"Like that makes a the difference."
"Actually, it does."
"Hmm." Suzanne glanced toward the door. "One of us needs to make sure he doesn't just wander out. I don't think he'll wake up, but nothing's certain."
"The couch looks fine." Josh pointed. "I'll wake up if he moves."
"You sound certain."
She was standing very close to him now.
"Confident," she continued. "Not to mention capable."
When he kissed her, the explosion of sweet electricity slammed through his body, swirled up and down, beyond anything he had experienced.
"My God," he whispered, holding her upper arms. "Suzanne."
"I've never done this before, Josh Cumberland. Not this fast."
"Done–?"
"Can your ninja senses detect someone sneaking out beyond a closed door?"
"I don't…"
"Come on." Her hands pulled him as if he were weightless. "Come on."
Inside her bedroom, she pushed the door quietly shut. The room was lit by a small bedside lamp, which she tapped, switching it off.
Only faint silver moonlight illuminated her form as she pulled her blouse off over her head, then undid her skirt and let it slide to the floor. Time slowed as she removed bra and panties, and stood there, a perfect goddess, the long scars glistening like moonlight inside her arms.
Josh blinked eyes filled with grit, with salt, with the overwhelming knowledge that he deserved nothing, and certainly not this. Then he removed his clothes with a Zen exactness, his gaze never deviating from her face.
They embraced standing, her skin incandescent, smooth and warm, and then she was pulling him to the bed where they lay down, his mouth finding her throat, working slowly down, to her nipples like black cherries, to the smoothness of her stomach, her soft inner thighs and the sweet surprise within, burying himself until she arced back, giving a low cry; and a shuddering sob as she took hold of his head and pulled him up to her face.
"In me," she said.
Then he was riding to the stars, expecting it to be immediate, but silky, soft strength enclosed him, prolonging the voyage, every nerve juddering; and then the atomic fireball cascaded outwards, bursting with nova energy until he was done, lying on her and in her, holding her forever, only her name in his mind and on his lips: Suzanne, Suzanne, Suzanne.
After a time, she said "Sorry, you're squashing me."
"Sorry." He rolled sideways, and she turned with
him, so they remained embraced though he popped out of her. "Oops."
"Shame," she said, then burped. "Oh."
They shook together in shared laughter.
"Now what are we going to do?" Josh stared at her in the darkness, amazed at the world.
"We could sleep."
"I guess."
He continued to stare, wonder seeping through him, with no awareness of the moment when he drifted downwards into restorative sleep for the first time in an age, with a sense of correctness, of security at last.
Everything paused.
They awoke still embracing, with no trace of cramp, as though their bodies fitted together exactly. Their kiss was soft, on the lips, and then she had him pulled inside her and they rode together, for longer this time, grinning, staring into each other's eyes at the moment of explosion, his before hers but only by seconds; and then he collapsed beside her.
"I need to brush my teeth," he said. "And did I mention you're beautiful?"
After taking it in turns to use the bathroom – a quick trip each, then a longer sojourn in the shower – they dressed and went into the small kitchen area. Suzanne put coffee on, then turned to him.
"You realise I'm not white?" she said.
"My God. And did you notice I'm not black?"
"I noticed everything."
"Me too."
The world was at peace as they kissed again, very soft and very still. Then they disengaged and got ready for breakfast, putting out bowls and cereal, occasionally glancing at the door to Richard's room, neither mentioning the boy's name.
"You're going to work with him today?" Josh kept his voice low. "Or would that get you in trouble with the disciplinary board?"
"Probably, if it gets that far."
"Ah. Let's sort out his problems, then maybe nothing will happen. It's his father who–"
The guest room door clicked open, and Richard was standing there. "Can I use the–?"
"It's over there."
He nodded, then shuffled past them to the bathroom, and went in.
"The poor lad looks awful," said Josh, "but not as bad as last night."
"No. The first thing I need to deploy is a powerful psychophysical technique for integrating body and mind for the day ahead."
"Cool."
"It's called breakfast."
Afterwards, while Suzanne did more work with Richard, Josh went into her bedroom to use his phone, checking the hospital for Opal's condition. He could have hacked into the watchcams, but the always-present memory of Sophie stopped him. A nurse told him that Opal was in post-op recovery, no further details available. The earliest she might possibly receive visitors would be tonight at 7.30, but he should call in advance, in case she was not ready. Thankful to have talked to a human being, Josh closed the call.
