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<h2>18</h2>
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<p>“I don’t know what on earth’s going on
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here,” Helen said into the phone. “But I’ve
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locked the place and I’m not going back in there again until
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I have back-up. I can call in and get a patrol team, but honestly,
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I’d rather you were here. We’re both in
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this.”</p>
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<p>“All right,” David said, his voice tiny and
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fragmenting. He was obviously in his car, a fact she already knew,
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for his voice kept dissolving into hisses of static. Bursts of
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crackling interference split his sentences into senseless islands
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of words. “I should be there in.....an hour.”</p>
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<p>“Say again?”</p>
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<p>“Wait... half an hour.....through traffic.” She got
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the message. There was one final burst of electronic heavy
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breathing and the phone went dead. He was on his way, just passing
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the centre of town. He’d come down the motorway and across
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the bridge that spanned the river near Barloan Harbour. She felt a
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warm glow of more than just relief.</p>
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<p>Down in the kitchen, Nina Galt was trying to remember exactly
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what the girl had said. Helen was on her third cup of tea of the
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afternoon and the pressure was getting to her, but she was
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reluctant to move. The toilets were beyond the stairway which led
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up to the room where Ginny Marsden had spent the night and had now,
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somehow contaminated with the foul, disabling smell.</p>
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<p>“She looked more than twenty two to me,” Nina Galt
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was saying. “She must have had a bloody hard life. If
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I’d looked like that when I was her age I’d have put my
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head in the oven. I thought she was at least thirty something,
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maybe even older than that. I remember thinking she was pushing it
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to have a kid, know what I mean?. There was grey in her hair and it
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looked like she could use a good shampoo. You could see places
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where it had fallen out. Has she got aids or something?”</p>
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<p>“She’s pretty sick,” Helen conceded. Once
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they’d come downstairs, Nina Galt seemed to forget the fact
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that she was a policeman and any hostility she might have initially
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harboured melted like spring frost on a south wall. She had seen
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the look of unaccountable fear on the younger woman’s face
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and some of it had transmitted itself to her. They were now two
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women sitting in a big kitchen, drinking tea, and trying not to be
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afraid. What she should fear, Nina had no idea, but when
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she’d got to the room upstairs, she had felt the
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unaccountable shiver of panic. She had been downright scared, for
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no reason, and that was scary enough. Helen Lamont, for all she was
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young and slightly built and good-looking, she looked tough and
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capable, had to be, going by the way she had faced Nina down in the
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front of the hostel, and if she was scared then there was something
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to worry about.</p>
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<p>“What about the baby?”</p>
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<p>“We don’t know. She may have kidnapped
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it.”</p>
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<p>“She never did,” Nina said, more of a question than
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a statement. “She didn’t look like somebody who’d
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do that. A good breath of wind would have knocked her
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down.”</p>
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<p>Helen had brought in the register from the front counter and had
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it opened on the table. Ginny Marsden, confirmed from the
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photograph, though Nina Galt claimed she looked at least ten years
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older, had given her friend’s name and shown a bank card as
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identification. Nina confirmed, yet again, that she didn’t
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have a pram when she arrived, but had brought one back later in the
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afternoon, leaving it in the space behind the stairs in the
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hallway.</p>
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<p>“And nobody saw her leave?”</p>
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<p>Nina shrugged, blowing a dragons breath double plume of smoke
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down her nostrils. “They come and go. We give them a roof and
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a kettle and hotplate, a bed and somewhere to put their clothes.
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It’s a charity, a kind of halfway house, just a shelter out
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of the cold.. The social services take them in after that, some of
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the time anyway, and sometimes the council might find them a
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permanent place, if they’re really lucky, for this
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council’s been broke for years, run by loonies and
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gladhanders. As I say, they come and go. It looks pretty much like
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she’s gone.”</p>
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<p>She drew in another heavy drag of smoke, held it for a while,
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her eyes fixed on Helen. She let it go and spoke through the smoke.
