Breakers

by Doug Johnstone

  ‘Shut up.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘No joke.’

  ‘Why?’

  Tyler shrugged. ‘Just get your stuff on.’

  ‘What happened to your eye?’ Bean said.

  ‘Nothing. Just bumped it last night.’

  It was only when he was out the room and in the hall that he realised Angela hadn’t mentioned the eye. Maybe she hadn’t noticed.

  He flinched at the sound of a key in the front door. He should get the locks changed but then Barry would be pissed off and take it as an insult. Anyway, changing the locks cost money and Barry could just kick the door in.

  The door opened and it was Kelly. Tyler tried to think of the last time he’d seen her without Barry but he couldn’t remember. She was bleary-eyed and wore a thick sweatshirt and jeggings.

  She closed the door behind her, looked at him and put a hand to his cheek. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Bumped into a cupboard in the kitchen.’

  She tried to run a fingernail along the cut but he flinched. She gave him a look. ‘It’s best just to do what he says.’

  ‘You think?’

  She sighed. ‘He’s got our best interests at heart.’

  ‘How can you say that after the other night?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Kelly said. ‘Nothing happened the other night.’

  Tyler shook his head. ‘I can’t get it out of my mind.’

  She lowered her voice. ‘Well try harder or you’re going to get us all killed.’

  Talking to her was like talking to Barry’s sock puppet, she just agreed with everything he said.

  Kelly looked through to the living room. ‘What are you making for breakfast?’

  ‘It’s not me, Mum’s cooking.’

  ‘Nice one.’

  ‘Really.’ He waved towards the kitchenette.

  Angela was putting a bottle of wine back in the cupboard when Tyler got to the doorway. He was disappointed but not surprised. And wine wasn’t that bad, considering.

  Bean came in behind him and stared at her mum.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Kelly said.

  Angela turned. ‘I didn’t realise it was such a big deal, cooking for my kids.’

  ‘You don’t normally,’ Kelly said.

  Angela got plates out of the cupboard, threw toast and eggs on them. The toast was burnt and the eggs were rubbery on the bottom and raw on top. Angela moved with the rhythmic sway of a constant drunk, like she’d spent a long time at sea dealing with the shift of balance on deck.

  Bean made a face at the plate in front of her, and Tyler gave her a look to at least try. He leaned in. ‘I’ll get you something else to eat on the way to school.’

  ‘I heard that,’ Angela said. ‘Fuck’s sake, I’m trying my best.’

  Tyler gave Bean another look, turning the two of them into conspirators. ‘Sorry.’

  Kelly watched all this with her eyes wide. ‘I’ll leave you guys to it.’ She headed towards the door then pretended to remember something. ‘Tyler, can you pop in and see Barry after school? He wants to talk about something.’

  ‘Sure,’ Tyler said.

  Kelly left and Bean pushed a knife into the runny white on the top of her egg. ‘What does Barry want?’

  ‘How would I know?’ Tyler said. ‘Now eat up.’

  Bean shook her head, trying to hide it from Angela.

  ‘Fuck this,’ Angela said. She opened the cupboard, took out the wine and went to her bedroom, slamming the door like a stroppy teenager.

  Tyler put his knife and fork down.

  ‘Forget that,’ he said, looking at Bean’s plate. ‘Let’s go.’

  17

  Bean gave him a hug then darted across the playground to join her pals. The other three girls had those bows in their hair in various luminous shades. Miss Kelvin caught Tyler’s eye and gave him a wave, that look on her face. He was sick of sympathy but he supposed it was better than apathy or aggression. If only he could translate sympathy into a way out of this. He returned the wave as the bell went and watched Bean shuffle into the line. A boy was kicking off, throwing his schoolbag around, showing off to the girls. Another one was crying and holding on to his mum, who rolled her eyes. No such drama with Bean, so grown up already.

