Resurrection. The Underwood and Flinch Chronicles: Volume One.

Chapter Two

2

Lisa left the Cricketers’ pub at just after eleven to return to David’s flat. She didn’t want to leave things they way they had done earlier, she hadn’t been able to relax and enjoy herself all night. As she walked, she wondered if he might have gone to bed already. He usually went to bed at about twelve, provided the students in the flat beneath him weren’t having one of their spontaneous parties, but that hadn’t happened for a while now.

 She smiled as she remembered how David had gone down to put a stop to it the last time it had woken them up. It had been two in the morning; he’d wanted her to stay behind in the flat but she’d insisted on accompanying him. David had gone down and knocked, repeatedly but patiently, on their door. A short time later, a drunken man in his early twenties opened the door. He was immediately on the defensive; the music flowing out from behind him at an unmitigated level while he stood there in the doorway, with his chin out and his arms folded across his chest. David had smiled and begun to chat to him about the situation. Five minutes later they were back in David’s flat, the music had been reduced to an acceptable level, and David was pinning a piece of paper with the man’s telephone number on it to the kitchen notice board. The man, whose name was Nathan, had given it to David in the event he might need it in the future to call to complain about noise or anything else.

 She’d been impressed and had told him so. He told her that disarming an enemy with diplomacy was something he’d learned in the army. Surprised, she’d asked him to tell her more, but he hadn’t. He told her he was tired and that he’d tell her later. She didn’t press him in on it. She figured he’d tell her whenever he was ready, though of course, he never had. She bristled as the feeling of rejection she’d felt earlier began to stir again: the unwelcome, though insistent thought that reminded her that while David may be fond of her, he apparently had no room in his life for her. Then her anger returned: Jesus, if he didn’t want to see her again, why couldn’t he just come out and say it instead of blaming it on his apartment?

 ‘Stop it!’ she said out loud. There was no use going over it again and again in her head, she needed to discuss it with him, not herself.

 As she turned onto Lansdowne Place she was met with the sound of distant music; someone must be having a party. She looked up along the row of terraced town houses to David’s building. The music seemed to be coming from there. The lights were on in all the apartments. Perhaps the effects of David’s diplomacy had worn off and the students in the flat below had gone back to their old ways. She stopped outside the house: this was definitely the source of the music, the sound of drums and guitars radiated from the house like heat from a blaze. 

 She went up the steps and pressed David’s door buzzer. There was no response. She pushed it again, but still nothing happened. Maybe he’d gone down to try to reason with the guys downstairs and was involved in doorstep negotiations right now. She decided to check; she pushed the buzzer of flat two. A moment later, an irate voice came back through the intercom.

 ‘Yeah?’

 ‘Hello? I’m sorry to bother you. My boyfriend lives in the flat upstairs from you. I wondered if – ’

 The intercom crackled and went dead. A moment later a buzz came from the door and she pushed it open. Inside, the very air of the hallway seemed to resonate with the beat of the music. She hurried up the stairs. When she got to the first landing, the door of the flat beneath David’s was already open and Nathan was waiting for her.

 ‘Thank fuck you’re here. Have a word with him will you, love? He’s gone completely fucking mental up there. It’s been like this for over an hour now.’

 ‘Yeah,’ said another guy, emerging from the flat. ‘And when we knock on his door, he threatens to kill us.’

 ‘Seriously,’ said Nathan. ‘We went upstairs, yeah? Knocked on the door, and your boyfriend flings it open – all mad in the eyeballs – and tells us we’re going to bloody die. Then he laughs and slams the door in our faces. Mad as a walnut whip, eh, Josh?’