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“I home she doesn’t come back. Whatever she’s
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got, I don’t want to catch. And I’ll have to get that
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room fumigated too.”</p>
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<p>David Harper arrived twenty minutes after the telephone call and
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Helen knew he must have broken the law to get there so quickly. She
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felt a glow suffuse her at the thought of his concern.</p>
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<p>“Plenty to tell you,” he said. “How did you
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find her?”</p>
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<p>“Solid police work while you were running around chasing
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your tail. And I haven’t found her. I’ve only found
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where she’s been. She’s gone.”</p>
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<p>“Great,” David said, brows drawn down. “You
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could have told me on the phone and it would have saved a
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trip.”</p>
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<p>Helen’s glow vanished. She bristled. “Don’t
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come the smartass David. You should have been here and you’d
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be telling a different story.”</p>
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<p>She stopped herself, realising it was the very concern that had
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spurred that response. “Sorry. Anyway, she’s on foot,
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with a baby,” she waited for his eyes to register that,
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“and a pram. She won’t be far, and it doesn’t
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look as if it’s in danger, but the girl herself could be. Mrs
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Galt says she’s sick.”</p>
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<p>“Call me Nina,” the big, not quite natural blonde
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insisted, favouring David with a wide and predatory smile. She
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looked as if she could swallow him. For some reason, it annoyed
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Helen. Nina went through the story again and then they went back
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upstairs, Helen trailing cautiously behind David, noting this time
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how Nina wiggled her broad but shapely backside in an almost comic
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come-on. The door opened and Nina stood back to let them both
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inside and immediately Helen felt her heartbeat speed up.</p>
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<p>“Same smell as the McDougall place, and Barker’s
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house.” David noted. “But a lot fainter.”</p>
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<p>“What is it?” Nina wanted to know. “Should I
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get the health inspector in and have the place fumigated? Is it
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some kind of disease?”</p>
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<p>“Don’t think so,” David told her. “A
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good scrub with soap wouldn’t do any harm.” He was
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looking around, noting the rumpled carpet still snagged under the
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leg of the old bed and the swirl of blankets on the mattress, like
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the nest he’d seen in the McDougall house. Like the one
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he’d seen at Celia Barker’s place after Helen had
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stumbled out. Round the back of the hostel, the dog was still
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barking, though the sounds were weaker, more muted. Every now and
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again, the clatter of its charge against the door, and the sound of
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wood tearing would rattle the ancient sash window in its frame.</p>
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<p>“Somebody should put that beast out of its misery,”
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David said.</p>
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<p>Over on the work surface beside the sink, David picked up the
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polystyrene package which still contained a shallow, dilute pool of
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blood. It bore the name of the butcher’s shop on a stick-on
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label. Nina told him the shop was less than a hundred yards away.
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An empty eggbox lay close by, with twin trickles of hardening
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albumen glued to the wooden surface of the well-used
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breadboard.</p>
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<p>The scent was almost gone, though Helen’s nose was still
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wrinkled in disgust. When he had walked into the room, David had
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experienced a flutter, a sudden thumping double beat of his heart
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and an odd, burning sensation in his temples which spread to his
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ears and he recognised it as his angry mode, a mood-marker that had
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been part of him since childhood. His father had always teased him
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about it, telling him to go cool his ears whenever the younger
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David had lost his temper in frustration. It was nowhere near as
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bad as the twist of violent emotions that had shunted through him
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in the house he’d thought of as Thelma Quigley’s, but
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it was similar enough to make him realise that Helen had been right
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to call him. There was indeed a connection, a very bizarre
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connection, between the flat and rotten - and if he admitted it,
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strangely exciting - smell and the two women, one dead, one still
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missing for now. The baby was the other connection.</p>
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<p>For an instant, a thought tried to grab his attention, danced
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away, then came back. He snatched it. Was the smell something to do
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with the baby Ginny Marsden had scooped from the pram? Was it
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sick?</p>
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<p><em>Was it dead?</em> That was something to consider, a
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possibility, however remote. David made a quick and professional
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search of the room, realised there was nothing more to be learned,
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and went out.</p>
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<p>The big and typically beefy butcher told them that a girl had
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bought more than a pound of ox-liver and some eggs. He
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couldn’t recall exactly when, but he recalled she looked
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stooped and cold. “I remember thinking the liver should do
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her some good,” he said. “Plenty of iron and vitamins.
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Put some meat on the bones. A good steak would have done her some
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good.”</p>
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<p>Of Ginny Marsden, however, there was no sign. Nobody else had
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seen the girl with the pram with the one squeaky wheel, with the
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exception of the assistant in the charity shop who had sold it to
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her, and she couldn’t remember what the girl had looked like,
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even with encouragement.</p>
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<p>It was only after speaking to the butcher that David’s
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thought came back to him, that the baby might somehow, however
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improbably, be dead. But when he voiced it, Helen countered the
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notion. Old Maggie in the cafe down by the bus stop at the far end
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of River Street had told her the infant had turned and looked at
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her with big blue eyes.</p>
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<p>“She said it made a noise, and it smelled like a new baby.
