‘I don’t know. I just…’
‘Hossein,’ she says, ‘if you were in Tehran and something like this happened to you, what would you think?’
‘It’s not the same.’
‘Christ,’ she says, and tosses her head. ‘I love the way you think this country is some kind of fucking safe haven. There are bad people here too, you know. Really bad people. They’re not the ones in charge so much, but they’re still bad people. This isn’t some stalker thing, Hossein. It’s not – you know – get a restraining order and he’ll go away. It’s… he’s a bad man. A really bad man. People die around him, and nobody does anything because they’re either too afraid or they belong to him. No. No, I’m not doing it. I’m not. He’s enjoying this. He’s loving every minute. Every time he calls me on the phone, I can hear it in his voice, how much he’s liking it, and every time I change my phone he finds the number again. He doesn’t let go. I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t. I’d give my right arm to be free of this, but I don’t think I ever will be.’
Hossein stretches in the sunshine and shows her a sliver of flat brown belly, a neat line of hair pointing down into his crotch. She is suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of lust that almost knocks her sideways. It’s the fear, she thinks. Just being made to think about this and I’m all over adrenalin. I’m mistaking adrenalin for arousal. People do it all the time. He looks over her shoulder and smiles at Vesta, coming up the steps with the tea mugs.
‘Well, think about it,’ he says. ‘For your mother.’
‘She wasn’t a very good mother,’ says Collette, doubtfully.
‘Still,’ says Hossein. ‘You’ll never have another.’
Chapter Forty-One
His love is forged in tears. They spring from his eyes as they struggle for that one final breath, pour down his cheeks while his hands are still about their necks. As he watches the light die out, the surprise, the fear, the pain melt away into nothingness, he feels his chest tighten as though his heart will break. For a moment, as the tears flood down, he will find it hard to swallow. He will take his hands from them and press them to his face, bend double and let the sorrow out.
‘I’m sorry,’ he tells her. ‘I’m sorry, oh, I’m so sorry.’
I’m out of control, he thinks. I no longer have any control over it – over this – this love. It’s got too much for me, now. The loneliness is too extreme. I thought my ladies would heal me. That it would stop this longing, this ache, this empty hole in me if they could never leave.
But it’s all backwards, this love of his. It starts the right way, every time. The way it starts for everyone. A chance meeting, a flash of attraction. The thinking about her when she’s not there, the slow build of intrigue, the fire of passion. But after that it’s all wrong. After the passion comes the mourning, and then the contentment, the relationship, the moments of easy intimacy. And then, creeping over him, day by day, the indifference. He feels nothing for Marianne now. He looks at her and he can barely remember the devotion that filled him just a few weeks ago. She’s just another withered, wizened disappointment, and him with the gnawing emptiness that grows and grows each day.
He looks at the God Girl and feels another rush of sorrow. My God, he thinks, I never even found out what your name was. I’m out of control. I am. If I’m going to do this, if I’m going to make these… sacrifices for love, the very least I owe them, the very least I owe myself, is the tenderness of anticipation. I’ve never been one of those people, going out to discotheques in search of thrills, collecting and throwing women away as though they were last night’s garbage. When I mate, I want it to be for life. I always have. And now look.
She struggled, far more than Marianne or Nikki did. Not a surprise, really, for his girls before have known him. Have at least known him well enough to have let their guard down, sit down in a chair, be relaxed and unready. The God Girl was torn between the need to evangelise and the awareness that she had come to a flat alone with a stranger. She didn’t sit, didn’t turn her back on him, but stood against the draining board, her Bible in her hand, and talked about Jesus until he wanted to howl at the moon. In the end he had to ask her to draw a map of where her church was, just to get her to take his eye off him for a moment and turn her back. And when he pounced, she was bending over the table, just feet between her and the door, and she fought and fought. Got off a scream, as well. First time anyone’s managed that.
Like riding a bucking bronco, he thinks, remembering her strength. Surprisingly strong, for one so slight. With a plastic bag over her head and both his hands clamped tight to hold it shut, she threw him from side to side as though she were made of springs.
Never gentle, he thinks. It’s never gentle. I wish it were. I wish there were some way to help them quietly off to sleep. That their transformation was a moment of quiet blue peace.
Her mouth is open. Thomas wipes his eyes and peels the bag away, gazes into the bloodshot eyes. Hazel, he thinks. That’s the colour they should have been, not this gooseberry green that goes so badly with the red of petechial haemorrhaging. Her blue veins, already so close to the surface, have bulged upwards, arterial roadmaps scrawled across her lovely features. Her nose, already a little overlarge for his particular taste, is, he realises, broken.
She’s spoiled. Quite spoiled. All that suffering, all that sadness, and he’s come out with nothing, just a useless ugly thing, a bonfire Guy, no good to any man.
He drops her to the floor and sits down heavily in his chair, next to her powder-blue leatherette handbag with its spill of spectacles and prayer pamphlets. Puts his face in his hands and begins to sob.
Chapter Forty-Two
This time, she doesn’t see him until they’re halfway home.
They’re strap-hanging on the tube, face-to-face, and Hossein’s presence lulls her. More than lulls her. Now she’s trusted him with her safety, she feels opened-up to him. She knows it’s foolish, knows it’s almost wrong, but she wants to look at him all the time and has to drag her gaze away, is intensely aware of his presence, the scent of him nearby. They’re bending their heads close together to hear each other’s voice over the rattle of the carriage, when the train jerks as it passes over some signals, throwing her back for a moment as the man standing in the doorway to the next carriage slips briefly into the light of the window.
It’s Malik. Definitely, really, Malik. No mistakes, no imagining.
Her mouth falls open mid-laugh and the blood drains from her face. She ducks back, out of sight and doesn’t know why she does so, for there can be only one reason why he is on this train.
‘What?’
She turns her back to the doorway. ‘Don’t look,’ she says.
He frowns. ‘At what?’
‘He’s here. In the next carriage.’
Instinctively he starts to turn, then stops himself. ‘Are you sure?’
‘No, I’m making it up.’
‘Don’t…’
She leans her back against the glass barrier. Feels him stand closer, the heat coming off his body. They glance up and down the carriage, look to see who else is with them. Mid-afternoon, this far down the Northern Line, there are only a couple of other passengers: solitary readers, no use in trouble.
‘We mustn’t get off,’ she says. They’re almost at Balham, where they should change for the overland. Long, empty outer-suburb platforms and a slow escalator ride to the High Road.
He nods, his eyes wide. Puts a hand out as the train begins to brake and holds on to her arm, protectively. ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘Just breathe.’
She realises, when he says it, that she has stopped breathing altogether. Takes a huge gasp in and hears it jitter out again. Pull yourself together, Collette. You won’t get out of this by stuffing your fists in your mouth and screaming.