‘I fetch your bag, meez,’ said the orderly, and pushed the empty wheelchair back down the driveway. Michael and Natasha and Isobel went inside. Isobel had lit the gas log fire, and as usual the living room was so warm that it was stifling.
‘It’s very cozy in here!’ said Natasha. She looked around the room, taking in the gloomy framed print of a log cabin that hung on the chimney breast, and the collection of Disney figurines on the mantelpiece. While Isobel had her back turned, she raised her eyebrows at Michael as if to say: My God – kitsch is not dead!
Michael helped her out of her pale blue nylon snow jacket. Underneath she was wearing a silky white turtleneck sweater and blue jeans. It looked to Michael as if she had lost a great deal of weight while she was undergoing intensive care, because she was very skinny, with small pointed breasts and bony hips. She kept her blue knitted hat on.
‘How about some herbal tea?’ asked Isobel. ‘I have some home-made coconut cookies, too.’
‘I’d love some regular tea if you have some,’ said Natasha. ‘No cream, though. Do you need some help with that?’
‘Unh-hunh, no thanks. This is my house and you’re my guest here, remember.’
Isobel went into the kitchen while Michael and Natasha sat down in front of the fire.
‘Do I sense a little coolness here?’ asked Natasha. ‘And I don’t mean the room temperature.’
Michael knew that there was no point in him lying. She would find out by bedtime, if not before.
‘The thing of it is, Natasha, in the past week or so, Isobel and I have gotten pretty close.’
‘How close is that, exactly?’
‘About as close as a man and a woman can get.’
‘You’ve slept with her? You’re still sleeping with her?’
Michael nodded.
‘Does anybody at the clinic know about that?’ asked Natasha. Michael was surprised that she seemed to be taking it in such a matter-of-fact way, considering they were supposed to be engaged. ‘Doctor Hamid, or Doctor Connor?’
‘I really don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think they would have suggested that you come and stay here if they did.’ He paused, and held out his hand toward her. ‘I’m so sorry, Natasha. I totally didn’t remember that we were engaged. I was sure that I knew you, but I had no idea how well.’
She took his hand and tried to smile but her eyes looked sad. ‘It’s not your fault, Greg. Doctor Hamid told me what happened to you.’
‘Natasha—’
‘No. Not Natasha. You always used to call me “Tasha”.’
‘Tasha?’ Michael shook his head. It rang no bells at all.
‘You can start calling me Tasha now, if you like. Maybe it’ll help you to remember me. Maybe it’ll help you to remember us.’
Isobel appeared in the kitchen doorway, carrying a tray with three mugs of tea on it. Michael glanced up at her briefly, but then he looked up at her again, and stared at her, because he was seeing the same optical illusion that he had seen three mornings ago, when he had first woken up – if it was an optical illusion, and not his mind falling apart.
For a few flickering seconds, he thought he could see the kitchen window right through her, as if she were transparent.
TWENTY-ONE
Tasha had been right. Isobel’s jealousy crackled in the air like static electricity. She was smiling and polite and everything she said was welcoming, but it was obvious that she regarded Tasha as a threat.
She wrapped her arms around Michael at every opportunity, and made sure that she cuddled up close to him on the couch when they were watching television that evening. When it came to supper time, and they were sitting around the kitchen table eating macaroni cheese, she made her big announcement.
‘We’re going to be married in June. Did Greg tell you that?’
Tasha looked sharply at Michael and said, ‘No, he didn’t.’
‘Well, it’s only four months away now and I do so hope that you’ll be able to come.’
‘Yes. That would be lovely.’
Isobel said, ‘It’s strange, isn’t it, how two people can just click sometimes?’ She popped her fingers by way of emphasis.
‘Yes,’ said Natasha. ‘I guess it is.’
Michael didn’t take his eyes off Tasha for the rest of the meal, trying to read her expression and work out what she was thinking, but she didn’t look at him again.
