Reginald Hill - Midnight Fugue

Waking is odd. Sometimes sudden, like bursting through the surface of a pool after long minutes swimming under water. Light, air, sound, all in a terrifying triumphal confusion.

Sometimes so slow and gradual that there are stages when you still do not know if you wake or sleep.

He has been waking gradually.

That moment when he thought love and joy had brought him fully back to the waking world he now realizes was only a partial waking, the border country where dreams and reality meet and are still confused.

Such certainty of happiness, such a sense of renewal, of leaving the old far behind and striding forward joyously towards the new, had made him feel invulnerable, had led him to take the risk, which of course he did not see as a risk.

He sees it now.

As clearly as he sees the long straight road tapering downhill before him, empty except for the bright red car.

There is nothing in sight behind it. He has summoned it here to make sure it is alone. That piece of planning, of forethought, belongs to that old world he now knows he has to wake into. He hasn’t left it behind him. He’d been fooling himself to think there was any way he could ever do that.

The final act of waking will take place when he speaks into his phone.

He waits. And he waits. Then he waits some more.

He tells himself this long wait is necessary. He has to be absolutely sure nothing has followed the red car. But he knows in truth it has nothing to do with being secure, at least not in that sense. He needs to be confident that the barriers he has built to protect his new world are strong enough to resist all onslaughts from the old.

So still he waits.

Then finally, knowing if he does not speak now, he may never speak, he raises the phone to his lips and says, ‘Leave the car. Walk up the hill to the pub. Go to the car park.’

The late afternoon has an autumn chill at its edges. The car park has only a handful of cars in it, mostly parked near the entrance to the pub. His is parked in the corner furthest away. He is the only person out here.

He watches the blonde woman get out of the red car and start walking up the hill.

He puts his phone in his pocket and gets himself ready for the final waking.

‘Hello, Gina.’

‘Hello, Alex.’

This was the real, the final waking. Here they were, face to face, standing awkwardly, like a pair of youngsters uncertain where their first date is going to take them.

He made no attempt to touch her. A handshake would have been absurd, a kiss obscene. What would he say? What would for him be the most important thing to say?

He said, ‘Let’s sit in my car.’

She followed him to an old pale grey Astra in need of a good scrubbing. She remembered that when she used to complain about the condition of his vehicle, he’d grin and say, ‘Man in my line of work wants a car nobody takes notice of.’ She remembered…

She dug her nails into the palms of her hands. Once let memories take control and all the pain she had fought her way through seven years ago would come rushing in again, and she did not know if she had the strength to fight it a second time.

She got into the passenger seat, he got behind the wheel.

He looked straight ahead and said, ‘I came to see you…to see how things were.’

She turned her head to look at him. It was definitely him, but different. Concentrate on the differences, they would help anchor her in the here and now. Head shaven, nothing remaining of those light fair locks so easily ruffled by even the gentlest breeze. Face slightly fatter. Strange. She would have looked for it to be thinner. She knew hers was.

She said, ‘Last year.’

‘Yes.’

‘You were in the street…late one night…’

‘Very late. I’d arrived earlier in the evening. No one was in. I waited. I needed to see…how things were…’

‘And you saw me and Mick. You saw us embracing. You saw me take him into the house.’

‘Yes.’

‘How did that make you feel?’

He didn’t answer and she said impatiently, ‘It must have made you feel something.’

Interrogation. Take control, set the agenda. Mick had said that. Or was it Alex? Did it matter? Somehow it felt that it did.

He said, ‘It made me feel relieved. It confirmed who I was, where I was.’

He turned his head now and looked straight at her.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘Not hurt me?’ she cried incredulously. ‘You disappeared. All those years without a sound. And suddenly you feel you don’t want to hurt me!’

He shook his head and said, ‘Back then, to start with I knew nothing, I was nothing. I didn’t think about hurting you because I didn’t know anything about you. Or about anything. Even when things started coming back, they had nothing to do with feelings. For a long time I was just a sackful of fragments trying to learn how best to reassemble itself.’

Take control, set the agenda. Well, that didn’t last long, she mocked herself.

‘Fragments?’ she echoed.

‘I was in pieces. I didn’t just run away and hide from you, Gina. I hid from myself. You have to believe that.’

‘Of course I believed that,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t let myself think you’d simply abandoned me without a word. I told myself it had to be something in your mind, or…’

‘Or?’

‘Or you were dead. I didn’t think that at first. It took me a long time to come round to that. But after so many years of nothing, that became the easiest thing to believe.’

‘So Mick was…’

‘A long time after I gave up on you. Not until I was sure you were never coming back. You know what made me sure? It was seeing you that night in the street. For a moment you were so real I knew you had to be an illusion. Does that make sense?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, because seeing you, and Mick, made me realize that to me, the new me, you were an illusion too.’

She wanted to scream, But I was there! I hadn’t run away! You could have stepped out of the shadows and spoken to me, how the hell dare you say that I was an illusion too?

Instead she said, ‘And that’s why you were relieved. Because you decided I was…what? Unreal? Unimportant? What?’

‘You were with Mick. You’d moved on. You weren’t letting the past rule your life. We had nothing to give each other except pain. Better for both of us that we ceased to exist to each other.’

They sat in silence for a moment, their eyes averted, then she burst out, ‘So why are you here now, Alex? What’s going on? You say you decided we had nothing to give each other but pain. So why the hell are we sitting here now?’

He turned his head to meet her gaze once more.

‘Not to hurt you, believe me,’ he said. ‘I’m truly sorry…’

‘Forget it,’ she interrupted him. ‘Just tell me what happened, what’s happening, tell it straight. We’ll save the apologies and recriminations for later.’

He looked relieved and settled back in his seat.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Except telling it straight isn’t easy because of the gaps. All I can do is say what I know, or think I know. I was at home. Then I wasn’t at home, I didn’t know where home was, I didn’t know who I was, or rather I suppose I knew I didn’t want to know. Does that make sense? What I mean is, I knew I was lost, but I never felt an urge to go and ask anyone for help in finding me.’

‘That sounds more like hiding than lost,’ she said.

‘Maybe. I had a lot to hide from.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning Lucy’s death.’

Someone had to say it. She was glad it was him. She’d always thought of herself as the stronger one, but seven years on it was Alex who had the strength to say it. She’d have thought this mention of her daughter’s name would be the trigger to open the floodgates, but instead it seemed to give her the strength to maintain her control.