Reading Online Novel

The Killer Next Door(92)



He sees her consider him. ‘I’m sort of waiting for someone,’ she says.

‘Okay. How about I move if – when – they come along? I so want to be outside today.’

She shrugs. ‘Sure,’ she says, and turns her chair side-on to the table to signify that she’s not into conversing and looks back down at her screen.

He sits, waves at the waiter, who gestures back that he will be along in a minute. Thomas turns his own chair towards the street and crosses one knee over the other, mirroring her body language as in all the best NLP manuals. ‘Beautiful day,’ he says.

‘Mmm,’ she says, and doesn’t look up from her reader.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Silly. Every day’s a beautiful day at the moment.’

‘Yes,’ she says, and clicks the clicker to turn the page. Clicks the page-back button a second later. Thomas looks out at the street. Not a particularly endearing sight. They’re opposite the Post Office sorting depot whose back wall faces out over the railway embankment’s no man’s land. It’s square, yellow-bricked, featureless, with a wheelchair ramp up to the red metal doors where the undelivered parcel window lives. A woman walks past in a green jersey tunic and black leggings, gladiator sandals on her feet and a rough bun on her head. Leggings, he thinks, are the devil’s work. Women think they hold them in, but they really don’t. If anything, they emphasise.

He turns back to his companion. ‘Good book?’

She looks up. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have said you could sit down if I’d known you were going to try to talk to me. Sorry. But I’m not looking for friends.’

Thomas feels the blood rush to his cheeks as she looks down once again, pointedly, at her book. ‘Sorry,’ he says, plaintively. ‘Only being friendly.’

She rolls her eyes and purses her lips. Picks up her coffee without taking her eyes from the reader and takes a sip. Plugs in her iPod earphones as a final dismissal.

Embarrassed, he gets up and leaves. He knows when he’s not wanted. Well, actually, of course, he often doesn’t. This is one of his problems. He grew up thinking that it was all about the men, that the women were just waiting to be chosen, and that all the men had to do was choose. It’s been a terrible disappointment to discover that the rules are more complicated. He hurries off up the street once he’s got a few paces from the table, keen to put space between himself and his humiliation. Reaches the Sunrise Café and sees that it’s still open. Oh, well, he thinks. They probably do cappuccino too. Everywhere does, these days. And one of those Portuguese custard tarts. They’re always good.

‘Piss off,’ says a voice beside him.

Thomas looks round, surprised. It seems such a random thing to have said. He sees a man, donkey jacket on despite the heat and combat trousers, glaring at a mousy woman in a loose tweed skirt, a formal white blouse and a lilac cardy. She’s clutching a sheaf of leaflets, one sheet frozen in the air between them where she’s clearly tried to hand him one.

‘Sorry,’ she says.

‘You’re allowed your beliefs,’ he says, ‘but stop trying to shove them down other people’s throats.’

‘I wasn’t!’ she protests. She has a Princess Diana haircut, circa New England Kindergarten, and a little crucifix on a chain round her neck. Lovely blue eyes, though, and a neck like a swan’s. He peers to see what the leaflet says and catches a glimpse of a big black THE GOOD NEWS and a hand-drawn, childish cross. ‘I was just —’

‘Trying to talk to me about God. Yes. I know. And I don’t care.’

‘But I just —’ she says.

‘You people make me sick,’ says the man, and knocks the leaflets from her hand. They cascade to the pavement.

Thomas sees his chance. Leaps across the gap between them and is sweeping them up in a moment, as the assailant is still making his way past to storm off up the street.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ says the woman. How the British love to apologise. ‘Thank you. Sorry. Thank you.’

She has a high-pitched, schoolmistressy voice. A voice that’s far older than she is. And beautiful skin. White as snow and faultless. Hypoallergenic soap and cold cream, he thinks. None of your modern cosmetic products. You only get that beautiful English Rose complexion from cold cream. Lovely skin. The sort of skin you want to touch, because you know it’s not often been touched before.

‘No, no,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. There was no need for him to go all Dawkins on you like that. Totally unnecessary.’

He manages to collect the leaflets together, taps them back into shape. Yes, they’re Christian leaflets. They have the name of the local evangelical church across the bottom. He occasionally sees them coming out of their barn-like building on a Sunday, pink-faced and pleased with themselves, the men in grey suits and V-necked sweaters, the woman dressed almost exactly as this one is now. He holds them out to her and she takes them with a grateful, bashful smile. ‘You have to expect that sort of thing,’ she says. ‘Some people just don’t want to hear the Word.’