by Maria Goodin
Tom laughs, pulling Michael in for a hug.
They swap life stories – over a decade of love, loss, achievements and disappointments summarised in a few minutes – but it’s just background noise to me. There’s a slight chill in the air, and the day seems to have a strange dreamlike quality. We’re boys, but we’re pretending to be grown men. We’re standing at a graveside, but we’re laughing. Nothing feels right or real.
As they talk, I crouch down in front of the headstone, just as I have done in the past. My eyes linger on the chiselled lettering.
Barclay James Macintyre…
I close my eyes, take a breath and open them again. “Hey, Max,” I whisper.
I’ve tried and tried to prepare for what I wanted to say today. But what’s fitting for a friend you lost too soon? For a friend you haven’t spoken to in sixteen years? For a friend you let down? I haven’t been able to come up with anything.
“We’re all here,” I tell him, feeling like I’m stating the obvious. “We all came to see you.”
I can see him in my mind’s eye, watching me, waiting, finding humour in my discomfort, an amused smile on his face. Always, always a smile on his face.
I want to tell him I miss him. That I miss his deep, dirty laugh, his jokes and his self-deprecating wit. I miss his ability to cheer everyone up. I want to tell him that I may not have spoken to him in well over a decade, but that I’ve thought about him every day, that I wish he was still here, that he deserves to still be here. Instead, I say what feels easier.
“Tom’s a bit of a fat bastard now,” I tell him.
Behind me, I hear Tom chuckle quietly, his conversation with Michael over. Now they’re both hovering behind me, listening.
“And Blondie’s covered in tattoos.”
And you, Jay Boy? I hear Max ask. What about you?
“And I’m…”
Losing my mind? Not who I thought I was?
“I’m sorry,” I say, feeling a lump rise in my throat. “I’m sorry that I let you down. That I didn’t manage to get help fast enough. That I made bad choices—”
“Hey,” warns Michael firmly, crouching down beside me and gripping my shoulder, “that’s not what today’s about. It’s not about who did what or—”
“This is about saying goodbye,” interrupts Tom, crouching down on my other side. “It’s about closure, not digging up old ground.”
“But I don’t know how to do that,” I tell them, my throat tightening. I can feel my heart rate starting to accelerate, my palms starting to sweat. I suddenly feel scrutinised and judged, like I’m sitting a test I’m going to fail.
I await instructions from my friends. For a second it seems like they’re both about to speak at once, but then neither of them says anything. Because the truth is they don’t know how to do this either.
“Is there nothing you’ve ever wanted to say to him?” I ask somewhat desperately, turning to Michael, searching for reassurance that I’m not alone in this struggle.
Michael looks thoughtful for a moment, but then he shrugs. “I guess I feel like I’ve said it all. In my music, my songs. I’ve written it all out.”
I remember some of Michael’s early songs, those from his darkest days, ones I haven’t heard in years, that I would happily never hear again. The slow, miserable ones I always knew were connected to Max’s death.
If I could take your hand and lead you to the light,
Then we could start again and it would be all right.
But when I reach for you, you fade again
Into the dust, into the pain…
“There are songs you don’t even know are about him,” continues Michael, “some of the ones I’ve written recently. ‘Soar’? That’s about him.”
I wrack my brain. When the tune comes to me – upbeat tempo, all slamming guitars and rapid drum fire – then so do the lyrics.
Fly, just let your spirit rise,
you’re beautiful inside, now I can see you in the light.
Fly, inside me, I believe
that you can soar beyond the stars and let yourself be free.
“I don’t ever stop writing it out,” says Michael, “because it’s always there, it’ll always be inside me. But every time I write it out, I work through it. And I’m in a different place with it now. All the guilt and sadness… it’s been replaced by something much more peaceful. I like to remember him now for who he was, for his spirit and humour, and if I can write about that, then that’s my way of talking to him, I guess. Of remembering him.”
I study Michael’s face like he’s someone I barely recognise, wondering how we’ve never had this conversation before.
“Plus,” he adds, “I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Max with Catherine. That’s also been a way of saying goodbye; talking about him. I’ve described Max to her, laughed about him with her, remembered him with her.”
Tom looks past me to Michael.
“Girlfriend?” he asks.
“Therapist,” Michael corrects him.
Tom cocks an eyebrow and nods approvingly.
“And what about you?” I ask, turning to Tom. “Don’t you have anything you want to say to him? Don’t you feel the need to say goodbye?”
Tom shakes his head, thoughtfully. “In all honestly, no. Because I don’t think he’s gone. Not in the traditional sense. I practice Buddhism now, so I look at death with a lot more acceptance than I did at the time. I don’t mean that what happened was okay, because it wasn’t. It was fucking horrible. And the way I coped at the time wasn’t healthy. But now, I don’t know… like Michael said, I’ve already found a way to make my peace with it. Now you just have to find yours.”
I close my eyes and shake my head.
Come on, Jay Boy, I can see Max saying, better out than in.
But all I want to say is sorry, over and over and over again.
I don’t want to say goodbye. I just want to turn back time and make it right.
Just say something! I tell myself, angrily.
