Dark Lullaby Polly Ho-Yen (drm ebook reader .txt) 📖

The evening was cool after the heat of the small hall that we’d hired for the wake. Rain had started to fall lightly on the streets but I headed past the Tube station. I liked the feeling of it dampening my face, a gentle caress after the hardness, the steepness of the day. I tried to concentrate on the sound it made falling on to the streets, but the Spheres buzzed overhead with story after story, drowning it out.

I was tired from talking, from standing in groups, from wearing the black clothes that weighed heavy upon me, but I wasn’t ready to return home yet. I stepped into one of the pubs that was full, turning to the side to squeeze myself through the heaving bodies towards the bar.

With Evie not at the funeral, I had unwittingly become its centre-point and now I enjoyed passing unnoticed through the crowds. No one stopped me, no one wanted to offer their condolences or ask how I was. There was nobody who talked about how much Dad meant to them, nobody here who even knew that he had died.

There was a terrible part of me that felt it was all a charade. I was tired of saying the same thing over and over, weary of putting my grief into words; each time that I did, it became a little more tired, a little more dreary, a little less real.

Just then, someone touched my shoulder. Their hand glanced upon the edge of my top and rested for a moment on the bare skin of my neck. It was the lightest of touches but in that crowded bar, it was so intimate, so tender. I took a breath and exhaled raggedly; something within me stirred.

‘Kit?’ His voice was soft but I heard it nonetheless through the din as though it pierced me. He said my name thoughtfully, as though it were something important, something to consider.

I turned towards the voice and there he was, this man I felt I both knew and did not know at all, as if we were meant to be meeting, at this exact time, in this very place, as if it was always meant to be. He was smiling at me in such a kind way that a lump rose in my throat, the sadness that I had contained all day amplified at the sight of his gentle face.

Without thinking of what I was doing, I let myself sink into his arms. He didn’t say anything as I reached towards him, my head come to rest upon his chest. His arms closed around me. I felt the warm strength of them. And I had the overwhelming sense that here I was safe; here I could rest; here I could be.

The beat of his heart sounded louder then than anything else that surrounded us. Louder than the frenetic, drunken talk in the bar, stronger than the grating voices of the Spheres that morphed from piece to piece in an unending loop.

And then, as though I were waking from a dream, I realised what I was doing and straightened, released him. His arms tightened around me for just a moment longer as he felt me shift. Then he let me go.

‘Thomas,’ I said. He looked at me in the same way as when we’d met at Jakob’s naming ceremony, as though he were committing my face to memory. I leant into him to talk, my face close to his. If I turned to the side I could have grazed my lips on the stubble on his cheek. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not in the habit of greeting people like that, I promise. Especially people I have only met once.’

‘That’s good,’ he said back. ‘That means that you only do it for me.’

‘I… I…’

‘It’s OK,’ he said gently. ‘You don’t have to explain. I don’t, umm, do that either. Maybe it’s just that—’

But then before he could finish his sentence I surprised us both, leaning in towards his face and lingering there for a moment and so our eyes were just centimetres apart. I saw his eyes widen, his pupils dilate to a molten brown.

We kissed softly at first, our lips only lightly brushing, but then his hands were in my hair, cupping my wet cheeks, and we held each other with a sort of desperation. A longing that until that moment I wasn’t aware I possessed.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again when we pulled apart.

‘Don’t be. Do you want to go somewhere a little quieter?’ He’d had to shout ‘quieter’ as the group next to us started to yell something. It made us both laugh. I nodded.

When we reached the street, Thomas put his hand out to catch the raindrops on his fingertips. And then he rubbed his fingers together, pondering it.

‘Shall we walk? Do you mind the rain?’

‘No, I like it.’

We fell into step together and walked easily along the pavements. Our hands swung next to one another, almost touching.

The streets were dark but lit up by the Spheres’ ghostly glow. We crossed the road and headed down a residential street. The houses were old, tall and narrow and were decorated with different types of cornicing, and semi-circles of stained glass above the front doors that depicted their house numbers. Most of the windows were lit up and so we could see into sitting rooms, bedrooms and hallways. There was the further glow of workSpheres which dominated many rooms, and sometimes we saw people sitting around one, loading different channels across the whole of its globe.

‘You never feel properly alone, do you?’ Thomas said, gesturing to the Spheres at the bus shelter, which droned out monotone words.

‘No,’ I agreed.

‘Do you know anywhere that doesn’t have them?’

‘One place,’ I said. ‘My dad’s old allotment. I’ve been there a lot since he died.’

‘I’m sorry. Seb did tell me. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’

‘It’s fine, it’s just… I’ve been talking about it all day. It