There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [4]
Dear Anna K
I am writing to you because my husband and I are at the end of my tether and we are hoping to God that you will be able to help us.
Ten days ago we invited Miles Garth, who I believe you know to dinner here at our house in Greenwich. He is a friend of a friend, we actually hardly know him which is why this situation is so difficult and actually untenable as you can imagine. To cut a long short story Mr. Garth has locked himself in our spare bedroom. I am only relieved the bedroom is ensuite. He will not leave the room. He is not just refusing to unlock the door and go to his own home, wherever that might be. He is refusing to speak to a single soul. It has now been ten days, and our unwanted tenant has only communicated by 1 piece of paper slipped under the bottom of the door. We are slipping flat packs of wafer-paper-thin turkey and ham to him under the said door but are unable to provide him with anything more dimensional because of the size of the space between the said door and the floor. (Our spare room door, in fact all the upstairs doors in our house are believed 18th century although the house itself dates from the 1820s you can understand my concern and the hinges are on the inside side. I have reason to believe he has jammed one of our chairs under the c18th door handle too.).
I/we have absolutely no idea whatsoever why Mr. Garth has chosen to barricade himself into our house, it is certainly nothing to do with me and it is nothing to do with my husband or my daughter. As you can imagine ten days is a long time at the end of the day. We have tried his work associates but nothing has worked.
We do not however wish to be unpleasant. We are at present using a softly-softly approach, also on the advice of the police advisers.
This is why I/we are contacting you as one of the few Significant others we can trace for Mr. Garth. We were fortunate to find this email for you in the address book in his phone which he did not take into our spare room with him but left with his jacket and his car keys in our lounge.
We have moved his car temporarily to the driveway of a friend but it cannot stay there indefinately (it was originally left I’m afraid illegally in a Residents Permit Space.).
If you can help my husband and myself at all in any way I/we would be very grateful. Our telephone number is at the bottom of this email. I would be very much obliged if you would contact us as soon as possible even if it is only to let me know that you have received this message even if you can’t actually help in this instance.
Very many thanks indeed and I/we look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely
Gen Lee
(Genevieve and Eric Lee)
Who was Miles Garth, again?
Miles.
Yes.
When we went to Europe.
Anna read it through again.
He is refusing to speak to a singe soul.
Later that evening she found that instead of thinking (as she did every night as the dark came down and every morning as the light came up) about work, and about the faces, one after the other, of the people she had failed, she was preoccupied with this notion, a lightly burnt soul, its scent of singed wool.
Before she went to bed she tapped out the following, and sent it.
Dear Mrs. Lee,
Thank you for your email. What a strange predicament. I’m afraid though that you might be on to a wild goose chase with me, since I don’t really know Miles Garth or anything about him, having met him only very briefly and quite a long time ago now, back in the 1980s. I am not at all sure I can help you. But if you think I can, I’m willing to give it a try. What would you like me to do?
All my best,
Anna Hardie.
Now it was two days later.
Miles, she said to whoever was behind the door. Are you there?
Where exactly was Anna, then, who had travelled in on the packed train that morning next to a man in a Gore-Tex jacket who was watching porn on the screen of his phone? She’d crossed