  Once she was inside he headed out of the gate and towards the high school, but then walked past the entrance and plugged his earbuds into his ears, put on Four Tet, ambient dance with some weird strings over the top. He cut along the path that split the woods from the fields. This close to the school the woods were full of crap, burnt-out remains of fires and barbecues, piles of beer and cider cans, used condoms, melted bits of plastic and twisted metal. As he got further away the rubbish cleared and he pretended he was somewhere calm and secluded. The trippy beats in his ears helped.

  He emerged from the trees on the road opposite the castle. He stood looking at its outline against the sky, remembered walking round the battlements last night.

  He strode down the road then he cut back in again through the woods, over the fence by the ambulance helicopter pad, then he was into the ERI grounds. He followed the signs to the entrance, the doors flanked by people smoking fags in dressing gowns, one woman with a drip on wheels next to her, the tube feeding into the folds of her nightie.

  Once inside he followed the signs and the coloured lines on the floor to Intensive Care. Thousands of people in this building, each with their own problems and worries, their own dramas and catastrophes, heart attacks and cancer, bowel or urinary infections, broken bones, replacement joints, varicose veins, brain tumours. Nearly fatal stab wounds.

  He went up to the desk where a nurse not much older than him was making notes on a piece of paper. Her nametag read ‘Justyna’. He’d figured that the nurse from his phone call last night, who knew Ryan by name and sight, would be off shift by now. This one looked a lot younger than the voice on the phone. She looked up and gave him a tired smile.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Strong East European accent, definitely not the same nurse.

  ‘I’ve forgotten which room my mum’s in, Monica Holt?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

  ‘Study period.’

  Justyna looked at the whiteboard behind her. It was a mess of symbols and acronyms, a secret language between doctors and nurses.

  ‘Room six,’ she said, pointing down the corridor. ‘Third door on the right.’

  ‘How is she?’

  Justyna checked the board, then shuffled some papers on her desk to find something. ‘No change, I’m afraid, she’s still in the induced coma. But the consultant will be round to check on her at lunchtime, there might be news then.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He tried to give her a smile but she was already back to her paperwork, tapping a pen against her teeth and thumbing through beige folders, slotting papers inside.

  He stared at the board behind her, frowned at the hieroglyphs, then walked away, taking a big breath and blowing it out. He closed his eyes for a second and imagined standing on a snowy mountaintop, fresh Alpine air burning his lungs.

  He was at her room. Four beds, two empty. One had an old woman in it, white hair like candyfloss, sunken features, badly bruised eyes and face. The other was Monica Holt. Her hair was down, not in the ponytail she’d had the other night. She was propped up a little and he wondered about that. She had a plastic tube running into her mouth, taped at her cheek, attached by a corrugated tube to breathing apparatus. She wore a loose hospital smock, her bare arms by her sides, a drip running into a raised vein in her hand.

  She looked younger than he remembered, as if all the worry had fallen from her face. The nurse had said she was in an induced coma. He made a note to look it up when he left.

  He inched towards her bed, looking around with every step and expecting someone to come in and grab him. The mechanical breathing apparatus wheezed and he flinched. Her chest rose and fell and he wondered about her muscles,
sliced apart and put back together under the smock and bandages.

  There was a plastic seat next to the bed. He looked at it but didn’t sit down. He took another step towards her, stared at her face. He noticed the smoothness of her cheeks, the dry skin on her lips, the swirl of her hair follicles. Her eyebrows were neatly shaped, her nails shiny red.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  His hand hovered over hers, and he rubbed his thumb against his fingers, scratched his forehead, then returned his hand to just above hers. He stroked the back of her hand with two fingertips and thought about her lying on the floor in her own house. Thought about his own mum, imagined her lying in a pool of blood. He remembered flinching from Angela’s touch this morning.

  ‘I didn’t know. Barry…’ He took deep breaths as his eyes stung. ‘I phoned the ambulance, I know that’s not much. I don’t know if you can hear me, I guess not. I’m so sorry.’

  He stood watching her chest rise and fall for a few minutes, touching her hand with his fingers.

