“Kate?”
It was a man’s voice, familiar but not clive’s, and she stiffened for the instant it took to place it. “It’s Paul.”
She put her head against the wall. Her heart thumped with anticlimax. “Are you still there?” he asked.
Kate straightened, wearily. “What do you want?”
“Nothing. I just thought I’d phone, see how you are — “
“I’ve got nothing to say to you.” She was already lowering the phone.
“No, wait, wait, wait, wait! Please!”
It was that please that stopped her. She hesitated, then raised the phone again. “All right. I’m waiting.”
She heard him breathing. “Look, I’m — I know you don’t want to talk to me, and I can’t blame you. I just phoned because, well, because — oh, shit, look, I’m trying to say I’m sorry.”
Kate was too surprised to answer. Paul waited a moment, obviously hoping she would.
“Kate? I said I’m sorry.”
There was none of the arrogance she’d come to expect in his voice. Even so, she half expected some catch. “You’re sorry?”
It was all she could think of to say.
“Yeah, I know it’s a bit late in the day, but … I just wanted to tell you.”
Curious, now, she tried to detect some hint that he was acting. But he spoke without any of his usual bombast. “What’s brought this on?”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, lately, and …” He gave an uneasy laugh. “All right, it was getting arrested that did it. Arrested again, I should say.”
Kate tensed for the accusation. It didn’t come.
“It was … well, it was no joke.” He sounded sober, still shaken by it. “The first time I got arrested, after I’d put the brick through your window, I was too pissed off to think about what was happening. I blamed you. You know what I’m like, it’s always somebody else’s fault, never mine.”
His tone was thinly jocular. He cleared his throat. “I was pissed off this time as well. But I was too drunk to get any sense out of, so they put me in a holding cell to sober up. I fell asleep, and when I woke up I felt like death. It stank of piss and puke, and I could hear all these drunks in the other cells, shouting and singing. Then I heard a couple of coppers coming down the corridor, talking about this drunk they’d picked up for a burglary, but it didn’t dawn on me until they started unlocking my cell that it was me. Even then, I just thought, ‘Fucking coppers, who do they think they are?’ And then I sat up, and saw I’d pissed myself and been sick all down my front.”
He broke off. Kate heard him swallow.
“Anyway, in the end they traced the cabby who’d taken me home. He remembered me because I’d argued with him and then puked in his cab.” He gave a humourless laugh. “Good job, as it turned out. Once they’d spoken to him, they gave me my shoes and belt back and let me go. Trouble was, when I got outside I realised I hadn’t taken my wallet when they’d arrested me, and I hadn’t got a cent to get home with. So I stood there, covered in puke and piss, and I thought, ‘What the fuck am I doing? I’m thirty-seven, I’ve lost my job, I’ve managed to piss off nearly everybody I know, and I’ve got to walk through the streets stinking like a wino.’ And I just started crying. If I’d had any money on me, I’d have probably bought something and got pissed again, but all I could do was walk home. By the time I got back I was freezing and stone cold sober, and I thought, ‘That’s it,’ and binned all the bottles in the house before I’d got time to think about it. Emptied them down the sink first so I couldn’t change my mind. Then I got the phone book out and phoned Alcoholics Anonymous.”
There was a dramatic pause. Kate wondered if he had rehearsed the ending, expecting a fanfare. But she was immediately ashamed of her cynicism.
“So how often have you been?” she asked, feeling obliged to say something.
“More than half a dozen times now.”
If he resented the anticlimax, there was no sign of it. Kate felt churlish.
“You go as often as you need, wherever there’s a meeting,” he went on. “I still need to go pretty often. There’re twelve steps they say you’ve got to take. The main one is accepting that you’ve got a problem. That’s supposed to be the hardest, that and apologising to people you’ve been a bastard to. Like you. But I’ve finally managed it. And I’ve not had a drink since.”
There was a faint note of pleading now, of wanting his accomplishment to be recognised. Kate relented. “It can’t have been easy.”
“Hardest thing I’ve ever done.” He sounded proud. “Next to this phone call, that is. But I wanted to tell you. I know I gave you a hard time. Not just recently. Before, as well.”
That wasn’t just drink! you’re still making excuses! She felt a flash of the old anger, but it quickly burned itself out.
“It’s a long time ago. Let’s just forget about it.”
“No, I mean it. I know what you think about me, and you’re right. I was a bastard to you. I wish I could blame it all on the booze, but I can’t.”
She tried to find a suitable response. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t believe him. Just that none of it seemed to matter now.
“Okay,” she said, and then, because she knew he expected more, added, “I’m glad.”
She could almost hear him trying to gauge if she meant it. He seemed to decide that she did. “I came to the office this afternoon to tell you, but I couldn’t bring myself to go in. I didn’t think I’d be welcome, anyway. Not after last time.” Kate made no comment to that.
“I saw your friend outside,” he added.
The change of tack threw her. Lucy? she thought.
“You know,” Paul continued. “The guy you were with at the restaurant.”
Understanding came in a rush.
“Outside?” she said, stupidly.
“On the other side of the road. He was in a doorway. I thought he must be waiting for you.”
“He was there this afternoon?”
“Yeah, about four o’clock, but — “
“What was he doing?”
“Nothing, he was just standing there. I couldn’t place who he was at first. In fact, I thought he was a dosser to be honest. He looked like he should have been selling the Big Issue.”
Kate didn’t laugh.
“Yeah, well, he was in a bit of a state, anyway. I wondered about going over and apologising for … well, you know. But then he saw me, and gave me this look, and I thought, ‘Perhaps not’. I’d got myself into enough trouble, and if he’d had a go nobody would’ve believed I hadn’t started it.”
A faintly aggrieved note had entered his tone, but Kate barely noticed. “Did he do anything?”
“Not while I was there, but like I say, I didn’t stay. I just got as far as your office and turned back. He was still staring at me when I left. Look, are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
The words wouldn’t come. “The uh … the police are looking for him.”
Distantly, she heard Paul exclaim, asking why, and her own voice answering. There was a roaring in her ears. When it passed Paul was shouting at her.
“Kate? Kate, you still there?”
“… Yes.”
“So this guy’s stalking you, then?”
The effort to explain was too much. “Sort of.”
“Christ! I wish I’d known!”
The familiar aggression was back. “Are you by yourself?”
“Yes, but — “
“I’ll come over.”
It was a statement. Kate felt herself teeter on the edge of acceptance. “No, I don’t think …”
“I’ll be there in about an hour,” he said.
“Paul …”
“Don’t worry. If I see him again you won’t have any more trouble. Listen, have you eaten? I can stop off for — “
“I said no!”
There was a silence. “I only thought — ” Paul began.
“No,” Kate checked herself. She tried to relax her tensed muscles. “I know. But I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Her anger was directed at herself for being tempted. She waited for him to argue.
“No, I expect you’re right,” he said, after a pause. He gave a strained laugh. “I can’t really blame you, I suppose. Still, the offer stands. If you need any help, just shout.”
The thank you lodged unspoken in Kate’s throat.
“Well, that’s all, then,” Paul said. He seemed to search for something else to say. “Look after yourself.”
She nodded, then remembered that he couldn’t see her. “I will.”
The connection remained for a few seconds, then the line went dead. Kate put down the phone, telling herself she had no cause to feel bad. In her distraction she even forgot what he’d said about Ellis.
She jumped at a sudden clatter from the lounge. She hurried through.
Dougal leapt down from the shelf where she’d left her plate. It lay on the floor with the carrots and remains of the fish scattered around it. The baked potato sat on the carpet like a dead tortoise.
Kate went to fetch a cloth.