Inconsolable (35 page)

It was no surprise to stumble, go to his knees. There was more pain when he smacked his face into the ledge, a hard bite, a gouge to his cheekbone and an instant stream of blood. One eye closed, knees throbbing, he cursed and stumbled the rest of the way to the cave and collapsed on the couch. He used the sleeve of his hoodie to staunch the bleeding, but the wound to his chest felt fatal.

The three hundred and eighty-seven had taught him the sliding scale of horror and pain and the deep impact of guilt. This parting from Foley might tear what remaining humanity he had out of him and leave him skeletal; dry, worn bones and shredded intelligence. He bled and he ached from cheek to knee and the final desiccation of his emotions was surely complete.

It hardly mattered what happened to him from here, the only thing that did was getting away so she couldn't find him again. Because she wouldn't give up so he'd have to make it impossible for her. She needed to find the person who was good enough to be part of her life's puzzle and he could never be the man who would fit her best.

He thought of blue on blue and sand, with a flash of red engraved on her side. He thought of Foley fighting for his sanity and his soul, defending him against Alan. He saw the wind take her scarf away.

His father take his self-respect.

He must've slept because there were long shadows when he woke. It was time to move on.

He took his shoes and holey socks off and went to the edge. This would be the last time. The final place he could fall. A true goodbye. He curled his toes over the sandstone and watched the waves break on the rock fall below. It was a brutal, unforgiving drop. This edge had always been a kind of talisman, an ecological lucky charm, to remind him that no matter how bad he felt there was always a worse outcome, but he didn't need the reminder anymore because there was nothing else to give away, nothing else to lose.

He took a deep breath and spread his arms, lifting his torn face to the sky, to the winter sun. He balanced there listening to the crash of the sea and the scream of a gull, his pulse in his ears, and then he dropped his arms and took a step back, and another, turned and looked at the cave for the last time, collected his shoes, socks and left the cliff.

He went to the shore and washed his face, the salt water bite took his thick-headedness away. He rinsed the blood out of his hoodie under a tap. Next stop the pavilion where there was always a chess game to be had, fat to chew and information he could use.

There was a game in progress: Noddy and Blue. Clint and Scully were spectating and sharing a bottle in a brown paper bag that smelled like rum. Mulder was under the table. He'd hoped to avoid Scully.

“Boys, Mully,” he said.

“Holy shit, Joker, what happened to your face?”

That was as close an invitation to sit as he was going to get. He slid into the bench seat beside Scully. The nickname Joker was so close to Trick, Drum always wondered if Scully had worked out who he was. If he had, he was decent enough to keep it to himself, but not so decent he didn't give Drum a hard time whenever he could.

“Fell,” he answered, knowing that'd get a laugh.

“Someone hit you?” asked Noddy. “Some copper? That's fuckin' nasty.” No surprise they knew about that. For homeless men they were well-read, and newspapers doubled as good insulation.

“Nope. The cops were cool. I did fall.”

Noddy moved a pawn. He had this game unless Blue was willing to sacrifice. That's what he'd have been asking Foley to do if he'd stayed, sacrifice her well-being, her social standing. It was unacceptable. “Thought that pretty chicky you've been hanging around with might've slugged you one.”

Jesus
. Yes. But it wasn't his face Foley had damaged, and it wasn't her fault he was pulled all apart and on the run again.

“You do that other bird, the one what dobbed you in to the fuzz?” said Blue.

“Nope.”

“The coppers feed you?” That came from Clint. Clint was always hungry.

“Yeah, they fed me. They were decent. Doing their jobs.”

Scully knocked his shoulder. “Thought you were a goner. Ta-ta the goose. Tell a good story, did ya?”

“I didn't touch her. I didn't need a story.”

“Saint Joker of the cliff face, that's you.”

“Shoulda done her anyway,” said Blue. “Long as she was offerin'.”

“Joker don't need no park prossie. He's still young and pretty, not like us,” said Scully, and that was a fair observation. These men were all in their fifties. Clint might've been eighty. It was hard to tell, he'd been living rough so long the dirt was engrained in his skin.

