A Line of Blood. Ben McPherson

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      The tension in the limbs, that rictus smile, they were not easily erased. What did Max know about suicide? What could an eleven-year-old boy know about despair? I had to talk to him, but had no idea what to say. This was bad. Wasn’t this the stuff of full-blown trauma, of sexual dysfunction in the teenage years, and nervous breakdown in early adulthood? And though I hadn’t actively shown Max the neighbour, I had failed to prevent him from seeing him in all his semi-priapic squalor. What do you say? Maybe Millicent would know.

      ‘Can I have some more cheese, Dad?’

      I said nothing.

      Maybe I should ring Millicent again. The phone would go to voicemail, but there was comfort in hearing her voice.

      Max went to the fridge and fetched a large block of cheddar, then took the bread knife from the breadboard. He sat back down at the table and looked directly at me, wondering perhaps why I’d done nothing to stop him. Then he cut off a large chunk. I noticed the bread knife cut into the surface of the table, but said nothing.

      The cat was at the sink. She looked at Max, eyes large, then blinked.

      Max went to the sink and turned on the tap. The cat drank, her tongue flicking in and out, curling around the stream of water.

      ‘Can I watch Netflix?’

      I looked at my computer, at the light that pulsed gently on and off. No. Seventy hours of footage to watch, and a week to do it. I have to work. I really should say no.

      ‘Dad?’ said Max.

      I nodded. Work seemed very distant now. Max stared.

      ‘I’m not taking a plate,’ he said at last.

      ‘OK.’

      At eleven thirty I heard Millicent’s key in the lock. I was sitting where Max had left me at the kitchen table, my own sandwich untouched; the tap was still running.

      I heard Millicent drop her bag at the foot of the stair. For the first time I noticed the sound of the programme on the computer: helicopters and gunfire; screaming and explosions. Millicent and Max exchanged soft words. The gunfire and the screaming stopped.

      ‘Night, Max.’

      ‘Night, Mum.’

      The sound of Max going upstairs; the sound of Millicent dropping her shoes beside her bag.

      ‘So, Max is up kind of late.’ Millicent came into the kitchen. She stopped in the doorway for a moment, and I saw her notice Max’s plate, the stack of uneaten bread, the bread-knife cut in the table surface. She turned off the tap, then sat down opposite me. She made to say something, then frowned.

      ‘Hi,’ I said.

      ‘Hey.’ Her voice drew out the word, all honey and smoke.

      When Millicent first came to London it had felt like our word. The long Californian vowel, the gently falling cadence at the end, were for me, and for me alone. Hey. There was such warmth in her voice, such love. In time I realised hey was how she greeted friends, that she had no friends in London but me at the start; the first time she said hey to another man the betrayal stung me. Don’t laugh at me for this. I didn’t know.

      ‘So,’ said Millicent. ‘I didn’t stink.’

       I don’t know what you mean.

      ‘In fact, I think I did OK. I mean, I guess I talked a little too much, but it went good for a first time. Look.’

      A bag. A bottle and some flowers. There’s a dead man in the next-door house.

      I looked up at a dark mark in the wall near the ceiling. Round, like a target. Draw a straight line from me through that mark, and you’d hit the neighbour. Seven metres, I guessed. Maybe less.

      Millicent looked at me, then reached out and took my hand in hers, turning it over and unclenching my fist.

      ‘You are super-tense.’

      ‘It’s OK.’

      ‘You’re OK?’

      No. I was as far from OK as I could imagine but the words I needed wouldn’t form. ‘Yes,’ I said at last.

      ‘You forgot.’ It took a lot to hurt Millicent, but I could feel the edge of disappointment in her voice. The interview, on the radio. Of course.

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘Radio.’ Why can’t I find the words?

      ‘OK,’ she said. She looked at me as if I had run over a deer. ‘But you didn’t listen to it. I mean, it’s also a download, so I get that maybe it’s not time-critical, but I guess I was kind of hoping, Alex …’

      I breathed deep, trying to decide how to say what I had to say. From the look of Millicent, Max had told her nothing of what we’d seen. I wondered where the police were. Maybe bathroom suicides were a common event around here. What do you say?

      ‘What is it, Alex?’

      From upstairs I heard Max flush the toilet. I thought of the bathroom in the house next door, of the bath five metres from where he was now.

      ‘Alex?’

      ‘OK.’ I took Millicent’s hand in mine, looked her in the eye. ‘OK.’

      ‘You’re scaring me a little, Alex. What’s going on?’

      Three sentences, I thought. Anything can be said in three sentences. You need to find three sentences.

      ‘OK. This is what I need to tell you.’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘The neighbour killed himself. I found him. Max saw.’ Nine words. Not bad.

      ‘No,’ she said. Very quiet, almost matter-of-fact, as if refuting a badly phrased proposition. ‘No, Alex, he isn’t. He can’t be.’

      ‘I found him. Max saw.’ Five words.

      She stared at me. Said nothing.

      ‘I should have stopped him from seeing. I didn’t.’

      Still she stared at me. She brought her right hand up to her face, rubbing the bridge of her nose in the way she does when she’s buying time in an argument.

      ‘I haven’t talked to him yet about what he saw. I know I have to, but I wanted to talk to you first.’ Because you’re better at this than me. Because I don’t know what to say.

      Still Millicent said nothing.

      The doorbell rang. Millicent did not move. I did not move. It rang again. We sat there, staring at each other. Only when I heard footsteps on the stairs did I stand up and go to the front room. Max had the door open. He stood there in his lion pyjamas, looking up at the two policemen.

      ‘Upstairs, СКАЧАТЬ