Harold wiped the rain from the photograph with a clean corner of his handkerchief, and flicked it from the flowers. As he walked on, all he could think of was the cycling mother. He wondered when it was that she had felt so desolate she had cut her arm, and left it to bleed. He wondered who had found her, and what they had done. Had she wanted to be saved? Or had they dragged her back to life, just as she believed she was free of it? He wished he could have said something; something to make her never do it again. If he had comforted her, he could have let her go. As it was, he knew that in meeting her, and listening, he was carrying another weight in his heart and he wasn’t sure how much more of that he could take. Despite the pain in his calf and the cold in his bones, despite the trouble in his mind, he drove himself harder.

Harold reached the outskirts of Taunton by late afternoon. The houses were packed together, and studded with satellite dishes. At the windows hung grey net drapes; some were boarded with metal shutters. The few gardens that were not concrete had been flattened by rain. The blossom of a cherry tree lay scattered like wet paper across the pavement. The traffic sped past so loud it hurt and the roads looked oiled.

A memory surged into his mind, one of those that Harold most feared. He was normally so good at repressing them. He tried to think about Queenie, but even that wouldn’t work. He shot his elbows out sideways to go faster and drove his feet against the paving stones with such fury he hadn’t the breathing to keep up. But nothing would hide him from the memory of an afternoon twenty years ago when it had all come to an end. He could see his hand reaching for the wooden door; feel the warmth of the sun on his shoulders; smell the mouldering, heated-up air; hear the stillness of a silence that was not what it should be.

“No,” he shouted, batting out at the rain.

Suddenly his calf exploded as if the skin-side of the muscle had been sliced open. The ground tipped at an angle, and seemed to swell. He reached out a hand to stop it, but in the same moment his knees buckled and his body lurched to the ground. He felt his hands and knees smart.

Forgive me. Forgive me. For letting you down.

The next thing he knew, someone was tugging at his arms, and shouting about an ambulance.

13

Harold and the Doctor