Down. Dizzy. Pitching left. He is draining away like dirty water, round and round. Stumbling not walking, the ground threatening to come up and meet him. And yet he presses on. Something’s not right.
He is swampy, heavy-footed. His shin is throbbing. A scuffle – like being spun in blind man’s buff – so quick that when it was over he thought he’d been mugged, but he patted himself down and his wallet and phone were there all right.
His muscles are soupy, unresponsive. His legs wade, the landscape too broad for him to make headway. The air is close like a wet web. He can barely draw breath.
He stumbles to the right, into a muddy wooded area in a direction he hadn’t intended to take and it’s as if the ground is reaching for him. Is it quicksand, not mud?
He’s really scared now; nervously places a hand to his chest. His shirt is wet through but it’s not raining. He looks at his hand. It is glistening dark; the colour unclear because of the dark and the orangey street lighting.
He starts to panic, cannot fill his lungs. What is happening to him?
He falls into the mud, feels some arms take him up and cradle him, looks up to see blonde hair. The alien scent of perfume.
Saskia?
‘Sass?’ he whispers, confused. Is she the cause of this, after all her stupidity? She went too far and he couldn’t stop her.
‘Sass?’
His sight dims, he is too tired.
The world dips.
Crisp in one hand, sandwich in the other; the tickle and press of light internal kneading around her pelvis, like butterflies in a sack. Seems typical that pregnancy has brought zero in the way of nausea but has instead turbo-charged Manon’s appetite.
She becomes aware of Harriet and Davy talking, urgent and low, on the other side of the open-plan office. Something’s up. They’re quickening. Manon elongates her neck, craning to hear, but her colleagues are too far away.
As they pass her desk she says, ‘Anything up?’
‘Job’s come in,’ Harriet says, but it’s clear she can’t be bothered to fill Manon in.
‘Ooh, who is it?’ Manon says, full mouth.
They ignore her.
She looks at Davy, full of himself these days; Detective Sergeant Davy Walker, promoted by the super, Gary Stanton. He might as well call Stanton ‘Daddy’. Well, he’s welcome to it. Manon is in hot pursuit of the work–life balance: desk job, regular hours, house full of children. She wants to focus on whether to sign up for an organic veg box or whether this would be taking
