"Darling can you call asap? This is longer than your usual silent spells though probably not your longest. I suspect that you've either met a girl or discovered a new pub that lets you sleep over and I probably shouldn't worry. Even so, call soon please. Mum."
There were two more from old friends asking how things were and a few from the advertising agencies that gave me the most regular work but none reminding me of deadlines.
All the same I fired off all the work I'd done to them by email, files attached and their contents summarised, along with an invoice for both jobs. I'd normally wait until they were approved before asking for the cash but sitting here cocooned in the darkness, sweat still streaming off me, stripped to my boxers, it felt like I needed to consolidate and prepare for change.
I sent a brief, breezy note to my mother dismissing her concerns and citing my hectic London lifestyle. In truth it was nothing like that which played out in her own mind from the charming rural idyll she inhabited. The village had an ancient coaching inn with a vast beer garden, the vicarage was three doors down from my mother's home, the cricket club backing onto the long sloping garden. I liked to pop back to visit but it seemed hard to find the time somehow and the house was so empty since Dad passed. Knocked down by a bus. Ironic way to go for an insurance salesman who made such good use of that very prospect to sell his wares.
She envisioned a packed diary for me; early mornings on cramped tubes, meetings and lunches, a crowded office, desk buried in papers and Starbucks cups, pub after work, girls, friends and girlfriends filling the evenings, nightclubs and nightbuses, black cabs and red bank statements.
I'd have loved that, but it rarely got halfway to her mental image. There were occasional early mornings and packed tubes of course, but that was no different from anyone in this town and indeed probably far less often than most. The meetings were duller than she could picture and usually over Skype and the lunches more Pret than Ivy. Hardly glamorous.
I had a few friends scattered both sides of the river though I seemed to see them so rarely despite the ease of meeting up. There were a few girls, fewer girlfriends.
Fewer still judging by the messages on my Facebook account. My mobile had vanished that night of course, and so I had not been able to take a call even if I had wanted to. But Issy had sent me three messages via the social networking site. One publicly viewable, the other two private, the final one brusque and bitter. That was over then. No need to respond, it wouldn't help anyone.
Sad I suppose. She was fun, and very sexy, but a burgeoning relationship needed the right conditions to flourish and I was currently struggling to fight down a constant sense of panic just because I wasn't hiding in the cupboard. Lord knows what she'd think of the new decor in here. Blinds are so last month. It’s all about refuse sacks now darling.
To friends a one liner. "Mental at the moment. Got a lot going on." There was a tear on my cheek when I pressed the send button. Replying to Mum with such a blatant lie about my wellbeing had been hard to do. Ignoring Issy felt not just cruel to her but went also against my instincts, like pouring away water when thirsty. But that last one cut me off from everyone. I had wanted to send them all very different messages, wanted to see them, hear them speak to me, have them listen.
What I would say to them though I could not begin to think but I felt sure that I would fail to articulate any of it clearly for them and they would struggle hard to understand what they heard.
I dropped my head to the table then, just to try to gather myself before the stitches popped at the seams again and I came apart. There was still sweat coming off me, and the tears mixed on my arm as I rested.
The sleep came fast, the dreams slower but no different than before in their fury and intensity. The youths I had encountered earlier came to me and were this time crushed and ripped at my own hands, eviscerated. Flayed and broken and endlessly protesting, begging.
I saw Issy too, naked and flushed, aroused and demanding of me. We made love many times, in many ways, increasingly urgent, frenzied. Increasingly violent. My hands first slid over her skin, touched and squeezed. Then more and more it was not enough and I pulled and gripped, pinched and pulled. Her screams and her cries were louder and only ever ecstatic, even in their torment.
So I was still crying when I woke again because I could not stand any more but the dream had me captive so long and would not let me go. Shreds of memory lingered, the sight of her soft body wet and dark, the blood slick and smudged and coming from nowhere but everywhere.
I blinked it away, held back a dry retch and sat up again. The sun was still up and I could see that the tape had come away from the window by my desk and a triangle of late-day sunshine lay on the skin of my arm. Red and raw, it smelled like a seared steak.
*
That was what made me remember what food was. Not once since leaving the hospital had it occurred to me that I had not prepared a meal for myself. But that image of cooked meat conjured by the scarlet sunburn on my forearm triggered something and I was half tempted to ignore and just head for the fridge.
I dealt with it first though, found some cream, applied some gauze and tape. It was incredibly tender to the touch and painful too. I must have been sitting there with it in the sun for hours.
The fridge was a sorry sight after so long and past the limp lettuce and sagging tomatoes I found eggs, only a little out of date, and cheese and set about preparing a large omelette to sate this rising hunger.
Quickly though, I found that I could muster no enthusiasm for that, before even an egg was broken so sifted instead through the freezer where the pickings were richer.
My stomach churned now, empty and cramping and nothing at all in this kitchen was the remotest bit appealing. I wondered for a moment how long it had been since I had eaten but surmised that the hospital treatment would have kept me nourished and my early check out and strange adjustment over the passing nights had suppressed my appetite.
