Nine months ago, set before The Burning when Dempsey is in hiding.
Three weeks. It's the longest time without her since he landed at Heathrow. Everything about London reminded him of how lonely he was back then. Landmarks taunt him again now, bittersweet with memories, roads go nowhere and he's turning it to the criminal he detests. Just like Harry had always warned him. He took Lupino to the coast, hidden him away in a cheap room cultivating a walk and posture in seafront. He swapped his recognisable cigars for cheap cigarettes and tried to rid himself of Dempsey, but he can't bear the emptiness and lack of familiarity. He needs a dose of Harry's common sense to keep him on track. As he stood outside the down-beat brothel in need of comfort, he shook his head and headed to the train station with purpose. Harry. London.
He leaps over the back wall into her garden, using a dustbin as leverage and despairs as the back door gives under his lock picking skills. He has a key for the front door but it's entrusted back to her until he's safe or officially dead. Wherever they've been hidden, he hopes not to see them, the temptation of discarding Lupino is stronger than he thought as he stands in her kitchen, looking at the haphazard collection of photos on her fridge. Of him with her at a party just weeks ago when he thought they had a future. He vows to take her out, to the opera maybe when it's over. Right now, if he saw the keys to his Merc, he'd wake her up and drive them away.
He just wants to see Harry's face. Have her yell at him or hug him. To call him a selfish prick for leaving her when they were so close to being more. To be reassured that she misses him as much as he craves her. He creeps through the living room, knowing the layout far too well for a mere partner. Past the cluttered piano, around the ticking grandfather clock, taking a wide step over the squeaky floorboard and begins to climb the stairs.
He hears her sigh as he reaches halfway. Then a rustle of sheets and a moan. He stops dead. Arrested by his own stupidity. He had never considered she has found someone else, that she may not have meant all the words she spoke with a gentle smile. The signals he must have misread.
It's been three weeks, that's all. But in the first weeks of his landing in this country, he'd tried to buy services from Gloria who refused him on account of Harry, stuck his tongue in his partner's mouth and bedded a hit woman. Through it all, Harry had remained stoic but radiated disappointment. He thought he was redeemed for not dating the friend who managed the bookshop. Maybe he has it all wrong?
His absence has given her time to meet another man but he feels a bittersweet tinge of sadness and jealously. He's been living like a monk, his mind and body attuned to her, like a place of pilgrimage, read to worship at her command. He feels cold from the soul and bones out, feverish with hurt and paralysed on the staircase, ironically and bitterly aware of who he was and penance he is paying now.
The sheets move again, and the bed squeaks. Then he hears his name, softly at first. It's her voice. Only hers. Then it's said louder. Oh Harry, he thinks, as he bites back a gasp, oh honey.
He wants to preen like a gilded cockerel. He wants to watch, to creep up the stairs and see how he makes her feel, but he's not that man anymore. He has discarded the meat head who peered at her body through the bedroom door and, later, stood under the shower with a mind full of fantasies. Thoughts that occupied his mind ever since, even when he was enjoying the body of another woman. He wants the real deal but he's got to be worthy of her first.
He kills the overwhelming urge to fall onto the bed with her and give her the real thing. To walk up, head held high and show her what she's missing and claim her. Make her see the stars and all the heavens. He'd pull down the moon if she asked.
But he'd never embarrass her. Not like this. She's too precious, too important. As her moans become a cries, he slips away. Goes back to his crummy bed sit and makes a mess of himself and the sheets.
He won't tell her, she'll never know. He vows, as he cleans himself up, that he'll tell her about Joey, it's too lonely in his head and he'll earn his place in her life.