  Eventually he turned and left. Along the corridor, a middle-aged man was leaning against the reception desk, chatting to the nurse and smiling. Tyler knew from the back of his head and stocky build that it was Deke Holt.

  He turned and walked in the other direction. It was only ten feet to the corner, eight feet until he would be out of sight, five feet, one step in front of the other, all it would take was for the nurse to look past Deke and point him out, there’s your son now, and he was a dead man, two feet, no shout from behind him, one foot and round the corner, breaking into a run, trainers thumping on the floor, heart throwing itself against his ribcage as he bombed down the corridor and threw himself against the security door, pushing the green button to open and bursting through and away, running and running as patients and staff stared at him until he found an exit and was outside, sucking in air, hands on his knees, feeling sick but holding it in, the fresh air electrifying his lungs.

  His phone pinged in his pocket and he pulled it out. A text message from Flick.

  Meet me at 20 Hope Terrace, asap. Fxxx

  18

  He scoped the street out of habit as he turned in from Kilgraston Road. Behind him was the high wall of Grange Cemetery keeping the dead in their place. Hundreds of souls he would never know. Hope Terrace was only a couple of streets over from Flick’s ex-boyfriend’s place, the houses not quite so huge, the owners maybe not millionaires but still not short of a few quid. These were Victorian four-bedroom joints, bay windows, small driveways, old gardens with oak and pine trees. The street was narrow, the houses keeping an eye on each other over the setts, a delivery van rattling over the surface as it passed him.

  Number twenty wouldn’t have been a target if he was on a job. ADT alarm box over the front door, newly bolstered windows. Low hedges meant you were exposed out front, no obvious entry points at the side of the house or any way to get up to the first floor. Just too risky.

  He had his hoodie up as he entered the driveway, resisted the urge to look around. If someone was curtain-twitching they’d see his face more clearly. He checked the windows of number twenty for movement, for any sign that Flick had broken in, but there was nothing. Blossom from a cherry tree drifted across the stonework under his feet as he reached the front door. He breathed in and out then pressed the doorbell. Old-school ding-dong tone. If this was a set-up he would just say he was looking for a friend and had the wrong house.

  He waited and listened then eventually heard footsteps. The outer door was closed, white-painted oak, no glass so he couldn’t see inside. The door swished open and there was Flick, mussing her hair, in skinny jeans and a white strappy top that showed off a flat stomach with a silver belly-button ring.

  ‘You took your time,’ she said.

  ‘Some of us have to get the bus.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s your car?’

  She looked both ways, comically, like a paranoid cartoon character. ‘I parked it in the next street. I’m not supposed to be here.’

  ‘Is this another ex-boyfriend’s house?’

  She smiled and ushered him inside, scanning the horizon again. ‘How many ex-boyfriends do you think I need to get revenge on?’

  ‘Could be hundreds for all I know.’

  ‘Fuck you.’ She held her hands out like a magician and looked around. ‘Welcome to Chez Ashcroft.’

  Tyler took in the hall. ‘This is your home?’

  ‘The one and only.’

  A landscape in a frame on one wall, a formal family picture on another, Flick much younger, maybe eleven, braces on her teeth. Her dad was in uniform, her mum in a simple green dress, both handsome, ordinary people trying to raise a girl.

  ‘Don’t look at that,’ she said, running over and lifting the picture off the wall. She turned it and put it on the floor, giving it a considered glance as she did.

  ‘But you stay at Inveresk,’ Tyler said.

  Flick walked through to the kitchen at the back of the house and Tyler followed, watching the bounce of her hair.

  ‘Correct.’ Flick turned at the island worktop in the kitchen. The room was large, French windows out to a neat lawn, landscaped garden up both sides, a fishpond down the bottom by a shed. ‘I’m not supposed to be here while my folks are in Afghanistan.’

  Tyler shook his head. ‘You’re old enough to look after yourself, surely?’

  Flick widened her eyes. ‘Thank you, yes. I’ve told them a thousand times. But they think I won’t be able to motivate myself to go to classes if I stay here.’

