being questioned was acting so oddly, but something about the size of the covered form drew her towards it. Her assumed status as a doctor cleared a passage for her through the crowd, and the police made no move to interfere as she bent to pull back the corner of the blanket. The boy’s head had been broken open and the face smeared like a wet painting, but there was no doubt as to his identity. Steven Bradley’s brief flight was over.
13
She turned away, towards the traffic squeezing slowly past the scene of the accident. A bus was inching its way through the gap between the delivery van in the middle of the road and the line of parked cars opposite. As it passed her, Aileen stepped on to the open platform, went inside and sat down on one of the bench seats. Once clear of the obstacle, the bus accelerated away. The other passengers — a mother and her two children, an old man with a small dog, two pale working-class girls and an Asian youth in a two-tone tracksuit — all turned to face the front again. Overhead, boots pounded on the upper deck. ‘We’re com-in’! We’re com-in’!’ voices chanted rhythmically.
‘Fares, please.’
‘Stamford Brook,’ Aileen replied automatically.
‘Don’t go there.’ The conductor was an elderly black, his voice and gestures robotic with exhaustion. ‘Change in Acton. Fifty pence.’
Aileen handed him the coins.
‘I couldn’t do anything about it,’ she said. ‘He ran straight out in front of me.’
The drumming overhead intensified.
‘
The conductor handed her the ticket.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Aileen explained. ‘That’s why I’ve stopped blaming myself, you see.’
One of the working girls turned to stare at her. Then she whispered something to her friend and they both tittered. There was a clatter of boots on the stairs and two youths in T-shirts and skin-tight jeans appeared, waving open cans of lager. One of them had a Scottish flag draped around his shoulders. He waved his fist at the conductor.
‘Hey, you black jobbie, did you no’ hear the bell?’
Aileen took hold of his arm.
‘You’re going to die,’ she told him. ‘I promise you that.’
A can of McEwan’s wrapped in knuckles ornamented with swastikas and death’s heads swayed back and forth in the air a few inches from Aileen’s face.
‘You’s barmy, woman,’ he said, backing away.
The gob of white foam had pushed up through the keyhole-shaped opening in the can. It made Aileen think of the cuckoo-spittle that used to appear suddenly in spring. The long grasses by the stream were all spattered with the stuff. She would lie there for hours, hidden from view, sharing a sinful cigarette with her friend Liz. The clouds scudded along overhead, and in the windswept space between a lark was ecstatically soloing. Her mother used to tell a story about children from London who were evacuated to the Cotswolds during the war. ‘One day, one of the boys came home in great excitement. “There’s a little sparrer stuck up there!” he said. “He can’t get up and he can’t get down, and he ain’t half making a fuss about it!” The little Cockney had never seen a skylark before in his life, you see!’
When Aileen looked again, the youths had gone. At the next stop, the two girls got up and walked towards the platform with short rapid strides, hobbled at the knee by their tight acrylic skirts. As they passed Aileen they broke into suppressed giggles that turned into howls of laughter as soon as they were off the bus. From time to time the bus stopped and people got on or off. Eventually Aileen stood up.
‘Not this one,’ warned the conductor.
‘It’s all right,’ she replied. ‘I know my way.’
Once off the bus, however, the streets seemed unfamiliar. Still, if she kept walking she would get home sooner or later. Occasionally a dog barked in one of the houses as she passed, or she overheard music or the abrupt roar of recorded laughter, or saw lights left on in an empty room. Of course, all these phenomena could have been simulated by devices such as the one that Douglas had installed.
As it began to get dark, she found herself in a long avenue built on a slight curve. The houses had windows consisting of eight panes set in a curved bay, and whenever a car approached, its headlights caught the panes one after the other, making the windows flash like warning beacons. But a few hundred yards further on, everything became familiar again, and the only puzzle was how it could have previously looked so strange. Aileen supposed it was due to her having taken an unfamiliar route. Even a place you know well can look odd if approached from an unfamiliar direction. She didn’t think about it much, preoccupied with her enjoyment at having got home safely. In spite of all that had happened, she was looking forward immensely to getting inside and shutting the door behind her, to eating and drinking and watching TV. Life goes on, she told herself. That’s all it does. It goes on, until it stops.
As she approached the front door, searching through her handbag for her keys, the phone started ringing inside. It would probably be Douglas, ringing to say that he had arrived safely. How nice of him! She felt very warm about Douglas sometimes, particularly when he wasn’t there. Her hand blindly rooted about in the bag, turning up her purse and diary, various items of make-up, two letters and a packet of tissues, but no keys. The ringing broke off with a truncated blip. She imagined Douglas setting down the receiver and turning away, disappointed or angry or even worried. As for the keys, she’d left them in the door of the Mini, of course.
Driving with Raymond in the mountains north of Los Angeles, Aileen had noticed that almost every bend in the road was marked by a black sign with one or more death’s heads painted on it. Raymond had explained that each skull marked the scene of a fatal accident. But when her taxi reached the spot where Steven Bradley had died a few hours earlier, there was no sign that anything of any interest or importance had ever taken place there. Aileen paid the driver and walked around the corner to the place where she had left the Mini. It wasn’t there. With it had gone the keys to her house, whose address was marked on several of the letters and other documents she had left on the back seat. That meant it wouldn’t be safe to go home, but before the implications of this had sunk in she saw Steven. He came at her like a wolf, swooping across the street straight in front of a car that never swerved an inch to avoid him, just as though he wasn’t there. Aileen screamed at him again and again, trying to scare him off, until people appeared at the windows of the nearby houses to see what was the matter.
She was in luck: the taxi that had brought her to the corner was still there, parked at the kerb, the driver counting his takings. At first he said he was off duty, but when Aileen told him where she wanted to go he smirked and nodded her into the back. The taxi dropped her at the side of the main block, by the sign ‘WARNING HAZCHEM’. The night staff were very sympathetic about the loss of her car and keys. They provided tea and biscuits and said of course she could spend the night. In the morning, Aileen knew, everything would be all right again. But first there was the night to get through. Before going to bed she paid a visit to the dispensary and took some Valium. Mindful of what had happened last time, she restricted herself to the manufacturer’s suggested dose, even though her room was in the basement and the window had bars on it.
In other respects, the experience was not dissimilar. She awoke in broad daylight, in a hospital. No one mentioned miracles this time, but of course miracles only happen once. Most striking of all, she’d had the flying dream again, and this time it lingered tantalizingly on the fringes of her consciousness. The merest nudge, she felt, would be enough to bring it back into focus. But her waking consciousness was too gross and clumsy an instrument, and a few moments later it was impossible to believe that the experience hadn’t all been an illusion. She washed and dressed, drank several cups of tea, thanked the staff and set out to walk to the tube. It was a warm and sunny day, and her mood had changed too. In fact a miracle of sorts
Her mood was briefly marred by the discovery, when she reached the tube station, that she had left her handbag behind at the hospital. Evidently some of the Valium must still be spicing her chemical soup, making her dopey and inattentive. For a moment she thought of going back to get it, but it was a long way through an
