‘I don’t think you can fix this one,’ I tell him, closing my eyes and trying to blink it away. My throat is dry and rasping. I have work to do, deadlines to meet. This course is my out. I’ve hinged everything on it being the way to change my life, to make things better. Without my laptop, I can’t study. Without my studies, this is all I’ll ever be.
I take a breath, gulping away the sob that feels close, but when I open my eyes, the walls have me crushed. I push myself up, but the ceiling starts to fall as I stumble across the room and clasp onto the kitchen counter. I’m in a box, confined and trapped, so disorientated that the first drawer I try to open is the one that’s not a drawer at all. It’s a handle that’s attached for either decoration or to confuse someone on the brink of a panic attack. It’s too hard to open my eyes all the way, so I fumble along the counter until I reach the proper drawer. There are medicines and painkillers inside and I riffle through them, eyes now screwed closed, until I find the inhaler. I haven’t needed it in a long while, but I suck on the bottom and then pump the trigger twice in quick succession.
It only takes a couple of seconds until the clouds begin to clear. When I open my eyes, the walls are back where they’re supposed to be and the ceiling hasn’t fallen at all. Billy is at my feet and I slide down until I’m sitting and smoothing the fur on his back. He twists to lick my hand and there’s such a purity that I realise I’m crying on top of him.
I’m not sure how long passes before I move next. The inhaler is still in my hand but the memory of needing it is fresh. I thought I was past this; thought I was moving on.
Eventually, I push myself up and cross to the sofa. The laptop is on the floor, upside down. I must have dropped it – not that it was working anyway. When I press and hold the power button, nothing happens.
‘Please work,’ I whisper. ‘Please.’
I press it again, but there is still only a blank screen.
It’s inevitable, I suppose. From the moment I sat on that wall and opened the envelope that had, literally, fallen into my life, I think I knew it would always come to this.
Chapter Ten
Hunting through charity shops and bargain bins has happened largely through circumstance, but I’d never been much of a shopper before what happened to Ben. It’s nothing to do with money and everything to do with a lack of patience. Trying on so many different items feels like such a faff compared to the end result. Shopping feels like a social thing, too – a team game – and that hasn’t been me for a long time. I can’t really remember when I stopped having friends, but it probably happened at around the time I moved in with Ben.
The number 24 bus takes me straight to work, but, if I remain on, it continues out to the Twin Oaks Shopping Centre. Hanging around there on a weekend was a fixture when I was a teenager who had friends. That feels like a distant memory.
When I last spent any significant time here, there was a massive HMV and a Virgin Megastore. Teenagers craved the CDs and DVDs that were packed onto rack after rack along the full length of the store. My friends and I would waste hours browsing for things we had no intention of buying. Now, everything like that is in the palm of our hands. It feels like life has moved on and it’s somehow skipped me.
As I wander along the wide, bright halls of the mall, it’s all mobile phone stores and pound shops. There are so many people, too, aimlessly going about their lives. I spend so much of my day around others – customers at work, or, of course, on the bus – and yet there’s nothing real about those interactions. They’re people I see and forget; people who’ll see me and forget. I feel surrounded but alone.
Many of the stores are decorated with orange and black streamers, with various standees of werewolves, Frankenstein’s Monster and, for some reason, sexy doctors and nurses. Not only that, the country seems to have undergone some sort of pumpkinisation at this time of the year. It’s American, of course. Everything is. Not like this in my day, and all that.
I continue meandering, getting lost until I stumble across a huge sports store. Another new thing since I was young is being pounced upon by a sales assistant the moment anyone steps into a shop. Most of my work history revolves around being in retail. When I was sixteen, I got a job on the checkout in a stationery shop that’s no longer there. The norm then was a general indifference to any customer who walked through the door. Speak when spoken to and all that. Now, I am barely into the sports shop when two separate people in red polo shirts descend to ask if I need any help. I tell them I’m fine, which I suspect is the sanest of answers, and then follow the signs to the footwear section. Someone wants to talk to me about gait and pronation, but I wave him away and pick out half-a-dozen different sets of running shoes that look comfortable.
