He’d followed a main road in the opposite direction the bus had taken, but grown tired and eventually turned his face to a wooden fence surrounding a building site and there suffered a paroxysm of such contained rage that it had left him with a broken tooth and cuts on the palms of his hands. Clenching his jaws together and grinding his teeth, he’d felt the enamel snap on a tooth at the side of his mouth. His cheeks had filled with grit. But when the tooth snapped the tension had passed from his body, leaving him confused and expecting shockwaves of agony. But there was no pain and he’d decided against going to a dentist. He didn’t know where the dentists were in the city. He’d then noticed the little half-moons of blood on the inside of his palms, made by his own nails. It had been so long since he’d bitten them; his nails were like unpleasant, feminine claws. How could they have grown so much and he not noticed?
Trying to retrace the bus route and find a landmark, Frank became hopelessly disoriented. He went into a tacky women’s hairdressers, which was the only place that he’d been able to find that offered him any sense of familiarity, to ask for directions. Girls in heavy make-up had exchanged glances when he found himself unable to speak. He’d just stood and trembled before them. After throwing his arms into the air in silent exasperation, he’d left the shop, crimson with shame. Speech only returned to him at the kerb where he’d stood muttering. Some people had stared. A taxi had taken him home.
These things never used to happen to him, but he had a notion that the potential for such a slide had always been in place. In the back of the taxi he’d hidden his face inside the lapel of his overcoat and bitten his bottom lip until his eyes had brimmed with water.
Two days later, or it might have been three or even four, someone knocked on the front door, and for a long time too. So Frank had hidden by lying on the floor of the spare room. He’d heard voices outside, talking in the neighbour’s garden, and he’d known that they were trying to look through the back windows of the house.
For the rest of that afternoon he’d chain-smoked Silk Cut cigarettes and didn’t relax until it was dark outside and Coronation Street’s theme tune was booming through the living room. The thought of going out to buy food had made him feel nauseous, so he’d stopped tormenting himself with the idea of leaving the house.
He tried again to fix the broken cabinets to the kitchen walls, but only succeeded in making his fingers bleed. He’d gone upstairs to wash them, but when he arrived on the landing he couldn’t remember why he had gone upstairs. He went and lay down on the bed instead. And around him clouded the smell of perfume, old furniture, stale carpets and chip fat. The radiators had come on with a gurgle. He’d felt safe and closed his eyes.
Sometime in the night, Florrie came into the room on all fours and climbed onto the bed. She sat on Frank’s chest and pushed a thin, cold hand inside his mouth.