An Almost Perfect Moon. Jamie Holland

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СКАЧАТЬ while someone rushed to his front and punched him hard in the face and then the stomach. He heard the sound of his nose breaking, felt the blood pour in a warm stream over his lip and chin, and tasted the thick sweet-metallic taste on his mouth. It happened so quickly. A youth, spotty and with tufts of random stubble on his chin, pulled a knife from his pocket and held it to Flin’s neck, the point breaking the soft and vulnerable skin.

      Flin gurgled and gasped as another knife slashed off his bag and hands rifled through his pockets. Then another punch, this time from behind: hard, swift, and unbearably painful, into his kidney. He crumpled to the ground. Grazed skin on his face and hands stung as he hit the wet roadside. For a split second he wondered whether they would kill him. An enormous wallop hit him in the ribs, a kick at full strength, blasting the last bit of air from him. Then footsteps running off into the night. The attack had lasted no more than half a minute.

      For a few moments, Flin lay there, still clutching his eyes, the rain spattering his back, and the cold, dirty water from the pavement seeping through his jacket and shirt, cloying against his skin. He could only just see, his vision blurred by the rain and rapidly swelling eyes. His nose hurt like hell, while his ribs and back throbbed, and tiny specks of grit stuck to the sides of his grazed hands. Blood continued to stream down the side of his face. Still in shock, and in extreme pain, he put his hands out flat on the hard wet concrete and pushed himself up onto his knees, and then falteringly to his feet.

      Leaning against a wall, he felt for his handkerchief, his raw hands stinging as they met the edges of his pockets. Holding it out to the rain, he dabbed at his eyes as they swelled further with each passing moment. He groaned with a humiliation keener than the pain. He’d been literally fleeced by four youths, probably nearly half his age, and left sprawled out on a rain-soaked roadside. What had he been to them? Nothing. Just something to rob, a walking cash opportunity.

      He made it home staggering, although he was nearly run over as he crossed the road to his own street. A car turned a corner and he never saw it, never even heard it. The attack had dulled all his senses. At his front door, he pressed the buzzer; his own keys had been in his bag.

      ‘Tiff, it’s me. Can you let me in?’ His voice felt strange, not his own, as though his tongue had been stung repeatedly.

      ‘Oh my God, Flin, what happened?’ cried Tiffany as she opened the door. His jacket was torn, and, soaked, bloodied and squinting, he was barely able to stand.

      ‘Mugged,’ he stammered, ‘punched. I think they broke my nose. Oh, Tiff, it was horrible. So frightening.’

      Tiffany grabbed his arm and led him to the bathroom. There she gently undressed him, washed his wounds and rinsed his eyes.

      ‘I’m going to take you to hospital,’ she told him. ‘You need someone to look at you.’

      ‘I’m fine,’ said Flin. But he knew he wasn’t. He gently massaged his neck, unable to forget the sensation of a knife-point digging into him. His body began to shake all over, uncontrollably, as Tiffany dabbed at his wounded face. She insisted they go to Casualty, and Flin felt unable to resist. So, an hour later, he sat in a hospital cubicle, exposed and humiliated for the second time that night, as a doctor began to stitch up his broken face.

      ‘You’ll be fine,’ the doctor told him matter-of-factly. ‘Wear dark glasses for a couple of days and you should soon be OK. The swelling will go down and, although it might hurt for a bit, I think your nose will look its old self soon enough.’

      Flin also had a broken rib, although there was nothing to be done about that. He would just have to be patient, not exert himself and wait for it to mend.

      He said nothing as Tiffany drove him back to their tiny flat, just gazed distractedly out of the window. He wanted to be in bed, safe and warm, holding his beloved Tiffany, far away from a world of dark menace and violence.

      

      As the doctor predicted, Flin made a swift physical recovery. His side was sore for quite some time, but after watching his face turn a myriad of different colours, the swelling and bruising gradually diminished. After a couple of weeks, only a scar across the bridge of his nose remained as physical evidence of his attack. But his confidence in London as a fun and vibrant place to live altered dramatically. The plan to move out suddenly returned as an urgent priority.

      ‘Do you mind, Tiff?’ asked Flin as they drove off for another weekend in the country. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘I can’t stay here now. Those youths were obviously sent to give me a kick up the arse. Must have been. You know, Tiff, I don’t want to live in this kind of world any more. I don’t want to feel crowded, obsessed with work, and constantly worn down by the stress of living in a city of eleven million people. I just want to be with you, on our own in some rural haven. I want to live in a place where we can shut everything else out if we want, batten down the hatches and create our own little existence untroubled by modern life. The real world’s too dark, too sinister. I don’t want our kids growing up in a place where they could be set upon at any moment. They should have open fields to run about in, and woods for making dens, where they’re not threatened by a constant stream of cars and lorries hurtling past them. And nor do I want to live solely on tasteless packaged food, being conned by supermarkets and eating chickens full of chemicals. Let’s grow our own, Tiff. Vegetables, animals. The Good Life. Wouldn’t it be great? We really could be like the Larkins if we wanted. We’ve just got to take the plunge. This isn’t just a passing fad any more. This is something I think we should do, now, right away.’

      ‘Have you finished?’ said Tiffany calmly.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Good because, Flin darling, if we’re going to do this, let’s do it. I’m fed up of hearing you talk about it, then never getting off your arse and actually making plans. We’re doing something about it now, or not at all.’

      ‘OK.’

      ‘And I think we should also think about going back to Australia.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Australia. Perhaps we should go out there for a bit. It’s the perfect place to get away from it all. You could meet my family properly.’

      ‘I don’t know, Tiff. When I meant move out, I meant within England really.’

      ‘Can you at least think about it?’

      Flin paused. ‘OK. I’ll think about it.’

      

      Over the next few days, he thought of little else. He’d never imagined living there before. Moving to the north of England was one thing – they might be a long way from their friends and family there, but being on the other side of the world was quite a different matter altogether. In Australia, he really would never see them. And with the exception of Tiffany, he wasn’t sure how much he really liked Australians. They always won at cricket and were so damn hearty about everything. He suspected that might grate after a short while. Then there was the climate. Great for some people, but wouldn’t he find it too hot? And there were sharks, and dangerous snakes, and crocodiles. In England there was nothing but the odd midge and an adder if you were very unlucky.

      But the idea was out in the open now, and he could tell it was rapidly growing on Tiffany. He never wanted to do anything to lose her, but to emigrate, and leave behind the country he loved, and all his family and friends completely … well, that would be a terrible, terrible wrench.

      For a week, they barely mentioned moving СКАЧАТЬ