Devotée
Standing on the beach usually makes me think of the Cure, or Camus. How stupid.
Stop it, stop it. Put it out of your head.
Standing on the beach, watching the water ease in and out. There's divers out there. And a cordon on the sand.
The sun is going down, light decreasing with each moment. Someone put a jacket around my shoulders and I never noticed. I was too busy biting my nails.
...after the deluge, the drought
My fingers are cold; I clasped my hands together a few times on the way down the stairs, and now there's just the chill metal of the door under one palm, and the brush of my pants material beneath the other.
The sun is shining.
Strange, the sensations uppermost in your mind when you have a semi-automatic weapon pressed to your ribs.
Mexican stand-off.
I can feel my breathing has hiked up, as we stare at each other. His eyes are an amazing shade of blue. And then I hear a click and he moves like a blur -- nearly wrenches my arm out of its socket as he pulls me aside. I go tumbling down the steps. I miss the moment, but hear the retort of the shot, and then another.
By the time I get my head around, my eyes focussed, the man with the gun is dead, and Tom is on the ground. My arm is sore from the fall -- I use it to push myself up, stagger on wobbly legs over to him, kneel beside him as he groans. The groan is such a relief -- he's making noise, he must still be alive. That, and the lack of blood around his head. He's grabbing his side. The vest -- he wore a vest, good man.
Adrenalin is wonderful. The world moves with clipped speed, clear and sparkling detail. People come. The medic helps me move him up against a pillar, and then more people, trickling out of the door where I remember standing -- goodness, it seems such a long time ago. A slim woman with dark hair and olive skin is led out and we meet her eyes, hawk-like, piercing black. For the briefest second, I can't remember who she is.
The medic has pushed a gauze pad into my hand, pressed it up inside Tom's vest, commanded me to hold here, and that's what I'm doing. His face is pale, and I can feel his diaphragm moving beneath my fingers - short gasps and heaving ribs and sweat.
It's not until we're in the ambulance, and they're having trouble getting his vest off because there's fibres caught inside the wound, that I get my voice back. It's thin and thready, but it's there, so I put the gauze soaked with Tom's blood into a kidney tray and swallow around my dry throat and say:
"It's okay. Tom, it's okay. We'll be all right."
And he's got his eyes closed tightly, and his teeth clench around his words as they try to pull the fibres away, and he whispers:
"Please shut up, Zoe."
I play Solitaire sometimes. Usually late at night, when I've woken up suddenly, and I want to do something other than just lie in bed and watch the shadows on the wall. Solitaire is better than reading, because you don't have to concentrate on a continuing narrative, you can just switch onto autopilot.
You still have to think, though, or you get caught out in those moments, the crucial moments. You deal the next hand and you have a flash, a realisation, a little spiralling explosion, because you've missed it, the crucial play. Maybe you neglected to pick up a card, or move another card -- it doesn't matter, it's too late now, you've missed it, and you know that it was the card you missed that has brought you here, to stalemate.
So it's too late. Game over.
...deference
The weirdest thing is the quiet. I think it's because none of the machines are working, so the constant dull subsonic hum that's always there is gone. Some things you never miss until they distinguish themselves by their absence.
It's not completely silent, of course. People talk, Sam is pulling the power cords out of the walls, Malcolm and Colin are working in a corner. Maybe I'm just more attuned to the atmosphere, now that I have a gun tucked into the back waistband of my skirt.
The metal is cold. Perhaps it will warm up soon with my body heat, but right now it's making me shiver. And I didn't even shiver when he asked me for authorisation -- as if he needed my authority. No doubt mentioning my weapons training was a ploy designed to give me the confidence to back him up, or maybe he needed to cover himself if it all went horribly wrong, or maybe he needed it for himself, a collusive partner, to give him the nerve to actually do it, or --
I don't know. I think I overcomplicate things sometimes.
Ruth catches my eye from across the room and gives me a funny look, but she's far enough away that I don't have to say anything.
I watch Danny, sipping a precious half cup of water from a coffee mug as he takes a rest from pulling the ceiling battens down. He doesn't glance over. Then there's a light touch near the small of my back, and I jump and turn around. Tom is giving me a gentle look.
"You okay?"
I nod, smile faintly. My face feels grimy.
"Fine."
He returns my nod.
"Good. Er, maybe you could help Malcolm collect electronic parts?"
"Sure," I say obligingly. I'll be glad to have something to do.
He smiles in acknowledgement, and it occurs to me that he looks extremely tired. I'm about to move away when I hear his soft words behind me.
"Zoe?"
