Death Row - Mark Pearson [2]
He remembered hearing the music and looking up and seeing his uncle’s eyes that were no longer empty. He felt the soft touch of the man’s hand on his head now that was almost like a benediction. He didn’t remember crying but he could feel the moisture trickling into his mouth, the sweet salty taste and the lingering fetid smell of rotting flesh. He looked across at the small window, stained green with algae so that the light filtering weakly through made him feel like he was at the bottom of the ocean.
He shook his head, clearing the ancient memory, and looked down at his twitching hand, arching it so that the sinews stood out like cord and made the blood vessels move below the translucent skin like thin blue slugs. His fingers curled inward, making his hand a crab.
The Year of Our Lord 1995.
Time to feed.
FRIDAY NIGHT
Jack Delaney handed the last of the plates to Siobhan, his seven-year-old daughter and the bright-eyed light of his life. She rubbed a tea towel quickly over it and then handed the plate to her Aunt Wendy, who dried it properly and put it in a wooden plate-rack that was mounted over the counter to the right of the sink.
‘Last one,’ said Delaney, pulling the plug out of the sink to release the soapy water.
Siobhan pointed to the old-fashioned penny that was set into the base of the plate rack. ‘Why do they put a coin in it?’
Delaney ruffled her hair. ‘The lady who makes them, it’s like her signature.’
‘It’s like Kate’s, isn’t it?’
‘It is. She helped me choose it.’
‘Just as well,’ Wendy said as she looked around the kitchen. ‘She has a good eye.’
Delaney grinned. ‘Obviously.’
Wendy laughed and flicked the towel at him. ‘I wasn’t talking about you, big-head. What do you reckon, Siobhan? If he was any more of a doughnut … sure he’d be eating himself.’
Siobhan laughed. ‘He’d be an apple doughnut.’
Delaney fixed her with a serious look. ‘Why apple?’
‘Because they’re my favourites,’ she said, with a musical laugh, and hugged him around the waist.
Wendy cast her gaze around the room. ‘Seriously, though, Jack. You’ve done a good job here. It actually feels like a home here now.’
‘Thanks. But, like I say, I had help.’
‘And like I say, just as well.’
‘Are you saying I haven’t got good taste?’
‘Only in women, Jack, only in women.’
Delaney looked around the kitchen himself, a slight smile playing on his lips as he realised how far he had come since meeting Kate. It was furnished now with a range of styles: a sturdy wooden farmhouse table, a Scandinavian rocking chair in the corner with a tapestried cushion on it, an antique dresser. Some original framed watercolours on the wall. If it had just been down to him he would have gone to IKEA and got the lot from there, but Kate had put her foot down and made him take his time to work at finding the right pieces of furniture. In just a few weeks he had the whole house decorated and furnished and his sister-in-law Wendy was right, he realised. It did feel like home. In a way he was sad to have finished. He had really enjoyed hunting down pieces with Kate: from antique shops and auctions, from bric-a-brac stalls – photos and prints and original watercolours, sofas, chairs, sideboards, cutlery, crockery, glassware, wine rack and wine, whisky decanters and – most important of all – a big sled-style rubberwood bed they had bought from John Lewis that sat in the middle of Delaney’s wooden-planked master bedroom with antique mahogany pot-cupboards either side like a statement that Jack Delaney was back and open for business.
Delaney realised that his daughter had asked him a question. ‘Sorry, darling, what’s that?’
‘I was saying … can I stay the night? Aunty Wendy said it was all right.’
‘Sorry, darling, not tonight.’
‘Oh please.’ Siobhan pulled her most pleading expression, her beautiful big eyes plucking at his heartstrings like Segovia on a banjo. She reminded him so much of her mother. At least he could see the resemblance now and take comfort in it. Months back and he’d have been in pieces, but things had changed.