Thieving Fear (16 page)

'Is Charlotte in there?' Catching sight of her at the back of the lift, Glen waved a handful of papers. 'Pass these to her,' he said and called 'They're for your cousin.' Someone in the front rank that was pressing everybody else towards the walls accepted the documents, and as the doors struggled together against the mass of bodies Glen's attention drifted left of Charlotte. His eyes widened, and he reached out as if he wished he could rescue her from the crowd. Then the doors shut, though only just, and the cage packed with bodies set about ascending, so sluggishly that she could have imagined it was being dragged down and in danger of sinking into the earth. People were relaying the papers to her over their shoulders, since there wasn't space for them to turn around. Were there three pages or four? As they arrived beside her she saw they were bordered in black. She was about to take them when the person whose bones were digging into her left side did, and she noticed that his hand was covered more with soil than flesh.

She couldn't retreat even an inch. She could only watch as he transferred the papers to his other shrivelled hand so as to grasp her face and twist it towards him. When her eyes strained to look away he released her and gestured at the doors, scattering earth like black dandruff on the shoulders of the woman in front of him. The lift shuddered to a halt and the doors staggered apart. For a breath, if she had been able to draw one, Charlotte thought only darkness was waiting beyond them. Then earth piled in, flinging everyone helplessly together on the way to filling her eyes and nose and mouth. Her companion seemed quite at home in it, because his fingers wriggled wormlike through it to fasten on her hand and pull her deeper into the suffocating dark.

She fought to cry out, but her mouth was gagged with earth. She strove to free herself from the scrawny clutch, but she was pinioned by bodies that had ceased to move and the one that should have. She tried to suck in a breath, but it consisted of earth too. Was she dreaming out of utter desperation that she'd managed to produce a sound? It was feeble and flattened, muffled by distance or worse. Nevertheless it seemed to travel past the blackness, and she put all her dwindling energy into repeating it. This time it succeeded in wakening her, and she threw out her hand to rid it of the sensation of being held. It collided with a barrier in front of her at considerably less than arm's length.

There was nothing like that so near her bed, and certainly no wall. She wasn't in her flat; she wasn't even on the roof. She'd thought spending the night on the padded sunlounger would rid her of the sense of being shut in before she had to travel to Hugh's – her four rooms had never seemed so oppressively small and dim, or even slightly until last night – but she hadn't slept much. She'd kept being wakened by a smell of earth and having to remind herself that it belonged to the plant-pots by the lounger. Each time she'd opened her eyes the night sky had looked far too close, a black lid above her face. Once it had grown lighter she'd managed to doze fitfully, and then it had been time to get ready to leave. Nothing had relieved the claustrophobia that felt as if her surroundings were smaller than her head: not showering in the glass cell of the bathroom cubicle rendered nearly opaque by steam, nor walking down the narrow street overshadowed by tenements to the main road that might have seemed wider without the traders' stalls and the crowds around them, nor the bus crammed with shoppers, nor the multitude of Saturday commuters at Kings Cross. As for the train to Yorkshire, it consisted of just two carriages for a journey of over two hours. Her seat and the one in front trapped her in a space so restricted that she had to slant her knees towards the window in order to press them together. She was further pinned by the side of the carriage and by her neighbour in the aisle seat, who must have been startled by Charlotte's nightmare cry. Charlotte opened her aching eyes and turned to make some apology, but the seat was unoccupied.

It was the only empty one in sight. When had her skinny neighbour deserted it? As soon as she was seated Charlotte had closed her eyes in an attempt to ignore the lack of space, and so she hadn't observed her seatmate, she had only felt the gaunt shape settle next to her. They must have been so eager to descend that they'd advanced into the foremost carriage as a station closed around the train. It was Leeds, where Charlotte had to change.

None of the disembarking passengers looked particularly thin, but locating her next train was surely more important. As she hurried to the nearest monitor a faint quake rose through the display, bone-white letters on a background black as earth. A train to Huddersfield was leaving platform thirteen in three minutes. Charlotte sprinted up an escalator towards the expansively arched roof and along a wide corridor with a view across the city to the moors. Despite the spaciousness, she felt as if her nightmare were still cramping her mind as she dashed down a second escalator to her train.

