‘He’s not here?’
‘Not any more.’
‘You can’t stay here,’ I said, ‘you can’t stay here and he can’t stay here.’
‘He was asking about you, Lor. How’s Lorna? he said.’
‘He’s not staying here.’
‘I know, Lor.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘Back to the station, I suppose.’
While he spoke his eyes had filled up, and now tears began pouring down his cheeks and his voice thickened.
‘There’s blood on your face,’ I said.
He wiped his face with his fingers and smiled.
He looked just like before.
‘I got in a fight,’ he said.
‘You? A fight?’
‘Yeah. With Maurice.’
38
The stars whispering above in that story-book sky. His face appeared again, still angry. It was between the moon and me. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ it said, ‘you make things impossible.’
I started to laugh.
Dan raised his eyes to the heavens.
I closed my eyes.
He jerked my arm and shook me.
I don’t know how it was that I found myself in his house again. I don’t remember getting there and I didn’t want to go in.
‘No, no,’ I said.
He said, ‘Stop it! Stop all this!’
‘I was going somewhere,’ I cried.
‘No you’re not.’ He pulled me and made me go in. I was on the sofa, he brought me some pills and a glass of water and stood there till I’d taken them.
‘Pills to purge melancholy,’ I said, and laughed.
The fire was out and it was cold so I put the rug I brought from my den over my knees. I tried to talk but he wouldn’t hear a word, he was furious, he lit a fire roughly but with tender skill, and I watched his stupid wide capable back and it made me cry.
‘Don’t do that,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t help.’
‘It’s only water,’ I said, ‘just water that comes out of the eyes.’ The fire was blazing up and the cat on the end of the settee purred in content, folding its paws underneath its dirty white chest. I hid my face in the cushion and tried to be asleep in the hope that on some other morning I might wake and find that I knew what to do. He drank from the bottle. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I’ll call your daughter. She can deal with this.’
I was sleepy. ‘I’ll move on tomorrow,’ I said from the cushion, ‘don’t you worry your pretty little head.’
He almost smiled. ‘You should get some sleep,’ he said.
‘It’s no good.’ I opened my eyes and lifted my head. ‘I won’t sleep. I’m wide awake. I don’t ever sleep.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘I don’t. I haven’t slept for days.’
‘You probably do sleep, you just don’t notice.’
I reached out and picked up the little wooden dog from the table and turned it round in my hands. It had a face and detailed little paws. ‘You’re quite talented, aren’t you?’ I said.
But when I looked up he’d gone. I slid away. Sometimes I woke, sometimes he was there, sometimes not. He kept the fire fed. I kept sliding away and coming back again. ‘Dan,’ I said one time, finding him there, reaching out and holding his calloused hand, ‘can I tell you?’
‘What?’ he said unwillingly.
My strange confessor.
*
I’m the evil baron. I did that thing. It’ll never ever go away. Lock it away in a haunted house, up in the attic, down in a deep dark wood. Done is eternal and so is the proof, eternal though buried. All that remains is the boiling oil.
*
‘Lor, can I have a cup of tea? I’m parched.’
‘You should go.’
‘Go? It’s me! What are you talking about?’
‘You can’t do this,’ I said.
‘Oh God, I know it might seem weird,’ he said, ‘but settle down. Life’s like that.’ He smiled. He actually laughed. ‘Things get weird.’
Sometimes things look as if they’re there but they’re not. Careful now. Soon he’ll be gone. The dark falling on the garden made his face dim, it changed and wavered in front of me. Look away. But when I looked back he was still there, and there was nothing I could say to him. I just looked at him and he looked back at me with his darkening face and dried blood on his face and there were no words for a long time, though his mouth was moving as if it was speaking. If he moved towards me, I thought, I’ll die screaming. Just fall down and my heart will stop. Begone, demon.
Over the trees the sky was that beautiful blue, so deep it hurt. An owl called hollow and low and another answered from further in the woods. My eyes were hot. ‘Go away,’ I said feebly.
‘Don’t be like that,’ he said.
I looked down at my diamond file, scraping softly at the silver I was working on, the little lines coming out from the central vein of the leaf. I love working silver. I hated him. I thought of Lily, her face in my mind just as she was, the way her upper lip curled. I felt her moment of pure terror in that instant when the car left the road and she saw the water through the windscreen coming up to meet her. Her and that poor daft stupid lad. ‘I know it was you,’ I said, ‘you did something to the car.’
He stepped forward into the light from the window and the back door, into my light so that I had to
