, a place that I secretly loathed. I was in the shared kitchen at the end of the corridor one day, making some tea, when the door creaked open and a girl of about my own age peered into the room. She hesitated, as if she was considering ducking back out again, but then gave a shy smile and came in.

  “Hi,” she said. Her voice was soft, with a faint accent that I identified as Welsh.

  “Hi.”

  “Are you living along this corridor, then?”

  “Yeah. Room 310.”

  “I’m in 316. The room at the very end.” She stepped closer to me, hesitated for a moment, and then held out her hand. “I’m Diane. Diane Meath.”

  “Katherine Argyle,” I said, and she smiled at me – a shy but warm smile that put me at my ease. “Where are you from, then?”

  “Wales. Near Cardiff. You?”

  “Lincolnshire.” I glanced out of the window at the vast London skyline, and thought of how different it was to the flat, empty landscape I had left just weeks before. “I feel like the country mouse who’s just arrived in the city.”

  “So do I. I’m scared to death. What are you studying here?”

  “English and Journalism.”

  “History and French.”

  “Like it?”

  “So far so good. If I can only get through three years in London, everything should be okay.” She smiled again, a little wistfully. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s terrified. Makes me feel less alone, you know.”

  That was where it began, I suppose. Youngsters who are far from home generally become friends easily, simply because they have little choice. And though Diane and I were both shy, and nervous around our peers, we soon became close. We were both scared, after all, which made it easier. At first, we probably only clung together for security. We ventured out into London together, intimidated by its size and energy, and went to see the tourist sites. We caught the tube to college, and met there in between lectures and tutorials for drinks in the student bar. We went shopping together, and stopped off in each other’s rooms in the evenings to talk and drink coffee. We had much in common, we found: we were both bookish, withdrawn around strangers, and we both felt like outsiders in the frenetic, impermanent, down-at-heel student world we now inhabited. We both had a romantic streak, and were wary of the boys who wanted to bed us – and who, having done so, would have spent the rest of their college careers either bragging about it to their friends, or trying to ignore our very existence.

  People say that your student days should be amongst the happiest of your life, and in many ways they are. But they are also a difficult time, a time of transition. You are officially an adult, and expected to take care of yourself. But you are also, under the skin, still just an insecure, frightened teenager, beset by a thousand doubts and worries, and unsure of your place in the world. I suppose that everyone feels like that, but at the time I thought it was just me. Then I met Diane, and found someone who understood.

  On Bonfire Night that year, we sat together in my room in the dark, drinking cherry brandy from the bottle and watching fireworks burst in the smoky London sky. My room had a view across the city, up into North London, and we could just make out the distant hump of Hampstead Heath, and an enormous bonfire blazing up there. It signified a world that both attracted and alienated, a distant world that I both wanted and feared.

  “It’s a family occasion, isn’t it?” Diane asked suddenly. A blast of red and gold in the sky lit up her features, and I could see that she was looking at me.

  “It’s a very silly occasion, if you ask me,” I said, affecting a cynicism I did not truly feel. “A jingoistic celebration of stupidity. But then I was raised a Catholic, so I would say that.”

  Diane laughed. “That isn’t the point. It’s one of those things that marks the passing of time, the passing of the seasons. I think people need these occasions. They help them to connect. For me, it’s all about the ongoing cycle of life. One generation gives rise to another, and then fades away. It’s all quite beautiful when you think about it. Do you want children, Katherine?”

  “God, no.”

  “Aren’t they the reason for our existence?”

  “So our lives have no meaning apart from procreation, do they?”

  “It’s just that they’re the part of us that goes on. They’re a reason to hope. A reason to do good.”

  “There are plenty of reasons to do that anyway. And I don’t see having kids as a pathway to some kind of spurious immortality.”

  My tone was sharp, sharper than I had intended, and we fell silent for a moment. Beautiful, bright explosions ripped through the squalor of the London night, lighting my miserable room with flashes of green, gold, red, and electric blue.

  “I’ve always admired people like you, you know,” Diane said at last, in a small voice. “You have this ability to look right into the darkness and not flinch in the slightest. I’m not like that. I’m not some cynical sophisticate. I want love, children, a home. I want to preserve the little part of the world that’s mine. I want money, insofar as it will help me to do that. Why should anyone sneer at those things, when they’re so fundamental?”

  “I don’t sneer at them. It’s just that I don’t think they’re the only things of importance, either.” I smiled, and touched her shoulder in the darkness. “But why should you care what I think? It’s your life. You have to live it the way you want.”

  “I will,” she said, and then added, a little sadly: “I hope.”