Come on, Jay Boy, coaxes Max.
“I can’t do this,” I say standing suddenly. “This is stupid. I don’t know what to say—”
“Jay!” calls Michael as I stride away.
“Just leave me!” I call, my chest suddenly tight, the air suddenly feeling too thick to pass through the tiny passages to my lungs.
“Why haven’t you been to the doctor?” asks Tom, once I’ve managed to regulate my breathing. We’re standing under the oak tree, the leaves rustling gently in the breeze.
I shake my head dismissively, my legs still wobbly, my hands still trembling.
“Because it comes and goes. It sometimes takes hold when I’m really stressed out and rundown, but generally I’ve been okay for a long time. It’s just these last few months it’s got really bad.”
“So, again, why haven’t you been to the doctor?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I sigh.
Tom stands square on and takes me by the shoulders.
“Yes, you do,” he says.
“Will you stop telling me I know stuff!” I snap, shrugging him off. “You’re the damn shrink. If you think you know why I’m doing something, then just say it!”
“Do you want to let go of any of this?” asks Tom, making a vague gesture towards Max’s grave. “I mean, do you really want to let go of it?”
I look at him as if he’s mad.
“Why haven’t you been to the doctor?” he asks again.
“I told you, I don’t know!”
But even as I’m shouting at him, I realise I’m lying. I suddenly recall Laura saying to me – years ago now – that I took a perverse pleasure in my own suffering.
“Maybe because… I don’t know… because why should I? Why should I get to breathe when he can’t? When he couldn’t? When he was gasping for air because I’d told him to run!”
“You didn’t kill him, Jay, the asthma killed him.”
I shake my head like he’s lost his mind.
“He hadn’t had an asthma attack in years. And then he gets scared and he runs and—”
“People get scared. And people run. He was on the football team, for Christ’s sake. He played every week and nothing happened. We went paintballing and nothing happened. We trekked for bloody miles in the pissing rain on that stupid school trip to the Lake District and nothing happened. But that night – maybe because of the stress, maybe because he was running – he had an asthma attack and unusually he died. It was a freak event. God, Jay, I remember reading about a case where a teenage girl with mild asthma just died mid-conversation with a friend. She was on the phone, suddenly stopped talking and fucking died. Sometimes these things happen and no one knows—”
“I know! I know that’s why it happened!”
“Who do you think you are? God?! You think you’re really that damn powerful that you are responsible for this happening?”
I walk slowly in a circle, running my hands over my eyes, through my hair. I don’t know what I think anymore. I see Michael lingering patiently nearby. I know he has nothing to add to this. I know he feels like he’s banging his head against a brick wall with me. Let someone else have a try.
“You don’t have to keep making yourself suffer,” says Tom. “I know you think you do, and I know I can’t change your mind about that – only you can change your mind about that – but I’m telling you, not as a friend, but as a medical professional, you need to go to your GP. These panic attacks that you’re having, along with the dreams, the intrusive memories, the self-blame… it could be that you’ve got PTSD.”
I look at him like he’s crazy.
“PTSD?”
“Post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“I know what PTSD is. It’s what fricking war veterans get.”
“It’s what people can get after a traumatic event, especially if they’ve felt extremely threatened, or witnessed a death. And it can start years after the event—”
“I don’t have bloody PTSD! It’s just been really stressful lately. I found out my dad’s not my biological father, my friend nearly miscarried right in front of me—”
“Okay, whatever, I mean, I’m just the psychiatrist. But, either way, you know that what you’re having are panic attacks, yes?”
“Yes, of course,” I sigh.
“And you know you can get help with those?”
I nod, thinking this is what Josh must feel like when I’m nagging him and he just wants me to shut up.
“But, of course, you need to want help,” says Tom. “You need to think you deserve help. And if you really believe that what happened was your fault, then there’s something else you’re going to need.”
“And what’s that?” I ask him with a weary sigh.
He holds his palms out, as if it should be obvious.
“Forgiveness,” he says.
Chapter 24
Intervention
“Where are we even going?” I ask.
Tom, sitting next to me in the driver’s seat, looks in his rear-view mirror at Michael, but neither of them says anything.
“This is kidnapping, you know that?” I grumble.
Tom smiles. “Think of it as an intervention.”
Wherever we’re going, they’ve obviously agreed it’s a good idea, but I have the impression that – as always – Tom is far more confident than Michael.
“Just don’t freak out,” says Michael behind me, sounding somewhat anxious.
“You trust us, don’t you, Jay Boy?” asks Tom, brightly, one hand casually on the steering wheel.
I stare out the window at the motorway traffic passing by.
“Like hell I do.”
I’m becoming a mess, there’s no other way of putting it. I’ve been sleeping so little that I’m starting to know what it feels like to be Michael, up all night in the dark and silence. His insomnia is helpful to me right now. We text into the early hours – meaningful stuff, pointless stuff, funny stuff – until he cuts me off and tells me to lie down and rest, even if that’s all I do. Michael’s work shifts mean he can sometimes nap during the day, whereas I have to be up at six thirty, and nobody should be rewiring some poor sod’s house after three hours’ sleep.
