by Clare Pooley
LOW BATTERY, it said on the screen. He put the phone down without attaching the charger and pulled the bedspread back over his head, breathing in its musty, comforting smell.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Hazard
Hazard was back in town, having spent the last four days in Oxfordshire with his parents. Incredibly, they didn’t seem to bear him many grudges, they just appeared relieved to see him looking well and relatively happy, although Hazard’s mum had seemed rather surprised to see him at breakfast every morning, as if she’d expected him to abscond overnight and go on a bender. To be fair, that’s exactly what he would have done in the old days. He wondered how long it would take before she’d trust him again. Perhaps she never would.
Hazard would have stayed longer, but his parents were hosting a New Year’s Eve party for the Rotary Club, and he thought it would be safer if he spent the evening alone. He planned to be in bed well before midnight, thanking his lucky stars that, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he’d start the New Year in his own bed, without a hangover or anyone whose name he couldn’t remember.
Hazard picked up his phone to check the time. It was a basic pay-as-you-go model. It had never rung, as no one had the number (apart from, as of this morning, his mum). He realized he didn’t even know what ringtone it was set to. Hazard had always been gregarious, sociable, and hardworking, so he was finding it difficult to adjust to this world with no friends and no employment. He knew he couldn’t avoid life forever.
It was 4:30 P.M. He put on his coat, locked up the apartment, and walked toward the cemetery. He was sure that by now the fallout from the incendiary device he had accidentally triggered on Christmas Day would have diffused, and he’d find Monica, Julian, and Riley all friends again. Given that his old social circle was currently off-limits, he was rather hoping he could join theirs.
He walked past Monica’s Café. It was dark. A notice on the door read CLOSED UNTIL 2 JANUARY.
* * *
• • •
SITTING ON THE Admiral’s tombstone, Hazard was so busy looking out for Julian or Monica approaching from the south side of the cemetery that he didn’t notice Riley coming from the north until he was just a few feet away. Perhaps Riley would like his phone number? How could he ask without looking a bit sad or desperate?
“No sign of them, then?” said Riley. “I’ve been waiting all week for Friday five p.m., hoping they’d show.”
“Nope. I’ve been here for fifteen minutes. Only me and the ravens. How are things with you and Monica?” Hazard asked, suspecting from the defeated droop of Riley’s shoulders that he knew the answer.
“She’s not answering my calls, and the café’s all closed up. I’m worried about Julian, too. His phone’s gone dead and I’ve rung his bell every day since Christmas, but there’s no answer. Julian usually only goes out between ten a.m. and eleven a.m., and he didn’t say he was going away. Do you think we should call the police?”
“Let’s go around there now and give it another go,” said Hazard. “Apart from anything else, if I sit here much longer, my bum may freeze to the Admiral’s tombstone.”
* * *
• • •
THE NAME ALONGSIDE Julian’s buzzer read J&M JESSOP, despite the fact that M hadn’t been there for nearly fifteen years. Hazard found that unbearably sad. The new Hazard was, he’d noticed, becoming rather sentimental. Despite buzzing repeatedly for five minutes or so, there was still no answer.
“OK, let’s check with Monica whether she knows where he is and, if not, we’ll call the police,” said Hazard.
“She won’t talk to me,” said Riley, “so you’ll have to give it a go. Although she’s not your biggest fan either.” Riley sounded rather relieved that he wasn’t the only one in the firing line.
“Does she live nearby?” asked Hazard.
“Yes, over the café,” Riley replied.
“Great, let’s go find her.”
The shared mission created a bond between the two, like soldiers on special ops, and they marched in companionable, purposeful silence toward the café. Riley pointed out the door, painted buttercup yellow, leading up to Monica’s apartment, and they rang the bell. No answer. They banged on the door of the café. Still no answer. Hazard stepped back off the edge of the pavement, causing a passing black cab to swerve and hoot, and craned his neck to look up at Monica’s window.
