The Dead Hour

I

Kate sat at the table in the small green kitchen, frozen with terror, repeating Knox’s name under her breath in a mantra, trying to feel safe. She couldn’t bring herself to turn around and look back at the man peering curiously in through the window. She could hear his hand brushing dirt from the small pane above the sink, feet crunching on the dead plants below the window as he swayed from foot to foot. He must have been as cold as she was.

And it was cold in the house. She had found logs under the back porch and coal in the cellar but didn’t dare build a fire. She didn’t know who was watching. Luckily she had found a wardrobe full of woolen sweaters and trousers in the back bedroom and now wore three layers, none of which suited her. She didn’t care. She had turned all the mirrors to the wall. She couldn’t bear to look at herself.

The light hit the table at an angle and she could see long, tongue-shaped trails through the dust. She licked it last night, trying to be frugal and not waste a spilled drop because the envelopes seemed to be emptying by themselves. She had mixed the contents of one of them with the milk powder but it just meant she had to get more into herself to achieve the same sense of comfort and it was hard because her nose was so sore and raw. She had to hold the tip of it out from her face to sniff. The second envelope wasn’t mixed with milk but the contents were still evaporating. It seemed inconceivable that she was taking it all. There was no one else in the house, even though she had been convinced for a period last night that there was, so it had to be her.

Kate imagined the face at the window had blurred features because of the soil stuck to his pale skin. There would be a deep, bloody, black hole where his eye should have been. His fingernail scratched slowly down the window, a high-pitched shriek, running down her spine vertebra by vertebra.

Kate covered her eyes and tried to breathe. It didn’t matter which room she went into, where she sat in the house, the man from down the hill would be behind her somewhere, singing sometimes, a vague tune in a low growl, trying to get her attention. Every spare corner of her head was filled with him; every time she shut her eyes she recalled the sight of him, her fingers tingling with sensation of a pencil through paper.

Since last night he was becoming confused in her mind with Vhari. She saw them as a couple, happy together, malevolent only to her, the cause of their troubles, cause of their deaths. Vhari hadn’t had a boyfriend since fat Mark Thillingly dumped her, but now she was drawn to the one-eyed man by their shared hatred of Kate. The couple lingered in the shadows, became more confident at night, tiptoed across landings, laughing behind doors, playing whispering tricks on wide-awake ugly Kate.

To be ugly. She was now ugly. It never seemed possible. Maybe at sixty or fifty but not at twenty-two. She caught her reflection in the windows during the day and saw a stranger, so thin she might have been a boy, her nose flattened, widening her face, making her look more freakish than plain. She grew up knowing she was beautiful. Her looks invited privilege and she took it wherever she went. She left school at sixteen and never worked, never wanted, never even had to ask for favors, just got given everything. People liked having her around. Not anymore.

She looked at the almost empty second envelope. There was no one at the window despite what she could hear. She still knew that much anyway. She had to get the fuck out of here. She had to get back to the city and visit Bernie’s garage.

If she didn’t get up from this chair soon and move she’d be found next May, swinging from the stairwell.

II

Paddy smarted at Burns’s parking a little bit down from her house and turning off the engine. It wasn’t for him to decide they’d stay and talk for a while. And yet they lingered, a combative silence hanging between them. They were both in the middle of a stretch of night shifts and neither of them were anywhere near tired.

The Meehan house squatted like a fat frog in the overgrown garden. Only the living-room light was on. Marty and Gerard would be watching late-night TV. They’d have to share a room tonight, as they did before Caroline got married and moved out. They would have spent their evening being directed by Con as they moved Gerard’s bed back into what was now Marty’s room and brought Caroline’s dusty single bed down the narrow ladders from the attic. The camp bed, a deathtrap for anyone over four stone, would have been unfurled and set at the foot of the room for Baby Con to sleep in near his mum. Paddy thought about the bus journey here from Caroline’s house and the shame of everyone seeing what her husband had done to her. Trisha would insist that Caroline go back to John. She’d make her go back again and again until she complied enough and demeaned herself enough and supplicated herself enough to make it work. Marriages couldn’t fail in their family. Divorce was for other people, Protestants, movie stars.

Paddy looked at the house. Better to marry than burn, they said. She’d rather burn.

A gentle wind nudged the branches of a tree in the street behind them, shifting the dim lights on the road and houses around them into a moving landscape of black and gray.

