Chapter 5: Records

I got as far as the top of the stairs on Friday morning before my legs stopped working.

I had a hand on the banister and a coat over one arm, and I couldn't make myself go down.

Gethin came out of his flat below, in a jumper with a hole at the elbow, holding a mug.

He looked up at me and then at the coat.

"Where are you going?"

"The clinic in Marylebone," I said. "I need my notes. I need to know what they said that last week."

"On the Tube?"

"Yes."

"You're shaking."

"I'm fine."

He put the mug on the radiator shelf.

"I've got a car," he said. "It's ugly and the heater smells of toast, but it goes."

"You said nobody rescues anybody."

"I'm not rescuing. I'm driving. There's a difference, and it's about eleven miles an hour slower."

I almost said no.

I stood on the stairs and thought about how much I had asked of the last man in my life, and how little he had ever given.

Then I went down.

The car was a green estate older than I was, with a child's seat in the back and a crushed paper cup on the floor.

"My sister's," Gethin said, and took the cup out. "She's in Swansea. I've got it until she misses it."

He drove with both hands on the wheel, steady, with the sleeves of his jumper pushed up.

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