“Shame.”
“Not really. Knowing Vicki she would have sent me in there after him in a towel to get the money shot.”
“Pretty boy like you? You wouldn’t get out of there alive.” Kelly craned around her. “Don’t see where you would work. You have a studio elsewhere?”
“Nah, mainly I work from home. In the grotto.” Craig got to his feet cupping the hot mug in his hands. “Prepare to step into my parlour.”
Kelly followed him to a door in the hall and from the similar layout to her own flat she knew where it led. “Your bedroom?” She was surprised that she didn’t feel more discomfort, but then judging from the rubbish compliment he had given her in the kitchen she didn’t imagine he was much of a smooth operator. She was quite safe.
Craig opened the door. The room was gloomy thanks to some drawn blackout curtains and a net of red LED lights that almost covered one wall. Craig switched the main light on, but the light from the red bulb only intensified the depths of the shadows and the dark walls. The other dark blue walls were barely visible from beneath a mess of black and white photographs that covered them. Kelly stepped towards the nearest pictures for a closer inspection. They were gritty casual shots of people that didn’t seem composed, just glimpses into frozen moments from people’s lives who seemed unaware of being captured in film.
“They’re good.”
“Thank you. They are not going to earn me a successful gallery space, but I like them.”
Kelly pointed to one of the photographs. A large built woman, middle-aged with a beaming smile, her hand a blur in trying to push the camera away. “I like this one.”
“It’s my mum. She hates having her photo taken. She’s great.”
The room had all the typical bedroom furniture, but set out on top of the chest of drawers and a desk was equipment for developing, and the shelves behind them were stacked with film and bottled fluids. Hanging across the room was a line with pictures pegged to it. The bed was dishevelled and lived in. The air was ripe, a soothing warm scent of manliness which she had forgotten could be so comforting.
“This is my office.”
“It’s nice to hear someone say that about their bedroom without me having to arrest them.”
“Yeah, however my profession is probably the second career to need a red light though. It’s in my bedroom too. Doesn’t really draw the same attention when you are seven storeys up though.” Craig let Kelly step out past him and he turned the light out and shut the door on the room. “I’m still doing things the old fashioned way for my personal projects, but I have to hire space at a developing studio for my commercial stuff, I have started off on digital photography, but I can’t afford the really decent equipment.”
“Your work looks good.” She said as Craig led her back to the kitchen. She drained the last of her tea and he took her mug. They both stood in the kitchen, he didn’t sit back down, and she didn’t know whether he wanted her to. “I’m glad you are feeling okay. If I don’t hear from Rachel I will give her a call and let you know what’s going on, see if she has managed to find anything out.”
“You off then?” Craig frowned.
She didn’t understand his surprise; he hadn’t acted like he wanted her to stay. “Er, yeah, I had better get something to eat. It’s been a long day.”
“Okay, keep me posted.”
Craig deflated into a visible slouch that caused Kelly to hesitate in the hallway. She found herself speaking, and wondered if she was possessed. “Well, I’m only having a microwave thing. Dinner I mean. So if you want to join me it wouldn’t be a problem. Sorry – I mean that’s if you’re not busy or got plans.” Definitely possessed, she decided.
“You really don’t know me. Irradiated food stuffs prepared by someone else sounds great to me.” Craig wagged his injured arm in the sling. “Didn’t fancy the struggle, I’m still trying to keep it rested. Anyway, if I had plans that would insinuate I have a life – which would be nice, now I come to think of it…” He smiled.
Kelly nodded toward the direction of the front door and Craig grabbed his keys and followed her. She experienced a feeling of wholeness that she found uplifting, as if she had soldiered on with a wound she had only just realised and dinner with Craig was an act of triage that would help her recover a pleasure that her injury had kept from her, an enjoyment she had forgotten. Kelly thought she could run up the stairs to her floor with the underlying teenage excitement. She savoured the feeling as they travelled the six floors up to her flat in the lift.
Rachel’s head lulled and she nodded briefly into sleep. She opened her eyes, clenched them and then opened them again whilst stretching her arms up. She stifled a yawn and checked her watch. Seven-thirty.
Her muscles were saturated with an aching tiredness from her lack of sleep. Six hours had passed in her vigil at the hospital and redundancy had settled into her resolve, she toyed with the idea of leaving. It was clear that little could be resolved or accomplished at Cat’s side. The crushing silences that punctuated her lessening and more desperate monologues were wearing tides that carried with them all the unanswered questions she had from the hospital and The Heights.
There were too many happenings and not enough connections or answers: the poltergeist activity in the Chambers flat; Emily and now Amy gone, Harry’s antagonism towards her, the unknown significance of the rune symbols Rachel had seen at The Heights, the coincidence of Cat’s kitten arriving at Rachel’s flat around the time Cat had entered her coma, the impossible destruction at Cat’s flat, the intense and mysterious experiences she had encountered in the twins room and Cat’s lounge, and now the mysterious watcher at the hospital.
Rachel leaned one arm on the bed and relaxed her overloaded head on it. Every fibre of her body called like a siren’s chorus for rest. The carousel of questions in her mind slowed, the sounds of the ward drifted away and the rhythm of her blinking slowed. Rachel forced herself to sit up and she stretched her eyelids wide cramming visual information between her lids to keep them open a little longer.
