Secret Story (44 page)

Patricia didn’t know how censured she was meant to feel. “I’ll talk to you for your film, Vincent, but that’s going to have to be all.”

His was by no means the only face that grew sympathetic, which seemed almost as burdensome as Walt’s disappointment. “Thanks for everything, Walt, really,” she said, easing her chair
backwards. “Good night, everyone. I think I’d better walk this off.”

“Would you like me to come with you?” Valerie said.

“I don’t mind.”

She didn’t, but her mother took it as an appeal. She caught up with Patricia in the colonnade outside the restaurant, alongside which the water in the Albert Dock appeared to have borrowed a heavy sluggishness from the overcast September night. “Do you want to talk?” Valerie said.

“Not particularly. I’m just thinking.”

Her mind was busy, at any rate. She was remembering how Dudley had dogged her along this route after the casting session. Might he have been intending her some harm if Vincent hadn’t called him back? It needn’t trouble her: she had eluded him. Around her the night was no darker than it ought to be. Beyond the Albert Dock she waited for the green man to seize illumination from his red counterpart, and then she crossed the six deserted lanes of the road, only to hesitate outside James Street Station. “Shall we walk to the next one?”

“Whatever’s best for you, Patricia.”

She’d followed that course to leave Dudley behind, but that wasn’t the memory she was determined to outstrip. She strode along Castle Street and past the town hall, hardly glancing at the skeleton that peered out of the shadows of a metal robe. Echoes of their footsteps kept her and her mother company across the quadrangle and the roads beyond it, and the escalator that climbed to the unstaffed ticket barriers, and both escalators that led deeper than the street. She wasn’t in a story about Moorfields, Patricia told herself when she heard feet running down the metal stairs at her back. “Don’t look,” she murmured. “Don’t bother looking.”

She wasn’t speaking only to her mother, who retreated from
beside her to the next step up. She was making way for the runner, of course; she didn’t need to protect Patricia. The youth clattered past them, his ears hissing and pounding with headphones, before Patricia could be sure of the legend on his T-shirt. She had to glance around at him when she reached the platform, because he was loitering in the tiled white passage. His scrawny chest did indeed say
BRING BACK MR KILLOGRAM
.

Why was he lurking behind her and her mother after having run past them? Because his train hadn’t arrived yet, she supposed—certainly not because he had ambitions to shove them under it—but she couldn’t shake off the notion that he might be imagining some such deed in memory of his apparent hero. She felt the first cool breeze of the day on her face as a train approached. She rested her gaze on the slogan before searching his eyes. “Why would you want to?” she said.

The headphones hissed so loudly that he must be deaf to any other sound. For a moment it reminded her too vividly of the water that had closed over her ears and the rest of her face, and she couldn’t breathe. Even if the youth didn’t understand her, she had clearly antagonised him. He glanced from her to Valerie, two women alone on an underground platform with nobody else in earshot, and she glimpsed someone altogether too reminiscent of Dudley Smith spying from deep in his eyes. Then the New Brighton train drew alongside the platform, and he swaggered onto it to plant his heels on the seat opposite him.

Valerie didn’t speak until the rumble had died away along the tunnel like the last trace of a storm. “It’s like Walt was implying. Dudley Smith is just the latest fad. He’ll be forgotten soon enough.”

“I hope so.”

Valerie scrutinised her expression and reached out a hand in case Patricia wanted to be touched. “Are you all right?”

“I will be.” The exchange reminded Patricia too precisely of another, and she tried to leave it behind. She gazed into the tunnel as the darkness began to rumble again. “Here it comes,” she said. “This is our story now.”