The Quarry Read Online Free PDF Page B

look at me). ‘Says it’s only held up by us being in it; him and me. Once we’re gone, once we stop believing in it, it’ll fall down all by itself.’
    ‘Plausible,’ Alison says, tugging at the sofa. It’s harder to move it that way; I think it’s the grain of the wood or something. She gets the couch to jerk forward a centimetre.
    Rob tuts again, licks at his hand. ‘Do you mind?’ he says. ‘You’re spilling my fucking drink.’
    ‘Oh, help her, Rob, for goodness’ sake,’ Hol says.
    Rob shrugs. ‘Wasn’t my idea to start moving the fucking furniture around.’ He drinks his drink. ‘This happens at work, too, you know,’ he tells Hol. ‘She starts out on some irrelevant, seat-of-the-pants new project, causes chaos everywhere and then I have to come along and clean everything up. I’d probably have advanced a lot further in the company if I didn’t spend so much time sorting out Ali’s messes.’
    Alison smiles widely at Hol. ‘That’s Rob-speak for I initiate some bold new venture taking the company in an exciting, fresh but entirely course-complementary direction and then he breezes in when all the hard work’s done and takes the man’s share of the credit. I’d be a couple of rungs further up by now if I didn’t have him constantly in tow.’ She tugs hard at the couch, grunting.
    ‘Jesus!’ Hol says, getting up and going round the back of the couch to push it. It slides back to where it was. Hol looks at me as she sits back down again. She’s frowning. I wonder what I’ve done wrong now.
    Then there’s a double ring on the hall bell.
    Shit. I don’t want to have to go. On the other hand, I sort of do want to go now.
    I stand up. ‘Excuse me.’
    ‘Kit,’ Hol says, extending one hand towards me, ‘you don’t have to—’
    ‘Yeah, Kit …’ Haze says.
    ‘No,’ I say, pointing to the door, ‘I have to … Excuse me.’
    ‘Is there blood?’
    ‘There is a little blood.’
    ‘Well, what does that mean? What does “a little” mean?’
    ‘It means there is a little blood.’
    ‘Don’t be fucking smart, Kit; just tell me how much blood there is. And what colour? Red? Brown? Black?’
    ‘Are you sure you can’t turn round and take a look?’
    ‘Not without going out into the fucking hall, waddling, with my trousers round my ankles and my cock hanging out, so, no.’
    ‘If I had a smartphone I could take a photo and show you.’
    ‘I’m not buying you a fucking smartphone. Will you shut up about the fucking smartphone? You don’t need one. And you’ll just post the photos on Facebook. Or find a way to sell them in your stupid game.’
    ‘Course I wouldn’t,’ I tell him. ‘Though you could have Faecesbook, I suppose,’ I add. Well, you have to try to lighten the mood.
    ‘Oh, Christ.’
    ‘There’s only a smear,’ I tell him. ‘And it’s red.’
    ‘Good, fine. Look, just, just, you know, wipe me off and … Christ, this is … Just, would you? Okay?’
    This doesn’t happen all the time but, sometimes, I have to wipe my dad clean after he’s moved his bowels. He can’t stretch round or underneath any more to do it himself; even on the opiates the pain is too much now that the cancer has moved into his spine. Often Mrs Gunn will do this. She is paid to be a carer now, though I’m not sure this whole arse-cleaning thing is really within her remit. Guy cried following the first time she performed this service for him. He doesn’t know that I know this; I heard him through his bedroom door, afterwards.
    The first time I had to help Guy wipe himself I tried to do it with my eyes closed. This was unsuccessful, and messy. My compromise these days is to breathe through my mouth so I don’t smell whatever might be in the toilet bowl (I resent being made to look in there but Guy feels a need to know whether there is blood in his stool). Obviously I am wearing a pair of blue surgical gloves; we keep a box by the door. I can let myself into the downstairs loo