The accident had changed all that, of course, and he didn’t just mean Tish’s appearance – he wasn’t that shallow a bastard. It was the whole painful, awful, messy aftermath. They’d both been too bashed up in the first few weeks after the crash, and by the time he’d started feeling better and Tish had got out of hospital, it had been too late. A few DMs were all they’d managed after Jess had died. Jake really hadn’t known what to write. What was there to say about something so terrible? By the time they met up at Jess’s funeral, it had been chronically awkward. At Harry’s sentencing, they’d actively avoided each other.
But now, seeing Tish again, oblivious that he was watching her, Jake felt a strong urge to go over and say ‘Hi’. Maybe he could see if she fancied going for a coffee. The thought of being able to give her a hug, talk to her, hear her laugh at one of his jokes appealed. Being normal together, it seemed possible, desirable. Friends again. That would be good. They’d known each other for so long. She looked up, scanned the crowds. Tight jeans, heeled boots. God, she looked good. Back, nearly, to the girl she’d been. A couple of guys walking past Tish checked her out. She didn’t notice. Jake decided. Yep, he wanted to talk to her. Wanted her back in his life, as a friend – at the very least.
He ran a hand over his hair, double-checking it wasn’t sticking up at the back, and stepped out of the shop doorway, intending to go over, reconnect.
He never got the chance.
Out of nowhere, Mo appeared. Tish saw Mo and, with a lift of her chin and a widening of her beautiful brown eyes, she smiled. Mo walked up to her and, to Jake’s shock and dismay, they kissed. Not a peck on the cheek, either, but a full-on proper kiss. Then they turned and headed off, hand-in-hand, down Coney Street. Jake watched them, acutely aware that in all their time going out together, Tish had never once held his hand.
Chapter 56
MARCUS WAITED. The thought that the handset was one of the last things Jess had touched before she died haunted him, but there was no going back. He had to know. The screen came back to life. All her passwords and codes were written down on the inside cover of her notebook – neatly listed. He was ‘in’ within a few seconds. Where to start? He opted for a simple test. He scrolled through her messages to see who she’d been in touch with the most.
There were hundreds and hundreds of texts and photos. Marcus felt like he was travelling back in time. Jess’s life and loves unravelled in front of his eyes in one endless, frantic, taunting loop.
After only a few seconds he knew who her boyfriend had been.
He sat back and let the confirmation sink in.
Harry.
Jess’s lifelong friend, the kid who had been part of their lives for so long that he was like another member of the family. The boy who been on holiday with them, eaten countless meals in their kitchen, joked with Marcus, wound Jess up, turned to Fran for advice – that Harry – had, at some point, become more to Jess than just a friend. He had become the object of her passion and affection. Her jealously guarded secret.
Harry had been the love of her life, and the person who had killed her.
Fran! Christ! He pushed the thought away. He couldn’t deal with that nightmare. Not yet.
Randomly he picked one of the messages and read it. It was daft nonsense about a teacher at college. He selected another. It was an exchange about some coursework. The next, a terrible joke about a frog. Had he got it wrong? Were they simply closer friends than he’d thought? No. The next message he read contained arrangements for meeting up one evening, including details of the lie they agreed she should tell, to cover up where she really was. He scrolled back in time – more ‘hook-ups’, more lies concocted. The sign-offs to each text left no space for doubt: Missing you, can’t wait to be together; love you, love you back; thinking about you, can’t wait till I see you again…And more: Sorry you were sad today, you can always talk to me. I’m here for you, I always will be. And worse: I want you, I need you, I love the feel of you, I want to—
He stopped. He couldn’t read any more, didn’t want to, but at the same time he did. He felt shoddy for invading Jess’s most intimate thoughts and feelings, but couldn’t put the phone down. He went to her photo gallery. There were thousands of images: people, food, drinks, clothes, places she’d visited, lots of shopping and laughing and hanging out and partying. Plenty of photos of her friends, many of whom he’d last seen at her funeral. But as he trawled through the gallery, he saw one face above all others – Harry. Harry and Jess, arms around each other. Harry on his own, looking broodingly handsome and absolutely a fully grown man, not the young lad of Marcus’s frozen recollection. Harry in action, playing cricket. Since when did Jess ever go and watch cricket? Harry posing. Harry smiling. Harry goofing around. Harry serious, his eyes looking directly at the camera, and at Jess, and now – through the scratched phone screen – at Marcus.
Jesus! How had they missed it? How had they not noticed the change in her? How had they loved their daughter and not realised that she was in love? Sleeping with Harry. Lying to them.
‘Why, Jess? Why didn’t you just tell us?’ Marcus’s voice startled himself. Her room absorbed, but couldn’t answer, his questions. He was left to guess. Embarrassment? Fear of their judgement, their disapproval – of her having a boyfriend, of her having sex, of her being with Harry? Did he disapprove? Would he have? He hadn’t ever thought of Harry like that, as the choice of his lovely, sparky, opinionated feminista of a daughter. He couldn’t say what he felt about the thought of them being together. The ache in his heart expanded. He missed her so badly. He had let Jess down. She obviously hadn’t felt able to be herself around him or Fran.