Cat snapped bolt upright from her prostate position and snatched Rachel by her coat collar and dragged her forcefully onto the bed. Her young face split into a frantic scream that howled through the air in a banshee cry of rage and torment that grated against Rachel’s ears. Tongues of Cat’s flame orange hair flickered wildly about her face from a vortex of rushing atmosphere while her wide and desperately pleading eyes pierced Rachel like javelins.
The flesh of Cat’s face became malleable putty sculpted by unseen hands into a skeletal face. A face with dark hollows for eyes, a nose pinched against its cartilage and thin lips tightly sheathed against a mouth brimming with yellow teeth. The face of the watching stranger stared out from the fiery halo of Cat’s hair with wild venom filled eyes that demanded Rachel to leave.
Rachel snapped awake.
She leapt back from the vision as if it had crossed the threshold into reality. An uncoordinated hand flailed and dashed her coffee from the side unit to the floor. Cat and her bedding were undisturbed; a picture of tranquillity. A sobering contradiction of her nightmare.
She fought to calm her racing heart and chastised herself for her fear. It was just a nightmare. The wet of cold coffee registered against her legs as it sank through her skirt. She groaned at her clumsiness and at the mess she had made, and wiped at the stains with a balled up tissue. She climbed to her feet and dragged her chair to one side to assess the extent of her spillage.
The black tendrils of coffee stretched out at her feet and formed six crude capital letters;‘HELP ME’. As soon as she registered them they were consumed within the widening spread of coffee.
Rachel wondered whether it was another vision, whether she was still asleep when a voice from outside the room grounded Rachel in reality: “Every shift I have to turf you out don’t I?” Although Rachel had angled the Venetian blinds closed she knew it was a nurse addressing the watcher outside the room. She moved to the glass wall and liste
ned.
“She must have been a very good friend…” the nurse’s sentiment was empathic enough but her tone was challenging.
With the vision of a tormented Cat and her plea for help, Rachel’s unease with the watcher had increased. Rachel crept to the door and dared herself to turn the knob that angled the blind encased within the doors narrow window. The gap didn’t afford her a direct view of the nurse or the watcher, but she could see their ghostly reflections in glass wall of the opposite room. The watcher was not standing passively in the corridor as she had expected him to be since his view had been obscured, but was pressed flat against the glass; listening. His hands caressing the surface of the window with his fingers probing and pressing at various points in slow precise movements, as if it was a ritual that afforded him some mystical presence or perception of the room within.
The nurse shuffled on her feet obviously uncomfortable with his actions and his silence. “I’m sorry,” the nurse’s voice came with a determined force. “Visiting time is over. Time to go home Mr…?”
A silence followed and dominated the foreground noise of the ward in a challenge of the nurse’s authority. The man eased himself away from the glass wall and Rachel snapped the blinds shut so he couldn’t see her. Rachel could clearly hear the quiet shrink away from a hissing voice, heavy with a rolling Polish accent that was uncomfortably close to her. “Yshor Malik… And I-am go-ing.”
“Well… I imagine I will see you next shift,” the nurse’s reply clipped the air like a parting clout round the ear.
There was a slow hissing exhalation of defeat from beyond the glass followed by a measured pace of hard shoes sounding slowly away. Rachel relaxed and released a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding.
Chapter Twenty
The heavy burgundy heightened Kelly’s mood, relaxed her body and fogged her mind, forcing her to concentrate on the simplest of actions. Kelly found comfort in the meal inside her, the warmth of her snug jumper and the security of having company. It was in this experience that she found more contentment than her cherished job had ever given her. Having a moment like this with a friend or acquaintance – or whatever Craig was to her, gave her a sense of completeness even if it might only be for a stolen evening. It was wholesome and fulfilling. She catalogued the tastes, the smells, the feel of her clothes, the pieces of small talk and imprinted them in her mind as a reminder of what she only now realised she had been missing. She would save them for the nights when there was no company, although she was sure that memories would be of little comfort now she had tasted the reality again.
She had been fooling herself that she was content being alone.
Camden had colluded with her sense that she wasn’t keeping herself to herself and was living her life. On a Friday or a Saturday it was difficult to feel alone and hard not to feel alive while walking the streets of Camden Town, the energy of the crowds that choked the Chalk Farm Road and the Market was infectious. Tourists visiting another landmark the city had to offer, Goths, Mods, New-Agers, Gays, all manner of races and cultures, all making pilgrimage to the market and shops that would offer them coffee-culture, exotic foods, herbs, outlandish clothes, handmade novelties and crafts, S&M gear and drugs. A place that would support your lifestyle and a place where you could pretty much be who you wanted. Perfect for Kelly trying to start over and find herself.
Kelly would go for a coffee, eat at the market’s food court, drift round the shops, but always with her Discman playing, and a thick book in her bag; props that would immerse her in a world of her own making when she felt she was growing too close to being in the real world around her, or someone wanted to share her table in an overcrowded coffee shop, or was showing her more interest than she wanted. She loved the long walk out of Camden along the canal to Little Venice, but that served the same purpose as her Discman and book as an escape route into isolation. Camden had supported Kelly’s illusion of living life.
