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

Put on prim, businesslike tone. Wry smile. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said – mumbled – got up. ‘I’m messing with you,’ I said. ‘Anyway – I have to be going.’ I was walking away, ‘Thanks for the party—’

I left the paper. I must have been shocked then to leave it, to leave the only proof behind. Blank or full of writing – I don’t know. Do you know? What was written and what wasn’t? But I had to leave. I saw a meeting with Mark and my bosses, all sucking on their teeth. I saw my humiliation, everything falling to pieces. I was already at the front door.

‘But. I mean—hold up, come back.’ Mark said, ‘Or you just need—’

The path through seemed to shrink. There were more people than I thought, and their voices rose up around me. Until I got to the door and slammed it tight.

Company

A stick falls in a room made of plywood on the edge of a precipice, a gorge over the sea. I heard the seals slab themselves up on the beach rocks. Can you hear them? They make strange calls. I sigh. I have been drinking in a party in a city that doesn’t exist and I don’t know how far out I am in the fields. The car is a way back on the main road, probably. It smells like the sea but also I smell, of cigarettes. Sweat, a bit. Not too bad. This bothy is the place to die in, very chic and echoing – and lonely – fucking beautiful. Even the stove is the perfect accessory, polished but someone before me used it, I can see old ashes in it, which makes me feel. Reassured. It’s real. How better could you get? James is with me, that’s true too. Oh, I know, sorry. Sometimes he crouches on his haunches. Sometimes he looks at me so sternly I want to laugh. James is the groom. James is the master. His book is far off – I left his confession, can you believe that, how could I? Quite a state. No choice or else shown up – but the miles contract accordion-style and I hear a music that I will not hear for real again until a few years from now, at a party, at another party, when I am well. After the party, when I creep downstairs and see everyone sleeping curled up on pillows on the floor and against the sofa. Whose house will it be? The two Jameses asleep in each other’s arms. Me alone against a damp wooden wall trying not to be a part. I slide my foot forward and look at nothing and you. This is another life, the right one. But even there we make poor sticks, we curl up and go soft.

Deep North

I drove up all night when I was still way over the limit. I am fucking ashamed, of course I am, don’t even ask. Until I got to this place – following nothing, following a line crawling on a blank screen – our end of the world which in this small country seems to be every edge, even the inside parts are precipitous. You can turn around twice and find yourself about to fall off this country.

I sit here by the fire. I’m trying to concentrate, get the edges of myself – to know – holding them somehow. My phone was in my pocket. It wasn’t the source of the music. Nothing was but I was. I stare into the flames and let the focus of my eyes go; there’s the stables – approaching – night this time. As if I could just lean forward into it. I replay my entrance. Night this time – I approach the stables – there is a horse under me, a man sagged over in front of me, like he’s drunk. I hold him in place with one arm – into the stable and there is the other James and I send him away. And I turn to my man. Some nothing scooped up off the dark country lane. He begs me. I say, you don’t want something true at last? He looks away. And then the pit of my stomach. You can find yourself doing something strange and awful so easily. And then the knife, and into his neck. I see it again. I breathe too hard. I see it again; the glint of blood by lantern light. Horses stamping and beginning to make noise at the fright. Everything slips. Clattering horses. A low wailing. All such sounds, a din rising over me. My hands on the wheel slippery from fear, sweat. I’ve never been held so strongly as I was by you. And other things that run dark over my hands.

At some point there was a harsh sound and I shook my head. I had the phone in my hand and it was calling – Badr.

‘Hi Badr,’ I said when he answered.

‘Tom! Oh, man. We’ve been looking for you, ay? Whereabouts are you?’

‘Oh I’m up north a bit. Far north coast.’ I looked up through a rainspattered windshield and saw a stove with the warm eye of a fire winking in it.

‘That is a way away, man, phew,’ Badr said, sounding impressed. ‘So what you doing there, you all right? Daniel’s been going nuts. Órla too. Bit of a stress.’

‘Sorry about all the fuss. I went for a drive, and then the road was so nice, I just – kept going. You know how it is. Just one of those times when you just need a holiday from your life.’ I looked at the grime under my nails and felt my nasty breath. I shivered in my clothes. They were fine but they weren’t clean. Nothing was, except the space around my phone: clean, small, safe.

‘When I need a holiday from my life I just go to the cinema, see an action film,’ Badr said. ‘But naw. I