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Benjamin Tate surged on. He wanted to run, not just to get to where he was going quicker, although he did, but to do something with this well of energy inside him. A new lease of life; that’s what survivors said, wasn’t it? That was him now, back from the dead, risen off the slab, stomping away as the man in the mask waved a scalpel after him. He looked up. In front of him the vast white building dominated the skyline, ever huge and hulking in the midst of the low suburbs. It appeared changed though, this morning, or maybe it was only his eyes that were changed. It didn’t appear as the brute he’d always taken it for, rather a great, sad, cumbersome beast, self-conscious of its size. He felt a strange fondness for the old thing, wondered if he’d not misjudged it all these years, that actually it, too, had been forever out of place.

His black shoes echoed down the stairwell. He began calculating how many times he’d gone up and down them. Who cared? He opened the door and was surprised by how dim it was down there. Had it always been like this? He couldn’t countenance it. Surely a bulb must have blown. Through the gloom he saw Pete and Sophia at their desks. As he got nearer they looked up. Pete tapped his wrist, where a watch would be if he’d worn one, and shook his head in mock reproof. Sophia smiled. He realised that she didn’t like him, had never liked him, that her politeness was only for Pete.

He sat down at his desk, stared at the monitor, the keyboard, a notepad – he wondered idly what it was they thought he should have been writing in it all these years. Beside it was the batch of cards left over from the previous evening. Eastburn, Easter, Eastman… He opened the drawer and removed the bookmark, ran a light fingertip over the bulging letters, wondered how that man from the bench must have felt when he realised he’d lost it. This was the reason he’d gone back, he might never have returned otherwise, but how could he live with himself had he left it here to come apart, waste away, all alone in the dark. He put the bookmark in his pocket and stood up, reaching behind Sophia and extending his hand to Pete. Pete stared at it, uncomprehending. ‘That’s it for me,’ Benjamin Tate said.

In years to come, when he remembered this day, and he would remember this day, he’d remember above all the sound of Pete hollering and whooping and clapping as he walked towards the door.

The mid-morning streets were empty. Everyone, it seemed, had things to do, places to be. He looked about. What struck him was the light. Perhaps it was just its contrast to the mute light downstairs, but it seemed unusually lucid that morning. He thought of the phrase, liquid light, thought this is what it probably meant. Everything seemed to radiate with a sort of translucence, a new clarity, their edges suddenly sharper than before. It made whatever he focused on stand out, almost jump out, from whatever was behind it. He thought how clear it was, how easy to see where one thing started and another ended.

He returned to his flat and searched the rooms for things to take with him. He looked in his cupboard, saw the shirts all lined up neatly with each flat sleeve holding the waist of the one in front, all in dull, vague shades of blue and brown and black, lifeless colours, colours that backgrounds were made of. He looked, a little guiltily, at the gown and slippers on the stool, imagined them peeking at him hopefully when he turned away. Did they know something was up, like a dog knows before its master goes on holiday? He walked out of the room, past the kitchen and into the lounge. The chair with its cross-eyed buttons, the single, small table, the shattered television. He had the sense as he moved about that this wasn’t his home, that someone he’d never met had died here and he’d been sent to clear up. He glanced at the books; what time now, for other people’s stories? As he walked out he fancied he could hear the walls, the lights, the softly fidgeting appliances whispering to each other after him. They’d never liked him either. Had the crooked number four fallen down then, that last time? It would have been fitting if it had.

At two o’clock he was outside the café. Clare emerged shortly afterwards and they walked a little without talking. She seemed for the first time to be nervous around him, or edgy. She stopped, waiting for him to speak.

‘I’m not sure how to start,’ he said. He began to tell her that he was going away, that he wasn’t sure when or where, or for how long, and that she should come with him. As he was talking he was watching her recede from him. He wasn’t surprised, found himself not minding even. He wondered at the seismic shifts that occur without our knowing, or without our acknowledging them, at least. He tried to identify what secret communications had already taken place that had foretold this.

