Underlife by Robert Finn (different e readers txt) 📕

head up slightly which seemed to help. After a moment’s effort Sebastian said, “I was just moving my shield to hold the doors.” He tried to give a shrug. “Bad timing. I’m sorry.”

The bullet had struck only a few seconds before but there was already a lot of blood on the floor. Sebastian had his hand pressed against the base of his neck, but vivid blood welled in pulses between his fingers. His eyes were flickering with pain and concentration.

Then, with a lurch, the train finally began to move and Warren glanced up as he registered the change. A groan from Sebastian brought his attention straight back to his wounded friend. “You have to stop the bleeding,” he said, squeezing the man’s arm to emphasise his words. “Concentrate.”

Clipper, still pressed into his corner, was holding perfectly still. He was trying orient his thoughts, to figure out what was happening, what he should be doing — and for the moment he was having no success at all. He was aware that the train was moving, aware that an armed man had opened fire in this carriage, aware that someone had been hit, but he wasn’t sure how to process any of it.

And for a moment he was back in that club, waiting for Gary, seeing Warren turn, and watching a broken bottle grind itself to pieces on the empty space in front of him, watching a punch that never landed slam his attacker to the floor.

Gary had said you couldn’t hurt them, whoever they were. But surely this was one of them, lying at Clipper’s feet, his blood leaking out onto the floor of the train, the spreading pool even now reaching the toe of Clipper’s scuffed right shoe. The man was going to bleed to death while Clipper crouched, really only inches away, immobile, within the growing circle of his blood, and something about that seemed so wrong that it set him in motion.

Before he knew what he was doing, Clipper found himself speaking. “Pressure. We need to put pressure on the wound,” he said.

Warren looked round at him and just stared.

Clipper was pulling off his tie, winding it round his hand and threading the end through to make a ball of material. He came slightly out of his crouch, eyes flicking nervously towards the man with the gun and then back to the piercing look on Warren’s face, wondering all the while who he should be most afraid of.

“I could…” He held up the wad of material to show his intention. Warren’s stare didn’t slacken.

After a pause, the stare lengthening, Warren said coldly, “I know you, don’t I?”

Just what I need, Clipper thought to himself, more stress. But he knew what to say. Another of Gary’s tutorials had covered this. At Gary’s suggestion, they had dreamed up half a dozen responses to this question, intended to be given to trogs, coppers and previous victims, should anyone recognise them. Clipper picked the first one that came to mind.

“My brother maybe. He does adverts. Posters and stuff. Like those crunchy cornflakes,” he said and shrugged. It occurred to him that if he pretended not to be afraid of Warren it would make this easier, and might defuse Warren’s suspicion. Because Clipper had a sneaking feeling that anyone who truly knew Warren would be permanently afraid.

Clipper was trying to reach Sebastian now, but Warren hadn’t shifted aside, though his hostility had disappeared somewhat and for a moment he seemed lost in thought.

Then a voice by Clipper’s ear said, “Let me help.” And it was the girl from the plaza, the one with hair the colour of maple syrup, the one he’d spoken to. And he remembered their conversation, how much he’d enjoyed it, and how it seemed like it had happened at least a week ago.

*

Rachel hung up. That was the fun part over. She’d burned her bridges with some real gusto and now she wouldn’t be able to back out or change her mind. But wasn’t that why people used to burn bridges? Or was it ships? Whatever. They were burned.

Putting her relationship with Rudy to the torch had been particularly easy, once she knew she had nothing to lose. As a boss he’d been a disaster and now there was no reason to pretend otherwise; she’d laid it out for him. Ticked off his faults with chilly efficiency. It was a talent she’d inherited from her mother — what she thought of as the family curse. Whatever you called it, she had her mother’s blistering forthrightness, even in German. Which was why she’d been putting off this second call for weeks. Putting it off until after she’d resigned. Putting it off until after she’d booked her plane tickets home. Putting it off until her last day at work, until her transatlantic flight was only hours away.

Time to call home.

No one had ever accused her or her mother of being two-faced, or of keeping quiet about other people’s shortcomings. Her mother never got calls from old friends saying, “Why weren’t you straight with me?” Naturally the main reason for that was her mother’s total lack of old friends. But if any had stuck around long enough to give their opinion, they’d have told you: she was so straight with people it made your eyes water.

There was no puzzle to it; Rachel could see it quite clearly: her mother’s way with people, the effect it had on them, and the woman’s inability to follow the logic of her own bluntness all the way through to the damage it caused. And even though it seemed so obvious when she looked at her mother’s life, she suspected that she had exactly the same faults and exactly the same blind-spot, the same obliviousness to consequences.

