10.4

 

The knock was soft—so soft Roisin almost mistook it for the downstairs neighbours. She lifted her head, listening as the rain tapped steadily against the window in a thin, persistent rhythm. Then the knock came again, a little firmer this time.

“Roisin?” Paul’s voice, low and careful. “Are you awake?”

She didn’t answer immediately. She wasn’t sure she trusted her voice. Her thoughts still felt waterlogged, heavy with the images she’d been trying—and failing—to shake loose. She pulled the duvet tighter around her shoulders. The light had completely gone, leaving the room dim with only the pools of streetlights to illuminate it, and the soft glow if her bedside light trough the curtains closing off her sleeping area. She felt suspended between the warmth of the duvet and the cold that clung to her bones.

Another pause. Then, gently, “I’ve brought you a cup of coffee. Can I come in?”

Roisin swallowed. She wasn’t ready to talk. She wasn’t ready to be seen. But something in his tone—quiet, steady, unintrusive—made it harder to refuse than to allow. She shifted position, the movement sending pain through her hips and pins and needles down her legs and into her feet. She lifted herself into a high kneel, then onto all fours, stretching her legs backward to ease the pain in her joints. She nodded, then, realising he couldn’t see her through the closed door, cleared her throat with a small cough and spoke aloud. “Sure, yes. Thanks. Come in.”

The door opened a fraction, then fully as Paul walked backward through the doorway, concentrating on keeping the mugs he held level. He caught the edge of the door with his foot and turned, closing it softly with his elbow. He looked toward the bed area, where he could see the glow of light. “I saw all the wet clothes downstairs,” he said, advancing a step toward the bed area. “You must have been soaked.”

“I was.” Roisin used the wall to keep her balance as she stood, shifting her weight from one foot to the other as the pins and needles shifted from her calves to the soles of her feet.

His turned, sending twin splashes of coffee onto the threadbare carpet. He grinned sheepishly as he rubbed his foot across the mark. “I thought you mike want a coffee” His expression shifted, but not to pity. Something gentler. Something like recognition. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“I was thinking.” Better that than admit she was being haunted by paintings she’d only seen for a brief moment; painting that had become part of her whether she wanted them in her head or not, and she very much wanted them there. And didn’t, at the same time.

“In the dark?” He put one mug one the floor so that he could turn the second around and offer it to her handle first.

She nodded. “Thanks.” The smell of the coffee as she lifted the mug reminded her that she hadn’t eaten all day, and reminded her stomach too, which chose that moment to voice its complaint.

Paul laughed. “Are you hungry? I bought a loaf of bread on the way home. It was reduced, too, but the sell-by date is today.” He performed a brief squat to pick up the other coffee and brought the mug to his lips.

She nodded. “Then we should eat it soon, before it goes off.”

“We should.” Rather than head to the kitchen, he crossed the room slowly, as though approaching a wild animal that might bolt. He didn’t approach closer than a metre and instead, stopped a short distance away—close enough to share the space, far enough not to crowd her – and offered his coffee cup toward her.

She stared at it, uncomprehending, then the social custom of clinking glasses came to mind, and she tapped the rim of her mug to his.

“Cheers, big ears,” he said.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The rain filled the silence, soft and steady.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Paul said at last. “I just wanted to check you were alright.”

Roisin let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. “I’m not sure I am.”

He nodded once, accepting the truth without trying to fix it. “Do you want to talk?”

She hesitated. The images rose again behind her eyes—the dissolving face, the twisting torso, the wings that might have been forming or breaking. She pressed the fingers of her free hand to her temple. “I can’t stop seeing them,” she whispered.

Paul’s gaze softened. “The angels?”