The Wrong Story

by James Ellis

  ‘I mean before, anywhere, did you see me walking along? With anyone?’

  Hobbes shook his head. ‘I didn’t. First time I really saw you was when you were lying face down in the mud. How fast do you think you were going? A hundred miles an hour?’

  ‘They think about 40. But that’s fast enough. Look.’ Tom showed Hobbes his missing tooth and he looked impressed. ‘I don’t suppose you saw it lying around anywhere, did you? My tooth?’

  ‘Sorry mate, no. I’ll have a look if you like.’

  ‘Would you? It’s stupid, isn’t it, but it’s a part of me and I don’t like to think of it, you know, out in the cold. On its own.’

  ‘That is weird but I know what you mean. I’ll have a look but I wouldn’t hold out any hopes. What are you going to do? Leave it or get a new one? No one can see it underneath that moustache, anyway. That is a corker of a mouser. I could use something like that to pull in all the leaves.’

  ‘Tom.’ Lawrence was beckoning in the background.

  ‘I have to go – but look, thank you. I can’t remember a single thing about what happened, so I don’t know exactly what you did, but whatever it was, thank you.’

  ‘No worries, mate. Just don’t do it again.’ He laughed and trotted across the road, back to his work.

  ‘Come on,’ said Lawrence. ‘No procrastinating.’

  ‘I wasn’t. Do you think there are other people around here who saw me, who saw me before I went up? They could help me remember what I was doing, who I was with.’

  ‘Let’s stick to the programme and take a look at the car park.’

  ‘I want to look around here first.’

  ‘Let’s do it afterwards.’

  Knock him up in the air.

  ‘Okay, but I am going to look around here once I’ve seen the car park.’

  ‘Of course.’ Lawrence smiled and Tom noticed that his teeth weren’t good. He’d not seen that before. Not that Tom felt he was in much of a position to pass judgement given his new gappy look. But even so. He looked away. ‘Let’s get on with it, then.’

  They walked down a side road, turned a corner into Hardies Lane, and there it was: the multi-storey car park that Tom had no memory of climbing or falling from. He looked up at the roof and wondered if his father had ever designed a car park.

  ‘I feel strongly that tall buildings should be equipped with safety nets, ropes, cages and harnesses,’ he said.

  They carried on walking and turned into an access road where a wide patch of grey concrete greeted them, beyond which, on the far side, was a grassy slope topped with a wire fence and, on the other side of that, a grouping of industrial units.

  ‘This rings a bell,’ Tom said. ‘This definitely rings a bell.’

  ‘That’s the beauty of Location Association,’ said Lawrence, slapping Tom on the shoulder.

  Along the car park wall there was a ramp with a low wall running alongside it. At the end was a narrow opening with steps leading up to a yellow access door.

  ‘Fancy looking inside?’ Lawrence said.

  ‘Okay.’

  Inside was a flight of concrete steps. Tom shivered and looked up. The stairs rose in a zigzag pattern to the top, to a tiny square high above them.

  ‘How high is this?’

  ‘Six floors one end; five the other,’ said Lawrence. ‘It’s on a slope.’

  ‘I fell off the front, onto the market.’

  ‘Yes, you did. Sixty feet give or take a few inches. How do you feel about walking up?’

  ‘Walking?’

  ‘The lift’s not working.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Come on. Give it a go.’

  They began the slow trudge upwards, past pitted walls cut with crude graffiti, up narrow, echoing, concrete steps, two flights for every floor, 13 steps each, with their heads down and their bodies bent forwards like mountaineers; Lawrence in the lead and Tom behind, breathing heavily. His head was starting to throb again and he realised he had forgotten to bring any water.

  As they walked, Tom imagined the builders constructing this car park, whistling and calling to each other, sitting on scaffolding and eating their sandwiches, looking out at the view with their legs dangling over the edge, ropes and buckets swaying in the wind, bags of sand and cement left where someone might trip or stumble.

  After five flights Tom said, ‘Let’s take a rest.’

  ‘There’s only one more floor to go.’

