Just In Case Part 11

She called for the bill, paid it, and they walked home together in the grey dawn. Agnes stopped at the front door to pull off her shoes. By the time she entered the flat, he was lying curled up on her bed, asleep.

She covered him with a blanket.

A few hours later, Justin stirred. He blinked open his eyes and found Agnes sitting next to him.

She looked down, her face kind. 'h.e.l.lo.'

Her voice sent a thousand volts of electricity through him, turned him one-dimensional with need.

'Are you feeling any better?'

He couldn't think and he couldn't help himself. He reached up and kissed her, kissed her so unselfconsciously and with so much purity of intent that she put her better instincts on hold and kissed him back.

This is the way the world ends...

She felt generous, relieved, excited by the intensity of his desire. I am helping him, she lied.

He didn't unb.u.t.ton her top, just slipped his hands underneath to the warm s.p.a.ce next to her skin, pressing his mouth to her face and her neck, so that by the time she reconsidered, remembered that this was Justin, mad Justin dancing on the head of a pin like a deranged angel, by that time it was too late, and it no longer mattered much who he was.

This is the way the world ends...

There was another explosion, this time inside his brain. Afterwards he felt calm, for the first time since the crash. The love overflowed his body and filled the room.

He's very nice like this, Agnes thought.

Instead of falling asleep, he stared and stared at her as if she were all he required till the end of time.

It was flattering to be stared at that way.

And then he buried his head in her arms and cried, told her how amazing she was, how kind, how generous, how wise. He clung to her as the oxygen in the room grew thin, depleted by too many intakes of breath and outpourings of love. She needed to get up, run away, escape his overpowering need and the knowledge that she had done something she wished she hadn't.

This is the way the world ends...

It was the sharp edge of charity that compelled her to stay until he fell asleep again, after which she crept out of bed, showered, left him a note, and with a mingled feeling of relief and guilt, shut the door behind her and went out.

Not with a bang but a whimper.

31.

Agnes phoned his parents. She had promised not to tell them about his presence at the airport, but in her opinion he needed help. Or more to the point, she did. She hoped they would come and get him or at least suggest an alternative solution to what Agnes felt wasn't entirely her problem.

His mother, however, merely thanked Agnes for allowing him to stay. 'You're terribly kind to have him. We really don't know what to do. Before he went to Wales he just drifted around the house like a ghost.'

Agnes stared at the phone.

'His father and I keep hoping he'll grow out of it.'

Agnes shook her head in disbelief. Grow out of it? But how? He is it. 'I think you should come and see him.'

'Yes,' said his mother.

'Tomorrow.'

Agnes put down the phone. Some people just shouldn't be parents, she thought. Like me, now.

Justin's mother arrived with Charlie as Agnes was going out. They met at the door.

'I'm sorry to run off,' Agnes said. 'Justin's still asleep. He was out late again, searching for his dog.' She looked hard at the other woman, who fussed with her gloves.

His dog's gone missing? thought Charlie.

'I have to go, but make yourself at home.' Agnes sighed. 'There's tea and coffee in the kitchen.'

While his mother hovered uncertainly, Charlie toddled over to the sofa where Justin lay sleeping, steadied himself against the edge, and leant in close. Justin opened his eyes to find his brother's face just inches away from his own.

'Charlie?'

What's happened to you? Charlie asked.

Justin propped himself up on one arm. His eyes burned. 'I was right,' he said, in a conspiratorial whisper. 'A plane tried to land on me. n.o.body believes me but I was right. And Boy's missing.' His voice broke. 'I think he's dead.'

Charlie watched his brother's hands, fluttering and nervy, the fingers raw and bitten to the quick.

'David?'

Justin sat up as his mother kissed him awkwardly.

'How was Wales, darling?'

Whales? What whales? Wails?

'How was the weather? Were the tents waterproof? Was the scenery nice? What about the food?'

He closed his eyes.

'There was a terrible plane crash while you were away.' She shook her head. 'Nothing's safe these days.'

He didn't respond and she accepted his silence, having lost her parental bearings so completely that she no longer knew what sort of behaviour to expect from him.

'Perhaps you should come home, darling. You don't look terribly well.'

Now there's a coincidence, he thought.

His mother turned away, face creased with worry. She found it difficult to accept that his behaviour fitted within the acceptable boundaries of teenage anxiety. But what could she do? She couldn't exactly order him to come home. His friend seemed nice enough, but was it right for a fifteen-year-old boy to be living with an older girl?

'Would you like some breakfast?'

He nodded, and she hurried off to the kitchen, relieved to postpone further conversation. In the kitchen she poured cereal and milk into a bowl, wondering when things had started to unravel. Perhaps she'd taken her eye off the ball when Charlie was born. Perhaps he was acting out of jealousy. She knew what the books had to say about sibling rivalry, but had hoped that David, at nearly sixteen, would be less susceptible.

How could she possibly know what was normal? Perhaps David was one of those boys who found adolescence uncomfortable, perhaps he was merely going through a stage a jabbering, incoherent, haunted, insomniac stage from which he would emerge calm and self-possessed, pa.s.s his GCSEs, get a job, meet a nice girl, buy a house, raise children, retire, have a heart attack, enjoy a good turnout at his funeral.

She placed the bowl of cereal by the sofa and took his hands in hers. 'Wouldn't you like to come home, David?'

Justin stood up and left the room.

