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Thirty-Four

Wednesday sometime

Tom

No matter how hard he tried, Tom could not manage to return himself to the dreamy underwater place where he had spent the last … however long. Instead of the warm and welcoming depths, he was stuck with bright and flashing lights, hard surfaces and pain. Worst of all, no Charlie. Charlie had been there, he knew, but he wasn’t here now. Just his parents, whom he hadn’t seen for literal years, and who looked the same but older. His mother was, if anything, more strident and demanding than he remembered, and his father more melancholy.

The nurses were kind and the doctors businesslike. Everyone kept telling him how ill he had been, as if that was supposed to mean something. He had no memory of being ill, though he certainly felt ill enough now. He wanted to object to the lack of dignity afforded by catheterisation, the drip keeping him fed and hydrated and the sticky pads on his chest. He felt as if he were on show to every passer-by, without the privacy to pee or brush his own teeth.

And his mother. Oh God, his mother. If anyone else told him that she means well, he would scream and to hell with all the needles and machines. She let slip that Orianna had been there, but when he demanded to see her, was told she had gone home to Amelia and Zenobia. That’s when he told her to go.

“We both know the girls’ names,” he said. “I don’t know why you keep pretending they are called something else. It’s time you went home too. I’m sure you have your own patients to bully.”

Her outburst was as expected, but promotion to college principal had given him the confidence to say what he thought in words as much as with a pencil on paper.

“I live with a man. His name is Charlie Rees and he’s a policeman, a detective. He’s my family. Charlie, A to Z, Ann and Orianna. People who like me as I am. So, thank you both for coming, but please go home.” He closed his eyes, and she took the hint.

His father came in some time later, and tried to smooth things over. But Tom was tired, and in pain, and just wanted someone to come and give him some of the good drugs, the ones that would send him back to oblivion, because reality was horrible. He told his father that he was wasting his time.

“You’ve had years to make things right, and you couldn’t be bothered. It’s too late.”

Charlie

When Charlie came out of the station it was to the return of the rain. Torrents of rain. So much rain that he couldn’t see from one side of the street to the other. Rain bouncing off the pavement, forming lakes on the road, filling the air with the smell of water. The streets were a sea of umbrellas, so many that Charlie should have been able to stay dry without one of his own. Except the rain was too heavy; even with umbrellas, everyone was wet. He remembered seeing a couple of stores that he thought would sell him what he needed when he and Tom had been to stare at the Empire State Building, so he put his head down and set off.

This part of the city was crowded, a steady stream of people entering and leaving, closing and opening their umbrellas as they walked in and out of the shops. Charlie caught sight of himself in a mirror in his chosen clothes store. His hair was dark and flattened by the rain despite the baseball cap. His trousers clung to his thighs where the rain had soaked through and though his jacket had done remarkably well, his shirt was wet and see-though. The trainers Murphy had bought him were saturated. Even after finger-combing his wet hair in front of a mirror, he looked weary beyond imagining.

Half an hour later he had everything he needed, from boxers and socks outward, all the way to a new red padded jacket. There was a respectable-looking hotel directly across the street, so once he was sure his packages would survive the rain, he ran with the hope they had a room. They did, and though the phrase sticker shock applied, he paid cheerfully — with one of Tom’s cards. Luckily, a large and noisy party entered the hotel behind Charlie, distracting the receptionist from looking too closely at the picture on Tom’s ID.

The room was just large enough for a double bed, a chair and desk, and a bedside table on each side of the bed. The view was of the wall of an airshaft about four feet from his own window. But it had a walk-in shower, a bed and no one knew where he was. Showering off the sweat and grime was wonderful. Climbing between the clean sheets was better. If he put Tom’s jacket on the pillow next to him so that he could smell Tom, there was no one to see. He slept as if drugged, and woke ten hours later, ready to start telling lies, or in one case, the truth.