He thought of a dozen replies. Instead, he put his hands in his sodden pockets and said 'What's the point?' before marching away from the swimming pool and past the ballroom and once more - the final time - to the balding man at the coat check.
All this time, Bob loped at Nathan's heel like a faithful Newfoundland.
'That wasn't half an hour,' said Bob, outside. 'But it was pretty fucking committed, I'll give you that.'
They buried Elise face down, by the river. The grave was shallow, dug in the cold earth with their raw hands and the edge of chalky boulders. They covered her with rocks and gravel, upon which they sprinkled moss and twigs and leaf mould. They stuffed her clothes and shoes into a knotted carrier bag, rooted from some corner of the Volvo's boot, and buried that alongside her.
In the car on the way home they rehearsed again and again their simple story, until Nathan half-believed it to be true.
When Bob pulled up outside Nathan's front door, it was still dark.
They were filthy.
Bob said, 'We shouldn't see each other again.'
'No.'
'But you can always trust me. I need you to know that.'
'I know that.'
'And can I trust you?'
'Yes.'
Nathan opened the car door. He wavered, and then said, 'Just as long as I never see you again, Bob. I mean, not ever.'
Bob nodded.
And Nathan climbed out, on to the pavement. Soil caked his clothes and his shoes and his hair and his eyelashes. His nails were split and black with it.
He went to the main door and fumbled at the lock. Then he rushed through the door and ran upstairs and into his flat. In the December dawn, he removed his shoes and socks and shirt, his suit and his underwear, and he threw them all in the washing machine.
Then he went to take a shower. He watched the water run brown, then grey, then clear. He stared at the bar of soap in his hand, a translucent lozenge of Pears, the cleanest smell he knew, and he began to cry.
She looked at him with tired and angry eyes. Her hair was still damp, showing the tines of a comb, fragrant with shampoo.
'Fine,' said Nathan. 'Whatever.'
When she'd gone, he stood staring at the door. By the time he'd snapped out of it, he was standing there in the dark.
There was movement behind him -- a furtive rustling, as if somebody was lurking there, in a dark corner. His hackles rose like a dog's and he moved quickly round the flat, turning on the lights.
When that was done, he sat staring at the yellow bulb, anxious in case it should blow while he slept, letting the inhabited darkness creep up on him.
What little remained of Nathan was wiped out by the sunrise.
Through the plasterboard walls he could hear the flush, the kettle boiling, the muffled radio: the neighbours, waking and stirring. He thought them hallucinations.
Sara came home in the afternoon, but only to leave him.
He was lying in bed and didn't speak as she packed three suitcases, ready to cram them violently into the boot of her old Golf. She was going to stay with her friend Michelle until next Saturday, by which time she expected Nathan to have found somewhere else to live.
He got out of bed. There were colourful detonations across his field of vision. He stood there, swaying.
'Look, I'm sorry.'
'What? That you thought I was flirting with that beardy little turd? Or that you left me all alone and then embarrassed me at a party where I didn't even know anybody?'
He woke with a spasm of panic. Somebody was in bed with him.
Nose to nose, she was observing the juddering of his dreaming eyes.
All the bulbs had blown. The flat was in darkness.
It took him a long time to breathe. But it wasn't dark: it was morning.
Monday morning, his second full day in this new world. The sunlight swam in and out of focus. He ran to the toilet and vomited.
He hadn't eaten since Saturday afternoon; there was nothing left to throw up.
Rinsing away the yellow acid taste, he was too frightened to look in the mirror. But there was nothing behind him, except the bathroom.
His pale reflection resembled the survivor of some disaster, a train crash or perhaps a bomb; one who is filmed hunkered at the roadside in a grey blanket, their forehead cobwebbed with blood.
He wondered what he could do.
There was nothing. It had happened. He couldn't make it unhappen.
58
59
Neil Cross
At this impossible thought, he grabbed the edges of the sink.
There followed a moment of strange elation. Something within him seemed softly to illuminate, then to swell until it was passing through the confines of his skin. It left his body, and he was floating in the high corner of the bathroom, looking down on himself, double-imaged in the mirror. Then whatever it was began to contract, to fold about itself like a pair of wings; to draw back into his body. When it had gone, this fleeting, illogical rapture, he could not say what he'd felt, or what he'd become when, briefly, he had broken away from himself.
He showered in a hurry because he stank, but he didn't shave. He found a pair of jeans, another band T-shirt, and a plaid, fleece lined jacket. He bundled his ruined suit and his shoes and his cashmere pea coat into a carrier bag, and hunted round for his house keys. Then he went outside for the first time since becoming whatever he had become. He had to wait in the hallway until the panic had gone.
The noise and the air of Monday morning. He huddled in his jacket. Outside the flat were buses and cars and people. He passed through them. He walked half a mile. His hands were very cold, red knuckled and raw. He passed the twenty-four-hour garage and the corner shops. Then he turned into the local high street. He went into the charity shop next to the dry cleaners and handed over the carrier bag which contained the clothes he'd worn on Saturday night. Then he went to the newsagent next door.
The woman behind the counter was nervy and thin and tall. She suffered some mild form of mental illness - Nathan had stopped buying his newspapers there because sometimes she ranted at him, accusing the Council or the Royal Family or the police of having her under surveillance and controlling her thoughts. But she didn't scare him now.
He bought The Times, the Guardian, a Daily Mirror, the Sun and forty cigarettes. He folded the newspapers beneath his arm, left the shop and walked to the Moonshine Cafe.
An adult education college was being built across the road, and the cafe was full of builders in dirty jeans and work boots with exposed steel toecaps. Nathan ordered a cup of tea and a full English breakfast.
He
took an empty Formica table and opened the Mirror. He skipped through, looking for mention of Elise. Girls were missing, but none of them was her. He opened the Guardian, and skipped through that too. And the Sun and The Times.
Breakfast arrived. He pushed it around the plate and forced himself to take a mouthful of scrambled egg, which had the consistency of seafood. His body wouldn't accept it; he placed the fork on the edge of the plate. He sipped tea and tried to read the paper, but his eyes skipped over the words. He left two papers for the builders and stuffed the other two in the book-sized pocket of his jacket. He lit a cigarette. The nicotine nauseated him and made him giddy. He walked home.
