The Devil's Playground Read Free Page B

looming,
    the work still undone. His mind was filled not with paragraphs
    and grammar but with thoughts of Jake, the short
    snap of time they’d spent together, the meagre two weeks
    that the old man had stayed in Jon’s flat. The aching throb
    of the space where someone used to sit.
    Jon stared at the flickering screen of the computer monitor,
    the impossibly complex rendering of a man’s body
    overlaid by meridian lines snaking and spiralling like telephone
    cables connecting the parts, keeping the system in
    flow. He could feel a headache’s claw creeping up the back
    of his neck, spreading wider, like a ratcheting of the skull,
    and he closed his eyes and saw Jake’s face once again, the
    straggly beard and high forehead, the eyes wide and alive,
    and he forced himself not to think of these things, squeezed
    his eyelids down hard as if that would be enough to expunge
    this vision. And it almost was.
    Jon rubbed his ankle. Dante could not have found words
    to describe this pain. Maybe the doctor had been mistaken.
    It seemed to be getting worse rather than better, a slow and
    dull throb that had become all insistent making him feel as
    if he was wearing an iron boot. He’d taken some painkillers
     

M
     
    and now, as he stared out at the people withdrawing money,
    huddling around the cashpoint like conspirators sharing a
    secret, he felt so angry, so ashamed for what had happened
    that morning.
    He’d been on the bus, standing on the exposed edge of
    the Routemaster, when he’d seen Jake, the tramp, walking
    along Oxford Street, or at least thought he’d seen him. Looking
    back on it now he realized that the man had been shorter,
    moved in a different way. Jon had jumped off the bus, hit
    the ground and went flying, face-down in the street. The bus
    behind screeched to a stop. He could smell the black smoke
    spewing from its front and hear the driver cursing.
    Everyone was staring at him. The constantly moving mass
    of pedestrians had stopped dead in their tracks and was
    watching with an unnerving intensity, a sort of group spirit
    that seizes people in the vicinity of an accident. He smiled,
    tried to get up and collapsed straight back on to the asphalt,
    unable to stifle unmanly screams of pain. His ankle felt
    broken. He was sure of it.
    He tried again. Arrows of pain shot up his legs, his stomach
    lurched, the earth shifted and spun. This is what happens
    when you black out, he thought and slumped back down,
    surrendering to gravity. He lay on the road, paralysed by pain
    and embarrassment, hoping the police, or someone — anyone — would come and get him out of this.
    The doctor had said the ankle was only sprained but it felt
    like it was broken. The doctor had suggested a pair of
    crutches, ease the weight off it for a couple of days, but Jon
    had refused, horrified at the thought of trying to navigate
    London on anything but two good legs.
    Had he really thought it was Jake? Or only hoped so much,
    desired it to such an extent that it had become real? For the
    first time, he understood how much he wanted it to have
    been the old man. The way he’d spent the past week searching
    the faces of the crumpled figures on the streets for him,
    wondering if he’d driven him out or if it was something else,
    one of the demons that haunted his past, hoping somehow,
    against everything, that he’d still come back, ring the buzzer,
    act as though nothing had …
    The phone made him jump. He peeled himself away from
    the window, eyes squinting at the light. He fumbled for the
    receiver. He had put his phone number in a book he’d given
    Jake. Perhaps the old man was calling him.
     
    ‘Jon Reed.’ Breathless with an underlay of expectancy, a
    slight tremulous uplift of tone.
    ‘It’s me, Jon. Just calling to check on progress.’
    Jon exhaled, his heart slowed, he reached for his cigarettes.
    He couldn’t tell his editor that he hadn’t started yet. Not
    with the deadline at noon tomorrow. He couldn’t