Peter Helton - Falling More Slowly

She glimpsed one, two cars going by. Couldn’t they see what was happening?

The punch in the stomach came as a surprise. The man behind her let go of her throat, spun her head around by her hair and kicked hard into the back of her knees. Then she was on the ground and they were kicking her. She shut her eyes and covered her head, curled up, as the kicks rained. Then it suddenly stopped. A car horn blared, the engines of the scooters whined. They were gone. Only when all was quiet did she dare to open her eyes again. Two more cars drove by slowly, the drivers curious, but then accelerated away. Carol hated them more than the muggers.

McLusky was glad it was a mild night because it meant they could walk. If he had thought about it he’d have found he was simply glad all round. The evening was going unexpectedly well, he hadn’t put his foot in it once, the food at the Myristica had been excellent and the night was curiously mild, giving it an almost Mediterranean feel. Even the Georgian houses around here didn’t look a million miles away from Italian architecture, though you couldn’t quite imagine people stringing washing across the streets. He hadn’t really known where else to walk so he had steered Louise towards his flat in Northmoor Street and she seemed happy to walk without asking the destination. He had been gently teased about his obviously brand new clothes that clashed with his comfortably worn shoes. What Dr Louise Rennie would make of his flat, even after the hour-and-a-half he had spent clearing up the worst mess, remained to be seen. At least the sofa and coffee table he’d bought from the junk shop down the road had been delivered and she wouldn’t have to stand. He had bought a bottle of red too, just in case.

As they turned into Northmoor Street he couldn’t help feeling that it had been presumptuous to lead her here. ‘Well, this is where I live, doctor, thanks for walking me home.’

‘Is that what I’ve been doing?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘And are you going to ask me in?’

‘I was going to try that next. Would you like to come up for a drink?’

‘Thank you, I would.’

‘I must warn you, I haven’t had time to decorate yet. Or buy a lot of things, there hasn’t really been the time to do anything much yet, careful, the tread is broken on that step.’ He noticed he was talking too fast as they climbed the narrow stairs and with some effort stopped apologizing until they got to his floor. His mail had been left by the door. He scooped it up without checking it and inserted the key in the lock. ‘Well, here goes, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ She dismissed his warnings as self-deprecation but only until she had negotiated the empty hall and stood in what was meant to be the living room. There were no curtains and no lampshade on the bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. In fact it would have been much quicker to list what actually was there: an unfashionable blue sofa and a pine coffee table standing on a thin ethnic rug. The walls were white. ‘Interesting, who’s your decorator?’

‘Warned you. The rest is worse. The spare room is still full of boxes, I’m not really unpacked yet.’ In the kitchen he popped the cork on a bottle of Australian red while Louise took in the spartan fittings with a deepening frown. McLusky noticed it. ‘I ordered a fridge, should come any day now.’

She ran a finger over the cream enamel of the WWII gas cooker. ‘A nice steam-driven one, I hope. Do all policemen live like this?’

‘No, I doubt it. Though I’m sure a lot of them survive on canteen food and pizza.’ He looked for wineglasses, couldn’t find any and had to settle for a couple of tumblers. ‘It’s only temporary, I’ll get it all sorted once I’ve got my bearings.’

The sofa was hard and smelled of dust and long storage. It reminded Louise of her student days in shabbily furnished accommodation, all that was missing were the posters of rock groups on the walls. She watched McLusky light a cigarette, manipulating the expensive-looking lighter with slender fingers. He used a saucer as an ashtray. This was like dating a teenager in his first digs away from home. She fortified herself with half a tumblerful of wine, reached out and gently grabbed and twisted his new blue shirt, pulling herself closer. ‘Okay, time you came clean. Unless this fabled spare room with all your boxes is one hell of a cavern you don’t seem to have … well, let’s just call it stuff . What happened? Did your last place burn down? Burglary? Repossession? Left somewhere in a hurry? Or did you just upgrade from a caravan?’

McLusky smiled down at Louise’s fist holding on to the shirt material. The grab had turned into a small, two-fingered caress. ‘I’m trained to deal with shirt-grabbers, you know?’

‘Well, you can show me that later. This is my interview technique. So. What happened? You’ve been very cagey all evening about your life in Southampton while I’ve told you practically every story of my life.’

‘I just don’t do stuff very well, that’s all. In Southampton I moved in with someone who seemed to have all that kind of thing already, fridges and cookers and heated towel rails. So I never accumulated any. When we split I simply threw some things into a few boxes and bin-liners …’ It had been Laura in fact who had packed all his possessions into boxes, carefully wrapped naturally, while he was still recovering in hospital. It was all there waiting for him at the section house when he got out. Half of it had never been unpacked since. ‘I’m not hung up on material things.’

‘Neither am I. Just a place to lay my head, really.’ She let herself sink back along the length of the sofa, bringing him with her by the shirt. Slipping her fingers into his hair she pulled him close until their lips met in a series of slow, tentative kisses. His aftershave seemed to have mellowed and blended with his own particular fragrance into faint hints of cinnamon and musk. She enjoyed the weight of his body on hers and wriggled lower, sliding her hands down his back as their kisses grew longer. His hands insinuated themselves smoothly into the small of her back, the arch of her neck. A hum of pleasure vibrated his chest and he pulled her body harder towards his own. Louise walked her fingers over the unfamiliar topography of his muscles under the shirt material, a whole landscape in urgent need of exploring. The unfamiliar buzz of the door bell froze both of them in a silent, trembling pause. The door bell sounded again, longer, more insistently.

‘Bugger.’ His first instinct was to ignore it. It was what the cast of Louise’s eyes and the pressure of her palms against his back seemed to suggest too. Only his mobile had been turned off, his airwave was in the kitchen and he could still hear the super’s warning that he might keep himself more available in future. The buzzer sounded for long seconds, someone was leaning on the button downstairs. ‘I’ll have to check.’ With an involuntary groan of frustration he disentangled himself, moving swiftly to the intercom by the door. ‘Yes?’

‘Liam?’ A woman’s voice.

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s me, open the door.’

‘Laura …?’

‘Give that man a coconut. Are you going to let me in or not?’

McLusky pressed the button while his mind raced. What was she doing here? And at this time of night? How had she found him? What could it mean? When she appeared in his doorway the sight of her drove all speculation into the background.

‘Well, can I come in?’ She peered past him. ‘Or is it inconvenient?’

‘No, not at all.’ He stepped aside to let her pass and caught sight of Louise whose expression suggested he might have worded that differently. ‘Come in, now you’re here.’ In the sitting room he made the introductions, feeling a little dazed. Unexpected didn’t begin to describe this. She looked well, her hair was shorter, she looked younger too, somehow, or just different? ‘What are you doing here? And how did you find me, I mean, why?’