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Authors: Suki Fleet

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BOOK: Falling
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Angus gets up and comes over to hold her other hand. Like a kid seeking comfort, he rests his head on her shoulder and presses her hand into his hair. I want to tell him what she can’t—that he doesn’t have to be scared—but anxiety is like a disease, infecting everyone around it. I make a decision to talk to him later about calling the doctor out again. At least then we can be prepared for the worst.

 

 

T
ODAY
IT

S
just me and Emma at the shop. Soren isn’t working. I don’t normally work with Emma as she only works on a Sunday, but the other Sunday girl, Lindsay, is on holiday and Soren and I are alternating the holiday cover. Already I know far more than I want to about Emma’s student lifestyle, as unfortunately Sundays are quiet and Emma is talkative.

“I have such a hangover. Make me a cup of tea, Josh,” she pleads, coming to stand so close behind me for a moment, I can feel her not insignificant breasts touching my back. She’s always brushing past me, tactile as a cat after some food.

It’s not long after we’ve opened up. When it’s quiet like this (completely dead in fact—there is not a soul in the shopping center yet), we can sneak hot drinks out onto the shop floor.

I think about saying no, but at least if I’m in the kitchen, she has to be out in the shop dealing with any customers that might appear, and she won’t be talking to me. It’s not that I don’t like talking to her. It’s just I am a whirling mess of anxiety this morning, worrying about Eleanor and Angus and what Oskar is getting up to in my flat, and I don’t want to talk to anyone, especially not about any of that. A few minutes making tea might give me some space to calm down.

“Did you go out last night?” she asks as I hand her a cup of tea and sit on the unoccupied chair behind the cash register while she sits on the narrow shelf next to it. Her skirt has ridden almost all the way up her thighs.

Thing with Emma is, she thinks everyone under thirty lives the student lifestyle if they’re not tied down by kids. The whole “drink-party-sleep-repeat, possibly attend a lecture if not too hungover” thing is not my thing at all.

“Nope.”

“Do you
ever
go out, Josh?” she asks absently, putting the tea down and pulling at her long blonde plait that hangs over her shoulder and fiddling with the shiny strands of hair. She has perhaps the longest blondest hair I have ever seen.

“Nope.” I take a sip of tea, wondering when she’s going to remember that she’s asked me this before, a few times now. She probably thinks I’m the dullest person alive. Maybe she’s right.

“Are you gay?”

The question comes out of nowhere.

I choke on my tea, spitting most of the liquid in my mouth back into the cup. Disgusted, I put the cup down on the counter and wipe my lips. She has never asked me
that
before.

“Why do you ask?” I croak.

Emma is watching me critically.

“I hit on you
all
the time. And I know you don’t have a girlfriend, so you’re either completely stupid, asexual, or gay. And gay seems more likely than the other two.”

“Or you just might not be my
type
,” I offer.

I’m not saying it to offend her. But heck, I’m pretty offended myself, though I’m not sure why.

Emma raises a neat eyebrow and hitches her skirt down a fraction. I’m guessing she doesn’t get told she’s not someone’s type too often.

“Because, let me guess, your type doesn’t have breasts and a vagina?”

Thankfully she looks more amused than upset.

“Do you really hit on me? Like when?” Now I’m curious. I can’t imagine being so oblivious. Was the skirt thing hitting on me? Is that what girls do?

“You’re evading the question. I’m right, aren’t I?”

I shift uncomfortably, feeling boxed into a corner. Luckily this is the moment the first customer of the day chooses to walk through the door, and I leap up to go be sales assistant of the year or whatever, though I can feel Emma glaring frustratedly at my back.

By lunchtime I can’t avoid her anymore.

“So what if I am?” I sigh, walking over to her when the shop is empty.

I don’t qualify it—Emma knows exactly what I’m talking about.

Standing up, she leans over the cash register—where she has been sitting the whole morning because her head hurts too much to move, apparently—her ample breasts resting on the keyboard, and hugs me. It’s as if I’ve told her the most amazing secret.

“We are
so
going to get you set up with someone!” she whispers conspiratorially, and I can’t suppress the shiver of dread that courses through my body.

