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

all,’ he said. We pulled apart, and he laughed at something. We went in and ate what is always the right amount of pasta, too much, strung with tangy cheese and glistening with butter.

Tom remained out in the night.

Minto

Daniel and I fell asleep on the sofa, him on one side, me on the other, our feet touching under a thrown coat. I was woken by sounds in the house, a key turning in the door. But it wasn’t Tom. I got up to investigate. In the hallway was a man, tall and hunched, with white hair he was sorting with one hand as with the other he rummaged in the post cubby and pulled out a stack of letters.

‘Are you Minto?’ I asked.

He turned around. A smile slowly materialised on his face.

Though it was dark I noticed yellow teeth, and blue, protruding eyes.

‘Hello! The very same,’ he said in a shoogly, theatrical whisper, before turning back around and working on his post again. He made a discard pile and a keep pile. The discard pile went straight in the bin, and the keep went in the pocket of his oversized grey coat, possibly forever. He was humming. He went into the kitchen – I couldn’t imagine him ever having been in that room somehow. I followed him in.

‘Ah, are you one of the lodgers?’ he said. He had a kind of refined, fluted voice that wavered between posh Scottish and terribly English. Sounded like a schoolmaster from a fifties film – Alistair Sim, that was it.

‘No. I just. Go out with one.’ I said.

‘Lucky them, whichever one it is,’ he said. He went to the fridge and took out a container of food and put it on the table. A sticker said ‘Badr’s turmeric chicken’ on the front, with a date.

‘Care to join me? The man’s a very fine cook.’

I fetched cutlery.

‘No plates,’ he said, holding up a hand.

We sat and picked through the sticky, spicy chicken with our forks, saying nothing. Minto continued to hum as he chomped. Distracted or wishing to appear distracted. After a while he stopped, fork mid-air.

‘Do you know what’s happening with the blond one?’

‘Tom?’

‘Yes, the blond one. I have noticed he is a little odd. Now, if it’s habitual oddness or sudden onset queerness, I cannot quite say. Just that to me he seems a little . . . lost in the fog.’ Before I could answer, he forged on.

‘Now, we’re all a little foggy now and then. God knows I’ve forgotten to eat for days at a time, or I’ve not paid a bill – somehow it always gets done, very good they are here about that. But when someone is so off that it starts to unbalance the house, that’s when I. Well. I go out on a walk and try to think of a solution.’

‘That’s what you were doing? You were on a walk.’

‘Midnight stroll. I went to the Pentland hills.’

‘That’s quite far for a walk on one night.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said, ‘it depends how time works for you. For some, like me in my old age, it is slower than for others. And you find you can get a lot more done when it is slow, though it can irk those who are fast fast fast.’

I went to the sink and washed my fork.

‘Do sit, girl. Sit sit. Have more of that. There, good. Sometimes, my days last for weeks at a time. I only must remember to keep some supplies to hand, or risk getting fatigued as the day stretches on ahead of me.’

‘I like that,’ I said, ‘though I don’t quite believe you’re entirely serious.’

‘Oh? Well—’ Minto paused. ‘If I had to take an educated guess at what has happened to your gentleman friend,’ he said, ‘I’d say he is suffering from a kind of disruption.’

‘Disruption of time?’

‘Ah you’re a quick one,’ he said. He ambled to the sink and washed his own fork under the cold tap and poured himself a glass of water.

‘Where do you think Tom is now, in his disrupted time?’

Minto stopped and stared in thought. His eyes were a paler blue than I’d thought, the colour of scintillations of light on water.

‘Oh, I haven’t shaved in too long,’ he said, rubbing his grizzled jowls. ‘Now, Tom, I’d say he’s probably lost in another century entirely.’

‘You’ve seen him with the book then?’

Minto looked at me. Man did not blink much. Owl head and a slight smile, ‘Ah, what book?’ he said.

‘The diary. He’s been reading the diary of an nineteenth-century man.’

‘Well, that’ll be it then,’ Minto said. ‘Look for him there.’

And with shuffling steps he left the room. And there came shortly after the sound of his door closing shut.

The Revenant

I lay dozing in Tom’s bed, and it was Tom that woke me, flushing the toilet and coming in at seven in the morning. I checked my phone for the time.

‘Where’ve you been?’ I asked in a carefully groggy voice.

‘Out,’ he said with a sheen of sweat on his face. It was too little to go on.

‘Okay. Oh, cold feet.’ I said, and shifted to make room. He set down his jeans and tee-shirt, smelling of raw earth and of himself. It smelled like he had been lying on the ground. He had pieces of leaf in his hair. Many of them. I didn’t dare to try and remove them.

At ten I woke up and got out of bed. The party was that night. Hallowe’en. I opened the curtains on the crisp-looking day, and looked back at the room. Mrs Boobs was awake and staring at me. We sat in vigil over Tom. His face soft with sleep. People can look so perfect while they sleep, I thought, so tender and wonderful. All that life held in safe hands. No worry or pain. Unless they are dreaming. But Tom’s eyes were still. And was he the only occupant of that body, and had he been all the time he was away in this world of