Bitterhall, Helen McClory [red queen free ebook TXT] 📗

and skin before he was called away by whatever called to him. Yes, that much.

We just left the room. We drank, we talked, I learned that his mother lived alone, sold done-up furniture online, and that his best friend was called Mark and lived in the most fabulous house – they’d known each other since childhood. He’d had a cat that had died and his mother said it haunted her for a year and a day. He didn’t believe in ghosts. Of course, I said. He told me more about the job at the university copying objects of infinite preciousness, which was at the planning and implementation stage, but also about some books he liked, which diverged wildly from the canon of the venerably old. I sat next to him. I listened to the scent of him. I felt his strangely soft voice. I searched out his dashing eyes and wondered if behind the shell a boldness lay. I did not wonder, then, why I wanted him to have that quality inside. Outside of our conversation the house bustled with other bodies who drank and laughed and began to depart. The last guest went, bar me. Daniel and I went into the kitchen and made food. There came Tom, stumbling. I got up on the counter, kissed him deeply, his arms got up around me. I saw Daniel watching us.

‘Goodnight, Daniel,’ said Tom.

The shining end of a sentence.

Captain Panic

We went to see a superhero film. Tom’s idea. This was our first proper going-out date. He was on time at the cinema, driving up in the dusky light in a silver car I realised later was Badr’s. I’d got the tickets, he’d get the meal at the fast food place afterwards. He seemed excited by the prospect of the film like a small kid might be. Faffed between what sweet to get then ordered the biggest bucket of popcorn and mashed it into his face by the handful before we even sat down, while I had roasted almonds and water. There is too much sugar in our lives anyway, and not always of our volition.

In the coolish dark we sat watching adverts with our heads pressed against the seatbacks from the push of the giant screen. I wondered if we’d hold hands like tweens. The film started, and the big explosions were so loud I had to cover my ears. The scene was a humanitarian disaster, but what was really awful was that one superhero didn’t trust another one and was rude. Who cares if I’d seen this kind of thing a dozen times already; I pulled out my hipflask and unscrewed the top. The contents smelled of the warm tinny whisky that had been in there since the year before, the last time I’d gone to see a superhero film. That time with a bunch of us from the bubble tea shop. I sloshed a bit down and resumed watching.

It was probably due to the clamour that I didn’t notice Tom’s behaviour until about two hours in when the inevitable flirtations of lead hero and lady hero got really egregious. I glanced aside to make a joke to him and saw he was staring down the rows at an empty gap. It was unusual right enough given the film had just come out and should have been packed at that showing. Someone had booked and not shown, I guessed. I glanced over at Tom. Bored? His eyes, in the flashes between car crashes, were glazy and rolling. I leaned to his ear.

‘You all right?’ I whispered. He didn’t answer me, or move his gaze. It was warm in there. I wondered if he was getting panicked by the environment and needed some air. I took his arm.

‘Let’s get a refill,’ I said, pointing to the popcorn. He rose obediently and we went into the foyer.

‘I should have expected it,’ he said, wiping his eyes.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked again. He didn’t seem to be responding to my words, but to his own.

‘I knew it. Where was it – another film I think. He went into the cinema and he saw a ghost there too. Not a ghost. A demon. An it—’

‘Here,’ I said, leading him towards the empty concessions area. I bought a bottle of water and broke the seal and put it up to his mouth, and he drank it down greedily.

‘Sorry, I—’ he said.

‘Feeling any better?’

‘God, how embarrassing,’ he said, putting the bottle up to his forehead, ‘I just overheated, I think.’ He straightened his back, ‘Shall we go back in then? Up for that?’

As if it had been me who had felt like shit. He even rubbed my arm. It took all I had not to snap at him. But what would I have said? Admit your weakness, man! Or, it’s okay, for fuck’s sake, you felt rubbish and we needed to leave and I got you out! All things that don’t require an angry tone of voice to say.

Swallowing Tree

You too might contemplate why I was with him, and you’d know to ask it aside from the obvious ‘just look at him’ response. So it was, Tom in the morning as the alarm went off pulling the covers off me to sleep a little longer. Under an umbrella that tilted to reveal the Tomness of him waiting for me outside of the library. Tom sullen when I didn’t give him the right response. Tom at my place pulling on his jeans, then his tee-shirt, then leather jacket. His back to me the whole time, the texture of different fabrics and skin. But also, everything around Tom. The emptiness of my bedroom after he’d left. The solid feel of it right before I brought him in again. The maleness of his room. His white cat, wandering around or watching with her beautiful hypnotic eyes. The candle I set alight while I studied, cedar scented, that I’d never light with Tom around. Without him, Effie and Anna with