Perhaps Ron won’t have Pauline to worry about for too much longer anyway? Presents after lunch, I ask you. A few other rows too, to be honest. She listens to Radio 2 instead of talkSPORT, made him watch a French film, that sort of thing. Though once you’re used to Radio 2 it’s not bad. And the film was good too, a good murder, even with the subtitles. And, actually, opening presents after lunch was OK, he was just too indignant to appreciate it at the time. Perhaps she is
But Ron wishes, he realizes, that she was here.
Ron looks at his phone. No new messages. Well, that tells its own story. She’ll have gone to bed without sending him a goodnight kiss. Should he send her one? He stares at his phone for a while, as if it might somehow have the answer.
In fact, he realizes later, this was probably why he missed the sign that something wasn’t right. Missed the fact that the light in his flat was off, when he always leaves it on.
That was why he walked straight into the trap.
Stephen wanders through the living room.
It is late, and he is alone, which doesn’t feel quite normal. Feels off. Hard to tell why.
He knows the sofa, and there is safety in that. It’s his, of that he is certain. Brown, some sort of velvet, the imprint of his backside in a lighter, golden brown. If he knows the sofa, things can’t be too out of kilter. Worse comes to the worst, sit yourself down, wait and see what happens, trust that it will all make sense in the end.
He cannot find his cigarettes, for love nor money. He can’t even find an ashtray. No lighter, no nothing. He has opened all the drawers in the kitchen. Stephen can see the sofa from the kitchen, so it stands to reason that it must be his kitchen. There’s some blasted business going on. Something is being hidden from him. But what, and why?
The key is not to panic. He feels like he has been through all this before. This confusion, these thought processes. Deep inside, he wants to scream, he wants to cry for help, to cry for his father to come and collect him, but he clings to the positive. The sofa. His sofa.
There is a picture on the kitchen worktop. It is a picture of him, looking much older than he remembers, and he is with an old woman. He knows her, knows her name even. He can’t access it right now, but he knows it’s there. A cigarette would calm him down though. Where has he put them? Is he forgetting things? Something is spinning, but it’s not the room, and it’s not his eyes. It’s his memory. His memory is spinning. However much he tries to tether it down, it is refusing to hold still.
He decides he will drive to the petrol station on the corner and buy some cigarettes. There is a jacket on the hook in the hallway, so he slips it on and searches for his car keys. Nowhere to be found. Someone has been having a spring clean. Very frustrating – just leave things be, leave things in their place, why does everything have to move around? That spinning again. Time for the sofa.
Stephen takes the weight off. He feels much older than he should, perhaps he ought to go to the doctor. But something tells him no. Something tells him he has a secret that others mustn’t know. Sit tight on the sofa, don’t raise the alarm. Everything will come back into focus soon enough. The mist is sure to clear.
The outside security light flicks on. Stephen looks out of the window. In a field he doesn’t quite recognize, leading to an allotment he can’t quite place, though he is sure he walked by it today, there is someone he knows well. A fox.
Every evening the fox comes a little nearer; Stephen remembers this quite clearly. A curving walk, eyes scanning from side to side, a man who understands fear, understands that people wish to do him wrong. And then the fox settles, head on paws, and looks into the window, as he does every night. Stephen looks back, as he does every night. They nod to each other. Stephen knows they don’t actually nod to each other – he isn’t barmy – but certainly they acknowledge each other’s existence. Stephen calls him Snowy, because of the white tip to each of his ears. Snowy lies down and thinks he’s camouflaged, but the tips of those ears always betray him. Stephen himself has white hair now; he saw it only this morning and was taken aback. His father has white hair too though, so perhaps he is getting mixed up.