Isobel had given Tasha the small third bedroom at the back of the house. Later, close to midnight, while Isobel had gone to take her bath, Tasha came into the living room where Michael was watching the news. She was wearing pink-striped cotton pajamas and she was barefoot, which made her look even more girlish and vulnerable. She smelled of some light flowery perfume.
She sat down beside Michael and tucked her legs up underneath her. ‘We have to talk, Greg. I have some things I need to tell you. I don’t know if I’m supposed to. Probably not. But I really think you deserve to know.’
Isobel called out, ‘Greg? Do you want this bath? It’s beautifully hot!’
‘Give me a minute, OK?’ Michael called back. Then, to Tasha, ‘What things? What?’
‘Ssh, I can’t tell you now. But we both have to go up to the clinic tomorrow morning, don’t we? We can talk while we’re walking up there.’
‘Greg! Come on, sweetheart, or it’ll get cold!’
‘OK, I’m coming!’ said Michael.
He stood up, but Tasha took hold of his hand and held it tight. ‘I still love you, in spite of everything. I mean it.’
Michael bent forward and kissed her on the forehead. He was about to kiss her on the lips when Isobel appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a large red towel.
‘Come on, lover!’ she coaxed him, although the way she said it, it sounded more like an order.
Michael was woken up by somebody shaking his shoulder. He opened his eyes, and saw that Tasha was bending over him, silhouetted by the moonlight that was shining through the bedroom drapes.
‘What is it?’ he whispered. Isobel was fast asleep, and breathing steadily.
‘There’s some people outside my window, in the yard!’
‘What?’
‘A man and a woman and two little girls! In their night things! They’re just standing there, staring!’
‘Hold on,’ said Michael. He lifted the cover and swung his legs out of bed. He was naked but he had left his clothes on the chair in the corner of the room, so he picked up his boxer shorts and stepped into them. Tasha was already at the door, waiting for him.
He followed her into her bedroom. She had drawn back the drapes and there they were, standing in the snow. Bill Endersby and his wife Margaret, with Jemima and Angela. Bill Endersby was wearing a white nightshirt, while Margaret was wearing a long white nightgown. Both Jemima and Angela were wearing patterned pajamas. All of their feet were bare.
‘Who are they?’ asked Tasha. ‘It must be so cold out there! What do they want?’
As if in answer to her question, Bill Endersby started to beckon.
‘It looks like he wants us to join them,’ said Michael.
‘Oh God, they scare me,’ said Tasha. ‘Can’t you make them go away? How can they stand out there in the snow like that, in the middle of the night?’
Tasha looked back out of the window. Bill Endersby was still beckoning. He wasn’t smiling. In fact his expression was quite grim. He had his hand on Jemima’s shoulder, and Jemima was beckoning, too. What made the scene look even more eerie was that Michael’s and Natasha’s reflections appeared to be standing in the yard next to their unwelcome visitors, like two ghosts.
‘They’ve done this before, these people,’ said Michael. ‘The weird thing is, they never leave any footprints in the snow.’
‘But why do they want us to go out there?’
‘I don’t know. I think the best thing to do is go ask them.’
He left the bedroom and went through to the kitchen. Natasha followed him, but she sai
d, ‘Don’t, Greg! They really frighten me!’
‘It’s a couple of geriatrics and two kids, that’s all. They may look creepy but what can they possibly do to us?’
With that, Michael unlocked the door that led out on to the back yard patio.
‘Please be careful!’ Natasha begged him.
Outside, the cold was intense. The moonlight was bright but it had the strange effect of making the back yard look like a stage set made of cardboard. Michael stepped outside in his bare feet, just far enough to be able to see where Bill and Margaret Endersby and the two girls were standing.
Except that they were gone. There was nobody in the yard at all.
Michael took two or three more steps forward across the patio, looking around the side of the house to make sure, but all four of their visitors had vanished. And, just like before, they had left no footprints.
