The Hunger Trace Read online

  The farmer approached him. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘Not much now, pal,’ Adam said.

  Several miles away, Louisa was out with Diamond, hunting to work off her nervous energy. A pheasant went into cover, and when they flushed it, the bird was so waterlogged it could hardly get into the air. Diamond put in two short stoops and stunned the thing with the second, as though disconnecting a wire. The pheasant made a splash when it hit the ground, its head amputated on contact, spraying water as it spun away from the body.

  The sky was like grey shag-pile rubbed in places against the grain. Louisa finished early because she could not concentrate. She wished that the memory of the phone call she had made would stop bolting through her torso. The rain quickened as she drove home. Other falconers had been saying that it would be a bad year for rain, that you had better get out there now, because the end of the season would be a wash-out.

  Adam’s confidence began to fade that evening on the train to Detton. Something about the dissolving day dragged at him. He tried to blame it on the dark weather and the sight of his car being towed away. Without meaning to, he recalled the feeling of power as he trapped the woman on the hill, and made her roll back down towards the main road.

  The floor of the train was covered in a silty filth, imprinted with soles. The carriage was empty but for a couple of old boys going out to the factories for the night shift, and a man with his infant daughter.

  Adam wondered if what he was feeling was nerves. He tried to remind himself of the guidelines he had created for his behaviour with clients. He never spoke of his family: his estranged mother back in Belton, the former industrial village where he had grown up. He did not smoke on a visit. Of course, he never mentioned his child. He did not speak about his work, or his other clients. That rule would be particularly relevant in this case, the woman living in such close proximity to another client. He never swore, but spoke in a firm, forthright manner; the women had called him, and should not have to ask twice.

  That, perhaps, was the difference with Louisa. Most of the women he saw relied on him to seduce them; as soon as he had left their houses (sometimes even their bedrooms), he was dead to them. A source of shame. But this was a woman who had pursued him through the streets. He had seen her buy a drink from the take-away near his house. She had bought two more for the little boys playing football in his street. He recalled her bouncing on her haunches, passing the cans to the children. I’m very clever, she had told him on the phone. That seemed true enough.

  The little girl in the train carriage began to scream for her mother. She was blonde, her face dark pink, so that she looked like a half-chewed saveloy. The screaming settled into a rhythm, with the stress on the second syllable. ‘Mu-mee, Mu-mee.’

  The father turned to Adam. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said.

  ‘It’s no bother, youth,’ Adam said. ‘She’s saying what we’re all thinking.’

  Usually he could swallow his emotions. It was just as important to his job as any sexual technique. When he felt particularly bad, he consoled himself with this: nobody could see into his mind. As the train slowed down, the windblown rainfall was like an animal clambering across the roof of the carriage. He tried to pull himself together. Maybe it’s just the time of day, he thought. The early evening was a dark, penitent time for him, heralding the changeover from one life to another. He patted the pockets of his jeans as the train stopped. He’d forgotten his phone.

  Louisa bathed, looking down at the outcrops of her belly and breasts, the dismorphic limbs beneath the glass-green water. Bubbles quaked in her leg hairs. After all those private years, her body now felt like a diary left in a café. She flushed with the outrage of her vanity. She would shave for no man, she thought. And yet she felt the pull of shame.

  Her mind went back to the entrance hall in the big house, the echo of Maggie’s coughing as she took off her clothes on the day they had rescued Diamond from the pond. Maggie had stepped from her jeans like a hawk trying to free herself from the leash. Louisa remembered the shimmer of the netted fabric of her underwear, the neat thin strip of pubic hair. All sorts of wonders. Louisa hoped Adam would not be expecting such things from her.

  She stood, and put her right foot on the edge of the bath. She soaped the lower part of her leg and then took hold of the disposable razor with which she usually shaved her armpits. She dragged the blade upwards from her ankle and immediately felt the blunt pluck of it. Dots of blood mixed with the green soap on her skin. ‘Sod it,’ she said. ‘I’m paying.’

