Darkside

‘In a place this size?’ repeated Marvel.

‘You know Arnold Avery buried all those kids on the moors around here. Lightning can strike twice.’

Marvel grunted.

Reynolds ran his fingers over the sharp jaws of a bench vice and spun the lever, loving the smooth silence of its travel.

As a boy, Reynolds had wanted to be a bus driver. He had vivid recollections of cycling to school – and later university –through the centre of Bristol. Every time he was in a queue of traffic, he would stop his bicycle beside a bus, just to listen to the engine with its thudding bass covered by curiously breathy high notes. A sublime metal orchestra inside the grand theatre of what Reynolds had always considered to be the perfect method of mass transportation. Even while slaving over his criminology degree, a part of him always fantasized about giving it all up and spending the rest of his life behind the wheel, high above the traffic, sitting over the engine of a Routemaster or a Leyland National. It was a fantasy he had never divulged to anyone. No one would understand.

Marvel whistled low behind him and Reynolds turned to see him holding up what looked like a tissue box.

When Reynolds walked over, he could see that it was filled with disposable latex gloves.

Ten Days

Jonas hated the doctor.

Dr Anil Wickramsinghe was his name and Jonas had come to hold him personally responsible for Lucy’s decline. Dr Wickramsinghe was middle-aged, balding and utterly inoffensive, but Jonas always felt in his guts that he was holding out on them. That, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, Dr Wickramsinghe thought it would be in everyone’s best interests to watch Lucy Holly in pain, fear and depression.

Like today.

Today Dr Wickramsinghe had listened to Lucy’s halting description of the progress of her disease with his head cocked to one side, feigning concern. When she said she had dropped a mug of tea on Wednesday, unable to feel that she wasn’t gripping it properly, he nodded and tutted. When she recounted two episodes of MS hug, which had left her writhing on the floor in agony, he nodded and made a little sound like ‘mm’ in the back of his throat. And when her lip trembled as she told him that her eyesight had faltered in the middle of The Evil Dead, he sighed as if he shared her pain.

‘When?’ said Jonas sharply. ‘You didn’t tell me that!’

Lucy bit her lip.

‘Why didn’t you tell me, Lu?’

‘I’m sure I did, Jonas.’

When she used his name that way, she was lying. Not lying like criminals lie, just … being economical with the truth, like a politician.

‘If you don’t tell me these things, Lu, how can I help?’

She was too kind to say it but he knew the answer. He couldn’t help – so what was the point?

Dr Wickramsinghe placed his palms flat on the table as if he was about to make a decision. As if he was about to get up and go to the secret safe behind the ugly sailing ships above his desk and get the real medicine; the actual pills that would put an end to Lucy’s suffering. Spin the dial and Open Sesame on a cure. Every single time they were here, Jonas expected him to confess that so far they’d been giving her sugar solution and peanut M&Ms, but that now – at last – she was sick enough for them to break out the good stuff.

Instead, Dr Wickramsinghe leaned back slightly in his chair, as if distancing himself from the awkward case before him, and said, ‘This is the progression we can expect, I’m afraid.’

Jonas wanted to pounce across the desk, grip him by the throat and bang his skull repeatedly against the ships until the sea ran red.

Can’t you SEE? he wanted to shout. Can’t you SEE that she needs HELP?

Lucy’s warm hand on his thigh told him she knew what he was thinking, even as she agreed with Dr Wickramsinghe: ‘Of course, I understand. But is there any more we can do for the symptoms?’

So like Lucy. So like her to calm him down, and to make the bastard who was killing her feel less like a shit while doing it. What can we do for the symptoms? As if Dr Wickramsinghe and she were both in this together. Not for the first time, Jonas imagined Lucy breaking up a fight between two five-year-olds, resolving the row, drying the tears, making them shake hands. It made him love her more than ever, even if it meant the man across the desk was getting off lightly.

‘We’ll try some more M&Ms,’ said Dr Wickramsinghe, ‘and throw in some Smarties and a big bottle of Lucozade.’

Of course, he didn’t say exactly that, but Jonas thought he might as well have.

* * *

Jonas took it slowly on the way home. The bigger roads had been gritted but if they hadn’t had the appointment he would never have ventured out in Lucy’s old Beetle. It had all its weight over the back wheels, leaving the front end to wander about at will, tilting at hedges and flirting with ditches. He was so used to the Land Rover with its four-wheel drive and traction control that the VW felt like a roller skate in the snow.