Was she the solitary passenger? The nearest carriage was deserted. Half the seats faced forwards, to be confronted across the midpoint of the carriage by their twins. Charlotte sat there to take advantage of the space between the halves, although it rather made her feel as if she were facing an unseen audience instead of just her overnight bag. She was regaining her breath and wondering why her brief sprint should have made it hard to breathe when the train jerked forwards.

A guard came calling for tickets, to little if any effect elsewhere on the train, and then Charlotte was alone. Trees and hedges blotted out the sky before the train was engulfed by a tunnel – no, just a bridge no more extended than the nervous breath she took. Several bridges that felt like threats of carrying her underground preceded the first station, where the train opened its doors for nobody visible and emitted a string of beeps as shrill as an alarm to indicate they were closing. As fields partly overcome by suburbs spread out on both sides, Charlotte did her best to concentrate on the sky. Was she apprehensive about seeing Rory? She couldn't understand why else the journey was making her so tense. The train halted at another station, and as it shrilled she was tempted to make for the doors. Of course they were too distant, and her nervousness was unforgivably irrational. Or perhaps she was right to take the sound as a warning, because the train had barely left the station when it plunged into the dark.

The tunnel shut her in with the rows of empty yet unfriendly seats and the vista of their equivalent beyond the doorways that kept rocking out of alignment between the carriages. The further rows appeared to be squeezed together like the segments of an accordion robbed of air. Why did she need to imagine that anybody sitting there would have to be unnaturally thin? The blackened hand that twitched between the seats as if responding to her thought must be the reflection of a crack in the wall of the tunnel, just a small crack, not an indication that the place was unsafe. The wall was rushing past almost as close to the side of the carriage as she was, with a muffled roar that made her ears feel boxed in. Perhaps a wider passage would have been unable to support the weight of the earth under which it was buried. She was far too capable of sensing all that weight, which felt poised to squeeze any possibility of breathing out of her. How long might the tunnel be? It had walled her up for over a minute, enough time for her to lose count of her nervously shallow breaths, but there was no sign of daylight, nothing ahead except seats thrashing back and forth like sleepers unable to escape a nightmare. Why had she let herself be taken on this helpless ride? If Rory was in a coma he wouldn't even know that Hugh and his cousins were there. The thought made her feel spied upon, grubby with guilt at having had it. She was too far into her journey to turn back from visiting the hospital. She could bear the rest of the tunnel, even if its walls seemed to be blackening the light that spilled from the carriage, absorbing it as a preamble to draining the light inside. The tunnel wasn't about to cave in, crushing the train like a tin can, shattering the windows, packing the carriages with earth and debris. The notion would have been easier to shake off if it hadn't felt underlain with secret glee, as if somebody were wishing it on Charlotte, anticipating it with wicked delight. She gave in to glancing over the back of her seat, but the others were owning up to no presence. As she faced forwards again a lanky shape leaped into view beyond the lurching doors. Its scrawny outstretched limbs were branches. It was a bush at the side of the track, and it was sunlit. The train had escaped from the tunnel.

She had been underground for less than three minutes, but she felt as if they or their stifling confinement hadn't released her – felt surrounded by a darkness all the more claustrophobic for its invisibility. When fields beneath a sky piled with shades of grey began to flank the carriage, the openness seemed ready to immure her in another tunnel. Whenever the train slowed, her breath did too. It was only halting at a series of small towns as yellow as sand, some of them dominated by factories. Each time it announced its departure with the shrill alarm, she dug her fingertips into the upholstery to resist fleeing to the doors. All this appropriated most of half an hour until Huddersfield raised lofty chimneys beside the track and gathered an industrial estate around it, corrugated metal buildings that resembled the outsize houses of a gentrified shanty town. In another minute Charlotte was able to liberate herself from the train.

She didn't want to be shut in a taxi. Hugh's number rang as she came in sight of a low huddle of them outside the station, and she loitered beside them as the simulated bell continued to ring. She was wondering if he'd gone out, though surely he would have taken his mobile with him, when he gasped 'Charlotte.'

