Very Nearly Dead

by A K Reynolds

  What had happened to him?

  I didn’t know. Maybe I’d never know. But for now, I decided to accept I’d had some kind of a lucky break.

  It meant I didn’t have to feel so paranoid anymore, and could go about my business as if everything was normal. Apart, that is, from the images which forced themselves into my thoughts every time I let them, especially at night when all I wanted to do was sleep.

  Kylie was waiting for me by the door to TNQ when we met the following Tuesday, on 30 January. It was a year since we’d last seen each other, and she looked better than I remembered. She had perfect blonde hair, the face of a model, and a gym-honed body. What’s more, she was wearing a no-expense-spared trouser suit.

  In contrast, I was – am – mousy-haired, averagely good-looking if you discount my modest but growing tummy, and I’d bought my clothes from the Oxfam shop round the corner. (Desperate times called for desperate measures – it was this kind of cost-cutting which enabled me to make my exorbitant mortgage payments.)

  ‘Jaz, how are you?’ She grinned, showing me a set of perfectly even teeth so white they gleamed in the unseasonal sunshine.

  ‘Things are good,’ I lied.

  She pushed open the door and I followed her inside. The place was bustling with office workers taking their lunch breaks and pensioners doing their level best to kill the remaining time they had before death, but even so we managed to find a table by the window. We both picked up a menu and I felt myself wince when I saw the prices.

  ‘How’s work?’ she asked.

  ‘Going from strength-to-strength,’ I said, with as much conviction as I could muster.

  ‘Are you still helping small-time crooks to prosper?’

  Ouch. She couldn’t have known what a sore point that was with me.

  ‘They’re not all crooks,’ I replied, with a touch of desperation in my voice.

  She raised her eyebrows. I say eyebrows; they were actually thin lines pencilled onto her smooth forehead.

  ‘That’s not what I’ve been hearing. How’s the bid for partnership going?’

  It wasn’t going at all well. Success in the legal profession had had the opposite effect on me to what it should’ve done. I’d been ambitious and enthusiastic when I’d started out, but with each trial I’d won my enthusiasm had suffered, and when I’d won the murder trial it’d been broken like a butterfly caught in an avalanche. After that, my indifferent attitude towards my work meant I’d become last in line for any promotion which might be going, behind even the office cat.

  I paused for a moment to give myself time to think up a convincing lie. There was no way I was going to tell Kylie the truth – I wanted to sound positive, upbeat, and in control of my life. ‘You don’t get to be a partner right away, you know. You have to make your mark – but I have, and the powers-that-be are making all the right noises.’

  She narrowed her immaculately made-up eyes. She wanted to be sure I wasn’t going to have some kind of breakdown, and spill the grimy beans about our shared dark past. I suppose I could have been projecting my own motives onto Kylie – I was, after all, watching her closely for the same reason.

  A waitress came over to our table. Kylie pointed at a couple of items on the menu.

  ‘I’ll have the goat’s cheese tart with a salad, a portion of mixed beans, and a slice of pumpernickel bread, please.’ She glanced in my direction and smiled. ‘What are you having, Jaz?’

  Christ, I thought, we’ll be going Dutch and that little lot will cost me. It’s something of a myth that lawyers earn buckets of money. Some are very well paid, and some eke out a comfortable living. Those among us who work for small firms in criminal law generally aren’t paid too well. When we aspire to have big mortgages, as I had done, our resources are limited.

  ‘Chicken salad for me, please,’ I said. It was one of the cheaper items on the menu.

  ‘Watching your weight?’ Kylie asked.

  ‘I happen to like salad and chicken.’

  ‘Would you care for drinks?’ the waitress asked.

  ‘Sparkling Evian, please,’ said Kylie.

  ‘Café Americano for me, no milk, no sugar, no biscuit on the side,’ I said, and the waitress hurried off to get our orders. I tried to relax, but was already feeling uncomfortable at the thought of how much I was going to be stung for the meal.

