Read Online Under the Harrow: by Flynn Berry - Free Book Online Page A

bright, and he doesn’t comment on the cold draft. He asks if we have any family in the area, and I say no. He switches on the radio. I direct him onto the motorway. As he pulls onto the slip road, I say, “It must be especially difficult for you.”
    “Why?”
    “You saw her right before it happened.”
    His hands roll forward on the wheel, then back. If you did it, I think, I will destroy you. He leans from his seat, checking the next lane with exaggerated care before merging.
    He doesn’t speak for a long time, and then he says, “He might have already been there, waiting for me to leave. I should have noticed.”
    “This is the exit,” I say. We drive past a parade of shops, a shipping depot, a storage facility. He drives slowly, checking the numbers on the side of the road. There isn’t any foot traffic and for the first time since we left I’m frightened.
    “Here.”
    He pulls into the lot, where a guard sits in a booth at the entrance. Keith passes my license through the window to him, and we wait in silence as he searches for my record. Keith appears restless, and I wonder if he came here to collect his van after it was tested for her blood.
    The guard returns my license and the gate swings open. Keith starts driving down the first row. I scan the cars, and then he stops. I look past him at Rachel’s car, an old Jeep. He turns to me with his mouth compressed in a tight smile, waiting for me to go.
    “Thank you. Are you hungry?” I ask. “Can I take you someplace?”
    We agree to meet at the Duck and Cover. After he leaves, I lock her car around me. The interior smells familiar, warm and dusty. I open the glove box and take out a small gold tube of lipstick. The color, when I open it, is a vivid dark red.
    She had so much left to do. It isn’t that she had something grand in mind, at least not that I know of. It is worse than that, she has been taken away from everything, she lost everything. She likes red lipstick, and will never again stand in the aisle at a chemist’s, testing the shades on the back of her hand. She likes films, and will miss all the ones coming out at the holidays that she planned to see. She likes pan con tomate, and will never again come home from work and mash tomatoes and garlic and olive oil, and rub it onto grilled bread, and eat it standing in her kitchen.
     • • • 
    At the Duck and Cover, Keith orders a whisky. The disappointment makes me slump. They carry Tennent’s, the same green cans of lager as the ones on the ridge.
    “Miss?”
    “A Tennent’s, please.” I point at the can. Keith doesn’t react.The bartender sets down our drinks and leans against the bar with his back to us, arms folded, watching greyhounds pelt down a track.
    “Do you usually drink whisky in the daytime?” I ask.
    “No,” says Keith, watching the dogs.
    “What’s your usual?” I say it loudly, hoping the bartender will correct him if he lies.
    “I don’t have one.”
    The greyhounds disappear into mist. The race ends, and a photograph shows the distance between the front two dogs’ noses and the finish line. Their noses are very long, like horses’.
    “Anything to eat?” asks the bartender.
    “I’m not hungry,” says Keith.
    “No, me neither.”
    The bartender takes a pack of Benson and Hedges from a shelf and goes onto the back patio, leaving the door cracked open. If I shout, he will come back inside. I don’t know which of the two men would be stronger. I swallow a long draft of beer and wish it were whisky.
    “You were eager to help,” I say.
    Keith doesn’t straighten or look at me, but something in him tenses and flexes.
    “Rachel was lovely. She was a lovely woman.”
    “Did you fancy her?”
    “I’m married.” I shrug. He says, “No, it’s not like that.”
    “What was it like?”
    “With Tash? It’s good. It’s normal.”
    “No, with Rachel.”
    He sets down his whisky and I think he’s going to hit me. “I barely knew her.”
    Nothing