Jon McGregor - So Many Ways to Begin

I'm being as careful as I can, he replied, but you're not helping much. He reached his hand up and curled it around the lean of her waist.

She stood away from the bed suddenly, closing her eyes and covering her mouth with her hand, catching her breath, looking around to see if anyone had been watching. She shook her head at him. You'd better be home soon, she said.

I'll see what I can do, he told her. I think they're going to want my bed back before too long. She sat down, looking at him and smiling as though she were the keeper of some great secret.

A nurse came and took his temperature, asked how he was feeling, and changed the bedding. There was some blood mapped out across one of the sheets where he must have caught a stitch as he turned over in his sleep. A man came round with a trolley, selling sweets and newspapers, books of crossword puzzles. People came round with food which tasted like it had been warm for a long time, and slid it in front of him on wheeled tables. After a couple of days he was able to sit up in bed, and then to get out of bed, and then to walk the short distance to the toilet. A doctor came, dragging the curtains closed around the bed, and listened to his breathing through a stethoscope, and looked into his eyes with a bright light, and tugged painfully at the ends of the blood-encrusted stitches. Time you were off I think, Mr Carter, he said vaguely, looking around as if he'd forgotten something. I think we've done all we can, he added, and slipped away again.

A police officer came, and sat by the bed with a notebook, and asked him what had happened. He told him, more or less, and the police officer wrote it down, watching David, asking questions, asking for a better description. David said it was unclear, that things had been quick, and confused. I'm not sure I'd recognise the man if I saw him again, he said. It's difficult to be certain, he said. I didn't even get a look at his face really, it was over so quickly, he said.

He lay back in a hot bath, steam rising from the still surface of the water and filling the darkened room, clouding the mirror and the window, curling and spreading across the ceiling. The two candles at the end of the bath burnt steady and still, their light streaming up the shining tiles behind them. Eleanor knelt on the floor beside him with a handful of cotton wool.

Kate was still at his mother's. Eleanor had said she wanted her to stay there a few more days, that she didn't want her to see him like this. She'd said it would frighten her. The house felt strange without her, empty and awkward, her toys still spread across her bedroom floor, her school satchel hanging by the door. But when he'd spoken to her on the phone she hadn't seemed unsettled by what was going on at all. Are you looking after Granny? he asked her. Are you cooking her dinner and making her bed? No! she said, giggling once she realised he was joking. Are you reading her a bedtime story? he asked. No Dad, she said. You're just being silly now, she said, and asked to speak to Eleanor. He missed her being in the house incredibly. They both did.

Sit up, Eleanor said quietly. She leant over, dipping a piece of cotton wool in the water, squeezing it out between her fingers. She pressed it on to the dried blood around the stitches, the grainy crust softening and dissolving and trickling down on to his skin. The cotton wool soaked red and brown, and she reached over to drop it into the bin. She dipped a fresh piece into the water and repeated the process, looking up at him now and again to see if it was hurting, carefully dabbing and wiping away the blood until there were only the pressed pink edges of the wound, the shining black stitches knotting it together, the red dotted punctures where the thread wove in and out of his skin. Stand up, she said, and he did, and the water streamed off him with a sudden plunging rush, the candlelight flapping for a moment in the shaken air. She held a towel up against him, drying his hair, his face, his chest and arms and back, pressing it carefully against his belly. When she pulled it away, it was marked with a small kiss of fresh blood. She soaked a pad of cotton wool in iodine and held it towards him. This is going to sting, she murmured, pressing it against the wound. It was cold, and he jerked back instinctively, but she kept it pressed against him as the initial jolt became a duller throbbing pain. He sucked air through his teeth, and smiled as she looked up at him. She dropped the cotton wool into the bin. There, she said, sitting back on her heels as if admiring her handiwork, how's that now?

He looked down at the scar, pink and hot from the bath, wreathed in the steam still rising from the water. I think that'll do, he said. Thanks, he said. They looked at each other for a moment, and she held back the beginnings of a smile at the corner of her mouth. Water had run down her arms and soaked the ends of her shirt sleeves. As he stood there, looking down at her, he felt the familiar flush and pulse of an erection beginning to swell. She watched it for a moment, the shift and stretch of the skin, the darkening of the veins. She stood up, shaking her head.

You're a disgrace, she said, laughing, passing him the towel as she left the room.

It was nobody's fault, he told himself later. It was just something that happened, something they'd both drifted towards without thinking it through. They spent so much time together at work, that was part of it. And they had a lot to talk about, things they could share, that was a part of it as well. They both had good reasons to stay at work late, not to go home, to find themselves yet again the only two left in the building.

We must stop meeting like this, she said to him once, laughing, as they both left the building after a long evening spent assembling new display panels. He laughed too, and said, right, well, see you tomorrow, and nodded a surprised hello to Chris, who was waiting for her at the bottom of the steps; and the next time they worked late she said, I didn't mean that you know, we shouldn't stop meeting like this at all.

She touched him, more than once, brief nudges and shoves which were never supposed to mean any more than oh stop it now, or go on then, or, occasionally, are you okay? No more than friendly, playful gestures. But he felt the soft pressure of those touches for hours afterwards, like pale bruises, and he started to want to feel them again.

It was nobody's fault. It was just something that happened.

She asked him how Eleanor was, still, and these conversations seemed to restore the innocence to the time they spent together. They made it okay; they were having the conversations good friends would have. He could say it was good for a long time after Kate was born but now she's started at school I think Eleanor doesn't know what to do with herself, I think she's just exhausted, and Anna could say oh David I'm sure she'll be better soon, as any friend would do. It was only talking, what they were doing. He could even say well I'm sleeping on the sofa now you know, just for the moment, she says she can't sleep when I'm there, she seems to flinch whenever I go near her, she's so withdrawn, and Anna could say oh it must be hard for you David, and this could be okay as well.

It was nothing. There was nothing going on. He told himself this, many times. He asked himself what she would see in him anyway, and there was nothing he could think of, and this proved to him that there was nothing going on at all.

But she told him once, outright. She said, I like you David, you know that, don't you? She said you're so, I don't know, dependable, reliable, no, that sounds wrong, solid, I mean like strong in your own way, oh listen to me, sorry, I don't even know what I'm trying to say. Saying all this while he stood looking at her, motionless, astonished, his breath caught in a fist-like knot in his throat. And she tried again: I like it when you're around, that's all, okay? Laying her hands on his shoulders when she said this, looking straight into his eyes, and only moving away when they both heard footsteps out in the corridor.