Cages by David Mark (acx book reading TXT) 📕

She says nothing. Looks at her hand as if it belongs to someone else. Slowly he withdraws it. Drains his pint. Picks up his satchel from the floor.

‘Are you going to read their stories?’ asks Annabeth, eager to change the mood. ‘Have you had a look?’

He shrugs, a little put-out at her sudden coldness. ‘That’s a job for when I’m tucked up with a whisky. Do you have a liquor cabinet or do I ask Fran here to take care of my needs?’

Annabeth finds his gaze. Holds his hard stare. ‘Scapa, isn’t it? Your favourite? I bought you a bottle when you agreed to do the course. You can have it now, if you like …’

He grins: a boy who’s been told he’s going to the football at the weekend. ‘Annabeth, you may be my favourite human. It might not last forever but for now, it’s you.’

Annabeth returns the smile. Drains her wine. Considers her house guest.

I don’t need forever, she thinks. I just need now.

SEVENTEEN

‘… honestly, a really strange feel to it: like an inner-city estate just dropped off at the water’s edge – 1950s houses just turned up on the shore one morning and wandered in and decided to stay. Really weird vibe to the place. If it was Sussex the houses would cost twice as much. It’s seaside, but not seaside. It just happens to be beside the sea. It’s not what you think of as English. Not a cricket pavilion and roses round the door kind of feel. More that kind of small-town-in-Lincolnshire vibe. Hint of violence lingering in the air even when everybody’s laughing. People raise an eyebrow if you order an extra pint of milk – as if you’re getting too big for your boots …’

Rufus looks up from the document in his lap. Peers at Annabeth over the top of his glasses. ‘Some lovely phrases here, Annabeth. Very lyrical. Maybe a bit specific in your comparisons but there’s enough about the atmosphere that you feel transported.’

Annabeth hides her smile behind her glass. She’s drinking an apple brandy that came in a gift hamper she won in the Christmas raffle. It’s OK; like cough mixture, toffee apples and distilled heartburn has all been swooshed about with a cinnamon stick. She’s feeling light-headed and sleepy all at once. She has her knees drawn up beneath her and she can feel herself slowly sliding into a sleeping position. On the armchair across the small living room, Rufus seems largely unaffected by the fine Scotch he’s been drinking since Ethan said good night and headed to his room. He’d seemed to take to Rufus. It had felt strange and rather wonderful to sit down for dinner as part of a trio. Out of politeness, her son had joined them at the kitchen table, dutifully forcing down some dry cottage pie. Rufus had declared it ‘magnificent’, though he’d been similarly gushing when he told her that the little two-bedroomed house was ‘a genuine delight’ so she knows that his seal of approval is a dubious accolade. Ethan had silently worked his way through half a bottle of ketchup in an attempt to make the dish palatable: loyal to the last. She’d been even prouder of him for the way he’d chatted with their guest. He hadn’t acted like a child. Came across as a clever, thoughtful young man. They talked about politics, about belief; about books read and unread. Rufus had seemed genuinely sorry to see him say goodnight and head upstairs to play his games with his mates. It had been almost surreal for Annabeth. Uncalled, a thought had flashed through her mind: a vision of a life. Dinner at the table. Chat. Gentle affection. A kiss from her son, a manly punch on the arm from her gentleman, then an evening on the sofa, chinking glasses, talking about words, drifting into a warm torpor to the lullaby of his deep, mellifluous voice. She’d had to bite her own cheek to make the vision disappear. The last thing she needed was to indulge in fantasy, no matter how delicious it might feel. Still, the sensation lingers.

‘This is good,’ says Rufus, his voice strange. He has a pen in his mouth, clamped between his teeth, as he scans the final paragraphs of the passage she wrote, years ago, and which nobody else has ever seen. Come the morning, she will wish she had resisted his overtures, but he had seemed sincere when he said he would dearly love to read some of her writing. She’d found herself agreeing without really knowing why and had stuffed pages of old jottings and random scraps of poetry into his hands before she could talk herself out of it. Then she poured herself a drink and retired to the sofa, listening as he made enthusiastic noises: telling her, time and again, that she had the soul of a writer.

‘Your heart is an inkwell, Annabeth. Dip the quill in it and whatever makes it onto the page feels real to the reader. Your descriptions are lovely, but I can see that you’re holding back. You seem to be on the verge of exposing yourself in parts but then you hold back, or veer away, or spoil the power of it with a joke or a frivolity. This could be so powerful if you let yourself lower your guard.’

On the sofa, Annabeth raises her head. Gives a nod of thanks and hopes that her discomfort doesn’t show. She picks up a scatter cushion and all but hides behind it, hugging it tight. Lower her guard? She could scream at the simplicity of the suggestion. For fifteen years she has had to watch her every minute gesture and movement lest she somehow incriminate herself or briefly expose her own true nature. For her entire adult life she has feared meeting somebody with enough empathy and insight to look into her eyes