To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

north in Cheston. They’d stolen a few bits and pieces including, for some reason, a spare carpet. They’d also destroyed my TV rather than nick it, and broken a lot of crockery – hence these peculiar cups and saucers, which I’d borrowed, I blithely told him, from Ian at 76. Painting the walls of the front room bright red was pretty warped I had to admit.

“Yeah, and they ain’t done a half bad job,” Duran agreed. “Looks professional – apart from the mess. But I’ve heard of worse.”

I said I hadn’t had a chance to try to clear up yet. It would undoubtedly mean replacing the sofa and chair covers, even the carpet and curtains. Funny the piano wasn’t messy, he said. I said this had struck me too. If he noticed the pale painted words on the ceiling in my study he said nothing. He asked if I’d called the police. I told him I had, but got nowhere. He nodded in gloomy belief.

I liked Duran. I couldn’t rid myself of the urge to get him off the premises, as if some poisonous gas cloud lay in wait inside the house, and no other must be exposed to it. Also an intense need remained to be on my own. Normally he didn’t get on my nerves, but this time, once he left, I broke down. I snivelled for about a quarter of an hour, and then I slept, inside my newly bolted and barred fortress. I dreamed my mother was in hospital and I had had to go to the lavatory, and coming back into the room I found I stood there, a grown man and naked in front of her, but she only said, “Don’t worry, Roy, dear. I’m dying. It won’t matter.”

I’d checked the call register on Sej’s mobile.

All calls were deleted, except my pair, of course. I myself for some reason deleted these. Then I smashed it to pieces. On the morning of the third day I made myself go out. The security of the house was now impressive. Even the alarm worked. Beyond the fortress however, might Sej still lurk?

My common sense told me he would be in no fit state to do anything of the sort. The little I’d seen of the pasting Mr C and his ‘colleague’ had given Sej assured me he’d be out of action for some while. After further ‘work’ I doubted he’d get far at all for two or three weeks. And he wouldn’t come back. No. Even he, even he wouldn’t come back for more.

I kept seeing him in my mind, when awake, the way the blows had gone into him – this always recaptured in slow-motion, whereas at the time the whole sequence had been blurred by speed – and the way he was when they’d finished. Which was like a very life-like dummy, lifeless. Even when I had drugged him he hadn’t looked this way. The man in the baseball cap was correct. There was no visible blood. They hadn’t marked his face. It was hard and yet, conversely easy, to put his two personas together – the lifeless bundle of limbs and hair and face, the dominating tyrant AB, who had made me strip and take a bath in front of him.

And that was strange to me, too.

Because this last act I had had to perform seemed to have unlocked so much implacable horror inside me, and still I couldn’t analyse why. I wasn’t some virgin Victorian girl. It was nothing, that thing I’d had to do, nothing.

And yet. It had been the pivot.

On that, my bid for freedom had turned.

My excursion to the high street and back went almost without event. I bought some food and various other necessities. I even bought some mugs and plates from the expensive shop which sold them, plain white. (The ordinariness of the high street both reassured and disturbed me. My ‘adventure’ must have gone on in some other parallel world. Not a ruffle on the surface here. Irrelevant).

As I returned up Old Church Lane, I was feeling a dull shaky elation. Then I saw George Fulton was out, slowly mowing his front lawn.

What would he do, I wondered, when he saw me? Turn and run like last time, pointing something sharp in my direction for good measure?

Besides, what had he seen of my paint-and-carpet ‘vandal break-in’?

Better take the bull by the horns.

“Hello, George.”

He glanced up, switched off the mower and eyed me carefully. Carefully too he said, “Hello, Roy. Feeling better?”

I’d previously made a decision on how to handle this.

“Yes, I’m fine now. He got in a state and blew it out of proportion.”

“Your son.”

“He really isn’t my son, George. I used to know his mother a long time ago. I hadn’t seen him for years.”

“No,” said George doubtfully, “I didn’t think we’d seen him, Vita and I, not before. He said something about that. I can’t remember what…” George paused and regarded the mower handle. “Why did you ask me to get the police, though? You did, you know. And your – your young friend told me you insisted he smash all your plates.”

So that was how Sej had covered his actions in the back garden. My fault again.

Nor could I in turn incriminate Sej. Not now.

“Yes, George, I did, I’m afraid. I’ll tell you the facts. I’ve had to take something for years for blood pressure.” (George nodded inadvertently. I knew, so did he have to). “This new stuff the doctor put me on can have a very funny effect on the brain. The dose was wrong too. Frankly I’d like to clobber the man, but in the end it’s been sorted out. I’m fine now, and I apologise for worrying you.”

George’s eyes looked nervous. He said, very fast, “But what are you taking? It’s not Captopril, is it? Only I take that, you know, have done for years – I mean, you hear these things don’t you, and I’m not as young as I