Drum put his hand under the table and gave Mully a pat. “Woman was sick. Making stuff up for attention.”

“Aren't we all,” said Noddy. “Checkmate.”

Blue grunted. “Shit.” His Queen was under threat. He'd have to sacrifice her and even then Noddy had the game in the bag.

“Why are you gracing us with your presence?” said Scully.

“Got any food?” said Clint.

Drum had change from the fifty he broke to buy breakfast. He handed it to Clint and the older man pocketed it furtively. “I need sage advice and counsel.”

That got a laugh, muttered comments about him being in the wrong place.

“I need a new place to live. Council is boarding up the cave.” That's all they needed to know. “Thinking I'll head out somewhere else.”

“Go south, get on the dole,” said Noddy.

Blue set up for another game. “Get yourself an old van. You can live in one of ‘em. That'd be luxury.”

“Joker'd be too good to live in a van. He needs real estate, trillion dollar views,” said Scully.

“I'm not too good for a van, or a camp site.”

“You fuckin' should be,” Scully said with such vehemence Mully whined. “Not a fuckin' drunk, not a druggie, not off your fuckin' scone. You're taking up space other men could fuckin' use.” He waved an arm. “Yeah, yeah I know you don't fuckin' condescend to take the government's money and you won't take a bed in a shelter, but you're wrong, man. All wrong.”

Drum looked away, caught Noddy's eye. “Scully ain't polite, but you've got a chance at a proper life, kid. We've said it before ‘n' you know it.”

“Don't want to be hungry like us,” said Clint.

Drum stood. He'd never been a real part of this group, knew he didn't fit. He could look the part in his op shop clothes, but his diction was wrong, even when he tried to modify it, he was too healthy, too active, too young and sober. And whatever advice they had for him was ultimately the same as his father's. Straighten up. Get your life back. Move on. Stop pretending to be something you're fuckin' well not.

Well, he wasn't pretending anymore and he was fucking off. He reached under the table to pat Mully a last time. “Take care, boys.”

He had one final stop to make. And he did it cautiously. The house was dark. Assuming Foley had closed the door and gate, or the garage entrance behind herself, she couldn't get back in, but she could sit in her car and wait, and so could his father. It was a blunt argument about who he wanted to see less. But the street was quiet. No sign of Foley and no sign of a car that could be Alan's. He used the garage entryway and left the lights off.

He didn't pause on the stairs. It no longer mattered that he was going to the second floor. He started in the office. He created a free email account and wrote to his real estate manager. It no longer mattered if this was a good market or a bad one. The house had become an easy crutch. It had to go. He wrote his sale instructions, which pretty much came down to sell it any way the agent thought best. The money was to be placed in the Benny Browning Trust in the usual way. He signed off Trick Drummond and stared at that alien string of letters for a moment, unsure what he felt at using their authority again.

He logged off and shut down. He rummaged for a bag. He didn't have much to put in it, some stuff he'd brought from the cave, a couple of books, a scattering of clothes. He opened the safe and emptied it. He kept his mother's engagement ring. He kept the cash. It would get him resettled. He'd need help otherwise and in that Scully was right. He didn't deserve any handouts. He held the small tablet PC in his hand for a moment. It would make life easier to have it, so that made the decision, he had to put it down, like he'd put Foley down, because life would be too easy with her too. He zipped the bag and left the room.

He avoided the bedroom. It would smell of them, fill him with the sense of what he was leaving and it was difficult enough.

He stopped on the landing. The groceries were where he'd left them. He backtracked to the kitchen and shoved the bag in the fridge. The agent could deal with them. He avoided the bedroom for the second time and got halfway down the stairs before he remembered the ill-fitting track pants and sweatshirt. They'd do to sleep in. He went to the bedroom to find them and everything in his body went tight to be in that room again.

The sense of Foley was overwhelming. He'd rarely slept in this room before the cave, the whole house bought as an investment rather than a home, and he'd never had a woman stay over. He could smell her, see her under his closed eyelids, almost taste her. He sat on the end of the bed and his face throbbed, his throat choked.