Craig strained forward with his good hand to slide the empty plate from his lap to the table, Kelly steadied it for him and guided it the rest of the way. She slumped back into her corner of the sofa and looked at him studiously over the rim of her wineglass, a little too long to be discrete. She was surprised at how much the recent events had aged him; he looked haggard, pale, his skin almost translucent, as if the vitality of his youth had been drained somehow – more than a disturbed night could do.
Craig shifted under her observation and tentatively met her gaze before snapping away self-consciously. “What?” His face melted into a puzzled laugh.
“Well, I have heard all about your yo-yo childhood of living in Bath, your family’s decision to move here, then their decision to move back to Bath when they didn’t settle and they missed the rest of the family. Then your return to London for university… I know how well you did at your exams and you have talked about work…”
“Work didn’t take long did it? Jobs are few and far between at the moment,” he grunted grimly, gulping a mouthful of wine.
“Don’t get all maudlin. I just wondered what happens after university. After you get home from work. What you do with your spare time.”
“Is this the police side of your aspect coming out? Well, officer. If I have a full day of work I might get home at 1700 hours, I shower at 1705, start preparing a meal at 1725, it takes about half-an-hour. None of that five-minute microwave stuff.”
Loosened by alcohol Kelly jabbed his good arm. “Cheeky Bastard.” She blurted round a mouthful of wine.
Craig rubbed his arm. “I’m sorry, do you know me well enough to slap me around? You aren’t a screw you know? I’m not your bitch.”
“Sorry.” Kelly’s face flushed as he recognised her familiarity. “I just wondered about you, what you do in your spare time and…” she felt so out of touch with being with someone socially. “Stuff.”
“Just pulling your leg. Truth is there isn’t much to say.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “What with all the moving around I kind of didn’t make any lifelong mates. When I left university all the really good friends I made went back to their own homes and stuff. I keep in touch with a few on email; always promising to meet up. We haven’t yet. Like I said, work is a bit short so money can be tight, it’s enough work balancing paying my bills and buying food; if I travelled across the country to meet up with my mates I would be in need of a UN food parcel to survive.”
“Could you go home? To live I mean. Until your finances are better.”
“Yeah…” Craig stared down into his wine and swirled it around the large bell of his glass. “Bath feels like my home town to me, but London feels like my grown up life. Mum would love me home I think; where she could look out for me. I just don’t want to go back. I want to be independent. I chose this career, kind of against school and family advice, going back home would make it look like its not going to work or they would see me struggling. The fact I had tried it my way, and am either struggling or failing would lead them back into trying to get me into the family business.”
“The print business? I thought that would be in the right area for you.”
“It’s the equivalent of working in a factory. Not much of a creative outlet. Plus my parent’s world extends as far as the front door or a trip to the social club or bingo…Bless them. After being at uni, moving out and having my freedom and a different set of friends and my own life and views, going home and facing a morning with mum and dad over the tabloid and a killer fry-up with their opinion of how well my brother was doing, and how the country should be run and what the youth of today should be doing, and how the refugee’s should be going to another country. Ugh! That road just leads to the dark side. Now I sound like a spoilt kid don’t I?”
“No. We all grow away from our parents. It would be hard to move back in with your parents when you have been living independently.” This was the kind of conversation she wanted to have with Craig, she wanted to get to know him. “Do you get lon
ely then?”
“That was leading!” Craig laughed easily. “No. I like my own company. I get on very well with myself. Are you looking for emotional baggage?”
Kelly swallowed her sip of wine quickly so she could answer and it went down her throat uncomfortably like a marble. “No! It’s nice to hear someone happy with their life.”
“Happy might be pushing it, but I think I travel light concerning emotional baggage. I was with a girl for a little over a year, on and off, while I was at university, but she ditched me in our final year. Probably just as well as our homes were quite far apart. I haven’t really had a relationship or anything since then, just a few sad attempts: not met the right person so far.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
Craig shook his head. “Nah. Mrs Right is out there somewhere. She’ll get tired of running from me one day and then we will see what happens.”
She smiled. “You’re a joker?”
“Humour is the best defence… If you can’t solve a problem, avoid it and mock it from a distance.”
“What about if the problem can’t be avoided?”
“That’s easy –,” he adopted a squeaky Monty Python tone. “RUNAWAY!”
They both descended into laughter.
“So what about you? What brings you so far from the suburbs of the seaside of Essex? What about you before the uniform?” Craig countered.
The fun of the moment ground to a halt like a fairground carousel making an emergency stop. She hadn’t talked about her life in Southend since she had started her new life in Camden. Ordinarily her defences would slam into place at the prospect of self-disclosure or the risk of emotional exposure with a man, yet with Craig her defences had relaxed, and she was drawn in to taking a leap of faith.
“I was very different back then,” she tested the statement as someone might test a limb of a tree before climbing on it.
“This sounds interesting,” Craig arched an eyebrow. “Were you a nun or an international drug runner?”
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