Numbers

with this wall of silence between us. I needed him.

“Are you awake?” I whispered, my voice nearly disappearing in the darkness of the huge barn.

“Yeah.”

“I’m freezing.”

“I know. Me, too.” A pause. A long, long pause. “Come here, then.”

I shuffled over to him as he turned over. He wrapped one of his long arms around my shoulders and I snuggled into him.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “For earlier.”

“It’s fine, Jem, shut up. It’s in the past.”

“Yeah, but…I didn’t mean to say it. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know. It’s alright. We’re alright. Lovers’ tiff, eh?” He kissed the end of my nose, moved down to my mouth, and suddenly it was alright again.

And as we breathed in each other’s breath and I buried my hands in his spongy hair, I thought, Lovers, yes, we’re lovers now. We came up for air and lay cuddling. My hands were still cold, and he took them and slid them under his clothes onto the bare skin of his chest and stomach to warm them up.

“Wouldn’t it be good if you could start again?” I said. “I feel like my life’s screwed up before I’ve even got started.”

“Tell me about it.” He turned over to face me again, and my hands moved around him, my arms enclosing him. “But we are starting again, Jem. If I hadn’t met you, it probably would have been dope and pills and smoking crack and shooting up junk. Prison. Hospitalization. That’s how it would have been for me, but you saved me from that. It’s going to be different for us now.”

I dug my fingernails into his back, felt the tears burning my eyes.

“Ow! What’s that for? Leaving your mark on me?”

“No, just holding you tight.” And he held me, too, and we had sex again, only it was making love this time, slow and tender. And I didn’t just lie there, I was part of it: moving and kissing, stroking and sighing. It was like I was someone else, but I wasn’t. This was me, the real me, and Spider was the only person ever to have found me, to see me for who I was. And I saw him, too. He was beautiful.

Afterward, I lay in the crook of his arm, my hand resting on his chest, and he was still, not a twitch or a tremor. We were peaceful and calm together, and I fell asleep with his warm breath on my face and his heart beating next to mine.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I was waking up slowly, still in a dream, not knowing what was real and what wasn’t. I could hear the warm, deep noises of cows talking to each other. My nostrils were full of earthy, shitty air – animal and vegetable all mixed up. I was curled up on my side as usual, but my back was warm, there was something heavy lying across me, and I felt enclosed. I opened my eyes to face a wall of hay. I looked down and there was Spider’s arm draped over my waist. He was on his side, too, curved into my body.

It was just getting light. The cows were struggling to their feet, kicking the hay around – I guess that’s what woke me up. I put my hand onto Spider’s arm and hugged him in closer. That little movement woke him up, and he nuzzled the top of my head, planted a kiss.

“We’d better get up, it’s morning,” I whispered.

Spider groaned. “OK,” he said. “Just five more minutes.”

And so we lay together a little longer. I was awake now, my mind going over the night before. Was it real? Was I different? Spider fell asleep again, I could tell by the weight of his arm, his heavy, even breath on my scalp.

I started getting worried about someone finding us there. Surely someone would come up to check on the cows. They didn’t just leave them for days, did they? I swiveled around under his arm, rubbed my hands up and down his chest to wake him up.

“Come on, we’ve got to go.”

He opened one lazy eye. “Whassahurry?”

“We need to get out of here, it’s getting light.” I wriggled out of his arms and sat up. There were bits of clothing all over the place, socks trodden into the filthy ground. Oh, yeah, it was real.

I gathered up my clothes and did my best to brush the crap off them, then undressed in order to get dressed properly again. I felt more self-conscious in the cold light of day, and quickly put on my T-shirt, then squirmed around getting my bra on underneath it.

“What you doing that for?” a sleepy voice asked. “I’ve seen it all now. You don’t need to hide.”

“I know,” I said, “I’m just cold. Anyway, get up. Here…” I balled up the sock of his that I’d been wearing and chucked it at him.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Once dressed, there was nothing to do but leave. Nothing for breakfast, not even a drink. The cows had lined up by their fence and were watching us curiously, their breath steaming in the cold morning air. We put the blankets in a couple of bags and left. There was no question about what we had to do today – we needed to find a bit of civilization – so we followed the path back to the main road. Spider carried our plastic bags. As we set off, he put them both in one hand and gently scooped up one of mine in his free one. We walked along, side by side, not speaking. When the path narrowed, he went a bit in front, but didn’t let go of me, and we carried on, me with my arm reaching forward, him reaching back. Sounds soppy, doesn’t it, like we’d mushed into sickly boyfriend-girlfriend stuff? But it wasn’t like that. We were just together now. Properly together.

We walked along the road, sticking a thumb out every time we heard a car behind us. We’d got to the point now where we had to risk being recognized. Nobody stopped. They were all in a hurry, speeding along this little country lane like it was a racetrack, swerving out when they spotted us, taken by surprise. A couple of them sounded their horns, like we shouldn’t be in the road at all. Where did they expect us to walk? In the ditch? Tossers.

It had stopped raining, but everywhere was soaked, and there were big puddles lying on the tarmac at the side of the road. My jeans got heavier as the water soaked up from the bottoms. It wasn’t easy walking on a completely empty stomach. My legs were tired, anyway, really tired, and my body was rebelling against what I was asking it to do. I kept belching, but I couldn’t even taste yesterday’s food – just sour, acid emptiness.

It had got to twenty past eight when we stopped. We couldn’t sit down anywhere, it was all too wet, but we stood a few feet away from the road, up a track to a farm. Spider put his bags down and lit one of our last cigarettes. We shared it in silence, while water dripped onto us from the trees above.

“It’s pretty grim, isn’t it?” Spider asked eventually. I just nodded. “I think we should risk using the phone. Get a taxi.”

“No way. They’ll trace it. It’ll be the end, Spider.”

“What else can we do? We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere here.”

“I dunno – but they’ll be waiting for us to use the phone, won’t they?”

He dropped the cigarette butt and ground it under his foot. “I’m hungry, Jem. I’m cold.”

“I know. Me, too.”

We lit another smoke and passed it back and forth, a small comfort in an otherwise bleak world. After a couple of minutes, we heard a car crunching down the drive behind us. We looked at each other. No time to move on, no point, really. A massive four-wheel drive thing came ’round the corner. They hit the brakes when they saw us, then drove around us. I could see the driver as the car went past – a woman, early thirties maybe, quite polished, hair pulled back into a ponytail, and a bit of toast held in her mouth like a beak. There were a couple of kids in the back. They looked like dolls strapped into that massive car.

The woman looked at us – surprised, wary, a bit angry, maybe – then drove up to the junction and turned left out onto the road. A few feet down, she stopped and reversed until she was level with us. The front passenger window went down and she took the toast out of her mouth and leaned across.

“Are you waiting for someone?” The voice was sharp, like she was accusing us of something. The crime of