Free Plastic by Christopher Fowler Page A

that they could only be worth a fortune.
    Awed into removing my shoes, I made my way to the cold steel altar of the kitchen. Sabatier knives hung in decending order of lethality like razor-sharp musical notes. Everything else lived behind rolling steel shutters. It took both hands to open the refrigerator. I searched for a kettle and found an attenuated steel object that looked as though it might hold water. If Giacometti’s figures were real people, this was where they would cook. The kitchen smelled faintly of the sea rather than food, and for a moment I had a fanciful image of breezes drawing the river estuary into the apartment, but then I saw the Ocean Fresh fragrance bottles plugged into the wall sockets.
    A slender steel handle opened the glass walls to the balcony. Outside, atomised rain flew upwards on river winds. London lay in a globe of pale autumnal fog, the twisted, dense patchwork of the land showing through in patches of brown and olive green, stitched by the anthracite thread of roads.
    I drew a deep breath and smelled the musk of Thames silt, sharpened through oxygen blooming from Embankment trees. The elements were all around, the dank wind in my hair, moisture dampening my jacket, settling in droplets on my upturned cheek. I wanted to scrub my face clean of makeup and let the passing cloudbank touch my skin. I felt like an angel looking down on the private world of the city, listening to its whispered secrets. Having arrived in a place I could not imagine, I suddenly felt like crying. The rain drifted and swirled. Sometimes the lattice of rainbow-drops rose on rogue air currents, to be flicked down again like turning schools of fish.
    A decade of marriage had come to an end. In that time, what had happened in the world beyond the front garden? Celebrities and politicians had fallen from grace, riots and lifestyle revolutions had fleetingly seized the public mood, fads and follies had thrived in the lifespans of midges, failed social experiments had demanded my attention in the bitter, recriminatory pages of the tabloids. Carved into digestible two-minute slots, wars, train wrecks, floods, plagues and assassinations had flashed past me on the evening news with the vacuity of quiz show scores. The last ten years had been a firework display viewed from a safe distance. Since my marriage began, I could not recall coming to London for any reason other than to shop. Now I began to wonder how any person could have remained so disconnected from the world.
    Shivering, I backed inside to explore my new surroundings, like a cat left with friends for the holidays.
    The rest of the penthouse had more character. A bathroom of sun-faded Cambodian stone. A carved Thai buddha with a fat red candle melted into its lap. An undulating glass shower I could walk into without having to open a door. A textured slate floor that darkened with the first spatter from the great copper showerhead. The steaming water cascaded over my shoulders, reddening skin, scalding away the misery of the last few days. Toiletries, understated and expensive, stood in a pumice recess. I eased a snake of foam from a tube and smeared it across my fat breasts, my pale pudgy stomach, feeling the skin soften beneath my fingers. The urge to cry was stronger than ever. I saw my body twisting in the glass wall of the shower, a distant pale figure, a woman I had never seen before. I shouldn’t be here. I can’t recognise myself in these surroundings.
    Heavy white towels as thick as duvets, matching bathrobes, underfloor heating, lights that faded up by the pressure of my fingertips. If the kitchen was clinical, the bathroom was decadent. No wonder Malcolm’s mistress was so anxious to pin him down to a divorce. I pulled on one of the robes and raised its hood, drifting through the bare white rooms, hugging myself with excitement. It was impossible not to feel like an interloper. I did not have the right credentials to be allowed in here.
    I checked the time