by Alex North
Fifty
I’d arranged to meet Karen in a pub a few streets away from my house, not far from the school. It was the village local, called simply the Featherbank, and I felt more than a little awkward as I arrived. It was a warm evening, and the beer garden adjoining the street was full of people. Through the large windows, the inside also seemed to be teeming as well. Just as when I’d walked into the playground on Jake’s first day, it felt like I was entering a place where everybody knew each other, and where I didn’t belong and never would.
I spotted Karen at the bar and made my way through the throng, packed in on all sides by hot bodies and laughter. Tonight, her big coat was nowhere in evidence. She was wearing jeans and a white top. I felt even more nervous as I arrived beside her.
“Hey,” I said over the noise.
“Hey, there.” She smiled at me, then leaned in to my ear. “Excellent timing. What can I get you?”
I scanned the nearest taps and picked a beer at random. She paid, handed me my pint, and then eased away from the bar and nodded for me to follow her through the crowd, deeper into the pub. As I did, I wondered if I’d entirely miscalibrated this evening and she was taking me to meet a group of friends. But there was a door just past the bar, and she pushed through that into a different beer garden, this one secluded at the back of the pub and surrounded by trees. There were circular wooden tables spaced out on the grass, and a small play area, where a few children were making their way across low rope bridges while their parents sat drinking nearby. It was less busy out here, and Karen led me over to an empty table toward the far end.
“We could have brought the kids,” I said.
“If we were insane, yes.” She sat down. “Assuming you’re not being incredibly irresponsible, I’m guessing you managed to find a babysitter?”
I sat down beside her.
“Yes. My father.”
“Wow.” She blinked. “After what you told me before, that must be strange.”
“It’s weird, yeah. I wouldn’t have asked him normally, but . . . well. I wanted to come out for a drink, and beggars can’t be choosers.” She raised her eyebrows, and I blushed. “I mean about him, not you.”
“Ha! This is all off the record, by the way.” She put her hand on my arm, and left it there for a couple of seconds longer than she needed to. “I’m glad you could come, anyway,” she said.
“Me too.”
“Cheers, by the way.”
We clinked glasses.
“So. You don’t have any concerns about him?”
“My father?” I shook my head. “Honestly, no. Not on that level. I don’t know how I feel about it, to be honest. It’s not a permanent thing. It’s not any kind of thing, really.”
“Yes. That’s a sensible way of looking at it. People worry too much about the nature of things. Sometimes it’s better just to go with them. What about Jake?”
“Oh, he probably likes him more than he does me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
I remembered how Jake had been just before I left, and fought down the guilt it brought.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Like I’ve told you, you’re too hard on yourself.”
“Maybe,” I said again.
I sipped my drink. A part of me remained on edge, but I realized now that it wasn’t anything to do with spending time with Karen. In fact, it was surprising how relaxed I felt now that I was here, and how natural it was to be sitting this close to her, a little closer than friends normally would. No, the nerves were because I was still worried about Jake. It was hard to stop thinking about him. Hard to shake the gut feeling that, as much as I wanted to be here, there was somewhere else it was far more important for me to be instead.
I took a drink and told myself not to be stupid.
“You said your mum’s looking after Adam?”
“Yeah.”
Karen rolled her eyes and then started to explain her whole situation. She’d moved back to Featherbank last year, choosing the village mainly because her mother lived here. While there had never been any love lost between the two of them, the woman was good with Adam, and Karen had figured the support would help while she established herself on her own two feet again.
“Adam’s father isn’t on the scene?”
“Do you think I’d be out with you if he was?”
Karen smiled. I shrugged slightly helplessly, and she let me off.
“No, he isn’t. And maybe that’s rough on Adam, but sometimes kids are better off that way, even if they don’t always realize it at the time. Brian—that’s my ex—let’s just say that he was like your father in some ways. A lot of ways.”
She took a sip of her own drink, and while the silence wasn’t uncomfortable, it still felt like a natural point to leave that particular subject. Some conversations need to wait, if they even have to come at all. In the meantime, I watched the children clambering over the play sets in the far corner of the garden. The evening was settling in now. The air was growing darker, with midges flickering in the trees around us.
But it was still warm. Still nice.
Except . . .
I looked off in a different direction now. My internal compass had already worked out where my house was from here, and I wasn’t even that far away from Jake: probably only a few hundred meters as the crow flies. But it seemed too far. And, looking back at the children again, I thought it wasn’t just that it was becoming gloomy, but that the light seemed wrong somehow. That everything was off-kilter and odd.
“Oh,” Karen said, reaching into her bag. “I just remembered. I’ve got something. This is a bit embarrassing, but will you sign it for me?”
My most recent book. The sight of it reminded me how far behind I was on any kind of follow-up, and that made me panic slightly. But it was clearly meant as a nice gesture, and also kind of a silly one, so I forced myself to smile.
“Sure.”
She handed me a pen. I opened the book on the title page and started writing.
