Chapters (60)
He exhales, looks away, and even his boredom seems evil. It annoys me, that casual gesture. But it’s also meant to be threatening. I get ready to go. I’ve had enough.
‘Right, great!’ I say. ‘I’ll be off!’
Screw him. I’ll get a photo of his number plate when I’m at the top of the road, up by the entrance to Tesco’s car park. The police can have him.
‘Yeah, go fuck yourself,’ he says, a spasm of irritation running through his angular body.
I freeze.
‘I… I’m sorry?’
I feel myself moving towards the car.
‘Go on. Leg it, yer nosy twat.’
The world lurches violently. My body floods with something ice-cold and utterly terrifying. I feel myself being carried at unimaginable speed to a place I’ve never been. It only takes a second.
‘I was worried,’ I explain, moving closer.
My hand reaches out, fingertips touching the roof of the car.
This can’t be right, but it feels right. I don’t know why. Everything’s changed. That’s all I know.
‘Worried,’ I repeat.
My other hand slips inside my jacket. I lean in until my body touches the driver’s door. What am I searching for? What am I doing?
Then I find it. Between my fingers. A pencil. I can feel its smooth hexagonal shaft, its strange steely rigidity. This can’t be right. But it must be. My world twists irrevocably on its axis. My roller-coaster moment.
‘I… just…’ I say, leaning further in to him.
But he’s not listening. He’s not even looking at me. He’s looking straight ahead, like I’m not there.
The point enters just above his eyeball, taking part of the upper eyelid with it. Easily, easily it goes in. Shockingly so. And shockingly fast, although in fact I’m calm, not shocked at all.
His face hardly changes. There’s the slightest expression of surprise. But mild surprise, no more than that. It might be that he remains exactly as he is, and the lack of horror is somehow expressive; peaceful, like he knows that this is what needs to be done, that I have no choice.
The pencil slides right in.
There must have been some force. But I can’t recall.
When I let go only a couple of inches are sticking out. With the ball of my hand I push it in all the way.
Then I wait, resting against the car.
When his body starts to sag I know it’s over.
That’s how it happens.
So quickly.
You’ve got no idea just how quickly it can all change.
Everything.