The meanest Flood

make sure she didn’t take anything important. And there was something strange: they’d definitely been CDs in the dream when in reality they were vinyl, albums, maybe a few audio-tapes in there.
    When she went outside to the van he poured himself a refill. Cheap and nasty, he could feel it going to work on his liver.
    He sat on a chair in the kitchen and put his head in his hands. He caught glimpses of the world fragmenting around him. ‘It’s fucking Christmas,’ he said when she came back into the house.
    ‘I know the date, Sam.’
    ‘Christmas Eve.’ He was going to tell her he’d bought a turkey again but she hadn’t been too impressed the first time.
    She looked good, as though she was on the verge of something. Sam hadn’t looked at her for a long time, or if he had he hadn’t seen her. She looked as though she had a life and she looked fired-up, as though she couldn’t wait for it to get going. Didn’t really matter what came, she’d make something of it.
    ‘You can take half the turkey,’ he said. ‘If there’s room in the van. I’ll get a saw.’
    ‘Look,’ Holly said, ‘it hasn’t worked, that’s all. We both tried and it didn’t come to anything. You haven’t been happy.’
    It was true, he hadn’t been. Not for years, long before Holly came into his life. He didn’t understand what happiness had to do with it. While they were together there was hope, that’s how he’d seen it. He’d known it wasn’t enough, but as long as they had each other...
    ‘You’ll be all right?’ she asked him. ‘You won’t do anything silly?’
    He wanted to laugh at that but why torture the woman? No, he wouldn’t do anything silly, he’d carry on making sensible and rational decisions. Soon as he’d finished these eight bottles he’d stop drinking and get a job. Become respectable, rich, maybe famous.
    There was a moment, in real time and in the dream, when he thought of going down on his knees, begging her to stay, at least over Christmas. But he didn’t do it because it might have worked. He saw them stuffing the turkey together and sitting down at the table with it between them. And he knew that what he thought was hope was no hope at all. If he begged long and loud enough it would prolong the nightmare. Perhaps indefinitely. But he saw himself with the possibility of alternative nightmares. A man with the luxury of choice.
    It was best that she ran off with her Norwegian doctor. And it was best that Sam stayed behind in the empty house. There was so much of him he didn’t know, so much of himself he had avoided. Sam Turner didn’t need a relationship, he needed time and space.
    ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for,’ he told her. While he was forming the words he tried to make himself believe them. She didn’t reply and he didn’t have anything to add.
    When she’d loaded up the van she came back into the house with a small blonde woman. ‘This is Sam,’ she said. ‘And, Sam, this is my friend, Inge Berit Andersen.’
    He tried to get to his feet but it was too far to go. He held his glass in a salute and swigged the whisky down.
    They left together, hand in hand like a couple of kids.
    Sam lived with the turkey and the blowflies for ten days before he propped the carcass against the dustbin by the back gate.
    He looked out at Osterhaus gate, found his clothes and got dressed. For a while he sat against the floor-to-ceiling stove which heated the flat and listened to Geordie talking to Janet in his sleep. He listened to Geordie talking to Echo in his sleep, and to Barney, and to his long-lost mother and his dead brother. This was the longest period that Geordie and Janet had been apart since they got hitched. Not surprising the kid was having withdrawal symptoms.
    Sam thought about Angeles and wondered how she was doing. He shrugged his shoulders. She’d be all right. She was a strong woman. She’d managed without Sam Turner before they met and she’d manage OK now while he was away, on the run, trying to defend an old girlfriend against a madman.
    He couldn’t phone Angeles. The police would trace the call. He could communicate with her through e-mail, using the Hotmail or Yahoo addresses, but he’d need an Internet cafe to do that and it was too early. The news told him that back in York the river level had risen by over four metres and was expected to rise again over the weekend. It was still raining up in the hills and the rivulets and tributaries were