“So.” Burns turned to face her, the leather squeaking beneath him. “This is where you live.”

The atmosphere between them was thrilling and unkind.

“Yes,” she said stiffly, wondering why she didn’t just throw open the door and get out. “Where do you live, with your wife?”

He tried to smile. “You’re very interested in my wife.”

“I’m interested in the fact that you wear a wedding ring at work and not when you’re out at the pub.”

He sighed patiently and cupped the gearstick with his hand. They both looked at it: if he flexed his fingers the tips would be inches from her thigh. “You don’t know what the police are like. It’s important to fit in. You can’t tell everyone in the canteen that your wife’s mentally ill and you’re frightened to go home.”

He glanced up at her to see if the lie had taken but she was skeptical. “Your wife’s mentally ill?”

“What do you think would make a woman do this?” He lifted the waistband on his sweater and undid two buttons on his shirt, pulling it open and baring his stomach. The skin was as smooth and shiny as toffee. She could see the outline of his muscles. A suggestive seam of black hair crept down under his waistband.

“Look.” He touched a patch of perfect skin.

“Where?” she said, glad of the excuse to keep looking.

“There.” He touched himself again.

“I can’t see anything.”

“Here.” Reaching over to take her hand, he pressed her fingertips to the warm skin. Her hand slid across his stomach, taking in a small scar.

“There?”

“Yeah. A bottle opener. She came at me with a bottle opener.”

He thought she was a mug and was using the cheapest lines on her, insulting his absent wife to trick the knickers off her. Yet she still felt her fingers glide across his silken skin and her mouth began to water. His hand covered hers, pressing the fingers deep into the skin.

“I think you’re a liar,” she whispered.

His free hand slipped along her thigh. She didn’t care if he felt the fat there. He didn’t deserve a thin girlfriend.

“You’ve got me all wrong,” he said breathlessly. “I’m a good guy.”

The dark night pressed around the car, blacking out the windows, seeping in through the cracks and filling the tiny cabin with the moist, musky scent of nighttime. Unbidden, Paddy’s hand slipped up to his chest and her fingers felt an erect nipple, a tuft of hair, a heartbeat so forceful she could almost hear the echo of it in the car.

He reached inside her coat, cupping her soft round stomach, his thumb brushing the underside of her breast. Her hand slid back down to his stomach, feathering the powder-soft skin, making his eyes roll back in his head. He was melting into his seat when she pulled her hand away.

“Not outside my parents’ house.”

Burns sat upright. “Where is there around here?”

Paddy sat back. “Out onto the main road and go right,” she said.

They took the old road to the steelworks, a defunct metal purifying facility that once occupied two square miles of land. It had been closed down, leaving a devastated landscape where the sulfurous scent of the devil still clung to the ground.

Burns found a potholed turning off the main road and cut his lights as they drove down it.

Moonlight illuminated a churned field of discarded rope and jagged shards of metal. When they were far enough not to be seen from the road he stopped the car, turned the engine off, and looked at her.

Paddy had cooled a little, caught her breath, and she wasn’t sure now but Burns’s fingers brushed her ear.

“Your neck,” he whispered, pulling her scarf. It fell away, unwinding like a snake uncoiling from a branch.

There were reasons why this was a bad idea but Paddy struggled to recall what they were. He pulled a small square packet from his hip pocket, a condom, and set it on the dashboard in a smug certainty that made her despise him. Oblivious, he reached across with his other hand and took her by the waist, pulling her to his lap, sliding her skirt up her legs. His hot hands were on her thigh, on her arse, on her bare breasts, his lips wet and ardent.

The last conscious thought in Paddy’s mind was a note of caution so distant that it seemed to relate to events far away.

She leaned back and handed him the condom, leaving him to pull it on as she wrestled her tights and knickers down over one ankle, graceless and desperate, leaving them to dangle off her left foot. She straddled him, kissed him, pushing his shirt up and pressing bare skin to bare skin.

When Burns pushed himself into her he still had the strip of the condom packet in his mouth. Paddy felt her eager cunt flowering out to greet him, a giant fleshy rose.

She couldn’t focus or see anything but the hairs on his neck, the maze of wrinkles on the leather headrest behind him. She couldn’t control her breathing. She held his shoulder tightly, perhaps hurting him, she didn’t know or care, pulling herself back and forth, stroking her clit with her free hand.

