accident – then it would be perfectly understandable if she’d simply forgotten because her mind was elsewhere.
I called her mobile again and got the same response. They couldn’t all have just overslept, could they? No, Kate was an early riser – unless, of course, she and Hamish had been up till all hours, bouncing off the walls, and had succeeded in exhausting everyone so much that they had all slept through their alarms, the phone calls, the banging on the door…
No, that was stupid and unbelievable. But I clung to it for a few minutes, if only to delay my thoughts from taking a darker turn. However, as I marched back across the landing and thumped on the door with renewed vigour, I knew that lurking in the back of my mind were lurid news stories of fathers who had suddenly gone mad and killed their wives and children before taking their own lives, of faulty gas fires poisoning entire households, of families being discovered slaughtered in their beds…
I conjured a picture of Paula in a nightshirt, face slack with sleep, tugging the door open and murmuring, ‘Alex? Wassamatter?’ I willed this image to become a reality, but again there was no reply to my knocking. I went back to my flat and paced for a moment. It was now 7.30 a.m. Was it too premature to call the police? Probably. Almost certainly. But something was wrong. I knew it. I could sense it.
Perhaps I should smash the door down? It might lead to embarrassment later, even to disgruntled accusations of over-reaction, but I could deal with that. If I knew that Kate was okay I could deal with anything. I thought about the shitty week I was having. First Candice, now Kate. What had I done to deserve this? Suddenly realising that I didn’t need to kick the door down, I darted back into my flat and into the kitchen. In the drawer beneath the wall-mounted water heater was all the flat-related paperwork: instruction books for the various appliances; gas, electricity and water supply info; a laminated list of rules and regulations; emergency numbers… ah.
Whipping out my mobile phone I thumbed in my landlord’s number, immediately storing it for future use. On the third ring a heavily accented voice barked, ‘Hello.’ The owner sounded resentful, as if I had caught him in the middle of something important.
‘Mr Grzybowski? This is Alex Locke from 22 Fountain Road in Chiswick. I live in flat 3. I need you to come over right away.’ Haltingly I told him why, my words tumbling over one another in my urgency to explain.
Mr Grzybowski was nonplussed. ‘This is a long way to come for such a paltry matter,’ he said. ‘Your friends must have simply gone out.’
‘Where would they go at 7.30 in the morning?’ I replied, trying not to sound sarcastic.
After some to-ing and fro-ing he agreed to come over, though not before I had threatened to kick in the door of flat 4 if he didn’t turn up. Breaking the connection I wondered about kicking in the door anyway, but instead I diverted my energy into running upstairs and knocking on the door of flat 5 where old Mrs Hersh lived.
She hadn’t seen the Sherwoods either, or heard them go out. ‘But I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,’ she reassured me, and invited me in for tea. I refused as politely as I could and pounded all the way downstairs, almost slipping and falling in my haste. I knocked on the doors of the two ground-floor flats, whose occupants I barely knew, to ask whether they had seen or heard anything.
They hadn’t, and so at 7.45 a.m. I found myself upstairs again, perched stiffly on the edge of my settee, teeth clenched and hands clasped tightly between my knees, like a first-time parachutist waiting for the call to jump. I’d exhausted my immediate options, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should be doing something . I called Paula’s mobile again, and when the answer phone cut in I left a second message. I heard the waver in my voice as I did so: ‘Hi Paula.
I called her mobile again and got the same response. They couldn’t all have just overslept, could they? No, Kate was an early riser – unless, of course, she and Hamish had been up till all hours, bouncing off the walls, and had succeeded in exhausting everyone so much that they had all slept through their alarms, the phone calls, the banging on the door…
No, that was stupid and unbelievable. But I clung to it for a few minutes, if only to delay my thoughts from taking a darker turn. However, as I marched back across the landing and thumped on the door with renewed vigour, I knew that lurking in the back of my mind were lurid news stories of fathers who had suddenly gone mad and killed their wives and children before taking their own lives, of faulty gas fires poisoning entire households, of families being discovered slaughtered in their beds…
I conjured a picture of Paula in a nightshirt, face slack with sleep, tugging the door open and murmuring, ‘Alex? Wassamatter?’ I willed this image to become a reality, but again there was no reply to my knocking. I went back to my flat and paced for a moment. It was now 7.30 a.m. Was it too premature to call the police? Probably. Almost certainly. But something was wrong. I knew it. I could sense it.
Perhaps I should smash the door down? It might lead to embarrassment later, even to disgruntled accusations of over-reaction, but I could deal with that. If I knew that Kate was okay I could deal with anything. I thought about the shitty week I was having. First Candice, now Kate. What had I done to deserve this? Suddenly realising that I didn’t need to kick the door down, I darted back into my flat and into the kitchen. In the drawer beneath the wall-mounted water heater was all the flat-related paperwork: instruction books for the various appliances; gas, electricity and water supply info; a laminated list of rules and regulations; emergency numbers… ah.
Whipping out my mobile phone I thumbed in my landlord’s number, immediately storing it for future use. On the third ring a heavily accented voice barked, ‘Hello.’ The owner sounded resentful, as if I had caught him in the middle of something important.
‘Mr Grzybowski? This is Alex Locke from 22 Fountain Road in Chiswick. I live in flat 3. I need you to come over right away.’ Haltingly I told him why, my words tumbling over one another in my urgency to explain.
Mr Grzybowski was nonplussed. ‘This is a long way to come for such a paltry matter,’ he said. ‘Your friends must have simply gone out.’
‘Where would they go at 7.30 in the morning?’ I replied, trying not to sound sarcastic.
After some to-ing and fro-ing he agreed to come over, though not before I had threatened to kick in the door of flat 4 if he didn’t turn up. Breaking the connection I wondered about kicking in the door anyway, but instead I diverted my energy into running upstairs and knocking on the door of flat 5 where old Mrs Hersh lived.
She hadn’t seen the Sherwoods either, or heard them go out. ‘But I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,’ she reassured me, and invited me in for tea. I refused as politely as I could and pounded all the way downstairs, almost slipping and falling in my haste. I knocked on the doors of the two ground-floor flats, whose occupants I barely knew, to ask whether they had seen or heard anything.
They hadn’t, and so at 7.45 a.m. I found myself upstairs again, perched stiffly on the edge of my settee, teeth clenched and hands clasped tightly between my knees, like a first-time parachutist waiting for the call to jump. I’d exhausted my immediate options, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should be doing something . I called Paula’s mobile again, and when the answer phone cut in I left a second message. I heard the waver in my voice as I did so: ‘Hi Paula.
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