The Concrete Grove (5 page)

“Only if you are,” he said.

She nodded, stood, took his glass. Their fingers touched again, and this time it felt strange, like a tiny electrical current had passed between them. She stared at him with those dark, dark eyes, a puzzled expression on her face.

When she returned from the kitchen she was carrying a tray. Upon it were their refilled glasses, and two more cans of beer. “One for the road,” she said, winking.

“So,” said Tom, a panicked feeling welling in his chest. “You say you haven’t lived here long?” This woman was confusing him. There was a mutual attraction here, he could feel it, but it seemed that they were both trying to ignore the connection.

“Do you live here, in the Grove?”

Tom shook his head. “No. I… not that there’s anything wrong with living here, of course.” He felt his cheeks burning. He was talking himself into a corner. “I mean… shit. Sorry.”

She laughed. “Don’t worry. It
is
shit here. I’m not fooling myself otherwise. Hailey and I used to live in Newcastle. It was South Gosforth, to be exact, right next to the Metro station. We had a nice home, I had a good job. Then a couple of years ago it all went tits-up when my husband bailed on us and his debtors. We lost the house and we had to come here. It was the only place the council would give us; according to their stupid little points system we didn’t have a high enough rating for anywhere decent.” She took a long swig of her drink, closed her eyes and swallowed.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so nosy.” He rubbed his palms on his thighs, then realised that the action made him look like some kind of madman. He stopped, held up his hands. Then he picked up his glass and drained it. “Listen, I should go.”

Lana nodded. She licked beer foam from her lips. “Is the wife waiting for you at home?”

For some reason he could not identify Tom felt guilty. “That’s right. She’s… she’s not well. There was an accident several years ago and she relies on me.” Why did he feel the need to justify himself? Was it because, really, he didn’t want to leave? He wanted to stay here and drink into the night with this woman, trading histories, telling stories, laughing and bonding and becoming friends – perhaps even more than friends.

He stood, tugging at the hem of his shorts, trying to cover the goose pimples that had appeared above his knees. “I should… you know. I should leave.” He felt dizzy, like the world was spinning faster beneath his feet. He tried to hold on, had to hold tight. If he didn’t, he thought that he might fall off the edge of the planet.

“Thanks again,” said Lana, following him as she walked to the door. “Listen, I didn’t mean to come on too strong then. It’s just that I don’t have any friends here, and I think I get a bit needy. Just ignore me.” She reached out, as if she were about to touch his arm, but then let her hand drop away.

“It’s fine. I can be your friend.” Jesus, did he really just say that? “How fucking corny,” he added, pausing by the door.

“Just a bit,” said Lana, smiling now, looking happier than she had done only seconds earlier. “But it was a nice thing to say.” She turned her head slightly to one side, and he caught sight of a faint scar along her jawline.

When he left the flat he had to fight not to look over his shoulder, just to catch another glimpse of her as she closed the door. He heard the locks slide into place, and paused to listen for her footsteps. But of course he couldn’t hear them; there was no way her bare feet could be heard through the door. Yet he told himself that she was standing on the other side, thinking about him.

Tom descended the concrete stairs, and left the building. He glanced at his watch and was shocked to find that it was now almost 9 PM. The street lights were on. Voices drifted towards him – kids’ voices, filled with intent. The song of distant sirens accompanied him as he jogged back along Grove End, along the side of the school and towards Far Grove. He felt like he was leaving something behind, something that might just prove to be worthwhile. Never before in his life had he experienced feelings like these: it was terrifying, but it was also liberating. Had he ever felt this kind of thrill when he and Helen had first met? He thought back, to the time when they’d swapped phone numbers in the university canteen, and realised that what he had felt then had been but an echo of this, and not a very strong one.

The voices receded, far behind him. Laughter. Running footsteps.

In the silence that rushed in to replace the sounds, Tom became aware that he was being followed. He turned his head to glance over his shoulder and saw a quick, light movement as something shot through a gap in the school fence and padded across the yard. He felt his feet slowing; his hands clenched into fists.
Run
, he thought.
Just keep going
. But his body refused to obey. It felt like all the blood was rushing out of his feet. The beer he’d consumed pooled in his lower stomach.