There’s a wonderful release in being able to look at things I like, rather than have to check the price first. This is what it used to be like when I was with Ben. I wasn’t particularly extravagant then but I’d look for things I liked, rather than things I could afford. Now, I try on all the shoes and walk around in them, simply because I can. Perhaps shopping isn’t so bad? I take my time and eventually settle on a pair of Asics that claim they will make me run faster. It sounds unlikely, but I’m at the point where I don’t care.
Seeing the price would usually make me anxious. It’s three days’ wages. Twenty-four full hours of sitting on a checkout scanning people’s shopping – all for a single pair of shoes. As the cashier asks for the money, I reach into my bag, into the envelope, and remove eight twenty-pound notes that I hand over.
It’s so simple.
The cashier is a young guy, who I doubt is even twenty. He’s all fuzzy chin fluff and spiky hair. He could be me all those years ago; could be me now, I guess. He barely looks twice at the cash, scooping up the notes and counting them into the till. I get less than £10 in change – and that’s that.
The shoes are mine.
I ask him to cut off the tags and enquire as to whether he can keep the box. He says that’s fine and so I find myself walking out of the shop in brand-new shoes. My taped-together monstrosities are immediately dumped in the bin outside – and I’m done.
I expect there to be guilt, but there isn’t. Perhaps I deserve this money?
My next stop is an electronics store and, this time, I do let the sales assistant talk at me. I feel like the star of the show; the centre of attention. He’s older, probably in his forties, padding out a suit that doesn’t look like it has fit him in years. He reeks of desperation, or cheap aftershave. Perhaps both. There is hunger in his eyes and it’s hard not to wonder if that’s how I look to others. Whether desperation of living pay cheque to pay cheque is something a person wears on their face.
He leads me to the laptop aisle and I stop at the first one. It’s the cheapest they sell – the very one that’s sitting unresponsive on my table at home. It costs even less than I paid when Amazon had it on special offer. I look up and the salesperson can’t hide the disappointment. There won’t be much commission on this. This will be from a stock of which they’ve been unable to rid themselves. The lowest of the low. This is me.
But not today.
‘What do you have that’s better than this?’ I ask.
The man’s lips slip into a smile and then he catches himself, leading me along the aisle into the next.
‘What type of thing are you looking for?’ he asks.
‘Something for my university course. Small – but fast. It has to boot up quickly.’
He nods along and then points to a pair of laptops at his side. He talks about the new Windows, plus RAM and CPU speed, but I’m not sure if I care about the specifics. He continues to talk, but I’ve already switched off. For all I know, he’s telling me about how they can sing, dance, do the dishes or hug a person on those cold winter nights. None of it matters. I can barely contain myself because I know I can afford either.
‘… how does that sound?’ he concludes.
I blink back into the shop. ‘Do you take cash?’ I
ask.
He stares at me, wide-eyed, not needing to say ‘nobody ever pays this much cash’, because it’s obvious. ‘I guess…’ he replies.
The man talks to me a little more about the two machines and I end up choosing the cheapest one – but only because it’s the same size as the piece of junk I have at home. It feels a little more manageable; a little more me.
When I’ve chosen, he practically frogmarches me to the front and then radios someone in the back to bring a brand-new laptop from the stockroom. He bangs on about extended warranties, but I tell him I’m fine. My mouth is watering as I reach into the envelope and dig out a fistful of twenty-pound notes. I count them onto the counter until there is a little over £500. It’s ten days of work for me. Half a working month all sitting in a neat pile.
For some reason, the voice in my head that was so insistent I spend the money is now telling me that this is someone else’s. The hypocrite. It’s so brash that I almost shush it out loud, only stopping myself when the till starts to chunter out a receipt. When it’s finished, the salesman hands me the box and the computer is mine. I walk to the exit and pause by the security gates, half expecting them to sound an alarm. I take one step towards them, then a second to get past, but there’s no sound.
