stonework, a pale face stares back at her. At first, she thinks it is a child, then perhaps a young-looking student. The intensity of the other woman’s gaze is unnerving, and she makes no move to turn away or look elsewhere.
The sound of the door opening alerts Felicity to Joe’s return and she is glad to escape the stare of the student across the street. She turns to face him as he stands in the doorway, almost as though he needs permission to return.
‘Would you like to continue?’ he asks.
She shakes her head. ‘I’m not feeling great,’ she says. ‘I’ve had a headache for most of the day. Can we leave it at that?’
He agrees, of course, and she says goodbye. When she steps outside into King’s Parade, the intense young woman is still there, still staring at her.
48
Shane
Shane wakes to find himself in a bed. This is unusual. Normally, he wakes in a shop doorway, or a bus shelter. More frequently, though, on a park bench. The other rough sleepers are nervous of him and he has learned to avoid them when they are awake. Asleep, though, that’s a different matter. He likes to watch them sleeping.
Confused, he lies in the darkness trying to remember how he got here, what day (or night) it might be, and where here is. He remembers following the tow path from Victoria Bridge towards the colleges and peering under the tarpaulin covering the punts at the Magdalen Street dock. Lately, the city’s street dwellers have taken to bedding down in punts, especially as some of the lazier dock hands leave the cushions out overnight.
He remembers finding the old lady in one of them, curled up with her arms around her shopping trolley and her beret pulled down over her eyes like a sleep mask. He’d watched her for a while, until her snoring quietened, and he’d thought she might be waking up. They often woke up as he watched them, as though they could sense him there.
After the dock, he walked across Jesus Green, and then to the common.
He is hot, which isn’t surprising because he is still dressed. His black sweatshirt is damp with sweat and his jeans are sticking to him. He pushes back the covers and swings his feet to the hardwood floor. His shoes are by the bed. There is pain between his shoulder blades and when he reaches behind his back he can feel the burning pain of a fresh wound. He has been cutting himself again.
His hands are sore too and he can feel the stickiness of blood. This feels wrong, somehow. He doesn’t normally cut himself where the marks will show. He has a flashback to broken glass, squeezing himself through a narrow window and his anxiety builds. He doesn’t break windows, he doesn’t leave a trail, he comes and goes like a ghost. Except now, it seems, he doesn’t. Things are unravelling.
He sniffs the air and can smell a familiar mix of furniture polish, fabric conditioner and coconut shampoo. Of course, he is in Felicity’s house, he has been sleeping in her spare bedroom.
Treading carefully – he knows which floorboards creak and which are silent – he crosses to the window. Her car is parked outside. He lets the curtain fall back and returns to the bed. He straightens the quilt and plumps up the pillow. It looks the same as when he got in, but he knows it will smell of the streets now and that she will know he has been here again. She always knows.
He leaves the room and heads for the stairs. Several of them creak, but he has learned to walk at the very edges. As he reaches the ground floor, he hears a church clock striking four in the morning. It will be getting light soon.
The door to Felicity’s room is ajar. He pushes it slowly and it inches open.
49
Joe
Joe almost expects Felicity to cancel their Friday appointment. He sits at his desk, waiting for the phone call that will tell him he won’t be seeing her again, and wonders, a little curiously, about the impending sense of loss that he feels. He tells himself that she is just a patient, and once again, that not all patients can be helped. Or even understood. The sound of the doorbell startles him, that of her voice over the intercom even more.
It will take her two minutes to climb to the second floor. He crosses to his bathroom and checks his