His bare feet were growing numb with cold, so he returned to the kitchen and closed the door and locked it. Natasha, wide-eyed, said, ‘What did they say? Did they tell you what they wanted?’
‘They weren’t there, Tasha. They were gone. That’s if they were ever there at all.’
‘But that’s impossible! I saw them with my own eyes, and so did you!’
Michael took the blue towel that was hanging by the side of the kitchen sink and bent over to dry his feet. ‘People have been appearing outside the house ever since I moved in here,’ he said. ‘The first night I came here, I saw about a hundred of them standing in the road out front. I went out to see what they were doing, but there was nobody there. I was beginning to think that I was having hallucinations … you know, that it was something to do with my amnesia.’
‘They were there, Greg. I saw them, too. That was no hallucination. God, they scared me. I was never so scared in my life.’
Michael held her in his arms. Through her cotton pajamas she felt as if she were all skin and bones. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing else we can do tonight. But I think we need to talk to Catherine Connor tomorrow about what we both saw. None of those people at the clinic are telling us the truth – or not the whole truth, anyhow. Something is happening here in Trinity and it’s not just people convalescing. Everybody here seems to be panicking about something, but I can’t work out what it is.’
Natasha looked up at him. He thought that she was about to say something, but all she did was touch his bare shoulder as if she were reassuring herself that he was real.
‘We’d better go back to bed,’ he said. ‘We can talk about this more in the morning.’
He kissed her, on the lips. She still didn’t say anything, but there was something in her eyes that told him that she was hurting.
‘Try to get some sleep,’ he told her. She nodded, and went back into her bedroom and closed the door. Michael stood outside in the hallway for a few moments, and then returned to Isobel’s room. Isobel was still sleeping, and when he climbed back beneath the sheets she didn’t even murmur.
Michael lay there staring at the ceiling while the moon sank below the horizon and the room gradually filled up with darkness. He was beginning to feel that he had lost touch with reality altogether, and that there was no way he was ever going to be able to find his way back. Bits and pieces of memory were coming back to him, but they were like so much space junk, ill-assorted fragments tumbling over and over through an endless, airless vacuum.
The room grew darker still, and he fell asleep. He couldn’t have been sleeping for more than twenty minutes, however, when he felt a quick, chilly draft and then somebody slipped into bed next to him. Somebody cold, and skinny, and naked.
He opened his eyes. He could see only blackness, but he could smell her flowery perfume, and he could feel her woolly hat and her hair against his shoulder.
‘Tasha?’ he whispered.
She put her arms around him and clung to him close. She was shaking.
‘They’re back,’ she said, in such a breathy voice that he could hardly understand her.
‘What?’
‘They’re back. Those people.’
Michael started to sit up. ‘I’ll go take a look,’ he said. Beside him, Isobel shifted and half-turned over and said, mmmfffff.
‘Don’t,’ said Natasha, clinging on to him even more tightly. ‘Please don’t.’
‘I don’t think they can harm me,’ Michael whispered.
‘Just don’t. Please. I don’t want to lose you again.’
Michael hesitated and then he lay back down again. Natasha stayed close to him, holding him tight. Gradually, she stopped shaking, but she was still very cold. Isobel continued to breathe evenly, in what Michael hoped was a very deep sleep.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked Natasha. ‘You can’t stay here all night.’
Natasha lifted herself up a little so that she could kiss him. It felt like a very chaste kiss, especially since her lips were so cold.
‘I need you,’ she said, and kissed him again, and this time her tongue slid into his mouth.
‘We can’t!’ he hissed at her, taking hold of her wrist and trying to lever her away from him. But she kissed him again, much more greedily this time, and she began to pant, very quickly, as if she had been running. She twisted her hand free and scratched his bare chest, and then scratched him further and further down his stomach, until she worked her fingers under the waistband of his shorts.