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Smell of milk. They’re all like that, I can tell you. Every
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weekend my mother’s house is full of them. They smell of
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worse than milk, I can tell you.”</p>
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<p>“Not your scene?”</p>
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<p>“Believe it,” Helen assured him. “I’m
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the black sheep of the family ’cause I haven’t gone
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into mass reproduction yet. My sisters give me pitying looks, but
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it’s not me that’s stuck with changing nappies and
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getting up in the middle of the night to pace the floor with
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teething babies. It doesn’t look like fun to me.”</p>
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<p>David smiled at the idea of Helen pacing the floor, but at the
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same time he recalled June’s ever more frequent complaints
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that time was moving on; that her biological clock was <em>ticking
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off the days</em>.</p>
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<p>“Oh, probably sometime I might go for it.” Helen
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said. “When I meet the right guy. And after I reach chief
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inspector level. My mother doesn’t believe women should have
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a career. She thinks we should populate the earth, but as far as
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I’m concerned, the earth is doing very nicely without my
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help. Anyway, I haven’t met the right guy yet.”</p>
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<p>She looked up at him and they both smiled.</p>
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<hr />
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<p><em>He had sensed the other one</em>.</p>
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<p>Immediately a tingle of strange and fearsome excitement had
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washed through him. It brought a hunger, the new and different
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need, a hollow yearning that was hot and fierce and infinitely
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powerful.</p>
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<p>Already he was spent, tired and drained from the effort of
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subduing the mother and bringing her back under control after the
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terror of abandonment. He had made her feed herself and he had fed
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off her, draining her of the building blocks his own changing body
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needed and then he’d slept and she’d tried to leave.
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The anger bubbled inside of him, anger and fear and the realisation
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of his own vulnerability.</p>
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<p>That was another new thing that he had learned since the moment
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the old mother had stopped and failed. He had discovered a fear,
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something that he might have known long ago but had forgotten in
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the years of complacent feeding. <em>Fear</em>.</p>
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<p>There had always been a mother, back, back as far as his
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strange, wordless memory would allow him to look, all their bovine
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bland faces merging into one, all of their teats melded into one
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great feeding. When one was finished, another would come to take
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her place, without fail, without question.</p>
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<p>And now there was this one, who had fought against him as he
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drained her.</p>
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<p>Inside her, he could perceive the destruction and dissolution,
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and instinctively knew she would not last. His hunger quickened at
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that. He would need more, much more as the change burgeoned.
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Already, he could feel his limbs lengthen, his muscles strengthen,
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and there was an even deeper hunger than the one he was used to,
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now awakening from dormancy within him.</p>
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<p>The change was racing towards him and it scared him as much as
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it excited. It was new and unknown, the first real new thing in his
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life for as long as his memory could ascertain. He could not
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remember his beginning.</p>
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<p>But he remembered the other one, the new female, with that
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tingle, unexpected and strange, the stirring of his growing want.
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The fearsome excitement had ripped inside him in a tide of sudden
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ferment. It was mixed with the fear and the inexplicable sense of
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vulnerability.</p>
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<p>She was <em>threat</em>.</p>
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<p>Yet she was more, though he did not have the words or the
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thoughts to explain what or why.</p>
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<p>He had made the mother move, after a while, when he had fought
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to dominate her and get his will inside her thoughts, damping down
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the fires of rebellion, stamping on the sparks until there was
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little left but a residual heat and some distant, bubbling flares
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that were far enough away to cause no concern. He had expended
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himself in that huge burst of energy and passion, draining his
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glands of everything they had, using up his vital growing
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sustenance in the singular effort of concentration that harnessed
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her. He was drained and had to rest, but even then, while he made
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her move, he could not let the link between them subside.</p>
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<p>There was danger here now, he sensed. Outside, the animal
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screeched and howled as it battered and snarled for freedom, its
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mind crazed by the mental shriek that had almost turned its brain
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to slush. As soon as he had the mother, as soon as he could make
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her move, he needed to be out of that place, where it had seemed,
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his next change would happen. She moved slowly and he could feel
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the vibration of the grinding bones and feel the heat of the
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inflammation in her joints as all of her goodness was leeched out
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to make his frame strong for the next stage.</p>
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<p>She had carried him down the stairs, wrapped in the shawl, much
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as she had wrapped and trapped him in the blanket, but he sensed no
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danger now. He made her put him in the carrier, in the dark. In
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another room, another of them, an old, spent and used one, was
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singing low. He stretched a curious tendril of thought to touch
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this one and picked up her dry fruitlessness, the emptiness of her
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body. There was no feeding there.</p>
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<p>Outside he closed his eyes against the light, however dim, that
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managed to get between the storm cover and the hood, turning his
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head to bury his face against the cloth, all the time holding her
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with a loop of his own thoughts, a rein of attention and
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compulsion. The pram rattled and jounced on the flagstones. She
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walked on in the narrowness of the street where there was no direct
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sun, just moving.</p>
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<p>Then he touched the other one.</p>
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<p>His outreach trailed across her and a sudden panic flared inside
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him,. The mother stopped dead in her tacks. Another one, again old
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and dry, muttered something in the passing, annoyed at having been
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held up by the sudden stoppage. The different one, the one he had
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touched before was very near, so close her presence was like an
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itch on the surface of his skin. His attention wavered out in an
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expanding circle of apprehension, ready to draw back at the first
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real hint of danger.</p>
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<p>He touched her again and felt her response. She was turning
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towards him, her mind already open. She was moving, quite slowly,
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moving in the other direction. She was turning, very quickly,
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swivelling towards him and he stroked the different part of her
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mind, that rare part in one of these creatures, that could
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perceive. It was weak and unused, but inside it the potential was
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vast. As soon as he felt it, he withdrew very quickly in great
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alarm. She too could <em>reach</em>.</p>
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<p>She was swivelling, and the crevasse in her mind was beginning
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to open, triggered by, responding to, his initial alien invasion.
