Watching You Chapter Three

                                                         CHAPTER THREE

 Kelly finished at six after a quiet night. Most of the junkies seemed to have gone to seed, the clubbers crawled into their dens for an unusually early night, and the boy racers probably competing their rust-ridden flyers somewhere along the coast. There hadn’t even been a “Big Issue” seller to be seen lingering in shop doorways.

               But the lack of activity, welcome in her present state as it had been, had only served to make her weary as she parked the car outside her house and undid the latch on the gate before letting herself into the place as quietly as possible.

                Joe would still be asleep, that much was certain, probably snoring his head off. He wouldn’t be up for a while yet, never having been an early riser, he was a last-minute person in every sense of the word, right down to the frantic rush from bed to factory in order to clock in at the stroke of eight.

                 Still, tired as she was, she wasn’t going up just yet. There remained that lingering sensation of her nerves being on edge, hanging back just behind the dopiness like a stranger waiting to pounce. The slightest sound would seem like a crash of thunder right now, and Joe’s snores could probably wake the dead when all said and done. Besides, there was bound to be the suffocating smell of his stale farts to deal with, like mouldy cabbage. Her eyes watered at the thought of it. No, she’d hang on until he raised himself; she’d listen to the news on “Sky,” and find out what had been going on in the land of the living.

              One thing to be grateful for was the car had behaved itself perfectly, thanks to McCain. She smiled as she thought of him, sarcastic but cheerful, that cheeriness enhanced by his soft Irish brogue. She thought about their forthcoming date on Friday night; well that was what it was after all, wasn’t it?

          The thought of it made her feel anxious but also invoked a pleasant sort of rising expectancy, not exactly explainable. Not a longing for McCain, not that strong, he wasn’t that much of a dish – there was that stupid ponytail for one thing, but there was something there all the same.

              Shouldn’t she feel guilty, level with Joe? Not a bit of it. When had he shown any concern for her? And it irritated her to think he couldn’t even get a simple job on the car right.

              She slid her hand across the sofa and directed the remote at the box. Pretty soon after she must have dozed off because when Joe woke her with a shove ten minutes before he was due to start work, she couldn’t remember listening to any news at all.

               ‘Thanks, I’ll do the same for you sometime,’ Kelly lifted heavy eyelids towards her husband and frowned. ‘Well, you’re sitting on the remote,’ he snapped back, ‘I need to check something on the box before I go.’

              ‘Like how many runners in the three-thirty at Cheltenham?’ She pushed herself from the sofa, not even bothering to catch his sharp glance. It had to be something like that. ‘Oh, while I come to think of it, I’m off out on Friday evening.’

               She watched his eyes darken at once with suspicion, she’d seen that look often enough to have known. Suddenly, the TV didn’t seem that important to him anymore.

     ‘A girlie night out, eh?’

     ‘Yeah, something like that.’ She watched the telly bring up a runner’s card, Doncaster it was. His stare hadn’t returned to the screen, she could still feel it upon her. ‘Just a social, that’s all,’ she said, forcing her eyes upon him. It would have been a fatal mistake to accede to a girlies’ night; the last time she went on one of those she was still single. The question itself had been a trap, just as well she could read him inside out.

     ‘Bit of a late arrangement, isn’t it?’ His eyes had narrowed as he picked at something beneath his nose that wasn’t a spot. ‘No, it was arranged last week. I forgot to mention it, that’s all.’ She managed not to blink, not to swallow, little giveaway signs that although Joe wasn’t brain of the century, he had a way of detecting in people.

     ‘Never thought of your lot as a group of revellers.’ He managed a dry little laugh that seemed to catch in his throat. How it irritated her these days; funny she hadn’t noticed it when they’d first met, and who said anything about revelling, did he have to blow everything out of proportion?  Yes of course he did; that was Joe. But she managed to avoid blurting her thoughts out; at least he seemed to have bought it – he’d turned his attention back to the telly, fumbling absently for his shoes now, and then finally losing interest in the Doncaster two-thirty, he forced them on.

      ‘I’ll see you later.’ He dropped his grip on the control, leaving her watching something she wasn’t remotely interested in.

     ‘Yeah.’ She heard him slam the door and rose from her seat. Her nerves were jagged again, and after McCain had seemed to calm them down, too. And now

to have to come back to this. Still, he wouldn’t be back until gone four. Five, in all likelihood, once he’d paid a visit to his beloved bookies.

     Then, like an object conjured from nowhere, she saw those dark eyes again, eyes that met hers as if they saw her, read her anxiety, her bewilderment at his comprehension of her, and as she shivered climbing the stairs, she felt the unease swell into fear. Stupid, illogical fear, but fear that gripped her like a stranglehold.