Despite this physical reluctance, he pushed onwards, aware that whatever had entered the school was now moving back in his direction. It drew level with him, keeping pace behind the high metal railings. He saw its dark, glistening flanks as it ran. The shape darted between pools of sodium light, and for a moment he thought that it was a child loping along on all fours. Then, gasping with relief, he saw that it was a short-haired dog. Of course it was. The relief was displaced once again by fear when he remembered that there had been sightings of packs of stray dogs in the area – he even recalled a story about someone being attacked one night by a mangy mongrel.

Tom tried to look away, to look straight ahead, but he was unable to take his eyes from the beast that ran alongside him, loping between patches of lamplight. The road was narrow here; the creature was so close that he could have reached out and touched it through the gaps between railings. There was moisture in his eyes; he felt like weeping.

Then the dog turned its bristly head to face him. And Tom felt an emotion that at first he could not explain. Never before in his life had he experienced real fear – the kind of fear that makes you realise that you are always a single moment away from death. One thought filled his mind, casting everything else in shadow: the dog’s face was human.

It was a hound with the features of a person, a male. A boy.

In the split second during which the thing looked his way, Tom made out its wide green eyes, its strangely hairless cheeks, its flaring nostrils and thin, curling lips. He was struck with a sort of nostalgic horror as the face of a young boy smiled at him from the body of a dog. Nothing he could have imagined would have scared him as much. He had not been this afraid since childhood.

And then it was away, bounding further into the school grounds, towards the dark classrooms. He tried to tell himself that what he had seen could not be real. That it was impossible. After all, he’d experienced but a single, snatched glimpse and not a prolonged look at the thing. He even managed to fool himself for a while, as he peeled away from the school railings and ran along in the middle of the road. Then, when finally he reached the brighter area where the road bisected Far Grove Way, he admitted all over again that what he had seen had been something from a nightmare, a nightmare that he should have remembered from long ago.

Even if his eyes had deceived him, it must have been his brain trying to tell him something, to warn him that he was close to making a big mistake. He shouldn’t be here, in this godforsaken wasteland of the Concrete Grove. In fact he should never come here again.

Helen was waiting for him back home. Behind him, at Lana’s flat, there could be only trouble. It was time to go home to his wife, and return to the life he had chosen many times, whenever he had been called upon to make the decision.

Running hard now, quickening his pace towards a full sprint, he tried to rid his mind of the shame and the guilt and the slow-burning rush of illicit pleasure. But no matter how fast he ran, and how far he went, Tom knew that he could never outrun himself.

CHAPTER FOUR

T
OM WAS COLD
when he arrived home. The temperature had dropped outside, and the skin of his legs was taut and goose-pimpled. He fumbled for his key in the tiny pocket at the rear of his shorts, his fingers unable to get a firm grasp on the Velcro flap. It took him a lot longer than it should, but at last he grasped the key and slipped it into the lock. The downstairs lights were off. Shadows swarmed around his feet, cast by the light that bled down the stairwell from his office.

“Tom?” Helen’s croaky voice drifted towards him from the ground floor. “Is that you, Tom?”

Who the fuck else would it be?
He thought. Then he said: “Yes, it’s me. Sorry I’m late.” He closed the door and walked along the hallway, flicking on the kitchen lights as he entered the room. The spotlights seemed to snap on too quickly, too brightly, and he closed his eyes against the glare.

The breakfast dishes were still in the sink. This morning, feeling lazy and careless, he hadn’t even bothered to load the dishwasher.

“Tom?” Her wavering tone annoyed him, made the hairs on the back of his neck bristle like those of a cat just about to pounce. He closed his eyes again, silently counted to ten.

“Tom!” Impatient now, he could hear her manoeuvring her body in the bed in the other room. Her excessive weight made the timber frame creak.

“Just a minute, love. I’ll bring you some soup.” She always liked soup on a week night. Even when she was fit and healthy, in the days before the accident, she had enjoyed a bowl of cream of tomato or oxtail after coming in from work.