When he entered the lounge Richard was in an armchair, apparently in a light doze.
"I'm going to talk to Josh now," Suzanne told the boy. "And when I talk to you again directly, you'll know the difference. For now, just rest."
As she turned to Josh her tone changed. "He's all right."
"Good." He said nothing about Opal. "That's good."
Suzanne nodded. Somehow they were on the same wavelength – if there had been positive news from the hospital, it would have been OK to share it; otherwise it was best to say nothing. She reached out her hand; when he took hold, it felt wonderful. With a smile, she led him into her bedroom – their bedroom? – and this time he knew it was only to talk. They smiled, holding each other's hands, as though about to start some oldfashioned dance.
"So what are we going to do?" she asked.
Josh let go of her hands and sat on the bed.
"You've no idea how warfare" – remembering fourteen years old and the rifle coming up and his head exploding but that was not the worst of it – "screws you up."
"We can deal with this later," said Suzanne. "And I mean it – we will deal with it."
"Maybe there are things that shouldn't be… but it's Richard we need to think about. Sorry, my l… Sorry."
Her lips twitched.
"Everyone," she said, "has the resources they need to deal with their life and make it better, and I mean everyone."
"What if I want to learn Chinese, and I have no materials and no ability? There's positive thinking and there's delusion."
"I didn't say you could learn the language in ten minutes, but that's more than enough time to dissolve whatever holds you back, like the false belief that you can't learn a language. I worked with a webmovie writer who'd been blocked for three years. Freeing up the block took five minutes. It still took him a year to write the next script, but he did it, that's the point."
"And you didn't discover what caused the block?" he said.
"Actually, the guy knew precisely what had caused it, but if he hadn't, I wouldn't have tried to find out. I didn't need to know. It's a form of brief therapy, and that's a technical term."
This was what he did not understand about her work. Despite the counselling he had been through, he still thought of therapy as uncovering hidden pasts.
"So treating traumas, you don't need to know the details."
No heads exploded in his memory. Her presence kept him calm.
"It depends. If someone was in a traffic accident, not their fault, just something dreadful they had experienced… then all I need do is recode the memory, so they don't re-experience anguish whenever they think of it. Not amnesia, but no overwhelming emotion, either. Delving bac
k into their childhood and how they related to their parents would be nonsense, because it's not the problem."
"All right."
"The old opponents of that approach called it treating the symptom instead of the cause, but sometimes treating the symptom is all you need. For example, sweating is a symptom of bubonic plague. During the Black Death, if the victims had been given more fluids, many would have lived, because it was the dehydration that got them."
This was not what he wanted to hear, because there was something odd about young Richard's reactions,
and not just to witnessing his friend fall.
"On the other hand, if the trauma patient is a victim of violence" – Suzanne glanced down at her own inner forearms – "then recoding the memory is not enough, because two-thirds of such people become victims again within eighteen months. Their behaviour patterns mark them out as soft prey for predators, so then I do have to explore their world, use the psychodynamic approach, and help them get more freedom in their lives."
"So maybe you need to uncover Richard's past."
"Ah. That's what you're after."
"Look, obviously my first sight of him was when he's under stress. But he gave this strange reaction…"
He described the soft cry that Richard emitted, seeing the bulldog logo on the back of a paramedic's jumpsuit. And how his catatonia – if that was what it was – started then, not at the moment Opal fell.
"I'll ask," said Suzanne. "But when the moment is right."
"OK."
"So what are you going to do next?"
"I thought I'd take a drive to Surrey."
"To Richard's father?" She glanced at the closed door.
"Yeah, but maybe I should do it after you've talked with Richard some more."
"That would be wise."
"Why don't I go fetch my car from the hotel, and bring it back here?"
"To take Richard home?"
"Only if he's ready."
"All right. I may not have anything for you. Uncovering memories is delicate, because it's too easy to implant false ones, vivid hallucinations of things that never happened."
"I have vivid memories of last night. Something I must have imagined."
She leaned over, and their kiss was fire.
"A shared hallucination," she said.
"Relax now, in trance everything is fine, and my voice will go with you as you go deeper still into the tranceinside-the-trance, and go back in time to a moment when…"
Richard felt himself floating in a vast, star-filled cavern, totally calm; and when the memory rose up, he held still instead of screaming, knowing he was strong enough to watch.