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He knew she could feel his touch.</p>
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<p><em>Go Go Go Go NOW.</em></p>
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<p>The mother turned, swivelled the carrier, back up the alley. He
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drew back, pulled back. Let go. He broke the contact with a psychic
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snap that was almost a pain.</p>
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<p>Mentally, for some reason, he was cringing away from her,
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stretched between the horns of his own hungers, confused by the
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seismic heavings inside his head and his body. He felt the glands
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puff up, draining his own substance, and he had to concentrate to
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force them back to quiescence. The tingle, fierce and unexpectedly
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violent, shuddered under his skin. He experienced a new hunger and
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a savage gladness that mixed in with the fear of entrapment and the
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uncertainty of the hunted.</p>
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<p>She was hunting him, he could feel that. She did not know what
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he was. Was unsure of his very existence, on the conscious level,
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but already she had breathed him in and the chasm inside of her own
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mind, the crevasse that held the coiled power, had sensed the
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strangeness, the difference of him.</p>
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<p>She did not know it, but they had already met, already
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touched.</p>
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<p>She had savoured him.</p>
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<p>He forced the mother to move away, to keep walking. The wheel
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squeaked and the mother’s bones ground together, the sound of
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uncontrolled erosion. He made her move, put as much distance as
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possible between him and the other one. That was all he could do
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for now, get away, make a retreat. If she was hunting for him, she
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would find him, maybe, but by that time, he might be prepared; he
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might be able to do something about it.</p>
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<p>For the time being, all he wanted was the quiet and solitude he
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instinctively knew was needed for the change. Despite that, as the
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mother took him further from the touch of the other one, the
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strange, unique excitement shuddered through him.</p>
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<hr />
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<p>Barloan Harbour’s small railway station looked like the
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centrepiece of a Victorian Christmas card under the light fall of
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snow which sent flakes floating silently to earth beneath a sky
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that was mysteriously clear to the east. Overhead the moon, low in
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the early evening winter sky, was round and bright, ringed with a
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soft and fuzzy halo, a bomber’s moon they used to say in the
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old days. It picked out the sluggish waters of the harbour basin,
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now at half tide and on the rise. The scattering of snow lined the
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stone slope down to a few feet above the waterline where a few
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hardy gulls and oystercatchers bleated hollowly. The moonlight
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limned the rail tracks which led east to the city, or back west to
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Levenford where Ginny Marsden had laboriously pushed the pram,
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still squeaking, up the ramp and onto the first train to pull in,
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heading eastwards. Something urged her to get off here at the
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harbour station, in the shadow of the soaring bridge which crossed
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the broad tidal river in an elegant double curve.</p>
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<p>It had been difficult to get the pram off when the automatic
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doors had opened. A boy, maybe a student, had taken the heavy end,
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hardly looking at her as he did so, and eased it onto the
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platform.</p>
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<p>“There you are, missus,” he said, courteous and
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friendly, hefting his full shoulder bag and sauntering away into
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the gathering dark. Five days ago, he’d have given her the
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eye, taken in her long and elegant legs, maybe even sat next to her
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on the train as soon as he spotted her tumble of blonde hair. Now
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he only saw a woman with a pram, hardly giving her a glance. Ginny
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Marsden was hardly even aware of that. There were other matters
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demanding her close attention.</p>
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<p>She slowly shoved herself and the pram towards the small, old
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fashioned waiting room, which, as luck would have it, if luck has
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anything to do with this story, was the only one in the whole line,
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from Kirkland right up to Central High, to have a coal fire, and
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that was only because the stationmaster, who lived in a small brick
|
|
house just beyond the edge of the platform, could get as much coal
|
|
as he could from the scuttle boats that stopped to unload at the
|
|
far end of the harbour.</p>
|
|
<p>A couple of schoolkids stopped canoodling when she slowly pushed
|
|
the door open and trundled the old pram ahead of her. She hardly
|
|
noticed them but, now disturbed in their private place, they pursed
|
|
their lips, exhaling in suffering sighs, and went out to find
|
|
another private neuk to resume their closer acquaintance. Ginny
|
|
walked slowly towards the flicker of the fire, spent a few moments
|
|
effortfully turning the pram so that it was broadside to the heat
|
|
and then sat down, trying to ignore the grind of dreadful pain in
|
|
her hips and knees. Her fingers were red from the cold in
|
|
Levenford’s elevated station where the wind had been gentle
|
|
but insistent and frigid. She had no gloves and she’d had no
|
|
mind of her own, at that time, to tell her to put her hands in her
|
|
pockets. They had stayed motionless, clenched tight to the handle
|
|
of the pram. Now in the warmth of the waiting room, they were red
|
|
raw and scadded, each knuckle swollen to twice its normal width.
