The Kind Folk Read Online Free PDF Page A

parent's sleeve. Eventually Luke succeeds in coaxing the tag all the way to its socket, and Terence slumps against the seat, mopping his forehead. "Are you sure you don't want to go to a hospital?" Luke persists.
    "I said." Just as fretfully Terence adds "Need to be home."
    Luke twists the key, and the engine sputters before spluttering alive. "That's where your medication is, yes?"
    "Where a lot is." Terence does his best to lean towards Luke against the seat belt, but his left hand can't reach Luke's arm. "Don't let them see," he mutters.
    Luke indicates and sends the van forward, earning a blare of the horn from a driver who was about to swing into the inner lane. "Who?" Luke says. "See what?"
    "Forget it, Luke. No point knowing."
    "Is it anything to do with why you called me last night?"
    "Wish I hadn't." More fiercely than Luke understands Terence says "Fed up with wishing."
    Drivers are braking on the slip road as they see Luke's abandoned car and trying to pull out before drivers in the outer lane will let them. Once he's past the car Luke speeds to the junction and heads through the narrow streets towards the railway bridge. "Leave it till you're feeling better," he says, "but I really would like to know why you called."
    "Sure about that?" Terence grasps the top of the dashboard one-handed to help him turn to Luke. "Tell you," he says and has to draw an unsteady breath, "one thing."
    Luke glances at him, but the eye that's fully open seems as veiled as its twin, and Terence's bottom lip has sagged beyond expressiveness. "They're all you ever needed," Terence pants. "Freddy and my brother. All you'll ever."
    "And you," Luke says, but he knows none of this is an answer to his plea about the phone call. The terraced street he's driving down ends opposite the brick arches that lead to the viaduct across the river. They're taller than a house, several of which newsed against them. One house in the two-storey row is Terence's, a few doors away from a spiritualist church. Reflected sunlight makes the two front windows as opaquely pale as the front door with its step on the pavement is black. "You stay in the van," Luke says, "and I'll get your pills. Where do I look?"
    "There," Terence gasps—at least, that's what it sounds like. He has raised his hand as though he means to point, but clamps it to the dashboard and cranes forward as his voice gives out. He's gazing at the house so fiercely that he shudders with the effort; certainly he's shivering. Luke drives towards it as fast as he dares, and then he sees what Terence must have seen. Somebody appears to be standing at the upstairs window.
    It has to be a reflection from one of the houses opposite. The figure seems not just to be resting its forehead against the pane; the white face looks pressed as flat as the glass, squashed virtually featureless. The rest of the shape is too blurred to be distinguishable. Before Luke can focus on it or tell Terence what it must be, his passenger topples across him and snatches the keys.
    The van judders to a halt in front of the house as Luke tramps on the brake. Terence has been thrown against the dashboard, clutching the keys. Luke reaches for them, but they clank along the dashboard as Terence drags them out of reach. Perhaps another spasm is making him do so, because his head lolls sideways, thumping the windscreen. His eyes are still on Luke, but in a moment they're as empty as the windows of the house.

THE LAST ROOM
    When Luke's car draws up outside the house a woman turns to watch him from beside the spiritualist church. She looks shy, perhaps about her generous proportions, which she has tried to camouflage with a long white dress that only succeeds in suggesting she's more pregnant than women generally are at her age. She hesitates while he locks the car, but as he makes to unlock the front door of the house she plods along the narrow pavement to him. "Are you one of Mr Arnold's people?" she says and then blinks at his face.