A Line of Blood. Ben McPherson

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СКАЧАТЬ as Max had, looking towards the neighbour’s house. Seen side by side, they were identical in every detail, except that the neighbour had washed his windows and freshened the paint on his back door.

      A Japanese willow obscured the rest of the neighbour’s ground floor. A tree, a pond, a bower. Who builds a bower in Finsbury Park?

      Max reappeared.

      ‘Dad, come and see.’

      I looked about me. Was this trespass? I wasn’t sure.

      Max disappeared again. No one in any of the other houses seemed to be looking. The only house that could see into the garden was ours. And I needed to retrieve my son.

      I jumped down, landing badly and compounding the pain in my knee.

      ‘You aren’t supposed to say fuck, Dad.’

      ‘I didn’t say it.’ Did I?

      ‘You did.’

      He had reappeared, and was looking down at me again, as I massaged the back of my knee, wondering if it would stiffen up.

      ‘And I’m allowed to say it. You are the one who isn’t.’

      He smiled.

      ‘You’ve got a hole in your trousers.’

      I nodded and stood up, ruffled his hair.

      ‘Does it hurt?’

      ‘Not much. A bit.’

      He stared at me for a long moment.

      ‘All right,’ I said, ‘it hurts like fuck. Maybe I did say it.’

      ‘Thought so.’

      ‘Want to tell me what we’re doing here? Max-Man?’

      He held out his hand. I took it, surprised, and he led me into the bower.

      The neighbour had been busy here. Four metal trellises had been joined to make a loose arch, and up these trellises he had teased his climbing roses, if that’s what they were. Two people could have lain down in here, completely hidden from view. Perhaps they had. The grass was flattened, as if by cushions.

      Now I noticed birdsong, distant-sounding, wrong, somehow.

      Max crouched down, rubbed his right forefinger against his thumb.

      From a place unseen, a small dark shadow, winding around his legs. Tortoiseshell, red and black. Max rubbed finger and thumb together again, and the cat greeted him, stood for a moment on two legs, teetering as she arched upwards towards his fingers, then fell forwards and on to her side, offering him her belly.

      ‘Foxxa.’

      It was Max who had named the cat. He had spent hours with her, when she first arrived, whispering to her from across the room: F, K, Ks, S, Sh. He had watched how she responded to each sound, was certain he had found the perfect name.

      ‘Foxxa.’

      The cat chirruped. Max held out his hand, and she rolled on to her back, cupped her paws over his knuckles, bumped her head gently into his hand.

      ‘Crazy little tortie,’ he whispered.

      She tripped out of the bower. Crazy little tortie was right. We hadn’t seen her in days.

      Max walked out of the bower and towards the patio. I followed him. The cat was not there.

      From the patio, the pretentious absurdity of the bower was even more striking. The whole garden was no more than five metres long, four metres wide. The bower swallowed at least a third of the usable space, making the garden even more cramped than it must have been when the neighbour moved in.

      The cat appeared from under a bush, darted across the patio. Too late I saw that the back door was ajar. She paused for a moment, looking back at us.

      ‘Foxxa, no!’ said Max.

      Her tail curled around the edge of the door, then she had disappeared inside.

      Max was staring at the back door. I wondered if the neighbour was there behind its wired glass panels, just out of view. Max approached the door, pushing it fully open.

      ‘Max!’

      I lunged towards him, but he slipped into the kitchen, leaving me alone in the garden.

      ‘Hello?’ I shouted. I waited at the door but there was no reply.

      ‘Come on, Dad,’ said Max.

      I found him in the middle of the kitchen, the cat at his feet.

      ‘Max, we can’t be in here. Pick her up. Let’s go.’

      Max walked to the light switch and turned on the light. Thrill of the illicit. We shouldn’t be in here.

      ‘Max,’ I said, ‘out. Now.’

      He turned, rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, and the cat jumped easily up on to the work surface, blinking back at us.

      ‘She likes it here.’

      ‘Max … Max, pick her up.’

      Max showed no sign of having heard me. I could read nothing in his gestures but a certain stiff-limbed determination. He had never disobeyed me so openly before.

      Light flooded the white worktops, the ash cupboard fronts, the terracotta floor tiles. It was all so clean, so bright, so without blemish. I thought of our kitchen, with its identical dimensions. How alike, yet how different. On the table was a pile of clean clothes, still in their wrappers. Two suits, a stack of shirts, all fresh from the cleaners. No two-day-old saucepans stood unwashed in the sink. No food rotted here, no cat litter cracked underfoot, no spider plants went short of water.

      From the middle of the kitchen you could see the front door. The neighbour had moved a wall; or perhaps he hadn’t moved a wall; perhaps he had simply moved the door to the middle of his kitchen wall. Natural light from both sides. Clever.

      Max left the room. I looked back to where the cat had been standing, but she was no longer there. I could hear him calling to her, a gentle clicking noise at the back of his throat.

      I followed him into the living room. Max was already at the central light switch. Our neighbour had added a plaster ceiling rose, and an antique crystal chandelier, which hung too low, dominating the little room. The neighbour had used low-energy bulbs in the chandelier, and they flicked into life, sending ugly ovoids of light up the seamless walls. What was this? And where was the cat?

      Max found a second switch, and the bottom half of the room was lit by bulbs in the floor and skirting.

      ‘Pick up the cat, Max-Man. Time to go.’

      He made a gesture. Arms open, palm up. Then he held up his hand. Listen, he seemed to be saying, and listen I did. A dog; traffic; a rooftop crow. People walked past, voices СКАЧАТЬ