“You’ve spent too long living on an island with only one road, mate!” said Riley.
“You can’t take Class-A narcotics for a decade unless you have a healthy disrespect for death,” replied Hazard. “Although it would be ironic, after all I’ve been through, to be killed by a taxi on the Fulham Road.” Then he said, “Look, there’s a light on up there. MONICA! WE NEED TO TALK TO YOU! MONICA! MONICA, HAVE YOU SEEN JULIAN? WE NEED YOUR HELP!”
Just as he was about to give up, the sash window was pushed up and Monica’s head appeared.
“For God’s sake, what will the neighbors think?” she whispered angrily, sounding scarily like Hazard’s mother. “Wait. I’ll come down.”
A few minutes later, the door opened. Monica’s hair was in a messy bun, skewered with a pencil, and she was wearing a large, shapeless T-shirt and sweatpants, neither of which were items of clothing Hazard would have expected her to own. She ushered, rather than welcomed, them into the café.
“Monica, I’ve been desperate to speak to you,” said Riley.
“Riley, let’s just stick to the matter at hand for the moment, hey?” said Hazard, before Riley could get all intense and derail the whole thing. “You can do that bit later. The important question is: Have you heard anything from Julian recently? Since Christmas Day?”
Monica frowned. “No. Oh God, I feel awful. I’ve been so wrapped up in myself that I haven’t even thought about him. What kind of a friend am I? You’ve tried his cottage, I take it, and his mobile?”
“Loads of times,” replied Riley. “I wish I knew his landline. It’s ex-directory.”
“Fulham 3276,” said Monica.
“Wow,” said Riley, “how did you remember that?”
“Photographic memory. How do you think I became a City lawyer?” Monica replied, not falling for Riley’s flattery. “I think this area of Fulham is 385, so his number would be 0207 385 3276.” She typed the number into her phone and put it on speaker. It rang and rang until eventually it reverted to the dial tone.
They were concentrating so hard on Monica’s phone that it took them a while to notice the banging on the café door. It was Baz, wearing John Lennon–style glasses, a black leather jacket, and a harassed expression. Monica unlocked the door and let him in.
“Hi, guys. I really, really need to speak to Benji. Do you know where he is?” he said, slightly out of breath. “I want to say sorry. I flew off the handle a bit.”
“It’s a little late for that now,” said Monica, tersely. “He’s gone up to Scotland for Hogmanay. He’s been desperate to talk to you for days. Baz, this is Hazard,” she said without once looking at him. She delivered his name as if it were a swear word.
“Hi,” said Baz, barely pausing to look at Hazard. “D’you have a landline for him? His phone’s turned off, or out of signal.”
“No, sorry. There’s a bit of a theme here,” said Monica. “We’re trying to get hold of Julian. No one’s heard from him since Christmas.” There was an uncomfortable pause after the mention of the word Christmas, as everyone thought back to that day.
“That’s not good. Let’s go find Granny. She usually sees him every morning for tai chi. She’ll know what’s going on.”
The four of them set off back toward the Broadway station, hostilities set aside for the greater cause.
* * *
• • •
BETTY SHOOK HER head vigorously. “I came usual time for tai chi, but no answer Monday, Tuesday, Wed
nesday, Thursday, Friday,” she said, counting the days off on her fingers. “I assume he with his family.”
“He doesn’t have any family in the UK,” said Monica. “Let’s go over there, see if we can get in.”
The five of them walked past the Broadway and on to Chelsea Studios. By this point, they weren’t feeling too optimistic about getting an answer at the front gate. And there was none.
“We find neighbor,” said Mrs. Wu, pressing every buzzer above and below Julian’s with aggressively pointed index fingers, in a random order, as if she were conducting an experimental piece with a full orchestra.
“Remember, Granny got out of Communist China in the 1970s,” whispered Baz to Riley and Hazard. “She and my dad swam across the bay to Hong Kong, with their most precious belongings strapped to their backs, like turtles. You don’t mess with Betty Wu.”