As the day progresses, I begin to wish I’d thought quicker and told Emma I already had a boyfriend, as she dismisses every comment I make about not wanting to meet anyone and about not being interested in a relationship. But the worst thing is, every time she asks me if I have a type, it’s like there is some faulty wiring in my brain and all I can think about is Angus—the weight of his thick dark hair in my hands when I kissed him, the stunning gray of his eyes.

Suffice it to say the rest of my day at work is dire, though I don’t find myself worrying about anything else until I’m on my way home.

I drive too quickly and then sit in the car outside my flat for another five minutes, staring up at the brightly lit top-floor windows, wondering what is going on in my living room and wishing nothing was going on and no one was there so I could go home and be alone.

In the downstairs hallway, I catch the faint scent of bleachy disinfectant. It’s unusual, as Eleanor is the only one who ever cleans the communal hallway, and since the robbery she has not even been anywhere near her own front door, never mind the communal one.

After giving Eleanor’s door a quick knock and not getting any response, I use my key. As soon as I push the door open, I am overwhelmed by bleach fumes. The whole flat reeks of it.

I can see Eleanor in the kitchen, cloth in her hand, bucket at her side. She is still in her dressing gown. All the food and cooking utensils are out of the cupboards and stacked up on the table. In the living room, Eleanor has rearranged the furniture to form a barricade across the window: the sofa is pushed back so it’s right under the windowsill with the two armchairs piled on top of it. All the lights in the flat are on, the curtains drawn.

Swallowing my shock, I call out to let Eleanor know I’m there before walking down the hallway into the kitchen.

Without letting her gaze linger on me, she opens her mouth and says something, but her words tumble out too quickly for me to be sure what it is.

The whole situation is a little disconcerting. I step toward her and touch her arm, but she flinches away and looks at me with a feverish gleam in her eyes.

“Where’s Angus?” I ask gently, looking round, perhaps expecting to find him cowering in a corner, unable to deal with this new twist in her behavior.

But she doesn’t respond. She carries on wiping down the already clean cupboards, over and over as if she will find what she needs in the repetition of the movement.

“Eleanor?” I say again.

When she looks at me, I get the feeling she’s not really seeing me. It’s frightening. I know what it feels like to be so lost inside yourself nothing outside of you makes sense.

I don’t want to leave her, but I need Angus here. I need to talk to him about calling someone because Eleanor can’t go on like this. We can’t keep pretending she’ll be okay, that she
is
okay, because she isn’t. She needs help.

 

 

O
N
THE
way out of her flat, I notice Angus’s coat is hanging up in the hall. It’s doubtful he’s gone outside anywhere without it in this cold. I pull Eleanor’s door closed and, feeling as though my legs are filled with wet sand, walk upstairs to my flat.

I can hear their voices from halfway down the stairs. Oskar is talking, and every so often Angus joins in and laughs. It makes me realize I’ve never really heard Angus laugh much, apart from the other night when he was drunk in my flat.

I doubt he’s going to be feeling like laughing in a minute.

God, I wish we didn’t have to do this.

My door is unlocked, and for a second or two, I stand in the doorway listening to their conversation. They seem to be getting on really well. I don’t want to admit it, but I’m kind of jealous, though I’m not sure why. And then I realize what they’re talking about, and I lean against the wall, my stomach lurching nauseously.

“I wish things were different…. We got close once… but he’s not really into me….” Angus’s voice is so low I can barely catch his words.

“There are plenty of other guys who would be. Other guys that are right here, right—”

I step into the living room, dragging a smile on my face and acting as if I haven’t just heard Oskar making a pass at Angus.

I’m not being weirdly possessive, and there is no other reason for me making my entrance right then other than Oskar is just not suitable. We know nothing about him. It’s likely he’s an addict—I picked him up outside Soren’s dealer’s house, after all. He’s probably dying for his fix right now. Angus does not need that sort of person in his life.

“Hey!” Angus shoots to his feet off the sofa, looking both shocked and strangely elated to see me. He shoves his hands in his pockets as though he doesn’t know what else to do with them. I watch the way his Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows and the faint but utterly disconcerting blush that rushes across his cheeks.

