The Deadly Space Between Read Online Free PDF Page B

a pause, he doesn’t say her name – ‘ I’m still in the lab . . .’
    He’s a scientist, then. Or a doctor? A pathologist? A coroner? What laboratory? Where? A hospital? A research institute, a university? Where? Does he live here? Or in London?
    ‘I’m here till eight. Call me.’
    Instinctively, I look at my watch. It is nearly three. She is not here. She will not be back until after six. Will she listen to the messages immediately? Usually she never does. Has she started doing that, hoping to hear him? Does he ring her at work? When she hears his voice, will she ring him back at once? 07710 283 180. This is his mobile number. I have neither his address nor his name. I have no concrete information. I do not hesitate. I sit down on the floor beside the phone, listening to the sizzle of the rewinding tape, watching the red light winking steadily, fluttering through her book of numbers, addresses. I have never done this before. She is not methodical. She writes new names on empty pages, any empty page, regardless of the alphabetical letters embossed on the serrated edge. There is no detectable pattern in her collection of names, numbers, addresses. It is quite arbitrary, slapped down at any angle. Here are the names of people I do not know, have never seen. I have never been interested before. Some names are crossed out, written again elsewhere, but still not under the apparently correct letter. There are numbers floating free, without locations or identities. Some have initials attached to them. I stare at blank initials, which hide everything, even the sex. It must be an institute, a hospital. I search the entire book for official addresses. I note the London numbers, which have no names attached. In desperation, for it is now nearly four o’clock, I ring one of these at random. It is a dry-cleaning service, impatient to know another number, the number on my green ticket, without which they can tell me nothing. Coat, jacket, trousers? What make? What colour? In despair I give up. I lean against the wall. Then listen to the tape again.
    The voice is steady, confident, unhurried. This is someone who is not afraid, neither of the answerphone nor of the tape. But, I realize this on the third hearing, from the question implicit in his tone, he had expected her to be there. He had missed her. Just missed her? When had he rung? He doesn’t say. And our answerphone doesn’t record the time of the messages. So she knows he would ring? Has he rung often before? Why didn’t I know? Why wasn’t I told? The boy on the floor, leaning against the comfortable tattered wallpaper of the hallway, is very near to tears. Obscurely, I feel shut out and betrayed. The prickle of tears begins at the back of my eyes, then slithers on down my face. The woman I love is slipping away. I no longer know her. She is no longer mine.
    I raise my hand to the rewind button. The answering machine is switched off. The phone suddenly rings. I jump backward, discovered, appalled. I stare at the clattering, vibrating phone, incapable of touching it again. I am absolutely certain that it is her lover, that vast, obscure and crushing presence, invisible, all-seeing, who is waiting, smirking with contempt on the other end. It rings and rings. I cower beside it, enraged and hysterical. Suddenly it is all over.
    I spent the rest of that afternoon grappling with an unseen from a Greek treatise on mathematics. The language of mathematics is biblical. Let A be equal to B. Let there be light. I found myself writing like the scribes, translating the prophets. It was a language of power. Henceforth the necessary characteristics of an axiom are: (i) That it should be self-evident; that its truth should be immediately accepted without proof. (ii) That it should be fundamental; that is, that its truth should not be derivable from any other truth more simple than itself. (iii) That it should supply a basis for the establishment of further truths. An axiom then, is a