Dying for Christmas Read Free Page B

space, the unnatural clusters of furniture – an L-shaped sofa floating by the windows on the far left, a long zinc dining table lost in the middle, a free-standing kitchen to my right, its high-gloss cupboards reflecting the light back from the row of spots strung on thick wire above. On closer inspection, one bank of the kitchen was set against a low dividing wall that didn’t quite meet the ceiling, with a space behind the partition that I assumed must lead to the bedrooms.
    ‘Come and see,’ said Dominic, setting the shopping bags down by the door. He took my hand to lead me across that forbidding expanse of floorboards.
    ‘A lot of trees must have died for this,’ I said to distract myself from how his fingers felt wrapped around mine.
    He looked down and smiled.
    ‘Yes, but their sacrifice was worthwhile. I had this put in when I moved in, complete with under-floor heating. It’s solid concrete below that. You can’t imagine how cold it used to be.’
    As we crossed the floor, my eyes focused on the one homely spot in that whole industrial space – a Christmas tree, at least ten feet tall, with a heap of beautifully wrapped presents underneath. Dominic let go of my hand in order to unlock one of the wide glass doors that led on to the metal balcony. Immediately a freezing wind flew off the river into my face, pecking at my nose, cheeks, eyeballs even. I gasped, but not just at the cold, at the whole sheer spectacle.
    ‘Funny to think that a hundred years ago this place would have been used for storing and loading tea or tobacco,’ said Dominic. ‘They’d just have tipped the stuff out of here on to barges, and away they’d go.’
    A pleasure boat came past, rocking from side to side on the choppy water, its doors firmly closed to the early evening chill. Inside, tourists in brightly coloured ski jackets held up iPhones to the windows to film their journey. What would they see, when they played it back, I wondered? A couple on a balcony, dwarfed by the building behind them. Would they imagine us to be married? Husband and wife?
    ‘Just down there is Execution Dock,’ Dominic said, pointing away from the bridge to where the river disappeared round a bend to the left. ‘It’s where they used to hang people accused of piracy. Apparently on hanging day the whole river would be awash with boats crammed with people craning to see.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said, suddenly aware of the voices clamouring to be heard over the roaring of the wind.
    ‘To make the spectacle more entertaining, they used a short rope which didn’t kill them instantly but left them to suffocate slowly, which made their arms and legs spasm so it looked like they were dancing. Afterwards they were covered in tar and their bodies were displayed in iron cages along the river as an example. One of them, Captain Kidd, was left in his cage for over twenty years. Can you imagine? The woman who lives on the first floor during the week insists it must have been hung right under our building here. She swears she can hear him crying on still nights. Come on. Let’s go in, you look frozen.’
    We went back inside and left the clamouring voices swinging in the wind.
    ‘A drink,’ he said, when he’d taken my coat and handbag. ‘There’s some champagne in the fridge if you fancy it?’
    He moved off to the kitchen and I sat down on the huge, charcoal-grey L-shaped sofa and was immediately swallowed up by its soft, yielding cushions. My whole body was alert to Dominic’s movements around the apartment. My mind was racing, the blood rushing in my ears, loud as the wind above the Thames itself.
    I sat back and tried to focus on the painting on the exposed-brick wall directly in front of the sofa. The painting had to be at least ten foot by eight. It was all done in shades of orange, pink and yellow with a weird lumpy texture, so that it looked more or less like someone had vomited over a canvas. The picture depicted the head and torso of a naked woman