Crossing the Line (20 page)

Not while she was alive.

I shivered again.

Poor woman. Never killed anyone. So sad.

She wasn't alive. The trial hadn't killed her but she was dead. She didn't have feelings to hurt any more. The cancer came back. With a vengeance.

That can be fatal, you know. Stupidhead.

She wasn't there to be damaged. Unlike –

No, no, no. Mickey was spit and wind and empty threat, and I couldn't live with any other possibility,
because what could I ever do about it otherwise? It wasn't enough to take to the police: one name-calling and a parking incident on a public road.

I never forget a face. Bitch.

So what? Face recognition. Not an uncommon talent.

They'd laugh at me. I'd seen these things in the papers, in the TV news. The police had other things to think about; they had targets to meet. And if I asked Dad to tell them he'd get purple and high-pitched and high-dudgeoned. They'd laugh even more at Dad.

What was I supposed to do to protect Allie? You have to look after yourself.

I shook my head violently. Orla was still leaning on the rail cemented into the sea wall, gazing down, cool as the gunmetal sea. Just watching her made me feel better.

Something struck me then. It just sort of fell off my tongue and out of my mouth.

‘You're so strong,' I said. ‘I can't take any more brittle people. You touch them and they break.'

Orla turned. For a moment she examined my face, then she reached out and drew one fingertip along the straight line of my eyebrow.

‘I won't break.'

‘No,' I said.

She glanced out to the horizon. ‘I need to go home now.'

‘Why?' I was bitterly and abruptly disappointed. ‘I thought your mum was at work.'

She eased away from my arm, took her gum from her mouth between thumb and forefinger, and dropped it into the sloshing grey waves.

‘Come back with me,' she said.

When I used to fantasise about kissing Orla Mahon, I'd imagine her being taller than me. I knew she wasn't, even in heels, but I used to picture myself standing on tiptoe to reach her mouth. Maybe it was because I felt so intimidated. Fortunately it wasn't like that in real life; I was a good few centimetres taller than she was.

Vertically, anyway. Horizontally speaking, we fitted together perfectly.

It didn't go like my fantasies. Nothing wild or crazy about it. She moved with me like an extension of my own body, warm and intense and electrifying. I felt it everywhere: in my bones and up my spine and into my fingertips. It jolted and tore me like I'd never be in one piece again, and I know she felt the same thing, because there was a moment there when we were the exact same person.

Afterwards I propped myself above her on my fists and stared into her tarnished-pewter, North-Sea-in-winter eyes. I was afraid of opening my mouth in case I came over all James Blunt, so I pressed my lips together and tried not to say anything.

I didn't want to look at the clock in case the hands had moved too fast. I didn't want to leave her rumpled single bed, didn't want to move my rigid arms from either side of her because I wanted to keep her there for ever. Not that she tried to escape. She placed both her palms against my face and gazed up at me, calm and intent. I inclined my head one way, then the other, aching after her touch like a loyal dog, loving the light scratch of her black-red fingernails against my ears. I felt pathetically grateful, like a stray who'd found a home, but she didn't look superior. She looked as if she'd found a missing piece too. Another ripple went through her body, and I shuddered in echo. I wished I didn't have to leave. I thought about the parallel world I had to go back to, and I shivered again, and Orla's hands tightened on my face. She smiled, her hands sliding down my face and to the back of my neck. Gently she pulled me down beside her.

I lay on my side, my arm possessively across her torso, my fingers curled round her upper arm, testing the texture of muscle where her soft skin slid across it. She gazed at the ceiling, a tiny smile tugging the corner of her mouth.

‘So,' I said, ‘will you still respect me in the morning?'

She gave a small inelegant snort.

‘You do bring out the lame git in me,' I added.

‘I know.' The dent of her smile deepened, then turned to a thoughtful frown. ‘Maybe I should call the baby Aidan. Mum would be mad to start with, but in the end she'd be happy. What d'you think?'

God Almighty. That turned my spine cold, for more than one reason. ‘Er,' I said.

The frown vanished as she laughed and rolled over to face me. It was a lovely sound. ‘Oh, breathe, you daft git. It'd be stupid, that's what.'

