Touched (10 page)

He was pleasantly surprised that his head wasn’t worse than it was. It was throbbing slightly but he had had some hangovers in his student days that had kept him out of daylight for the whole day they were so painful. He felt thankful that they had left the Indian when they had, thankful that he hadn’t gone onto a club and for waking up and having the water in the night.

After a shower he felt even better. He spent a full 15 minutes just standing under the stream of hot water, letting it wash away the previous night.

After that he knew there was only one last thing he needed to complete his recovery;
towelling himself dry and slipping on his towelling robe he walked through to the kitchen. Coffee. A fresh one. Strong. Caffitaire or espresso? No contest; espresso it had to be.

As he screwed the lid onto the charged espresso pot he suddenly felt the same prickly feeling that he was being watched that he had felt the previous night. It was so strong that he swung around, sure that there was someone in the lounge. The kitchen was just a galley one, really just an alcove off the lounge, part of the same room. There was no place for anyone to hide.

The room was empty. He was all alone. Still he felt himself shiver.

‘Wishful thinking, Dan,’ he muttered to himself. Yes, waking up with Tess would have been a wonderful start to the weekend. He smiled at the thought but then the smile faded. Who was he kidding? Himself, that was who. He didn’t know her, he hadn’t kissed her, he hadn’t even touched her. He knew virtually nothing about her.

‘Bloody deluded idiot,’ he muttered angrily to himself, turning the ring on fully under the espresso pot.

He did the washing up whilst he waited for it to boil. As he did a memory came to him. Something about last night. Lips on his. Cold lips, cold as the night.

He shivered again.

The coffee was perfect, let down to a strong Americano by some boiling water. It worked its usual black magic, bringing him fully into the world. Whilst he sipped it he passed the time uploading the rest of his recent pictures to Flickr.

He had got into the habit of carrying a camera with him everywhere over the last year. It was a useful distraction, a way of forgetting the pain and an escape from the brooding in the refuge of creativity. He couldn’t always manage the bulk of a DSLR but tried to take it when he could but many was the time he just had a compact with him. Dan found he actually liked using it, its limitations seemed to push his creativity and composition more than the DSLR did.

Thinking about photography got him thinking about Thursday evening and the photographs he took of the Lowry. He had taken one of Tess. It was quick and very hurried, he didn’t even have his eye fully to the viewfinder when he pressed the shutter. The SD card was still in the camera. He retrieved it and pushed it into the slot on his laptop.

He was disappointed; the images he had taken that night were there but the one he had taken of her was missing. He must have not pressed the shutter release properly or else the auto-focus had stopped it firing. He was sure though that it had taken, yet there was no sign of Tess on the thumbnail images he could see on the screen.

Then he remembered the shots he had taken in the flat when he did the survey. They were on the compact. Some he had already uploaded and put in the report but the rest would still be on the card that was in the camera and the camera itself would be in his suit pocket. He hurried to fetch it and unload the images.

They were the last ones he had taken and were easy to find. He found himself praying that she would be on one of these but deep down he knew that this was going to be a long shot. It was one of the drawbacks having an interest in photography; your instincts were always to exclude what wasn’t supposed to be in shot. He was taking photos of the flat and the flat was exactly what he had taken.

There were none of Tess.

He was surprised how disappointed he was.

But then something struck him. Of course he HAD deliberately taken a shot of Tess in the flat, or at least he had tried to. How could he forget the guilt he had felt, the self-disgust that he had stooped so low yet had not been able to resist the temptation to do it?

Yet it was also obvious that he had failed even to do that. He used to be a dab hand at surreptitious photography, though it was usually of some building that his clients wanted a report on but didn't want the market to know of their interest. In Moscow he had taken shots inside a shopping centre despite being followed by suspicious security men who wouldn't have been out of place working for the KGB.

Yet this seemed to be just another thing that he was failing at.

