Faith

by Peter James

  Now it was good just to get the feel of the place. Tomorrow he would return on his mountain bike, wearing a crash hat, dark glasses and smog mask and he would take a closer look for any surveillance cameras. More than likely there were none here, it was too much of a backwater, but he wasn't leaving that to chance.

  He took another drag on the cigarette and turned up the music even more, feeling happy. This afternoon the dealer had accepted his deposit cheque of five hundred pounds on the Subaru Impreza, and in a few days he would be driving around in it. Uncle Ronnie always paid on the nail, and he was depending on this. Regardless of the deposit, the dealer refused to hold it beyond Monday.

  And tonight he was going to get laid. Sevroula was a Turkish girl who had danced for him a month ago at his table at Stringfellow's. They had slept together every night for a fortnight, then her husband had come home on leave from his oil platform in the North Sea. He had flown back up there this morning.

  Sevroula had told Spider he was the best kisser in the world.

  In just a couple of hours he would pick her up from the staff entrance of the night-club. Maybe they'd stop and have a drink somewhere. Then he'd take her back to his flat, turn down the lights, tweak up the volume on the sound system, do some lines of Uncle Ronnie's finest coke. Then they'd get animal with each other.

  He lit another Marlboro and took a second cruise past Cabot's front door. Darkness. Seclusion. Fire-escapes. Only four storeys high.

  Chicken shit.

  61

  A narrow strip of sunlight strobed on Faith's face through a tiny chink in the curtains. She woke smiling, her body flooded with warmth. They'd been shopping in the Portobello Road, having a good time, Ross and herself, laughing at a grotesque antique demon on a stall that was several hundred years old and made of plastic. They'd broken out into helpless laughter. They were hugging each other, barely able to stand up they were laughing so much. Life was so good between them, she could feel this incredible love they had for each other, that nothing, nothing could ever diminish.

  Then, reality closed over her, like the cold waters of the deep. And the long, slimy tendrils of reality wound tight around her ankles, pulling her further down still into a darkness blacker than any night.

  Five days ago the future had stretched ahead of her, limitless, like those first few days in childhood after school broke up for the summer, when the holidays stretched further ahead than the mind could think. Then suddenly they were coming to an end, and she would find herself ticking away those final days before the new term began and the nights started drawing in. She had that end-of-summer-holiday feeling now, only worse.

  She lay wondering if she would ever see another summer, wondering if she should make a list of all the things she wanted to do while she was still well enough to do them.

  She shivered. What were those things? She wanted to see Alec grow up, get married, have kids, to be a grandmother—

  She wanted to go to Peru, India, Australia, to see the terracotta army in China. To Jerusalem. To—

  Tears rolled down her cheeks into the pillow. I can't think like this. Can't admit it, have to be positive. Oliver is going to cure me. He's going to get rid of this thing. I feel fine today, I really do.

  Outside, life went on. People came and went from this planet. There were creatures around long before man, tiny organisms, microscopic single-cell amoebae, bacteria, plankton, ants, beetles. And she had read they would be around long after the human race had died out. Some breeds of cockroach could live happily in post-nuclear fallout. They weren't aware of humans, didn't need them and wouldn't miss them when they were gone. We wouldn't even be history, she thought.

  And these kidney-bean shaped creatures inside her that she had seen through Oliver's microscope, these quantum-sized living organisms that were spreading through her gut and her nervous system, that were using her as a living carcass in their food chain, these Lendt creatures, they and their progeny would be around long after she had gone. After everyone had gone.

  She listened to the birds chirruping outside, and something suddenly felt unreal about them. Nothing in her life felt totally real any more.

  Inside the house there was another sound. Grating voices, constant peaks and troughs of sound-effects and music. Television cartoons always sounded to her as if she was hearing them through a badly tuned radio with the volume too high. She could hear one now, faintly, a fuzz of sound that made it through all six walls separating their bedroom from Alec's.

  Which meant that Alec was awake.

