Cold Fire by James Hartley

Author:James Hartley [Hartley, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78535-763-3
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2018-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

3

Gillian looked out at the full moon, which was furry at the edges although the sky was cloudless. “I think the sky is really changing colour this time, you know.”

“Impossible. Your eyes are getting used to the light.”

“No, really. I think it’s morning. You should go.”

Romeo sat up. “I’m not going. They can come and get me here.”

“Oh, why is this happening to us? That’s what I don’t get. Why can’t it just be easy? The usual way? Why does it have to be like this?”

“I don’t care if they come and get me. What are they going to do? What could they do to me?”

Gillian pulled him closer. Behind her, on the faded white wall, now grey, was a years-old cartoon of a child being given an injection. “No one’s going to take you away from me.”

“I love you, you know.” He was facing her, eye to eye, soul to soul. “No, I really do. I know people say it all the time. I know I’ve said it before and not meant it, but this time I mean it. This is something I’ve never felt before. It’s so simple and clear.”

“It’s the truth,” said Gillian quietly

“Exactly. It’s the truth. It’s quiet as the truth. The truth is always quiet, isn’t it?”

“We’ll always be together.”

“I love you so much.”

“I love you!”

“Why didn’t I just tell you back then, when we met? In the bar at home?”

“Ha, why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know.” Romeo was asking himself the same question but suddenly saw he was many people, not one. He was no longer who he had been. He was only this: with her now, in love. To be here he had to have been there. He had to have done nothing. “I was a fool.”

“My fool,” said Gillian. “And I’m a fool, too, you know. I didn’t do anything, either, did I?”

“I didn’t trust myself. Maybe I thought you were going to laugh at me. Or, or …”

“You know I think that even if you’d said something I wouldn’t have believed you.” Gillian stared out at the sky. “Oh, no, it really is changing colour. I’m serious!”

“Don’t look at it.”

There was a sudden noise, a bump, from somewhere outside the Sick Bay door. It had come from one of the dorms alongside or upstairs. Both shifted in the narrow bed; the world had changed. It was no longer theirs

“I have to go,” Romeo said

“Tell me we’ll see each other again.”

“I promise.”

Gillian suddenly drew back and scrunched herself up against the headboard as he stood in front of the window. “Oh, I don’t know if it’s the light or what but you look terrible. You look like a corpse.”

Romeo wanted to joke but instead, the truth working through him, he shook his head, swallowed and whispered, “You too. You look like a statue on a tomb.”

Both turned at a knock and they said goodbye with their eyes as the door began to open. In the time it took the Matron to come in,

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