LITMIR.BIZ

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hesitated, chewing the corner of her lip. He hated the fear of him that clearly showed in her face. At last she said, ‘Wait a minute.’

      The door closed and he heard the bolt slide. He waited in the dark hallway. When she opened it again she was dressed in jeans and a jersey. The door was on the chain.

      ‘Well?’

      ‘I can’t talk about anything through this gap.’

      ‘You think I’m going to let you back in here again?’

      ‘Please,’ he begged. He could see her struggle with herself for a moment. Then reluctantly she unchained the door, holding it just wide enough for him to edge past. It was trusting of her, he thought.

      He remembered the room. Only it looked ordinary and smaller now, with things like knickers and tights hanging on a little plastic line by the sink, and a portable television on the table. She had been watching Brookside.

      ‘I heard what happened,’ she said. ‘The police told Zoe and me, and we read some more in the paper. It was today, wasn’t it? The funeral?’

      ‘Yeah. It was.’

      Neither of them knew what to say next. Cat looked younger and more vulnerable than she had done in the club and afterwards. Her eyelashes were colourless without mascara and there were tiny crusts of chapped skin on the full curve of her lower lip. Her damp hair hung in coils against her neck.

      To break the silence Rob made a stab at saying something. Anything. ‘How long have you lived in this place, then?’

      She hunched her shoulders, expressing indifference. ‘Bit of a dump, isn’t it? I was living with my boyfriend from home, we had a flat together. I came up here from Croydon, you know, to be with him while he was at college. Got a job word processing in the estate agent’s in Galloway Street. And then I find out what a loser he is, don’t I? So I got this place and moved out again. I didn’t fancy going back home. It’s all right here. Friendlier than London, isn’t it?’ She stood with her head on one side, appraising him. ‘You want a coffee?’

      ‘All right. Thanks. I thought I hadn’t seen you around before.’

      ‘Know everyone, do you?’ She was taunting him but he answered her straight.

      ‘It feels like it. I’ve been stuck here all my life. What do you expect?’

      Cat took two mugs out of the sink and spooned Nescafé into them. ‘Why don’t you go somewhere else, if you don’t like it? What work do you do?’

      ‘Carpentry. Kitchens, cupboards. Not building site work. It’s word of mouth and local contacts, mostly. Hard to start up from nothing in a new place.’

      She was looking more closely at him. Then, to his surprise, she reached out and touched the empty sleeve of his leather jacket.

      ‘What happened to your arm? Was it in the crash?’

      ‘Yes. Cracked elbow.’

      ‘Why did you come here?’

      Rob began haphazardly, ‘I’m going to be charged with causing death by driving under the influence of drink. Lucky I hadn’t had any of Danny’s spliff or anything else that night, or I’d be up for that as well. I could get five years as it is.’

      Her mouth crimped at the corners, showing her concern.

      ‘What do you want with me?’

      ‘I want to know what you told the police. About what happened before we left here.’

      She turned away, her head bent.

      ‘Listen.’ He stopped himself from reaching out to shake her. ‘You know what happened. What did you tell the police? Am I going to be done for assault, as well?’

      He regurgitated the events as he recalled them, brutally pushing the facts at her, wanting her confirmation that, yes, that was how it had been.

      Not looking at him, Cat said, ‘Zoe doesn’t remember it the same way as you.’

      ‘It wasn’t me who did anything,’ Rob insisted. At the same time he felt that he was betraying Danny.

      Cat nodded. ‘I suppose not.’

      Rob picked up his coffee and drank it, hardly noticing that it was much too hot. He was glad that he had come here, to make even this rudimentary contact with another human being. In the two weeks since the accident the rhythms of his old life had faltered and then ceased altogether.

      He had not worked because his van had been taken apart by the police vehicle examiner and was in any case too seriously damaged to be repaired, and because his tools had been held by the police, although the coroner’s officer had now informed him that he could reclaim them, and because his arm was in plaster. And more than for any of these reasons, he had not worked because he could not bring himself to think of the steady everyday business of constructing dovetail joints and fitting sweet brass hinges, and planing and sanding wholesome wood until it was satin smooth after the destruction he was now guilty of.

      He had telephoned the woman whose kitchen was half completed and told her abruptly that he would not be coming back. She had not been pleased. He had not earned any money for more than two weeks, and as a self-employed carpenter Rob did not have very much saved.

      As the days after the accident went by his regular contacts with people grew less frequent. At the beginning he had seen one or two of his friends, but, whatever they said, he believed or imagined that Danny’s death had shocked them and altered the easiness of their friendship. He took to walking long distances to pubs he had never visited before, and sitting over a single drink, listening to the mutter of the television over the bar. He went to the gym and worked obsessively on his legs. A sweaty cloth twisted round his neck supported his plastered arm while he did set after set of leg and calf raises. He avoided conversations with the other weightlifters, and the sight of his own reflection in the wall mirrors. In the last day or so he had stayed in his room, speaking only to shop assistants when he went out to buy something.

      Then there had been the funeral, and Danny’s mother had seen him sitting there, and had quickly looked away again.

      Cat’s face had changed. He half believed she might have followed and understood something of what he was thinking. She hesitated, then said, ‘It’s awful for you. But it was an accident.’

      It was not as bad for him as it was for Danny.

      Rob came up against the same truth everywhere. This was what had happened, this was what he had done. There was a death in his past a long way back before this one and he knew that old endless finality. The obscene, shameful and mocking irrevocability of someone being alive one minute and dead and gone the next.

      That was what he thought about when he looked at Danny’s mother.

      ‘I can’t remember what happened. Not the actual moments before,’ he said vaguely.

      ‘You didn’t seem that trashed. He was, I knew that.’

      ‘Danny. His name was Danny.’

      ‘I know.’

      ‘Say it then.’

      ‘Danny.’ Her mouth stretched at the corners making the word.

      He wanted to get away now, before this girl worked out too much about him. ‘I’ve got to go,’ Rob said, standing up.

      As he reached the door Cat said, ‘You can come back some time, if you want. You know, if you need to talk.’

      ‘Yeah, I might do.’

      James came out of the living room carrying Sock wrapped in a blanket. Jess stretched over to kiss the baby’s head and breathed in the sweaty damp scent of his hair and scalp. Then she stood back to let James carry him on out to the car.

      ‘Will you be all right?’ Lizzie asked, repeating herself.

      ‘Yes,

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