by Neil Cross
He said: ‘I just have to wait and see.’
A long silence fell between them. A dark cloud passed over the pale sun. The room dimmed, then fluoresced with an abrupt, shadowless light so bright it seemed to hum like a wire.
When they spoke, it was at the same time.
He deferred to her, but it seemed she’d changed her mind about what to say.
With a flick of the hand, she brushed the fringe from her eyes. Holloway saw the ring on her third finger.
He swallowed.
‘So,’ he said. ‘You took the plunge, then.’
She examined the ring as if she’d forgotten it was there.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘New Year. In Barbados.’
He smiled.
‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘And how is your husband?’
She smiled back at him. It was a good smile, happy and tender. It made him ache for all the years that had gone into it.
‘Adrian’s well,’ she said. ‘He sends his best wishes. He says get well soon.’
‘Tell him I’m trying.’
She unlaced her hands and patted his knee.
‘All right,’ she said.
‘He’s good,’ Holloway said. ‘He’s a good man.’
‘I know.’
‘Of course you do. And what about Dan?’
‘His wife’s ill,’ said Kate. ‘I think that’s his main concern.’
‘Yeah,’ said Will. ‘Of course.’
He didn’t know what to do about Weatherell.
‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘He’s OK. He’s fine. He knows about—your breakdown. Or whatever. He can’t quite believe you thought he was to blame—’
‘I don’t think I did,’ said Will. ‘Not really.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Well.’
There was no polite way for him to break off the conversation. He could hardly pretend to have somewhere to go. But she knew him well. She stood, tucking a lock of hair behind an ear. She gathered her coat and handbag. She folded the coat over the crook of her arm.
She said: ‘I still don’t know what happened. Not really.’
He smiled.
‘Nor do I,’ he said. ‘Not really.’
He remembered an optical illusion he’d seen as a child: a drawing of a young Victorian woman, seen in three-quarter profile, wearing a wide-brimmed hat adorned with an ostrich feather. On second glance, the drawing became a leering, hooknosed witch seen in profile. Then the witch became a girl again. The drawing was both, but only one at a time. And when the eye was focusing, there came a second when it was neither.
She smiled.
She said: ‘Even if you did know, you wouldn’t tell anybody.’
A number of pillows were braced against the small of his back, supporting him.
He said: ‘Would you mind?’
She helped him lean forward, and one by one she took the pillows out, punched them into shape and replaced them behind him. She helped him to lie back.
She fussed efficiently with the edges and folds of the bedding.
He said: ‘Leave that. Don’t worry.’
When she looked up, he saw she was about to cry.
He said: ‘Come on, now. Come on.’
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
She said: ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Come on, now. Do I look that bad?’
She laughed and blew a bubble of snot from one nostril. She nodded and that made him laugh and that made her cry. She rooted around in her handbag. She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose.
He smiled. She laughed and sobbed at the same time.
Something had changed between them.
She sat again. She moistened a corner of the handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. Then she took a mirror-compact from her bag and began to reapply her make-up.
He watched her. She held up the compact, tilted her head back and pulled a face, making a long O of her mouth. With a few deft sweeps of a brush shaped like a tiny fir tree, she applied mascara. She patted a sponge into the compact and applied foundation to her face in the proficient, business-like fashion he’d first seen more than twenty years ago, when she was only a girl.
Then, with quick, circular movements of her fingertips she blended the foundation along her jawline. She closed the compact in one hand—it made a convincing snap—then replaced it in the handbag. She took out a bottle of perfume and spritzed her wrists and neck. Applying perfume was something she always did after crying.
Looking at her now, he realized she probably didn’t even know it.
She put the bottle of perfume back in the bag. The room had filled with a scented mist that caught the light from the window.
‘Right,’ she said. She brushed her skirt flat across her thighs, then stood.
She bent over to kiss his brow.
The perfume mist had settled on her hair.
She said: ‘Look after yourself.’
‘You, too,’ he said.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring Caroline.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Give her my love.’
She nodded.
‘Make sure you eat,’ she said. ‘Keep your strength up. Call us if you need anything.’
Us.
He kept his eyes open to see if she paused in the doorway. But their days of pausing in doorways were long gone, and that was OK. He listened to her footsteps echo in the corridor, grow fainter. He could have tapped their rhythm from memory. The thought offered a kind of contentment. He heard the squeak of the heavy, swinging doors. Their black rubber skirts brushed along the hospital lino.
Later, he sat on the edge of the bed and watched the green sliver of municipal park. It was just visible over the ranks of parked cars, whose roofs were still beaded with raindrops. The sunlight warmed his cheek. He heard cars on the nearby road. A distant radio.
He watched people. They strolled or walked, sometimes ran. They were too distant to see clearly. Sometimes they were accompanied by dogs: dark, fast-moving specks that buzzed like houseflies.
He thought about Jack Shepherd. He wondered if a man could dream his own death.
Sometimes, the events that brought him here seemed uncomplicated; everything linked to everything else in a clear sequence of cause and effect. Then his mind lost focus. Sequence and causation gave way to an older, chaotic pattern, at whose complexity he could only grasp, to whose arcane energies and unknown conjunctions he remained subordinate.
But sometimes those connections corroded and fell away, and all that remained was what had happened.
And then he was happy.
Acknowledgements
To anybody interested in the frontiers of New Age folly, I recommend Damian Thompson’s The End of Time. From this fine and funny book I borrowed much of Rex Dryden’s theology as it appears in Chapter 5. If it stinks, that’s probably because it originated with Paco Rabanne.
Like the end of the world, Holloway Falls was a long time coming. Happily, many hands helped to make light work of it.
Not only did David Godwin’s commitment and enthusiasm never flag, his willingness to re-read slightly different versions of the early manuscript exceeded the limits of human endurance. For this I will never be able to thank him properly, or indeed apologise. I’m similarly indebted to Tim Binding. He determined to get the best out of me, whether I liked it or not and, annoyingly, he was never wrong—not even about me thanking him for it, in the end.
To those I’ve worked with (so far) at Scribner—Rochelle Venables, Joanna Ellis, Alex Heminsley, Neal Price and James Kellow—thank you for making a new boy feel so quickly at home, and for caring about this book.
To Jeremy Palmer: thanks for the years of close reading, large bar bills and the free exchange of ideas, most of
them stupid. And to Jon Parker, who knows all the right words to all the right songs, not to mention a thing or two about books.
But the greatest debt by far is owed to my wife, Nadya Kooznetzoff. Her patience never strained and her nerve didn’t crack—not even when I gave superabundant cause for both. Anyone who knows her will tell you she was always out of my league. And they’d be right. She still is.
Holloway Falls is from both of us, with love, to our sons Ethan and Finn.
About the Author
Neil Cross (b. 1969) is a British novelist and screenwriter best known as the creator of the multiaward-winning international hit BBC crime series Luther, starring Idris Elba, and the international hit horror movie Mama. His highly acclaimed memoir, Heartland, was shortlisted for the PEN/Ackerley Prize in 2006. Cross has also written several thrillers, including Captured, Holloway Falls, and Always the Sun, which was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. Cross continues to write for TV and film in the United Kingdom and the United States. He lives with his wife and two sons in Wellington, New Zealand.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2003 by Neil Cross
Cover design by Tracey Dunham
978-1-4976-9247-3
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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