To Karen.
I paused. I could never think what to write.
I’m really glad to have met you. I hope you don’t think this is shit.
When you signed books for people, some waited to read what you’d put. Karen was not one of those people. She laughed as she saw what I’d written.
“I’m sure I won’t. Anyway, what makes you think I’m going to read it? This is going straight on eBay, mate.”
“Which is fine, although I wouldn’t plan your retirement yet.”
“Don’t worry.”
The air around us was darker still. I looked over at the play area again, and saw a little girl in a blue and white dress standing there, staring back at me. Our gazes met for a moment, and everything else in the beer garden faded into the background. And then she grinned and ran toward one of the rope bridges, another little girl running after her, laughing.
I shook my head.
“Are you okay?” Karen said.
“Yes.”
“Hmmm. I’m not sure I believe you. Is it Jake?”
“I suppose so.”
“You’re worried about him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s probably nothing, just that this is the first time I’ve been out on an evening without him. And I am having a good time, honestly. But it feels . . .”
“Really fucking strange?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
“I get you.” She smiled sympathetically. “It was the same for me when I first started leaving Adam alone. It’s like there’s something tethering you to home and it’s stretching too thin. There’s this need inside you to get back.”
I nodded, even though it felt much more than that. The sensation inside me was that something was terribly wrong. But I was probably just being overdramatic about exactly what she was describing.
“And it’s fine,” Karen said. “Honestly. Early days. Let’s just finish these and you can get back home, and maybe we can do
this again sometime. Assuming you want to?”
“I definitely want to.”
“Good.”
She was looking at me, both of us holding eye contact, and the space between us felt weighted with possibility. I realized that this was a moment when I could lean in for a kiss, and that if I did, she would lean forward too. That we would both close our eyes as our lips met, and that the kiss would be as gentle as breath. I also knew that if I didn’t, one of us would have to turn away. But the moment would have been there, and we would both know it, and at some point it would happen again.
Might as well be now, then.
And I was about to do just that when my phone started ringing.
Fifty-one
It had been in the afternoon, and Jake and Daddy were coming back from school. It was usually Mummy who picked him up on that day, because it was supposed to be one of Daddy’s days to work, but that wasn’t what happened.
Daddy wrote stories for a living, and people paid him to read them, which Jake personally thought was exceptionally cool. And Daddy sometimes agreed that, yes, it was. For one thing, he didn’t have to wear a suit and go into an office every day and be told what to do like lots of other parents did. But it was also hard, because it didn’t seem like a job to other people.
Jake didn’t know all the ins and outs of it, but he was dimly aware that this had caused problems between his parents at one point, in that Daddy was doing most of the pickups and drop-offs, and that meant he wasn’t writing quite so many stories. The solution was that Mummy started picking him up more often. This had been meant to be one of her days. But then Daddy turned up and explained that Mummy wasn’t feeling well, and so he’d had to come instead.
That was the way he said it. Had to come instead.
“Is she okay?” Jake said.
“She’s fine,” Daddy said. “She was just a bit light-headed when she got back from work, and so she’s having a lie-down.”
Jake believed him, because of course Mummy was fine. But Daddy seemed more tense than normal, and Jake wondered if his most recent story had been going less well than usual, and that having to come out to collect Jake was . . . well. What was the opposite of icing on a cake?
Jake often felt like he was a problem for Daddy. That things would be a bit easier if he weren’t around.
And in the car, Daddy asked the usual questions about his day, and how things had been, and what he’d done. As always, Jake did his best not to answer them. There was nothing exciting to say, and he didn’t think Daddy was really all that interested anyway.
They parked outside the house.
“Can I go in and see Mummy?”
He half expected Daddy to say no, although he wasn’t sure why—maybe because it was something that Jake really wanted to do, and so Daddy would say no just to spoil his fun. But that wasn’t very fair, because Daddy just smiled and ruffled his hair.
“Of course, mate. Just be gentle with her, okay?”
“I will.”
The door was unlocked, and he ran into the house without taking his shoes off. That was something Mummy would normally tell him off for, because she liked to keep the place clean and tidy, but they weren’t dirty or anything, and he wanted to see her and try to make her feel better. He ran through the kitchen and into the living room.
And then he stopped.
Because there was something wrong. The curtains at the far end of the room were open, and the afternoon sun was coming in at an angle, lighting up half the room. It looked peaceful, and everything was very still and silent. But that was the problem. Even when someone was hiding from you, you could usually tell that they were there somewhere, because people took up space and that altered the pressure somehow. The house right now didn’t feel like that at all.
It felt empty.
Daddy was still outside, probably doing something with the car. Jake walked slowly across the living room, but it was more like the room was walking backward past him. The silence was so huge that it felt like he might bruise it if he wasn’t careful.
To the side of the window, the door was open. It led to the small area at the bottom of the stairs. As Jake stepped closer, he could see more and more of it.
The marbled glass of the back door.