  She dropped the razor into the water where it twisted slowly. But when she had unplugged the bath, she took a new blade from the packet and started again.

  She tidied, tucked the stock of her shotgun under the sofa and boiled coffee bags to cover the bird smell although she could no longer detect it herself. For the first time in many years, she applied make-up, and tried to keep thoughts of her own hypocrisy at bay. She was, after all, doing exactly what Maggie had done.

  She waited, drinking Guinness and then Scotch. The drink bloated her, made her feel ridiculous, so that by 7 p.m. she no longer wanted him to come. It was a grotesque idea. Why had she entered into this so rashly? What if someone found out? What if she didn’t fancy him when she saw him up close? He could have grown a moustache. What if the whole thing was awful?

  The phone rang at half past and she heard his young voice. ‘It’s Adam Gregory.’

  Oh God. Here he was calling her, with his surname. ‘Oh. Hello,’ she said.

  He was surely calling to cancel and, after all her reservations, she was desperately disappointed by the prospect of spending the evening alone.

  ‘I’m at the station,’ he said.

  ‘The police station?’

  ‘No.’ He sounded offended. ‘The train station.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Car’s fucked. Sorry. ’Scuse the language. My car is done-in, basically.’

  ‘Golf GTi, right? You boys thrash those things to within an inch of their lives.’

  ‘It was a crash, actually,’ he said. ‘But I’m alright. I’ll have a courtesy car soon. I wouldn’t normally have to take the train, like.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said, enjoying the shift of power, but trying to put him at ease.

  She felt him relax slightly. ‘Wouldn’t say much for my work if I couldn’t afford to run a car, would it, eh?’

  ‘I’m sure you’re good enough to run a whole fleet,’ she said, catching her eye in the mirror and shaking her head, almost unable to believe in the conversation, and her part in it.

  ‘Well. We’ll soon see,’ he said. ‘So . . .’

  ‘Oh sorry. Of course. I’ll come and pick you up.’

  The rain was still hammering down as she arrived at the station. The sky was thick and purple. He stood, exposed as could be, lit up in the old red phone box, surrounded by the gelatine corpses of spiders. He left the phone box and started jogging towards Louisa before she flashed the lights because, of course, he recognised her van.

  As soon as he got in beside her, Louisa began to fully appreciate the extent of her intoxication. She could hardly remember how she’d got there. She drove back at twelve miles an hour, noticing him glance at the speedometer. He seemed unnerved. She worked hard not to laugh at the thought of being pulled over by the police, drunk, with a prostitute in her Transit van.

  They spoke, briefly, about the damage to his car, but Louisa found she had to further slow the van in order to concentrate, so in the end they sat in silence. Driving sobered her enough to bring back the nerves. She turned off the lights as they reached the top of Drum Hill, and cast an anxious glance at the big house. She parked as close as she could to the cottage.

  Adam became more animated when he got out of the van and saw Iroquois under shelter on the lawn. ‘Sake!’ he said. Louisa thought of the well-tended lawns of the houses she had seen him visit. She felt her life about to go on show, and could barely guess what would b
e considered eccentric, although a steppe eagle in the front yard was an obvious one.

  ‘What a belter,’ Adam said. ‘Can I touch him?’

  ‘Her. You can if you want to be eviscerated.’

  ‘I’d like to know how it feels.’

  ‘To have your guts ripped out?’

  ‘No. The feathers and that.’

  Iroquois had already lost interest. She had a look of judgment about her. Adam continued to stare as he walked by.

  ‘Bitch magnet,’ Louisa whispered to the bird as she opened the door.

  In the light of the hall, she looked at Adam.

  ‘What’s up?’ Adam said.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten that you were . . . I’d forgotten what you looked like.’

  He sighed. ‘It’s a height thing, isn’t it? You’re thinking I’m too short.’

  He was right, but was this the same super-confident bloke who had trapped her on Woodlands Close? ‘No,’ she said. ‘Your height is the least of my concerns. Besides,’ she said, slipping into a Derbyshire accent, ‘you’re all same lying down, aren’t you?’

