Decay Inevitable by Conrad Williams

could anybody feel threatened when there was a picture on the wall of a view from Waterloo Bridge? Where was the danger in a flat where a bag of dolly mixtures was sitting on top of the fridge?
    “ I’ll guess it. Give me five guesses. ”
    He shared out the coffee and thought of the way she had stepped over the threshold of each room, her hand moving out to gently grasp the doorjamb, relaxing against the wood as though returning to a pose she had practised many times. Sean had stood behind her while she inspected the rooms. He liked the way he could see her eyelashes when she was in three-quarter profile; her short, brown hair and the fringe that flopped about her forehead; the blended, slightly plump curves of her cheekbones and mouth. She looked boyish and soft, but a hardness danced in her quick green eyes. He found himself wanting to show her his maps of cities from a hundred and fifty years ago and play her a piece of music that he adored in the hope that it would move her too.
    “ Hannah? ”
    “ No. ”
    Light bled from a deep crack between the bathroom door and its frame. Carrying her cup, he was halted by the movement of her naked figure across the gap. She was a blur of pink, the flurry that fills a moment of space, but she passed through his mind in intimate detail.
    “ Fiona? ”
    “ No. ”
    At the table in a kitchen with a tap that wouldn’t stop dripping, wrapped up in his towelling bathrobe, her hair slicked back, she sipped coffee and listened to him talk about London. It was nice to be in a room with a man and not have him want to wave his dick in her face. And then she surprised herself by opening up to him, telling him things that she could barely acknowledge to herself.
    “ Mildred? ”
    “ Ugh. Piss off. No. ”
    For the last six years, since her grandmother had suffered a stroke and needed to be cared for, she’d walked a rut into the backstreets of the town. If she thought about the reams of men and women that had paid her dirty money to sign off her body for a few hours, she’d go mad. So she never thought of them. Well, hardly. Sometimes they’d dip into her sleep, these none-faces, these black ghosts, bruising the meat that they’d hired for a while, emptying themselves across the map of her body, scattering seed across a barren land that could sustain nothing of any warmth or significance any more.
    “ Isobel? ”
    “ No. Last chance. ”
    Most of her friends were dead. She’d beaten the odds, staying alive on the streets for this long; life expectancy for prostitutes in the Northwest was dwindling all the time. Tonight it had seemed her turn had come. A saviour was rare, but she wondered how self-seeking his heroics might prove. She studied his face while he took up the conversational baton. He did not judge her; his face had not fallen when she revealed her true colours. It was a good face: angular and tough but something about his eyes and the shape of his lips hinted at vulnerability. It looked like a face that might cry while its owner was killing you.
    Sirens looped across the night. A police helicopter, its belly loaded with cameras, striped the night with an acid-white spotlight that stabbed into the ruined flesh of the town, picking over the remains like a glutton at the bones of a roast.
    “What’s in it for you then? What can you expect for saving me?”
    “There’s never anything in it for me,” Sean said, at last. “But I feel... I don’t know... some degree of responsibility for you. Perhaps because I feel nothing for myself.”
    “You don’t have to use chat-up lines, Sean. But it’s sweet of you to say so. Unfortunately, I don’t share your concern. I can take care of me better than anyone else, and if I get into trouble, that’s my look-out.”
    Sean nodded. “I’ll say goodnight then. If you need anything, give me a shout.”
    She kissed him on the cheek. He said: “Karen?” But she didn’t reply.
    Heading for the sofa, he watched her disappear