‘Tasha, we can’t!’ he repeated, but she took hold of his penis, which was already three-quarters erect, and massaged it up and down. Her hand was cold, and he knew that he shouldn’t be doing this. Isobel could wake up at any moment. But then he thought: Tasha is supposed to be my real fiancée, after all, and it was Isobel who made a play for me first. He was also beginning to find that the danger of making love to Natasha while Isobel was sleeping so close beside him was highly arousing.
Natasha pulled the bedspread aside and climbed on top of him, guiding his penis between her emaciated thighs. She was so thin that he could almost close his hands around her waist. He could feel her ribs, and her breasts were tiny, although her nipples were stiff. He took each of them between his lips in turn, and rolled them against the roof of his mouth with his tongue. Each time she let out a long, quivering exhalation of breath, which sounded almost as if she were dying.
Isobel let out another mmmffff and restlessly tugged at the sheets. Michael and Natasha froze and for over ten seconds they stayed utterly still. Natasha was as cold inside as Isobel had been, although her vagina was much tighter, and Michael was already losing all sensation in his penis. Even his testicles were beginning to feel cold, and his scrotum had scrunched up tight.
Isobel seemed to have settled down again, so Natasha started slowly to ride up and down on Michael’s penis, making sure that her movements coincided with Isobel’s breathing. Each time she lifted herself up so high that his glans almost slipped out of her, but each time she slid herself back down again at the very last moment until he could feel her prominent pubic bone pressing against his, so hard that it was painful.
After three or four minutes, however, she began to ride Michael faster and harder. With every stroke, Michael was pushing himself up into her so forcefully that he was lifting his buttocks clear off the bed. As the pace of their love-making quickened, both of them forgot about Isobel, and what would happen if they woke her up. All they were concentrating on now was that moment of sparkling ice-cold climax.
Which came. And came. And came again. Natasha bent her head down and sank her teeth into Michael’s left shoulder, to stop herself from crying out loud.
Afterward they lay in each other’s arms, neither of them speaking. The bedroom was now utterly dark. Not even Belle’s eyes gleamed at them from out of the closet.
As they lay there, however, and their thumping heartbeats gradually slowed down, they became aware that Isobel was no longer breathing as slowly and regularly as she had been before. In fact she was panting, and panting faster and faster with every second that went by
.
Michael could feel the mattress gently quaking, and he could hear what sounded like somebody persistently licking their lips. After less than a minute, Isobel gasped, and shook, and then lay as still as Michael and Natasha.
The three of them lay awake in the darkness until it began to grow light outside. Then, without saying a word and without looking at Michael and Natasha, Isobel got out of bed and went to the bathroom.
Natasha kissed Michael and said, quietly, ‘I think this is my cue to leave. I’ll see you later.’ She kissed him again, three times, and then she added, ‘I love you, Greg. I love you so much.’
After she had gone back to her room, Michael lay on his own and thought about what had happened. Most of all, he thought about how cold Natasha had felt, just the same as Isobel. How could any woman feel as cold as that, let alone two of them? He was beginning to become convinced that maybe they weren’t cold at all, and that the iciness he felt when he made love to them was caused by some kind of physical or mental aberration from which he was suffering.
Isobel came back into the bedroom. She walked around the bed and stood in front of him, naked. She had the most complicated expression on her face: part jealousy, part arousal, part amusement, but wholly superior.
‘Did you enjoy that?’ she asked him.
He could have retorted, ‘Did you?’ but he kept his mouth tightly closed. The situation was thorny enough already without him making it worse; and apart from that he liked her too much, and he thought that he had probably hurt her quite enough already.
‘I don’t mind you fucking her, sweetheart,’ said Isobel. ‘In fact, she could share our bed with us every night, if you like. We could have some really good fun. But don’t forget that you’re mine. That’s the whole reason you’re here.’
‘I thought I was here so that you could help me to get better.’
‘Of course. But you know what William Blake wrote? “I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.”’
‘But you said that I was yours. Like I belong to you, or something.’
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