Kristin Read Free

the
language, although clipped, staccato, was undeniable and her fluency improved
with every sentence she formed, as though she were a novice learning at an inconceivably
fast speed.
    He looked outside —
it had grown dark. He checked his watch, ‘I’m sorry, I need to go.’
    ‘You must leave?’
    I promised my mother I’d
call by.’
    ‘ Mother ? I do not remember a mother. But
my father was very bad.’
    He looked at her inquisitively
as they walked.
    ‘There were two of us. I
mean, I had a brother, but my father hated me and sent me from his house
forever, whilst my brother was allowed to stay.’
    ‘You don’t see them?’
    ‘Only when I dream. I
despise them both and when I see my brother again I will kill him.’ She moaned
and brought a hand to her temple. ‘Pain!’
    ‘Are you all right?’
    ‘I get pain, in my head,
when I feel anger.’
    ‘You should see a doctor.’
    ‘ Doc-tor ? Yes.’
    They reached the rotunda
and stood in silence.
    ‘Will you be OK?’ he asked,
eventually.
    ‘OK?’
    ‘All
right, will you be ... ?’
    ‘Yes. I will be ... all
right.’
    ‘Good luck anyway, maybe
we’ll meet again?’
    ‘Oh, we will,’ she said
with absolute assurance, and vanished into the underworld without looking back.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    Three

 
    Thom arrived at his mother’s detached house
in Bermondsey at around five-thirty. The temperature had plummeted and snow had
started to fall. The door opened and her ageing face cracked with emotion. She held
out her arms and hugged him until his ribs hurt.
    ‘My God, I’m so glad to see
you,’ she sighed, with relief.
    ‘Are you all right?’
    ‘Better for seeing you.
Come in quickly, you must be frozen?’
    He closed the door and
followed her to the kitchen, watching as she brought the kettle back to the
boil with a trembling right hand that had affected her since a severe stroke
three years earlier.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said,
shivering against the door frame.
    ‘About what?’
    ‘Sorry I wasn’t here.’
    ‘Don’t worry. I didn’t even
know anything had happened until I    switched the wireless on, but it just felt like something was wrong as
soon as I woke up. I don’t know, I opened the curtains and everything seemed
... final, hopeless. Does that make sense?’
    He nodded. She handed him a
mug of Earl Grey tea and they moved into the lounge. He had so many memories of
the room and it had changed little since his childhood. He looked at the old,
bottle green armchair in the corner and felt happy for the first time in days.
It was here he’d sat as a young boy, with his father, and listened to hour upon
hour of wondrous stories from the master.
    His mother had lowered
herself slowly into the same chair thirteen years ago as his father had
confirmed the news she couldn’t bear to hear, that her youngest son, Nicholas,
had died riding pillion on a friend’s motorcycle in the Rotherhithe tunnel.
    And it had been in the
chair she’d taken the telephone call informing her that her beloved husband,
George, had passed away in hospital of a heart   attack following a routine operation.
    Here, too, he’d somehow
managed to make love for the first time, with Amy Stanton, a fellow student
from Goldsmiths College. Sixteen years on he could still hear her shortened
breath, feel the beauty of the naked form that had devoured him with its
burning fire. His pulse quickened.
    ‘God, I miss them, Thomas,’
she whispered.
    ‘So do I. Every day.’
    ‘Nick would have turned
thirty this year.’
    ‘And Dad would be ...
sixty-eight?’
    She nodded solemnly as the
old wall clock ticked more seconds away. ‘Have you seen the papers this
morning?’ she asked, handing him a neatly folded copy of The Times.
    He scanned the front page
with apprehension and loathing: “FALSE ALARM, BUT PRE-EMPTIVE WESTERN STRIKES
INEVITABLE,” and tossed the broadsheet onto the floor. Maybe the