  It was Saturday. She could see from the brightness of the sun on the curtains that it was a fine summer morning. The clock by her bed said seven fifteen. Ross was stirring and she did a quick calculation. He was playing golf at nine, which meant he had to leave here by half past eight. Which meant he would need to be downstairs, having breakfast, by eight fifteen at the latest. He would need to shower and shave so he would have to be out of bed by eight.

  Which left a forty-five-minute window.

  Downstairs there was a flurry of barking from Rasputin. Probably the papers arriving — it was too early for the postman. After a minute or so he quietened.

  Now Ross was moving. She breathed in and out steadily, the way someone in deep sleep would breathe, eyes shut tight.

  Please don't touch me. Don't start groping me, I don't want to have to make love to you.

  He grunted, then rolled over, and she heard the clinking sound of the steel strap of his Rolex, and knew, from years of sleeping beside him, that he was now looking at his watch and that in a few moments he would take a sip of water from the glass beside him. And she knew what would be in his mind.

  'Faith?' Just a whisper at first, then louder, more insistent. 'Faith? Are you awake, darling?'

  She lay still, facing away from him, tight and foetal. His fingers began tracing a line down her back, between her shoulder-blades.

  Leave me alone.

  'Darling? Faith?'

  Now silence. She could hear his breathing above her own. The bed moved, feet padded across the carpeted floor. She heard him in the bathroom, first the hard stream of urine, then the sound of a tap running and the brushing of teeth, the click of the door, and the soles of his Bally slippers slapping along the landing and down the stairs. Excited barks from Rasputin in the kitchen, then louder barking as Ross opened the door for him and he rushed outside.

  And she knew that, in a few minutes, Ross would be coming back upstairs, carrying a cup of tea with a freshly picked flower lying in the saucer, and there would be no staying asleep then and no way out of his advances.

  She tried to go back to sleep but that was impossible. Instead, she started running through a list of everything to be sorted out for tonight. Twelve for dinner. Mixed Italian hors d'oeuvres starter of Parma ham, melon, tomato, avocado, olives, mozzarella with Ciabatta from the little Italian delicatessen in Brighton. She could tick those items off. Then salmon en croute — using filo pastry — with asparagus grilled with Parmesan. New potatoes. Tick. Peas. Tick. Then she went through her checklist for the pudding ingredients. Then the fruit salad. Tick.

  She worried that she didn't have enough cheese, or Bath Olivers. Ross only allowed her to serve Bath Olivers with cheese, nothing else.

  He was coming into the bedroom now. She heard the clink of a cup rattling in a saucer, the click of the door closing, the swish of his silk dressing-gown. The cup being placed close on her table, inches from her face. The scent of a rose. The rustle of newspapers.

  A tiny pulse tugged inside her throat and she tensed even more, waiting for the mattress to sag, the bedclothes to move. To her surprise, they didn't.

  She heard running water in the bathroom. The radio came on and the shower door clicked shut.

  She opened her eyes, and saw a yellow rose lying in the saucer. Maybe it was finally getting through to Ross that he needed to be gentler with her because she was ill.

  But that worried her even more.

  She
sat up in bed.

  A curl of steam rose from her tea. The Daily Mail, with several bite marks from Rasputin and a small amount torn from the bottom of the front page, lay neatly folded on the duvet beside her. The headlines, a little blurred, talked of peace in Bosnia and of the forthcoming wedding between Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones.

  She reached across, picked up the jar containing her contact lenses, took out each lens and inserted it.

  Much better. Instantly the room and the newsprint were pin-sharp. She blinked a few times. The first few moments with the lenses were often uncomfortable, and today they felt worse than usual, making her eyes water — probably because she had been crying, she realised.

  Big speculation in the paper about what Sophie was going to wear for the wedding, and a comment about the vows she was going to take. She would promise to obey her husband but said she was determined not to walk in his shadow. Faith admired her courage. She had learned that to be under a husband's shadow ultimately corroded your spirit.

  Then, as she read the next line, all the words slipped off the page and she found herself looking at plain white newsprint.

