Robert Young - Gatecrasher

Thursday. 6.30pm.

When Sarah shut the door behind her Campbell awoke suddenly and found himself with his head on the table in front of the laptop which was still on. There was a small patch of drool pooled around his cheek and for a moment he felt disoriented and alarmed.

‘Fall asleep?’ she said as she moved through into the kitchen with a bag of groceries.

Campbell felt as if he were barely even awake and rubbed at his eyes and wiped his cheek. He didn’t say anything.

Sarah walked back through to the living room where Campbell sat and looked closely at him. ‘You look shattered. No surprise really after everything…’

Campbell raised his eyebrows and nodded.

‘I got some food for you and stuff. Toothpaste, teabags,’ she went on, tilting her head toward the kitchen. ‘You can stay here tonight. If you want. I mean, I don’t think you have anywhere else to go do you?’

He shook his head.

‘Then it makes sense doesn’t it? I mean you look terrible too. You must really need some sleep.’

He nodded and looked a little taken aback by the reference to his appearance and began patting his hair down, conscious that it looked a mess.

‘I, uh, I got quite a bit of food,’ Sarah said, walking back toward the kitchen and calling over her shoulder. She seemed edgy somehow, more uncomfortable than when she had been with him earlier in the day.

‘Thanks,’ Campbell replied.

Had something happened whilst she was out? Had she decided to call someone after all? He imagined Sarah being told to come back, to keep him there while they sent someone. Certainly she had been pretty shaken by the things he’d told her and had mentioned going to the police. But this seemed like a distinct change in the way she was acting.

Campbell yawned and stretched in the chair and rolled his head back on his shoulders, feeling his neck click. His head was throbbing and the awkward position that he had fallen asleep in had doubled the pain in his ribs. Campbell stood up slowly and rubbed his hands lightly over his sides. He noticed that the bandages that he had wrapped around his wrists were starting to show red patches underneath where they had begun to weep and bleed.

He started through to the kitchen where Sarah had begun to unpack the shopping. She straightened quickly and looked tense.

‘Plenty of food,’ he said.

Sarah blushed slightly and turned away. Campbell frowned and started to wonder if he was just being paranoid.

‘Hope you’re hungry.’

‘I hope so too. Wouldn’t want this to go to waste.’

Sarah turned and looked at him again. She opened her mouth and then closed it. Campbell looked at her for a moment and decided that he wasn’t being paranoid. Before he could speak she did.

‘I, uh, don’t suppose you really have anything to do this evening… I thought that I might keep you company for a bit.’

Campbell noticed that as she spoke she seemed to draw herself up again, to dispel the nerves and awkwardness that he’d seen there before and now looked full of the calm self-assurance that seemed so much a part of her.

‘I got enough for two…’ she said with a shrug as if that settled it, she might as well stay now.

‘Well I hadn’t really got round to making plans yet,’ he replied with a hint of a smile.

‘Don’t over do it will you? I could go if you’d rather…’

‘No, no. I’m kidding Sarah… That’s very kind of you. Thank you.’

There was a moment of silence that was broken by Sarah busying herself with the groceries, rustling bags and tossing things into the refrigerator.

‘Oh I put the boiler on when I left so there should be hot water.’

‘OK. Great.’

‘I thought you could use a shower or a bath or something,’ she added by way of an explanation.

Suddenly Campbell could think of nothing else in the whole world that he would rather do to soothe the aches and pains that seemed to cover him from his head down through to his feet. He thanked her again and turned and made for the stairs, grabbing his bag on the way through where he had had the presence of mind that morning to throw in a few toiletries.

He drew a hot bath and sank slowly into it, the water stinging the more tender bruising on his ribs and the graze on his knee that he had noticed that morning and one on his elbow that he hadn’t. He must have picked those up sprawling across the tube platform.

With weary surprise he noted that had only been around twelve hours beforehand. How much had happened in so short a period? Campbell could barely take it in even now. When he had recounted things to Sarah it didn't seem as if this had all started only five days previously. It had taken almost no time at all to have come so far, for his life to unravel so completely. How long would it be before he could get back to normal he wondered. More to the point, was that even likely?

He closed his eyes and slid right under the water for a moment pushing away the thoughts and the pain and just trying to relax. The hot water gradually began to do its work and the aching started slowly to subside.

In thirty minutes he was back in the living room where Sarah was looking through a newspaper at the table. She looked up as he walked in.

‘Better?’

He nodded. ‘Yes thanks. Much.’

‘You look better.’

‘I needed that.’

‘Dinner’s cooking. Hungry?’

‘I should be,’ he said. ‘But I don’t feel that hungry really. Sorry.’

Sarah looked a little disappointed but did well to hide it. ‘Well it will be ready in about half an hour anyway. Maybe you’ll have an appetite then.’

Campbell felt stupid all of a sudden. She had gone well out of her way for him already and didn’t need to be here at all, let alone making him dinner. The least he could do was feign enthusiasm, even if he didn’t actually feel it.

He opted to say nothing else rather than risk making it worse and he moved to the sofa and sat down quietly and closed his eyes.

For ten minutes neither said a word. Sarah read the paper and Campbell sat wondering whether he should make polite conversation but then stopped himself, worried that she would think he was doing it just to make up for the previous comment.

Finally Sarah closed the paper and turned in her chair. ‘So. What’s on your mind? You’re very quiet. Still a bit shaken up I guess?’

‘A bit, yeah,’ he replied but he couldn’t hide the distance in his eyes. He wasn’t sure about telling her what he had been looking at whilst she had gone out before he fell asleep.

‘Something else?’

Campbell was staring into space across the room. He nodded vaguely.

‘Something important?’

He nodded again. ‘Think so.’

‘Come on Daniel, what’s up? Tell me.’

He ran his hands over his face and inhaled deeply. ‘I think…’ he started. ‘I think I know who’s behind all this. And why.’

Thursday. 11pm.

She could see little through the window of the bus as it swept through the wet London night but she stared at the glass all the same, determined to avoid eye contact with the drunk young men who sat nearby and stared over regularly looking for an excuse to speak to her.

Normally she would take a cab, but cabs were hard to find on a wet night and she wasn’t too far from home and anyway, until the last stop she had been sat with two friends. Now she was alone and trying hard to look preoccupied and unapproachable and she wished away the five minutes until it was her stop.

Her flatmate would probably be up and was a nice enough guy that he would come and meet her at the bus stop if she rang and asked him to. She toyed with the idea but watching the rain sheet down against the tarmac she decided not to be so cruel to drag him out in this. It wasn’t a long walk. It wasn’t that late.