  ‘So, how’s business?’ Kylie asked.

  ‘Brisk,’ I said, nodding with conviction. ‘The criminal classes are always at it, and I get a lot of repeat business. Sad to say that no sooner do I get a felon off the hook than he commits another crime and the process starts all over again.’

  I didn’t mention that in spite of my healthy caseload I was struggling to make ends meet. ‘Are you still in the interior design business?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s great. One of my designs was featured in Interiors Today magazine.’

  ‘Very impressive. You’ve come a long way since giving up your acting career.’

  ‘I suppose I have. I was never going to make it big in that line of work but it got me a lot of useful contacts. How’s Robert?’

  Ouch. I’d been expecting the question, but even so it hurt. Still, in a way I was glad she’d asked it. I needed practice at dealing with it before the reunion. I gave her my rehearsed answer, ‘He’s history. We decided to go our separate ways.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ She looked and sounded genuine, which annoyed me. The thing I hate above all else is people feeling sorry for me.

  ‘Don’t be. I’m much happier now he’s out of my life.’

  ‘Oh, like that is it?’

  ‘Yes, it’s like that.’

  ‘Any new romantic interests?’

  ‘No.’

  I felt loserish admitting to that. But then, I was a loser. I’d gotten divorced from my husband, was in a dead-end job – yes, on the surface it looked glamorous, but believe me, being a solicitor doing criminal law in a small firm with no prospects of promotion is as dead an end as you will find – I had no children, the biological clock was ticking ever more loudly, and I had no boyfriend or prospect of one. I wanted a boyfriend as that would help with passing myself off as normal. But I knew I could never be normal, because I harboured a terrible secret – the same secret Kylie was keeping.

  We finished our food and split the bill. I paid for my share on the one credit card I had which wasn’t maxed out.

  We left and said our goodbyes to each other.

  ‘See you on Saturday the third of March,’ said Kylie as she disappeared down the street. She said it in a friendly enough way, but she was probably making a point.

  ‘Yes, see you Saturday the third of March.’

  We parted company, without either of us having even once mentioned the mammoth in the room, loudly trumpeting to get our attention.

  As I made my way home, I thought about the coming reunion.

  It would be worse than the previous ones had been, if that was possible. In addition to the usual paranoia I’d be going through because of the incident from my schooldays, I’d be worrying about the Sean Price business catching up with me, and I’d have to explain to people why my husband wasn’t with me, then I’d have to explain why I hadn’t gotten myself a boyfriend yet. Everyone else would be in couples and I’d be the only singleton, standing out because she didn’t have anyone. All that explaining, all that pretending to be happy I’d have to do, putting on a brave face and a fake smile, and trying to convince Seth and the others I wasn’t a liability, it made me exhausted just thinking about it.

  A week went by, and I returned to work on Monday 5 February feeling as if a nuclear warhead was going to go off at any second and destroy everything I valued, leaving no trace of my life. But by the time two weeks had gone by, I’d begun to feel I’d gotten away with it.

  After three weeks I felt I ought to go out and celebrate my good luck. Celebration to me could only mean one thing, so on Friday 23 February, after I finished work, I took m
yself to The Angel cocktail bar. The words of the AA meeting I’d had the night before should’ve been ringing in my ears, but if they were, I ignored them. I bought myself a gin and tonic and took up a place by the window to watch the world go by. It was a peaceful world once again, one I no longer had to fear quite so much. I raised my glass.

  ‘Cheers,’ I whispered so as not to let on to the few other customers in the place I was talking to myself. ‘You’ve come through your crisis, Jaz, and you’re out the other end.’

  Then I whispered, ‘You reckoned that killing the boy shook you up so much you’d never drink again. It didn’t take you long to forget about him, did it?’

  Feeling I ought to show more respect, I took a sip of my drink and raised the glass a second time. ‘Here’s to Sean Price,’ I said quietly. ‘May he rest in peace, and may his parents find peace too.’

  Then I took another sip, put down the glass, and stared out the window.

