The Fathers, the Sons and the Anxious Ghost

by Jamie Adams

  “My mum died nearly ten years ago, give or take,” she said, in a curious whisper. “She died because of someone else. It wasn’t as straight forward as everyone thinks. She had been suffering for a long time, and now I am going to get retribution for her.”

  “But where did this idea come from? You have never spoken about her like this. What brought that on?” I asked as I worried about her state of mind.

  “If you aren’t going to listen and take this seriously, then you’re not the man I thought you were,” she growled, snapping her iPad cover down and turning to look me in the eye.

  “Mum was being bullied. I know that for sure. I just am not a 100% certain why. But I do think I know who.”

  I took a big gulp of milkshake and contemplated calling for back-up, as I was starting to realise that she really was in a weird state.

  Where did she get all of this from? Why did she suddenly have these feelings?

  I pressed her further on it. Tess was typing away the whole time that I spent discussing it with her. She didn’t seem to want to give me any details or even any clues as to why she was so intent on exposing whatever this turned out to be.

  “You must have seen or heard something that made you think this,” I said. “You didn’t always reckon it was anyone’s fault. The police were alarmed by the scene and checked it over; didn’t they? They ruled out everything that night, and the coroner said it was definitely suicide.”

  She looked up from her writing and scowled at me.

  “I don’t like talking about it as suicide. Mum wasn’t that selfish. She was upset. She was harassed. She was at the end of her tether, and she could see no other way out,” she replied, angrily.

  I was offended that she felt I was being disrespectful, wondering how we could ever discuss this issue properly if every word spoken had to be on her terms. I decided to go for the safest option and just listen to whatever Tess wanted to say. She sipped her drink and leaned forward.

  “I haven’t told Dad or Alfie about any of this, but Alfie nearly discovered my secret box the other day.”

  I was obviously puzzled, but she soon cleared this up a bit.

  “Mum had left me a box around my neighbour’s house. She had instructed Margaret to give it to me when I turned 16. Well…dumbo…I just turned 16, and she handed it over to me. She told me that Mum had given it to her about a week before she passed away. When I asked Margaret why she never mentioned this, she told me she had been sworn to secrecy; and she had no idea of my mum’s intentions, so she decided to honour it. I knew she hadn’t looked inside as the Sellotape was still tightly wrapping the red little box.”

  “Wow!” I gasped, drinking my milkshake right up. “I can’t believe she did that.”

  “Well, it makes sense to me. Margaret was a brilliant friend to both of us, and she is a very loyal lady. I don’t have any bad feelings at all. But it has opened my eyes,” she went on.

  Her phone screen flashed, and she urgently packed up her things and started off before telling me that she was late to her piano lesson. I waved and smiled warmly, but she didn’t stop long enough to make an expression before she ran out of the door.

  All of these revelations didn’t sit well with me. I was not sure now what to do, but I hoped that she might trust me enough to show me some of the contents of this mysterious gift. Perhaps I could get Alfie to have a sneaky hunt for it, and we could examine it ourselves. I thought better of it and decided the best person to speak to about all of this was Max, as he had his head screwed on and usually knew the best way to deal with these things. After a chat on messenger, he vowed to help me sort this out.

  Chapter 19 (Max)

  It was our first read through together, and the air outside was warm and wet. Lisa was so excitable, as she had not thought she would get any role at all; but she successfully got the female lead, and I got a major role too, it turned out. Sadly, I wasn’t her love interest, but I did have lots of lines to learn; and my character was meant to hang around the stage for eight scenes, which meant I had to find a way to handle those lifelong, crippling nerves of mine. One thing was certain; having Lisa there was going to make it much more bearable.

  Today we all sat around a table, going through every line and discussing possible staging. The director, Mr Simmons, was very helpful and guided us kindly through each scene, suggesting ways we could alter our tone and bring out the characters appropriately. He was a legend in school, and we all took what he said very seriously, often taking time to note down his suggestions. My scripts ended up covered in copious notes, which I would probably have to type up later in order to make sense of them. The reviews for last year’s play were outstanding, and none of us wanted to let the others down. We all badly wanted to pull off a masterpiece, and the concentration on our faces must have looked intense.

  My phone vibrated, and I caught it in time to send it to voicemail, but everyone seemed to glare at me as I tried to play it down. Dad then texted me, and I could see that it flashed up with the words ‘pizza later?’ This brought out a smile, which distracted me from what I was about to say.

  “Keep up, Max,” Mr Simmons nudged, supportively.

  Lisa repeated her cue to me, and I managed to get through a few sentences correctly, even pausing for effect whilst showing a concerned expression on my face. A small clap came about as I completed the monologue, and a few more people read their lines before we were stopped and told to get a drink or use the washrooms.