  Tyler held his arms out. ‘Well, they have a point.’

  ‘You’re not in school either,’ Flick said. ‘You don’t have the moral high ground.’

  ‘You called me.’

  ‘You didn’t have to come.’

  He looked at the pots and pans hanging along one wall. The marble worktop, Smeg fridge. ‘Why did you text me?’

  She made a dumb face. ‘Because I wanted to see you.’

  He looked away, embarrassed by her honesty. ‘Why?’

  She sighed theatrically. ‘Oh my God.’

  She opened the fridge, which contained just basic stuff, cheese and butter, jars of pickles and mustard. She pulled open one of the drawers in the bottom.

  ‘Fancy a drink? I have beer, cider or white wine.’ She looked at him, then at a wine rack along the back wall. ‘Or red. Or champagne. Fancy a mimosa?’

  He shook his head, didn’t want to ask what that was.

  ‘Come on, live a little,’ she said.

  He spotted soft drinks in the fridge. ‘Just a Coke, thanks.’

  ‘Jeeze.’ She handed it to him and cracked open a bottle of Chenin blanc, poured herself a large glass. She held the glass out. ‘Cheers.’

  He clinked self-consciously and swigged from his can.

  She took a long gulp of wine. ‘Do you want the tour?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She led him round the house, mocking herself and her family as she went. But she didn’t really mean it. She was aware of how well-off they were, acted a little embarrassed about it. In the living room Tyler noticed Bluetooth speakers and a large, chunky set of audio equipment, Cambridge Audio. A small selection of CDs, old indie like Radiohead and Blur, other stuff he hadn’t heard of. A sleek coffee table with hi-fi magazines on it, a small wooden sculpture of Buddha. The kind of stuff you saw in show homes on television. There was no sense of people living here, ordinary people with their ordinary shit.

  There were a couple more family pictures in small frames on a bookshelf. Flick skipped across and blocked his view, turning them facedown before he could see.

  ‘What does your dad do exactly?’ Tyler said.

  ‘Orders people about in the desert.’

  ‘He actually fights?’

  ‘He has done. So he says.’

  ‘I didn’t think we were still at war over there.’

  ‘Logistics,’ Flick said, moving on. ‘Support. I don’t really know. Mum Skypes every now and then but
she never says anything. It’s like they don’t care about me at all.’

  ‘I’m sure they do.’

  Flick led him round a dining room with an oak table and chairs, flowery wallpaper, then an office with more dark wood, black leather chair, box files on shelves. Tyler wondered if there was anything worth stealing in the desk drawers, or hidden amongst the files.

  ‘What about your mum?’ Flick said, heading up the stairs. ‘You said she had problems.’

  She hesitated on the landing, took a drink of her wine. He watched her drink then followed. He stared at the landing window, noticed the reinforced locks that had been added to the original wooden frame. ‘She’s ill.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  There were four bedrooms but they only needed two, so one was a guest room and the other had been turned into a makeshift gym, free weights in one corner, a running machine in the other, bits of kit scattered around.

  ‘They’re both superfit,’ Flick said. ‘It’s tiresome. It’s just something to fill up the emptiness of their lives.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s lame.’ She took another drink. Her glass was almost empty.

  ‘And what are you filling up your emptiness with?’ Tyler said, glancing at her glass. He regretted it immediately.

  She registered surprise, then it was gone. She slid towards him and touched his cheek in a mock-sexy gesture. ‘You fill the emptiness in me, darling.’ Then she flounced out of the room. Everything with her was a performance, layered in irony, wrapped up in too much self-awareness. It was sweet but fucked up, tiring to go along with, like he was supposed to dig around for the real her.

  He tried to pick up the largest dumbbell but it didn’t budge from the floor. He tapped it with his toe, imagined hurling it out of the window, then left to find her.

  She was in her own bedroom, sitting on the double bed, her wine glass empty. She tossed the glass between her hands, daring it to drop and smash on the floor.

  ‘You think I’m an idiot,’ she said.

  ‘Not at all.’