What Becomes by A. L Kennedy

bed and opened up.
    It was all right. Not fantastic. But all right.
    Stuff about buildings, deer, a broken window, dead relatives, love.
    And then he was parting page 26 from page 27 and there was a hair.
    Hers.
    Goldenish with little kinks in it and curved across the paper.
    He touched it.
    Long enough to stretch from the tip of his middle finger to the tenderest place in his wrist.
    It touched him back.
    He felt goldenish and afraid.
    Because it’s always better to be contented than in love. But when you’ve had nothing for so long, you get greedy and confused. You want to be more than contented, you want to be burned up alive and made again. You want always to have a loved face.
    Why wouldn’t you want that?
    He didn’t think he’d altered in the way he was with her after that. It had only made more sense that he should start taking the train to Edinburgh at weekends, going to see her – and sharing new coffee shops, new books: the cold, malty air and the drizzle letting her soak into him, his clothes. They went to the big new cinema and held hands and giggled, but still kept holding. They took their pictures in the photo booth at the railway station.
    In my wallet: her hair just cut and we wanted to immortalise it – this haircut – and her lips are quite thin but they have this delicacy and it seems she’s about to speak or smile, and she was looking at me, letting me have the way that she looked at me.
    In my wallet.
    With me.
    Need a new wallet now.
    â€˜You all right, chief?’ Tim peered down the stairs, still seeming concerned, attentive, which was an irritation.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜You, ah . . .’ He crept a few steps lower. ‘You’re . . .’ He pointed, apparently embarrassed by something that Peter had done, or else something he was.
    And Pete glanced down, realised his thumb was bleeding, a chip cut into it, not too deep, but messy. ‘Bollocks.’ He’d have to sterilise the cutting surface, throw out the swedes.
    â€˜I can clean up, if you want.’ Tim saying this, as if he’s facing an invalid. ‘You could just . . . you know. Wash your hand.’
    Peter paused, blood dripping.
    I
am
an invalid. Tim, Fintan, everybody: they saw me be well, be with her. They saw me burning
.
    Now all we do is remember what I’m not.
    I should sack them.
    His thumb only started hurting when he noticed it, once he understood what had gone wrong.
    â€˜I’ll . . . Yes.’ Peter finally moved to the muddy sink and the first-aid kit. ‘If you could clean up. Yes.’
    He ran the cold tap over his thumb, washed and washed, the water staying slightly pink, no matter what.
    Party.
    She’d been going to a party – somebody’s birthday in a pub – and we’d never done something like that, been together in front of her friends.
    Saturday evening in Edinburgh and you bring her flowers on the train, mind them for the whole of the journey so they’re still nice.
    Handing them over and she’s on her doorstep and wearing make-up – night-out kind of make-up and this thin dress, silky, because it’s summer, and she’s still in stocking feet. Maybe tights – you don’t know yet – but that’s not how you say it – you say stocking feet, that’s the accepted phrase. Her flat is behind her and you do not know it well, because you never can quite get a grip of it, because of watching her and gladly suffering the way the kitchen tabletop hurts a little under your hands, being covered in her using it and having breakfast and sitting at it to maybe read a book.
    You wanted to sit a while, too, but she was smiling at the flowers and hurrying them into a sink full of water because she couldn’t find a vase and then she’s searching for her shoes without you and you’re looking at her bookshelves and you mainly would like to just stay here and not go out and maybe your jeans