  Taking the opportunity to message Dad back, I agreed a time, and he said he would pick me up. It was great because I hadn’t seen him for over a week now. I wondered if he had been around Sam’s house, but he hadn’t mentioned it, and I hadn’t bothered to ask. With Sam and me, the less said about our two dads at the moment, the better. Since we both discovered them together, we had been a bit emotionally scarred. I mean, I love gay people. I love my dad. I always thought Sam’s dad was great. But putting all of those elements together at the same time freaked me out. It would just take some getting used to I supposed, and the last thing I wanted was for it to drive a wedge between Dad and me. It was partly my fault though that Mum found out; as in my distress, I had messaged Chloe for support, and she had told her nan, who just happened to be my neighbour, old Ruby. So taken aback, Ruby had gone straight around to tell my very surprised mum, who immediately flipped out, threw a toaster across the room, nearly hitting me and chucked everything that Dad possessed into bin bags, dumping them in the driveway.

  Anyway, that was over with; the dust was settling, and it was important that Dad and I got to spend some quality time together. When he came to pick me up after rehearsals, he nodded at me to get in the car and drove off quickly, hardly speaking all the way there. When we sat down in Pizza Bob’s, I made the first move and asked him what he had been up to. He was friendly and relieved that I was still speaking to him. I was, of course, likewise pleased that he was not holding a grudge. We managed to make some small talk, and he mentioned how bad the football game had been the previous night, and how our favourite team’s manager was appalling and should have been sacked. We definitely agreed on that. It made him laugh when I did an impression of the ignorant goalie who was basically not even paying attention when the striker came by and scored from up close. Dad seemed at ease with me, so I considered bringing up Josh, my old teacher.

  “Where are you living, Dad?” I asked.

  “Just with my cousin, Nicole. Thought you knew,” he replied, calmly.

  “I don’t have much to do with her because I don’t have her number. So I just assumed you had your own place or were living with Josh,” I said, awkwardly.

  He shook his head and tutted. I could tell that he did not know what to say.

  “Look mate, I never wanted it to be this way. I tried so hard with your mum for so long, but she just blocked me out every time. She never gave me the time of day. I don’t want to sound mean, but she was always preoccupied and never showed any interest in my life.”
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  I couldn’t handle this, even though I was sure that he was correct. Many times I had seen her blank him or just shrug him off. She basically treated him like shit, but I turned a blind eye every time, assuming that was normal for two parents. After all, they loved each other. That was what I had thought, but now everything seemed based on lies. Thinking about bringing up the obvious, my mind was changed by an interruption that I could not have foreseen.

  Alex came through the door to the restaurant and paced over to the counter, looking as if he were expecting to pick up a take away. He clocked us straight away and nodded to Dad, with a smile. Dad got up and went over to him, and they chatted quietly for a while before they both came over and spoke to me.

  “Thanks for always looking out for Alfie,” said Alex as he patted my shoulder supportively. “You know you are welcome around ours any time.”

  “We all get on well. We just look out for each other,” I replied, quietly.

  “I worry that he smokes too much weed,” he went on.

  Dad looked at me with a grimace, indicating we might need to discuss this further afterwards.

  “He doesn’t do much, I promise. He is fairly chilled and looks after himself. I think he worries about Tess though.”

  This change of subject was my way of getting off that awkward topic. I knew that Alfie was smoking spliffs like it was going out of fashion and didn’t want Dad grilling me about it.

  “What makes you think that?”

  Alex was surprised that I had snuck that into the conversation randomly.

  “I dunno, guess he is just being an overprotective big brother,” I said, trying hard to dig my way out of another awkward topic.

  “Do you think he has a reason to worry about something?” pressed my dad, throwing his hat into the ring.

  My head was spinning. This really was not the direction I wanted to go in.

  “Whatever it is, I will get to the bottom of it, but both of you please just let us sort it. If you go prying, Tess will freak out.”

  Well and truly feeling told off, both men chuckled, and Alex was called over to pay for his pizzas. He waved as he left and nearly fell over as the door opened in his face. Relentless as the night was, coming into the place now was a rather drenched-looking Lisa.

  She was telling Alex to pull up his hood, when she too noticed us sat by the window.

  “Hey!” She yelled, still dripping like a wet sponge, with her hair glued to her forehead.

  Dad invited her to join us and looked impressed that a reasonably hot girl was interested in hanging out with me.

  “Are you taking out or do you want to join us?” he asked.

  Being polite she made her excuses, but I tried to reinforce the offer, as I could sense that she didn’t really fancy going back out into the rain.

  “Dude, you are gonna get soaked. Just stay here and dry off with us. We can discuss the play.”

  Quickly she agreed, and soon we were all happily talking about rehearsals. Dad was quizzing us on the process of learning our lines, and we were bitching about some of the other actors and their diva demands.

  “Jake said he couldn’t rehearse well without a constant supply of coconut juice, and Cara insisted that she stopped every half hour for a cup of green tea,” Lisa said, rolling her eyes disapprovingly.

  The pizza was colourful, with a healthy mix of vegetables and meat. We were all feeling stuffed by the time it came to pay the bill. Lisa insisted on paying, but Dad ignored her and forked out for the meal before offering her a lift home, which she rejected, as she had her bike parked nearby. All seemed good with the world, but I realised when I got home that Lisa being there had stopped me having a heart to heart with Dad about Josh and him. At the same time, me leaking the fact that Tess was having problems may have let the cat out of the bag and started a whole load of new issues. As I lay in bed, waiting to fall asleep, I thought about going to see Tess the next morning and getting to the bottom of everything before somebody else got in there first; that somebody being the last person in the world she wanted to know. Her dad.

