An Hour in the Darkness Read Free

next morning she was gone.

2

    A few weeks after I hit my head I finished with Karen.
    She came to my house one morning and I just told her we were through. I told her this while she stood freezing on the doorstep, waiting to come into the house. She looked pretty though and a part of me regretted it. Karen hit the roof. She said she hoped I dropped dead or something. I shut the door in her face because I’m not good with confrontation, but she started yelling it all through the letter-box. She said she hated me and had never really wanted to go out with me in the first place. I said I didn’t blame her one iota. Karen said her mum thought I was probably neurotic or something. Then she started crying and begged me to take her back. I said I jolly well wouldn’t take her back and went and lay down on my bed. In the end I had to put a pillow over my head so I couldn’t hear her anymore.
    I got over Karen pretty quickly. I’m like that. I pretty much fall in love with a girl a few seconds after meeting her. I tell girls things I know they’ll love, like they fill my world and I can’t breathe when I’m near them. All kinds of stuff like that. Believe it when I tell you that they can never resist me for too long. For a while I think they’re the happiest they’ve ever been. Then I lose interest all of a sudden. I break their hearts, I think. Jenny said you break a girl’s heart when you finish with her. I never feel bad when I break up with girls though. I just feel relieved it’s all over. Jenny said that one day when I really fall in love I’ll be the one who gets my heart broken. I love it when Jenny gets worked up about breaking girls’ hearts like that.
    Anyway, I left my parents’ home and got a room in the city. I took all my savings from the bank and just went one morning. Mum didn’t speak much, but she made me breakfast. When I went outside it was grey and rainy. I got a room above the Angel Gateway. The Angel Gateway is a strange little alleyway that runs between Gallowtree Gate and the market. It sounds beautiful but isn’t. In fact, it’s just about the most depressing place you’ll ever see. I love all that beautiful-sounding-name stuff for places that are as depressing as hell, don’t you? I really get off on that sort of thing.
    I got real low that first day alone in my new room. It was a Sunday and because Sundays always bothered me I went for a stroll along New Walk. New Walk’s about a hundred miles long and my dad used to live there when he was a kid. It’s all very serene down there and the houses are so pretty they make you want to get down on the ground and cry.
    It felt strange standing outside Dad’s old house. I was trying to guess which room he’d slept in when I saw an old woman looking out of a window at me. I think she was surprised to see me standing outside her house like that. I smiled and waved a little to try and smooth things over. I tried to tell her it was the house where my dad was born. I said it too quietly though – like you do when you’re talking to people behind glass – and she didn’t hear me. I raised my voice a little until I was practically shouting. I tried to tell her everything would be okay; it was just my dad’s old house. I didn’t want her to think I was just some random lunatic or something. She suddenly put her hands over her face and burst into tears. It must be pretty awful having somebody screaming outside your house like that. I said I was sorry and left.
    I was bored, I admit it. I was missing Jenny so much I decided to go to the museum to see Daniel Lambert’s chair. Jenny loved to sit in Daniel Lambert’s chair and flick her legs out all over the place
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Old Danny boy was so fat you could get a hundred kids on that chair. And behind the chair, pinned on the wall, was a pair of Danny’s trousers. I swear they were about a mile wide.