  It did not even occur to her this was weird. She merely looked around her on the white duvet, which was now a dazzling white, almost too bright to look at, to try to find where the little black words had all gone. But she couldn't see them.

  They're going to mark the duvet.

  She picked up the newspaper and all the rest of the words slid off the pages like raindrops from a polished surface, and fell in a shower around her.

  'Ross,' she said, 'there's something very strange —'

  The walls of the room rippled like curtains in a breeze. She watched them, intrigued. 'Ross!' she called out. 'Ross, come and have a look at —'

  Something crawled through her hair. With a shudder, she ran her hands through it, but it was still there. Not just one creature, but several. They were crawling down her back now, too. She swung her legs out of the bed in panic, struck the bedside table. The cup, saucer, yellow rose all fell to the floor in slow motion. The rose began to melt as if it was dissolving in acid.

  'Ross —'

  And now, as she stepped on the carpet, the floor tilted away from her and she fell forward, plunging down into an empty lift shaft, screaming. 'Rossssss… Rossssssss!'

  Suddenly she was floating on the ceiling, looking down at the floor. She could see a woman spreadeagled, naked, blonde hair pooled around her head, a brown stain near her feet with a tiny yellow flower melting away at the centre of it. It was herself, she realised.

  She was looking down from the ceiling at her own body on the floor.

  I'm dead.

  'Ross!' she screamed. 'Ross, help me, I'm dead, I'm dead.'

  He was in the shower and couldn't hear, she realised, her panic worsening. 'Ross! Help me!'

  I'm dead.

  There were strands of carpet in front of her face, she was breathing in the smells of fabric and dust. Faintly, through the wall, she could hear the thrumming of the power shower. Then she was looking down again, from the ceiling. Whimpering, she said, 'Ross, please help me.'

  Never going to see Alec again. Get Oliver someone, please get Oliver, he'll know bow to bring me back—

  A change of sound. The shower switched off, then the click of the door, and then with strange fascination she watched Ross coming out of the bathroom, striding in slow motion, dripping wet, towel around his midriff. Watched him kneel beside her, cradling her head in his hands.

  Help me, Ross. My heart has stopped.

  'Ross — please help me.'

  If Ross can revive me I will go back down into my body and if he doesn't I'm going to drift away, further away.

  The ceiling was pressing down on her back. She was feeling shut in, claustrophobic. Ross's lips were moving. Reading them, she could see he was calling her name, looking frantic.

  But she couldn't hear him.

  62

  Ross, holding her wrist, felt anxiously for her pulse. It was strong, steady, a little fast but that was fine.

  Relieved, he looked at his watch: 7.48. Making a mental log of the time, he worked his arms underneath her, lifted her up and laid her on the bed. He moved the pillows away to ensure that her head was tilted well back, keeping her airways open, and checked inside her mouth for anything that might choke her.

  Her eyes were open but unfocused, pupils dilated. He cursed.

  Given her too damned much.

  In a voice that was slow and slurred she said, 'Ro-oss — I can see you.'

  'Good.'

  'I… I…' Her voice tailed off.

  He sat on the bed, watching her.

  'I'm up here,' she said. 'I'm up here, I can see — I —'

  'What can you see?'

  Her eyes rolled, as if they had become detached from their muscles; the pupils disappeared and he was staring at the whites. She was losing consciousness.

  Holding her pulse again he said, 'Faith?'

  A small, frightened voice now. 'What's happening, Ross?'

  He kissed her forehead. 'You're going to be fine, my darling. You're just having a little turn from your illness.'

  'Don't leave me.'

  'I won't.'

  'You — you have to play — golf this morning.'

  'It doesn't matter, they can play without me.'

  'I'm spoiling your morning.'

  'I'm with you. That's all that matters to me.'

  'We —' she said.

  'We what, darling?'

  'Need —'

  'What do we need?'

  She was silent.

