was upstairs. Listen, I’ve got to nip out.’
‘But, Terence –’
And so I left the shop and followed you, out of Cave Antiques, out into the light. I followed you down Blossom Street, through the city walls and down the length of Micklegate. I held my distance when you disappeared inside a clothes shop. I held my breath when you crossed over the road, turning your head in my direction. You didn’t see me.
You carried on, over the river, on to Ousegate. I bumped into Peter, the vicar, and he blockaded me with mild smiles and charitable words. He asked how we were bearing up.
‘Fine,’ I told him, although the anxious looks over his shoulder probably gave a different story. ‘Honestly, we’re getting there. We have our bad days but . . .’ I saw you turning left, heading out of my view. ‘Listen, I’m terribly sorry, Peter, but I’m in a rush. Another time.’
I ran towards Parliament Street and saw two crowds of youths loitering around the benches near the public toilets. The nearest group was made up of boys sitting on stationary bicycles. Or standing: eating chips, sucking on cigarettes or typing into their mobile telephones. Boys wearing the kind of clothes Reuben always wanted. Trainers, tracksuits, their faces shaded by caps or hooded tops. The warm fuzziness inside my mind returned for a second.
I recognised one of them as the small boy I had seen vomiting his innards out onto the pavement the night Reuben died. He nudged his friend and nodded over to the other group. The boy had his back to me but turned, smiling. The smile died as he looked across. It was him. It was Denny.
I followed his gaze over to the others. I scanned this second tribe. Boys with odd haircuts, dressed for the French Revolution. A rather rotund girl with a painted Pierrot tear on her cheek. T-shirts with macabre designs and Gothic fonts. The Remorse. The Pains of Sleep. The Cleopatras. Daughters of Albion. Instructions for My Funeral. Teenage Baudelaires, plugged into music machines or eating bagel sandwiches.
My heart fell as I spotted you, right at the very centre.
The boys buzzing around your beauty as I had feared. I saw one of them talking animatedly to you and Imogen.
He seemed older than the rest, rake-thin, dressed in tightest black, and despite the weather he was wearing a blood-red scarf. He had a long, pale, fleshless face with sleepy eyes. A cadaverous face, Dickens would have said. What was he saying to make you both laugh? I itched – no, burned – to know.
There was someone else, on the furthest fringe of that group. A boy I recognised but didn’t know why. A tall, overweight boy trying loudly to fit in. He had blond hair with a pinkish fringe and wore thick-lens glasses. And then I realised. It was Mrs Weeks’ son George.
Up until recently he had always accompanied his mother on her Saturday-morning visits. The reason it took so long to place him was that George Weeks had always struck me as a quiet, studious kind of child. For all his heft it had been easy to imagine him bullied, what with his bad breathing and shy manner. And having had his father teach at the school wouldn’t have helped matters. I remember once trying to get Reuben to talk to him, as George was a year above him at St John’s, but your brother slipped away and made an excuse, as was his fashion. (I remember the letter I had found in his schoolbag. Perhaps Reuben resisted George because he hated Mr Weeks. Or perhaps it was simply out of allegiance to his tribe. I don’t know. I have no answers.)
I wondered if Mrs Weeks knew her son mixed in such circles. I wondered if she knew her asthmatic child was a smoker. I wondered what she would do if she did know these things.
Anyway, there he was, being loud and boisterous, trying like all the others to steal your attention. And there I was, peeping around the corner of Marks & Spencer, as invisible to both groups as the thousand shoppers and tourists that swarmed around.
It would have been a risk to move any closer so I had to stay there, unable to hear a word except for those of the African lady with the loudhailer, filling that carless street with the Book of Revelation.
‘The kings of the earth, and the great men . . .’ she raged with her fundamental anger, giving proof of nothing except its own doubt.
Denny’s group began to laugh at the woman, and throw chips at her. All except Denny himself, whose dark, unreadable eyes were still staring at you.
‘. . . and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains . . .’
I saw Denny walk away from his group, past the doors to the toilets and over towards you. The boy with the cadaverous face, the Uriah Heep face, turned and said something that Denny ignored. And then Denny spoke to you and you spoke back and I wished I could have read your lips, but all I had were the words of warning boomed angrily in my direction.
‘. . . And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne . . .’
The words bulging her eyes, her eyes bulging her words.
‘. . . and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?’
Uriah Heep pushed Denny away and Denny pushed him back, as the others tightened around them. Chips and insults flew through the air. Denny won the push and Uriah fell at your feet. I saw another of Denny’s tribe wade in. It was the shaven-headed boy whom I had seen at the tennis courts, kicking Uriah in the stomach.
You looked at Imogen, scared, stranded in the middle of all this.
I had to do something.
I started walking, towards you, but things calmed.
Denny’s tribe pulled the skinhead away as Denny himself disappeared out of the scene. Imogen helped Uriah to his feet.
I stood stuck to the ground as you walked away with your companions, to the rising cheer of Denny’s friends. Any moment you were going to see me and I would have no excuse for leaving the shop. None that you would have believed. And, after Rome, I couldn’t afford to push you further away. Inside the sun-red darkness of a blink I saw Reuben, crooked on the ground, and I took this as a final sign.
‘God shall wipe all tears from their eyes.’
My watch told me it had been an hour. And enough of the old Terence was there to return me to the shop, to help Cynthia on this busy afternoon.
‘Where on earth have you been?’ she asked me, in a hiss quiet enough not to disturb the old couple having a browse around the furniture.
I found it difficult to answer. ‘I had to . . . I went to . . . Bryony was . . .’
Cynthia closed her eyes and released an exasperated sigh. ‘You didn’t follow her, did you?’
The old couple glanced towards us, and made their silent decision to leave.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I did. I followed her. But I’m back now, aren’t I?’
‘I don’t know. Are you? Are you back, Terence?’ The ‘back’ was given further emphasis with her ascending eyebrows.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
Cynthia inhaled, preparing for a verbal onslaught, but she changed her mind. Her tone softened. Her eyebrows lay back down. She stared over towards the spot where the old couple had been standing only moments before. ‘Nothing, Terence. Nothing. I just think you might need someone to talk to.’
‘Someone? What someone? About what?’
‘A third party. A bereavement counsellor. Someone you don’t know and can open up to. I found it so helpful, you know, when Helen . . . Knowing that I could go somewhere every Tuesday afternoon and sit and blubber away and make a show of myself.’
‘No,’ I said. The idea of sitting on a plastic chair in a room filled with mental-health leaflets and the smell of cheap instant coffee, talking to a total stranger about all this – well, it was