A Chance Encounter by Rae Shaw (e manga reader TXT) 📗

machine, which was cold. She swept them into her palm and picked up where he had left off. He was talking, somewhere, his voice carrying up from below. She was surprised he managed to find reception down there.

She hovered near the cellar door.

Mark spoke hoarsely, as close to tears as a man might come and not shed them. ‘I’m not a coward, or impotent. And I’m sorry Ellen was the one to tell you.’

He might have slept next to Julianna undisturbed, but come the morning, he had woken to the persistent trills of his mother’s texts. Ellen had broken the silence, not him.

‘But what she said is true. He’s guilty, Mum.’

Only his mother could ruin the start of a day. Julianna understood what was going on. What Deidre lacked was guile; the cunning of an intellectual mind. A sledgehammer was Deidre's approach. According to Mark, her neighbours and friends would never know this side of her. They were party to her kindness, the sweet wife of a wronged man, who popped around for tea and left hours later, her bruised ego rescued by their sympathy.

‘Mum, it’s the truth,’ Mark said, hoarsely. ‘He took two knives with him, he planted the other. It was pre-meditated.’

Mark’s patter of pacing feet stopped; Julianna edged away from the door, keeping her shadow out of the stairwell.

‘You knew he was in with the crooks. What did you expect? You can’t go on thinking he’s going to be found innocent. You’ll have to go see him and tell him to change his plea, take the advice of the parole board, and hope he gets out on licence eventually.’

An unwelcome wave of nausea lodged itself in her stomach. Mark was probably feeling much worse.

‘An alibi?’ he said, despairingly.

Deidre wasn't seeking a simple denial of guilt, she was suggesting perjury.

‘Mum, that isn’t going to work; he argued for self-defence. He admitted he was there.’ There was a soft thump. He had landed a gentle blow.

The punch bag was strung up and ready to be battered. Her therapy was in his easy reach, and not hers. She hadn’t realised how enticing it might be to somebody else, and she had spoken so often of her need to the point Mark had questioned whether it was appropriate – what if she lost control and used something else?

‘Mum. That is it.’ He hammered out the words into the icy basement. Down there he could shout, believing Julianna was asleep upstairs. ‘He’s guilty! If I can accept the truth, you can too. I’m not going to see my father again. He lied to both of us. I’m finished. Done. I’ve got a life and I'm not wasting it on him. Or you.’

She contemplated whether he wanted rescuing, but down there wasn’t the best place to comfort him. It was horribly like a prison cell.

Something smashed, the impact of an object against a harder surface. What that was, she guessed, had been in his hand. The aggressive thump of fist against leather was a familiar sound. She winced; she was tempted to call out and warn him, but he would find out she had been eavesdropping. Instead, she removed herself back upstairs and hid under the bedcovers, pretending to sleep.

He detoured round the bed and slipped into the bathroom. Rising for the second time, Julianna returned to the kitchen and continued the quest to make coffee, the one he had abandoned so furiously. While the machine bubbled, she descended into the cellar. The light illuminated glittering pieces of something shiny… little shards of broken plastic.

She placed the coffee mugs on the bedside table, and while he remained occupied, she rifled through his trouser pockets hunting for the rest of the phone. The screen was shattered, the casing badly cracked. The shower door creaked. She dropped the damaged mobile back in his pocket.

He stuck his head round the bathroom door, and smiled, gloriously, as if nothing had happened downstairs. ‘Hi. Mmm, coffee.’

‘You're up early.’

‘You don't mind, do you? I went into the cellar and punched the shit out of that thing.’ His knuckles were red. He had found out the hard way.

‘You should have bound them.’ Why the pain? A stupid question because she used it in the same way.

‘I realise that now.’ He examined his hands.

‘I'll get you some ice.’ Just before she reached the door, she glanced over her shoulder. He wiped the condensation off the surface of the mirror.

She froze to the spot. He held the razor to his neck. It shook for a second, then he shifted it up higher, to his upper lip. ‘Bitch,’ he growled. ‘Bitches, the pair of them. Well, screw them.’ He scraped the razor along his jawline and rinsed the blade under the tap. Unperturbed, he smudged the spot of blood along the hardened edge of his chin.

Julianna retreated, carrying with her a bitter taste, and it wasn’t coffee. Alex had called her a stupid bitch when she had found out about him. He had landed on the pavement and screamed abuse at her. The difference this time was blame: Mark's family had tipped him into a darker place, and it was getting harder to follow him there. She wasn't sure if she wanted to anymore. The thought of giving up on him, which she would revisit throughout that day, brought with it a realisation. Her feelings toward Mark had changed.

~ * ~

Julianna said nothing to Mark about his mobile, and in turn he provided no explanation for his assault on the punch bag. She applied ice to his knuckles and the pair of them danced around the reasons. Short on time, they drank scalding coffee and then ate toast in the car. Her clapped out vehicle was one of the few allowed in the building’s underground exclusive car park. As soon as they walked into the