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a leg to stand on.
And now Vic was gone, Belle fed and given her hour s runaround on the cliff tops. Tom
looked around his home, which, for once during his occupation of it, could really use a
cleanup. The undone dishes, the sheets he hadn t been able to bring himself to change since
Flynn s brief visitation to his solitary bed, the books and newspapers scattered round the liv-
ing room all these had been his friends before, or handholds at least, when he was trying to
stay out of the pit.
Locking the back and front doors behind him, securing his prison, Tom admitted to himself
that he wasn t trying at all. He sat on the sofa, and after a minute picked up the receiver of the
phone. He was aware that he was struggling not to ball up, to wrap his arms around himself,
and stopped it. It was cold in here, that was all. He dialled the number of the locum doctor he
shared with the surgeries in Newlyn and St. Just. Yes, she was available to cover for him to-
morrow. That was good, Tom told her, absently pushing Belle away as she poked an anxious,
food-speckled nose beneath his arm. He d been called away unexpectedly it would only be
the one day.
And surely Flynn should be safe for that amount of time, shouldn t he? Until Tom
emerged? He and Tremaine didn t fly together anymore, were in different branches of the ser-
vice. No, he should be fine. Locked into a barrack room, beaten up and fucked raw, which
was what he appeared to want. Fine&
The Stoli Elit was better chilled. Tom reckoned, if he gave it half an hour, he could almost
disguise this oncoming bender from himself as a few pleasant drinks. The first part of it, any-
way. And he was not so desperate, was he, that he couldn t put the bottle in the fridge and
wait for thirty bloody minutes? He stood in the kitchen, rolling the bottle, with its bright con-
tents and shining silver label, between his palms.
Rage shook him. No, he couldn t bloody wait. He was an addict, same as any bored
housewife he tried to wean off sedatives or any junkie kid on the Penzance estates. An ad-
dict, a drunk, without even that last shred of self-control he could use to hide from his own
shame. Without warning, the muscles in his arms and shoulders tensed the same involun-
tary spasm that had pitched Rob Tremaine off his back and onto the cobbles at the Fox and
he found himself smashing the bottle down on the edge of the sink.
It did not so much break as explode. Tom stood at the end of his action, staring dully at
the floor. He tried to be so gentle, didn t he? A doctor. But he didn t know his own strength.
Given opportunity, motive, he could be just as much of a ham-fisted brute as Tremaine. If the
bastard were here now, he would show him. Pull him off Flynn. Slam him down among the
shards and batter him to death and beyond, rather than ever let him lay a hand on Flynn
again.
The old flagstones were glimmering like a night sky. Hypnotic. A good idea. The raw eth-
anol evaporating off the spilled vodka rose into his brain. Shivering, Tom dragged a hand
across his eyes and stumbled back into the darkness where the tower s stairs coiled down.
The second and third bottles came easy to his hands. He smashed them one after the oth-
er on the edge of the sink, this time feeling a kind of scarlet relief as the flying shards bounced
back to slice at his palms and wrists. Blood joined the constellations and the vertiginous mess
on the floor. He d kicked his muddy boots off when he came in did not notice, going back for
a fourth, that he was barefoot, that the glass pierced his soles.
A terrible sound brought him to a halt. It was like a child s wail, except that no human
throat could have made it. Tom wheeled round, grabbing at the table to stop himself from fall-
ing. For a moment there was nothing but his own fractured breathing and the drip of vodka on
the flags and then he saw his dog huddled against the kitchen s far wall. Trying to press her-
self through the stonework. Eyes wild, hackles raised& She was keening at him in absolute
terror.
Tom let go a breath.  Oh, God. Belle. He put the fourth bottle down on the table carefully.
There was a bloodstained handprint on it, another on the scratched deal table s surface.
Choking faintly, Tom glanced at his hands, made a distracted effort to wipe them on the back-
side of his jeans.  Belle, sweetheart. He took a step towards her, and she cringed from him.
He didn t know her background, what had happened to her before she had been rescued.
The shelter had her history, but Tom hadn t wanted to know, unable at that time to bear the
knowledge of further cruelty or pain. Whatever it had been, he knew that he could be kind
enough with her, patient and peaceful enough, to make it better. He crouched beside her. He
was aware, from a great distance, that he was sobbing, great rough gasps that tore his chest.
 Oh, Belle. When finally she let him touch her, he collapsed against the wall at her side.
He drew his knees up, folded his arms across the top of his head. He could not breathe or
see. The smell of blood and vodka filled his lungs; the sounds of his own grief flooded his
ears. Balled up, clutching blindly at the dog s scruff with one hand, he wept, unable to believe
the depth, the age, of the wounds gaping wide in him. What was he becoming? What had he
already let himself become? The red tide swept through him, through and through, convulsing
him until he began to retch dryly and see stars, and even then there was no stopping it, not
for a long time, not until he wore himself out and exhaustion at last came to his rescue. His
last awareness was of feeling his limbs go slack, of sliding wearily down onto the ancient
chilly bones of the watchtower and closing his eyes.
The cool rush of wind-driven rain on glass brought him round. He opened his eyes and
stared for a long time at the kitchen window, where silver-grey streaks were appearing, sud-
den bright patterns that destroyed themselves and flickered back, an endless repeat that
soothed him.
It occurred to him that he was seeing the pane from an odd angle. A slight kilt off land-
scape, like a badly hung picture. He normally watched it in dignified perpendicular from his
breakfast table. When he tried to correct the orientation, he became aware that his neck was
hurting. That there was a sting in his hands and arms like the results of his long-ago tussle
with a jellyfish off Porth Bay beach. That he was in fact curled up on his kitchen floor, and that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]