Decay Inevitable

At the end of the street they came upon a park that, for a moment, filled Emma with enough hope for a little sunshine to return to her demeanour. But there was no hill to be found in the park, just a pond with water so still and black it resembled a polished slab of ebony. Sean hugged her for a long time in an attempt to lift her out of her disappointment.

“We have to go at this a different way,” he said.

“Doggy style?” Emma asked, her voice muffled by Sean’s jacket.

“No,” Sean laughed, closing his eyes and breathing deeply the scents that clung to Emma’s hair. There was apple in there, and honey. And good old-fashioned I-want-you-till-I-die pheromones. Not for the first time, he wished this was somebody else’s problem and he could get on with unwrapping Emma’s various layers, getting to know the woman who meant so much to him. It had been a long time since he felt so committed, so clear about what he wanted. Being with Emma was like sucking a strong mint: she cut through all the dross in his head and found the little part of his brain that said yes all the time.

“I think we have to try to remember how we found the hill when we were children. I know it came to me so easily sometimes, it was as if it was hanging around behind my eyes, just waiting for me to shut them.”

Emma nodded in his arms. “I know. I can still smell what the grass was like. It was always midnight on the hill. There were always people walking around. They seemed lost but they gave off this indestructible air.”

“Who else but the dead can be indestructible?” Sean asked.

“Maybe we should find a hill near Warrington. Maybe that would help.”

“At night.”

Emma moved away from him. “Yes, at night. We should take a picnic. Kids’ food. Comfort food. Try to find a way back to a time when we were young. When we didn’t have to worry about anything.”

“We could go to Hill Cliffe. There’s a pretty little cemetery there. And a good view of Warrington. You can see the parish church and the detergent factory–”

“How lovely...”

“–and Fiddler’s Ferry power station. You can see the old clocktower in the centre of town, at Market Gate.”

“I’ll make us jam sandwiches, that really sweet, seedless stuff. And margarine. On cheap white bread.”

Sean closed his eyes and smacked his lips. “Mmm-mmm!”

“And Monster Munch,” Emma suggested.

“Pickled onion flavour?”

“Of course.”

Sean opened his eyes and frowned. Something was going wrong. The sky had bruised a little and the air had grown chillier. Looking at Emma was like looking at someone through unwashed gauze. Her edges had softened; there was a smudgy gleam to them. He reached out for her and told her to close her eyes, to lie back on the grass with him. She didn’t question him. Her breath, excited and hot, told him all he needed to know. His heart was pounding.

Emma said, “And I’ll bring some of those cheese triangles...”

“Ugh, I hated them,” said Sean, remembering the flavour in his mouth, the sludgy texture. “But I liked sweets. Sherbet fountains and moon dust.”

“Okay. We’ll get some. And comics.”

“The Beano and The Dandy. 2000 AD. Look-in.”

“Twinkle,” Emma said.

Sean shrugged. “It’s a whole different world to me, all that girl stuff.”

“Didn’t you have a sister?”

Sean shook his head. “Naomi was always into whatever I was into. Football, war comics. Bollocks like that.”

“Shall we take some toys to the hill?” Her hand in his grew damp; the dewy grass moved through their clothing. The air turned heavy with moisture. Something was happening to the ground at their backs. It felt as though they were being gently tilted.

Don’t open your eyes, he sent to Emma, hoping that she’d get it.

I won’t, I won’t.

“I preferred Sindy to Barbie,” she said, squeezing his hand.

“I had an Action Man with rubber hands and eagle-eyes. Proper hair. Not that plastic moulded shit you get these days. I had a Six Million Dollar Man too.”

“In a red track suit?” Emma was getting so excited it sounded as though she were being pumped with helium. Other voices were joining theirs; deeper, more sombre, less urgent. They were far away, a susurrant shifting. Getting closer.

“Of course! And he had those bits of rubber for skin. You peeled them back and you could get at his bionic circuits in his arm.”

“What was his enemy called?”

“Maskatron. I had one of those too. Quite nasty, really. You could put his own face on, or Oscar Goldman’s or Steve Austin’s.”

“Before he grew that minging moustache, thank God.”

It was like word association, only much deeper than that. He was getting aromas and tastes from his childhood that were coming back after a twenty-five-year absence. He remembered programmes from the television that he used to watch when he came home from school at lunchtime. Rainbow and Pipkins and Handful of Songs. He remembered wrestling with his dad on the patio, Dad pinning him to the ground with his superior weight and challenging him: “Now get out of that, go on.”