I glance back expectantly. His expression is one I'm familiar with -- pensive, commanding, but with a certain polite regard. I've come to think of it as Tom's 'Do it - please.' face.
"Stay close," he says.
I blink, and nod again. He has to keep me nearby now. I'm the only other loaded gun in the room.
The divers look like black water-beetles.
I don't think they're going to find a body. I have a bit of a lurch when one of them bubbles to the surface, calls out a discovery -- it's his coat. They found his coat.
...expectations
I fiddle, half-browsing the pages. Danny is dispensing booze, and Tom eyes me, my legs tucked up on the sofa chair like some lolling literary lump.
"And how is Dickens, on the re-read?"
I make a face -- I'm only part-way through -- then shrug, blasé.
"Actually, I think I understand it better now. Pip never really cared anything for Estella -- he was just toying with her. It was always Miss Haversham he was after. For the money, you know. Plus, he had a thing for geriatrics."
Danny snorts and chokes on his wine. Tom's eyebrows lift. He blinks neutrally.
"You know, Zoe, I thought I knew your mind, but on reflection I see that I was wrong. You're actually rather twisted, aren't you?"
I raise my glass and grin.
"I was trained by the best."
And for some reason we all think this is hilariously funny, and for days afterward someone only has to say 'twisted' and the three of us have to stifle grins, and Harry finds it extremely annoying.
Part of me feels guilty that Danny is running around back at the farmhouse, doing all the mopping up, while I stand here on a sand-dune with my mobile switched off, zoning out. My presence is official; it's the thinnest of pretexts.
Someone hands me a thermos lid full of coffee. It's horrible -- black, bitter. I make sure I say thank you.
...dummy
There's no sense of foreboding. I keep thinking that I should feel something -- a prickle, a tingle in the gut. But there's nothing really, just a nasty aftertaste whenever I look at my mobile and think of it ringing, and ringing, and ringing out. A sort of crawling revulsion, which I've been trying to shake off.
It wasn't what we asked her to do, but she went and did it anyway. Her choice. I don't know why you'd make a choice like that. Not a choice I would ever, ever make for myself.
All morning -- showering, dressing, catching a cab in to work -- I've been trying to get rid of this sense that maybe she didn't feel like she had any choices. I take a breath, make a mark with my pen, firmly. Making notes, keeping tabs.
Something makes me glance up, the way you do when you're thinking. I am an observer. It's a natural proclivity exacerbated by training. I observe without trying. Scanning rooms. Watching, out of the corner of my eye. Out of my eye's corner I see something and turn to engage it, and there he is.
Two steps out of Harry's office -- three steps -- and then...balancing. Balancing on the ball of his foot. There's a next step but he's not ready to take it yet, because it's a stagger, a fall. Blanched white. I feel a cold wash and think of the moment I turned off the hot tap to stand for a second or two in the freezing shower rain, wanting to purge myself of that ugly shuddering gurgle that returned whenever I thought of Vaughan and Mariella.
Mariella.
I can't think for a second, and he can't move. We just look at each other.
Oh god.
Awful. I'm awful at this. I wish I were cold-blooded, like a reptile. Like a puff adder. It's the same feeling every time - as though I'm in an elevator that has suddenly stopped and then dropped a floor. I want to reach out to steady myself, but there's nothing there. I have no internal handholds.
I used to think it was because I'm younger, or a woman, or that it was something in my own personal make up. But now I watch Tom's face, white-white, and see his hands open and close, open and close, and I know it isn't just me.
He's reaching for handholds.
I'm about to do something stupid and ineffectual like speak, or walk up to him -- but then he swallows and, with a gargantuan effort that looks like a blinking hesitation, he leans and takes that step. Then another. And another, gaining momentum, walking towards the revolving doors, grabbing his jacket, going out headfirst, my eyes following...
He looks quite normal, if you're not an observer. If you don't watch his hands.
Open and close.
Open and close.
I've stopped biting my nails because it's pointless.
I feel Danny come up and touch my shoulder, while I stand looking out to sea with my lips parted, for all the world like some mariner's widow. How pathetic.
"They radioed in," he says. "Harry's going to be okay."
I close my mouth and nod.
"Good."
"Zoe...I've been thinking."
"Have you? Me too."
"Tom shot Harry in the arm. The left arm."
"Yes. He did."
"He didn't shoot the signal device. On Harry's right."
"No."
Danny stares at me, but I'm looking far away.
"Tom didn't shoot the signal device because he didn't want to shoot you."
"Yes," I say. "I know."
"Zoe...if Tom is the cold-blooded rogue they say he is, then why didn't he just shoot Harry dead? Why did he avoid hurting you? For that matter, why leave us both alive, back at the farmhouse?"