“I was, erm, just keeping Oskar company.” He gives me a meaningful look. “I should, erm, probably go now.” He points to the door as if I don’t know what direction he means to go in and then, with his head down, walks straight past me.

Oskar raises his eyebrow, looking faintly amused. I shake my head and reach out, touching Angus’s shoulder before he can disappear.

“Wait a sec,” I say softly.

I don’t move my hand, and Angus doesn’t move away. We don’t look at each other, but I can feel his warmth emanating through his T-shirt into my fingertips. The longer I leave my hand there, the more warmth seems to fill me—flooding my bloodstream, pooling in the pit of my stomach.

“How are you doing?” I ask Oskar, staring at the way his cast is propped up on my coffee table. His skin looks sickly pale, though I’m not sure if that’s just natural for him, as he looked sickly pale when I first saw him before I ran over his foot.

“My foot hurts like a bitch, but I guess that’s to be expected,” he sighs.

“Do you need any painkillers?”

I remembered halfway through the morning that I should have left some paracetamol or something out for him. I keep them locked in the bathroom cabinet, but he wouldn’t know that. The hospital said last night that he should take painkillers as and when he needed them. I feel guilty as hell about it now.

“It’s okay. Angus has been looking after me.”

I feel Angus shift—a liquid roll of muscle beneath my palm—and sense he feels uncomfortable.

Oskar folds his arms across his chest. It’s a slightly defensive gesture I try not to mirror. I like where my hand is on Angus’s shoulder too much right now.

“Um, actually I need to use the phone, but I didn’t want to use yours without asking you first.”

Charmed by Oskar’s consideration, I drop my hand away from Angus to dig my mobile out of my pocket. I hand it to Oskar.

“Call who you need to. I have some things to sort out with Angus. I’ll be back in a bit,” I say.

Angus is waiting by my front door.

“Come on,” I say grimly, brushing past him and making my way back down the stairs.

“What is it?” he calls after me worriedly. “Is it Mum? Is she okay?”

He obviously decides she isn’t as, without waiting for me to answer, he jumps down half the stairs and reaches his front door before I do. His shaking hands make hard work of getting his key into the lock.

“Hold on.” I put my hand over his. I don’t know why. I’m not a tactile person. An impossible-to-control desire to comfort him has temporarily taken over my brain. “I should warn you the flat’s a mess and the window’s barricaded. How long were you upstairs?”

Angus swallows and looks away. “I didn’t mean to stay so long. I like Oskar. I liked talking to him. I haven’t spoken to anyone… friends… since….” He stops, wipes his arm across his eyes, and takes a deep breath. He’s so immediately emotional—he reacts so quickly to things—it’s utterly disarming. “I know she’s not okay, Josh. I just want everything to be normal. I know I shouldn’t’ve—”

I pull him into my arms. It’s such a bad idea, but it feels like the only thing I can do right now. I feel him grip my coat in his hands and sob against me, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from pulling him closer, holding him as tightly as I can, telling him lies like it’ll be okay, that I’ll make sure it’s okay, that I’ll look after him. Things I can’t promise. Things, I tell myself, I don’t even want to.

He smells like heaven. The sensation of his body against mine makes my knees weak.

I have to push him away. Though I make sure I’m gentle.

I hand him a tissue out of the pocket of my coat and wait while he wipes his eyes and blows his nose.

“Let’s go and sort this out.”

I give his hand one last reassuring squeeze, and we open the door.

Chapter 4

 

 

I
T
TAKES
the two of us to stop Eleanor cleaning. Gently I take the cloth and the bottle of bleach out of her hands even though she resists me. Then Angus removes them far out of sight. Eleanor’s hands are red and raw-looking. The bleach fumes are making me feel woozy.

“We should open a window,” I say to Angus.

I lead Eleanor to sit down in one of the hard-backed dining chairs as Angus scrambles over the piled-up furniture to drag the curtains back and open one of the living room windows.

For a while after that, the three of us sit at the table—Eleanor sagging in my arms, Angus looking at us miserably.

BOOK: Falling
10.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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