When Ron got to the house in Belgravia, there was no answer at the door. When he looked through the front window, the front room, which had been looking more and more like a pigsty the longer the Russians stayed there, looked pristine and clean. He tried the mobile number he had for Alexey, but it appeared to be switched off. He rang Toby. Toby didn't know what was going on. He said he'd ring Ron back, but that for now he could go.
Back at the house in Pimlico, he walked into the kitchen to find Caroline sat in there naked eating cereal. Annabelle came in. At least Annabelle was wearing a t-shirt. Ron realised it was his red t-shirt with the British Army crest on.
'I borrowed your t-shirt, sorry Ron. It makes me feel tough,' said Annabelle.
'That's ok,' said Ron.
'I found it in the airing cupboard,' said Annabelle.
'It's alright, no worries,' said Ron.
'Ron, do you need to go in the bathroom before we go in the bath?' asked Annabelle.
'Yeah, good shout, I'll go now,' said Ron.
***
Toby rang at about half nine. He couldn't get in touch with the Russians and hadn't heard anything. He'd phoned Heathrow but couldn't get confirmation that they'd made their flight. He asked if Ron had his appointment with the vets' team today and Ron said that he did. He had to take Katie to a drug addiction recovery service in Hackney in the afternoon. Toby said he needed Ron for the next three days, to mind a couple of American tourists.
As he was leaving, Vicky was shouting through the bathroom door, asking if Annabelle and Caroline were in the jacuzzi. Annabelle shouted out that they were. Vicky said she wanted to come in and get in with them and Annabelle opened the door for her. Steam came out of the bathroom door. Ron had been really wanting to have a jacuzzi, but he didn't know how to turn it on, and he didn't have the nerve to ask the girls, he thought they'd make fun of him.
Katie rang just as he got into his car. She was trying to sort out a booking. Four prison officers wanted to book Marie, Emma and Vicky for that night. Ron said prison officers would be trained in restraints and would be used to violence and grappling, so he might struggle to manage on his own if things went wrong. Vicky said it was female prison officers, but Ron said it didn't matter. She said she could have someone on standby if he needed help, but she only wanted one person to go in with the girls. Ron said he'd do it.
***
Ron told Marie and Dr Smith Crowden about when he'd come home from Afghanistan. He'd wanted to leave the army for a while, so he finally did leave. For a while he felt ok. He had his pension and he worked for Southwark council doing gardening. He'd found that the gardening meant he could be outdoors, and that it kept him fit. Over time, though, he'd started to find that people wound him up. Not specific people;
people.
All of them. He found that he didn't want to go out, so he didn't. He stopped going to work. He stopped looking after himself. He kept running, and he lifted weights, because he was terrified of losing his fitness and his strength. When he'd finished doing those things, he felt like he didn't really need to shower. Then he pissed himself in his car.
He'd visited his sister and her husband and his niece, and they'd had the windows open, in November. They were sat there in their coats with the windows open because of the smell coming from him, and he hadn't even realised for a good while. He felt cold, and thought, what the fuck's going on, what are we sitting here like this for? Then he realised, and he left. Not long after that, he'd ended up on Waterloo Bridge, stood by the edge. He couldn't go over. He kept thinking about his niece and how his sister had mentioned in a letter, which he'd received at the Forward Operating Base, that they'd been putting his niece's dinner money in her mittens when she went to school so that she wouldn't lose it. He'd thought of that when he was stood on the bridge. He imagined his niece going to school with her mittens on, which were on a string which went inside her coat, and he started crying, and some cunt had poked their nose into things.
He told Marie and Doctor Smith-Crowden that he'd pissed himself again, about a week ago.
***
The sun was so bright when he came out of the Mental Health Team building that it hurt his eyes. It always seemed to be dark in the building. He rang Katie and she still said she wanted to go to her appointment. Ron drove to the East End to get her. He drove over Waterloo bridge and he remembered what it had been like. He thought about his niece and imagined her with her mittens on going to school and it made him cry again.
It was hot in the car. The traffic was bumper to bumper a lot of the way. He thought about Marie. She'd touched his arm when she was showing him out and he could still feel it. He was going to see her tonight. He hoped it wouldn't be too bad and he thought that if it was just women there it wouldn't hurt like it had when he'd seen her with male clients, or when he'd turned up at her flat and Tarquin had opened the door.
He liked driving through the City of London, he liked the architecture. He thought the old buildings that had survived the war were beautiful.
***
The man who assessed Katie at the drug service was called Kwame. Ron thought he seemed like a nice guy. Katie seemed nervous and unhappy. She told Kwame she'd been using cocaine for more than ten years, but that it seemed to have got out of control in the last few months. She said she would start taking it as soon as she woke up in the morning, and that it would go on all day and into the night. Kwame asked her what her sleep was like and she said she got three or four hours a night. She said she would have to get up in the morning to work, and so that her son didn't realise anything was wrong. Kwame asked Katie what she did for a living, and she said she worked as a fashion consultant. She told him what she was spending on cocaine per week and Ron was fucking shocked.
***
'Have you lost weight?' Ron asked Katie, when they got back in the car.
'Yes. Thank you for noticing. When Yousef and the Arabs come over, if I'm going to come out of retirement, I want to look good,' said Katie.
'You always look good, you don't need to do anything,' said Ron.
He meant what he said, he thought Katie was lovely.
'Thank you, Ron, but it'll be a party, and the others will be there and I'm at least ten years older than all of them. Thank you for saying that, though' said Katie.
'I'm not trying to flatter you,' said Ron.
'I know,' said Katie.
'Have you seen much of the others?' asked Ron.
'I've been shagging Caroline,' said Katie.
'Oh, ok. How's that going?' asked Ron.
Alarm bells were sounding in his head.
