The Hunger Trace (25 page)

The knock on the window made her shout. It was Christopher. He had been gone for less than five minutes. She buzzed down the window. ‘You scared the shit out of me, Christopher,’ she said. The man in the Volvo had turned around.

‘What’s wrong, youth?’ Adam said. ‘You forget sommat?’

‘Erm, erm, let me in,’ he said.

‘It’s open,’ Louisa said.

Christopher got back in the van. ‘Erm. Let’s get the eff out of Dodge,’ he said.

‘Hey,’ Louisa said. ‘Just relax. It’ll be fine. You’re just nervous, that’s all. Relax. Get back in there and have a chat with her.’

‘I did,’ Christopher said.

‘What happened?’ Louisa said.

‘Erm. Not my type.’

‘
Not your type?
’ Louisa said.

‘She’s a few too many rungs down the evolutionary ladder for my liking,’ Christopher said.

Louisa glanced at Adam, who pretended to clear his throat with his hand over his mouth. Christopher began to chew the skin on his fingers. Louisa looked towards the Travelodge. The man in the Volvo drove closer to the entrance. A woman came out and got in the passenger seat. Louisa could not see her face.

‘Right,’ Louisa said, starting the engine. ‘No point hanging about, then.’

‘Nope,’ Christopher said. ‘Let’s leave Dodge behind.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine, thank you. Erm. It’s a crying shame things didn’t work out between me and Carol-Ann, but it’s for the best.’

Louisa hung back and waited for the Volvo to get onto the carriageway. Then she put the van in gear.

‘You’re probably right,’ Adam said. ‘Good lad.’

They waited to join the traffic. ‘I could see her, erm, bending over a hot stove,’ Christopher said, and Louisa knew what was coming because she had heard it from David, had watched the film with him. ‘But I couldn’t see the, erm, stove.’

*    *    *

That night, Adam’s vibrating phone crawled across the table, the face lit green. Nothing could change a mood like it. They looked at each other like gunslingers, Louisa’s smile still fading from an earlier joke. He picked up the phone and read the text.

‘That your mother, was it?’ Louisa said.

‘No. My mother an’t spoke to me for years. You know that.’

‘Sister?’

He shook his head.

‘You could at least do me the service of lying,’ she said.

In the early days she had been pragmatic. She told him she knew the deal; it didn’t matter. She could not imagine ever having felt like that now. She went upstairs and got dressed, listening to the mumbled voice. The laughter. He came in a few moments later. ‘Look, I won’t go if you don’t want me to,’ he said.

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘It’s just one visit – I can afford to miss it.’

‘I can’t believe you can stand there and tell me it’s about the money. It’s nothing to do with money – it’s in your nature. You enjoy it.’

‘That might have been true, in the past. But it’s not now.’

He paused. ‘Look. What if I stopped? Altogether. We could both get proper jobs, pool our earnings.’

‘
Proper jobs?
What do you think I do all day?’

‘How much do you make a year? From the birds?’

Louisa fidgeted. She added a thousand pounds to the true total. ‘Six,’ she said.

‘You live on
six grand a year
?’ he said.

‘My hawks do. I live on my savings. Anyway, that’s not the point. I’m not going to work in a stupid office where some idiot schoolkid tells me—’

‘I’ll quit,’ Adam said. ‘We’ll get by. I’ll find the money for the lass. We’ll get by. You could teach. They must want teachers for this kind of shit at the agricultural college. I’ll go back on the building sites. We could get a place. A normal life. A good one. I’ve been thinking about it almost since I met you. You’ve made me think it’s possible. I’ll quit, for you.’

There followed a silence in which Louisa slowly shook her head. ‘Don’t you go making it about
me
, Adam. Don’t put me in that position.’

He laughed once and then stopped, waited for her to continue. When she did not, he left.

She watched from the window as he got in his car and slammed the door. It wasn’t that she didn’t want a life with him, she just didn’t think it was possible.

As it happened, Adam did not get as far as the roundabout that afternoon; he was back in four minutes. Louisa thought it was Christopher calling again, and was about ready to burst when she came to the door.

‘There’s a lot of traffic,’ Adam said, without meeting her eye. ‘So I cancelled.’

They went into the living room. The rush of relief enabled Louisa to postpone any more big talk for the time being. She reached for the gin with one hand, his belt with the other, and ignored the look of defeat on his face.

The lights rippled up and down the triangular peak of the Odeon’s plastic awning. From the roof, the CCTV cameras filmed the retail park: the expanse of orange brick, and the childish blocks of DFS and B&Q. Maggie parked the Land Rover and walked towards the cinema. Through the glass front of the building she could see the toad-green mass of Christopher huddled over the bright wall of pick-and-mix. She went to buy the tickets.

They had loved coming to the cinema together, before. David would drop them off and then go to the pub. They used to play air-hockey before going in, Christopher’s size and forthright politeness scaring off the youths who haunted the arcade area.

Maggie had noted, amongst the teen flicks and blockbusters advertised in the newspaper, that the film club were having an eighties season and showing
ET.
She figured it was worth a try. She walked over in time to see Christopher swipe a fistful of sweets. The moustaches of dirt beneath his fingernails were stark against the pink shrews.

‘I hope you’re not eating as you go,’ Maggie said. ‘Because that’s a felony. Here’s your ticket.’

Christopher looked at it. ‘Of all the features in Christendom,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
, that’s what’s wrong.’

‘I thought you liked it.’

‘One: I don’t like animals.’

‘He’s not an
animal.’

‘And B: this is a student ticket.’

‘You’re a student,’ Maggie said.

‘I don’t want to be associated with, erm, institutions and repressive, erm, regimes.’

‘Principles cost money, kiddo.
You
didn’t have to pay for the tickets.’