  She didn’t. She was deprived on any kind of life, however ordinary or extraordinary. Deprived of every possible triumph or disaster, of any chance to screw up, or be stupid, or be fragile and human and flawed. All of it taken away, one summer day eight years ago. No children, no love, no immortality, and no little piece of the world that she could call her own. Not even a proper resting place, or an answer for those left behind. Just another question, another shadowy smudge that is neither one thing nor the other and remains forever inscrutable.

  I do not sleep again. I get up in the early hours, drink some coffee, and try to read, but I can’t concentrate on the words in front of me. At last I get dressed and head out into the cool dawn for a run, jogging the short distance from Spitalfields to the City, where the first office workers are just beginning to arrive. They spill out of tube stations and taxis, fresh and groomed despite the early hour, calmly accepting the daily drudgery of paid work. I slow down to a walk as I enter Lombard Street, and then slip into a coffee shop halfway along its length. It’s quiet at this hour, and after ordering a double espresso at the counter I pick up a newspaper from the rack and take a seat next to the window. A large white building, almost surgical in its sterility, rears up on the other side of the road, and I stare at the p
olished sign next to the door. Morgan Clearey, Recruitment Consultants, it reads. The company that James Sallow works for, the place where he has worked for almost ten years.

  I sit sipping my coffee, with the newspaper open on my lap, but with my eyes trained on the building. Half an hour passes, forty-five minutes. The stream of people passing by in the street, and crowding into the coffee shop for their morning shot of caffeine, increases. I glance at them, and then look away. There is only one face, one person, in whom I have any interest.

  He arrives at half-past eight, immaculately dressed as always, his curly brown hair neatly trimmed. He walks with a quick, impatient stride, face utterly devoid of expression. He is the kind of man a woman might think handsome, but a man without any obvious character – something of a blank screen, in fact, upon which the observer can project their own needs and desires. That must be a great advantage to a man such as him; he is able to reflect an onlooker’s dreams, and indeed to magnify them. Perhaps this was why he appealed to Diane: she saw in him a dazzling likeness of all the things she desired and valued most. She took his overweening ambition for a simple yearning for worldly comfort. She saw his arrogance as the self-assurance of a man who knew his place in the world. She saw in him a decent, dependable man who could give her the security and self-confidence she craved. Like many lovers, she saw not the real person, but the fantasy. She was not seduced; she seduced herself. And perhaps that, too, was why she appealed to him. She flattered him, and inflated his sense of his own importance.

  Sallow swipes a card through the electronic lock at the entrance, and pushes the glass door open. I watch as he walks through a vast, immaculate foyer to the lifts, and then disappears into the building’s tangled entrails. Just another worker, just another day at the office – but this worker has left a world of pain and grief outside the doors.

  I think of the two of them together, and how it must have been. I think of him touching Diane, of them fucking together in the darkness, and of the new life that that gave rise to – a life that would be squandered before it even began. God, what a waste. I feel sick, despairing. I finish the cold dregs of my coffee, put the cup back down on the table, and push my way out of the now-crowded shop. Outside, I draw in a lungful of cool, if not exactly fresh, air, and then begin to run back to Spitalfields. Vigorous exercise, I tell myself, that’s the ticket. Like physical pain, it takes the edge off mental and emotional pain. I wonder why I came here, why I chase after things that can only hurt me. I am as masochistic as Neil is, perhaps; but mine is a predilection that I dare not admit.

  ~

  I spend much of that day hunched over my laptop, working. But I am easily distracted: the ping of new emails arriving in my inbox, and the ever-present parallel Universe of the internet, makes it difficult to concentrate. I finish writing one article about a fashion show, and begin another about a new design hotel in Belgravia. I find it impossible to care much for any of these things, though: they are glittering baubles for grown children, a testament to a civilisation that has become senile. I can only hope that my lack of enthusiasm will not be evident to editors or readers. Whatever else happens, I have to make a living.

  At lunchtime, I log on to www.whathappenedtodiane.org, and read the most recent posts. Not much has happened since my previous visit, which is unsurprising: with no news or recent developments, I sense that people’s interest in the case is beginning to run dry. Even the curious afterlife bestowed by the internet has its limits, it would seem. I check who is online, and see a few familiar names: Valley Girl, Lovelornlass, Northern Boy, Lurker, Dreamsnatcher – and Phillip, the newbie. A disparate group of strangers, brought together for the sole purpose of chasing ghosts.

  I scan the new posts for a few minutes, and am surprised when a personal message pings up on the screen: even given the ersatz intimacy of the forum, direct contact is rare. I open it, and find that it’s from Lurker. This surprises me even more: we’ve never spoken to each other specifically on the forum, or been on especially friendly terms.

