Her tone mellowed when she realized who it was. She tried to pin him down to a date for a drink, but he avoided the issue. They’d seen each other twice since she’d left him for John Ayer; once while he’d been living with Chris. Chris had been very relaxed about the meetings, but Richard hadn’t. On both occasions he and Susan had spent a good deal of time talking about Ayer; the first time focusing on why Susan had left Richard for him, the second on how unhappy she was about the fact that Ayer had in turn left her without even saying goodbye. Either she hadn’t realized how much the conversations would hurt Richard, or she hadn’t even thought about it. Most likely she had just taken comfort from talking to him in the way she always had.
‘You’re avoiding it, aren’t you,’ Susan said, eventually.
‘What?’
‘Naming a day. Why?’
‘I’m not,’ he protested, feebly. ‘Just, busy, you know. I don’t want to say a date and then have to cancel.’
‘I really want to see you,’ she said. ‘I miss you.’
Don’t say that, thought Richard miserably. Please don’t say that.
‘And there’s something else,’ she added. ‘It was a year today when. ’
‘When what?’ Richard asked, confused. They’d split up about eighteen months ago.
Susan took an audibly deep breath. ‘The last time I saw John,’ she said, and finally Richard understood.
That afternoon he took a walk to kill time, trolling up and down the surrounding streets, trying to find something to like. He discovered another corner store nearby, but it didn’t stock Parma ham either. Little dusty bags of fuses hung behind the counter, and the plastic strips of the cold cabinet were completely opaque. A little further afield he found a local video store, but he’d seen every thriller they had, most of them more than once. The storekeeper seemed to stare at him as he left, as if wondering what he was doing there.
After a while he simply walked, not looking for anything. Slab-faced fat women clumped by, screaming at children already getting into method for their five minutes of fame on CrimeWatch UK. Pipe-cleaner men stalked the streets in brown trousers and zip-up jackets, heads fizzing with racing results. The pavements seemed unnaturally grey, as if waiting for a second coat of reality, and hard green leaves spiralled down to join brown ashes already fallen.
And yet as he started to head back towards Kingsley Road he noticed a small dog standing on a corner, different to the one he’d seen before. White with a black head and lolling tongue, the dog stood still and looked at him, big brown eyes rolling with good humour. It didn’t bark, but merely panted, ready to play some game he didn’t know.
Richard stared at the dog, suddenly sensing that some other life was possible here, that he was occluding something from himself. The dog skittered on the spot slightly, keeping his eyes on Richard, and then abruptly sat down. Ready to wait. Ready to still be there.
Richard looked at him a little longer and then set off for the Tube station. He used the public phone there to leave a message at Kingsley Road, telling Chris he’d gone out unexpectedly and might be back late.
At eleven he left the George and walked down Belsize Avenue. He didn’t know how important the precise time was, and he couldn’t actually remember it, but it felt right. Earlier in the evening he had walked past the old flat, establishing that the ‘For Let’ sign was still outside. Probably the landlord had jacked the rent up so high he couldn’t find any takers.
During the hours he had spent in the pub he had checked the cuts only twice. Then he had ignored them, his only concession being to roll the sleeve of his shirt down to hide what was now a deep gash on his forearm. When he looked at himself in the mirror of the gents his face seemed pale; whether from the lighting or blood loss he didn’t know. As he could now push his fingers deep enough into the slash on his chest to feel his sternum he suspected it was probably the latter. When he used the toilet he did so with his eyes closed. He didn’t want to know what it looked like down there: the sensation of his fingers on ragged and sliced flesh was more than enough. The pain in his side had continued to condense, and was now restricted to a rough circle four inches in diameter.
It was time to go.
He slowed as he approached the flat, trying to time it so that he drew outside when there was no one else in sight. As he waited he marvelled quietly at how different the sounds were to those in Kentish Town. There was no shouting, no roar of maniac traffic or young bloods looking for damage. All you could hear was distant laughter, the sound of people having dinner, braving the cold and sitting outside Café Pasta or the Pizza Express. This area was different, and it wasn’t his home any more. As he realized that, it was with relief. It was time to say goodbye.
When the street was empty he walked quietly along the side of the building to the wall. Only about six feet tall, it held a gate through to the garden. Both sets of keys had been yielded, but Richard knew from experience that he could climb over. More than once he or Susan had forgotten their keys on the way out to get drunk and he’d had to let them back in this way.
He jumped up, arms extended, and grabbed the top of the wall. His side tore at him, but he ignored it and scrabbled up. Without pausing he slid over the top and dropped silently on to the other side, leaving a few slithers of blood behind. The window to the kitchen was there in the wall, dark and cold. Chris had left a dishcloth neatly folded over the tap in the sink. Other than that the room looked as if it had been moulded in an alien’s mind. Richard turned away and walked out into the garden.
He limped towards the centre, trying to recall how it had gone. In some ways he could remember everything; in others it was as if it had never happened to him, was just a secondhand tale told by someone else. A phone call to an office number he’d copied from Susan’s filofax before she left. An agreement to meet for a drink, on a night Richard knew she’d be out of town. Two men, meeting to sort things out in a gentlemanly fashion.
The stalks of Susan’s abandoned plants nodded suddenly in a faint breeze, and an eddy of leaves chased each other slowly around the walls. Richard glanced towards the living-room window. Inside it was empty, a couple of pieces of furniture stark against walls painted with dark triangular shadows. It was too dark to see, and he was too far away, but he knew the dust was gone. Even that little part had been sucked up and buried away.
He felt a strange sensation on his forearm, and looked down in time to see the gash there disappearing, from bottom to top, from finish to start. It went quickly, as quickly as it had been made. He turned to look at the verdant patch of grass, expecting to see it move, but it was still. Then he felt a warm sensation in his crotch, and realized it too would soon be whole. He had hacked at him there long after he knew Ayer was dead; hacked symbolically and pointlessly until the penis which had rootled and snuffled into Susan had been reduced to a scrap of offal.
The leaves moved again, faster, and the garden grew darker as if some huge cloud had moved into position overhead. It was now difficult to see as far as the end wall of the garden, and when he heard the distant sounds from there Richard realized the ground was not going to open up. No, first the wound in his chest, the fatal wound, would disappear. Then the cuts on his stomach, and the nicks on his hands from where Ayer had resisted, trying to be angry but so scared he had pissed his designer jeans. Finally the pain in his side would go; the first pain, the pain caused by Richard’s initial vicious kick after he had pushed his drunken rival over. A spasm of hate, flashes of violence, wipe pans of memory.