Offcomer (16 page)

Any time after eleven, he had said.

She stood up slowly, walked across the room. She took her rucksack by the strap and, backing away, dragged it out to the middle of the floor. She knelt beside the bag and took the metal tab of the zip between her thumb and forefinger. She could hardly feel it. She dragged the zip across, pushed her hand down through the layers of fabric. She picked out her clothes one by one, laid them out on the carpet. Small piles formed around her. T-shirts, knickers, trousers, jumpers. Her other pair of shoes.

It seemed to take a long time. It seemed to be inordinately hard work. It took an incredible effort just to take hold of a corner of a cotton T-shirt and drag it out of the bag. Her feet and legs grew numb underneath her. The rucksack emptied. She saw sand-coloured canvas at the bottom. She reached in, felt around: there was nothing left. Around her the clothes had piled up like fortifications, walling her in. She wanted to stand, to step out over the ramparts, but when she heaved herself up she found that her legs had gone dead and there
was nowhere to put her feet. She lurched, staggered, stumbled on her clothes, then subsided onto the bed. She sat looking vaguely at the emptied bag, the precarious piles of clothing, at her pale numb feet. Everything looked odd, like it wasn’t hers, like it belonged to someone else. She became dimly aware of the blood beginning to prickle through her numb muscles. It was unstoppable; it would flush them pink and full. And that too felt somehow wrong, somehow distant. As if she were not feeling it herself. As if she were feeling it felt. And as the nerves in her toes and feet and calves came back to life, they registered an ache, they registered cold. And that, at last, seemed real.

She heaved herself up off the bed, bent down again, slid her hand under a heap of clothes and crushed them up against her chest. She walked stiffly over to the chest of drawers. She opened each drawer in turn, then closed each of them again. Every one of them was full. Slowly, she turned to the wardrobe, took the metal handle between her fingertips and pulled the door open. Jackets and trousers jammed up tightly together. No space. She looked back across the room at the dark open mouth of her rucksack, at the uneven stacks of clothes. She walked back over to the bag, dropped her armful back into it, then bent to shovel in the rest of the clothes. She pushed the rucksack back into the corner.

She picked up her mug and walked the three paces back through to the living room. Her tea had gone cold.

She went over to the window, drew back the curtains. Light came in slices through the treads of a metal fire-escape. Beyond, the algaed green of a damp back-yard wall. She felt unclean, as if covered by a thin grey film of dirt. Her hair, hanging round her face, felt heavy, greasy. She walked through
to the bathroom. She felt as if she was watching herself walk through to the bathroom.

She turned on the shower. The room began to fill with steam. The shower was above the bath. The bath was pale yellow, greasy with dirt. There were two oily marks where Alan’s feet went every morning. A bottle of medicated shampoo, its lid off, stood on the side of the bath. On the wash-hand basin, a bar of Shield lay in a clotted pool of blue slime. The taps were spotted with spat-out toothpaste. Sandy-ginger stubble stuck to the greasy ceramic. Lying on its side in a pool of gritty foam, was a silver-handled, fixed-head razor.

Beside it was a neat little plastic box. Claire watched her pale hand pick the box up. She watched her other hand move across to open it. The fingers pulled out a precise paper envelope, an inch long, and unfurled it. A clean cold razorblade. It was unfamiliar, odd-looking: the sharp edges looked innocent. It was the gap inside, the absence, that looked threatening, that looked like it might bite. Claire watched herself pick up the blade, fingertips pressing together through the space. She saw herself walk across the room and slide the bolt across the door. She sat down on the edge of the bath, but didn’t feel the hard plastic through her thin pyjamas.

Slowly, almost thoughtfully, as if to see what would happen, Claire lifted her left leg, laid her ankle on her right thigh. Her pyjama leg fell back and revealed the smooth swelling of the calf muscle. Short, stubby hairs grew out of the skin, lay flat against it, where she had shaved herself, two days ago, in England, with a disposable blue razor. The anklebone seemed to press out against the membrane; the bone seemed almost visible. She cut a straight line across the thin skin.

She was surprised by the quantity of blood. It welled up
immediately, before she had even finished the cut. It ran down over the ankle, dripping onto the knee, splashing onto the dirty lino. For a moment she just sat and watched, fascinated and delighted by the brightness and the heat that was pulsing out of her. Then she began to giggle. Because it looked so dramatic. Because she had made such a mess. Because it was, in fact, so easy.