  Hi Kittyminx, hope you don’t mind me sending a PM. I wondered if you might be able to help me. I’m currently studying journalism part-time, and I’m writing an article on Diane Meath-Jones’s disappearance and how it has been covered on the internet. I’m hoping to focus not just on online news sites, but on forums, YouTube films, and chat rooms. The article will not be about her disappearance per se, but about how it has been reported and reflected on the web. I’m also hoping to talk about the effect it has had on people who never knew her (I’m assuming you didn’t know her personally), but feel strongly enough about her to make her the focus of their lives, almost.

  If you have time, could you tell me why Diane means so much to you? Does she fill a void in your life? Do you think it’s healthy to be preoccupied with someone in this way? As one of the regular posters on the forum, you might be able to provide some particular insights into this.

  I might make use of direct quotes in the article, if that is okay.

  There’s something challenging about the tone of the message, with its slightly aggressive questioning, and the suggestion that there’s a void in my life and that I’m unhealthy. I wonder why he should adopt such an attitude, if all he wants is material for an article; in my own career, I’ve always found that it’s much better to keep your feelings to yourself, and just let your subjects speak. At the same time, it really isn’t so surprising. On the few occasions when Lurker has posted on the forum, he has always stated that, in his opinion, Diane went missing of her own free will and that no crime was committed that day eight years ago. He probably regards me as a slightly unbalanced conspiracy theorist, I realise, as a desperate woman subsisting on fantasy. I open a Word document, so that I can organise my thoughts properly as I write, and begin to type.

  Hi Lurker, no probs about the PM. Since I’m a freelance writer and journalist, I was actually quite interested to hear that you’re studying journalism. I hope it’s going well. What kind of course are you following?

  For many of the people on the forum, it isn’t a question of whether we knew Diane personally. Most of us, obviously, did not. It’s ultimately a question of justice, and of finding a resolution to a case that has dragged on for eight years. Diane is missing; many of us believe that she was murdered. In any case, she shouldn’t be forgotten. She was a person, not a statistic. Not another cold case file gathering dust in New Scotland Yard.

  I know all the objections to this, believe me. I’ve heard them a thousand times before. Why are we so fixated on this one woman, when there are plenty of people who have gone missing in unexplained or suspicious circumstances? Why are we so concerned about this one cold case, when there are plenty of live cases that also need to be resolved? Don’t we understand that the police have to prioritise? Why, above all, do we feel so much for Diane, when there are other people equally, if not more, deserving of our sympathy?

  I don’t have an answer to these questions, and they trouble me deeply. I think that perhaps in an ideal world we would be more balanced and less obsessive. But Diane has that mysterious quality that fascinates – charisma, I suppose. Her image stares at us from a thousand websites and news articles. Watch any of the documentaries about her disappearance on YouTube, and she seems so vivid and real that you can almost believe that she is still there. Yet she isn’t, and it is this, above all, which captivates us. In life, she might not have been special. Now that she is gone, she enthrals.

  This, of course, is the age of celebrity, and Diane has become a celebrity of sorts. She is a symbol of loss, of innocence betrayed; and yet, in a curious way, she is also an emblem of hope. Dream and nightmare come together in the mystery of her disappearance. Her life has come to be equated with aspiration, with overcoming one’s limitations. Here was a very ordinary young woman, from a rather deprived background, who had not only succeeded academically and begun to forge a promising career, but who was living with a wealthy, successful man in a penthouse overlooking the Thames
. There is a tendency, rightly or wrongly, to see the manner of the life she was leading as an ideal. And her disappearance, far from shattering that ideal, seems only to have cemented it.

  And then, of course, there is the sheer mystery of the case. Study it for just five minutes and all manner of questions will begin to occur: Who? When? Where? How? Why? There is enough in this one case to keep armchair detectives guessing for years to come.

  If you read the forum regularly, you’ll know my opinion about what happened to Diane. There is no evidence of abduction, and nothing to suggest that she either killed herself or simply walked away of her own volition. There is only evidence for one conclusion, and you will of course be perfectly aware which conclusion I’m referring to.

  Why has James Sallow never been held to account for what he did? Is it really because there is not enough evidence, as some people insist? Or is it because he has friends in high places, a web of contacts, and a certain amount of leverage? Do you know how powerful Sallow actually is? His father is a wealthy businessman, a media mogul, an OBE, a key donor to a major political party. Sallow himself has no shortage of important friends and acquaintances. Before the scandal of Diane’s disappearance, he was even considered as a parliamentary candidate – a rare honour, for a man so young and inexperienced.

  I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. I believe that the Moon Landing was genuine. I believe that Princess Diana was killed in a simple road accident. I don’t see conspiracies everywhere. But I also think – and it would be naive not to – that money and privilege and personal connections can carry a great deal of weight. Do you think it right that the wealthy and well-connected should evade justice, while the poor and ordinary pay dearly for their crimes? Is that fair?