He shook his head, trying to make sense of all the strange drift washing up around him, whether it was unrelated or whether all the pieces together would point to some single tragedy far out at sea. The trouble was, even on their own the pieces seemed unbelievable, like none of this was real, like he’d imagined it all.
He got up and headed out. As he walked towards the lobby he saw two students walking towards him, a boy and girl. She smiled a little at him but then looked concerned and slowed, somehow managing to bring him to a stop with her body language.
‘Wow, Dr Stratton, what happened to your head?’ He looked puzzled and she said, ‘Emma Darling, I did your course last year, Psychology 216.’
‘Strangely, not only do I remember the name of my own course, I also remember you Miss Darling.’ He realized his tone was wrong, coming across pompous and sarcastic, leaving her slightly humiliated. He heard himself speak sometimes and wondered what had happened to him. ‘You wrote a good piece on post-traumatic dreams. I gave you a first for it.’
She smiled, bashful, and then pointed at his head.
‘That looks really nasty.’
‘It’s nothing, really. It looks much worse than it is.’ She didn’t look convinced. ‘So you’re in your final year now?’ She nodded and he said, ‘Well, best of luck.’
‘Thank you.’ She still looked concerned but touched too, Alex happy that he’d managed to redeem himself for once, make himself seem vaguely normal, human. Even so, he noticed the guy looking on with a bemused expression, probably itching to say something as soon as they walked away.
Alex even turned and looked after them as they headed toward Short Loan. They looked good together, and as he watched them he thought briefly of Natalie. Sometimes it seemed so recent, and he couldn’t work out how he’d transformed from one of those kids walking away into the person he was now - the time had been too short, the change too great.
He walked back to his car but when he got there he just sat for a while studying the bump in the passenger mirror. It looked pretty nasty, like a deformity, the part of it that wasn’t covered by his hair already beginning to bruise up badly. He felt okay but now that he’d seen it he decided to sit there for a while before driving home.
He thought about Rob, not so much about the fact he was dead, but what he might have said about his own death. Almost certainly he’d have put it down to chance, a regular roll of the dice in a war zone, and it was hard to imagine how it could have been anything else.
Two of Alex’s friends had died within the space of a few weeks, both in ways that appeared unfortunate but both a long way from being suspicious. If they hadn’t had the misfortune of being in the same car ten years before Alex would never have given it a second thought himself.
And if anything, it made him more determined that Rob had been right. Faking a drug overdose was one thing, plausible enough, but arranging to have someone blown up by a local militia in a war zone was a different story, the kind of thing only a conspiracy theorist would believe in. The fact was, Matt and Natalie weren’t in danger, and certainly neither of them were killers.
He started the car and pulled away. He needed to get home and eat and have a decent night’s sleep. The night ahead was out of his hands but he just felt if he could sleep, long and untroubled and dreamless, he’d begin to see everything in the right perspective, regain his balance again.
An untroubled sleep, not much to ask for but something that seemed beyond him. He woke in the early hours, uneasy at first but then relaxing, realizing he wasn’t in the middle of an attack. He was thirsty though, his mouth dry. Perhaps that was why he’d woken.
He got up without turning on the light and made his way downstairs. It didn’t matter that it was dark; he knew the way blind, stepping over the creaking stair, wanting to maintain the silence.
And he was glad he hadn’t turned on the lights because the downstairs was lit anyway, swimming in the unearthly glow of the streetlights coming in through the front windows. He was surprised they lit up the whole place as much as they did, giving it a strangely atmospheric quality, like a theatre set.
He walked into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. He shivered then, sensing that someone was behind him, the air stirring, like someone had crossed the hall behind him. He turned quickly but saw no one, just the empty orange glow. It felt like someone was there though. Putting the glass down, he walked back through, uneasy.
He looked into the lounge where the light was even brighter. Will was sitting in the armchair cutting things out of newspapers. He looked up briefly and smiled at Alex. Alex nodded back and Will said, ‘Why are you crying?’
He put his hand to his eyes, dry, and said, ‘I’m not crying. None of this happened.’
Will nodded and went back to his papers. The phone rang and Alex picked it up. There was a lot of noise at the other end, gunfire, distant explosions, and then an urgent voice, ‘She’s in the house, Alex. She’s in the house!’
‘Rob?’