‘Why are you asking me?’ she eventually said. He wondered that also. They had simply run their course. She was indeed Florence Nightingale, and he’d been diagnosed, treated, discharged. There was an awkward moment then, when both tried to think of something appropriate to say, before she’d taken his hand, squeezed it quickly, and then, just like that, let him go. In another week they’d be strangers.

Where would he go now, he wondered? He had no idea. Had that really been Madeline, in the car? He could find her, if he wanted, he didn’t doubt that. There were ways and means.

Benjamin Tate was in an ancient courtyard that trapped the sun. He was standing on its edge, head tipped up at an angle, staring into the warm yellow glow behind his eyelids. Where was he? Somewhere in southern Europe, or North Africa, somewhere else, anyway. There were high, flat skies and deep-blue bays with white edges. He hadn’t known the ocean could be that colour.

He’d been there more than a month, had only come for a week but discovered, to his surprise, that he was a secret sun-worshipper, he who had always considered himself to be a child of the winter. In the courtyard around him other people drifted to and fro, came and went, paid him no heed. He leant back and scratched his shoulder blades against the hot stone wall. It surprised him how smooth it was. He thought of the thousands, millions of arms that must have brushed up against it over the years, rubbed away, through sheer persistence, its rough edges. He smiled weakly to himself; there were lessons there.

He walked out of the courtyard, followed the pebbled alleys into which, still, the tracks of chariots were cut. He wondered what it must have been like, the day the earth exploded and spilled its scorching innards on top of everyone. Their corpses, set rigid in hardened cases of ash, were all about, in all manner of poses, and all ages. He wished he was nineteen again, or rather, that he was the age he was, but had lived his life differently since he was nineteen. Perhaps if someone had taken the time to tell him what Clare had told him. Yes, why had no one said those things to him? He thought of his mother, deranged and ranting in that dismal home. He thought of his father, hollowed out by grief, gone cold in the chair. And his brother. When he thought of Charlie, or Charles, he thought only of himself, of the gap that had opened not closed over the years.

An image of the old tree outside his window appeared. It would be there now, unchanged, as it had been yesterday, as it would be tomorrow. Of all things, he missed that tree the most, its remote steadfastness. What did it care if his dreamy face was gazing at it or not? He liked that about it. There was once a boy who had dumped a bin liner of clothes on a doorstep. He wondered what had become of him. He hadn’t been destroyed. He saw him still, bent over in the false light. He could return to him.

The sun was directly overhead now, it beat down against the back of his neck. His water bottle sweated in his hand. Somewhere a boy was crying down at his dropped ice cream, watching it turn to pink liquid. Benjamin Tate found a bench, leaned down against his elbow and gazed dully at the shadow hunched between his feet. He closed his eyes again, thought he might drift away. All the voices swirling around him. A woman, old-sounding, was on her way to Oman to visit her husband, but had always wanted to visit this site. A man wasn’t happy with his hotel bed, which creaked and kept him awake at night and he didn’t sleep well at the best of times. So many lives. And what of his own now? Perhaps he’d run a marathon, or limp one at least, or set off on one of those hare-brained, cross-continental adventures that were all the rage these days, or he could climb a mountain, or all the mountains, or learn a new language. Perhaps he’d make a friend. No one is ever just one person.

Just behind him someone was speaking quietly, but he could hear every word she said, as though she were at his ear, talking only to him. She was speaking about a bench in a park, and a painting of an old ship on a wall, and a field of yellow rapeseed. She was saying she wanted to go back there. He heard another voice then, a young boy, no, two young boys, they sounded so alike, they were playing together. Soon their father would come and scoop them up with his two great paws and carry them home.

Benjamin Tate was on his feet now. It was cooler. The sun was off in a far corner of the sky. How long had he been there? Where had the time gone? He was running to catch up with it. The ruins were behind him. He heard another voice. He knew it, although he’d never heard it before. I’m happy here, it said. And Mummy and Daddy will come soon. Yes, he knew that voice. He would speak her name. Ruby. Ruby.

THE END