I turn to look at Danny's face, watch the cogs in his brain clunk over.
"I don't know."
...no relation
...and we look at each other very deeply, very honestly, and I say the words that create Truth.
"And you looked after me," I say. "We've taken care of each other ever since."
"We're family," he says, as though he believes it. "We always look after each other."
There's a hum underneath us, because it sounds so real, it is so real. I sigh out softly, comforted somehow, and it's only when he looks away to reach for the bottle that I feel it - shocking, dangerous warmth, vermilion blush high on my cheeks. So when he turns back with the wine and asks if I want a top up I quickly glance at my notes and mumble my refusal.
The wind has picked up, it's freezing now, and my nose has started to run. I think it's about time I packed it in. It's been long enough, and I don't want to look like I'm keeping a vigil.
My aunt was religious. She used to slip into churches, drop her change in the box and light candles -- for sickness, for death. But I've never been a devotee. I have no rituals. So where does that leave me?
Limited options, really. I could take up smoking again, get drunk with Danny, leave my room in disarray, throw myself into work with a passion I barely feel, snap at everyone, call my father and lie aimlessly, find someone to fuck, max out my credit card on retail therapy, pick at my food, clean up my room, wake up at 3 a.m., gasping, to play Solitaire...
...conversations with dead people
It's getting late, and I am getting drunk. We've been here for far too long already, but I'm willing myself to be in the mood. Helen and I so rarely get the chance to just socialize these days.
We've been pacing ourselves. I am on my third, and she is on her fourth. The condensation on my glass died some time ago. Now I just watch the flow of custom at the pub and play with the water rings on the tabletop.
With the din surrounding us, we can talk about almost anything. Helen prattles on about work for an hour before finally getting to the point. We've been discussing personalities, and we're almost finished with Tessa.
"I still think she's a hard bitch," Helen guzzles into her glass.
I squint. "I thought you said you were observant?"
"I am. I've observed that she's a hard bitch."
"Ah." I'm not going to give away all I know. "Let me just say that Tessa has...many layers."
"Mm. We'll see." Helen looks contemplative, too casual. "So, enough about the staffroom Madam. What about Tom?"
I can grin now, and roll my eyes, because she's actually broached the subject.
"Oh, I think I can see where this is going."
She laughs.
"No, no." Then repents. "Well, yes. I'm interested. There you go. So what's he like?"
"Apart from in a committed relationship?"
"Don't care."
No, I can see that she doesn't. Really. She pushes on.
"Come on. What's he like?"
I might be drunk, but I'm not that drunk. I hedge, buying time.
"To work with? Or generally?"
Helen goes all coy, looks away and waves her glass airily.
"Just...generally."
"I don't know. Professional."
"More please."
"God, Helen..."
She laughs at the expression on my face.
"Don't look at me like I'm being ridiculous, Zoe, it happens all the time!"
"What, shagging the boss?"
"Harry's the boss."
"Show's how much you know."
I sip and go all sphinx-like. Helen's turn to roll her eyes.
"Either way, I'm not interested in shagging Harry, am I."
Grin. "I don't know, you tell me."
"Zoe. No, really. What's he like?"
"Oh..."
I put my chin on my hand and think. I don't know where to start, or even if I should start at all. Conversation of this sort is like quicksand -- difficult to avoid, hard to shake off, impossible to know how far down it's going to go. Put your foot in, and before you know it, you're up to your neck. I try to assess Helen's actual level of drunkenness, but then the pause gets too long and I'm obliged to dip my toe. I shrug and opt for double-speak.
"Oh, he's horrible. Dreadful to work with. Really, you wouldn't believe it..."
"Zoe..."
Blithe and expansive now.
"Yes, god -- horrid little man. Can't bear him, myself. Don't tell him I told you, will you?"
Helen's laughing at me now, and I'm laughing too, and I feel relieved. And then she's just grinning and looking at me oddly, and I get all weird and blinky, and I'm trying to sustain my grin but she's not smiling with me at all. Just at me. Until I can't stand the suspense.
"What?"
"Oh, wow..."
And the way she's looking at me, and when I see that she's not really as drunk as l thought, makes me feel terribly vulnerable.
"What?"
She folds her arms over her crossed legs and stares at me.
"You're totally gone on him, aren't you?"
Air puffs out from between my lips like a contained military explosion, and I make a watery grin.
"Come again?"
"Go on," she says brusquely. "Admit it."
I chuckle.
"You're mad."
Then I pick up my glass and knock back the dregs. This chat is over, and there will be no admissions, of any kind.
Ever.
As I said.
I've never been a devotee.