I laughed too, like a gasp of relief.

‘So, careful with the condoms,' she added. ‘Don't open the next one with your teeth.'

The next one.
I touched her nose ring and kissed her. ‘Sorry. Bit of a hurry. Stupid as well as ugly.'

‘You talkin' a
me
?'

‘No,' I said, ‘you daft git.'

God, could she get any more perfect? She could quote
Taxi Driver.

Her wicked grin faded as she examined my face. She touched a fingertip to the side of my broken nose. ‘You're not ugly,' she said casually.

There was nothing casual in the way her finger traced my brow, and the dip of my temple, and the hard line of my jaw, then came to rest in the hollow of my throat. She must have felt me swallow hard; I felt her fingertip rise and fall. I thought about the other bedroom, the one next
to this one, the one she hadn't glanced at as she gripped my hand tighter and pulled me past. The door had been slightly ajar but
Don't look
, she'd said.
It's like he's still there
.

I thought about Mrs Mahon going in and lying on his bed and holding his clothes and crying. I thought about Orla lying here listening to that, and then having to put up with my sister, pretending.
It's like he's still there.

It was, sort of. I didn't feel threatened, though, or angry. If Aidan was around, he didn't scare me. It wasn't about him. Not this.

Later in the afternoon Orla fell asleep, but I didn't. Through the thin curtains a low afternoon sunlight filtered. Divided by the window frame, it split in one rhombus in the centre of the carpet and one on the duvet cover. I lay and watched the dancing light, wondering what was making it move, and then I focused on the dust motes that swirled and circled, rose and sank, never falling: plane after plane of them. Galaxies, nebulas, constellations of them. Staring into them, I searched for suns and planets. I wondered if I was an atom of a dust mote in a bar of light in someone else's dimension, some other lucky bastard's bedroom.

Then I watched the dusty light fall across Orla's skin and hair, glint off the silver ring in her nostril, and I didn't care any more. My arm tingled, numb where she lay on it, but I didn't want to move. I let her breath touch the skin inside my elbow and didn't care if my arm fell off, or
if my planet, my whole universe, was grit on someone's cosmic shoe. I loved Orla Mahon, and there was a reasonable chance that she loved me back. Which was fine. That was all it took.

I thought, it'll be all right now.

Oh, right.

I should have got Orla out of my system, now that I'd actually slept with her, but sometimes I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life in a hazy Orla-dream. That's where I was the next afternoon: on my back in a colder, emptier bed, trying to remember the touch of her fingertip on my eyebrow. How her skin tasted. How cool or warm her breath was when it touched different parts of my flesh. It was a lot to remember; it took a lot of my concentration. I'd already switched off my phone, because Orla never called me when she was spending quality shopping time with her mother, and there was nobody else I wanted to talk to. Now I closed my eyes and swore violently, trying to ignore the insistent ringing of the doorbell.

‘No Words of Wisdom today,' I muttered at the ceiling. ‘We're out of stock.'

Ring, ring. Hammer hammer hammer. Ring.

‘Nobody home. The Soul Doctor is Out.'

Hammer. Riiiing.
Riiiiiiiing.

‘Eff off and get a life.'

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.

I thought this was what parents were for. Answering the door.

Course, they were both out. Seemed like they disliked my company as much as I disliked theirs. Growling, I rolled off the bed and slouched downstairs. If this was the Jehovah's Witnesses, there was about to be a Crime of Religious Hatred.

That could not be a familiar silhouette beyond the distorting glass. It could
not.

I flipped the snib and flung open the door. Oh yes, it could.

‘You're dead,' I told Shuggie.

He didn't look intimidated, of course, but it struck me that he wasn't wearing his usual calmly critical, lost-in-space look. He was panting, chest heaving, his eyes wide and scared.

‘It's K-Kev,' he said.

‘What?'

‘I … I've seen …' He hauled in a breath, stammered something incoherent, all consonants. At last he managed, ‘I seen him!'

That was something I never thought I'd witness: Shuggie losing his grasp of English grammar. ‘You can't
have seen Kev, Shugs. He's in the slammer.'

