Leaning forward an inch he’s managed to pull his arms free and they’ve fallen to his sides. He tells himself this is to ease the numbness in his fingers, which is getting worse. It’s so bad that he almost doesn’t feel those fingers being pulled back, but when he realises what she’s doing and what she’s referring to, he jerks his hand away and lets out a groan.
‘What was it about that case in particular, eh, Nathan?’
He can hear a sudden intake of breath, and feel her shifting her weight on his legs.
‘Not me,’ he says, reading her discomfort. ‘I would never… I could never…’
‘Then what the fuck are we doing here?’ she asks, this time shifting the position of the knife.
‘Steven Fish’s murder took me somewhere I hadn’t been before,’ he says, squeezing his eyes even more tightly shut. ‘I had no control. No limits.’ He’s gasping for breath now and pressing his back into the wall. ‘I only had a glimpse, but even so it was almost impossible to escape from that mind. And when I finally had, I knew I needed a way to escape from my own.’
‘Have you lost control?’ says Katie, moving forward again.
He shakes his head over and over.
‘I want to believe you,’ she says. ‘I need to believe you. But you kept things from me before. And I know you’re keeping things from me now.’
He opens his eyes wide, surprised by just how close she is. At least it gives him something to focus on, beyond the numbness in his hands and the position of that knife. ‘I have nothing to do with these murders,’ he says. ‘I swear to you.’
‘But you are keeping secrets,’ she says, holding his gaze without blinking. ‘Things we’ve seen have meant something to you.’
‘I haven’t killed anyone!’ he says, matching her stare. ‘You have to know that. Surely all you have to do is look into my eyes and you can tell? Jesus, Katie, you know me. What does your instinct say?’
‘It’s gone,’ she says, softly. She blinks and turns away, and he follows her, taking in the cigarette burns and empty wine bottles on the floor beside him.
‘How? What could make you doubt that gift, doubt all those years together, doubt who you are?’
‘It’s who you made me.’
‘Rubbish. I just gave you belief. Who’s taken it away?’
She opens her mouth and then closes it again, lifting the weight from his legs and snatching the knife.
‘I’m not the only one with secrets, then,’ he says. Now she’s moved he can see the phone where he’d tossed it onto the floor after speaking to his brother. Katie stands with her back to it, and he tries to kick a pile of dirty washing over it, but she turns just before it disappears.
‘You’ve called someone?’
‘No,’ he says, quickly. ‘But I think I was about to. I haven’t had a phone in more than a year, and for a long time before that I would never have had one by my bed because when I woke lost and confused in the night I would try and call home.’
He used to think he was smarter than this, smarter than the criminals who would ramble on to hide a lie only to give away another truth. Home has certainly been playing on his mind – not the one in Scotland; that’s barely a home at all, just a place to hide away and wait – rather the place where he once had a family, where he wasn’t alone.
He’s tempted to tell her about his brother, to offer at least a little, but Katie’s own lack of certainty holds him back. For so long he’d lived for her belief. Once he’d taught her how to look, she’d seen the good in him as clearly as she’d seen the bad in others. It was only when he’d stood over that headless corpse, its end drawn out in so many agony-filled ways, feeling like he was standing on the edge of a limitless black hole, that he’d lost the strength to even act like he was going to be okay. And yet… and yet, now that they’re back together and she’s joined him in his crisis, he’s finding a different strength, ready to play another essential role.
‘I’m sorry for not showing you who I really was,’ he says. ‘But I’d been pretending for so long before I met you, with everybody I met, even with…’ His head drops, but he immediately lifts it back up, closing out the memories and moving on, just as this new, tougher version of himself he’s created would. ‘I thought it was the only way to hold on. Towards the end, though, I was starting to…’ His hands are free and curled in front of his face, as if trying to shape the feeling that’s taken hold of him: a feeling that can be described in a single, impossible-seeming word that he finally manages to push out. ‘Trust.’
Katie turns back to him, and he can see the hurt in her eyes. ‘We were so close,’ she says, with an aggression that he fully understands.
‘The closest I’ve ever been,’ he says. ‘But beyond all this superficial shit,’ he grabs the front of his borrowed T-shirt and flicks his head towards the room around them, ‘we do know the truth about ourselves. We will always have our own secrets. And we will always seek to uncover other people’s.’
‘Always?’ says Katie.
‘I don’t know about the future,’ he says, looking away. ‘I guess that’s been the problem all along. But I do know what I’ve done in the past. You don’t need to trust me fully, you just need to trust me enough for us to make this work. One more time.’
* * *
Ten minutes later and he’s sitting at the breakfast table finishing a second bowl of cornflakes. He looks around the tiny flat, watching Katie as she stands at the sink washing up dishes that have clearly been there for days. He notices the number of wine glasses too, several in pairs, dotted around the room.
‘Do you have friends over much?’
She spins quickly, almost dropping the dish she’s holding, wearing an expression that he takes to be guilt. ‘Why?’
‘It’s none of my business,’ he says, holding up his hands by way of apology. He lowers them and drags a well-chewed fingernail over the surface of the table, following a snaking groove, amazed at how personal this has suddenly become. ‘And given it’s only a couple of days, it’s probably best that we don’t—’
‘You weren’t the only one trying to forget about things,’ she says, cutting him off. ‘I just chose a more sociable route.’
He’s surprised to find his cheeks flush as she lowers her head and drags down her white shirt, the front of which has been splashed with soapy water. He wants to move on, to move away from this awkward situation, and so turns back to the small talk. ‘How’s your dad?’
Her shoulders slump, and this time she lets go of the plate in her hands. He hears it sink to the bottom of the water. Once again he knows he’s got it horribly wrong, making a mistake he would never have made before, back when he was switched on and tuned in, when he knew that stepping beyond the professional world was guaranteed to bring them both pain.
‘He’s been sick for a long time, long before you left, but it was one more thing I was blind to. This last year…’ Her shoulders drop further. ‘The deterioration has been so rapid, faster than the doctors could ever have imagined, like he’s given up. You remind me of him. When you’ve gone off to wherever it is you go. That’s why I can’t stand it. I can’t have you living on the other side of that wall. Not if we really do only have a couple of days.’
He instinctively looks at his wrist. It could almost be mistaken for a glance at his watch, to check the time, and in a way, that’s exactly what it is: a reminder that it’s running out. He flips the wrist over and stretches his arm across the table. He wants her to turn round, he wants her to take his hand, he wants to offer comfort, to convince her that she’s going to be okay, he wants to have some strength to share but, in the end, all he has is regret and the same old words that have haunted him for so long. So sorry to have left you alone.
‘I should have recognised his Alzheimer’s far earlier,’ says Katie. ‘At least then I could have said what I needed to while he still understood. I could have eased my conscience, made it easier for myself.’ She laughs again and shakes her head. ‘Easier.’
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
On this occasion, he can tell he has said the right thing because she turns towards him with half a smile, not seeming to care about the water dripping from her gloves.