I stepped forward out of the sunlight to let him have a good look at me before I ended his life.
Despite everything, I was shocked. He looked both younger and older. Younger, because he wore casual clothes – old jeans and a baggy black sweater with holes in the elbows – and older, because he was suffering. His pallor accentuated the browny-purple shadows around his eyes. His lips were thin and bloodless. Even as we stared at each other, colour surged across his face and then receded, leaving him even paler than before.
He reeled. Literally reeled – falling back against his workbench and knocking equipment to the floor.
A battered old sofa was set against one wall. I helped him across the workshop, a small spark of resentment adding itself to the bonfire of my fury. I was the one who was dead. Well, nearly dead. So why was he the one wobbling about like a fainting schoolgirl? On the other hand, I could see he’d been suffering for a very long time. At least I’d only been dead for an afternoon. He sat for a while with his eyes closed, breathing heavily.
I sat down myself. It had been another long day.
He opened his eyes.
I know he said, ‘Max,’ because his lips moved, but no sound came out. I nodded. Not in encouragement, but so that he would know who was about to splatter him all over his own workshop.
‘Yes,’ I said, tightly. ‘Max. Not Isabella.’
He closed his eyes again.
‘That won’t save you. Open your eyes.’
He did. Still dazed, he ran his eyes over my face. His lips moved and again, he said, ‘Max?’
I said nothing this time.
‘I … How? …’ I think it was all too much for him. He closed his eyes again.
I poked him. ‘Don’t go to sleep.’
That jolted his eyes open. He blinked a little, made a huge effort to pull himself together, and said, because in a crisis, the mind tends to fix on trivia, ‘What are you holding?’
I discovered I had been about to gut him from groin to gizzard with an old plastic dustpan. Blue.
‘Never mind that. Isabella?’
‘What?’
‘You said, “Isabella”.’
He was still confused.
‘Did I?’
I couldn’t keep it in any longer. ‘You couldn’t wait, could you? “Oh, my redhead’s dead. Never mind, I know where I can lay my hands on another. All cats look the same at night.” ’
He slapped me.
I hit him with the dustpan.
This was going well.
He sat up. ‘How could you think …? How could you think even for one minute that I …? What is the matter with you?’
‘The matter with me? I’m not the one shouting my current girlfriend’s name at my ex.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend. How could you think that? And who are you, anyway? What do you want?’
I was reaching boiling point.
‘You’re pretending you don’t know who I am? Well, I’m not bloody Isabella.’
‘Yes, I think we’ve established that. Do you want to continue through a list of people you’re not?’
‘Don’t you know me? Or don’t you want to know me?’
‘I know who you look like, but she’s dead. So just tell me. Who are you? What do you want?’
I suddenly saw things through his eyes. A stranger in his workshop. Actually, a blood-drenched madwoman clutching a blue dustpan.
The radio broke into “Things Can Only Get Better.”
I struggled, discarding words, phrases, explanations.
‘In my world, you died.’
It was the best I could do.
He said again, ‘Who are you?’ But this time in a completely different voice.
‘My name is Max.’
He seized both my arms and dragged me round to face him.
‘No. No, it’s not. She’s dead. Who are you?’
‘My name is Madeleine Maxwell. I work for St Mary’s. I was on assignment at Agincourt with Peterson. Everything went tits-up. I was stabbed. With a sword. I fell down. When I opened my eyes, I was in your flat upstairs. I’m sorry but I’ve made an awful mess on your carpet. If the blood doesn’t come out then you’re going to lose your deposit.’
He dragged his eyes away from my face and finally took in the fifteenth-century costume, which managed to be both stiff and soggy with blood.
‘That looks bad. Should I get an ambulance? Ring St Mary’s?’
I shook my head. ‘The wound is closed. I just need a bit of peace to recover.’
He dropped my arms and now moved to the far end of the sofa, distancing himself from me. I hadn’t expected jubilation, but horror, shock, disbelief, and fear were written all over his face. He didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do. My temper was subsiding. This really hadn’t been a good day and its events were beginning to catch up with me. I didn’t know what to do next. It had never occurred to me he might not be as pleased to see me as I was to see him. Once again, I was lost in an unfamiliar emotional maelstrom.
However, there’s a St Mary’s ritual for dealing with this sort of thing.
‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’