It’s mine, all mine.
The box isn’t heavy, but it is awkward. I lug it around the shopping centre as if clinging onto a newborn child. Young and old look at me as I pass. It’s probably the oversized box, but it feels as if I’m special. It’s been a while since groups of people turned to look at me – if it ever happened at all.
After a few minutes, I have to stop on a bench to rest my arms. It’s then that I notice I have yet another missed call from an unknown number. One after another, after another. This mystery caller is literally the only person who has phoned me for three days. I tell myself it’s nothing, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that the calls only started after the money had been left in my bag. If the unknown caller knows something about the envelope, then why not say so? They have my number. I’ve tried to talk to the person twice – and he or she could have left messages on any other occasion. Instead, it’s silence. It feels… ominous – and yet I’m on such a high from spending the money that I blink it away.
I’m on my way towards the front of the shopping centre and the bus stop beyond when I notice the pet store. I stop, take a step towards it and then another away. But it’s hard to resist.
I spend ten minutes squishing various toys, before noticing the sign about a ‘dog cake’. I picture Billy’s scruffy, grizzled face beaming at the idea of a cake that’s entirely for him, and so I spend another £20.
I waddle my way towards the exit, somehow balancing everything, when I find myself passing the food court. Even with everything I’m carrying, I march with a purpose over to the McDonald’s window. There are screens now, where orders are tapped into the system and paid for without having to talk to anybody. I pick a Big Mac, fries and strawberry milkshake, then feed the machine a ten-pound note. It is only a few minutes until I’m sitting in my new trainers, with my new laptop at my side and a doggy cake on the table, all while dipping fries into a milkshake.
Life, as they say, is wonderful.
Chapter Eleven
I’m not entirely sure how anyone thought it was a good idea that, one night a year, kids should be given their own body weight in sugar. The streets around our estate are like the aftermath of a bombing raid. Children are screaming and running in all directions – and a good proportion are dressed up to look as if they’ve dragged themselves bloodied and battered from a crumbling building.
Tyler is dressed as a tree… sort of. He has taped twigs to a green top and is going around telling everyone that ‘I Am Groot’. Quinn, meanwhile, is wearing a football kit. I’m not sure what that has to do with Halloween. As for Billy, the two boys made him an orange jumpsuit and have strapped a toilet-roll gun to his back, so that he can be Rocket Raccoon. I’ve somehow ended up supervising two members of Guardians of the Galaxy, plus a four-foot footballer.
Compared to some of the other children, Karen’s pair are incredibly polite and well-behaved. It helps that, once again, Billy is the star of the show. So many kids and adults come over to say how terrific his costume is and then rub his head or his back. He never seems to tire of the attention, even rolling onto his back for a belly rub at one point and slightly squashing his toilet roll gun.
As we traipse from door to door, I keep an eye on the lamp posts we pass. To the untrained eye, it’s a weird new hobby; to the trained eye, I’m reading the various posters people have put up. There are crudely made ones advertising gigs and quiz nights at some of the local pubs. Somebody is hosting a sit-in on the green to protest the new one-way system, which, if you ask me, sounds like grounds for sectioning. There’s one that screams: ‘Wanted: Flatmate’, which is probably a good way to get stabbed while sleeping.
Nothing about missing money, or a lost envelope.
The voice in my head can’t make up its mind. It’s now saying I should enjoy the money; that it’s mine and I deserve it.
Even if I wanted to repay what I spent, it’s gone past the point of feasibility. With the dinner, the laptop, the trainers, Billy’s cake, the McDonald’s and a couple of other odds and ends, I’ve spent more than £700 in less than twenty-four hours. I’ve kept the receipts as proof of my theft – if it is theft. The numbers burn inside me.
I’m so lost in thinking about myself that I almost miss the ‘NO trick or treaters’ sign that’s pasted to a gate. Quinn is halfway down the path before I call him back. We carry on along the street and there’s no question that some of the adults have used this night of trick or treating as an excuse to go over the top with their own costumes. There are a couple dressed as Rey and Kylo Ren who are having a lightsabre fight in the middle of the street, all while their kids – I assume it’s their kids – watch on, bored.
