Part 12 (1/2)

He entered, asked the butcher for 500 grams of minced beef, handed him the money, accepted his package and his change, and left.

As he pa.s.sed the window again, he felt cautiously triumphant. He risked a tiny sideways glance. Still no rabbit. Excellent.

The way another person might have pursued the meaning of life, Justin made meatb.a.l.l.s, shaping each ball into a sphere so laboured and perfect, it caused his eyes to fill with tears for the flesh of the n.o.ble cow, for the perfection of three-dimensional geometric forms in nature, for the relentless universality of dinner time.

He tried explaining this to Agnes and she laughed, but stopped when she caught sight of the expression on his face. He turned away before she could see the tears fall.

Oh lord, she thought. Woods. Not out of yet.

She had hoped the cooking would bring him out of himself, lead him back into the real world. But it didn't. In the kitchen he was like the sorcerer's apprentice: he couldn't stop. The orderly rhythm of recipes calmed his jangled nerves, there was no need for value judgements and approximations. He disliked pinches and handfuls, hungered after precise measures and medium (not small, not large) eggs. It calmed him to choose ingredients, to prepare each according to its true inner nature. The feel of raw materials and the sound of sizzling comforted him.

It comforted him most of all to feed Agnes.

'It's good, Justin, you're a natural,' Agnes said, helping herself to another meatball.

Yes, he was a natural. A natural lunatic. But he enjoyed putting his mind to simple tasks, enjoyed her approval, enjoyed her pleasure at eating something other than sandwiches. It made him feel closer to the person he had lost track of, the person he had been not so long ago, before his brain got all tied up in catastrophe.

And he felt closer, if only by teaspoons, to his heart's desire.

33.

Justin had planned a special meal to celebrate two weeks of living with Agnes. As he adjusted the heat under the lamb chops, he heard a knock on the door.

Wrapped in a thick winter coat, Peter Prince looked gawky and unfazed as ever, like a relic from a life Justin had almost forgotten. Beside him stood his sister.

'Do you remember Dorothea?' Peter asked.

'h.e.l.lo,' she said, noting the dark circles under his eyes.

Though her face looked familiar, Justin could not recall having met her before.

The three stood in awkward silence. Justin wished they would go away. He squeezed his eyes shut, but when he opened them again, brother and sister were still there.

Peter smiled his awkward smile. 'Your mother said you were living here now.'

'Yes.'

'Something smells good.'

'Lamb.'

During this exchange, Dorothea observed Justin calmly. Justin, who had often marvelled at Peter's ability to sustain an uncomfortably long silence, now wondered if the talent were genetic.

He sighed at last, defeated. 'Won't you come in?'

Peter brightened. 'Thanks. That would be nice.' He stepped in before Justin could change his mind and once inside, looked carefully around the little flat. He noted the crumpled duvet on the sofa, the breakfast dishes still on the table, the sink full of water and unwashed mugs. 'You don't come to school any more,' he said.

Justin nodded.

'Or cross-country. Coach was asking what happened to you.'

'Worried, was he?'

'I wouldn't say worried exactly. Hacked off, more like. I think your lamb is burning.'

Justin dashed to the hob, grabbed the frying pan and hurled it on to the kitchen table. Having seared his palm on the handle, he reached over to turn the heat off with his good hand, plunging the other into the sinkful of dirty, cold water. Smoke continued to billow from the burning frying pan. He stared at the charred meat as the smoke alarm began to shrill.

Peter grabbed a tea towel and fanned it violently under the alarm, while an unruffled Dorothea walked over to the window and opened it. Eventually the noise stopped and the smoke cleared.

'I saw a picture of the airport disaster,' Peter said, in the dramatic quiet left by the shrieking alarm. 'And...' He hesitated. 'I thought I saw you.'

Justin stared.

'My G.o.d, you are one lucky guy.'

'Lucky?' Justin p.r.o.nounced the word with exaggerated care, his teeth clenched, his entire body rigid with disbelief. Dorothea removed his burnt hand from the dirty sinkwater and examined it.

Peter Prince hesitated. 'Uh... well, yes, lucky. The way I figure it, you must be just about the luckiest guy on earth.'

Justin exploded. 'Are you totally, utterly insane? I've nearly been blown to smithereens in a freak airport accident, just about had a plane land in my lap. It's the first time in history anything bad has ever happened at Luton Airport and I just happened to be inches from the epicentre. The fact that I'm here today is thanks only to the bizarre coincidence of Agnes arriving five minutes this side of apocalypse, thus saving me from spending the rest of my days as a teaspoonful of vapour.'

Peter nodded his head sympathetically. 'Yes, I guess so. Only...'

'Only what?'

'Only... you're still alive. She did arrive, and you weren't vaporized. And you were hanging around in an airport, which strikes me as kind of dangerous in the first place. Airports! I mean think about it. They're a hub, a crossroads for all sorts of lowlife operators: drug dealers, pickpockets, international criminals, forgers, arms dealers, black marketeers, smugglers, slave traders, spies, deposed dictators...'

As Peter totted up potential horrors on the fingers of his left hand, Justin froze, though it might be more accurate to say that time ceased to advance around him. He experienced a kind of philosophical vertigo, his thoughts spinning wildly as Peter Prince's words sunk in.

One lucky guy.

His brother hadn't fallen out the window. He himself had survived a blast of epic proportions that should have killed him. Maybe he was lucky after all.

He didn't feel lucky, but he was alive. Thanks to luck, and to Agnes. Without her, he had nothing. Without her, it was possible he would cease to exist altogether.

Dorothea wrapped a clean tea towel around Justin's hand. 'You'll live,' she said, and he stared at her.

Peter glanced around the flat once more. 'Where's Boy?'

'I don't know. I haven't seen him since the crash.'

Peter looked genuinely shocked. 'No wonder you're so upset.'