Part 35 (1/2)

We disagreed about almost everything, but we disagreed in a weird way. Like it meant we thought just the same as each other, but would go hammer and tong to disagree over details. Ha. The colour of wrapping paper. New music. Pretentiousness of art. We couldn't start a conversation without arguing. It was great.

We loved each other so much it scared the living f.u.c.k out of me.

An aide came shuffling into the room, then, as silent as death. He didn't speak. He wheeled a medical stand before him carrying a small steel machine with a gla.s.s front and a system of tubes dangling below it. I ignored him. I carried on talking.

A week before Jasmine Tomas moved into my flat, she told me to get rid of all the photos I'd taken of her. This was six years' worth. She said... she said when we lived together all our photos should be of both of us, or neither of us.

She said that sort of thing a lot.

The thing about Jasmine Tomas was, it would be easy to mistake her for a romantic. It would be easy to be fooled by the things she said, the gestures she made. And then just when you figured you'd got her pegged she'd switch on the footy, or tell a sick joke, or come home from work with stories of scalpels and infections. One time, I cooked Jasmine a stew. I mean, f.u.c.k... my job was to go overseas and kill stuff. I don't cook. Still, it turned out okay, you know? Cheese, leeks, you name it.

So I took the lid off the stew when she arrived - wearing the purple-and-blue dress with the earrings I got for her birthday - and oh G.o.d I wanted her, and everything was just perfect, and the first thing she said was: Looks just like the inside of a gangrenous leg.

And then she laughed too loud, like a drain, and I laughed too. I couldn't help it.

The aide took the end of the rubber tube John-Paul had fitted to his arm. He slotted it neatly onto a spigot on the side of the steel machine, and turned towards me. He avoided my gaze.

My a.r.s.e hurt. I kept talking.

He pulled a needle out of a plastic wrapper, and came forwards.

The first time I met Jasmine Tomas, for the record, she was teaching a group of w.a.n.kers with too much testosterone about biohazards. All part of the training. She'd been seconded to the MOD from some governmental research-team or other - had more letters after her name than an episode of Sesame Street - and there she was, stuck in front of a room of leering a.r.s.eholes who spent far longer staring at her t.i.ts than at the projector presentations she brought along. So... a few of those same a.r.s.eholes dared another a.r.s.ehole to ask her an embarra.s.sing question about the dangers of s.e.xual infection during fieldwork, and she didn't skip a beat. Told him she'd examine his infected areas after the lecture as long as he promised not to leak pus on her, then kept on talking over the top of the laughter.

I was the a.r.s.ehole. I went and apologised after she'd finished. She took it well.

A week later we got dinner, then coffee, then the best f.u.c.k I ever had.

Three years later I was still killing people for 'Her Divine Majesty's Government', only now I was looking forward to the weekend just like every other guy, bored of his job.

Jasmine Tomas was my weekend.

The canula was in my arm, somewhere. Fitted to the tube that was fitted to the machine. I couldn't see behind my back.

My a.r.s.e continued to hurt.

The aide flicked a switch with a devotional smile towards his master, then stood with his back to me, fussing over the machine.

And the tube - oh f.u.c.king h.e.l.l I understood - the tube that led from me to the machine to John-Paul, it filled with blood like a long thermometer; red mercury bulging upwards.

My arm felt warm and cold at the same time. A p.r.i.c.kling sensation. Pins and needles, killing my cells, spreading across me. And oh Jesus f.u.c.k s.h.i.+t I got it, I got it you withered old b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and I felt sick and weak and faint, but I kept talking because it's all I could do.

I said: Listen.

I was never really designed, you know, for the romantic thing. Wasn't sure how to do it, I guess. But then nor was she, so we got on fine. Squabbled and sniped and smarmed our way through it all, awkward as you like. Never happy for long, but never sad for long either. f.u.c.k fairytales. f.u.c.k 'perfect'. We loved each other like n.o.body else, and that's enough.

So she decides to move in. I asked her, she said yes. The thing is, she works all day every day and I'm... out of the country. Business trips. Frequent flyer, blah-blah. So we figure we'll see more of each other if it's all cosy. All domestic. No need to schedule it every time.

Then the disease started. You remember? Right at the very beginning, it was just... some new thing. Nothing to worry about. They sent me to the East, to... Well. It doesn't matter where or why. I got back and Jasmine Tomas was supposed to move in that week, and all I got was a b.l.o.o.d.y text message telling me we'd have to postpone.

She'd been rea.s.signed. Couldn't say where. Couldn't say why.

So I waited.

And the world died around me.

John-Paul just stared.

With my blood pouring out of me, filling him up like a greedy mosquito, bringing colour and warmth to his shrivelled face, he just stared and listened. He groaned once in a while, like a man in the throes of pa.s.sion, and it made me feel sick to imagine him b.a.l.l.s-deep in someone, grunting like a pig.

I felt sick in a lot of ways.

The world wobbled around me. Nothing was the right shade. Greyness was creeping out of every corner, and stinging the insides of my arms. My eyes rolled. My a.r.s.e hurt.

I twitched my fingers behind my back, certain now that the aide was too busy watching the machine to turn around. I worked with all the speed and focus I could muster as everything slid away into bloodless limbo.

I kept talking. I kept f.u.c.king talking.

It was all I could do to cling-on. To stay awake. To stay alive.

I said: I did some digging. Pulled some strings at the SIS; found out what she'd been sent to do. Where she'd gone, even.

UN mandate. That's all I got. Rea.s.signed to a secret location as part of an international research team. Supposed to find a cure for the AB-virus.

'Project Pandora,' it was called.

John-Paul looked up.

And moaned, softly.

My fingers moved behind my back.

My a.r.s.e stopped hurting.

Blood moved on my hands.

I said: Listen.

Everybody died.

Jasmine Tomas, who I loved in that old movie way... I never heard from her again. Not for five years.

People died and lay on the streets, ambulances rushed back and forth, the world shat out its own guts and sat there like Elvis, poised on a toilet, dying by degrees.

I went back to Vauxhall Cross. I checked her records. Blood-type AB+.

As good as dead.