  Tom waved him on. ‘Go ahead if you want.’ Lawrence shrugged again and stopped. He leaned against the far corner with his hands in his pockets, gazing at Tom in the same way that Karen had done earlier, and as Dan and Holly had done in the garden when he’d come home from the hospital – with a watchful, ready-to-react expression.

  ‘Look.’ Tom nodded towards the only two cars he could see, which were parked side by side. ‘All this space and they park next to each other.’

  ‘Drug deal, I expect,’ Lawrence said. ‘Or sex.’

  ‘But the cars are empty.’

  ‘Maybe they’re on the back seat.’ Lawrence’s voice echoed around the stairwell like a bullet bouncing off the walls. ‘Maybe it’s a suicide pact. A lot of people jump off car park roofs these days. Come on.’ Lawrence peeled away from the wall. ‘One more floor.’

  He started walking and Tom looked through the window at the two isolated cars parked next to each other. They reminded him of his father’s car, sagging on his driveway. Tom wished, for a moment, that his father was there with him. It was a wish that lacked the power of his younger grief but it saddened him nonetheless. It would be nice to be in the company of giants. Nice to feel his shadow fall across him.

  They walked up the remaining steps and stopped at the top of the stairwell. Another access door faced them but this time a breeze blew beneath it and Tom was aware of the brightness beyond the window. It was the brightness of the outside.

  ‘Well, I think this is it,’ said Lawrence.

  Tom put his arm against the door and rested his face against the window. It was cool against his hot skin. His mouth was dry.

  ‘Are you all right? Not getting twitchy?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Tom said. ‘Just catching my breath.’

  He was becoming aware of himself, of his posture, his position in relation to the outside and to the ground far below. He recognised those feelings as the first gentle touches of panic, as gentle as a cobweb touching his face.

  ‘Did I tell you about a friend of mine who fell off a mountain?’ Lawrence said. ‘His boot caught on a tree branch that was growing out the side of the mountain. Saved his life.’

  ‘I don’t think there are any trees growing out the side of this car park.’

  ‘Very true, but that’s not my point. My point is, he didn’t keep thinking about what might happen, and so when it did happen, it wasn’t what he thought would happen.’

  ‘I see.’

  Lawrence held on to Tom’s gaze, smiling. ‘Let’s go out onto the roof,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘Yet? There is no yet. We’re here now and this is where it happened. This is real Location Association. You are right in the centre of the location and now it’s time to start associating.’

  ‘Just give me a moment.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I was thinking, can an intangible thought be stronger than a physical movement?’

  ‘Oh dear. That really is too much thinking even for you. A little less brain, a little more body – that’s what I always say.’

  ‘Do you? Well, I’m wondering if I can trust myself not to panic. What would happen if I pushed open the door and something went wrong in my mind, some rogue synaptic connection occurred, and I ran across the roof and jumped off the edge? It’s like that Vesuvius thing I was telling you about.’

  ‘You’d fall,’ said Lawrence. ‘But you’re not going to do that, are you? Why would you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You
are over-thinking everything. Seriously, I’ll hold on to you.’

  Tom briefly imagined Lawrence trying to restrain his 18 stone bulk. ‘I’m not sure that would work.’ He could feel his thoughts becoming lumpy, becoming less to do with thinking and more to do with thinking about thinking, of simulating thinking, as if each thought were a single, shaky snapshot rather than a smooth, continuous film. ‘I think I want to go down now.’

  Lawrence laughed and pushed his hair back, revealing a shiny area of dry, freckled scalp. ‘But we’ve only just walked up. You know, there’s no difference between standing up here and standing on a three-foot high wall.’

  If Lawrence had said anything other than that, then Tom might have remained. He might have walked out onto the roof, conquered his fear of heights, remembered why he had been up there and how he came to drop off the edge, and the trip would have been a complete success. But because Lawrence said that Tom said, ‘I’ll see you down there.’

  ‘Really? You’re giving up? Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘How about just one minute? We walk out, walk round, and then go back down. One minute. Thirty seconds, even.’

  But Tom had already started his descent, putting the door behind him and returning to the gloom, taking one careful step at a time, holding on to the handrail, focusing on the moment when he would be on terra firma again, looking up instead of looking down. ‘Do you know what G.K. Chesterton used to say?’ he said.

