When I nodded, he passed over the crumpled ten-pound note with the prettified Jane Austen on one side and the Queen on the other.
I scanned the TVs in shop windows for evidence of the capture of the terrorist, and one glorious nine o’clock news showed the picture I’d taken and then his real face, quite similar. I didn’t know why he hadn’t been captured before.
Rejoicing I returned to my evil digs, determined to freshen up the following day, have a good meal, and “come out of the closet.”
But first I must tell everybody. I didn’t have much credit left in my phone and debated whether I’d phone my parents or Jacob. My parents really merited my initial call. How they must have worried, but it was to Jacob that I made the crucial call.
I gave him my address. “Flat 3 ground floor, knock twice and ask for Veronica, and Jacob, love, bring me a change of clothes, I’ve only got this manky T-shirt and a pair of grotty jeans. Come quickly, no later than tomorrow. Love you.”
It was late in the evening when I heard a knock on my door.
I thought it might be another tenant wanting to borrow a quid for his gas meter. I didn’t have anything to spare, but I could scarcely pretend I was out when I had the light on, which, as always, leaked out round the edges of the badly fitting door.
I opened the door, and there on the threshold stood my best friend. A wave of relief flooded over me. All my problems would be solved. With Jacob beside me, we could brave the world as we had done so many times before. Hadn’t we? Actually thinking back, I couldn’t remember any particular occasion when we had. It seemed as if it was always me who led the way, who got the lucky breaks, the better school, the better job, the success—but then it had all come crashing down.
Still, what the hell. He was here, and somehow everything would be all right again.
“Jacob, my friend, come in, come in. Don’t stand out there. Go into the living room and make yourself comfortable. What will you have to drink? I’m sorry I haven’t got much, just tea or coffee—instant, I’m afraid. Or there may be a drop of scotch left in the bottle.”
I babbled on, pulling him inside, which was straight into the front room. He looked at the threadbare carpet, the sad bits of furniture, the sagging armchairs. Then he turned and looked at me.
Stared at me full in the face.
“Oh dear,” he said, and there was a strange almost sarcastic note in his voice, which I couldn’t immediately fathom, “What have we done to you, your friends and your lovers? Looking like shit. Have you seen your face recently? Thin, haggard, unshaven. And you stink. Phew! You stink like a pig.”
“Yes, I’m sorry, Jacob, I’ve let myself go a bit recently, but there’s been things happening to me, dreadful, dreadful things. But it’s all good now that you are here.”
“And you were always the one in charge, the one ahead, the successful one—”
Suddenly I realized what it was in his voice—a tone of triumph.
“—and me trailing behind, always having to be thankful for your cast-offs. I’ll get you a nice job. My rich lover will sort it out. And I thankful to be sucked off in a covered bus stop, sheltering from the rain.
“What a state you’re in, how are the mighty fallen. I see your eyebrows have grown back. That’s one thing to your advantage. About the only thing as far as I can see. Where’s your rich, powerful lover now?”
“Jacob, what’s the matter with you? I thought we were friends, the best of friends. I never knew you felt like this.”
His voice rose to a shout. “Of course you didn’t because you never stopped to think, to put yourself in my place. If you had, perhaps you?
??d have realized that I never loved you, never even liked you.”
“But I always thought of you as my younger brother, part of the family.”
“Ah, that’s what your mother thought when she gave me your address and I sent you your little birthday present. You always were the lucky one, escaping from my fire with a little burnt and singed eyebrows.”
“Your fire?”
“Of course it was my fire. I rather hoped that I’d get the both of you, but it seemed that marvelous, gorgeous Lex also had a bit of luck. And then the present. That didn’t quite go to plan either. Seems it made rather a mess of two police officers. Well, bad luck them and again good luck you.
“But your luck seems to have run out now, hasn’t it, little Johnny Appleseed? What a fucking stupid name to choose. Still, it doesn’t matter now.”
The sheer vindictiveness in his tone struck me like a blow. There was a glint of madness in his eyes, huge and wide. His mouth was open as he spat out the words and a dribble of saliva ran down his chin.
“Still, it doesn’t matter now. Here’s where it ends.”
He felt in the pocket of his coat and drew out a knife, wide-bladed with a deadly point. I thought how it would so easily cut through my thin T-shirt, rip through my skin, thrust through the gaps in my ribs, and pierce my heart. Or perhaps this madman, for that was surely what he was, driven insane by his envy and jealousy, would only be satisfied with cutting bits of me, first bits that would hurt abominably but would not kill me, and finally when I was on the floor screaming, he would deliver the coup de grâce and put me out of pain forever.
The madness wasn’t only in his voice and his eyes. It seemed to have affected his whole body, for he was dancing, his legs moving up and down out of rhythm, waving the knife around and around. I could do nothing but watch, and that seemed to enrage him even more, because his leaps became wilder and wilder….