Not giving himself time to reconsider, Marcus switched her phone to loudspeaker, dug his own phone out of his back pocket and pressed her number. The ringtone clattered around the room. He waited. Six rings, then the buzz as it went to voicemail. Her voice – loud and joyous – spilled out of the phone: ‘Hiya. You’ve reached Jess. I’m either busy or actually ignoring you, but you can leave a message either way and I’ll get back to you when I can.’
The silence went on for what felt like for ever, then the screen faded.
Marcus re-dialled and listened to her voice four more times, before gathering enough courage to leave his daughter a message she would never get.
Chapter 57
SOME MORNINGS Harry woke with an erection, which surprised him. Being locked up with three hundred and fifty other men, suffocated by the overpowering smell of testosterone, was not conducive to feeling horny; neither was being lonely and depressed, but try telling his body that. When it happened, he turned his face to the wall and jerked off quickly, keeping his mind blank. A mechanical act, his brain not engaged. He didn’t want Jess or Tish – or any of the girls he’d slept with – involved. Not here. At least he’d been put in a single ‘bunk’. The shame was bad enough as it was, without an audience.
His days inside were regimented, controlled by the buzzer and a series of very clear instructions – which was actually okay. There were worse things than being told what to do all day. He was told when to shower, when to exercise, when to eat, when to work and study, when to socialise. It gave a structure to his days, and that was a relief compared to the desolate period after the crash and before he was sent down. Of all the injunctions, the pressure to socialise was the most wearing. The rec room in his wing was a minefield of shifting allegiances and antagonisms that were hard to read and navigate. Hanging around on your own was regarded with suspicion by the other lads, and by the guards. The latter tried to encourage him to participate, by suggesting that he join in with the poker games or by starting loud conversations about football, demanding that he voice an opinion – like that was going to endear Harry to anyone.
He preferred to sit and watch the old-fashioned TV in the corner. It was sealed inside a Perspex box, a sensible safety measure – people had been known to take vehement issue with the decisions of the judges on talent shows. He’d watch wh
atever was on, anything for a quiet life. There was a preference among his fellow TV addicts for wildlife programmes – no irony there. They especially seemed to like the shows where antelopes were chased down by lions, or water buffaloes got snapped up by crocodiles. They’d pick sides and cheer and holler, as if their passion could somehow influence the outcome. Though it wasn’t all blood and chewed sinew. They had their softer side. One evening they’d watched a film about a baby penguin that had lost its mother in a blizzard. That had reduced most of the room to a silence filled with throat-clearing.
After rec, it was lockdown.
They were put to bed early, like naughty children. Most of them accepted it with grumbles and dragging feet, again like little kids. Harry didn’t mind being sent to bed. Though he hated the sound of the doors being locked, it was always a relief to be on his own. At least in his room no one was watching. The rest of the time he was very conscious that the staff were monitoring him. He knew that concerns had been raised about him by more than one of the screws. He guessed that Jim had been one of them. Jim was older than most of the other officers and more tattooed than most of the inmates. An old-school officer – ex-army, Harry guessed – Jim had a mean-looking face and hands like Wreck-It Ralph, but most of the blokes afforded him some respect, and that was a rare commodity on the inside.
The interest in Harry, and the inside of his head, by the officers had come as a surprise. He had not expected prison to be about his state of mind. The only person who had ever expressed much interest in that, before now, had been Jess. Keeping them out was proving exhausting, especially during the one-to-one sessions. Talking. What was the point? Yet there was no denying that there was a pressure building inside him, which was getting worse. The routine, the smell, the noise, the sense of being part of a herd, the confinement, all that was as bad as he’d expected; but the need to keep his thoughts and his feelings to himself was far harder. He wanted no one inside his head. He tried his best not to go there himself.
But at night, when his cell door was locked, there was nowhere else to go.
He prepared for the mental onslaught by taking the toothbrush from the tiny shelf above the sink, smearing a small amount of toothpaste on it and sitting on his bunk, holding it, ready.
Shutdown was announced by yet another buzzer – the last of the day – followed by darkness. Well, not true darkness; even in the middle of the night there was some illumination. It seeped in from the corridor, and from the irritating blink-blink of the smoke alarm. There was always some light being shed on them. You can’t keep an eye on people in the dark. But at least the shift from bright, harsh light to the monochrome of night was a relief. There was nothing worth seeing inside a prison; nothing beautiful, nothing nice, nothing green, nothing but concrete and metal and wipe-clean surfaces.
Harry sat on his bed listening to himself breathe, his eyes adjusting to the gloom, holding the toothbrush in his hand. Only when his heartbeat had slowed, and the noises on the corridor quietened, did he allow himself to think about Jess.
They had never spent a whole night together. They’d planned to – one weekend when Dom was due to be away on business, and Martha was supposed to be on a school trip. They’d been looking forward to it for weeks, but Martha had got tonsillitis, so that had buggered everything up. There’d been some afternoons, though, when they’d had time to go to sleep afterwards, or at least lie close to each other, talking. That’s what he conjured up, when the lights went out and he was finally alone. The memory of his hand stroking the dip above her hip, or scratching her back. Her pale skin, its texture so different from his own. Her smallness, and yet her strength. Her Jess-ness. The seductive, reassuring cocoon of being together.