‘Neither did you.’

Maggie was sick of that argument. She closed her eyes slowly, and when she opened them she was just quick enough to spot the expression of care disappearing from Christopher’s face. ‘Why are we doing this, anyway?’ he said.

‘Well, I thought it would be nice. I thought it would remind us of the Good Old Days,’ she said, trying a catchphrase.

‘Why, erm, would we want to do that?’

Maggie took a big breath and tried to keep smiling. ‘Well, you know. We used to have a good time. Me and you, off to the movies.’

‘
Movies
is okay, but I hate it when people say, erm,
cinemas
. Erm. “I’m going to the cinemas.” Stupid. I’m only going to
one
cinema.’

‘Yeah,’ Maggie said.

‘So we’re travelling through time then, are we? A blast from the past?’ His arm shot out to simulate a rocket.

‘I guess so.’

‘Like, erm, Marty McFly.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I like
Back to the Future
,’ Christopher said.

‘It’ll probably be on in a few weeks. They’re doing a whole season.’

Christopher puffed out his cheeks and exhaled in a long, sweet whistle.

‘Oi. Give us a shrew,’ Maggie said.

Maggie hadn’t been to the cinema since David had died. They took seats by the aisle. She realised that their clothes smelled of the outdoors: metallic in her case, fungal and damp in Christopher’s. The couple in front of them seemed to notice this, too, and ceased their embrace in order to sniff the air and half turn against the light of the screen. Maggie figured the smell of the hotdog and nachos which she had purchased for her stepson would crowd out their alien odours.

She watched Christopher bite into a nacho loaded with various mush. He closed his eyes while he chewed, and sighed with pleasure, as if he’d just taken some life-saving antidote. Crisp shards fell into his hand, which he had readied below his chin for that purpose. He pushed the crumbs in, too. Against all odds, it was fun to watch. When had Maggie last enjoyed food to such an extent? She laughed, and Christopher laughed, too, unable to contain his pleasure.

When the film started they watched quietly until the scene in which the young Drew Barrymore sees E.T. in her brother’s room. ‘Holy shit,’ shouted Christopher, when Barrymore screamed. The couple in front looked at each other, united in their sense of injustice. Maggie opened her mouth to whisper a warning to Christopher, but she thought of David, how he would laugh guiltlessly at Christopher’s public histrionics. She shifted her feet, unsticking her boot heels from the floor.

‘She turned into an absolute, erm, humdinger, that Drew Barrymore,’ said Christopher, not whispering. ‘I’d like to make an honest woman of her.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Maggie said.

‘She just needs to, erm, settle down a bit.’

The man in front of them received a shove from his girlfriend and turned around. ‘Look. Could you keep it down please?’ he said into the space between Maggie and Christopher.

‘We’re sorry,’ Maggie said.

‘I can speak for myself, you know,’ Christopher said to her.

‘I know, kiddo,’ Maggie said. She turned back to the man. ‘I didn’t realise I was talking so loud. Sorry.’

The woman turned around now. ‘It’s not so much the talking as the eating. Can’t you get him to eat with his mouth closed?’

‘Oh come on,’ Maggie protested. ‘Have you seen the size of those hot-dogs?’

The woman tutted and turned back to the film. Maggie had tried to joke it off, but she was hurt by the couple’s reaction. She looked at Christopher and saw that he was almost crying. ‘Hey,’ she whispered. She put her hand on his arm but he stood and addressed the couple. ‘Oh, I’m
really sorry
for eating. At least I’m not, erm, virtually having coitus in a public place. I mean, there’s a time and a place for that sort of, erm, copulation, and it’s the bedroom. Or maybe the stairs if you can’t, erm, wait. Erm, eff off.’

He tramped up the sloping aisle, his body tilted into the gradient.

‘Cheerio,’ the man said, shifting back into his seat.

Maggie paused for a moment, and then leaned towards the woman in front. ‘What you said was very cruel,’ she said. The woman did not turn round.

She followed Christopher out into the car park, where he was already trying the door of the Land Rover. Maggie unlocked it and went round to sit in the driver’s seat. She rubbed her face with her hands.

‘It’s not you that should be, erm, upset,’ said Christopher.

‘You mustn’t listen to people like that, Christopher. They’re ignorant.’

‘It’s all very well saying that now, isn’t it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re a substandard wingman. Louisa Smedley would have been all over them like a bad, erm, rash. Smack.’

‘Yeah, well, Louisa Smedley didn’t take you to the cinema. She’s not
here
, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

Maggie felt like saying more on the subject, but she did not want to poison the friendship between Louisa and Christopher.

‘I need a drink,’ he said.

‘So do I,’ she said.

‘Alone,’ he said.

Maggie started on cocktails as soon as she got home. She drank Pisco sours, like her mother used to make. She mixed the drinks in an empty biscuit tin, which was the only suitable receptacle she could find. After four of these, she felt acidic and needy. She called Louisa and got a dead tone. These days, she felt disinclined to knock on the door. It seemed like a wasted walk. A mood of resentment struck her, and then gave way again to the simple wish to be with her friend.

What she remembered was autumn, when they had seemed to find a possible way of living, pulled by the magnetism of the animal rhythms, and the arc of light over the hill. She recalled that day out by the reservoir, Diamond coming down from on high, and taking the duck into the pond, riding him, drowning him. Louisa had waded in after them, to take Diamond off the kill. She threw the limp mallard to Maggie, who stood on the bank, watching in awe as Louisa, breathing sharply against the cold of the pond, held her left hand up high above her head with Diamond perched on top, feeding. As Louisa waded back to the bank, Maggie held out a thick branch. Louisa took the branch and dragged her into the water, Maggie bouncing like a colt. She might have laughed, had she been able to breathe.