“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so nosy.” He rubbed his palms on his thighs, then realised that the action made him look like some kind of madman. He stopped, held up his hands. Then he picked up his glass and drained it. “Listen, I should go.”
Lana nodded. She licked beer foam from her lips. “Is the wife waiting for you at home?”
For some reason he could not identify Tom felt guilty. “That’s right. She’s… she’s not well. There was an accident several years ago and she relies on me.” Why did he feel the need to justify himself? Was it because, really, he didn’t want to leave? He wanted to stay here and drink into the night with this woman, trading histories, telling stories, laughing and bonding and becoming friends — perhaps even more than friends.
He stood, tugging at the hem of his shorts, trying to cover the goose pimples that had appeared above his knees. “I should… you know. I should leave.” He felt dizzy, like the world was spinning faster beneath his feet. He tried to hold on, had to hold tight. If he didn’t, he thought that he might fall off the edge of the planet.
“Thanks again,” said Lana, following him as she walked to the door. “Listen, I didn’t mean to come on too strong then. It’s just that I don’t have any friends here, and I think I get a bit needy. Just ignore me.” She reached out, as if she were about to touch his arm, but then let her hand drop away.
“It’s fine. I can be your friend.” Jesus, did he really just say that? “How fucking corny,” he added, pausing by the door.
“Just a bit,” said Lana, smiling now, looking happier than she had done only seconds earlier. “But it was a nice thing to say.” She turned her head slightly to one side, and he caught sight of a faint scar along her jawline.
When he left the flat he had to fight not to look over his shoulder, just to catch another glimpse of her as she closed the door. He heard the locks slide into place, and paused to listen for her footsteps. But of course he couldn’t hear them; there was no way her bare feet could be heard through the door. Yet he told himself that she was standing on the other side, thinking about him.
Tom descended the concrete stairs, and left the building. He glanced at his watch and was shocked to find that it was now almost 9 PM. The street lights were on. Voices drifted towards him — kids’ voices, filled with intent. The song of distant sirens accompanied him as he jogged back along Grove End, along the side of the school and towards Far Grove. He felt like he was leaving something behind, something that might just prove to be worthwhile. Never before in his life had he experienced feelings like these: it was terrifying, but it was also liberating. Had he ever felt this kind of thrill when he and Helen had first met? He thought back, to the time when they’d swapped phone numbers in the university canteen, and realised that what he had felt then had been but an echo of this, and not a very strong one.
The voices receded, far behind him. Laughter. Running footsteps.
In the silence that rushed in to replace the sounds, Tom became aware that he was being followed. He turned his head to glance over his shoulder and saw a quick, light movement as something shot through a gap in the school fence and padded across the yard. He felt his feet slowing; his hands clenched into fists.
Despite this physical reluctance, he pushed onwards, aware that whatever had entered the school was now moving back in his direction. It drew level with him, keeping pace behind the high metal railings. He saw its dark, glistening flanks as it ran. The shape darted between pools of sodium light, and for a moment he thought that it was a child loping along on all fours. Then, gasping with relief, he saw that it was a short-haired dog. Of course it was. The relief was displaced once again by fear when he remembered that there had been sightings of packs of stray dogs in the area — he even recalled a story about someone being attacked one night by a mangy mongrel.
Tom tried to look away, to look straight ahead, but he was unable to take his eyes from the beast that ran alongside him, loping between patches of lamplight. The road was narrow here; the creature was so close that he could have reached out and touched it through the gaps between railings. There was moisture in his eyes; he felt like weeping.
Then the dog turned its bristly head to face him. And Tom felt an emotion that at first he could not explain. Never before in his life had he experienced real fear — the kind of fear that makes you realise that you are always a single moment away from death. One thought filled his mind, casting everything else in shadow: the dog’s face was human.
It was a hound with the features of a person, a male. A boy.
In the split second during which the thing looked his way, Tom made out its wide green eyes, its strangely hairless cheeks, its flaring nostrils and thin, curling lips. He was struck with a sort of nostalgic horror as the face of a young boy smiled at him from the body of a dog. Nothing he could have imagined would have scared him as much. He had not been this afraid since childhood.
And then it was away, bounding further into the school grounds, towards the dark classrooms. He tried to tell himself that what he had seen could not be real. That it was impossible. After all, he’d experienced but a single, snatched glimpse and not a prolonged look at the thing. He even managed to fool himself for a while, as he peeled away from the school railings and ran along in the middle of the road. Then, when finally he reached the brighter area where the road bisected Far Grove Way, he admitted all over again that what he had seen had been something from a nightmare, a nightmare that he should have remembered from long ago.
Even if his eyes had deceived him, it must have been his brain trying to tell him something, to warn him that he was close to making a big mistake. He shouldn’t be here, in this godforsaken wasteland of the Concrete Grove. In fact he should never come here again.
Helen was waiting for him back home. Behind him, at Lana’s flat, there could be only trouble. It was time to go home to his wife, and return to the life he had chosen many times, whenever he had been called upon to make the decision.
Running hard now, quickening his pace towards a full sprint, he tried to rid his mind of the shame and the guilt and the slow-burning rush of illicit pleasure. But no matter how fast he ran, and how far he went, Tom knew that he could never outrun himself.
CHAPTER FOUR
TOM WAS COLD when he arrived home. The temperature had dropped outside, and the skin of his legs was taut and goose-pimpled. He fumbled for his key in the tiny pocket at the rear of his shorts, his fingers unable to get a firm grasp on the Velcro flap. It took him a lot longer than it should, but at last he grasped the key and slipped it into the lock. The downstairs lights were off. Shadows swarmed around his feet, cast by the light that bled down the stairwell from his office.
“Tom?” Helen’s croaky voice drifted towards him from the ground floor. “Is that you, Tom?”
The breakfast dishes were still in the sink. This morning, feeling lazy and careless, he hadn’t even bothered to load the dishwasher.
“Tom?” Her wavering tone annoyed him, made the hairs on the back of his neck bristle like those of a cat just about to pounce. He closed his eyes again, silently counted to ten.
“Tom!” Impatient now, he could hear her manoeuvring her body in the bed in the other room. Her excessive weight made the timber frame creak.
“Just a minute, love. I’ll bring you some soup.” She always liked soup on a week night. Even when she was fit and healthy, in the days before the accident, she had enjoyed a bowl of cream of tomato or oxtail after coming in from work.
Tom moved quickly, opening the can and pouring its contents into a saucepan on the stove. He stirred the soup as it warmed up, and once it began to bubble slightly at the edges, he buttered two slices of bread. When the soup was ready he ladled it into a large bowl, and then placed the bowl and a plate containing the bread on a plastic tray. He added a spoon and a napkin, and then left the kitchen and walked through the house to her