He shut the lid of the laptop without shutting it down and went and got dressed. He had decided that he might as well get the normal Saturday jobs out of the way. He gathered up his dirty clothes, even the ones that he would normally classify as being only ‘part worn’ and put the washing on. Then he gave the kitchen a good clean.

During this he had an attack of guilt. He knew he should really recycle, even though this meant sorting through the bin and retrieving the bottles and plastics from the coffee grounds and curry remnants. Somehow though it made him feel better, even if it was only a token gesture. Another lesson he had learned from the increasing visits from the black dog was that just as the slightest thing could send him off into blackness also distraction and doing positive things, even only vaguely positive in fact could lift him and lighten him. The act of retrieving, washing and sorting into bagged carriers that he could take to the recycling
centre made him feel virtuous. He could drop them off when he went to the supermarket.

Which might as well be the next job, he decided. Ideally he preferred to get to the supermarket early or to do his shopping late night. By Saturday afternoon the world and his wife packed the aisles adding to the stress of something he already disliked. He looked at his watch. It was getting late but better now than later.

Grabbing his jacket, coat and keys, Dan carried the three bulging carriers of recycling down the two flights of stairs to the ground floor and then outside. He then stood stupidly looking at the place where his car should have been.

And wasn’t.

‘Oh bollocks!’ he said quite loudly.

The car was, of course, safely in the office car park.

Cursing under his breath, Dan walked briskly to the bins and threw his carefully sorted recycling in with everyone else’s rubbish. As soon as the lid slammed shut, as if to mock him a splatter of rain announced the arrival of a heavy shower.

Morosely he trudged to the bus stop. He was still 50 yards away when a bus arrived, dropped off a single passenger, then pulled straight off, even though Dan was sure the driver had seen him running. He stood and sheltered under the cover of the stop and read the electronic display. It told him that the next one was due in 15 minutes.

It arrived 28 minutes later.

As he settled into his seat having paid what he felt was an extortionate amount for his ticket he felt his mobile vibrate. It was a text: ‘Really, really sorry about last night. Are you still talking to me? Jen xxx’

Kisses, hmm, he thought. He wondered how much she remembered about last night. He found that he could remember a fair bit, the softness of her lips, the firm yet yielding nature of her breasts when she pressed up against him, her warmth, her scent. It had been too long since he had been that close to an attractive woman. It would be fun to explore all of the above further he decided.

But then he remembered that this was the first time he had thought about Jenny – Jen – since he had left her last night whereas Tess had occupied his waking thoughts and even his dreams virtually all the time since he had met her. It was Tess that he had hoped to find in his bed this morning. Given that would it be right to string Jen along? But then again, Tess kept vanishing on him and he had no idea whether she was interested in him in that way, certainly not in the way Jen seemed to be, though God knows why she was. And she needed a reply, he hadn’t been upset by her last night. He didn’t want her feeling bad.

He decided to send a light, polite text back, saying that he hoped her head wasn’t too bad and that she was feeling OK. He was hoping that she would have forgotten about her asking him to go clubbing or else wouldn’t be feeling up to it. Right at this moment he felt a lot older than 33 and couldn’t think of anything he would like to do less.

At the office, his was the only car left in the car park. He felt a stab of admiration and jealously at his colleagues greater powers of recovery.

As he was about to turn out of the car park entrance he noticed the florist opposite and this gave him an idea. He reversed back, left the car and hurried over the road. Minutes later he was putting what he though was a horrendously expensive but surprisingly small bouquet of flowers onto the back seat. He hoped it would say sorry for falling asleep better than words could.

It was then he
realised that he neither had Tess’s number nor knew where she lived. Sure, he knew that it had to be somewhere in the apartment block where he had met her but he didn’t know which flat and it was a big place.

‘Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks,’ he muttered, not quite believing how fuzzy his thinking was today but also wondering if it was actually any worse than normal. Again it was just simply not something that he wanted to dwell on too deeply.