Tom stared down at the ground. A soft wind ruffled his hair. He looked back up again, and there were tears in his eyes. “My wife. Helen. You know about her, of course, that she’s a paraplegic. She lost the use of her lower body, from the waist down, when the car her lover was driving crashed.”
“Yes. You told me all about it.” She moved closer to him. A group of teenagers ran by on the other side of the bridge, laughing and throwing coins into the river. Several cars and a bus drove towards the Newcastle side of the river, thumping over the steel joints in the tarmac decking.
“She did this to me.” He turned his face so that she could see clearly the bruising. “Last night, she… changed. She became something monstrous and she attacked me. She hasn’t been out of that fucking bed in years, but last night she managed to get out and drag herself after me through the house. I fell. She grabbed me and tried to smother me…” he turned away again, ashamed.
The sunlight flashed, making Lana close her eyes for a second. Then she couldn’t stop blinking. When he had mentioned monsters, she couldn’t fail to think of Hailey: and of the things she’d been carrying inside her. The monsters — if that’s what they truly were — she had delivered. Along with these thoughts came ones about Monty Bright. The deformities on his body; the screaming faces trapped in his flesh.
“We can help each other, you and me. If we stick together and use the strength we seem to have when we’re side by side.” She took a step back. More cars passed them on the roadside. A young couple strolled by, hand in hand; the man stared at Tom, as if he could see something strange about him. Then he looked away. “Last night I went to see Monty Bright. He and his men… they did things to me. Raped me.”
Tom made a sound deep in his throat: half sob, half moan.
“I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought they’d leave us alone if I went there, and did what they wanted. But it didn’t work out that way.” She kept her eyes on his battered face, refusing to look away in shame. Even though she’d kept quiet about what had happened with Hailey last night, she felt that she was being as honest with Tom as she ever had with anyone. She realised now that she’d placed her heart in his hands. All he need do was to squeeze it tight, or open his fingers and let it fall. Either way, it would hurt; but one way would cause far less pain than the other.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” His mouth was a slit in his face. His eyes were now hard and empty.
“I want you to tell me that it doesn’t make any difference. That you still want me, and still want me to want you. I want you to say that you’ll help me. We’ll help each other.”
Another bus chugged by. Raised voices were carried to them from the riverbank. To Lana, the moment felt as if it might shatter like glass at any minute. “Of course I still want you. I mean, you’re the only person I know who’s as fucked up as I am.”
It was a feeble joke — desperate, really — but in that moment she loved him for even trying to lift the mood.
They walked along the side of the bridge, holding hands and looking up through the steelwork at the wedges of bright sky visible between the girders. Traffic grew heavier and as they approached the south side they began to see people making their way across the arching eye of the Millennium footbridge towards the old Baltic Flour Mill. There must be some kind of exhibition in the new gallery; the redevelopment of the building had raised the profile of the area and brought with it a fresh interest in the local art scene.
“I know a little place where we can have coffee. It’s nothing flash, just a greasy spoon café where the taxi drivers go.” Tom led her sharp right off the end of the bridge, heading down Bottle Bank, where there was a row of old shop fronts, most of them boarded over. “It’s just down here.”
A few taxis were parked at the kerb on the narrow cobbled street that led back down to the river’s edge. Set amid the timber-boarded frontages were two premises that had not succumbed to financial ruin. One of them was a taxi rank and the other was a tiny café with no name and badly whitewashed windows.
They went inside and sat down at a low table. The place was gloomy; not much light could get in around the patches of white on the window glass. If she twisted her head and leaned across the table, Lana could catch a glimpse of the street outside. “Nice place,” she said. “How many Michelin stars does it have?”
Tom laughed. “I used to do a lot of business round here, when these were all going concerns. I have a few clients on Gateshead High Street, too. Whenever I’m in the area I come in here for a morning coffee and a read of the papers. Nobody bothers you here. They all want to be left alone.”
There were three other customers in the café. A skinny middle-aged man with a facial twitch sat near the toilet door reading a battered paperback novel, and two other men sat in silence drinking milky tea from large mugs.
“They’re all taxi drivers,” said Tom. “Nobody else even knows this place exists.”
“Except you.” She reached across the table and stroked the back of his hand.
“Yeah, except me.” He stood and went to the counter, where he ordered two black coffees from a shapeless woman in a long grey sweater and grubby jeans who appeared from a door to one side. She went back through the door and emerged less than a minute later with two mugs filled with what looked like tar.
“You expect me to drink that?” She took the cup Tom offered her as he sat back down, peering into the contents and pretending to be disgusted.
“Just think yourself lucky I didn’t ask for it with milk. At least black it’s drinkable. Just about.” Tom added sugar to his mug from a chipped bowl on the table. The end of the teaspoon was frosted with an off-white crust and the discoloured clusters in the bowl looked like singed crystal meth.
Someone turned on a radio — probably the saggy woman who’d served them coffee — and a droning traffic report filled the empty spaces in the room.
“I have to ask you something.” Lana curled her fingers around the mug. The coffee was hot, but she liked the way it made her skin hurt. “Something important.”
Tom took a sip of his drink and put down his mug. “I’m listening.” His swollen face looked better in the dim light. Not so damaged.
“I plan to-,” she licked her lips. “I plan to kill Monty Bright. It’s the only way out of this I can see now. I have to kill him.” Just saying the words in daylight, even at such a low volume, forced Lana to fully consider their true meaning. It didn’t sound so bad, she thought. Not in terms of the chaos invading her life. What was a little murder to add to the mix, especially when the proposed victim was no longer even human? “I need to know if you’re willing to help me do that.”
Tom stared at her. His face went pale beneath the fresh contusions. He swallowed. The radio droned on. “If you’d said this to me a few days ago I would’ve run a mile. But now — after everything that’s happened — I’m still here. I’m still listening.”
Lana paused for breath, took a drink of the scalding coffee, just to drive the moment home, and then continued. “He isn’t a man. I think he used to be, a long time ago, but he isn’t now. Not anymore. Prolonged exposure to whatever’s festering in the Grove has changed him into something else.” She examined Tom’s face for signs of doubt, or possibly a hint that he might stand up and leave.