Necessary as Blood Read Free

she gave Charlotte a kiss. “Right. Thanks, Roy. I’ll owe you.”
    Sandra glanced at her watch. It was five minutes past one. Waving to Charlotte, she turned away. When she reached the corner, a sudden impulse made her glance back, but the crowd had obscured her daughter as seamlessly as a closing zipper.

CHAPTER ONE
    Sadly, I have recently come to accept what I refused to accept for so long: that the house may be only ephemeral.
    —Dennis Severs, 18 Folgate Street: The Tale of a House in Spitalfields
    The streets were greasy with moisture. The air inside the bus felt thick, almost solid, and in the damp August heat the personal-hygiene deficiencies of some of the passengers were all too apparent.
    Gemma James stood near the center doors as the number 49 lumbered south over the Battersea Bridge, gripping the stanchion, trying not to breathe through her nose. The man in the seat beside her stank of more than unwashed body—alcohol fumes came off him in waves, and when the bus lurched he swayed against her.
    Why had she thought taking the bus a good idea? And on a Saturday. She’d had a few errands to run in Kensington and hadn’t wanted to bother with parking—that had been her excuse, at least. The truth was that she’d craved the mindlessness of it, had wanted to sit and watch London going about its business without any assistance on her part. She hadn’t planned on having to protect her personal space quite so diligently.
    When the bus ground to a halt just past the bridge, she was tempted to get off and walk, but her map told her there was still a good way to go, and a few sluggish raindrops splattered against the already-dirty windows. To her left she could see the rise of Battersea Park, an impressionistic gray-green blur through the smeared glass. The doors opened and closed with a pneumatic swish. The drunk man stayed resolutely put.
    Gemma didn’t know this part of London well, and as the bus turned from the fairly posh environs of Battersea Road into Falcon Road, the neighborhood quickly lost its gloss.
    Surely, Hazel didn’t mean to live here rather than in Islington? Thrift shops, video rentals, halal butchers, down-at-the-heels nameless cafés—and now ahead she could see the converging railway lines of Clapham Junction. Had she missed her stop? She jammed her finger against the red request button, and when the bus doors opened at the next stop, she almost leapt out.
    Her feeling of relief was short-lived, however, as she stood on the pavement and looked round. She consulted her A to Zed, double-checking, but there was no doubt this was the street. It was, she saw, not even a cul-de-sac, but simply a short dead end. A square concrete building that announced itself in both English and Bengali as a mosque stood on the corner, and in the street itself a few young men in skullcaps and salwar kameez idly kicked a football.
    Gemma moved slowly forward, searching for the number Hazel had given her. A rubbish skip stood on the pavement to her left, overflowing with what looked like the complete interior of the terraced Victorian house behind it. That was a good sign, surely, she thought, the area on the upswing. But aside from the short terrace, there were only council flats at the end of the street, and a high wall to her right.
    The young men stopped kicking the ball and looked at her. Shegave them a neutral nod, then straightened her back, surveying her surroundings with deliberate purpose. Police work had long ago taught her that it was not a good idea to wander about looking like a lost sheep—it marked you out as a victim.
    She’d worn a sundress, in deference to the sticky weather, and although the persimmon-colored cotton skirt ended demurely enough at the knee, she felt suddenly uncomfortably exposed.
    A bungalow, Hazel had said, with a charming garden and patio. Gemma had found the thought of a bungalow in London odd enough, but it seemed unimaginable here, and she began to wonder if she had