|
|
When the blood began to run again into the shrunken veins, the pain
|
|
in her hands corkscrewed deep under the skin and she was aware of
|
|
it constantly, without reprieve. She could do nothing about it. She
|
|
could not, at this time, even weep.</p>
|
|
<p>Outside, beyond the dusty window, an occasional flash of bright
|
|
blue light would jitter and sizzle on the overhead electric line
|
|
where the hard frost allowed a trickle of power to escape. It was
|
|
an eerie lightning, a hissing spark that sounded like the
|
|
shivering, wordless hiss of the commands inside her head. Moving
|
|
with infinite care, like an old, spent woman, she sat at the end of
|
|
the slatted bench, feeling the heat on the side of her bare leg.
|
|
Her head ached and her breasts ached and in her womb, blood
|
|
trickled thickly, radiating the constant cramp, but these
|
|
sensations were almost pleasant in comparison to the awful tides of
|
|
hurt that juddered into her bones.</p>
|
|
<p>She sat there, passing the time in a daze that allowed for
|
|
hardly any thought. The baby still had her battened down, its
|
|
pressure still hissing inside her head, its manipulation almost
|
|
absolute.</p>
|
|
<p>After a while a train went past, clattering over the
|
|
cold-widened gaps and making the waiting room shudder. Once past,
|
|
in the darkness under the soaring arch of the bridge, it howled
|
|
like a beast and was gone. The baby jerked in the pram, its
|
|
attention momentarily grabbed by the noise and vibration. The brief
|
|
escape from the pressure of its will let Ginny’s
|
|
consciousness bubble up to the surface.</p>
|
|
<p>“Please God,” she prayed silently. “Please god
|
|
spare me from this.”</p>
|
|
<p>Out in the night, the train’s clatter diminished and the
|
|
blue sparkle jittered again on the overhead cables.</p>
|
|
<p>“I’m dying,” Ginny Marsden realised, but there
|
|
was nothing she could do about that. She was too tired to move, to
|
|
hurt and too desperately weak to do anything but bear the pain. In
|
|
the momentary respite from its attention a tear welled up in her
|
|
eye, making the already dim shapes in the sparse room waver and
|
|
dance. It spilled out and trickled down her cheek, a brief,
|
|
transient warmth on the dry and wrinkling skin of her face. It slid
|
|
past the corner of her mouth where the surface was fissured and
|
|
puckered into creases that aged the young girl so violently that
|
|
the student on the train had taken her for middle aged.</p>
|
|
<p>The single tear trickled to her chin, hung there for a moment,
|
|
then dropped to the matte of her coat. It was a tear of utter
|
|
despair. It was all she could do.</p>
|
|
<p>The sound of the train disappeared into the far distance, a
|
|
rhythmic rattle that faded to a whisper. High overhead, on the road
|
|
bridge, the lights of cars and trucks speared out across the curve
|
|
and into the black gulf of the night, picking out the motes of snow
|
|
suspended in the air.</p>
|
|
<p>The baby’s attention turned back to Ginny Marsden.</p>
|
|
<p>She felt its probe, its rough and feral touch and her own mind
|
|
flinched away from the contact, quite fruitlessly. It did not even
|
|
have to waste its energy and substance by spraying its chemical
|
|
messengers now. If she had looked inside, under the hood, she would
|
|
have seen, not a baby, but a blurred shape whose outlines twisted
|
|
and changed, now dark, now light, now smooth, now dry and flaking.
