The Train by Sarah Bourne (fiction books to read txt) 📕

into the privacy afforded by some bushes. Aidan knelt down and unzipped Ray’s trousers, taking his penis in one hand, cupping his balls in the other. ‘Well, hello, big boy,’ he said, and moistened his lips.

Ray looked down, saw his hand on Aidan’s blond hair.

He gasped. This was all wrong. He wriggled, trying to move away but Aidan took it for pleasure and kept gently squeezing his balls and now looked up at Ray with those Daniel Craig eyes before taking him in his mouth.

Ray let out a whimper of pleasure and then pulled away.

‘I can’t.’ He started zipping his trousers. ‘I’m sorry.’

He didn’t look at Aidan as he turned and ran.

He ran until his lungs were bursting. He slowed to a walk, chest heaving. He realised he’d left his briefcase behind but nothing would have made him go back for it. He felt ashamed and guilty. How could he have let it happen? Was he so needy he’d fuck the first person who showed him kindness? That wasn’t who he was. It was what the cancer had made him. Weak, pathetic. He kicked a stone on the path and looked to the sky and fought back tears.

An old man walking his dog gave him a wide berth and Ray gave him the finger, which made him feel even worse.

He pulled out his phone and booked an Uber. He had to get to Euston and onto a train home as soon as possible before he did anything else he’d regret.

Ray had had a pet rabbit called Lionel when he was young. He couldn’t remember why he named it Lionel – maybe it was after Lionel Blair. He and his mother had watched Give Us a Clue devotedly during his childhood. Lionel, the rabbit, had lived to a ripe old age and had always seemed content to live in his hutch, being moved about the lawn so he always had fresh, sweet grass to eat. When he was old and frail he’d escaped. Ray had found his body days later in a nest of dry leaves and grass he’d made for himself under the laurel bush at the back of the garden. Twelve-year-old Ray had decided he must have known he was dying and wanted to go off and do it on his own. He thought about that as he stood on the doorstep of his parents’ house in ‘up and coming’ Wandsworth. When he was a child, no one wanted to live there. Now hardly anyone could afford it. He wondered what his parents’ semi was worth these days.

Lionel. Housing affordability. He didn’t seem to be able to hold on to one coherent thought. His mind was throwing useless memories and facts at him and he was unable to filter them. And what on earth had made him turn his steps towards Wandsworth now? He turned back towards the street, viewing the garden path, all four feet of it, as the drawbridge between hell and purgatory. His mother opened the door.

‘Ray – is that you?’ she asked his retreating back.

Damn. Not fast enough.

‘Yes, it’s me.’ He swung round and pulled his face into a thin smile while his insides headed towards his feet.

‘I didn’t know you were coming.’

‘No, neither did I.’

His mother stood in the doorway wringing her hands in the particular way that always made Ray feel sorry for her and want to reassure her everything would be all right. He wondered if she’d done it all her life, or just since she’d met his father.

‘Shall I come in?’ he asked. It was convention, wasn’t it, to go into the house when one visited even if it had been a mistake to come.

‘Your father’s in the loft sorting things.’

Ray nodded. His father was always in the attic. It was his equivalent of a garden shed. For as long as Ray could remember his father had disappeared there rather than spend time with his family. Quite what he was sorting, Ray wasn’t sure. It had been boxes of stuff from his parents’ house after they died, but that was years ago. Surely he couldn’t still be going through that?

His mother still occupied the doorway. Ray took a step towards her and she recoiled, flattening herself into the narrow hall. He stepped past her carefully, took off his jacket and shoes and turned to give her a peck on the cheek. She hadn’t moved but as his lips approached, she tilted her face slightly to receive the kiss.

‘Who is it?’ came his father’s voice down the stairs.

‘Ray,’ said his mother.

‘Me,’ Ray said at the same time.

‘Oh.’

‘Just came to say hello,’ Ray called to his father.

There was a noise in response that could have been an acknowledgement or it might have been his father exclaiming over a new and rather disappointing find in one of his boxes.

Ray shrugged and followed his mother into the kitchen where she fluttered around between the sink and the table as if she couldn’t decide what to do.

‘What’s he sorting now?’

‘He goes to auctions and buys job lots. He says one day he’s going to find something really valuable someone’s tossed out by accident.’

Ray rolled his eyes. ‘These days everyone watches Antiques Roadshow. Trust me, no one is going to throw out anything that might turn out to be a priceless artefact.’

The creases round his mother’s eyes and mouth deepened in what Ray recognised as her pained look. ‘It keeps him busy.’ She turned to the sink, squeezed out the dishcloth and started rubbing at the already spotless draining board.

Ray sucked in a deep breath that felt like it came from the soles of his feet and drew up all the strain and disappointment, the repressed anger and unspoken shame that was the fabric of the household. He’d thought, when he came out to his parents, that he’d been the cause of it, but when he reflected on it later, it had always been the same. His father’s remoteness, his mother’s anxiety; the distance between