Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (read book txt) 📗

When I traced it back, I couldn’t quite work out how I’d even got to this point. Had I ever even liked this girl, really? Had I encouraged her friendship? I didn’t think I had. Yet somehow, she had become my problem. A problem I wasn’t sure how I was going to solve.

GREENWICH PARK

She has always hated meeting in the tunnel. She prefers to smell the grass, the earth, the moss. But the rain is coming too hard tonight. Besides, they don’t have much time.

The skies are heavy now, the tumbling clouds epic, the growl of thunder chasing people into their homes. The rain comes, scattering them like mice. She walks past the warm glow of other people’s houses.

She makes her way through the tunnel, through its concentric circles of light and shadow. She passes signs on the tunnel walls. S9, S11, S12. She doesn’t know what the numbers mean. The ceiling drips, and her footfalls echo north and south.

S19, S20, S24. She feels the pressure of the water overhead, the weight of it, the dampness, seeping through into the air. They usually meet by the bulb that flickers, insect-like, beside a sign that says ‘No Cycling’. As she nears it, the sudden bump of a bicycle over a storm drain makes her jump. It passes, its light flashing into the darkness. She carries on.

When she arrives, he is pacing, breathing heavily, eyes wild. He is angry, she can tell. He lifts her, roughly, pushes her against the wall. The white subway tiles are cold on her back, his breath hot on her neck. She feels weightless.

They said they wouldn’t do it again. But now the landscape has changed, the horizon shifted. Their doors are closing, sooner than expected. The thunder comes again. They need to start making plans. He feels frightened. Of her, of them, the thunder, both. Frightened to go. Frightened to stay. Frightened of what they might do.

On her way home, the thunder has stopped, and something in the atmosphere is altered. She walks quickly, past the doors in the park walls. She wonders who uses those doors. She has never seen them open or close. Autumn leaves are gathered at their feet, like rusty hands spread wide. The bricks darken in the rain.

The next day the birds are circling over the park, sweeping across the sky like iron filings. They are gathering their numbers, flying south for the winter. It was him that pointed it out to her, this melancholy wheeling. Now she can’t not see it. She can’t not think about it. Wishes they could go with them. She wishes they had gone already. She fears it might be too late.

And now it is, and now they are here. Left behind in a world without birds, to face the cold.

37 WEEKS

HELEN

I am locking Monty in our bedroom at the top of the house. He stares up at me miserably as I set his food and water bowls out beside the wardrobe, a litter tray next to the door. He hates being shut up here. But the last time Charlie brought friends along to one of our parties, one of them thought it would be funny to singe his whiskers with a cigarette lighter. I’m not taking any chances.

Even though I can’t imagine anything I feel less like doing at the moment, I somehow ended up agreeing to throw this bonfire party. Katie kept going on about it, saying how it was her first weekend off in ages, and how nice it would be to have fireworks at the house again, to do something to celebrate the baby coming, even something low-key. To fill the house with lovely memories again. I told her I wasn’t sure. The building work is nowhere near finished. The house looks a mess.

‘No one minds that,’ she said. ‘Anyway, that’s the perfect time to have a party, because it doesn’t matter if things get ruined.’

‘I thought you said it would be low-key?’

‘It will. But you want it to be a party, don’t you?’

And then before I knew it, Charlie was talking about bringing his decks and some friends from the club. I made him promise not to invite too many. I told Daniel I didn’t want the house any more ruined than it already was. But weirdly, Daniel seemed keen on the idea of a party.

‘I think Katie just thought it would be nice,’ Daniel said. ‘An old-fashioned Bonfire Night party. Like your mum and dad used to do.’

‘Mummy and Daddy used to do toffee apples and sparklers and sausages, Daniel,’ I groaned. ‘Not Charlie and his idiotic druggy friends smashing up the house.’

‘It won’t be that bad. Give your brother a break.’

‘You know what he’s like, Daniel! Say the word party to Charlie and he starts inviting everyone he’s ever met.’

I thought back to our engagement drinks, when we’d first moved into the house. I’d hoped for a small, intimate gathering, a few jugs of Pimm’s on the lawn. I was secretly pregnant, anyway, so I wasn’t drinking. Then Charlie had turned up, a whole gang of friends in tow, and insisted on starting a game of something called beer pong in the garden. By the end of the night the house was littered with drunken corpses. We’d had to have a whole section of carpet replaced.

Daniel smiled and shrugged, gesturing out of the window. ‘We could do with having a bonfire anyway, don’t you think? We’ve got all those cuttings in the garden. And fireworks are always fun.’

I cradled my mug of tea in my hands, letting the warmth seep into my fingers, and gazed out at the wasteland of our garden. I couldn’t make out why Daniel was so keen to do it. I couldn’t understand why he thought all the cuttings needed to be burned, instead of just put in the garden waste bin. I hated the thought of people in