It is a world of giants, the adults, and they do not seem to realise how confusing it all is. The plane travel is wonderful, then boring, seeming to last for days. He plays games on his pad, sleeps, eats food he does not like, knowing Father will shout if he leaves any behind.
"Twenty-one countries," says the lady in uniform, "in twenty-five days. Even I don't do that."
He has no idea how to reply, or quite what the words mean, but at least she is friendly. Then there is–
A ripple moved through him, a tightening of his stomach, but then her hand was on his shoulder and he relaxed, calm again.
"Tell me. Go back to just before the time you were afraid."
–Father's presence, big and comforting however much it frightens, because this is Father, strong and unbeatable, around whom the world revolves. The whole trip has been a chaos of dislocating sights: corridors and rooms, smiling faces looking down on him, fake-cheerful voices, adults chivvying him along, their words without sense.
There is the clinic and the grinning dog on the wall, the cartoon dog called Timmy he has seen before. Big hands press his shoulder blades, urging him forward, and he feels the grown-ups might trample him like the elephants they saw yesterday or the day before, those legs longer than he had expected for such round, heavy creatures with amazing trunks that Father said were prehistoric or something like that, and if only Father would hold his hand while the smiling men and women showed them round all these places but there was grown-up work to do, Father said so, which was why everything was a jumble of adults who–
The hand on his shoulder.
"Closer to that time, Richard. To just before the fear started, and you can tell me about it now."
–do not notice when he slips away by sort-of accident, staying behind when they turn, continuing into the shining white place they had partly explored. Somewhere a toy had squeaked, so perhaps there are other children here, boys and girls he can talk to and maybe play with. He goes through the big doors that slide back with a whoosh, the air feeling very cold as he steps further inside.
There is a chair beside the raised – thing – that looks like a metal bed with a curved glass casing over it. Climbing up, he is able to stare inside.
She is very pretty, the sleeping girl beneath the glass.
For a long time he wonders whether he should try to waken her, but if she's tired or maybe sick then that would be a bad thing. So he climbs down, and moves to the next one in the row, wondering if it's a boy or girl inside and whether they'll be awake. He is just about to climb up when voices sound and he crouches down, shaking, wondering what will happen if they catch him, and how much Father will shout when he finds out.
There are six of them, two of them sort-of white–
Her fingertip made him pause. Then her question came.
"Tell me more about sort-of white."
His voice seemed to speak by itself: "Like Chinese, but I was young."
"And the others were white?"
"No, the other doctors were black."
"Like me?"
"No. They were dark. So were the others."
"What others, Richard?"
"In the big rooms. Offices. Wearing suits."
"So… Tell me about the doctors. What happened next?"
He returned to the star cave, then the dream. –and the glass raises up, one of the bed-things, and he can see the boy inside has no clothes, which seems funny, and he's lying there while the doctors get things ready, a trolley with metal stuff on it, and those tubes from the ceiling dangling over the boy, and something is not right which is why he is frozen and his mouth opens wide in a scream as the first doctor raises his hand and it's shining when he, when he, when he–
Hand on his shoulder.
"Just breathe, and breathe, and step outside yourself as if you're watching a movie of what you did, watching yourself in the scene, that's right, and tell me what happened next."
I am watching crouched down, trying to hide, screaming without sound when the shining metal descends and the skin splits open, everything inside so liquid with globs of stuff and twisted things like pipes inside his body. I stumble away, knocking against a bed or something but the monsters, the doctors, are too busy to notice as I run, too scared to say anything, swearing I will say nothing if only I can get back to Father because otherwise they will cut him as well as me chop him up slice us up cutting and slicing and cutting and–
Hand, the dream fading, only the star-filled cave and a feeling of soft ease.
"Sleep now."
Drifting.
[ TWENTY-THREE ]
Josh travelled by Tube, smiling at fellow passengers. Back in his hotel room, he exercised and showered, got changed, packed a few clothes and toiletries in his gym bag – but leaving the rest, making no assumptions about Suzanne wanting him to stay the night again – and carried the bag out to his car. Then he drove into the heavy traffic, feeling relaxed: he was in a travelling armchair, when you thought about it, and the speed he moved at was irrelevant. The slow stop-start progress made him calmer by the minute.
Wow. Suzanne.
Some forty minutes later, he pulled up in front of her place, used the keychip she had lent him to get through the ground floor entrance, then jogged upstairs to her flat. There, the door opened, and she smiled at him.
"Hey.
"
She hugged him. There was a tremble inside her, different from before.
"What is it?"
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