Still it was a strange thing to be unable to reconcile this ravening hunger with any of the food on offer. I went back to the fridge again, retrieved the eggs and cheese, resolved to eat something regardless of this odd indifference that lingered even as the butter slithered and frothed in the pan and I beat eggs and grated cheddar.
I chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed and though the cheese was strong and though I added tabasco halfway through, the dish seemed impenetrably bland and unsatisfying.
Not so bland on the way out though. My vomit was bitter and harsh, burning my throat and nose, my eyes watering and my chest heaving and heaving.
The kitchen tiles swam in sick, hot and thick and foul. Half chewed egg dropped from my chin, pattered into the mess at my feet and all I could do was cling grimly on to the sideboard as I retched, retched and heaved, nostrils afire, throat closing and cramped, eyes like they would burst from their sockets.
It passed slowly, easing off until the muscles in my chest stopped spasming but simply burned now with the effort of breathing. I was covered in sweat again and had slid down to the floor on my backside, legs out in front of me, back against a kitchen unit and tears from my eyes ran down into the mucus from my nose, the vomit on my chin.
I would shower soon, mop the floor and renege on my vow not to sleep. But for now, I would sit here letting it all subside, close my eyes and be glad that the thick mess in my nose blocked out any of the stench and I would think again about those figures in the darkness by the tree.
Chapter 8
Blake Roth stands statue still at the top of the road looking down toward the spot where it happened. He has retraced steps from the bus stop where he saw the man with the dark suit and the drunken stumble, to this spot of pavement where he followed him into the shadows of the tree lined street.
Roth knows that something happened here but like before, the memory sticks at the point where the face of his attacker is revealed and goes blank and there is a gap in his recall here, like a physical thin
g. He can sense its dimensions, gauge the size of it, but not its form or content.
He is at once desperate to know what it is that he cannot remember and terrified of it. There is malice lurking there, a lingering dread and a ferocious power and Roth stands a hundred yards from the spot it happened and has to muster the conviction to go and stand there, as if the final piece of memory may physically inhabit that small space.
It does not, cannot, but Roth feels something as he approaches and his neck and shoulders are tight and tensed when he finally stops and looks around the shaded patch of pavement.
Here in the gravelled driveway of a house is where he had laid the man out and where he himself had landed was but a few feet away. The driveway was canopied by a large tree, trimmed and cut into shape so that the lower branches gave clearance enough for a car or for a person to pass without ducking down.
Roth stood beneath it and peered up into the branches above, to where the trunk appeared to split in two half way up and diverge.
He sees nothing there nor in the windows of the house behind with their tasteful white shutters and expensively restored original sash window frames. This house, with its clean sandblasted brickwork and large SUV parked up, contained wealth and for a minute Roth pondered on breaking in and taking something for himself. But that was not what he was here for. It was an answer he wanted. A clue.
Crouching at the spot on the gravel where his victim had fallen, Roth closes his eyes and clears his mind. He sees again the man go down under Roth's first heavy blow to the kidneys, again he moves in closer to take the wallet, watch and phone. Again he is interrupted and again the sharp pain in the neck as though he has been struck there by something firm and sharp, or rather that something has landed there.
He looks up again into the branches and leaves above him and begins to wonder. Dense though the foliage there is, it does not hide the several thick, strong branches. Branches that can take some weight.
A movement, smooth and swift in the darkness catches Roth's eye and he stands again, focusing in on the spot where the shadows shifted and finding that he does not need to squint to see. His eyes can discern shapes and forms amid the gloom and just as he thinks that he's lost it, he sees it again and with a swiftness that would amaze anyone were they watching, is up into those branches and claiming his prey.
The cat is limp in his hand, Roth's thick fingers too tight on its fragile neck and it takes a moment to register that he has done this.
He drops to the ground again, the gravel crunching and shifting beneath his feet, and is away at a trot. The urgency in his pace suggests not so much that he is trying to get away, but that he has somewhere he means to go.
*
It lies there on the sideboard. It does not move, will not move again of course, but he stares at it all the same, waiting, feeling its accusation and reproach. Or at least he imagines that is what he feels.
But he feels something else very strongly. An urgent, churning sense of what must be done, what he wants to do, however unnatural.
First he strokes the cat, running fingers through the soft fur and feeling that there is the very faintest of heartbeats in its chest, a discovery which sharpens Roth's feeling and spurs him into action.
In the bathroom he finds a razor and scissors in the kitchen drawer. He lays the cat on its back, front legs falling to either side, paws up like a too-late surrender.
Snipping away at the fur Roth clears a patch at the animal's throat and then takes up the razor, wets it, and begins to shave. Carefully scraping across the skin he reveals a soft square of flesh, smooth and grey-pink and still warm.
This he does until the whole throat area is clear of fur and the skin is exposed from beneath the chin down to the top of the chest.
