‘I didn’t mean to make you feel bad,’ he said softly.
Alex could hardly tell what the noise was that Susie made, but he thought it was meant to be a laugh. ‘Well, that’s great. That’s just lovely. Everything’s fine, then.’
He moved towards her again, suppliant, almost crawling, and put his hands on her knees. ‘Susie-Paul. Baby sister. You know I never mean to hurt you. I’m sorry. I’m a bad person. I’m sorry.’
‘You’re not bad, Derek.’ She wiped her smeared eyes and lowered her head again to his. ‘You don’t have to apologize.’
‘I love you, baby.’
‘I know. I know.’
Alex didn’t think that he’d moved; he hardly thought that he’d breathed. But he must have done something, because Derek’s head lifted suddenly and he glanced down the hill.
‘You brought a person with you.’
‘He’s my friend.’
‘I don’t like that.’
‘Well, tough luck,’ said Susie.
Derek sat up and frowned towards Alex. ‘I don’t know why you have to involve other people.’
‘Because other people matter to me. You just have to live with that.’
‘It’s really not safe,’ said Derek, shaking his head in disapproval. ‘I’ve told you that before. These are not safe people.’
Alex tried to catch Susie’s eye, not knowing if he should go back down the hill.
‘Anyway,’ said Susie. ‘None of this is why I’m here. We need to find you a proper place to live.’
‘This is better than where I was before.’
Susie looked around the underpass. ‘You know, honest to God, it’s probably not much worse. But the rooming house did at least have some heating.’
‘People tried to hurt me there.’
‘What I want, what I hope is that we can find you a better place. There’s some money from Mom’s will, it’s not a lot but… ’
The change was like an electric shock, so fast Alex was dumb-founded. Derek leapt up, his fingers reaching and convulsing like snakes, his voice a high screech.
‘You bitch! You fucking bitch!’ He grabbed at her sleeve, shaking her arm hard, but Susie didn’t seem frightened; she dropped her head in resignation and wept but didn’t move away. ‘You think you can trick me that way?’ he shouted, still shaking her arm, his other hand moving clawlike near her face. ‘You think I’m an idiot? You fucking bitch!’
‘Shut up, Derek,’ said Susie quietly.
‘Get out of here! Get out!’ He pulled away from her and hurled himself back into the tent, zipping the flap closed. ‘Go away now, bitch!’ Susie buried her head in her knees, sobbing, Derek screaming from the tent, ‘Go away! Go away!’
And Alex moved, scrambling up the slope towards her and taking her wrist. ‘Susie. Come.’ She shook her head, waving him away with her other hand. ‘Come on, come on, honey,’ whispered Alex.
‘Go away, go away, go away!’ screamed Derek.
‘He isn’t going to hurt me.’
‘I’m not afraid of him hurting you. Honey, come with me.’ Alex pulled her up and away from the tent, out from beneath the underpass, crawling with her, up the last steep slope to a level field, Derek howling, ‘Go away, go away!’ below them. They came out at the edge of the railway track, and she staggered and fell against him on the narrow outcrop before the rail. They stood in the snow, staring at each other, out of breath, Susie hanging on to his arms, Derek still shouting below them.
‘I have to go back,’ she said.
‘What the hell do you think you’re going to do? Drag him out?’
‘Not like this. I can’t leave like this.’ She had barely taken half a step onto the plunging slope before she slipped, skidding down on her side and grabbing at a thorny branch, landing on her knees, Alex thought. But he couldn’t really tell, she was in darkness now, hardly visible.
‘Derek,’ she called, and Derek screamed, wordless, a long keening wail. ‘I’m going now,’ Susie yelled above the noise. ‘Derek, I will come back. We will work this out.’ Alex was standing uncertainly on the tiny strip of snow between the track and the downslope, listening for trains. ‘Goodbye, Derek,’ shouted Susie, and he tried to make out the shape of her as she fought her way up the hill one more time. As soon as he could see her clearly, he grabbed her arm and hurried her across the tracks into the field beyond, then stopped, uncertain what to do next.
‘Where are we?’ she panted.
‘Oh God, I don’t know.’ Car lights were moving below them, an arc of highway surrounding the dark wedge of the hill, a few bright windows in the apartment towers across the valley. ‘Bayview. That must be Bayview.’ He moved towards the lights, reaching the verge of another steep hill where brush and thistles as tall as Susie’s head rose out of the snow, and he held her tight to his chest and slid downwards, a controlled fall through dry branches towards the gravel shoulder. The world mostly visible again, he stared at the passing cars, trying to orient himself, to understand where he was.
‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘I think I know how to get out of here.’
There was a traffic light about twenty feet up the shoulder, and it took them across Bayview onto Pottery Road. And on the bend of Pottery Road, at three in the morning, there was a man selling roses from plastic buckets, a thick luminescent green necklace wound around his forehead, glowing pink and yellow bracelets lining his arms, his piles of roses interspersed with flashing red artificial flowers. He looked at Alex and Susie hopefully as they came in his direction. ROSES $5 written on the buckets in black marker.
The thin sidewalk was intermittent; they had to walk on the shoulder most of the way, past the glowing man and up the road, across the Don River and beneath another underpass, to the foot of a hill. On their left side Alex saw a dreamlike array of wooden ponies, floodlit beneath a yellow billboard declaring the place to be Fantasy Farm. Smaller signs admonished Fantasy Farm Is Private Property, and Please Do Not Climb On The Antique Carriage. The ponies reared and pranced between pools of darkness.
On the right side was a proper sidewalk, protected from the road by a concrete divider, on which someone had sprayed the word FEAR in black paint. He stepped onto the pavement, weak with relief. ‘We can follow this street up to Broadview,’ he said. ‘When we get to Broadview we’ll be back in the real world.’
‘I’m so tired, Alex,’ said Susie, who hadn’t spoken since the traffic light.
‘I know.’ He put his arm around her again. ‘It isn’t far. You’ll be okay.’ But it was up another hill, and he was tired as well, too tired. He couldn’t stop and get out his glucometer here, but climbing hills in the middle of the night would be driving his sugar down badly; he needed carbohydrates before a hypo set in.
They made it to the top of the hill, and it was Broadview and Mortimer. There were perfectly normal small houses, and a dental clinic, and rows of little strip malls on either side of the street, the stores locked for the night. There had to be someplace that was open, he thought, seriously worried now about his blood sugar. Anyplace. And yes, there was a lit building about a block away.
‘Let’s go that way,’ he said, and got close enough to see that it was something called the Donut Wheel Diner – perfect, he would be all right.