She was nothing but an overwhelming urge and couldn’t stop now if she needed to. Suddenly her cunt spasmed, her legs shutting as she jackknifed into his chest. Every pore on her skin shuddered and a cold wash swept over her.

She could feel something warm dribbling down her bare thighs. The skin between her legs was wet, not slimy, and she was sure she had urinated into his lap. Ashamed, she stayed where she was, stiff, feeling ridiculous and naked and vulnerable. His large hand was suddenly obscene on her damp buttock. She shifted her weight, extricating her trembling legs, but Burns stopped her, making her wait where she was while he kissed her neck with an open mouth and breathed her name.

She didn’t look at him as she climbed back into the passenger seat. She stared out of the window, pretending to be engrossed in the flat, ruined land, wondering what the hell had just happened to her. Her knickers and tights were still around her ankle but she pulled her skirt down primly, wondering how she could get them up and cover herself with any dignity.

Next to her Burns pulled the condom off and tied a knot in it, smiling to himself in a way that made her feel excluded and stupid and angry. The windows were opaque with condensation. Burns ran a finger down the windscreen and smirked again. Turning on the engine, he sat back, waiting for the windows to clear, and tapped his knee patiently. He reached forward to the radio but Paddy panicked, thinking he was going to touch her again.

“We should go,” she said unnecessarily. “I’m tired.”

It was half two and she worked the night shift five days a week. She would be awake all night and they both knew it. Burns gave half a smile and stumbled across a station playing Lionel Richie’s “Running with the Night.” A childlike pleasure came over his face until he heard her snigger; his fingers flicked onward to another station and Echo and the Bunnymen.

“Better?”

“I don’t like Lionel Richie but put it back if you want to hear it.”

“No, I don’t like him either.” He cringed at his obvious lie. “Okay, I do like him. Is he not cool?”

She smiled. “Lionel Richie?”

“Yeah? He’s not, is he?” He bit his lip.

“Burns, what age are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“You’re only two years older than me. How come you dress like Val Donigan?”

He sat back and smiled at her, pulling his V-neck straight. It wasn’t his usual toothy matinee idol smile but a coy asymmetric face crumple. “I’m a polis. This gear is cool in the polis. You like this crowd?” He pointed to the radio.

“I like Echo and the Bunnymen, yeah.” She didn’t really but she wanted to.

“See, I just think that guy can’t sing.”

They each nodded hesitantly, looking unguardedly at each other. She imagined him dressed well for a moment, without the severe haircut and the terrible outfit. He had dark eyes and a big, character nose. He scratched his neck. “I want to see you again.”

Paddy smiled at the euphemism and then laughed. “Is that what we just did? ‘Saw’ each other?”

“Yeah.” He gave a satisfied sigh. “I gave you a seeing-to, yeah.”

She felt unbelievably relaxed and calm as she yanked her tights up, pulling her coat around her hips for privacy, and fell back in the seat, grinning. “Take me home, Burns.”

They drove back listening to the radio. “Killing Moon” finished and the DJ announced a change of pace and played a Madness record. They sang along-even though they were a teenybopper’s band, somehow they knew every word. It didn’t take them long to get back to Eastfield.

“Okay.” Paddy gathered her things together. “I know a lot of policemen. If you ever tell anyone about this I’ll phone your wife.”

He clutched his chest prudishly. “Listen, I’m as ashamed as you are.”

She didn’t want to smile or look at him again in case she stayed. Opening the passenger door, she stepped out of the car and watched him drive away, leaving her alone on the broken pavement.

If her mother had seen them pull up earlier and then drive off, she’d say she forgot something at the comedy club. Her scarf. And they went back for it and stayed for another drink.

She watched him leaving. Burns didn’t look back but she could tell by the inclination of his head that he was watching her in the rearview. It was only then that she saw the red Ford Capri parked outside Mrs. Mahon’s house. She looked carefully, though it was in the shadow of the streetlamp, but couldn’t see anyone inside. She was being paranoid. Cars could park on the roundabout without her permission.

It wasn’t until she was lying in her bed, reliving every touch and caress of the night, that she remembered the Ford hadn’t been there when they first got home. Mrs. Mahon was in her seventies. She wouldn’t be receiving visitors at one thirty on a Friday night.

Paddy sat up, pulled on her dressing gown, and padded silently down the stairs, looking out of the front door into the silver-frosted street.

The Ford was gone.