  The street was bustling and amongst the crowds of shoppers, office workers, and revellers, I noticed a young man. He was well-dressed and purposeful, swinging his arms like a soldier on parade as he made his way down Thomas Street.

  His face was all too familiar.

  It was Tony, a boy from my distant and troubled past.

  My skin prickled with the sort of adrenaline fear I get when I’m in my car and someone cuts in front of me on the motorway, leaving no margin for error. My hands began to tremble. Then I realised I’d been mistaken. It wasn’t Tony, just someone who resembled him. Soon his back was disappearing amongst the evening drinking crowd, and I should have relaxed, but didn’t. That face had dredged up long-supressed memories which turned me into a nervous wreck.

  I picked up my glass, the ice clinking because of my shaking hand, took a big gulp, then another, and my first drink was gone. I’d planned on nursing it for a while, long enough at least to read a few stories in the newspaper I’d bought on my way here, but my nerves had put paid to that plan.

  I went to the bar and got another gin and tonic, a double, then returned to my seat still thinking about Tony. He’d be thirty-four now, and no doubt would look very different if he was still alive. But he wasn’t. He was definitely dead, and I couldn’t stop thinking about him, wishing he was still around, and, all-too-often, imagining he was.

  I took a few deep breaths, got a grip on myself, and read the rest of the newspaper I’d bought on my way to the cocktail bar. Then I knocked back enough drinks to bury my guilt-ridden past for good. Or so I hoped.

  I don’t know what time I got home, or how I got there, or pretty much anything else I did that night. Next morning – Saturday – I woke up with the fluey feeling you get when you’ve had too many and stayed in bed for longer than you should. Finally, I got up to have a pee, and after that there didn’t seem to be any point in getting back under the duvet, because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep. I wrapped myself in my white towelling dressing gown, padded downstairs in bare feet, and switched the electric kettle on.

  I like to grind my own coffee but I was feeling too delicate to operate the grinder. Instead, I made a large mug of instant coffee which I took to the front room, and deposited on an occasional table. When I got there I opened my iPad to find a message from Kylie reminding me that the reunion was coming up on 3 March.

  I shut the iPad and lazily pointed the remote at my TV, pressing the buttons until I got Sky News on the screen. When I’d done that, I barely listened to the young male newscaster telling me about the events of the day. I only had it on to stop me from noticing too clearly that I was a thirty-plus-year-old loser who lived alone, had no boyfriend, and seemingly no prospect of getting one, and who had been involved in two killings. It was what the telly was for, at least in my house.

  As I drank my coffee, I wondered what fresh hell would be waiting for me at this year’s reunion.

  On Friday 2 March I got out of bed and worked out how long I had left before I’d be compelled to meet with my former associates at the school reunion and pretend it was a normal meeting of normal friends. There was a day-and-a-half to go. Yet another message from Kylie confirmed the fact that I had approximately thirty-six more paranoia-filled hours to get through, after which I’d have another year’s respite until the next one. Or would I? It was likely I’d spend the entire year – indeed, the rest of my life – being tormented by what I’d done to Sean Price, in addition to being tormented by the mess I’d gotten involved in during my teens.

  The walls seemed to be closing in on me. I decided I couldn’t go to work, not in the state I was in, so I rang in sick.

  What a life I was leading, if you could call it a life. It was devoid of meaningful relationships and maintained by liberal doses of alcohol. Alcohol was the medicine I used to hold it all together. It was also the poison that might ultimately blow it apart.

  With all the stress I’d been going through I didn’t think I could face up to my former associates for an entire evening. There was a horrible chance I’d get myself wasted and say something I shouldn’t.

  That’s the thing with secrets. You bottle them up as best you can but you better make damned sure the seal on the bottle is good and tight, because they spend all their time struggling to get out. They can be strong and determined little buggers, secrets.

  How many times had I been with a friend, especially when drunk, and desperately wanted to say, ‘You know that thing with so-and-so? Well, this is really what happened.’

