Chapters (46)
Karl felt his insides roiling with the knowledge that the next sign wouldn’t be a number at all: it would just be WELCOME TO. Desperate as he was to reach Newcastle, he was almost equally desperate not to face what was there. The check of the phone, the probably fruitless dive in search of a miracle get-out – he’s fine, he’s safe. And then when that didn’t materialize, the horrible thing he was going to have to do. The call he was going to have to make to Hamish Elton. A call which, had he made it before now, would have stopped James from doing what he – what Karl hoped to hell he hadn’t already done.
Outside it was shivering weather; listless rain, just a little, over the narrowing terraces. The occasional bottom-floor glow behind blinds; a super-early riser, perhaps, or someone like him with a problem too big to go to bed with. But Karl didn’t really believe that; he envied anyone who was behind any of these walls. He’d swap with them just like he would have swapped at the services. He would take on any problem that wasn’t the silence of the road, the memories of James, the cold unanswerable question of where James was now.
It was a lonely feeling when life caught you out. And that was what had happened, Karl admitted to himself for the first time since he’d seen the texts. What was unfolding was just what he deserved. Because he was only a hero if you stopped the tape where he had, with James back on his feet, Karl having helped his old friend out. And that wasn’t where the tape stopped. Not in real life. The tape of Karl and James stopped a few months ago, with him throwing James away.