The meanest Flood

overlooked the garden and was standing by the window, staring out as though she could see the wheelbarrow and the late-flowering roses.
    She turned when he entered the room. ‘Sam.’
    ‘How you doing?’
    She took a step towards him but he moved faster and had his arms around her before the door had closed behind him. Her slim white stick fell to the carpet as she searched his body with her hands, reaching under his jacket and into the small of his back.
    They stood together for a few moments, each of them maximizing the area of contact. He could smell her hair and feel the dark curls tickling his face and neck. He was aware of the heat of her thighs against his own, the way her fingers kneaded the discs of his spinal column. She was slim but she was fit and her body was strong and muscular. Her blindness gave her an outer appearance of vulnerability but she was fiercely independent and ever willing to take on whatever the world threw at her.
    He held her at arm’s length and looked at her. She reached out her hand and touched his face, tracing the line of his nose and lips with the tip of one finger.
    ‘You look good,’ he said.
    ‘So do you. I’ve missed you.’
    She wore a black satin suit from Paul Smith, a thin cashmere top under the jacket. He wanted to breathe her in, her voice, her mind and body, the dusky tinge to her skin.
    ‘There’s coffee,’ she said. ‘By the bed. And I’ve brought some clean clothes. I put them in the bathroom.’
    He kissed her on the mouth and she put her hand behind his head and returned the kiss forcefully as if afraid it might be the last.
    Sam poured the coffee and splashed cream into Angeles’ cup. He handed it to her. His own he drank black. She asked him about Oslo and what happened to Geordie and he answered all her questions. He watched her constantly, fascinated by the nuances of movement and facial expressions that had attracted him to her when they first met but that he had forgotten about until he started missing her over the last few days. He told her about finding the body of Holly Andersen in the flat at Calmeyers gate and the characters he’d sailed back to England with in the container aboard the Ivan Mazuranic.
    Angeles listened. From time to time as he spoke she reached out and touched his hand, and using that uncanny ability she referred to as facial vision, she always knew exactly where it was.
    After the coffee Sam went into the bathroom and stripped off his clothes while the tub filled with hot water. He trimmed his beard, which had a tendency to grow quicker on the right side, and lowered himself into the water, feeling it close around him until he was immersed up to his chin.
    He closed his eyes and listened to Angeles moving around in the next room; that sharp tapping of her stick as she negotiated unfamiliar territory. She opened the bathroom door and stepped inside, hovering there for a moment as if measuring the room, gauging the spaces that were available to her.
    She came over to the bath and found the chair on which Sam had placed his clothes. She gathered them in her arms and took them through to the bedroom. Through the doorway Sam saw her place them on a low table at the foot of the bed. She removed her jacket and rolled up the sleeves of her sweater. When she returned to the bathroom she sat on the chair and reached for the soap.
    ‘What you up to?’ he asked.
    ‘Sit up,’ she said. ‘I want to scrub your back.’
    Sam struggled into a sitting position and let her go at it. ‘You like?’ she asked.
    ‘Mmmm, magic.’
    She lathered him again, kneading the muscles on his back with the knuckles of both hands. ‘It’s good to have you back,’ she said.
    Sam tried to think of something to match it but the words wouldn’t flow. He reached up and touched her face. When she left him he finished washing and cleared the condensation from the mirror to check there was something left. He knew what it was about the beard, made him look like a social worker. He towelled himself down and walked through to the bedroom. Angeles was in the bed, her clothes lying on the carpet where she had dropped them.
    He got in and put his arm around her. He couldn’t stop thinking of it as an interval, that when it was over he’d have to go out again and grapple with reality. He began to talk and Angeles listened and they turned out their minds for each other without realizing what they were doing.
    When they’d been quiet for a while Angeles said,