Decay Inevitable

Tim moved as quickly as he could away from the wall: still a languid movement. “What?” He blinked.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Wandering around.” His voice was wet, catarrhal. Listening to him breathe was like listening to a sucking wound in casualty.

“You were touching that wall up like it was your girlfriend.”

Tim reddened. He pushed the babyfine floss of his hair away from his eyes and made to walk past Sean. It was easy to block his path. A cobweb would have impeded him.

“What were you doing, Tim?”

“I. Was. Do-ing. No-thing.” Enunciating every syllable, Tim tried to stare out Sean, summoning as much fury to his puppy face as possible.

“Okay, Tim,” Sean said at last. “I don’t mean anything. I was just curious.”

Tim seemed to slump; relief wiped the pitiful attempt at pique from his features. “Do you want anything from the shop? I’m just off to get Salty a packet of fig biscuits.”

“Bottle of water,” Sean said. “Thanks.”

“Right. Put the money in the tin, won’t you?”

“Always do. See you later. We’re going to the pub, aren’t we?”

Tim nodded. He was waiting for Sean to leave the room with him. Sean didn’t disappoint, heading back up to where Nicky Preece was stationed, but as soon as Tim had pushed through the revolving doors, Sean was back down the stairs. He retraced his steps through the offices to the wall that Tim had been caressing. It was a wall scarred by tiny holes where nails or tacks had fastened charts and plans and diagrams to it. Pale green paint was chipped here and there, revealing a sickly pink undercoat. Feeling somewhat self-conscious, Sean placed his hands against the wall in the same way that Tim had. The plaster was warm to the touch and he could feel a slight vibration: no doubt Jez or Robbie or Lutz working with a power tool down below. Sean moved his hands across the wall, wondering what it was that Tim had been doing. Could he have some kind of demolition fetish?

He pushed himself away, chuckling to himself and feeling embarrassed that he had allowed Tim to get at him like that. At the threshold of the room he heard the wind getting up outside the building, howling through the brick nets and chutes and scaffolding. The traffic had dwindled on the carriageway. The cloud had infected the entire sky. It was as though the sun didn’t exist any more.

EMMA ARRIVED JUST as the evening news was beginning on the television. Sean let her into the flat and then returned to the set, where a man with too-pink skin was standing by a curve of motorway. A crater in the road’s surface was the size of a large roundabout, straddling the central reservation. The crash barriers had ruptured and bent like toffee. Days after the explosions on the M6 and M1, forensic teams were combing the area around the detonated bombs, looking for clues.

“...as yet nobody has claimed responsibility for the explosions and, although it seems unlikely from the sheer scale of the attack, police are not ruling out the possibility that the culprit is a lone terrorist...”

Sean was wiping his hands on a tea towel. Emma plucked it from his fingers and, stepping into the circle of his arms, kissed him deeply.

“Hello to you too,” Sean said, smiling, when she eventually pulled away.

“That was just a message to you, from me,” she said. “Whatever went before... it doesn’t matter to me. I’m here if you want me.”

Sean had made a stew of tomatoes, bacon, and beans. He served it up with hunks of bread and glasses of merlot. They sat eating on the floor, cross-legged, leaning lightly against each other while sleet spattered the windows and the news played out its awful theatre to them.

Later, sitting among the dirty dishes and listening to music, Emma asked Sean what he thought about the motorway bombs.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve seen nothing like it before. I mean, look at the number of cameras they’ve got out on the roads these days. And you’re telling me nobody picked up anything on them?”

“They aren’t all working all the time, are they?”

“No, but you’d think, if what, over fifty bombs had been planted, that something would have been filmed. It’s all too perfect. Nobody has that kind of luck during an operation. Nobody.”

“Well, it looks like they have now,” Emma said, absently stroking the soft fuzz on the nape of Sean’s neck.

Sean thought of the way Tim had moved his hands over the pimpled, scarred surface of the wall. He had treated it almost reverentially.

“I wish I could open you up sometimes,” Emma said, her voice changed. Nervous. Gentle. “You’re so quiet, really. You’ve always been quiet.”

She pressed against his ribcage as though, in the bones that patterned his skin, she might read something about him that she didn’t know. “In here is the real you. The you I want to understand and get to know better. I want to get under your skin, Sean. Does that upset you at all? Does that kind of talk scare you?”