  Lawrence was clumping down the stairs above Tom. ‘I don’t really follow cricket.’

  ‘He wrote a bit, too. G.K. Chesterton used to say he’d rather live in the valleys where everything looked grand and magnificent, than in the mountains where everything looked small and distant.’ Tom stopped and looked back up at Lawrence. ‘Shall I tell you the difference between standing on the multi-storey car park roof and standing on a three-foot wall?’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘One is very high, and one isn’t.’

  Back on the street, Tom told Lawrence to go on without him, saying that he wanted to speak to the market stallholders in case any of them had been there on the day he fell, although in truth, he was tired of Lawrence’s company and wanted to be alone to stand amongst the market stalls and look up. He wanted to imagine his descent, imagine himself as the turning, twisting, tumbling meteorite that had struck the earth. He also wanted to search for his tooth, to at least try to find it. He owed it that much.

  But Lawrence said, ‘No problem. I’ll come with you. We walked out together; we’ll walk home together.’

  So Tom resolved to return another day and they walked home in silence and Tom reflected on the trip and wondered how Lawrence had known that the lift in the car park wasn’t working.

  He fully expected Lawrence to come into the house with him, assuming that he was now a weekend fixture, but Lawrence stopped at the gate and said, ‘I have to go now. See you soon. And don’t feel embarrassed about today. It happens to the best of us.’

  ‘I don’t feel embarrassed.’

  ‘Really?’

  He walked away and again Tom wondered if he had a car and, if so, where it was parked, and exactly where on the horizon he lived. He was glad he wasn’t staying for lunch, but when he went inside he found that there was no lunch for which to stay, and no Karen either. No Karen, no children, no food. Only Tom.

  ‘Knock her up in the air. Knock him up in the air. Knock them all up in the air,’ he said.

  He hung his jacket in the hallway and went into the kitchen. In the fridge he found four cans of beer. He checked his watch.

  ‘Excellent. Oh-wine-hundred hours.’

  He took out two cans, opened one, drank it all, opened the other and poured it into a glass. He took a third can, back-heeled the fridge door and went upstairs. He paused for a moment outside Dan’s door, then tapped lightly and looked in. There was a desk with a laptop on it, clothes on the bed, a rucksack on the floor. Books and posters on the wall. No Dan, though. He withdrew and closed the door and crossed the landing. Ignoring the sign that said Warning: Girl Zone – Keep Out, he looked into Holly’s room.

  In here there was a dressing table overflowing with make-up, and bottles and cards and magazines all over the bed and the floor. Clothes were piled high – dumped, strewn, discarded – and photographs of Holly and her friends were stuck across the wall-mirror and every other free surface. The bed was unmade and the curtains drawn. And no Holly. It looked like she had simply woken up and walked out, after which a cyclone had struck.

  Tom went downstairs and made himself a sandwich and drank another beer. All the time, the presence of the door to the outhouse bothered him. He turned the knob and pulled. Nothing. He leaned his head against the wood and listened. Again, nothing. He stood there for a long time, leaning against the door, listening to nothing.

  ‘Get the key off Karen,’ he said at last.

  He went into the living room, sat down and ate the sandwich. He was sleepy now. For a while he lay there looking at the clouds crossing the sky and then he became aware of a distant barking, and again he wondered if it had always been there. It seemed to carry on the wind, on the rhythm of his pulse, a mournful hooting of a distant dog singing to him.

  He stood up and went to the window. He stared at the garden and at the car on the drive and thought of his mother and his father and it made his skin tingle; an acute, precious feeling that was quickly gone. He was about to sit down again when he saw Police Officer Ann Lasley cycle up to his gate. She propped her bicycle against the wall, unbuckled her helmet and walked up the path. Tom stepped to one side of the window and didn’t move when the doorbell rang.

  He waited.

  He could imagine the silhouette against the window in the front door, an all-seeing eye peering through the frosted glass. The doorbell rang again. It seemed louder. Tom scarcely breathed. He thought he heard her walking back down the path but he couldn’t be sure, and so for the next half an hour Tom sat on the floor, concealed from the window by the side of the sofa.