She was the passion of that red scarf snatched by the wind. She was the discrepancy of the shiny jewellery in her nose and breast and belly. She was the bold colours of her puzzle piece and the intention behind it. She was stubborn and clever and funny and brave and frustrated with what she couldn't make her own. She made him want so badly to fit her. But he didn't fit anywhere and he didn't think he had it in him to try. The sooner he got away from sights and sounds that tricked his memory, he'd feel more in control.

He'd had no control with Foley in this room last night and hadn't wanted for it. She'd reduced him to sensation, to his lizard brain, beyond thoughts of worth or guarded actions. She made him pure somehow just by wanting him so furiously.

What he felt, that churning in his gut, was mourning. It was grief when he didn't think he had any more room for that emotion. He needed to calm himself. He took a breath, lay his hands over his knees. He couldn't hear the sea and his own breathing was off balance.

He started on the names. Colleen Adderton, Harold Ameden, Swen Aslog. He made it to the G's and forgot Niles Graham, such an easy name to lose, and then the M's and he skipped over Dai Ming. It was a testament to how out of control he felt. He didn't think he'd ever forget these people. The order of their names was as solid, as present to him as his own arms. In the beginning he'd done this often, until it stopped being a memory test and simply was a part of his consciousness. He hadn't done it since the day Foley arrived and it wasn't calming him now. He was at the T's and couldn't remember who came after Anchalee Thalingthisong.

He could go down the hall to the office and check, but he couldn't take the office with him. Everything made sense before Foley, all the names had a place, now nothing did. Maybe it didn't matter anymore. This was an incomplete prayer. There could be more names and he'd not kept up, and remembering didn't honour anyone, didn't bring anyone back.

He felt oddly broken when there was nothing left to break; grimly determined when there was nothing left to decide. He'd spent two years trying to empty himself of the guilt and horror and the weight of responsibility, and now that he no longer felt the urgency of it he should've felt free.

His cheek was bleeding again. He put his hand up to it and touched the wetness, but what came away on his fingertips wasn't blood.

He dried his face with the sheet and went downstairs, took his gear from the bathroom and left the house through the garage. He caught a bus, then a train to Central, then waited on the platform for a country train. In the morning he'd be long gone and Foley would finally be safe.

31: Haystack

The work crew said the cave was empty when they went to board it up. Only the couch, an oil drum, the remnants of a steel outdoor setting and a garbage bag full of bits and bobs to cart away.

Foley waited another day, to make it five days since Drum had kissed her forehead and left her on the rock ledge, before she went to the house. She ate a lot of ice-cream, a lot of Tim Tams, a lot of potato chips over those five days. There wasn't a carrot or anything that might've masqueraded as protein or an official food group in her diet. It was proof you could live on stupidity alone.

As if she needed more of that.

Nat was kind. She didn't comment on the non-food, or the twenty-four straight hours of TV Foley watched while she was pretending to be sick. She didn't lecture, or boss or put anything like an I told you so expression on her face. She also pretended not to hear the tears, or see the permanent crumple in Foley's chin. Nor did she interfere in the wallowing by attempting a cheer up or offering a shoulder. Nat more or less ghosted around the edges of Foley's semi-catatonic state with half an eye on the fact Foley hadn't showered or gone to bed. And when Foley pulled herself together and went to work, Nat must have been relieved because Foley was.

Now things would be normal.

And normal was what she wanted. A normal day at work with normal Gabriella annoyances, normal opportunities to run into Hugh, and have coffee with Adro. A normal sandwich for lunch, a normal attempt to get through her email and quotient of meetings before the day ran out. Maybe a normal amount of exercise in the evening and a normal piece of meat with veg for dinner, a normal bedtime with a normal attempt to sleep.

Do over till it felt natural. Do over till it made sense.

Normal was the new black and black was Foley's new colour. She thought about having the puzzle piece blacked out and turned into a more conventional puzzle shape. It was cheaper than having the whole thing lasered off and would be one stage less ridiculous.