Thieving Fear

He was about to take this as a simple rebuff when he grasped that he might be bruising her starved arms. He released them so hastily that he wondered if he seemed eager to be done with touching her. As he patted them to compensate, a jerk of the train flung him back on his seat. 'That wasn't me,' he protested. 'It was the driver.'

'You're a good person, Hugh. We all know you are.'

He felt as if she'd placed him at a distance far greater than the gap between the seats, and so he could only return to his dogged subject. 'Do you understand what I was trying to say now at least?'

'Are we back at that again? Can't we find our way away from it and leave it alone?'

Though her choice of words seemed thoughtless, Hugh managed to say only 'Don't you think someone else is?'

'I've no idea what you're asking me to think.'

'I don't want to say too much.'

'You are, though. It just isn't making a great deal of sense.'

Hugh leaned forwards, gripping the edge of the seat to reassure Ellen that he wasn't about to grab her. 'Suppose talking about you know who brings him?' he said barely louder than the monologue of the wheels.

'Too many people around, Hugh.'

He was behaving irrationally in at least one way: it surely couldn't matter how quietly or otherwise he spoke. He sat back, to Ellen's visible relief, before saying 'Now we're on our way you know where to do you know what, shouldn't he be trying to make things worse for us?'

Hugh had begun to wonder if she found his language childish by the time she said 'Perhaps he's distracted by us splitting up.'

'Leaving the others at the hospital, you mean.' When she confirmed this with a solitary nod Hugh said 'But he made us all have nightmares when we weren't together.'

'Maybe it takes more of an effort to keep them up.'

'Suppose it's to make us think he doesn't care if we find him?'

'I think you were right before. We ought to stop talking about it. Let's concentrate on getting there and seeing what can be done.'

This made Hugh more aware of the purpose of their journey than he wanted to anticipate. Perhaps Ellen sensed his disquiet, because she said 'Think of Rory if it helps.'

It almost did, but only for a moment. 'Maybe he's there,' Hugh blurted. 'Him.'

'I thought we said that's just a kind of nightmare.'

'He could be busy doing something to Rory. Suppose that's why we're being left alone?'

'I expect Charlotte would call us if there were any developments.'

'We should have asked her to.' Hugh dragged his mobile from whichever pocket it was in. 'I want to be sure,' he felt defiant for saying.

He'd begun to wonder if some event at the hospital was distracting Charlotte by the time she said 'Where have you got to?'

He could have done without her turn of phrase. 'We're on the train,' he said.

'I thought you'd have to be. Any problem?'

'Not here, well, not more than we've been having. How about there?'

'Just the same as when you left.' Before Hugh could decide whether this contained any accusation Charlotte said 'Sorry, I should have thought. I didn't notice.'

'What didn't you? What's wrong?'

'Quiet a moment, Hugh. You're right, absolutely. It's going off. I'll take it out if I need to.' Closer to the phone she said 'We aren't meant to use mobiles in here. There's a sign at the entrance, apparently.'

'We just wondered how Rory's getting on. Will you let us know if there's any change?'

'So long as I can reach you.'

'Why shouldn't you be able to?'

'You'll have to go underground, won't you? Sorry,' she added, not addressing him. 'I have to go now, Hugh.'

'All right, maybe we'll talk again.'

As he wished he hadn't made the prospect sound uncertain Ellen said 'Hold on. Tell her hold on.'

'Ellen wants a word.'

'She'll have to wait until I go outside.'

Ellen tugged one of her hands from beneath her and inched it forwards, then shoved it back into hiding. 'Doesn't she want to speak to me?'

'Of course she does. She just can't in the hospital. She's going where she can.'

Ellen's gaze was sinking inwards by the time her mobile came to life. It sang O at length and eventually arrived at klahoma, the final vowel of which she thumbed off. 'Charlotte?' she said. 'You'll want to be part of this, Hugh.'

She switched on the loudspeaker and laid the phone next to her before sitting on her hand again. 'I was thinking, we never called Glen back.'

'It sounded as if he'd finished to me, but I can give you his number.'

'Do you think it might be better if you rang him? He won't know mine, so he mightn't answer it. You could always tell him it's for my book. I just thought we should find out if he had anything else to say about, you know, why he rang before.'

Charlotte sighed or made hard work of a breath. 'I'll see if there's anything to get out of him. It can be my excuse to stay out here for a few minutes.'

With that she was gone as though the impatient clawlike clicking of the wheels had surged to drag her down. Ellen's hand crept out to finger a key and retreated into hiding. Hugh levelled an encouraging gaze at her, even once his eyes began to smart with the prolongation of the task. She might have been holding herself rigid in anticipation of the call, but the motion of the train assailed her with the occasional shiver. When the phone began to sing its tinny O she jabbed a key and snatched her hand back. At first Hugh thought she'd broken the connection in her haste, and then he heard a voice, muffled enough to be buried. 'You need to put the loudspeaker on again,' he said and activated it for her.

'Glen isn't answering, you two. I've left a message for him to call one of us.'

'You aren't waiting outside till he does,' Hugh protested.

'I'm not, that's right. I'm going to Rory in a minute. In fact, make that now.'

The clamour of an ambulance had begun to overwhelm her voice. Hugh had the disorienting impression that the artificial wail was rising from beneath the carriage or even from underground. It grew muddily blurred as it filled the loudspeaker, and then it sank into silence, but not before drawing a bony hand into sight behind Ellen's head.

Hugh didn't know whether he was more dismayed by it or by how Ellen might react when she noticed it. He was panicking over where to look when Charlotte said 'If anyone needs to call me I'll have the phone on mute.'

'Thanks, Charlotte,' Ellen said. 'We'll know you're there.'

'Good luck then. Be careful,' Charlotte added and might have been searching for less of a cliche as the owner of the hand peered between the seats. She was a pensioner whose reddish hair and bony face looked faded as an early photograph. 'Would you care to turn that down?' she said. 'We don't all want to hear your business.'

'Goodbye, Charlotte,' Hugh called, possibly in time for her to hear. 'Gone now,' he told the pensioner. 'Is it all right if we talk?' This sent her back into her seat, but her intrusion felt too much like an omen of a worse one, and left Hugh with such a sense of being spied upon that he was afraid of making some disastrous mistake out of nervousness. 'Let's talk,' he appealed to Ellen. 'It doesn't matter what about. Anything except, anything else at all.'

TWENTY-EIGHT

By the time they came to change trains Ellen felt as if she and Hugh were reverting to childhood. They'd been reduced to playing a word game, competing to produce the longest word by adding a letter at each turn. Go, god,