Tom moved quickly, opening the can and pouring its contents into a saucepan on the stove. He stirred the soup as it warmed up, and once it began to bubble slightly at the edges, he buttered two slices of bread. When the soup was ready he ladled it into a large bowl, and then placed the bowl and a plate containing the bread on a plastic tray. He added a spoon and a napkin, and then left the kitchen and walked through the house to her room.

Helen had occupied the reception room since she’d come home from hospital. At first it had been a matter of sleeping in there so that Tom could get some rest. The pain had kept her awake; she didn’t want to cause him any sleepless nights. Now, much to his relief, she stayed in there because she was too lazy to move. He couldn’t stand the thought of her joining him upstairs in the master bedroom – even if their sex life had not died along with her ability to walk, the idea of her massive body beside him was enough to bring a sour taste to the back of his throat. And she was so big these days that he stood no chance of carrying her up the stairs.

He pushed open the door and stepped inside. The room was dim – she rarely let him open the curtains, and the light she used to read by was fitted with an energy-saving bulb that never cast much light.

“Sorry I’m late, Helen. There was this girl, just a young lass, really. She’d fainted in the street and I had to stop and help her.”

Helen put down her book on the bed. She turned and peered at him over the lenses of her tiny reading glasses. Her jowls shuddered. “Really? Was she okay?”

He nodded. “Yes, she was fine. Just a bit shaken. I took her home to her… her parents. They said she suffers from fainting spells, some kind of seizures. But she was fine when I left.” He smiled. Why wasn’t he telling her everything? Parents? He felt guilty for hiding the fact that Hailey had only a mother – and an attractive one at that – but something held him back, made him give a sanitised account of events. Was it guilt? But why? It wasn’t as if he had done anything wrong or improper. He’d thought about it, yes, but thinking a thing and acting upon those thoughts were entirely different situations.

“Here,” he said, moving towards the bed with the tray balanced on his open palms. “I made your soup.”

“You never forget, do you? Never let me down?” Her smile was big and loose, like a mother smiling at her child. “I’m glad I have you to look after me, Tom. God knows what I’d do without you, you know.”

He set down the tray on her meaty thighs. “Why do you say that? Of course you have me. Why wouldn’t you?” Again, he felt that his own guilt was making him labour the point. She often did this, a sort of passive-aggressive emotional blackmail. He usually ignored it… but now, this evening, what had happened earlier was making him defensive. “Just eat your soup. I have crusty bread; it’s your favourite.”

Her small, spongy hand grasped the spoon and she shuffled up against the headboard, trying to settle into a more comfortable position. When she raised the spoon to her mouth some of the tomato soup spilled down the front of her nightdress. For a moment, Tom thought it looked like blood. She tipped the spoon and drank the soup, closing her eyes to savour the taste.

Tom felt like picking up the bowl and pouring the scalding contents over her head, onto her face… and then he felt ashamed, disgusted with himself for resenting Helen in this way. It wasn’t her fault she’d been partially paralysed, not really. Yes, she had chosen to be there, with That Man, but nothing in life was ever so clear cut that you could fairly apportion blame. Nobody was innocent; everyone was guilty of something. It would be unfair of him to place the whole of the blame onto Helen’s shoulders.

Maybe so
, he thought.
But it’s her fault that she won’t even get her fat arse out of bed
.

Again, he felt a deep sense of shame; a depth charge of emotion detonated in his stomach. The accident – why did they all keep calling it that, even now,
especially
now? – had left deep mental trauma, like a trench in her soul. Helen was afraid to go out, and she was equally as frightened to remain inside. Her whole life was lived in a state of fear now, and there was very little anyone could do to change that. All Tom could do, all he could really manage, was to collect her prescription drugs once a week and feed and care for her every day, offering her support when she needed it. Washing her armpits, emptying her colostomy bag. Keeping her human. Whatever their marriage had once been, it wasn’t the same now. Everything had changed that day ten years ago, when That Man had crashed the car in which she was a passenger and she’d lost all feeling from the waist down. That day, that terrible, terrible day, was effectively when their love had died.