Dancing Towards the Blade and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘Something else would have happened.’
    ‘Right, like I’d’ve got punched.’
    She laughed, but Alan looked away, his mind quickly elsewhere. ‘I want to talk to you later,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you tonight.’
    She sighed. ‘I’ve told you, it’s not possible.’
    ‘After what you told me earlier, I want to call you. I want to know you’re OK. There must be a way. I’ll call at seven o’clock. Rachel? At exactly seven.’
    She closed her eyes again, then, fifteen seconds later she nodded slowly.
    It was a minute before Alan spoke again. ‘Only trouble is, you smile at anyone at a bus stop in London, they think you’re a nutter.’
    This time they both laughed, then rolled together. Then made love again.
    When they’d got their breath back they talked about all manner of stuff. Films and football and music.
    Nothing that mattered.
    Alan lay in bed after Rachel had left and thought about all the things that had been said and done that day. He wanted so much to do something to help her, to make her feel better, but for all his bravado, for all his heroic notions, the best that he could come up with was a present.
    He knew straightaway what he could give her, and where to find it.
    It was in a shoebox at the back of a cupboard stuffed with bundles of letters, a bag of old tools and other odds and sods that he’d collected from his father’s place after the old man had died.
    Alan hadn’t looked at the bracelet in a couple of years, had forgotten the weight of it. It was gold, or so he presumed, and heavy with charms. He remembered the feel of Rachel’s body against his fingers – her shoulder-blades and hips – as he ran them around the smooth body of the tiger, the edges of the key, the rims of the tiny train wheels that turned.
    After his father’s death, Alan had spoken to his mother about the bracelet. He asked her if she knew where it had come from. The skin around her jaw had tightened as she’d said she hardly remembered it, then in the next breath that she wanted nothing to do with the bloody thing.
    Alan put two and two together and realised how stupid he’d been. He knew about his father’s affairs and guessed that, years before, the bracelet had been a failed peace offering of some sort. It might even have been something that he’d originally bought for one of his mistresses. His father had been a forensic pathologist and Alan was amazed at how a man who exercised such professional skill could be so clumsy when it came to the rest of his life.
    It wasn’t surprising that his mother had reacted as she had, that she’d wanted no part of the charm bracelet. It had become tainted.
    Alan was not superstitious. He sensed that Rachel would like it. He wouldn’t give it to her as it was though. He would make it truly hers before he gave it.
    He knew exactly what charm he wanted to add.
    From Muswell Hill it was a five minute bus ride to Highgate tube. Rachel leaned back against the side of the shelter. Her hair was still wet from the shower she’d taken at Alan’s flat.
    She’d thought so often about how she might feel afterwards. It had been a vital part of the fantasy, not just with Alan but with other men she’d seen, but never spoken to. The sex had been easy to imagine of course. It had been gentler than she was used to and had lasted longer, but the mechanics were more or less the same. Where she’d been wrong was in imagining the feelings that would come when she’d actually done it. She’d been certain that she’d feel frightened, but she didn’t. Fear was familiar to her, and its absence was unmistakable. Heady.
    She waited a couple of minutes before giving up on the bus and heading for the station on foot. Had there been anybody at the bus stop, she might well have smiled at them.
    Lee didn’t think that he asked too much. Not after a long day talking mortgages to morons and assuring mousey newlyweds that damp was easily sorted. At the end of it, all he wanted was