|
|
It would have been baby sized, but thin-limbed and
|
|
belly-bloated.</p>
|
|
<p>Yet when it demanded to be fed, she would feed it. When it
|
|
demanded to be held, she would hold it. When it wanted mothering,
|
|
she would mother it.</p>
|
|
<p>Later, another train, this one heading west, went thundering
|
|
past, not stopping at Barloan Harbour. Ginny stirred and with
|
|
enormous effort, she stood up. There was no-one else in the waiting
|
|
room, but had there been, he would have heard the awful millstone
|
|
sound of bone grinding on bone. Ginny Marsden paused for breath,
|
|
unable to let out a cry, even a moan. Her feet moved, and she went
|
|
out and along the narrow platform to the white gate that led to the
|
|
cobbles of the narrow sloping road. She pushed the pram ahead of
|
|
her up the hill just as a small girl on a big boy’s bike came
|
|
flying down, pigtails flying in the slipstream.</p>
|
|
<p>“Watch out Kirsty,” another girl called, swooping
|
|
down the hill on a smaller bicycle. “You nearly hit that
|
|
woman.” The pigtailed girl wobbled, turned her head to watch
|
|
the woman push the pram, her attention snagged by something. The
|
|
bike’s momentum carried her beyond the stooped figure, away
|
|
from whatever had attracted her notice and both children, carefree
|
|
and excited, whizzed past, leaving Ginny Marsden alone on the
|
|
road.</p>
|
|
<p>It took her half an hour to get to the main through road. By the
|
|
time she reached the small end cottage with the bed-and-breakfast
|
|
sign in its window, she was limping heavily and the nerves in her
|
|
left foot were completely numb.</p>
|
|
<p>The old woman who answered the door wore glasses as thick as
|
|
bottle ends, which made her eyes piggy and shrunken. While her
|
|
vacancy sign was out in the garden, an old fashioned B&B plaque
|
|
hanging from two chains on what looked like a hangman’s
|
|
gibbet, she hadn’t expected any business so close to
|
|
Christmas. She had two rooms on the top and one on the bottom and
|
|
that was the one she offered the gaunt, ill-looking woman who stood
|
|
at the door.</p>
|
|
<p>Mrs Cosgrove, a dumpy little woman with a wizened leg, a legacy
|
|
from the old polio days before the war, told her the rate and said
|
|
she always took cash, never trusting those plastic cards. Ginny
|
|
fumbled, almost absently for her bag, searched it and said she
|
|
would have to go to the bank the next day. Her voice was hollow and
|
|
distant, as if she really was sick. The old woman looked her up and
|
|
down suspiciously. There was a silence as she peered through those
|
|
magnifying lenses, then, at that moment, the baby whimpered. Mrs
|
|
Cosgrove looked for a second as if she’d been suddenly
|
|
slapped. She blinked several times and without hesitation, she
|
|
bustled the woman and the pram inside.</p>
|
|
<p>Ginny hardly said a word, merely nodding like an automaton, as
|
|
the woman, as wide as she was tall, and her hair pulled into a
|
|
savage bun, shoo-ed her into a ground floor room, lit a gas fire,
|
|
and then brought the girl a steaming plate of soup and a mound of
|
|
buttered bread.</p>
|
|
<p>She asked if the baby might need a bottle, explaining that she
|
|
had one of her grandson’s still in the house. Ginny shook her
|
|
head and bent to sup the hot soup.</p>
|
|
<p>For some reason, it tasted slimy and alien, almost made her
|
|
sick, but she forced it down. She wanted something with blood and
|
|
calcium, something raw and full of sustenance and powerfully rich.
|
|
The tastebuds of her tongue seemed to stand out on their own when
|
|
the strange appetite came upon her, but still, she supped the soup
|
|
until it was gone.</p>
|
|
<p>The woman finally left her alone and after a while, the baby
|
|
demanded to be fed.</p>
|
|
<p>Ginny Marsden, looking like a woman more that twice her age, now
|
|
aware of the imminence of her own death, obeyed.</p>
|
|
<p>______</p>
|
|
<p>June rang the bell after ten, just as Helen was leaving. The
|
|
three of them stood awkwardly in the hall, David, wrong-footed
|
|
again, not sure whether to let Helen out first or invite June in.
|
|
Finally June made the decision, pushing her way past and drawing
|
|
Helen a look that should have pinned her to the wall.</p>
|
|
<p>“See you in the morning,” Helen said, giving him a
|
|
wide smile which also conveyed her mirth at his discomfort. Quite
|
|
archly, very mischievously, she added: “And don’t sleep
|
|
in, Sergeant, we’ve a busy day ahead of us.” Before the
|
|
door closed, she winked at him and turned away towards her car.</p>
|
|
<p>“What was she doing here,” June wanted to know.</p>
|
|
<p>“She was collecting some of the papers we’ve been
|
|
working on.”</p>
|
|
<p>“Are you screwing her?”</p>
|
|
<p>“Jees....” David started to say. The question, so
|
|
bluntly put, had startled him to bewilderment. He’d never
|
|
heard her use that word before. “What do you mean?” he
|
|
finally asked.</p>
|
|
<p>“I mean, are you screwing that bitch? Are you giving it to
|
|
her? Huh? Like what you and me never seem to do these
|
|
days?”</p>
|
|
<p>“Don’t be so bloody stupid,” he snorted, all
|
|
the while sensing a hot and turgid flare of excitement at the
|
|
now-conscious thought of it. He hadn’t actually considered
|
|
the idea, not deliberately, he told himself and even then he knew
|
|
that was not quite true. He had thought of her, even though
|
|
he’d always tried to keep his working relationship
|
|
separate.</p>
|
|
<p>He had pretended he hadn’t understood the previous night
|
|
when Helen had told him he didn’t have to do a runner,