  But telling the truth wasn’t an option, not to anyone. It could get me killed.

  So I just had to keep schtum, the way I had done for eighteen years. The trouble was, I was weakening. I could feel it.

  At first it’d been easy, in a way, to keep my mouth shut. Fear took care of that. But it had to win a fierce battle for control of my mind with guilt to get its way. That was just the first battle in a long war of attrition. Ever since, guilt had been gnawing at me, and my resistance had been worn down.

  Sooner or later I was going to spill my guts, I was sure of it. And what would happen to me then?

  God alone knew.

  I had to go to the reunion. If I didn’t, they’d come looking for me. They’d corner me after work in the car park or some other dark place to question me, to make sure I was still on-message. If it went as well as it possibly could, it’d still be an ordeal. And it might not go well. Failing to be at the reunion could raise doubts about me. They might decide to take me out because that’d be – as far as they were concerned – good risk management. In the very worst-case scenario, they’d torture me first. Or Seth would, at any rate, and maybe he’d get one of the others to help. I wasn’t sure the rest of them would have any stomach for it.

  Anyway, it’d be better to avoid the risk by showing up at the reunion, acting normal, and going home.

  But I knew it wasn’t so simple.

  It was hard keeping quiet about things even while I was sober these days, and every time I got myself into a state I opened my mouth and was barely able to control what came out of it.

  Which reminded me: I’d lost a day. I’d had one of my blackouts, the worst ever – and I’d had some bad ones in my time. The whole of Wednesday 24 January had been erased from my mind. What had I done on that Wednesday? Where had I been, what had I said, and who had I said it to?

  I racked my brains but all I could see were the same images over and over again: a young boy’s twisted face, and then, another young boy’s twisted face – one from long ago, all of eighteen years since.

  It was only 10am and those memories made me want to reach for a drink right away but I forced myself to put the kettle on instead.

  ‘Keep calm, Jaz,’ I said. ‘There has to be a way out of this.’

  But deep down I knew there was no way out. Deep down I knew the best I could hope for was to negotiate the living hell I was in without getting arrested and banged up, or, worse still, being tortured and killed by a criminal gang.

  The kettle steamed and
clicked off so I spooned some instant coffee into a mug and poured boiling water on it, followed by a little cold water to cool it down. As I sat at the kitchen table drinking my coffee I realised I wouldn’t be able to get through the school reunion. The stress I was already dealing with on any given day was too much for me. There was no way I’d be able to take on any extra. And attending the reunion would involve a lot of extra. Way too much for me to deal with.

  But I couldn’t afford to miss it.

  Torture and death didn’t sit at all well with me, especially if I was going to be the victim.

  So what now? Go on the run? Was it an option?

  I’d have to give up my house and all I’d built up. And if I did, they’d probably track down my mum, dad, and brother, and torture them to get information out of them – or maybe just for fun. Because that’s what this stuff was for at least one of them – Seth – fun.

  No, I couldn’t run. I couldn’t afford to put my family in peril. I had to face up to it on my own.

  What if I went with someone to the reunion? What if I had company? That’d help me. If someone went with me, I’d have a psychological crutch to lean on, and I wouldn’t fall down. Robert, my ex, had served the purpose wonderfully well during our courtship and marriage. It was too bad I’d fucked things up with him. I needed him. In the end, he hadn’t needed me.

  There was a knock at the door which derailed my train of thought – a loud copper’s knock. I jumped from my seat, nearly spilling my coffee, while rehearsing in my head the way I was going to play it.

  You’re going to be surprised there’s a policeman calling on you, Jaz, as surprised as any innocent person would be.

  My heart was pumping wildly as I opened the front door. When I saw a delivery driver standing on my doorstep I relaxed.

  ‘Sign here, please,’ he said, holding up one of those devices which takes an electronic signature. I took the plastic wand and signed the screen with a shaking hand.

  ‘Sorry, it doesn’t look like my signature,’ I said.