‘Tom,’ said Maria. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You mean you know him?’ cried Keane, wheeling to face her with wide-eyed shock.
‘He’s a new boy on the scene,’ she said. ‘Came to the last munch. Tom, why are you here?’
Keane was really rattled now. He turned back to Tom, his face a horrible grey.
‘You mean you’ve even dug this far down? You’d even sink this low? My private life is private, you fucking sewer rat. I’ll break your fucking neck.’
With a roar, he leapt upon Tom, felling him so that they both thudded on to the lawn and lay there, locked in a deadly struggle, Keane’s hands aiming for Tom’s throat.
‘No!’ I screamed, but they didn’t seem to have heard me.
Maria started and disappeared back into the house, leaving Martin and me to watch helplessly while the two combatants tried to kill each other.
I ran over to them and knelt on the grass, pleading with them both to stop, but they were deaf and blind to me, interested only in throwing the best punch. Keane seemed to be slightly ahead in that competition, though Tom put up a good showing too. Keane carried more weight, but Tom was more athletic.
After what seemed like an age of them knocking each other to the floor then staggering up for another go, then knocking each other to the floor again, Maria ran up with some kind of long plastic rod in her hand and touched it to the back of Keane’s neck.
He sprang away from Tom with a howl of rage and pain, clutching the spot she’d touched and glaring at her.
‘What the fuck?’
‘Get up, and stop making such a fool of yourself, man,’ snapped Maria. ‘I will not have this in my garden.’
‘Then get him out of here,’ demanded Keane, looking warily at the spark stick then at Tom, as if weighing up his options.
‘I will. Tom, go away, please.’
‘I think I’d like to leave too,’ I said, aching to go over to my battered and bruised lover, but scared to reveal our connection to Keane.
‘Understandable,’ said Maria icily. ‘I’ll call you a cab. J, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Honestly!’
Tom got up from the lawn, brushed himself off and looked Keane in the eye.
‘You needn’t worry about me any more,’ he said. ‘I’m done with this. I’ve lost my job at the Clarion over it. I’m going to London to find freelance work. Let’s call this my way of saying goodbye.’
Keane grunted. ‘Good fucking riddance,’ he said, but he was obviously still sulking at being cattle-prodded out of his ultimate victory by Maria. ‘Go on then. Walk.’
Tom’s eyes locked with mine for a flicker of a second, then he turned and made his way, with as much dignity as a man limping and gasping with pain at every step could muster, to the gate.
I made to follow Martin back into the house, but a staggering Keane put a hand on my shoulder, trying to stop me.
‘You don’t have to go,’ he said. There was blood at the corner of his mouth and his left eye was dark red and swollen.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, shrugging him off. ‘I think I do.’
Maria had called me the cab by the time I joined her in the living room.
‘Did you know he was a journalist?’ she asked me.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘That’s why I didn’t take things f
urther. I was afraid he was only looking for a story.’
She put down her phone and covered her upper face with a hand.
‘I should have seen it,’ she muttered. ‘It’s unlike me. I’m usually so careful.’ She looked up. ‘You could have told me.’