The only sound now was his own heartbeat.
The white wallpaper.
Approaching so slowly that he was barely moving.
The knotted wooden handrail.
He looked down at the floor.
Mummy—
* * *
“Daddy!”
Jake screamed the word before he was even properly awake. Then he tucked himself down entirely beneath the covers and shouted it again, his small heart beating hard. He hadn’t had the nightmare since the old house, and the shock of it had gotten a whole lot bigger while it had been gone.
He waited.
He wasn’t sure what time it was, or how long he’d been asleep, but surely it had been long enough that Daddy must be home by now? A moment later, he heard steady footsteps coming up the stairs.
Jake risked poking his head out. The hall light was still on, and a shadow stretched into the room as someone came in.
“Hey,” the man said softly. “What’s the matter?”
Pete, Jake remembered. He liked Pete well enough, but the fact remained that Pete was not Daddy, and Daddy was who he wanted and needed to be walking over to him right now.
Pete was very old, but he sat down cross-legged beside the bed in a quick, decisive movement.
“What’s wrong?”
“I had a bad dream. Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s not back yet. Bad dreams are horrible, aren’t they? What was this one about?”
Jake shook his head. He’d never told even Daddy what the nightmare was about, and he wasn’t sure he ever would.
“That’s okay.” Pete nodded to himself. “I have bad dreams too, you know? Quite often, in fact. But I actually think it’s all right to have them.”
“How can it be all right?”
“Because sometimes really bad things happen to us, and we don’t like to think about them, so they get buried really deep in our heads.”
“Like earworms?”
“I suppose so, yes. But they have to come out eventually. And bad dreams can be our brain’s way of dealing with that. Breaking it all down into smaller and smaller pieces, until eventually there’s nothing left anymore.”
Jake considered that. The nightmare had been even more frightening than ever, so it felt more like his mind was building something up rather than breaking it down. But then, it always ended at the same point, before he could properly remember seeing Mummy lying on the floor. Maybe Pete was right. Perhaps his own mind was so scared that it had to build itself up for that sight before it could begin to break it down.
“I know it doesn’t make it any easier,” Pete said. “But you know what? A nightmare can never, ever hurt you. There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“I know that,” Jake said. “But I still want my daddy.”
“He’ll be back soon, I’m sure.”
“I need him now.” With the return of the nightmare, along with the little girl’s warning earlier, Jake was more sure than ever that something was wrong. “Can you ring him and get him to come home?”
Pete was silent for a moment.
“Please?” Jake said. “He won’t mind.”
“I know he won’t.”
Pete took out his mobile phone, and Jake watched anxiously as he swiped through, pressed the screen, and then held it up to his ear.
Downstairs, the front door opened.
“Ah.” Pete canceled the call. “I guess that’s okay, then. Will you be all right up here for a minute while I go down and get him?”
No, Jake thought, I won’t. He didn’t want to spend another second up here in the darkness by himself. But at least Daddy was home now, and he felt a flood of relief at that.
“Okay.”
Pe
te stood up and walked out of the room, and Jake heard his footsteps going back down the stairs, and then him calling out Daddy’s name.
Jake stared at the wedge of illuminated hallway beyond the bedroom door, listening carefully. For a few seconds there was nothing but silence. But then he heard something he couldn’t identify. Movement of some kind, as though furniture were being shifted about. And people talking, only with sounds instead of words, like when you were trying really hard to do something and the effort made you make a noise.
Another loud sound. Something heavy falling over.
And then silence again.
Jake thought about calling out for Daddy, but for some reason his heart was thudding hard in his chest again, as hard as it had been when he’d first woken up from the nightmare, and the silence was ringing so much that it felt like he was back inside it, back in their old living room.
He stared at the empty hallway, waiting.
A few seconds later, there was a new sound. Footsteps on the stairs again. Someone was coming up, but they were moving slowly and carefully, as though they were scared of the silence too.
And then someone whispered his name.
Fifty-two
“I’m sure everything’s fine.”
Hurrying along behind me, Karen tried to make it sound breezy. And no doubt she was right; I was almost certainly overreacting—walking so quickly that she was struggling to keep up. She had come with me without us discussing it, but if she hadn’t, I might even have been running right now. Because, while she was right, and there was most likely nothing to worry about, I still felt it in my heart. The certainty that something was terribly wrong.
I took out my mobile and tried phoning my father again. He had called me at the pub, but it had cut off before I’d had a chance to answer. Which meant that something must have happened. But when I’d tried to call him back, he hadn’t picked up.
The phone rang and rang now.
He still wasn’t picking up.
“Fuck.”
I canceled the call as we reached the bottom of my street. Maybe he’d dialed by accident, or changed his mind about needing to talk to me. But I remembered how deferential he’d been earlier on, and how quietly pleased he’d seemed to be allowed to look after Jake and be allowed into our lives, in however small a way. He wouldn’t have called me unless he could have helped it. Not unless it had been important.