‘So what changed?’
‘Nothing changed. I know how stupid it is even to think this way.’
‘But…’
‘It’s a cliché. Being close to death makes you feel more alive.’
‘So you’re thinking – what? Start again, or just one more time?’
‘Just one more time. But I don’t know… Look, there’s us, there’s moving in together, there’s buying a house.’
‘Yep. There’s all that.’
‘So, listen, you decide. It’s up to you.’
Stella laughed. ‘No it’s fucking not, Delaney. Definitely not. I’m not making your decisions for you. But look, you want my opinion? Go. Go, for Christ’s sake. If you don’t get killed, I’ll be waiting for you when you get back.’
‘You’ll be waiting.’
‘Yes. That’s what I’ll be doing. Waiting.’
‘Is that new for you?’ he asked.
‘Yes, it’s new.’
‘Well, it’s new for me too.’
She woke just before dawn and he was sleeping sweetly, as if dreams could never trouble him again.
In the kitchen she made coffee, then went to the home-made white-board and took the items down one by one. The picture of Bryony slipped from its pin and fell at her feet. Dirty girl. An echo came back to her, and she thought she remembered hearing those words before; they had arrived with a slap and, for a second, she saw her mother’s face, lips tight with anger, her hand raised for the second blow.
Little Stella Mooney, home alone for hours, darkness coming on, and trying to make herself something to eat – things spilled, things broken.
Dirty girl!
It’s all chance, she thought. It’s all risk. God knows, the smallest choice changes everything. She wondered what Delaney’s war-zone choices might be: this road not that, go on or turn back, the difference between whether she’d ever see him again or not.
For all she knew, Gideon Woolf’s choices might have been much the same.
There was the merest flush of light in the eastern sky. She took her coffee to the window and watched the dawn come up, London’s glow giving way to a tinge of aquamarine, the sky above a deep, vibrant blue. Between the two, growing ever sharper, ever harder, the city skyline.
She could almost imagine his silhouette, etched there a moment, as he looked down on the wakening streets.
The End
Down into Darkness Page 33
