Whitstable by Stephen Volk Page B

on the arm of a chair in case he should fall. Sweat broke on his brow. He undid the buttons at his throat but they were already undone. He opened more, but his fingers were frozen and useless, fumbling and befuddled and half-dead.
    This man who makes horrible, sadistic films about cruelty and sex and torture…

    Someone who’s never had any children of his own, they tell me… Someone who adores other peoples’ children…
    This old man and this innocent little boy…

    Liquid surging up his gullet, he gagged and stumbled from the room to the little lavatory under the stairs, pressing his handkerchief to his mouth, but gagging nonetheless.
    ***
    After he had vomited on and off for half an hour he half-sat, half-lay in the dark, drained and pathetic, too weak to move. What was the point of moving? He was clean here. He was untouched, though his fingers tingled from the bleach he had thrown liberally down the pan and the acid of it almost made him retch all over again. At least here, huddled on the cold linoleum, he could imagine the Domestos coursing through his veins, ridding him of the foul accusation that had contaminated his home. Here he could bury himself away from vile possibilities, horrid dangers, unspeakable acts and, yes, responsibility to others. What did others want of him anyway? He despaired.
    What did his conscience want of him? To go to the police—with what? The fantasy of a backward child? A child with a vivid imagination, or psychiatric problems, or both? And what would that do but cause trouble, of the most horrifying nature, not least for himself? An old man talking to a young boy , he’d been accused of being by the boyfriend. The insinuation turned his stomach anew. What was wrong with that? How dare people misinterpret—but misinterpret they would: they wanted to misinterpret, that was the vile thing. Then again, what if he himself was misinterpreting? He could see it now, in a flash-forward, a dissolve: “Famous actor unhinged by grief.” If he stepped forward and spoke up, he’d be just as likely the one arrested. Sent to prison. Shamed. His picture all over the newspapers. If he was pathetic now, how much more pathetic would he be behind bars, or even in the witness box? But what churned in his belly more than all of that was the terrible thought that his failure to act would suit the true offender down to the ground. The creature would be free to continue his cynical, sordid depredations to his heart’s content. And that poor boy…
    God…

    He shut his eyes. He felt like the terrified Fordyce, the bank manager he played in Cash on Demand . Mopping perspiration from his brow. Prissy, emasculated, threatened. Affronted by the taunts of his nemesis. Goaded. His psychological flaws exposed. But that didn’t help. What could he do ? He wanted, wanted so desperately for someone to tell him. But who was there?
    Aching and chilled, he clawed himself to his feet, clambered to the kitchen, poured himself lukewarm water from the tap, and drank. He needed Helen, his bedrock. Now more than ever.
    He realised he felt so weak and ineffectual, not just now, but always. He remembered the spectacle of breaking down in tears in front of Laurence Olivier, thinking then, as he thought now: Am I strong enough? Am I strong enough for this?
    Yes you are, Helen had reassured him . If you want to be. You’re worth ten of them, Peter. You’re strong enough for anything…

    Back then, she’d nursed him through a nervous breakdown that had lasted a good six months. Dear Heaven, is that something this odious man could use against him now? His doctor’s records of psychological unbalance? He felt the terrifying possibility like another blow to his physical being. The awful likelihood of the dim past regurgitated, raked over in mere spite and venom. It would bring with it dark clouds, as it had done then.
    Six months of misery it had been, for him and for Helen too, without a doubt. God only knew how she’d