He rinses the scissors and tosses the razor into the rubbish and turns back to stare at the prone cat which looks the more vulnerable for his handiwork.
For a long time Roth does nothing. His head is bowed, his eyes closed and he is engaged in a mental battle that he knows that he is going to lose, but must fight regardless.
When he succumbs, he does so with resignation, snatching the body of the cat in both hands and placing his lips against that shaven skin. And then he bites.
*
When the dawn arrives in Roth's home he will take again to sleeping beneath his bed all covered in blankets and will endure again the scorching heat that the day brings, but this time he will sleep as soundly and as deeply as he has ever done. No dreams will come to him this time, dreams that terrify and plague him each time he closes his eyes since the incident and which cannot be escaped.
This time, there will only be peace and it will all be, he will come to realise, because of the thing he does next.
The cat is limp and shrunken and will soon stiffen and Roth finds a thin plastic bag to dump the dead animal in. He has no garden, five stories up, but there are several large bins at the foot of the stairs for all the residents to use and he heads there first to dispose of what remains of someone's pet.
That done, his next job is somehow less daunting to him than the previous one. What he did to the cat was at once both difficult but inevitable. Roth had tried to resist but knew that he would fail to. This time his resistance does not exist. He has stepped over a line now and not only can he not look back, he does not want to. This next act will complete a cycle, but it will begin a new one and though Roth cannot know what will be, he senses it and he embraces it.
She has lived next door to him since he moved in and he has watched her age and slow with the years. Now she rarely ventures out. There are stairs to negotiate when the lift is often out of action, there is distance to cover, there are hooded youths who frighten her, and not just the boys. There are neighbours who will do the trip to the shops for her.
Roth has done it. Occasionally she will catch him on the landing on his way out and she will ask that he fetches milk and bread and he sees each time how much of her courage has been mustered just to deal with this part of her day, just to look him in the eye and hope for a smile.
She never gets one. She does not expect to so she should not be disappointed, though she clearly is. Roth knows that some warmth is what she is asking him for, not groceries, but she is not his problem and Roth is cold. Where are her relatives or the council workers? Where are her friends to come and drink tea and eat biscuits and talk about this country, gone to the dogs? Why must Roth care when others do not? Roth has cared for people in the past but rarely has it been reciprocal and he has taken those hard lessons down the years and remembered them.
He has broken into homes before and does so tonight with an ease and stealth that speaks of experience but also of a newfound skill. He finds her sleeping, sheet and blankets up to her chin, mouth open, the red digits of a radio alarm clock on the bedside table.
He stands at the foot of the bed, arms folded, eyes fixed on her. In the darkness his vision is clear and sharp, more now than even the passing nights where he has noticed it more and more. He is calm, his breathing measured, his mind clear.
For a long while he closes his eyes and listens, picking through the sounds of the night. Filtering past the snoring from upstairs, loud and regular, past the ticking clock from her living room next door, the clanking from the radiator, still on against the late spring chill that she has felt so acutely. He tries to ignore her breathing and the noise she makes as it catches in her throat and he goes to the clear metronomic beat of her heart.
He cannot discern in it any of the pain of her loneliness, the grief for her long dead husband or estranged children and its rhythm betrays nothing of the longing that her eyes do each time she has tried to make conversation with him outside his front door.
She has run out of happiness this woman, run out of time, although she has yet to register this truth and tries to ignore it. But it will not be denied, not any longer.
Roth looks at her again and then removes his sweatshirt, his t-shirt.
He moves to the side of the bed and he reaches down and rolls her onto her side. She stirs but sleeps on.
Roth drops to his knees and leans in. He smoothes the hair away from her neck gently and snakes his arm over her shoulder and across her chest, rests his elbow down on the bed, hugging her firmly.
She stirs again and his lips are an inch from her ear. 'Shhhhh,' he hisses softly. Her eyes open a little as his arm tenses around her, pinning her in place and his hand closes over her mouth. Then more widely as his teeth sink in.
He bites down, once, twice, finds her jugular on the third.
He drinks.
Chapter 9
How long before you stop being new in town and become a Londoner? A few months? A year? Is it when you work out which side of the escalator is for standing or that you aren't supposed to have conversations on public transport? Is it when you start looking past the crazy person instead of at them?
There's no particular measure for becoming a Londoner, which is of course not the same thing as being a cockney. That strange, specious rule that means you must be born within hearing of the Bow Bells - in as cacophonous a place as London, you'd be hard pressed to hear them from down the road, let alone the nearest hospital maternity suite.
Me, I'm less than two years here and have already moved once. Still feels like everything's new and weird and a little intimidating. Even the stuff I see everyday like the skyline or the rudeness. It's not rudeness really, more an absence of warmth, a withholding of manners. But you've only to scratch the surface to find the best of people. And the worst.
Starting over somewhere new is always hard, no matter what the circumstances. The first few months are just spent being rudely disabused of all your wildly overcooked expectations and then once you're recalibrated to reality often it's just about trying to keep up.