  Ross checked her pulse again. Her eyes were darting in all directions. Then they rolled upwards again and the pupils disappeared. Her eyes closed.

  'Faith?' He pinched the flesh on her forearm, but there was no reaction. He checked her pulse; it was fine.

  Twenty minutes passed. He sat, holding her wrist, monitoring her pulse all the time, not daring to leave her.

  'Cheese,' she said, her eyes springing open. 'We need cheese.'

  'Are you hungry?'

  In a deadpan voice she said, 'You're so funny, Ross. You're so funny, you make me laugh and you make me just keep on laughing.'

  Then she turned her head and stared hard at him. Stared with eyes that were focused yet sightless. He looked away, and as he did so she said, 'You're going to kill me, aren't you, Ross?'

  'Why do you say that?'

  'Oscar Wilde said every man kills the thing he loves.'

  'Oscar Wilde was a turd burglar. I don't think a man who sodomised small boys is qualified to talk about love.'

  'But you will kill me,' she said. 'You'd prefer to kill me than lose me.'

  'I'm not going to kill you or lose you. I'm going to make you better, darling, we're going to beat this thing inside you.'

  There was a long silence. Ross looked at his watch again. Another fifteen minutes elapsed. Then Faith said, 'I want to be back in my body, Ross, I don't like it up here. I'm so scared. Please don't let them take my body until I'm back inside it. You won't, will you?'

  'Of course I won't.'

  'You have to tell me what cheese to get.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'For tonight.'

  She kept having lucid flashes, he noticed, and this was good. It was another hour and a half before the signs were clear that the drug was beginning to wear off.

  It was almost noon before Faith was stable enough to go down to the kitchen to start preparing dinner for that evening. Even then, Ross was nervous of leaving her alone, and he didn't think she was yet in a safe state to drive. He took her to the supermarket himself. Standing by the cheese counter, waiting their turn, with the numbered ticket in her hand, Faith turned to him and said, shakily, 'Can you explain what happened to me this morning, Ross?'

  'It's the disease advancing because you're not taking the pills,' he said. 'You must start taking them again.'

  As soon as they got home Ross made her take
two capsules. Then he left her in the kitchen and went upstairs. Jules Ritterman and his wife were coming to dinner tonight. And Dr Michael Tennent, a psychiatrist who had his own radio show. And another psychiatrist, David DeWitt. The perfect audience. Not to mention the Chief Constable of Sussex and a High Court judge.

  He locked the bathroom door, opened the cabinet and took out the Calvin Klein box. He would have a drink with Faith before the guests arrived, as they always did, to put themselves in a party mood.

  By his reckoning, just a quarter of the dose he gave her this morning should suffice.

  63

  The first symptom is prolonged nausea — the patient usually feels this for between two and three months. Increasing disorientation with delusions of persecution and night terrors follow. Terminal features include fluctuating levels of consciousness and hallucinations. Then a gradual loss of motor-control functions.

  * * *

  Ross had gone to the golf course to play a quick nine holes, then he was collecting Alec from a birthday party. It was half past three, and he wouldn't be back for at least another hour.

  Faith, glad to have the house to herself, had snatched a break from her preparations in the kitchen to sit down at Ross's computer and look up the symptoms of her disease on the Net again.

  'Terminal features…' she read again, with deep discomfort.

  She'd had the first symptom, prolonged nausea — or at least recurring nausea. Not necessarily the second symptom, though. She'd been having bad dreams but not actual night terrors. But this morning she had definitely had a psychotic hallucination. And the sensation of being out of her body was still scaring her now. Was that what death was like?

  A fly batted against the window. She opened the window to let it out and savoured the smell of freshly cut grass. Then she logged off and sat for some while in Ross's leather chair, reflecting gloomily on what was happening to her. She was deteriorating. The disease was progressing. Destroying her.

  What chance do I really have?

  She took her mobile phone from its hiding place in the bottom of her handbag, pulled on her Barbour, and walked out through the french windows. Rasputin barged past her, ran across the wide flagstoned terrace, then waited.