It’s as we’re about to head along the next driveway that Tyler stops. He picks at one of the errant twigs angling out of his shoulder and nods behind me.
‘I think that wolf is following us,’ he says.
At first I don’t notice who he means – but then I spot the figure striding along the pavement on the other side of the street. The person is tall, wearing a wolf mask that covers the entire head, plus a full body suit of hair, with a basketball jersey and shorts over the top. Whoever it is has no children with them. Because of the height, I assume it’s a ‘he’ – and the wolf turns to look at us before stopping momentarily and then continuing on.
‘Why do you think he’s following?’ I ask.
‘Dunno. He’s just always there.’
I turn from Tyler back to the other side of the street, but the wolf has already disappeared around a corner.
‘There could be more than one wolf,’ I say.
‘I guess…’
Tyler suddenly loses interest in the way kids do. Quinn is waiting at the next house, impatiently bouncing on his heels and Tyler skips away to join him. We head along the path as a foursome and the owner has the front door open before we’ve got there. He asks Tyler if he’s a tree, tells Quinn he hates Manchester City and then asks if Billy is ‘a giant rat’. Poor old Billy doesn’t seem to mind, probably because he’d gone through a quarter of his doggy cake before we came out.
The homeowner scratches his head as Tyler explains about the Guardians of the Galaxy – but he does dump handfuls of mini chocolate bars into the boys’ carrier bags and follows it up with an ear-rub for Billy.
We carry on along the street, ignoring the houses with the lights off, and continuing until the boys’ bags are full of sweets and chocolate. It’s as we’re about to head home that I notice the wolf again. This time, he is standing in the shadows of an alcove next to some bins at the back of a housing block. The lighting is dim, but the orange glow from the apartments beyond casts his hairy shadow across the pavement. The wolf isn’t watching us; he’s turned in the opp
osite direction, thumbing a mobile phone. The head of the costume is hinged upwards, resting on top of his head as the bluey glow from the screen illuminates his stubbled face. His jaw is sharp, his cheekbones angled, though it’s too dark to see much else.
There’s the fleeting glimpse of passing a celebrity in the street and realising a few seconds too late who it is. And in that moment, only a moment, I feel a tug of recognition. The shape twists away slightly, peering closer at the screen. I take a step towards him but then…
‘Auntie Luce…’ Quinn tugs on my sleeve and I turn to see him, knees clamped together. ‘I need a wee,’ he adds. I turn between him and the wolf, but the moment is lost. The slant of the light has changed and the man in the costume now seems like the stranger he is.
It was Ben, of course. It’s always Ben. I’ve seen him everywhere in the five years since the train crash. He’d be a customer walking out of the supermarket, or someone on the opposite side of the street. It was always half glimpses, or sideways stares, never anything firm. I looked it up on the internet and the pseudoscientists and blogger therapists all say it’s normal after a trauma. Ben’s in my mind again after I dumped my life story on poor Harry. His debt became my debt – and that became my life.
‘Are you okay?’
I turn back to Quinn, but both boys are now staring up at me with puzzled expressions.
‘Of course,’ I say, ‘let’s get back home.’
I risk another quick glimpse towards the wolf – but he’s no longer in the alcove and the only other people at that end of the street are the Star Wars parents with their weary kids.
Billy is flagging – he’s not used to all this late-night walking – and I have to carry him up the stairs of Hamilton House until we’re on our floor. I take the boys past my apartment to Karen’s and then use the spare key to let them in. Quinn shoots straight off to the bathroom as Tyler starts trying to pick the rest of the twigs from his costume. Billy wanders around, confused at why we’re in the wrong flat. I’m about to flick on the kettle when the front door creaks and pops open, to reveal an out-of-breath Karen.
A Face in the Crowd: An absolutely unputdownable psychological thriller Page 7