Human Remains

the square.
    Audrey and a friend are making for the taxi rank and the inevitable queue.
    I head towards the multi-storey where I left the car, and spend a few moments affixing the numberplates I unscrewed from Garth’s Volvo in the street behind the office yesterday. Just in case things don’t go according to plan.
    I drive slowly around the corner towards the taxi rank just in time to see Audrey parting company from the blonde woman. Audrey isn’t going to wait in the queue for a taxi. Audrey is going to walk. I feel a little tremor of excitement. Everything is going so well, so perfectly. I could not have planned it better. I take a left turn and park in a side street. The arousal and the thought of what might happen later are making it hard to concentrate, so I stare at the clock in the car and make myself wait exactly five minutes. Then I start the engine again and drive back to the main road. It is still busy, the street-lights illuminating her path. She must feel safe, walking home, with cars and people passing her every few seconds. She does not feel alone. She does not feel threatened, not in the slightest – which is all good. Very good.
    I pull alongside her and open the window on the passenger side.
    ‘Audrey!’
    She stops walking and looks at me, at the car. Her face registers drunken confusion. She is more pissed than I’d thought. This, too, is good.
    ‘Colin?’ She comes over to the car and leans in a little, through the passenger window.
    ‘You need a lift?’ I ask.
    The car is warm and I can feel the freezing air flooding in through the open window. As she bends towards me, her cleavage is on full display. I force myself back to the eye contact, back to the reassuring smile.
    ‘Oh, that’s kind of you. I’m nearly home, though.’
    ‘Come on, I’ll drive you the rest of the way. Get in.’
    It’s the confidence, the easy friendliness that does it. The lack of explanation. Don’t beg. Keep it simple. Assume assent. And besides all that, her shoes are hurting her and it’s bitterly cold and what could happen with someone she knows, less than a mile from her front door?
    She smells of wine and the remnants of a citrus perfume and drying sweat, and I inhale her as subtly as I can while trying to keep up a reassuring conversation.
    ‘So how are things with Vaughn?’
    ‘We’ve split up,’ she says.
    ‘Really? Oh, I am sorry. He didn’t say anything.’
    ‘No, he’s in denial.’
    ‘So what happened?’
    She looks out of the window as we slow for the traffic lights.
    ‘He’s just – not the right person for me. It’s nothing he’s done wrong. He’s a decent bloke.’
    ‘But it’s time to move on?’
    This time she smiles at me and for a second – just a second – I falter. Is this the right thing to do? I could still choose a different path here. I could drop her off at home, give her my phone number, wish her a pleasant weekend and ask if she’d like to come out with me some time. That’s what they do, isn’t it? The sorts of things people say?
    ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Time to move on.’
    I put my hand across and touch her knee. Just her knee – no higher – but still she makes a clumsy grab for it and pushes it away.
    ‘What do you think you’re doing, Colin?’ Her voice has lifted an octave. ‘I know I’m a bit drunk but that doesn’t mean you can start taking advantage, alright?’
    I feel the anger and the bile rise in my oesophagus.
Audrey, how could you? Ruining everything, so quickly?
    ‘I wasn’t,’ I say coldly. The traffic lights are on red. They shine into the car and make everything inside it red, too.
    She softens, then. ‘Alright. Sorry if I overreacted. I’m a bit jumpy at the moment. It’s the next turning on the left – just up there at the top of the hill.’
    I look across to her, inhaling her scent again. It’s the turning point, right here, right now. I could drop her off at home still, no harm done. No risk. Or I could take her now and move my life forward down this journey. And her attitude, the defiance in her eyes, makes me want her more than ever. She would put up a fight, no doubt about it. But taking the fight out of her would be so much better; so much more of a kick than watching people die who have no fight in them at all.
    She stares back at me, drunk but challenging, almost daring me to try it.
    The lights change to green and I ease the car up the hill.

Annabel
     
     
    I woke up early on Sunday and got dressed in