  He gave a weak smile.

  ‘Are you usually this touchy?’ Louisa said.

  ‘No. Sorry. Been a weird day. It’s just that people sometimes mention it. “Thought you’d be taller.” One of the reasons I don’t work for one of them seedy agencies. Women just come out and say it: no short men. Must be six foot plus. Not much I can do about it, is there, apart from going on rack? It’s like racism.’

  Louisa laughed. ‘That’s a bit strong.’

  ‘Well, imagine the uproar there’d be if men started saying, “No fatties”.’

  Adam said this as Louisa removed her coat, revealing her belly and big hips. He blushed and looked away. Louisa saw the blush. ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘Now that we know what we think of each other’s physiques, shall we have a drink?’

  Adam closed his eyes. ‘Sorry. I’m not normally this . . .’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. But if you think men don’t request slim women, you need your bloody ears testing. And your eyes. Now. What do you want?’

  ‘You got beer?’

  She patted her stomach. ‘You know it.’

  She noticed that his hands were shaking. ‘Are you alright?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah. I just . . . I just need a fag.’

  She opened the door again, and let him out into the cold air. In the kitchen she poured the beers and watched the throbbing red dot of his cigarette in the dark.

  For the first few moments, she tried to guess his thoughts. She looked for signs of some tired routine, but he appeared to be honest, quiet – the sort of person who would not make her uncomfortable by asking too many questions. After half an hour, Louisa’s bitter, paranoid voices quietened. She did not even feel drunk any more.

  He asked her about ‘the birds’, and she told him the basics of what she did: the clearance, the displays, the hunting.

  ‘I remember this time,’ he said, ‘I were about eleven years old and we were playing in the junior football tournament at a carnival. I goes over to take a corner, and this massive golden eagle from the falconry display swoops down on me. Really went for me.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Louisa said.

  ‘I hit the deck. All my mates are laughing at me. Referee didn’t know what to do.’ He became thoughtful. ‘Me mam was there, and all. I remember looking over and she was hysterical with laughter.’

  ‘Where was it? The carnival?’

  ‘Belton Rec.’

  ‘I think that might have been Oggie’s eagle,’ Louisa said. ‘I was probably there myself, assisting. A lot older than you.’

  ‘Really?’ he said.

  ‘We did all of those carnivals.’

  ‘Imagine that,’ he said quietly. ‘We were both there on Belton Rec that day, and now we’re here. Funny how things work out, in’t it?’

  ‘I’d say it’s hilarious,’ she said.

  They sat in the warm and they talked and drank and laughed. In the brief silences, they listened to the rain. Louisa had taken the unusual step of turning on the central heating, and – as Adam sat by the radiator – his jeans gave off a pleasant heated fug that mixed with the almond smell of his wet hair wax.

  Louisa had planned to talk about Maggie, but she dismissed the impulse when it came to her. She did not want to ruin the night, and she realised now that there was something to ruin. She looked at his strong neck. ‘Do you need anything? Another drink?’ she said.

  ‘No ta, duck. I feel much better.’

  To Louisa, that felt like an unguarded compliment. She went into the kitchen to fetch another drink for herself and he followed her, talking. The contents of Diamond’s crop lay by the toaster: a neat line of washed bones and fur. She thought about trying to hide it, but Adam didn’t appear to mind.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he said, picking up the skull of a mouse.

  ‘That’s the last bloke who came here,’ Louisa said.

  Adam laughed. ‘There was me worrying about my size.’

  ‘Yeah, but he was hung like a horse,’ said Louisa.

  Adam held the mouse head up to the light, and the colours from the glass lampshade swirled on his hand. ‘I like it,’ he said.

  ‘I feel a bit strange being the one to say this,’ said Louisa. ‘But you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Just having the company is fine.’

  Afterwards she decided that he must have made the move, because she would have over-thought it, even in that relaxed state. What shocked her, after all those years, was desire. He leaned against her so hard that she lost her balance and flailed behind with one arm, reaching blind for the kitchen wall like a bad swimmer. He brought her back with a forearm around her waist.