|
|
letting him know by her very posture, that he was welcome to stay,
|
|
at least a little longer. Maybe he had picked it up wrongly, though
|
|
he didn’t think so. He recalled the powerful, unexpected
|
|
surge of desire that he’d had to clamp down, not as powerful
|
|
as the un-natural sensation in the dead woman’s house, but a
|
|
powerful need within him just the same. They were partners, but now
|
|
there was something else sparking between them that confused and
|
|
wrong-footed him. He could have stayed at Helen’s, but he
|
|
hadn’t, because he <em>had</em> made the effort, ever though
|
|
on the way home, he’d swung between lust and loyalty, pinned
|
|
between the physical drive and his own sense of fair play.</p>
|
|
<p>“Then what was she doing here?”</p>
|
|
<p>“I already told you.”</p>
|
|
<p>“You’re a bloody liar. You’ve been seeing her
|
|
behind my back, haven’t you?”</p>
|
|
<p>She pushed past him, along the short, wide hallway where some of
|
|
his best pictures were lined up in large frames alongside his
|
|
favourite elemental shots, a skein of geese passing in a chevron
|
|
across the face of the full moon, a world-famous piece shot by
|
|
Fiona Spiers, one of his own, from early autumn, a woodcock in
|
|
sharp and perfect focus while the trees it flew between were only
|
|
blurred shadows. The centrepiece was the one he’d taken as a
|
|
boy, a close up shot, so close the edges were distorted, of a
|
|
dragonfly on a stalk, glittering in the sunlight, while empty paper
|
|
skin from which it emerged hung down, transparent and useless, and
|
|
as ugly as the larva from which it had transformed. She strode past
|
|
the photographs and into the front room. He followed.</p>
|
|
<p>“Well?</p>
|
|
<p>She had stopped in the middle of the room, winter coat swinging
|
|
round to catch up with her. She looked neat and capable, a matching
|
|
beret at a jaunty angle. She was looking down at the scatter of
|
|
papers and books all over the floor. There were two half empty
|
|
coffee cups on the table.</p>
|
|
<p>“I’ve been seeing her every day. I told you,”
|
|
he said. “We were working.”</p>
|
|
<p>“For the past week?”</p>
|
|
<p>“Three days, you know that.”</p>
|
|
<p>“I’ve left messages all over the place. You’ve
|
|
not answered any of them. It’s just not good
|
|
enough.”</p>
|
|
<p>“For God’s sake, June. I’ve been up to my
|
|
eyes. I just haven’t had time.”</p>
|
|
<p>“Don’t you love me any more?” She spat the
|
|
words out.</p>
|
|
<p>That question really caught him on the hop. “Of course
|
|
I...” he started without thinking. “Yes, of
|
|
course.” Even as he said it he realised it was a response, a
|
|
conditioned reflex. She had needed him to say that, right from the
|
|
beginning of their relationship, driven by the need to love and be
|
|
loved. For a while he had thought he meant it and after a while he
|
|
had stopped thinking about it. Now he realised he should have. He
|
|
had not been entirely fair, with himself or with her.</p>
|
|
<p>She turned to look at him. “No you don’t. You really
|
|
don’t. We’ve been going out for nearly two years and in
|
|
the past six months I’ve hardly seen anything of you. The
|
|
last time I did see you, did you stay? No. You gave me some
|
|
limp-dicked excuse and left.”</p>
|
|
<p>“Steady on,” David started to protest. She was all
|
|
fired up and all her sentences were crammed up against each other,
|
|
and she was using language he heard every day of the week, but
|
|
never from her. “That’s a bit unfair. You know
|
|
I’m in the middle of something important.”</p>
|
|
<p>“A dead woman in the shopping mall? A missing girl?
|
|
That’s hardly the crime of the century. You must be losing
|
|
your touch or your reputation. But I don’t give a damn about
|
|
the job. I care about us. What am I supposed to think? Look at
|
|
me.”</p>
|
|
<p>He did. She was standing in the centre of the room, one hand on
|
|
her hip and the other stretched towards him, a finger jabbing the
|
|
air. Her nail was long and red and looked as if it could stab him
|
|
deep enough to draw blood.</p>
|
|
<p>“You spend all of your time with her.”</p>
|
|
<p>“That’s because she’s a police officer. She
|
|
works with me. We work together.”</p>
|
|
<p>“It’s more than that. In know it. I’m not
|
|
stupid. Otherwise you’d have stayed with me the other night.
|
|
But you didn’t stay, did you? You haven’t stayed over
|
|
in weeks. You won’t move in with me and you won’t let
|
|
me move in with you. All my other friends are engaged or married.
|
|
They’ve got children for heaven’s sake. And all the
|
|
time my clock’s ticking. I don’t want to wait until
|
|
I’m forty. I can’t wait, don’t you
|
|
understand?”</p>
|
|
<p>“So that’s what this is all about, is it?”
|
|
David said, quite needlessly. He’d already known that.
|
|
“It’s about kids.”</p>
|
|
<p>“It’s about <em>us,</em> David,” she said
|
|
passionately, her eyes flashing blue, and right at that moment, he
|
|
felt ashamed of himself and sorry for her. She had drives he could
|
|
not, would not, comprehend.</p>
|
|
<p>“It’s about us,” she said, voice high and
|
|
almost desperate. “Us and the future. I can’t wait any
|
|
more, watching you run around with her, spending all your time
|
|
working or taking your stupid pictures. I need more than that. I
|
|
need a relationship and yes, I do want children. I want to be part
|
|
of something, part of a family.”</p>
|
|
<p>“I told you I would think about it,” David said, and
|
|
again he realised he wasn’t being fair. “It’s a
|
|
big step.”</p>
|
|
<p>“What are you?” she demanded, eyes glittering again.
