Connect by Julian Gough

Author:Julian Gough
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

92

Lloyd arrives, suspiciously quickly, ahead of two corporals flanking Naomi. He can’t have brought her far. Where were they? What has Naomi been saying?

Ryan sees Lloyd is trying to catch his eye.

‘Thank you, Lloyd,’ says Ryan. ‘You can leave now.’

‘Sir . . .’ says Lloyd, glancing back at Naomi.

She has gone straight to Colt. Probably wants to hug him, thinks Ryan. But that tends not to work out too well. No; she’s holding his hand. He’s letting her do it. Interesting. Improving.

And Colt looks at his mother; his father, his mother; his father.

Back and forth, thinks Ryan. Like he’s hypnotized.

Ryan gets an odd, faint memory, of the three of them standing like this, in a tense standoff, when Colt was a kid. Where exactly, and why? It won’t come to him. Ryan suppresses the tiny shrug he’s about to make. Years of conscious control over body language, it’s become automatic.

‘My wife,’ says Ryan quietly to Lloyd. ‘My child. I’ll deal with this.’

Naomi hears him, turns, opens her mouth to snap, ‘Ex-wife.’ Closes it. No. This officer is trying to get her back out of the room. And she wants to stay in the room, with Colt. ‘It’s fine,’ she says to Lloyd. ‘Seriously, it’s fine.’

The officer glances at her, at Colt. At Ryan.

Lloyd straightens up and goes for it. Ryan feels curiously proud of him. ‘Sir, I’m going to have to contact the Department, and file a formal . . .’

‘Get out,’ says Ryan.

‘Sir.’

Lloyd waves the two corporals out, and leaves.

The door closes with an airtight suck. Like a kiss, thinks Naomi. Like a kiss. She lets go of Colt’s hand.

And as Ryan and Naomi stare at each other across the room and their faces change expression, pour out strange information that Colt can’t quite decode yet, he looks at his father; his mother; his father; his mother. Look at what just happened to Mama’s face . . .

It is as though he has never seen his parents’ faces before.

Unconsciously, Colt reaches up, adjusts the visor of his helmet, as sharp new thoughts cut through him.

She changes, when she sees Dad. To protect herself. To feel safe. She changes her face. The way she stands. Do other women do that, too? Wow, women can’t be themselves, when they are in the room with him. He is a distortion field. Angry. He makes them not be themselves. And he doesn’t know. He thinks women are like that all the time. He doesn’t know.

He wants to . . . oh wow.

Colt doesn’t want to think the word, but it’s the right word – the other words he tries in its place don’t work – so he finishes the thought.

He wants to fuck them.

All of them.

Colt has never realized this before, and he pauses over this strange thought.

Has Dad ever seen a woman be herself?

‘Well,’ says Ryan. ‘My family. All in one place. This is better than Thanksgiving.’

There’s a kind of glee in Ryan’s voice that makes Naomi uneasy. ‘So, what happens now?’ she says.

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