‘Oh yeah?’ Ed said. ‘Local?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you miss it at all?’
‘Not at all.’ Jim made a sound that he hoped sounded like a chuckle. ‘So what are you doing here?’
Jim had asked Ed before Ed could ask him.
The younger man lifted his chin, indicating something behind Jim’s back.
‘I’m with her,’ he said.
Jim didn’t have to turn around to know who he meant. He could feel her, a cold breath at his back. As he turned to look, everyone else in the room blurred into one long streak of other, indiscernible people.
There was only her.
She must have just appeared in the last few moments, standing near the leather armchairs, chatting with a man and a woman. The man might have been the assistant manager Jim had spoken briefly with the day before and, going by the fact that she was holding two microphones and a sheaf of pages, the other woman must be the journalist.
Eve Black was taller than he’d expected, five-ten he’d say, and in a room full of ordinary people, looked somewhat ethereal. She didn’t seem as thin as she had on television, probably because whatever she was wearing – some kind of layered dress or skirt – was swaddling her frame, making it impossible to tell where the black material ended and her actual body began. Her hands were in its pockets, disappearing between the folds of the material halfway up to her forearms. She was wearing more make-up this evening, her skin warm and dewy-looking, the awful red slash of lipstick toned down for something more natural and pink. She was wearing long, dangly gold earrings with lots of little moving pieces that glinted in the overhead lights as she turned her head, and her eyes seemed bigger, somehow, different—
She was staring right at him.
And now, waving.
For a split second he felt the impulse to raise his own hand in response but then he saw, in his peripheral vision, Ed lifting his hand.
She was looking at Ed, not him.
Jim said, ‘You know her?’
Eve turned back to her conversation.
‘Well, yeah …’ Ed frowned. ‘That’s Eve Black.’
‘Eve Black?’
Ed’s expression was unreadable and Jim wondered if he was pushing this feigned ignorance a bit too far.
‘The survivor,’ Ed said, ‘from the Passage house.’ He pointed to the nearby table covered in copies of The Nothing Man.
‘Oh …’ Jim said. ‘Oh. Jesus. Sorry, Ed. I was a bit slow on the uptake there. My wife’s dragged me to this, you see. I only realised what the book was on the way in. It wouldn’t be my kind of thing.’
Ed raised his eyebrows. ‘No?’
‘Nah. You know yourself. After thirty years of it, the last thing you want is reading about the ones that got away. Am I right?’
Ed said, ‘Hmm,’ but he was regarding Jim with something new, something that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago.
Scrutiny.
‘So you worked on the book, is it?’
Ed nodded. ‘You worked on Optic too, didn’t you? Back then?’
‘Only in the sense that we all did at some point. I think I helped man the phone lines a few times.’
‘There you are!’
Noreen, a sheen of sweat at her temples, was on Jim’s left, looking up at him, radiating annoyance.
She said to Ed, ‘Hi. I’m Noreen, Jim’s wife.’
Jim glared at her.
He imagined what Ed was seeing, seeing her for the first time. Short, fat and frumpy. She was wearing bright white runners under a dress with a garish pattern on it that, as far as he was concerned, belonged on a tablecloth. She never did anything with her nest of brittle grey hair and, as ever, she wasn’t wearing make-up. She was a fucking mess.
Jim wanted to strike her as hard as he could across the face, then smash her headfirst into the nearest hard object. He bit down on his lip to create a point of pain, an anchor to keep him here, in the moment, to stop him from acting on impulse.
Ed introduced himself and shook Noreen’s hand.
‘You’re the one who dragged him here,’ Ed said goodnaturedly.
Noreen opened her mouth to speak, stopped and looked to Jim for guidance.
‘Okay, folks,’ a voice called out from the other side of the room. ‘Are we ready to go? If you could all just take your seats …’
Saved by the bell.
Jim took hold of Noreen’s elbow, pinching the skin hard.
‘We better go find a spot,’ he said. ‘Can’t see a thing from here. Good to see you, Ed. I’ll find you after, okay?’
Jim was already turning away, steering Noreen with him.
He pulled her back across the room, through the crowd, until he had found another place for them to stand.
Where they could see Eve, but she couldn’t see them.
When not sat in front of a television camera transmitting live to the nation, Eve Black was different. She looked apprehensive, but the fidgeting was gone. While she waited for the journalist – Danielle something – to begin, she sat perfectly still, seemingly confident and relaxed. During the introduction (‘… she’s an author, survivor and detective’) Eve scanned the crowd, smiling at what must have been the faces she recognised, giving a little wave or nod here and there.
‘I thought,’ Danielle said, ‘we might start with a little reading?’
Eve nodded. She leaned down to retrieve a book from the large handbag resting against the leg of her chair. It was The Nothing Man, but it also wasn’t. It had a soft cover and was completely blank, and black, except for the words ‘The Nothing Man’ printed in bright white down its spine.
She took a delicate sip of water and cleared her throat.
‘Good evening, everyone,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much for coming. I think what I’ll do is read just a little bit from the very start of the book, the introduction. It’s safe enough. I don’t want anyone to have to listen to … You know.’ She paused. ‘Any gruesome details.’
Whispers rippled through the crowd. No doubt some of them – most of them? – were only here for that.
Jim hoped they were disappointed now. The idea pleased him.
Eve cleared her throat again and then began to read in a strong voice, loud enough to fill the four corners of the room without the need for the microphone, which was still sitting on the table beside her chair, evidently forgotten.
‘When we meet, I probably introduce myself to you as Evelyn and say, “Nice to meet you.” I transfer my glass to my other hand so I can shake the one you’ve offered, but the move is clumsy and I end up spraying us both with droplets of white wine. I apologise, perhaps blush with embarrassment. You wave a hand and protest that no, no, it’s fine, really, but I see you snatch a glance at your shirt, the one you probably had dry-cleaned for the occasion, to surreptitiously assess the damage. You ask me what I do and I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved that this conversation is going to be longer …’
Jim tuned out, lost in the strangeness of the situation.
Here he was, standing in a room listening to Eve Black read aloud to him from her book about him, while Ed Healy, who’d helped lead the Nothing Man investigation (to nowhere), stood nearby.