She glanced round the bathroom for something to sop up the blood. The toilet roll was sitting on top of the cistern. She hobbled over, wound tissue round her hand, held it against the cut. With her free hand she rummaged in the mirrored cabinet for plasters. She found one, lying flat on the shelf, probably left by the previous tenant. She opened it, stuck it on.

She glanced back across the room, saw a trail of blood, dot-and-carry-one, across the floor. Droplets of blood clung to the panel of the bath. There was a tiny red pool by the toilet, another one at her feet. There was blood on her pyjamas, blood on her hands. Next time, she thought, I’m going to have to be more careful. But looking at her bloody skin, feeling the cut glow with pain, she knew at last that she was alive, and real, and hurting.

Alan sat at his office desk and drank deeply from his cup of instant coffee. His throat was sore and his mouth was dry from the morning’s work, but he was happy. The two-hour seminar had passed quickly. He had not stopped talking the entire time. And, as usual, it had gone right over their heads. He remembered the look of glazed incomprehension on his students’ faces and smiled to himself. Philosophy was supposed to be difficult. It was supposed to be a rigorous, demanding,
scholarly subject. He had sweated blood to get where he was. And he was buggered if he was going to make it any easier for anyone else.

He lifted his legs up, crossed them on the desk. He congratulated himself on arranging the job at Conroys for Claire. It amounted to foresight of prodigious proportions. Spooky almost, since he had done it before the meeting at the bus station. Or perhaps he had suspected her all along, subconsciously. Anyway, Gareth was an old friend. He wouldn’t let her get away with anything. And he would probably notice what Claire was up to long before Alan would. Because, Alan had come to realise, he was not particularly observant. Gareth would be better at keeping an eye on her: he wouldn’t suffer from abstraction in the way Alan did. And, perhaps most importantly, Alan realised with a shudder, Gareth wouldn’t fancy Claire himself. He was, he thought, the ideal boss for his girlfriend. The pub situation was not perfect of course; lots of pissed men looking for an easy shag. But she would be busy, and she would be tired. She wouldn’t have the time or energy to flaunt herself. Alan, if he hadn’t been holding a cup of coffee in one of his hands, might have rubbed them together in satisfaction. Instead, he smiled grimly to himself, pulled open his desk drawer, and reached in for his packet of shortbread fingers.

Now, he thought, as he munched stickily on his biscuit, was the time to start calling people up. Now was the time to start socialising. Now she was here, he could display his happiness. He’d show them. Everyone who ever thought they were doing better than him. He listed his achievements in his head. Ph.D., job, girlfriend, flat. Claire was the only one that he could bring out for the evening to show people, unless of
course he took his letter of appointment with him and wore his gown to the pub. And now, he thought, he had another reason to call people up and arrange a night out. He would show her how reasonable he was. How forgiving. And how popular.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a tiny plastic-covered address book with the university crest on the front. He licked his finger, leafed through the pages. He picked up the telephone, dialled a number.

“Hello. Can I speak to Paul Quinn please?”

Alan was aware of something different in the flat. He closed the door softly behind him, listening. He could hear voices—she must have the radio on—but that wasn’t it. He could smell cooking—rich, warm scents—but that wasn’t it either. His stomach grumbled. He was hungry. He went through to the bedroom, hung up his coat in the wardrobe, saw her heap of bags on the floor. She hadn’t put anything away. Her stuff took up the entire corner. She was cluttering up the place. She was occupying too much space. That was what he had noticed. A psychic shift. He congratulated himself for once on the fineness of his senses, but decided that he would not take the issue up with her tonight. She could be as inconsiderate as she liked, but he was not going to allow himself to get angry about it. Tonight, he was going to be happy. He was going to be content. He was not going to let her spoil his evening. He closed the bedroom door behind him, walked through the living room and down the corridor to the kitchen.

She was standing at the cooker, her back to him. Her arm, shoulder, hip, moved slightly as she stirred something in a
pan. Another pan, lidded, rattled gently on the back ring of the cooker.

She was dressed in dark trousers and a jumper. She looked neat and clean and soft. Her hair was caught up in a ponytail; he could see soft fine hair feathering the nape of her neck. He stepped towards her, put a hand on her hip, kissed the back of her neck.

