Captives

NINETEEN

Scott replaced the receiver and sat staring at it for a moment.

He would ring again in five or ten minutes.

Outside, the wind had dropped slightly but the rain had intensified. It slapped against his window, the constant spattering like a thousand birds pecking at the glass.

Try again now.

He reached towards the phone.

No. Leave it.

Instead he hauled himself out of bed, angry that he'd been denied the welcome oblivion of sleep. He crossed the small bedroom to the dressing table, which bore a motley selection of after-shave bottles and deodorant cans, some empty. There were wage slips, too, piled up in order and weighed down with an ashtray still full of dog-ends.

There was a framed photo of himself and Carol.

He picked it up and ran his glance over it, his eyes pausing every so often to look at her face.

The picture had been taken about eight months earlier. They had managed to get out of London one night and spent two days in Brighton. The weather had been good and the picture showed Carol in a bikini, her arm around his shoulder. He'd asked some bloke sitting near them to take the picture, relieved when it had come out so well.

Christ, she was lovely.

He touched the photo with one index finger, as if to feel the smoothness of her skin. The warmth of that day seemed a million years ago as he stood listening to the rain hammering against the windows. He put the photo back and wandered through into the kitchen, where he retrieved a bottle of vodka from one of the kitchen cupboards. He took a glass from the draining board, then returned to the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and poured himself a large measure.

He used to give his father a drink. After the first stroke, a couple of shots seemed to put the old bastard in a better frame of mind. After the second one, dropping him in a vat of the stuff wouldn't have helped.

Fuck him. Forget about him.

He'd tried, but it had proved surprisingly difficult. When he remembered his father it wasn't as the wasted, comatose figure he'd watched over in hospital or the cantankerous sod he'd been forced to put up with for ten months. He remembered him as the sometimes abrupt, sometimes lonely but often funny man he'd shared his flat with for two years and eight months before the first stroke. Prior to that the old boy had lived in a flat of his own in Muswell Hill. He'd been forced to move out when it had been taken over by a new landlord.

Why the fuck had this particular spectre returned to haunt him, he wondered? Why was he thinking about his old man when the only person he truly cared for was Carol?

Perhaps it was the loneliness that made him think.

He felt lonely now, sitting on the edge of his bed, the drink cradled in his hand, listening to the rain. He thought how his father had once confided to him what he felt. And it was fear of that feeling which remained firmly embedded in his mind. Scott needed someone. No, not someone; he needed Carol.

He reached for the phone and jabbed out the digits of her number, just as he'd been doing for the past half-hour.

He just wanted to hear her voice.

The phone went on ringing.

Just let me hear her.

Perhaps she'd pulled the connection from the socket so she wouldn't be disturbed.

Pick it up.

Maybe she'd put the phone under a stack of pillows to muffle the ringing so it didn't wake her up.

Come on. Come on.

The ringing continued until he slammed the receiver down in frustration.

Perhaps she was ill.

Perhaps she wasn't there. She might have been hurt on her way home. She could be in hospital now.

What if…?

He downed what was left in the glass and poured himself another, gulping half of it down in one swallow.

She was not there. He knew it. Felt it.

Then where?

He gritted his teeth, his breath coming in short gasps.

Where was she?

He looked across at the photo on the dressing table. She smiled back at him.

Scott shouted and hurled the glass across the room. It hit the wall and shattered, spraying shards of crystal in all directions. Vodka dripped from the wet patch on the paper.

He wondered how long it took for loneliness to become despair.