Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman Page A

Richard’s front door. “Not her best side,” he said.
    Richard shut the door to the broom closet. He took his keys from his back pocket, unlocked his front door, and he was home. It was, he was rather relieved to see through the kitchen windows, nighttime once more.
    “Richard,” said Door. “You did it.” She had washed herself while he was gone, and her layers of clothes looked like she had at least made an effort to get the worst of the filth and the blood off them. The grime was gone from her face and hands. Her hair, when washed, was a dark shade of auburn, with copper and bronze highlights. Richard wondered how old she was: fifteen? Sixteen? Older? He still couldn’t tell.
    She had put on the brown leather jacket she had been wearing when he had found her, huge and enveloping, like an old flying jacket, which somehow made her look smaller than she was, and even more vulnerable.
    “Well, yes,” said Richard.
    The marquis de Carabas went down on one knee to the girl and lowered his head. “My lady,” he said.
    She seemed uncomfortable. “Oh, do get up, de Carabas. I’m pleased you came.”
    He stood in one smooth movement. “I understand,” he said, “that the words favor , really, and big have been used. In conjunction.”
    “Later.” She walked over to Richard and took his hands in hers. “Richard. Thanks. I really appreciate everything you’ve done. I changed the sheets on the bed. And I wish there was something I could do to pay you back.”
    “You’re leaving?”
    She nodded. “I’ll be safe now. More or less. I hope. For a little while.”
    “Where are you going now?”
    She smiled gently and shook her head. “Uh-uh. I’m out of your life. And you’ve been wonderful.” She went up on tiptoes then and kissed him on the cheek, as friends kiss friends.
    “If I ever need to get in touch with you—?”
    “You don’t. Ever. And . . .” and then she paused. “Look, I’m sorry, okay?”
    Richard inspected his feet, in an awkward sort of way. “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he said, and added, doubtfully, “it was fun.” Then he looked up again.
    But there was nobody there.

Three
    O n Sunday morning Richard took the Batmobile-shaped telephone he had been given for Christmas several years earlier by his Aunt Maude out of the drawer at the bottom of the closet and plugged it into the wall. He tried telephoning Jessica, but without success. Her answering machine was turned off, as was her cellular phone. He supposed she had gone back to her parents’ house in the country, and he had no desire to phone her there. Richard found Jessica’s parents deeply intimidating, each in their separate ways. Neither of them had entirely approved of him as a future son-in-law: in fact, her mother had, on one occasion, mentioned to him quite casually how disappointed they were by Richard and Jessica’s engagement, and her conviction that Jessica could, if she wanted to, do so much better.
    Richard’s own parents were both dead. His father had died quite suddenly when Richard was still a small boy, of a heart attack. His mother died very slowly after that, and once Richard left home she simply faded away: six months after he moved to London he took the train back up to Scotland, to spend her last two days in a small county hospital sitting beside her bed. Sometimes she had known him; at other times she had called him by his father’s name.
    Richard sat on his couch, and he brooded. The events of the previous two days became less and less real, increasingly less likely. What was real was the message that Jessica had left on his machine, telling him she did not want to see him again. He played it, and replayed it, that Sunday, hoping each time that she would relent, that he’d hear warmth in her voice. He never did.
    He thought about going out and buying a Sunday paper but decided not to. Arnold Stockton, Jessica’s boss, a many-chinned, self-made caricature of a man, owned all the Sunday