  Jesus wept, the warmth and the breath and the moisture. He kissed her neck and she felt the long pulse of his desire – the duration of a muscle cramp. She knew he was not faking it. People have it within them, she thought, those same people who seem so distant and closed in everyday life. And now she felt it coming from this man who was so near to her that he was just a colour, a shape, an eye, an ear. Belt buckle and fervency.

  She heard a moan – that remembered sound, charged with the frustration of not being able to crash right through the other person, the impatient wish to sit inside their ribcage, or eat them. She realised that the moan came from her.

  Louisa woke at four to find him incapacitated by a young man’s sleep. They were still on the living room sofa, where they had made love. He lay with one leg hanging down, his big toe touching the carpet, while she sat at the end. Her shirt was nearby; she put it on. His sweat felt cool on her thigh.

  She brought a blanket from the bedroom and laid it over him.

  When he finally rose, Louisa was already making breakfast. She felt glad that she could not see his face. While he slept, her doubts had crept back in. He must have done this a thousand times. He must have done it with Maggie, a few hundred yards away – though Louisa had never seen him stay the night there. She had become suspicious of the desire which she had found so flattering last night. For some reason, she found herself thinking of David again, their one kiss. She had seen the reluctance in his face afterwards, and she feared that she might be met by a similar expression when Adam walked into the room.

  She could hear him dressing in the lounge now, the glide of the various fabrics. His movements were slow. She turned back to the eggs before he arrived in the kitchen, dressed in his boxer shorts and red T-shirt.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘I’ve made breakfast. There’s easily enough here for two, but if you don’t want it, I’ll feed it to the dogs. Or I can eat it myself. That’s more likely, to be honest. I’m fairly hungry, as it goes.’

  He rubbed vigorously at his soft, bristly hair. ‘I really don’t know what to say about last night,’ he said.

  ‘You could just have coffee. If you want.’

  ‘I would love some coffee.’ He sat dow
n at the kitchen table.

  ‘Help yourself. And help me. My mug is there. It says “mug” on it.’ She laughed unsteadily.

  Louisa put two plates of eggs, bacon, black pudding and toast on the table, and sat down. Adam smiled and looked away. ‘Ta,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You said you might stop over, but I didn’t think your tactic would be to just pass out like that.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said.

  ‘No. I mean. Neither am I. But it doesn’t count as a stop-over.’

  ‘Whoa there. It does to me, young man. The notch is on the bed-post and I’ve told all my friends.’

  He laughed. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Listen, don’t worry. It doesn’t matter. It’s natural for a man to fall asleep after sex. At least you didn’t nod off while we were . . . These things happen.’

  ‘No they don’t. This is not how I do things. I drooled on your sofa.’

  She laughed with a mouthful of toast. ‘My God. You’re not too clever at the old morning-after chat, are you, given your business?’

  ‘Louisa, most of my visits are in villages. Half of them are in the daytime. This is not something I’m used to. And last night . . .’

  ‘It must be a bit disturbing, waking up to me. The whole clotted mascara, morning breath thing.’

  He sat back and looked at her. She felt abruptly aware of her appearance: she knew that the small amount of eye make-up she had applied was probably a spidery mess, and could feel her ponytail slipping to the left. She was bra-less in a large US Air Force T-shirt. She searched his face for that expression of regret.

  ‘You look nice,’ he said, and smiled.

  FIFTEEN

  For the first year after the accident, David continued to meet Louisa at the cob van once a fortnight, and she admired him for that. His family had closed around him protectively, and he could have excised those few months from his life, gone back to his friends and lived normally. She hoped he continued the meetings through need, rather than duty.

  They spoke quietly while the generator powering the trailer rattled on. If a trucker, or sometimes two, emerged from the bushes, they fell silent, and drifted into the dark. He was dealing with a crime for which he felt sorry, but for which he had received no censure. Louisa told him now was not the time to confess. ‘It’ll dig everything up again, and we don’t need that. I don’t need it,’ she said.