Ben Cheetham - Blood Guilt

As Harlan listened to Eve’s footsteps echo away, an urge came over him to tear the door open, run after her and fling his arms around her. Resisting it with a wrench of willpower, he fell back against the wall, hugging himself, sliding to the floor. “She’s coming back,” he murmured, lips twitching as if they didn’t know whether to smile or grimace.

Harlan held onto that thought, using it to get him through the long night when he was being tortured by images of what he’d done to Robert Reed and what others might be doing to Ethan. The next morning he woke up telling himself he wasn’t going to be in when Eve came knocking. But all day he sat in the living-room, listening out for her. To kill time, he turned on the television. Susan Reed appeared on the lunchtime news wearing a t-shirt with Ethan’s face on it and the words ‘Have you seen ETHAN REED?’. She spoke to the news reader from her tiny kitchen, which was crammed with people sorting through boxes of posters and leaflets. Her expression was no longer dazed. Her frowning, bloodshot eyes somehow managed to simultaneously convey a sense of fatalistic weariness and steely determination. The Baptist preacher, Lewis Gunn, stood grave-faced at her side, resting a supportive hand on her shoulder.

“The search for my son will continue as long as it takes,” Susan told the news reporter. “Whether that be days, months or years. We’ll never give up hope of finding him.”

When Susan finished speaking, the preacher, in his usual vigorous manner, informed the viewers that he was organising several events to raise money for the reward fund. He appealed to people to give generously and read out a telephone number for donations. Harlan greeted the announcement with mixed feelings. The offer of a large reward often led to an influx of new information, most of which, although of little or no use, was given in good faith. But it also brought out the chancers and scammers, passing the police weak or even knowingly false information in the hope of getting their hands on the money.

The knock eventually came late in the afternoon. Harlan sprang up and hurried to the door. “Eve?”

“Hello, Harlan. I told you I’d be back. I’ve brought you some pasta.” Eve waited a moment to see if Harlan would open the door, before adding, “I’ll leave it out here for you.”

Saliva filled Harlan’s mouth — he hadn’t eaten a decent meal since visiting Eve’s flat. He looked at the door handle, swallowing. Hating himself for it, he slowly reached for the Yale lock and opened the door. His gaze flicked from Eve’s face to the plastic carton of pasta she held, as if he couldn’t decide which he wanted more. In return, her eyes moved over him anxiously as if searching for signs of illness or self-abuse.

Wordlessly, Harlan motioned for Eve to come in. She moved past him, glancing from side to side, her gaze lingering on the sheets scrunched at the bottom of his otherwise bare mattress, the bathroom with its mound of dirty clothes and towels, and the kitchen work-surfaces cluttered with unwashed pots, half-eaten cans of baked beans and spaghetti, and mould-flecked bread. “Cosy, isn’t it?” Harlan said, with a crooked smile.

In the living-room, Eve handed him the pasta and sat on the sofa watching while he voraciously consumed it at the table. “Why are you doing this to yourself?” she asked when he’d finished.

“You know why.”

“Jim says the boy’s dead.”

Eve’s words laced Harlan’s forehead with lines like cracked clay. “He can’t know that for sure.”

“No, but that’s what him and all the other detectives on the case think. That’s what you think too, isn’t it? I can see it in your eyes.”

Harlan broke his gaze from Eve’s, looking at the sheer cliffs of concrete, glass and steel outside his window. “We could be wrong.”

“Even if you are, there’s still nothing you personally can do about it.”

“There might be. I might think of something.”

“Like what?” Eve’s voice was gentle, but her question contained a note of challenge.

“I…I don’t know. I just know that I owe them this.”

“No you don’t!” Eve was on her feet suddenly, moving towards Harlan. He flinched at her touch and held her at arm’s length, as if afraid she’d catch something nasty off him. “You owe yourself. You owe us.”

Harlan shook his head fiercely, still not looking at Eve. “There can’t be any us.”

“This is crazy.” Eve’s voice was hard, but her hands that clasped Harlan’s arms were tender. “I love you. Fuck knows why. Maybe it’s because only you really understand what I’ve been through. And you still love me. You don’t need to say it. I know you do.” She tried to pull him to her. His arms trembled, but didn’t bend. “How can that be wrong? How can love be wrong? If you can tell me, I’ll leave right now and never bother you again.”

Harlan couldn’t tell her. Suddenly his arms gave way and he collapsed into Eve’s embrace. Uncontrollable tremors ran through him. This was what he wanted more than anything, yet part of his mind, his soul, railed against it. He tried to draw away from Eve, but she held him tight as though trying to squeeze every last drop of resistance out of him. “Don’t,” she said.

“Look at me.” Harlan made a sweeping gesture at the room. “Look at this place. I’m no good for you.”

“You are good for me,” Eve soothed. “I love you. I want to be with you no matter what. And as for this place, well, you don’t have to stay here. You can move in with me.”

Harlan shook his head. “I need to be here.”

“Why?”

“In case.”

“In case of what?”

“She…Susan Reed, she knows I live here. So she knows where to find me if she needs me.”

Eve looked at Harlan with a baffled frown. “Why would she come to you for help? She hates you.”

Harlan’s mouth screwed into a grimace. “I know it’s absurd, I know, but I’ve got to be here for her. I’ve got to.”

Eve stroked his face, the angular jut of his cheekbone, the roughness of his stubble-flecked jaw. “Okay, stay here, and I’ll stay here with you.”

“But this place is a dump.”

“It’s not so bad.” Eve smiled. “Nothing a woman’s touch can’t fix.”

Harlan smiled faintly too, remembering how Eve had transformed the first place they’d lived in together — a dingy one bed-roomed flat above an off-licence — into a comfortable love nest.

“So it’s settled,” continued Eve.

“I…I’m not…” Harlan mumbled uncertainly.

Eve tilted up his chin and looked him in the eyes. “It’s settled. I’m going to fetch some clothes from my flat. I won’t be long.” She leaned in and kissed Harlan. At the touch of her lips, the last of his resistance seeped away.

“Okay.”

As Harlan saw Eve to the door, guilt gnawed at him with sharp teeth. He returned to the living-room and stared out the window, half watching for Eve, half studying his own reflection, wondering how it was possible to feel so good and so bad at the same time. Perhaps there was no way to reconcile his longing for Eve with his sense of obligation to Susan Reed. Perhaps he was just going to have to accept it, let it wash over him, see where it took him. He knew one thing — if his future with Eve was uncertain, without her it was non-existent.

An hour or so later, Eve returned with a bag of clothes and a box of cleaning products. She set to work on the flat straight away, scrubbing the bathroom and kitchen till they gleamed, hoovering and dusting the living-room and bedroom, bagging the dirty linen ready for the laundrette, changing the bedding. And when she was done with the flat, she set to work on Harlan, cutting his hair, running him a bath, climbing in it with him, soaping his back. Afterwards, they ordered takeout and ate it on the floor in front of the gas fire, talking and listening to the wind whip at the windows. They talked long into the night. Eve told Harlan about the new career she’d embarked on in the past year. She told him, at his insistence, about the relationship she’d had during his incarceration. He told her, equally reluctantly, what prison had been like for him. They talked with some sadness but no resentment about Tom — his seemingly boundless energy, his huge sense of fun, his cheeky laugh. When they were finally tired of talking, they undressed each other and made love and fell asleep in each other’s arms.