Blackwater - By Conn Iggulden Page 0,11

here,’ she said. I waited for something more. I wondered if she had packed a bag. Perhaps if I’d taken the time to look through the bathroom cabinet I might have known the phone call was coming.

‘Don’t go far,’ I said gently. Sometimes I talked to her like you would to a nervous horse, but she didn’t seem to mind. I wanted to say that I loved her, to express the sudden warm feeling in my chest when I heard her voice. For once, I couldn’t say the words, easy as they are. She never did, and though I told myself it was there in every word and glance she threw me, it still mattered. I’d swallowed so much pride over the years that it washed back into my mouth and burned me. Perhaps I was full at last, and that was why it brimmed over every time I was made to taste a little more defeat, a little more shame. For a moment I hoped she wouldn’t come back. In a second of phone silence I saw my life going on without the pain and drama. Eventually, she would become a distant memory for someone I used to be. A problem for someone else. All pain goes, remember, even the memories you thought would kill you. Perhaps I would just get in my car and drive away before she came back and pretend to be a normal person for the rest of my life. I might even be happy and live some sort of eerie existence where I didn’t have a blood test every month in case she brought home some plague that would strip the flesh off me. It would be a strange sort of life without fear and without hate and without my obsession with her.

I put the phone down without really listening to her say goodbye.

It took about ten minutes of sitting on my own to realize I needed to get out as well. I didn’t want to be the one who stayed and waited for her to come back. I didn’t want to be on my own, and I certainly didn’t want to be there if Denis sent Michael round a second time. That was the thought that really got me moving. She had taken the only suitcase, but there was an old duffel bag in the cupboard over the immersion heater, so I stuffed a few things in that, adding a bar of soap and a half-full can of deodorant. I didn’t have the money to bother with a passport. I was thinking of taking a train west, perhaps to spend a few days in Cornwall. I found my good boots and shrugged myself into the coat, moving quickly and controlling a swelling sense of panic.

I opened the door just as I became aware of a moving shadow behind the glass. I’d been thinking about her, and as the lock clicked I realized someone was standing there, looking in. They’d watched me pat pockets for keys and open the duffel over and over to shove some last item into the depths.

They seem to move at a different speed, these people. If someone tries to push his way into a house in a film, the door is likely to slam in their face. Denis just walked in as if it was his own house, though his expression showed what he thought of the place. His shoulder knocked into me and then Michael came in behind, pressing his left hand against my chest and holding me against the wall without the slightest difficulty. I might have struggled if they’d given me a little warning, but it was just too quick and too casual.

As Denis disappeared into the lounge, Michael shook his head almost apologetically. I came to life then in a rush of fear adrenalin, yanking at his fingers to break his grip. The little scrap of garden and freedom was so near I couldn’t bear to have the door close and be stuck inside with them. Michael pulled me back from the open doorway and shut it with his other arm, nodding to himself as he heard the click. The hall was darker with him blocking the light.

‘Where is she?’ Denis demanded, coming back from the kitchen. I didn’t reply. For a moment, the strangeness of having him in my house was just too much. I’d seen him last at a New Year’s Eve party with balloons and a Scotsman. I remembered his face, but