It was a hound with the features of a person, a male. A boy.
In the split second during which the thing looked his way, Tom made out its wide green eyes, its strangely hairless cheeks, its flaring nostrils and thin, curling lips. He was struck with a sort of nostalgic horror as the face of a young boy smiled at him from the body of a dog. Nothing he could have imagined would have scared him as much. He had not been this afraid since childhood.
And then it was away, bounding further into the school grounds, towards the dark classrooms. He tried to tell himself that what he had seen could not be real. That it was impossible. After all, he’d experienced but a single, snatched glimpse and not a prolonged look at the thing. He even managed to fool himself for a while, as he peeled away from the school railings and ran along in the middle of the road. Then, when finally he reached the brighter area where the road bisected Far Grove Way, he admitted all over again that what he had seen had been something from a nightmare, a nightmare that he should have remembered from long ago.
Even if his eyes had deceived him, it must have been his brain trying to tell him something, to warn him that he was close to making a big mistake. He shouldn’t be here, in this godforsaken wasteland of the Concrete Grove. In fact he should never come here again.
Helen was waiting for him back home. Behind him, at Lana’s flat, there could be only trouble. It was time to go home to his wife, and return to the life he had chosen many times, whenever he had been called upon to make the decision.
Running hard now, quickening his pace towards a full sprint, he tried to rid his mind of the shame and the guilt and the slow-burning rush of illicit pleasure. But no matter how fast he ran, and how far he went, Tom knew that he could never outrun himself.
CHAPTER FOUR
TOM WAS COLD when he arrived home. The temperature had dropped outside, and the skin of his legs was taut and goose-pimpled. He fumbled for his key in the tiny pocket at the rear of his shorts, his fingers unable to get a firm grasp on the Velcro flap. It took him a lot longer than it should, but at last he grasped the key and slipped it into the lock. The downstairs lights were off. Shadows swarmed around his feet, cast by the light that bled down the stairwell from his office.
“Tom?” Helen’s croaky voice drifted towards him from the ground floor. “Is that you, Tom?”
Who the fuck else would it be? He thought. Then he said: “Yes, it’s me. Sorry I’m late.” He closed the door and walked along the hallway, flicking on the kitchen lights as he entered the room. The spotlights seemed to snap on too quickly, too brightly, and he closed his eyes against the glare.
The breakfast dishes were still in the sink. This morning, feeling lazy and careless, he hadn’t even bothered to load the dishwasher.
“Tom?” Her wavering tone annoyed him, made the hairs on the back of his neck bristle like those of a cat just about to pounce. He closed his eyes again, silently counted to ten.
“Tom!” Impatient now, he could hear her manoeuvring her body in the bed in the other room. Her excessive weight made the timber frame creak.
“Just a minute, love. I’ll bring you some soup.” She always liked soup on a week night. Even when she was fit and healthy, in the days before the accident, she had enjoyed a bowl of cream of tomato or oxtail after coming in from work.
Tom moved quickly, opening the can and pouring its contents into a saucepan on the stove. He stirred the soup as it warmed up, and once it began to bubble slightly at the edges, he buttered two slices of bread. When the soup was ready he ladled it into a large bowl, and then placed the bowl and a plate containing the bread on a plastic tray. He added a spoon and a napkin, and then left the kitchen and walked through the house to her room.
Helen had occupied the reception room since she’d come home from hospital. At first it had been a matter of sleeping in there so that Tom could get some rest. The pain had kept her awake; she didn’t want to cause him any sleepless nights. Now, much to his relief, she stayed in there because she was too lazy to move. He couldn’t stand the thought of her joining him upstairs in the master bedroom — even if their sex life had not died along with her ability to walk, the idea of her massive body beside him was enough to bring a sour taste to the back of his throat. And she was so big these days that he stood no chance of carrying her up the stairs.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside. The room was dim — she rarely let him open the curtains, and the light she used to read by was fitted with an energy-saving bulb that never cast much light.
“Sorry I’m late, Helen. There was this girl, just a young lass, really. She’d fainted in the street and I had to stop and help her.”
Helen put down her book on the bed. She turned and peered at him over the lenses of her tiny reading glasses. Her jowls shuddered. “Really? Was she okay?”
He nodded. “Yes, she was fine. Just a bit shaken. I took her home to her… her parents. They said she suffers from fainting spells, some kind of seizures. But she was fine when I left.” He smiled. Why wasn’t he telling her everything? Parents? He felt guilty for hiding the fact that Hailey had only a mother — and an attractive one at that — but something held him back, made him give a sanitised account of events. Was it guilt? But why? It wasn’t as if he had done anything wrong or improper. He’d thought about it, yes, but thinking a thing and acting upon those thoughts were entirely different situations.
“Here,” he said, moving towards the bed with the tray balanced on his open palms. “I made your soup.”
“You never forget, do you? Never let me down?” Her smile was big and loose, like a mother smiling at her child. “I’m glad I have you to look after me, Tom. God knows what I’d do without you, you know.”
He set down the tray on her meaty thighs. “Why do you say that? Of course you have me. Why wouldn’t you?” Again, he felt that his own guilt was making him labour the point. She often did this, a sort of passive-aggressive emotional blackmail. He usually ignored it… but now, this evening, what had happened earlier was making him defensive. “Just eat your soup. I have crusty bread; it’s your favourite.”
Her small, spongy hand grasped the spoon and she shuffled up against the headboard, trying to settle into a more comfortable position. When she raised the spoon to her mouth some of the tomato soup spilled down the front of her nightdress. For a moment, Tom thought it looked like blood. She tipped the spoon and drank the soup, closing her eyes to savour the taste.
Tom felt like picking up the bowl and pouring the scalding contents over her head, onto her face… and then he felt ashamed, disgusted with himself for resenting Helen in this way. It wasn’t her fault she’d been partially paralysed, not really. Yes, she had chosen to be there, with That Man, but nothing in life was ever so clear cut that you could fairly apportion blame. Nobody was innocent; everyone was guilty of something. It would be unfair of him to place the whole of the blame onto Helen’s shoulders.
Maybe so, he thought. But it’s her fault that she won’t even get her fat arse out of bed.
Again, he felt a deep sense of shame; a depth charge of emotion detonated in his stomach. The accident — why did they all keep calling it that, even now, especially now? — had left deep mental trauma, like a trench in her soul. Helen was afraid to go out, and she was equally as frightened to remain inside. Her whole life was lived in a state of fear now, and there was very little anyone could do to change that. All Tom could do, all he could really manage, was to collect her prescription drugs once a week and feed and care for her every day, offering her support when she needed it. Washing her armpits, emptying her colostomy bag. Keeping her human. Whatever their marriage had once been, it wasn’t the same now. Everything had changed that day ten years ago, when That Man had crashed the car in which she was a passenger and she’d lost all feeling from the waist down. That day, that terrible, terrible day, was effectively when their love had died.