Getting his breath and his brain back, he shook his head violently, as if it was me that was being stupid. ‘No,
no.
Not Kev. Kev got stabbed.'

‘What?
' Shuggie really brought out the drooling idiot in me.

‘In the Young Off— … in that place. He got in a fight. Got in a fight and got stabbed.'

‘
How could he get stabbed?
' I roared.

‘Sharpened spoon.' Shuggie blinked, as if he was thinking. ‘You can sharpen the –'

‘Shut up! You can't have seen him! Where did you see him? Hospital?'

‘No, no, I didn't see
Kev
. Mickey. It was Mickey I saw.'

‘
What?
'

‘Stop saying that!' cried Shuggie. ‘It was Mickey, understand? I saw Mickey. He's raving, off his head, cursing Allie to hell and back. It's Mickey I saw!'

I was only immobile for a moment. Then I spun and ran back into the house, taking the stairs two and three at a time, grabbing the banister and hurtling round the landing so fast I almost stumbled. In my room I yanked on the drawer so hard it shot right out of the wardrobe. I fell on my backside, then scrambled up to dig among the jumpers. Shuggie stood at my back.

‘When?' I snapped. ‘When did you see him?'

‘Hour ago.'

‘Where've you been?' Unfair and savage, but I couldn't
help it. Why didn't the little tosser have a phone?

‘Your phone's off. I tried to phone you, I borrowed one.'

I snatched my phone out of my pocket and stared at it stupidly.

‘Did you call the polis?'

‘I never thought. I was trying to find you. I never thought …'

He was babbling. I wished he'd shut up. I wished I didn't own so many damn jumpers. ‘Shut up. You did right. Shut up.'

‘I looked everywhere, Nick.' He was almost in tears. ‘Never thought you'd be home.'

I didn't reply. Fair enough.

Even his voice sounded white. ‘Mickey won't hurt her.'

‘Yes he will.' I couldn't find the bloody knife, couldn't find it. I flung jumpers aside. Catching one reflexively, Shuggie clutched it against his chest.

‘He wouldn't dare, Nick, he wouldn't.'

‘Yes he would.' I didn't know why I was wasting my breath. Shuggie knew he was talking crap; he was only trying to calm me down. Oh God,
there,
at last. I snatched the knife from a fold of sweatshirt fabric. Even through scraps of
Daily Record
I cut my finger, but I didn't have time to suck it. Shuggie stepped hurriedly out of my way as I grabbed my jacket.

‘Get the polis,' I said.

I think he tried to follow me because I heard him shouting my name, but he couldn't keep up. Just as well. He'd
done his bit and I wouldn't want him keeping up, not now. Good old Shuggie. Time to butt out of my business now.

I was thumbing my phone keypad as I ran, but remembered in two-and-a-quarter seconds there was no point. Allie's phone had been nicked. She hadn't got a new one yet.
Didn't like it. Never used it.

I was keen not to fall, there being a blade shoved into my pocket, but I ran as fast as I could anyway. After a bit I slowed to a jog. After all, I didn't know where she was.

My lungs hurt. Hesitating at the pedestrian traffic lights by a huge roundabout on the bypass, I felt panic choke me. I didn't know where to start. I thought about the High Street, and the shops. If she was in town, she'd be safer. Mickey wasn't stupid enough to attack her in front of loads of people, and even if he was, someone would intervene.

I thought about that for a moment. No, they wouldn't.

Then I remembered Drugstore Cowboy, and Richie the not-very-bright security guard. Richie was hard enough, or he thought he was. Richie was willing to have a go at me, and he was big and ugly enough to have a go at Mickey. Please, Allie, I thought. Please be shoplifting in Drugstore Cowboy. Even if you get arrested for it, please be busy nicking stuff. In fact, please get arrested and taken to the cells. Best place for you.

The little green man bleeped at me. I stood and stared at the crossing. Cars had had to stop for the red light and
one driver was mouthing abuse at me and tapping his temple. Then he tapped it harder, called me a name I could lip-read. I could only stare at him. As soon as the lights started flashing he screeched away with a stink of scorched tyres.

I didn't know what to do. Turning one way, then the other, I whimpered.