“Right.”
But by now they were grinning at each other. Sam smacked him hard in the face.
“You see,” she said, “if that had been the case, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But if we’re both serious about going off and…Well, if you’re set on this Richard like I’m on Bob…and we decide to break up our happy flat—”
“You made that choice before I did, Sam. You decided to move out yesterday. You went.”
“And I’d still be gone if it wasn’t for the snow.”
“Maybe there’s nothing else to say to each other, then.”
They looked at each other and found it hard to synchronise their expressions. Just like old times. They had never known, when they looked at each other, whether to laugh or cry.
“I think there’s a fuck of a lot we’ve still got to say to each other,” she said.
“Yeah?” He shook his head, still ringing with her slap. “I’m going to get my stuff and see Sally.” His daughter didn’t seem quite real to him this morning. He hadn’t expected to see her so soon. He was more surprised to see her today that he had been last night, finding her apparently patrolling his dreams.
“I don’t think I can do it, Mark.”
His feet kicked at the next step up. “Do what?”
“Do you know when I was happiest?”
“Go on.”
“Each night when the bus pulled up outside our flats. When I’d finished work and our place was warm and you and Sal had already been in for a few hours. Or when I could watch you sleeping at night. Fuck. What am I saying?”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think I do.”
“Bob’s a boring fart,” she exploded. “And he thinks I’m after his money.”
“They get quite a bit, coppers.”
“Come on then, Kelly. Tell me you don’t really like fucking boys.”
“But that’s not true, Sam. You’ve always known that.”
“I can’t fucking win, can I?”
“Where’s Bob now?”
“Oh, I left him tied to the bedposts.”
“BOB, WE’VE BEEN TALKING…”
Sam let herself into the bedroom to find it close and dusky. Bob was snoring again, his limbs flung out. Mark peered in and Sam shook her policeman awake.
“Big cock,” Mark commented. “is that what you were after?”
“Fuck off.”
Bob woke with a shout and stared in dismay at the two of them standing there.
“It’s all right. I’m not sticking around,” Mark said, sitting on a corner of the bed.
“Mark’s seen it all before,” Sam reassured him.
“What are you going to do?” asked Bob warily. Throughout their training, policemen are warned about compromising themselves. And here he was.
“Bob,” Sam began. “Do you love me?”
“I…Of course I do, Samantha. Look at last night.”
“Enough to want me and my daughter living in your nice house?”
He stammered, “Yes. You know that.”
“But more than Mark does?”
“Mark doesn’t want you at all, Sam. You’ve said as much. He just wants the kid.”
“’The kid’?” asked Mark.
“I’ve done a hell of a lot for you already, Sam…I don’t believe this. Get that faggot out of here and let’s discuss this—”
The door shot open and two removal men appeared. “Oh. Sorry. We’ve got to clear this stuff out.”
“In a minute,” Sam said in her best manageress voice. “Two shakes.”
The removal men exchanged a glance and retired.
“Mark and I are evolving an outrageous plan,” she told Bob.
“Sam!” He was shouting now. “I’m sick to the back teeth of fucking outrageousness. Why can’t we just go home—to my bloody home—and tell this twat to piss off? Why can’t we just be normal?”
Despite her careful equanimity, something in Sam stirred. It was a memory of her father’s barking rages and how she had been forced to watch them from a similar position. She never did have a good bedside manner.
“Sam,” Mark said. “Why don’t you get your policeman to define ‘normal’ for you? If he comes up with anything interesting, let me know. I’m off to pack before those men get all my things mixed up.”
MARK’S BELONGINGS HAD ALREADY BEEN DISTURBED. THERE WASN’T MUCH to go through. Sure that this would be a short trip, he had brought only one bag with him. Beside the rumpled double bed in the room at the very top of the house, this bag was being turned inside out and a swift ransacking was under way.
And who was the perpetrator, breathless and busy?
As Peggy, Iris and Sally ate breakfast, flinching every time someone nearby dropped a vase or banged furniture against a doorframe, items of Mark’s clothing were being strewn.
As Sam untied Bob and told him to shut his mouth and dress so that the men could take his bed away, the perpetrator was choosing, with careful deliberation, what to wear.
And, as Simmonds wrapped pieces of china in fuchsia tissue paper, looking up at the ceiling as if in expectation, this perpetrator made himself apparent.
In the top room he pulled on Mark’s spare jeans, easing into their cool, creased legs, fastening the buttons with fingers that trembled.
The shirt he slipped into bristled with static. A cheap shirt with threads dangled, buttons missing, but it was charged with Mark’s presence. Tony breathed him in.
When the door swung shut, Tony turned to face it.
Mark stopped dead. He stared at his emptied bag because it was easier to look at that than at Tony. It gaped at him.
At one time they had delighted in wearing each other’s clothes. Turning up places dressed as the other. The thrill of unwashed things, to wear the other’s essence.
And here were Mark’s clothes now. The striped shirt that was his warmest, his most comforting, the jeans that fitted him like no others. The shirt wasn’t properly fastened and where it hung open—Mark forced himself to look—there was nothing underneath. He could see the back of the shirt.
Tony’s arms were raised in a gesture of welcome. No hands. Only the cuffs of those familiar sleeves.
“Here we are then,” came Tony’s voice. “In the daylight.”
A headless man. The shirt’s collar was loose and open about nothing. From here the
