I let the paper drop. Then very slowly I turn. With the candle gone, there is only a dark avenue of shadows. Is there something there? A shape? I could move back into it. But I don’t know what I will find. And whether what I find will have a knife. I must leave, now.
I turn again, hurrying this time. Using the jacket, I open the door. I slip out of the flat, down the stairs and into the street. I check for red berets. There are none. Good. Nicole has gone home with Adam. Bad.
You would think I would know if a person is dead. I have spent enough time with dead bodies. Well, just two, but important ones. With Mum I knew she was dead because the hospital said. With Dad it was different, though. And to be fair to myself, now, with Ally, I didn’t know that Dad was dead. I mean, he wasn’t breathing. And he didn’t have a pulse. And he didn’t speak. Plus he was suspended from the ceiling. But, you know, I didn’t want him to be dead. And I’d just come back from confirmation classes, so I’d spent two hours being filled with the glory of living to serve God. I was only going to them because Dad said Mum would have wanted me to have them, even though he’d lately started saying he didn’t think a good and loving God would have taken her from us, and he’d stopped taking me to church. They seemed pretty keen on a good and loving God at the confirmation classes and living as a disciple of Christ. So it didn’t make sense for Dad to be dead. God wouldn’t have allowed two dead parents, would he?
I had to run to Adam’s house, to ask him to come back and help me find out. Adam thought I was joking. Wouldn’t stop kicking his football with the kids on his street. Wouldn’t even talk to me at first. He didn’t want it to be true either. But I kept telling him and telling him, and eventually he had to come with me. Then we went into the room together. He was still hanging there. Unmoved.
‘His neck’s broken,’ I remember Adam saying.
‘Yes, but is he dead?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Adam. ‘He is.’
After that I ran to Adam. He fought me off, but I held him, I held him, I held him, until he was still. Dad was dead; God was dead; all I had now was Adam. I don’t know how long we stayed like that. It was long enough for Adam’s mum to come looking for him. We’d left the door open so she came in and saw us there.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
Then she saw him, Dad. Or at least, she must have done, because she screamed. She pulled Adam and I apart, pulled us out of the room, and shut the door. That was the last time I saw my father.
But I wasn’t implicated then, you see. Or at least, not really. People kept telling me I mustn’t blame myself. How would I blame myself? I was a fourteen-year-old boy. My Dad was a grown-up. He made his own choices. So because it wasn’t my fault, I could ask other people’s view. I can’t do that now. I can’t say, ‘It wasn’t me, it was Luke, my fictional creation, but would you mind awfully, Adam, or DC Huhne, or random man on the street, going to check if the woman Luke might have killed is dead? Watch out, though, because if she isn’t, then she is standing in the hallway of her flat, and she’s probably angry’.
No. The only thing for me to do now is to walk to Moss Bros to deliver the jacket. Now that I have it, I mustn’t delay.
I arrive. It is shut. I look at my watch. Ten p.m. That makes sense. I should go home. But no – this is where I need to be right now. The next step is to return the jacket. So here I must stay.
I sit down on the pavement outside Moss Bros. What I need is a television. I need 3,000 televisions, each with a pixel of Adam, or just one Adam on each screen. Then I would tell him everything. I have another secret now, that I cannot share with him. Although book three is our secret really, even though he doesn’t know it. He’ll get the benefit with the next book, though, of our closeness. All my readers will.
Would he understand about Ally? Could I tell him: another woman, killed? Would he shrug and say, What’s one more? Or would he start to side with Nicole?
If there were all those Adams, then so quickly their screens would become invaded. That shared gaze with just the two of us lost. First Helen would enter screen, half filling them with her enormous pearled bust. Then Nicole would dazzle her way in, diamonds flashing. Paste, this time: she hasn’t Helen’s money. Ally would follow, filling the last empty space with her nudity so I could no longer see Adam.
I blink away the screens and look at the street again. There is a red blob down the street. Nicole and her beret? I squint. She has got very tall.
Oh.
Traffic light.
Nicole is being lazy. Unless I am on a long leash now. Or she has abandoned the beret, perfected her disguise. She could be wearing anything now. Black. Or nothing. Pale fleshy pink. She must wear nothing. I must compel her.
What would Luke do? The invitation for lobster would not be enough. Luke would do something romantic, something bold. Serenade her. I wonder if Luke should sing. I open my mouth and sing a few lines of ‘Yesterday’. No. I cannot do method if it requires singing. I will have to try something else.
Adam has a violin, I remember. Or at least he used to, from school. It lived in the corner of his sitting room, before he married Helen and got the house. He had this little joke of always putting it in the chair I liked to sit in, so I had to move it, every time I came round, whether he was expecting me or not.
It’s probably in their attic now. I could ask to borrow it. Or maybe just ask Adam. Otherwise it won’t be a surprise for Nicole. Maybe Adam can teach me. I’d like that. Then I can teach Luke. And so we can be close again, Adam and I. Not book three close. But next best thing.
I trace the shape of the violin on the pavement with my fingers. I try to visualise it so I can write about it. There are all those curves, with one each side, like the arch of a back. I run my finger down each one. Then on top of the violin there are the holes, again lovely curves, facing each other. They are like a two lobsters, paired for life in wood. Yes, Adam can teach me. Then I’ll find a night when Adam is out. And I’ll take Nicole by surprise.
It is still the wrong day, and the shop remains shut. Night stretches before me but I am too awake to sleep. I will run. I put on the jacket and set off, tails flapping behind me as I run down Oxford Street, to Charing Cross Road, loop back up, through Soho Square, Dean Street, Old Compton – no, stay away from there – back to Dean Street, controlling my breathing, then Greek Street, Tottenham Court Road.
On, on, on he goes, running past the darkened world waiting for light, waiting to breathe again. Breathing will be through her, his beloved, as close beside, close inside her, he touches again the fulfilment of his being.