“I’ll call in later, Susan,” he said.
“Don’t!” I cried. “I never want to see you again!”
“He won’t come back, you know.”
“I don’t care! I don’t want to see him, and I don’t want to see you! Now get out of here!”
“I’ll call you when you’ve calmed down.”
“I won’t answer. Just get to hell out of here, and don’t come back!”
“I’m going to fix Grey …”
“Get out!” I ran from the bed, opened the door and shoved him through, pushing it against his weight and then bolting it. He banged on the door and called something to me, but I didn’t listen. I lay on the bed and pressed the pillow over my ears. I was utterly sick of everything, blaming myself, blaming you, blaming Niall.
A long time later, when I dressed and went out for a walk, I discovered I had become visible.
I had grown used to being visible with you, and I was accustomed to the feeling, but now I was alone. There was no other cloud near me from which I could draw strength. My visibility had become my normal state. It felt odd, like new clothes.
When I was back in my room, I tried to make myself invisible. It was more difficult than I would have believed, a strain to sustain it. As soon as I relaxed, I slipped into visibility again.
By the time evening came I knew that everything I had sought was now mine. It seemed ironical, but deserved, that I had had to lose you to gain it.
That was the day of the car bomb, but I did not hear about it for some time. I had no television and read no newspapers, and anyway my interior preoccupations were flooding everything. I worked at my drawing board until late into the night.
I went into the West End the next day to visit the studio, and learned from newspaper placards and headlines that a bomb had been set off outside a police station in northwest London. Six people had been killed, and several more had been seriously injured. It did not occur to me that you might have been one of them.
I saw nothing of Niall for almost a week, then one day he turned up at the house. He rang the bell at the Street door, and when I went out I found him in a subdued, defensive mood. I felt no shock at seeing him.
He said, “I won’t come in, Susan. I wanted to see how you are.”
“I’m fine. You can come in for a few minutes if you like.”
“No. I was just passing.” He was acting guiltily, avoiding my eyes. “I suppose you’ve heard the news?”
I shook my head. “I don’t read the papers.”
“I thought not. You’d better read this one.” He passed me a copy of The Times, rolled up tightly. I started to unfurl it. “Don’t look at it now,” Niall said. “Read it inside.”
I said, “Is it about Richard?”
“You’ll see what it is. And there’s something else.
You said you wanted to read what I’ve been writing. I wrote this for you—I don’t want it back.”
He passed over a manila envelope sealed with transparent tape.
“What’s happened to Richard?” I said, the newspaper already half open.
“It’s all in there,” Niall said, and turned and walked quickly away.
I opened the newspaper as I stood in the doorway, and by reading the main story I found out at last about the car bomb, and what had happened to you. Most of the news was about the police hunt for the terrorists, with new security measures being introduced, but I learned that you and the other injured people were in intensive care, under police protection. It turned out that one of the terrorists had been injured in the blast, and the others had issued a macabre warning that “witnesses” would be eliminated. Even the hospital in which you were being treated was kept a secret.
I bought every newspaper I could find, and followed the story for as long as it was prominent. You were the worst injured of all the victims, and the last to be removed from the danger list. I know that if I had really tried I would have been allowed to visit you earlier, but I sincerely believed that seeing me might have done you more harm than good.
In the end only one newspaper carried occasional bulletins about your progress, following what they called your “story.” From this paper I learned that you had been moved to a convalescent hospital, and at long last I plucked up the courage to try to see you. I telephoned the newspaper, and they arranged everything.
As soon as I saw you, that morning with the reporter, the first thing I noticed was that you had lost your glamour.
This is what happened to you, Richard, in the weeks before the car bomb. Do you now remember?
Part VI
I
Three weeks after returning to London, Richard Grey was offered filming work in Liverpool. It was to be a fourday assignment, operating the camera for a television documentary about urban renewal in the wake of the Toxteth riots. It would be physically demanding on him, but the unit would be working with full union crew, including camera assistants, and after an hour’s indecision he accepted. He caught the train to Liverpool the following day.
It temporarily solved the problem of what to do. He felt frustrated by the continuing stiffness in his body, and was restless to be working again. Anyway, his money was at last beginning to run low. There was talk of compensation being paid by the Home Office, and correspondence was going to and fro between a solicitor and his MP, but it was not something he was counting on.
Until the film work came along, Grey had been hobbling through his life, learning again how to go shopping, to the movies, to the pub. Everything had to be taken slowly. Once a week he went to the physiotherapy department at Whittington Hospital to be manipulated and exercised; he was improving, but it was very gradual. He walked as much as he could, because although immediately afterward he felt tired and uncomfortable, the longterm effect was a steady easing of his left hip. The stairs outside his apartment were a constant obstacle, but he found he could manage. Driving was difficult, because using the clutch pedal put a strain on his hip. What he needed was a car with automatic transmission, but this would have to wait until more money arrived.
Leaving London would mean a break from Sue, something which a few weeks before he would never have dreamed he wanted, but which now seemed essential. He had to have time away from her to think about other things, clear his mind a little.
Grey wished fervently that she had turned out to be in reality what she had appeared to be at first: a girlfriend from his lost weeks with whom a relationship could be continued, renewed by the freshness of rediscovery. When he first met her he had found her oddness intriguing and winsome, hinting at layers of buried complexity which patience would release.
He still found her physically attractive, she interested him, and great tenderness existed. As his body healed, their physical relationship became more exciting and satisfying. But the difference was that she said she loved him, whereas in his innermost self Grey knew he did not feel the same. He liked her and he wanted to know her better and more intimately, but he did not love her. He was emotionally dependent on her, missed her when they were apart, felt protective of her, but still he did not love her.
The problem was their past together.