Eventually, a tinny voice came over the intercom, sounding more than a bit cross.
“If you’re trying to sell me dishcloths, or talk to me about eternal salvation, I’m not interested,” it said.
“Please let us in. We are worried about friend. Not seen him for days,” said Mrs. Wu.
They heard an unmistakable groan, then, a few minutes later, a well-coiffed platinum-blond lady of a certain age opened the gate. Her face was waxy smooth, but she had a turkeylike neck, swathed in an Hermès scarf. She looked like the sort of woman who, when her husband was driving her somewhere, would sit in the backseat.
“Who are you looking for?” she asked, without any introduction.
“Julian Jessop,” answered Monica, who wasn’t going to be intimidated by anyone.
“Well, good luck with that one. We’ve lived here for nearly six years and I can count the number of times I’ve seen him on two hands.” She waved her manicured talons at them. “Maybe one hand, come to think of it. He’s not turned up to any of the Residents’ Association meetings.” She narrowed her eyes at them, as if holding them personally responsible for Julian’s lack of participation. “I’m chair,” she added, information that was both unnecessary and unsurprising. “I suppose you’d better come in. Good God, how many of you are there?”
They walked past her, nodding their thanks as they did so, and headed toward the door of Julian’s cottage.
“If you find him, tell him that Patricia Arbuckle needs to see him urgently!” she shouted after them. “If I don’t hear from him soon, I’m instructing my lawyers!”
Riley knocked hard on the door. Hazard’s palms sweated as he waited for an answer. And he didn’t even know Julian, although he rather felt as if he did.
“JULIAN!” shouted Mrs. Wu, in a very large voice for one so small. Monica and Riley peered in through the front windows, which, thanks to Monica, were no longer totally opaque.
“I can’t see anything out of order, although it’s a bit difficult to tell, to be honest,” said Monica. “He’s let it all get in a mess again.” She pushed the sash window up and it opened about twelve inches. What they really needed, thought Hazard, was a small child.
“I go through window!” said Mrs. Wu, who was, he noted, the size of a small child. “Biming! Hold feet! You, big boy, hold body!” Hazard took a few seconds to realize she was addressing him.
Mrs. Wu raised her hands above her head and he held her by the torso as Baz and Riley grabbed her legs. Her face was facing the ground. “Right! Forward! Through window!” she shouted at them like a military commander, and they posted her through, like a parcel into a letterbox. There were a couple of minutes’ pause while Mrs. Wu lowered herself to the floor, then stood up.
“Open the door, Granny!” said Baz. A few minutes later, they were in.
Julian’s cottage smelled unloved. The curtains were closed, it was freezing cold, and the spider’s webs were back with a vengeance. Riley, who knew his way around better than anyone else, was doing a reconnaissance of the ground floor.
“No sign of him down here, let’s check his bedroom. It’s up there,” he said, pointing at the wrought-iron spiral staircase that led to the mezzanine floor. Monica led the way up the staircase with Riley and Mrs. Wu following behind.
Hazard heard Monica shout, “Julian!” They had obviously found him. Hazard held his breath, fearing the worst. Finally, Monica reappeared from the bedroom upstairs.
“He’s OK, just very cold and confused,” she said. Hazard could see his breath form clouds as he exhaled slowly. “God knows when he last ate. Baz, can you turn on the heating? Mrs. Wu, can you bring round some of your magical healing soup? Julian’s adamant that he doesn’t want to go to the hospital, so I’m going to see if I can find a doctor who can come round and check him over. Riley, if there are any shops still open, can you try and find some Angel Delight? Butterscotch flavor, obviously.”
Why obviously? Hazard wondered. He felt like putting his hand up and asking if she had a job for him, too, but thought she might just throw something at him again. He went to find a kettle. His mother always swore by a nice cuppa in a crisis.