It had always been Jess who got up first, wriggling out of his grasp, shielding her body with her hands. She would scoop up her clothes and go into the en-suite to shower and Harry would lie under the duvet, wishing her back into bed, and at the same time feeling slightly offended by her urgent need to wash him off. But when she came out, her T-shirt mottled in dark patches where her skin wasn’t quite dry, smelling of lemon shower gel, he’d been turned on all over again by the way she smelt – clean, fresh, edible – and he’d be aware that he was lucky to have even a fraction of her.
The third time they’d slept together, Jess came out of the bathroom rubbing her gums with her finger. The smell of mint had filled the bedroom. It’s what they used to do as kids when they were camping – they’d pass Fran’s family-sized toothpaste between them, fill their mouths with nose-fizzing toothpaste, then use their fingers to ‘clean’ their teeth. He had laughed. ‘Use mine.’
She shook her head and continued to rub at her teeth. ‘No. It’s okay.’
He sat up. ‘So you’ll share bodily fluids with me, but you can’t face using my toothbrush?’
She licked her finger. ‘Using someone else’s toothbrush goes against everything I hold sacred. Plus, it’s gross.’
He remembered how she’d knelt on the bed, stretched across and kissed him, her lips and teeth fresh with mint.
A few days later he’d slipped the present into her bag. She found it when she was digging around, trying to find her purse at the end of the day. Her saw her do a double-take, but with the buses after college, if you weren’t quick you got trampled, so Jess prioritised her pass. They all piled on, scanned their passes and headed up to the top deck. There weren’t enough seats for them to sit together, so Jess and Shamika went and sat near the back, and he and Navin had to grab a couple of individual spare seats.
He’d watched as Jess took out the parcel and turned it over in her hands a few times, talking to Shamika. Then she started pulling at the Sellotape. He had bound it quite tight – gift-wrapping was not one of his strengths. The only person he ever bought presents for was Martha, and even she had got to the age where he could just bung some money in a card. The Sellotape wasn’t budging. Jess put the present to her lips and used her teeth. At last she got an end free and proceeded to unwind the tape. Halfway down, it dawned on her what it was. She looked at him and grinned. A purple toothbrush – her favourite colour – with glitter embedded in the plastic handle. It had cost him all of £1.89 in Superdrug. One thing he had learnt from Jess was that small things mattered.
The bristles on the toothbrush were now splayed and ragged from use. He walked over to the tiny sink in the corner and ran the water. The smell of mint filled his cell. He closed his eyes and began to brush his teeth.
Chapter 58
IT WAS the fact that she couldn’t text Harry that upset Martha the most, almost as much as him not being around. It had been a part of her existence: sending him daft messages and GIFs and, even better, him sometimes messaging her back. The banter had been their way of saying, ‘I’m here, if you need me.’ Well, she needed him now, but he wasn’t there. It was just her and her dad, and it felt less than that.
Dom’s approach to Harry’s absence seemed to consist of not talking about any of it, unless forced to. That and being falsely cheerful – all the time. It was business as usual, as far as he was concerned – namely, fake it to make it. The pressure to ‘be okay’ added to the stress for Martha. The scheduled landline calls to the prison were perhaps the worst. Harry and her dad literally seemed to be unable to talk to each other. It fell to her to chat and laugh and ask questions, like it was perfectly normal to only be able to speak to your big brother once a week, at a set time, presumably with people listening in whenever they wanted to. She had pinned all her hopes on a visit to see Harry, but when Dom returned from his first trip up to Darlington, that hope had taken a battering.
‘Well? How is he?’ Martha needed Dom to tell her everything.
‘He’s doing okay.’ She waited. ‘He looked fine. He’s lost a bit of weight. His face is thinner. Like he said on the phone, the food is garbage. But he’s been going to the gym, so he’s keeping fit. They have a decent one apparently, and they can access it most evenings.’
Martha’s
frustration fizzed. She should have known that her dad would default to hard facts in a bid to avoid uncomfortable emotions. ‘But how is he really? How is he coping with being locked up?’
Dom rubbed his stubble. ‘Fine, I think.’
‘You think? Didn’t you ask him?’
‘Well, not in so many words. I asked how he was, and Harry said “okay”. He said it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as he’d been expecting.’ Dom’s tone was defensive.
‘What about the other prisoners?’
‘I only saw the ones who had visitors as well today. It was hard to tell anything from that, really. They were what you’d expect. There were a lot of shaved heads and tattoos, but there were plenty who looked normal. A mix of ages. Quite a few older blokes. Some had kids.’
Martha saw her opening and went for it. ‘So it would be okay for me to come with you next time?’
Dom bought a few seconds by repositioning a pen pot on his desk. It was a penguin one that Martha had made when she was in primary school.
One Split Second: A thought-provoking novel about the limits of love and our astonishing capacity to heal Page 20