She jumped. She dropped the spoon. It clattered against the side of the pan.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said, irritated. He turned away from her, switched the radio off.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” she said.

“I noticed.”

He sat down at the kitchen table. Her back was to him, so she couldn’t see him, but he forced himself to smile anyway. He was determined he wasn’t going to let her annoy him. He was going to be happy. He was going to be magnanimous. He was going to be the very model of patience. And he was going to show Paul and all the rest of them what true contentment really was. He smiled more broadly. It was beginning to make his face ache.

She fished the spoon out of the pan, began to stir again. Underneath the dark wool of her jumper her breast shook slightly with the motion of her arm.

“How was your day?” she asked. She did not look round.

“Fine,” he said. “Busy.”

“I’m making pasta. Is that okay?”

“Fine by me.”

“It’s just I didn’t have much money.”

“Right. How did it go at Conroys?”

“I start tomorrow.”

Alan nodded. “Good. Just as well. I’ve arranged something for tonight.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re heading out,” he said grandly. “I’m meeting an old friend.”

“Oh.”

“Paul. Went to school with him. Then uni. He did architecture.”

“Oh.”

“He’s got a girlfriend, apparently. When I told him about you he said he’d bring her along. We’re going to Bar Twelve.”

The stirring slowed. Her breast stopped shaking.

“Alan, I’m skint.”

“Don’t worry,” Alan said generously. “My treat.”

She lifted the other pan and held the lid on at an angle. She drained the starchy water off into the sink. A cloud of steam rose around her. She put the pan down, opened a cupboard, looking for plates.

“Down the bottom there, by your feet,” Alan said. Her feet were bare, he noticed. They were stained grey with dirt.

She bent down, opened the cupboard, slid two plates off the pile. She dished out the pasta, poured sauce over each heap. She put a plate down in front of Alan, placed the other across the table from him. Alan waited while she fetched the cutlery.

“What does he look like, Paul?” she asked, handing Alan a fork.

Alan watched her seat herself, watched the blank expression on her face. His heart thumped loud and fast. He could feel it there, underneath his ribs, racing. He should have known this would happen. If he was honest, he thought, he
had
known this would happen. He felt fury rise inside him.
He couldn’t look at her any longer. Couldn’t stand looking at her beautiful, deceitful face. He leant down over his plate, began shovelling farfalle into his mouth.

“Does it matter?” he said.

“Not really.”

Alan stabbed angrily at the pasta, stuffed another forkful into his mouth.

“Well then.”

He chewed, scooped up more food onto his fork.

“I was just wondering.”

“Right.”

“I’ve never met him.”

He glared at her, fork hovering above his plate.

“Of course not.”

“So I won’t know him when I see him.”

Alan put down his fork.

“He’s short,” he said. “He’s got dirty-fair hair. He wears glasses.”

“Right.”

“You’ve never met the girlfriend either and you didn’t ask about her.”

She glanced up at him, then back down at her plate.

“What does she do?” she asked, quietly.

“I don’t know. Teacher, I think.”

“What’s she called?”

“Grainne, apparently.” He stuffed the last forkful of food into his mouth. He was still hungry. He looked up.

“That’s unusual,” she said. She didn’t look up from her plate. She didn’t seem to have eaten anything.

“No it’s not,” he said, watching her push the pasta bows around in their pool of sauce. “It’s quite common.”

“Oh.”

“It’s an Irish name.”

“Right.” She put her fork down.

“Don’t you want that?” he asked.

“Mn?” Her voice sounded thick.

“The pasta. Don’t you want it?”

“Not really.”

He reached over and took her plate.

“No point eating it if you’re not hungry.” He scraped the mess onto his own plate.

Alan didn’t know quite what he was looking for. Some extra care, perhaps, in her choice of clothes, or an excessive precision in the painting of lipstick onto lips. He wasn’t sure. He was sure, however, that he would know it when he saw it. There would be no fooling him. He sat waiting for her on the sofa, legs crossed, right foot bouncing in mid-air. He glanced every two minutes at the hands of his watch. When the hands had ticked round to eight o’clock, he sprang up and marched through to the bedroom, his knuckles whitening and his eyes narrowed. She had been ages.