  While he sat there, he wondered what the purpose of her visit was. Perhaps the police thought he knew more than he did. Perhaps they thought he was unstable, a jumper, a danger to passers-by and fresh fruit produce. Or did they suspect foul-play, that he was the victim of an assault?

  Tom allowed that idea to wander around the inside of his mind. It was unpleasant to think that he might have been fighting for his life and had no memory of it. He felt sorry for himself and wished he’d been there to help himself. And why? Why would he have been fighting on a car park roof? A random mugging? Car park rage? Why had he even been in a car park? And on the roof of all places?

  ‘But you were up there today, weren’t you? Like a little lamb trotting up the stairs.’

  Tom got to his feet, dragging himself upwards on the sofa arm as if he were hauling on heavy ropes, a man battling the tide and bringing a ship in to its moorings. He peered through the net curtains. Ann Lasley had gone but now it looked as if Lawrence was lurking at the end of the cul-de-sac, leaning against the lamppost. Tom couldn’t be sure, but if it was, then what was he doing there, skulking like a willowy weasel? What was he up to? Was he waiting for Karen? Was he watching Tom?

  Tom had no intention of letting him in again. He had had enough Lawrence for one day. He bolted the front door and went to his study. Karen and Dan and Holly would have to ring on the doorbell when they came home. He sat down at his desk and flexed his fingers, including his healing thumb. There was a drawing pad on the desk and he picked up a pencil and wrote at the top, as neatly as he could, the word Facts, and underlined it. Then he wrote:

  She works late.

  He knew where the living room was.

  She knew he drank tea instead of coffee.

  She knew he took sugar.

  He knew the car park lift didn ’ t work.

  He put down the pencil and found that he was picturing Karen as she had been when they were young and star
ting out, doing new things together and having fun. He could see her happy, laughing her musical laugh, her smooth, round face looking up at him… Tom stopped. He wasn’t imagining Karen; he was imagining Maggie.

  He put the list to one side and read the discharge letter, which he had left in its envelope. It included the outpatient appointment for the following day with Doctor Muller. Tom had planned not to go but now he thought, why not? He returned to the list.

  He must have a key.

  He looked at that and then wrote:

  He’ s done it once; he ’ ll do it again.

  Like today ?

  Tom looked at the words. Is that what he thought or was he letting his imagination get the better of him? He tore the paper from the pad and threw it into the bin. His mind felt stale and used and worn out. Enough thinking.

  Enough imagining.

  He climbed down the ladder, went into his bedroom, lay down on the bed and fell asleep within a few minutes. When he awoke again it was dark. He listened. He could tell without checking that he was alone in the house. He got up, unsteady on his feet, his mouth sticky from beer, and went to the bedroom window and looked out. There was no sign of Holly or Dan or Karen. No sign of Karen’s car. They, like the barking dog, were out there somewhere, but unlike the barking dog, they weren’t getting any closer.

  15

  It was a disturbed night for Tom. He woke many times, turning from side to side, finding comfort and then losing it again; the covers too hot and then too heavy; unfocused worries snaring his muddled thoughts and keeping him from reaching a deep, dreamless, peaceful sleep.

  He dreamed vividly, each vignette a richly textured experience. In one, a granite boulder rolled around his cul-de-sac on the pavement, its knobbly protrusions crushing the kerbstones to powder, each splintering contact bringing an exquisite sensation of sadness, the anticipation of the rock arriving outside his house too much to bear and waking him up for a moment, lifting him to the surface of sleep before letting him fall to the bottom again.

  In another, Tom was trapped in a glass aquarium. A large dog that looked like a hyena had its nose against the glass, snuffling and sniffing, following Tom with blind relentlessness as he ran from one end of the glass to the other. And in a third, Tom had given up smoking and his temper was immense, a huge, joyful release of rage that consumed him and exhilarated him. He was arguing with Karen on a bridge overlooking a motorway, and as he stared into the headlights below, he flew into the windscreen of an oncoming car.