THIRTY-NINE
Monica
He didn’t look like the Julian Monica knew. He’d been curled up in bed, like an apostrophe, so thin and shriveled that his body barely made a hump under the blankets. Three empty tins of baked beans, one with a fork sticking out of it, sat on the floor by the bed, along with his mobile phone. The tartan kilt and jacket he’d been wearing last time she saw him lay in a heap by the door, as if the person who’d been wearing them had simply evaporated, or spontaneously combusted, like the witch in The Wizard of Oz.
For a terrible moment, which felt like an hour, Monica had thought he was dead. He was so still and, when she’d touched his hand, his skin felt cold and clammy. But when she’d shouted his name, his eyelids had flickered and he’d made a groaning noise.
Now, he was sitting in an armchair by a roaring fire. Baz, after some time spent searching for the boiler, had realized that Julian didn’t have central heating, just a few freestanding electric radiators, none of which was on. He now was wrapped in several blankets and sipping from a mug of Betty’s chicken sweetcorn soup.
One of the GPs from the local doctor’s office had come by and prescribed warmth, food, and fluids, along with some antibiotics for bedsores. He’d muttered darkly about how “each of these episodes” was putting more strain on Julian’s already weak heart, so Monica assumed this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. But at least now, some color was slowly seeping back to his cheeks and he looked a little less cadaverous.
Monica was sure that Julian’s decline was related to the arguments on Christmas Day, so she was going out of her way to be friendly to Riley in front of him. Riley, meanwhile, appeared to be doing everything he could to get back into her good books. She’d pushed this, out of interest, to see how hard he’d try, by telling him that Julian’s downstairs loo needed a good clean. He’d trotted off with a bucket, some bleach, and a scrubbing brush like an obedient puppy. There was no way she was going to get romantically entangled with him again, but they could be friends, she supposed, for Julian’s sake.
As for Hazard, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to like someone who played so carelessly with people’s lives. What was he doing here? Who invited him to insert himself into their circle anyway? She’d come across his type before, so used to being admired and getting his own way that they didn’t even question their right to be included.
Everything about him annoyed her, from his too-perfect Hollywood smile and stupid hipster beard right down to his preppy loafers. When she was sixteen, not long after her mother died, her dad had persuaded her, against her better judgment, to go to the school prom. She’d been kissed by a boy who’d looked just like a younger Hazard, and she had begun to think that maybe, just maybe, things would start to get better. Then she’d found out he’d done it for a dare. See if you can get the class swot to put out. She’d stopped going to s
chool for several months after that.
And what kind of name was Hazard, anyhow? Although it did suit him. He was the sort of guy who needed to come with a warning sign.
As if he could sense her thinking about him, Hazard turned to her.
“Hey, Monica. Did you manage to persuade Julian to teach an art class at the café?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied, making a mental note to reinstate the art classes as soon as possible, for Julian’s sake, if nothing else. Hazard plowed on, despite Monica’s terse reply.
“Can I join in? I haven’t done any art at all since uni. I’d love to give it a go again.”
Monica pictured Hazard at the university, hosting black-tie dinner parties and licking gelato off the razor-sharp hip bones of girls called Davina who’d gone to Roedean.
“I don’t think there’s enough room,” she said. Then added, “Sorry,” as a churlish afterthought.
Unfortunately, despite his grand age, Julian had the hearing of a bat.
“Of course there’s room, old chap. We’ll just pull up an extra chair!”
“Would you like my new mobile number?” Hazard asked her, waving a surprisingly old-fashioned phone at her.
“Why on earth would I want that?” she snapped. Did he think every woman was interested in him?
“Er, so you can call me about the art class?” Hazard replied, looking a little taken aback.
“Oh, I see. No need, just turn up. Mondays at seven p.m.” Thinking she may have been a little too aggressive, Monica decided to hold out the tiniest leaf of an olive branch. “What were you doing out in Thailand, Hazard?” she asked, forcing her tone to sound more friendly.