'Are you at home?'

'Where else would I be?'

The question sounded embittered or worse, not at all like Hugh, but she thought it best to pretend she hadn't noticed. 'I'm at the station. How do I get to you?'

'Aren't there any cabs?'

'More than enough, but I'd sooner walk.'

'A cab's quicker. It won't cost much.'

'Is Ellen there?'

'No.' With equal bewilderment Hugh said 'Why?'

'Then there's no rush, is there? I thought we were all going to the hospital together.' At once she felt sufficiently guilty to add 'Or has there been a change? Is Rory conscious?'

'He wasn't an hour ago. He hasn't been yet.'

'But you've seen him. How is he otherwise?'

'I don't know. I've been waiting for you two like you said.'

'Since yesterday?'

'He wouldn't care either way, would he? He wouldn't have known I was there.'

She heard dismay bordering on desperation. She oughtn't to make him feel worse about his brother. 'Let's talk about it when we're together,' she said. 'Which way are you from here?'

'Empire Street.'

'I know the address, Hugh.' She didn't understand why he'd taken several seconds to prepare to say it. 'I'm asking how I get there,' she said.

'Up the hill.'

Charlotte assumed this referred to the road that climbed past a small factory, dilapidated but not defunct. 'I see it, and then?'

'Is something up with your phone?'

'Not that I'm hearing. I go up the hill, and then . . .'

'So it's me.'

'Your phone? It'll just be a crossed –' Charlotte said, having grown aware of another voice in her ear. Before she could identify its few muddy words or distinguish more than how pleased it seemed to be with itself, the line went dead.

She was almost irritated enough to call Hugh back. Instead she went to the last taxi in the queue. How could just stooping to the vehicle make her feel shut in? Even asking for directions did, though the driver was almost maternally anxious to help. So did climbing the steep road towards a blackened sky that looked pregnant with a storm and all the lower for it, and following the road across a bridge around which the air was thick with the fumes and the rumble of four lanes of traffic beneath, and tramping along a protracted stretch walled on one side by a factory while trees above a wall overhung the other. At least the route wasn't crowded; indeed, there was never anyone behind her whenever she failed to resist the temptation to glance back. She felt especially ridiculous for doing so as a narrow side street brought her to her cousin's house.

It was the near end of the terrace that formed the right side of Empire Street. Clothes of all colours drooped on lines in front gardens as small as the sandstone houses. Hugh's had no clothesline, just an abundance of weeds bordering the cramped mossy path and raising their ragged heads from its cracks. Charlotte was hauling the unhinged gate aside when a plump woman in a sari stepped out of the next house. 'How is Mr Lucas?' she said. 'Have you seen him?'

'Not yet. We're going soon.'

'Where are you going, please?'

'To the hospital.'

'Please forgive me. I did not know this. Could you say that Mrs Devi was asking about him?'

'I will,' Charlotte said and wished she didn't have to add 'If he knows we're there.'

Mrs Devi lifted stubby hands beside her face as though to shape her mouth rounder. 'What has happened to him?'

'He was in some kind of accident on his way here.'

'He was run over? I forever tell the children –'

'No, in his van.'

Mrs Devi looked as confused as Charlotte had begun to grow. 'He is a driver? Where does he keep it?'

'Sorry,' Charlotte said and would rather not have gone on. 'Who are we talking about?'

'Mr Lucas,' Mrs Devi said, vigorously waggling her fingers at Hugh's house. 'Are you not familiar with him?'

'He's my cousin. Are you trying to tell me something's wrong with him?'

'He has not been to work for nearly three days now.'

'You get time off even if you work for Frugo. I expect he'll have taken some because of our cousin, the one who's in hospital, that's to say his brother.'

'He has not been out at all.'

Charlotte peered at Hugh's house, but the faded scaly front door remained shut, and her voice hadn't brought him to any of the windows, which were slated with reflections of clouds. She tried to conceal her unease as she said 'I'll let him know you were asking.'