On the other hand, perhaps he could stay here, just for now. Perhaps he needs time away, a change of scene. Or perhaps he's in love with Agnes. Suddenly it all made sense: the eccentric behaviour, the mood swings, the nerves. First love, of course! Well. She certainly wasn't going to be one of those obstructive mothers, the ones who preached morality and abstinence at every turn. Let him have his love affair. She'd help him pick up the pieces when it ended.

Charlie gazed at his mother, unable to make sense of her expression. He padded around the flat after his brother, trying to get him to talk. But Justin looked past him, and eventually retreated to the bathroom, where he locked the door. Charlie leant against it, defeated.

His mother tapped softly, but receiving no answer, called goodbye, reminded him to eat, and then humming a little packed Charlie into his pushchair and left.

32.

Justin stayed on at Agnes's flat.

It was not so much a moving-in as a not-moving-out, and it wasn't at all what she'd had in mind. But he was only fifteen. He wasn't well. She felt guilty.

Justin didn't question his exile from Agnes's bed, but spent most of his time hunched on the sofa watching her, his eyes tragic and dilated with love.

After living with his middle-of-the-night wanderings and insomnia, Agnes now had to check morning and evening that he hadn't fallen into a coma. He slept almost constantly and showed no real interest in food, though would eat dutifully, like a child, any meal she put in front of him.

But she was not a cruel person (she told herself) and she wasn't about to throw him out on the street. So it was with a large measure of resignation that she left for her studio each morning, leaving Justin fast asleep on the sofa.

After two or three days, she arrived home to find him staring gloomily at MasterChef on TV. And she had an idea.

'Justin, I'm working so hard, and I haven't had a decent meal in days. What if I leave you some cash and a cookbook and you see what you can do?'

He looked shocked. What can I do? I can panic at the possibility of having to venture out of the flat. Or having to cook. Why doesn't she ask a question I know the answer to, like, would you like to have s.e.x with me again?

But then he realized that this was something he could do for her that would make her life easier, a way to thank her for being kind to him. A way to win back her love. Yes, it would require getting dressed, going out, making choices, calculating change, following directions. But he owed her so much. It would be a start.

He told her he would try.

The next day, a Sat.u.r.day, she left some money on the kitchen table with a copy of Cooking World, and went off to the studio.

He made it as far as the butcher's on the corner. It was an old-fas.h.i.+oned family butcher's, one of the few left in town, and there was a semi-skinned rabbit hanging upside down in the window. Justin caught its eye and it winked at him. He recoiled in horror.

And then he heard the horrible whispery voice, only this time it was singing in a high-pitched, squeaky tone, like a rabbit's. When he dared look again, he saw that it was the rabbit singing, its dead mouth opening and closing with the words: Run rabbit, run rabbit, run run run.

Where was his greyhound, now, when he needed him? He tried ignoring the horrible figment of his imagination, hoping it would go away, but the rabbit continued to sing.

Run rabbit, run rabbit, run run run.

Justin forced himself to walk to the meat counter where the butcher stood chatting casually with a woman and her daughter, a soft-featured, st.u.r.dy girl with thick brown hair and clear, fearless eyes. All three seemed strangely impervious to the singing rabbit, but when Justin approached, they turned to look at him.

He was a peculiar sight. Tears rolling down his face, shouting to drown out the sound of the singing rabbit; he said he needed help, pointed to a chicken, handed over some money, grabbed his parcel and bolted out the door in a panic.

Boys, thought the butcher.

Drugs, thought the woman.

Justin Case, thought Dorothea. So we meet again.

He heard the terrifying voice of the rabbit shouting after him.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Goes the farmer's gun.

So RUN rabbit, RUN rabbit, run, run, RUN!

He ran, shaking with fear. He couldn't look at the chicken, its loose yellowy flesh reminded him too much of his own. It looked pathetic, naked and dead. He couldn't bear to touch it, began to cry when he thought how vulnerable chickens were, how misused, how short and tragic their lives.

He missed his brother. His dog. His former self.

When Agnes returned home, she found Justin curled up asleep in the foetal position and the chicken, still wrapped in paper, leaking blood on to the hob of her cooker.

Well, she thought, I wouldn't call the experiment an unqualified success.

She cleaned up the mess, rubbed the bird with salt and oil, stuffed it with a lemon and placed it in a hot oven, along with some ancient potatoes and beans from the bottom of the fridge.

An hour later the smell woke Justin, who, for a brief ecstatic moment, thought he'd managed to cook a meal by himself. Agnes would be impressed and grateful; she would invite him across the flat once more and into her bed. The reality disappointed but did not surprise him.

That night they ate together.

He didn't tell her about the singing rabbit, just sat and listened as she talked about her day, the photographs, her plan for a show. As the narrative unfurled he stopped hearing her words and listened instead to the delicious cadence of her speech. The sound of her voice soothed him, he drew it around his shoulders like fleece.

I will feed Agnes, he thought, and in exchange she will take me back.

And so he set about channelling every ounce of fear, anxiety, nervous energy and love especially love into food.

On Monday morning he found a recipe for meatb.a.l.l.s, uncrumpled the money left over from Sat.u.r.day's chicken, shoved it into his pocket and ventured out. The brightness of the day hurt his eyes, but the world felt cold and pleasant against his skin. He approached the butcher's window cautiously. The rabbit was gone. Perhaps he had imagined it.