When I do dose off, I’m plagued by nightmares. I run too slowly. I shout but no sound comes out. I stand – fretful and indecisive – at a crossroads. I see fire and blood, hear cries of pain, and feel the weight of responsibility crushing me, squeezing the air out of me, until I wake, struggling for breath. I see threat everywhere, and at a time when I’ve promised to give Josh more freedom, I feel constantly torn and anxious.
I also feel angry. All of the time. Knowing how stressed I am, Rob invites me to spend some extra time with him in the gym, bashing it out. There’s a certain satisfaction in hearing the thud of my boxing gloves against his pads.
“Harder!” he barks at me. “Work it out of you!”
For a short while, when I’m coated in sweat and practically on my knees, there’s no room for thought or feeling. But the relief is temporary, and by the time I’m back home, the pressure’s already starting to rise again.
I don’t know what kind of intervention this is or what can possibly help me, but right now I feel open to just about anything.
We find a parking space some distance from the seafront, in front of a neatly kept bungalow with a birdbath in the front garden.
I step onto the pavement and shove the car door shut. Seagulls circle and screech overhead, struggling to keep a straight path against the wind.
“Where the hell are we?” I ask.
Tom leans backwards, stretching out his spine, breathing in the salty air.
“Essex.”
“Yeah, I know we’re in Essex. I mean, where exactly are we? And why are we here?”
Tom and Michael exchange a meaningful look.
“Come on, guys,” I sigh, “what the hell’s going on?”
“We think there’s something you need to do,” says Tom, decisively.
Michael approaches me apprehensively. “Just stay calm, okay? And remember we’re trying to help you.”
“Help me what? What are we doing?”
“Come on,” says Tom, placing his hand on my back and steering me down the driveway of the bungalow, in between the potted plants and the Nissan Micra.
“What?” I ask, shrugging him off. “Whose house is this?”
Just then the front door opens and a lady steps out. She’s in her early sixties, I’d guess, portly, neatly bobbed fair hair, beige trousers and a navy-blue cardigan.
I think I recognise her, but in my confused state I’m not completely sure. And then a man steps out beside her. A tubby, silver-haired gentleman with glasses and a soft, friendly face.
And now I know exactly who they are.
My stomach lurches and my limbs freeze.
We stand still, staring at each other for a moment, before I feel Tom pushing me gently forwards.
“Hello, Jamie,” says Max’s mum, Carole, smiling warmly at me. “Goodness, look at you!”
Before I know what’s happening, she reaches up and kisses me on the cheek.
“Lovely to see you again, son,” beams Max’s dad, Peter, taking my hand in both of his and pumping it up and down.
His eyes look small and blurred behind the thick lens of his glasses, and I watch his chin wobble as he shakes my hand.
I’m mute and rigid. I can feel my heart pounding. I want to turn and run from these wonderful people who have never known what I did.
I hear Carole behind me now.
“Hello again, Tom,” she laughs, and it’s clear from the way she says it that they’ve only met recently, that he’s been here already, setting this up.
“And Michael!” Carole exclaims brightly.
I stand there, dazed and lost, as everyone greets each other, shakes hands, plants kisses, as if this is a pleasant reunion of long-lost friends instead the moment of reckoning. I know why I’ve been brought her
e and it’s not to make chit-chat. It’s to own up to what happened, to confess. To seek forgiveness. Tom might have already spoken to Max’s parents, but there’s clearly no damn way he’s told them what happened that night.
“Come inside,” says Peter, guiding me indoors, “let’s get everyone a drink.”
I step out of the wind into the narrow hallway, where I remove my shoes in a trance. From there I’m led into a large, immaculately tidy lounge.
The first thing I see is a photo of Max on the wall, beaming at me. I haven’t been able to bring myself to look at a photo of Max in sixteen years. I’d forgotten about that little gap between his two front teeth, the rosy hue of his cheeks. I feel my breath catch in my throat. But when I turn away there’s another one on the mantelpiece – Max in his primary school uniform – and another one on the windowsill – Max eating an ice cream on holiday. Around me people talk, but I hear nothing of what they’re saying. I feel dizzy and disorientated and I just want to get out of here.
Suddenly a hand touches my shoulder. I turn with a start.
“You okay?” Michael asks.
I look around, but it’s just me, Michael and Tom in the room.
“What the hell are we doing here?!” I whisper fiercely.
“Think of it as exposure therapy,” says Tom, calmly and quietly.
“I don’t want any fucking exposure therapy!” I hiss through gritted teeth. “This is insane! What are you trying to do?!”
“Calm down,” says Michael, placing a hand on my arm.
I knock him away angrily and he retreats.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” I hear him mutter to Tom.
“Here we go,” says Carole brightly, entering the room with a tray of polka-dot mugs.
“We bought chocolate Hobnobs for the occasion,” says Peter with a smile, placing a huge plate of biscuits down on the coffee table, “we remembered you boys always loved Hobnobs.”
“Barclay certainly loved a Hobnob,” mutters Carole, sitting herself down on the sofa.
“Good old Barclay loved anything edible, didn’t he?” pipes up Tom, and the rest of them politely chuckle in agreement.