|
|
“Are you sterile? Or have you turned gay? I’m beginning
|
|
to think you might have, for your sex drive seems to have died the
|
|
death. I remember when you couldn’t get enough.”</p>
|
|
<p>Quite involuntarily, David burst out laughing as irritation and
|
|
guilt and exasperation and sudden anger tumbled inside him.
|
|
“I can’t be gay if I’m screwing Helen Lamont, can
|
|
I?”</p>
|
|
<p>Her jaw dropped and for an instant he enjoyed it. “Are you
|
|
telling me...?” her voice trailed away.</p>
|
|
<p>“No of course I’m not. It was you who said I was and
|
|
if that’s what you want to believe, no matter what I say,
|
|
then it’s up to you.” He stopped, closed his mouth when
|
|
he realised he was being drawn into this confrontation, reacting in
|
|
anger. He started again. “ Listen, this is out of order.
|
|
Let’s just sit down and calm down and talk this through like
|
|
intelligent adults.” He put his hands out, reaching to place
|
|
them on her shoulders. She wriggled away from him.</p>
|
|
<p>“No,” she said with a quick shake of her head.
|
|
“I need an answer now. We’re either together or
|
|
we’re not. I need a commitment and I need it now.”</p>
|
|
<p>“What kind of commitment?”</p>
|
|
<p>“A real one. Something definite. I don’t want to
|
|
waste my life hanging around for something that might happen,
|
|
maybe, some time. Like never. I need to know where I am, where I
|
|
stand. It’s easy for you, but it’s hellish for me when
|
|
you’re never with me and when you miss dates and don’t
|
|
phone. Yes, I want a commitment that says you’ll be where
|
|
<em>you</em> say you’ll be, and that you’ll take me out
|
|
and that we can live together and yes, have babies. And honestly
|
|
David, the way I’m feeling, if I can’t get that
|
|
commitment, that’s it. End of story.”</p>
|
|
<p>There it was, hanging there. He wanted to avoid it, wanted to
|
|
squirm away from it and spend some more time picking it over,
|
|
thinking it through. He wasn’t a weak man, not in any real
|
|
sense, but he hated hurting her, hated hurting anyone except the
|
|
occasional villain who had a go at him. But he was beginning,
|
|
however belatedly, to realise that sometimes kindness wore a face
|
|
of stone.</p>
|
|
<p>The silence stretched out for a long, frozen moment while the
|
|
two of them, stood motionless, protagonists or dancers.</p>
|
|
<p>“All right,” he said finally. “You’re
|
|
right. I haven’t been fair. But I really don’t want to
|
|
move in. I don’t want to have children, not yet. I
|
|
don’t want to get married, not yet, and I don’t want to
|
|
settle down.” He stopped talking, looked at her. “Not
|
|
yet.”</p>
|
|
<p>Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. He held up a hand.
|
|
“I don’t have the same drives you have. I don’t
|
|
have the same needs either. I really love my work, honestly, even
|
|
all the crap that goes with it. And I can’t take you with me
|
|
when I go up the hills and take pictures, because that’s not
|
|
your thing. If you want more, then I’m sorry. I can’t
|
|
give you more, not yet. Maybe,” he started, looking into her
|
|
eyes and now seeing the need to say the obvious. “Maybe not
|
|
ever. I’m sorry.”</p>
|
|
<p>June rocked back as if she’d been slapped. Her mouth
|
|
goldfished some more and David felt an unaccustomed tear springing
|
|
in his own eyes as he picked up her distress. It was an awful
|
|
moment. For an instant the blood drained from her face and he
|
|
thought she might faint. Instead, she recovered quickly. Her brows
|
|
drew down into a frown and her mouth pulled itself into an angry
|
|
twist. Without warning she moved, striding past him, coat flapping
|
|
again, he half turned, a word trying to blurt out. She stopped,
|
|
turned, and then, striking like a snake, she balled her hand into a
|
|
tight fist and hit him square on the nose.</p>
|
|
<p>The tear of anguish and remorse died unborn. Real tears of
|
|
blinding pain sparkled instantly and made his vision waver.</p>
|
|
<p>“Jesus fuggig gryst,” he said.</p>
|
|
<p>She stormed past him, through the door, down the hallway. She
|
|
swiped again and knocked one of pictures from the wall. The world
|
|
famous Spiers shot of the skein of geese took off, flipped over and
|
|
landed with a crash of smashing glass. The front door opened,
|
|
banged hard against the wall.</p>
|
|
<p>“Bastard,” she snarled just before the door swung
|
|
again and slammed shut. The hallway shook with the vibration.</p>
|
|
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|
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