The unseen forces guiding him had clearly decided he’d rested enough, his right flank suddenly exploding in agony as if some creature had burrowed deep inside him, chewing and tearing at his appendix with razor-sharp teeth. Roger leapt back to his feet, turning into the pain and set off at an obedient jog.
He ran through the night, changing direction whenever the stabbing and rending in his abdomen bade him to do so, thankful that although the night air was warm he didn’t have the blazing heat of the sun to contend with. Several times he tripped over holes in the hard, dry dirt, sprawling in the dust. He was dimly aware of the stress in his damaged knee but the compulsion to keep running overrode any pain in his muscles and joints. Like the uncaring owner of an old car who was happy to run the vehicle into the ground, the unseen forces that drove him pressed him onwards.
As the rays of dawn crawled over the horizon, Roger found himself on the outskirts of a town.
He recognised the name, possibly he’d driven through at some point in the past but it was an unfamiliar landscape all the same.
He was thirsty again, his throat dry and gritty. As he looked around he could see the milkman delivered early here – cartons of milk sat on numerous doorsteps waiting for householders who were either still fast asleep or dozing between blind stabs at the snooze button.
Under normal circumstances, Roger would have no truck with stealing, but circumstances were far from normal and, after quickly scanning the street for signs of life, he darted up a shrub-lined garden path and swiped a pint, sprinting away from the scene of the crime before daring to stop and open the carton.
He hadn’t drunk milk neat since his childhood, the creamy taste strangely alien to his tongue, but the liquid was cool and refreshing, the flavour irrelevant. He drained the carton quickly, wiped the remnants from his lips with the back of a hand and placed the empty container carefully on the pavement at his feet; as if discarding it neatly was somehow different from littering.
The pains in his gut, which had subsided to a blunt niggle while he drank, returned with a vengeance, telling him it was time to be on his way again. He jogged along the deserted streets turning left and right as the twisting in his bowels dictated.
As the minutes passed by, the town began to shake off its slumber. Bedroom curtains were thrown open, businessmen in smart suits kissed their dressing-gowned wives goodbye at front doorsteps. One or two nodded a greeting to Roger as he jogged past them, assuming he was just another fitness freak with an early morning routine.
Eventually, with the sun well up over the distant grey hills and the dawn chorus supplanted by the noise of traffic, he reached a small cul-de-sac of half a dozen prim bungalows. Each property was a clone of its neighbours: red-brick driveways adjoining neatly trimmed rectangles of lawn – rows of dwarfish shrubs and bushes serving as the only demarcation between the houses. The road appeared to be a dead-end, there was nowhere else to run.
Why had he been brought here?
As if in answer to his unspoken question his innards suddenly leapt towards the property ahead of him. So forceful was the tugging in his giblets that he jumped forward as if he had been given an electric shock.
Number Six looked the same as all the other bungalows - with its white PVC front door, pristine block-paved driveway and immaculate lawn. There appeared to be nothing special about it, nothing unusual that would set it apart from its neighbours, but the pulling in his abdomen left him in no doubt that this was indeed his goal.
He ran up to the door, desperate to get his ordeal over with and pressed the bell. He heard a faint ringing in response and, as he waited for someone to answer, he pressed his hot face against the cool brickwork.
Laura.
The name sounded clearly in his head. So clearly that he turned, thinking someone in the vicinity had spoken to him.
There was not a soul in sight.
The door opened. A woman who he assumed to be in her seventies stood before him; although, as he stared at her in silence he began to question his original guess at her age – her figure and style was that of a woman twenty years younger but the grey in her hair and the heavy lines etched into her face added years.
“Can I help you?”
The woman cast her eye over the visitor at her door, quickly looking him up and down, disdain clear on her face.
Roger realised he must look a total mess and probably didn’t smell too fresh either.
“Laura,” he said, his voice dry, barely above a whisper.
“Pardon?”
The woman looked as though she had seen a ghost, her pallor adopting a sickly hue.
“I’ve come about Laura.” He repeated himself, his tongue more confident this time.
The woman threw her hands up to her face, staggering back a few steps as if she’d been physically struck and, as she backed away from the door, unseen fingers hauled on Roger’s insides, forcing him to accept their insistent invitation.
He stepped over the threshold into the small hallway and shut the door behind him.
12
“Oh, it’s lovely, Jean.”
Margaret Brown put down her knitting and slipped the phone out from under her jaw. If Jean was in one of her talkative moods then this could be a long conversation and cradling the phone ‘hands-free’ was already getting uncomfortable.
“I should have moved out years ago – rattling around in that big house all by myself after Robin passed away...what was I thinking?”
She threw a quick