It never felt wrong, letting rip like that, hitting them right between the eyes. It felt pure and honest and simple. But it wasn’t anywhere near as exhilarating sitting around waiting for them to come back, waiting for them to get over the initial sting of hearing the truth, and gradually realising that they never would.

Before she’d come to London, around the time that she realised living with her mother was no longer remotely bearable, Rachel had done her best to get through to her, to make her understand that she was driving everyone around her away. And she hadn’t been a hundred percent surprised when her mother failed to acknowledge the truth of it — but had instead repaid the compliment by rounding on her, proceeding to enumerate all the ways in which Rachel herself was deficient, deluded or unlikable. It was quite a fight.

There hadn’t been much left to say after that. Or rather neither of them were interested in saying it. So that’s how they’d left it. Their relationship a lifeless, radioactive wasteland. Emotional Chernobyl.

It wasn’t until Rachel had been in London a few weeks and had looked back calmly on that last unrestrained, fully-nuclear exchange that she’d understood what had happened, the forces that had been at work. Her own certainty that she was right and her mother’s monstrously stubborn refusal to admit it were two sides of the same coin. Her mother would have been feeling the same chill, thin wind of righteousness roaring through her and marvelling at the pigheaded obstinacy of the woman in front of her. Really, the whole thing was just her mother having a fight with her own reflection; Rachel was simply the vessel by which this stupidity could annihilate itself and simultaneously pass down to the next generation.

She had no idea what the solution was — it couldn’t be dishonesty or blandness — she couldn’t very well start simpering, it would be more than she could bear — but equally there had to be a way of wielding the truth that didn’t involve using it to mug anyone who wouldn’t take the hint and drift away of their own accord. The furthest she’d got in her search for an answer was the beginnings of a suspicion that it had something to do with trust. Maybe her caustic honesty was just about getting her retaliation in first. Maybe if you could really be sure of someone, you didn’t need to launch pre-emptive strikes. Now if only she could persuade her mother of that.

Slowly she dialled her mother’s number. In her heart it was still her number too. Pushing the keys one by one felt like arming a bomb. A thought occurred to her: what if her mother no longer got up this early? Conversational bloodshed would be inevitable. Oh well. Rachel tried to pull together a few words that might produce some effect besides silence or a long-distance brawl. At the other end, the phone rang: long American tones.

“Hello?” It was her mother’s voice. The first time she’d heard it in almost three years.

She let her breath out and spoke: “Hi Mom.”

There was silence at the other end of the line and Rachel cupped her other hand around the phone to keep the wind away from the mouthpiece.

“Hi,” her mom said eventually. Her tone gave nothing away.

“Mom, I…” How could she possibly phrase this? There was no easy way to express it. But then an unexpected swell of emotion pushed words out of her mouth: “Mom, the thing is… I miss you and I’d like to come home.”

She hadn’t said ‘want’ to come home, but ‘like’. It wasn’t a demand. She was throwing herself on her mother’s mercy. A quality her mother had never given any sign of possessing.

More than anything Rachel had ever done, this felt like putting her neck on the block and waiting for the axe to fall. The first thing her mother would do was ask what this meant, what it signified. She’d want it spelled out that Rachel was capitulating, admitting that she’d been wrong. Then she’d lay down some rules about how it was going to be different this time — and by different she’d mean tighter, tougher, more under control, with less room for future rebellions.

Rachel could almost hear her speak the words: “So what are you saying? You’ve come to your senses at last? Well, let me tell you…” But those words never came.

Instead: “Are you…” Her mother’s voice was strange. “Are you OK? Is everything OK?” Her mother seemed unsure. Rachel wasn’t sure she’d ever heard her sound like that before.

This was unexpected, but it was too soon to relax; fighting could still break out at any moment. But the fact it hadn’t yet was more than Rachel had expected.

“I’m fine,” Rachel said carefully. “I’m quitting this job, though. I have quit it.” She regretted saying it like that. ‘Quitting’ was a trigger phrase of her mother’s. Not something she had ever permitted.

Her mother said nothing.

Rachel went on: “It’s just that… I miss you and I miss the horses too.” It was silly but true. “I don’t know how things are, if they’ve changed, but if you… if it’s OK with you, I want to come home. Help with the farm. See how it goes.”

Her mother still said nothing. The pause lengthened.

Rachel spoke into the silence. “So might you, um… I mean, is it OK if I come home?” Her mother was really making her work for this, but Rachel wasn’t going to chicken out now, no matter how agonising it was to say these things aloud. She’d been prepared for battle. She’d been determined not to provoke it, but she’d been expecting it. So she wasn’t going to let the silent treatment throw her off track.

Then she realised her mother was crying. “Mom?” she asked, wondering if something had happened. Had someone died? Was something else wrong, besides