  Failing to drift off to sleep, I ran my lines for the play through my head a few times and was oblivious for a while of the fact that a text message had landed on my iPad screen. It was from Lisa.

  “Had a great time tonight. Even if your dad is a bit mixed up right now, he is still brilliant! You’re so lucky to have him. Hope we hang out more. Lisa.”

  Blimey! I did not see that coming. It reminded me that her dad had run away many years ago with the woman that used to child-mind her when she was little. Thinking of how to respond, I was overwhelmed by a sense of achievement. Who’d have thought that a random pizza night with Dad would have led to Lisa showing some actual interest in me? I slept on that idea and hoped to dream about where that might lead to in future.

  Chapter 20 (Sam)

  It was freezing outside, but we were supposed to be playing football. The PE teacher was distracted somewhere, and the three of us just wanted to go in. Alfie was shivering because the wind was so icy cold. I was rubbing my hands together frantically, desperate to get through this as quickly as possible. Max, however, was too busy talking to notice the sub-zero temperatures forcing his hairs to stand on ends.

  “So I went around to see your sister this morning, but she had already gone. You must have been doing your paper round,” he said to Alfie.

  “Yes. She normally goes out early. You know what she is like. Always doing something. Usually something strange.”

  “It’s funny you say that,” I said, interrupting them. “Because I saw her walking out of your street at about 8:30, looking peed off.”

  “Isn’t that where her mate lives. You know…what’s her name? Sally?” he replied, pacing up and down, with his hair flapping madly.

  “No. She is at the other side of the village,” corrected Max, without hesitation.

  “That’s a bit weird then, mate,” said Alfie, looking perplexed. “You ask her about it, Sam.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.”

  The game continued when the coach returned, and later on we all went our separate ways. My first job was to catch Tess before she left school. I reckoned she would most likely be in the ICT suite as she liked to geek out at school, and apart from everything else, she was still the school’s blog editor. True enough, there she was, concentrating hard on a screen that was filled with text and pressing buttons repeatedly in a way that implied she was getting cross.

  “Hey, you. What’s new?” I joked as I swung past her and plonked myself on the chair next to the neighbouring computer.

  “Getting sick of predictive text,” she moaned, sulkily.

  “Let me cheer you up,” I said, revealing a snapchat picture on my phone which showed Andy from class ten being caught with his pants down, having had a wee in the bushes behind the bike sheds.

  “Maybe that should go in the blog,” she teased, snatching my phone from me. “Hasn’t he heard of toilets?”

  “To be fair, they are always out of action. This place is falling apart, and you know it,” I replied, obstinately.

  Having now got her attention, I asked her if she had got anywhere with her investigation. To my surprise, she came right out and told me where she had been for the past few mornings.

  “I have been spying on someone. A person that I think gave my mum a lot of grief. I want to know if this person is as bad as Mum made out.”

  My mind was so blown away by her openness that I just had no idea how to come back from this.

  “You have spied on someone? What the…?” It was my guarded response.

  “Yes. Mum was clear that this woman had given her grief for many years. She was bullied by her. So much so that it reduced my mother to a blithering wreck!”

  Her face screwed up with such disgust as she spoke about it. I wondered if she would tell me how she knew.

  “Who is this woman? How do you know about all this?”

  “My box of stuff. I told you. Mum
left a diary in there. It’s all in that book. Everything. It’s horrible to read,” she carried on, welling up and shaking a little.

  I threw an arm around her and rocked her a little.

  “What else was in the box?” I asked, patiently.

  “My nan’s engagement ring. She wanted me to have it, so she put it in there too,” she said, through sniffles and occasional gasps.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything then. Just listen,” she snapped.

  “Do you want to do this here?” I checked, sensitively.

  “Why not? Nobody is around. Here is as good as anywhere.”

  Tess went on to tell me how she had been finding it difficult to sleep at night ever since she found out. She believed whole-heartedly that this other woman had ruined her mum’s life and led to her death. Reminding me of the fact that she had slit her wrists in the bath, Tess spoke about how lifeless her mum had felt. She apparently described in her diary the constant bitchy comments and horrid behaviour towards her. This woman had gone out of her way to make her feel useless, worthless and not worthy of being a mum or of deserving a happy life. None of the details were explicit, but I was becoming certain that Tess had some good evidence for what she was saying. To make it even clearer, she produced a small jotting book from the depths of the school bag.

  “Here it is,” she said, passing me the book which had got yellow post-it notes attached to some of the pages.

  I looked at her with inquisitive eyes. Did she really want me to read it?

  “Have a look at where I put the first post-it,” she said, nudging me.

  Opening that page, I saw some hand written notes which were neat and tidy and used the most exquisite handwriting I had ever seen. I began to read:

  “Today was hell…again! She intercepted me while we were waiting for the kids. Standing behind me, she spoke quietly into my ear. She called me a ‘bitch’ and snarled that I should go away somewhere, run off and make a new life. She told me she would look after my family, and they wouldn’t miss me, as I was a piece of dirt that nobody wanted to know. Everyone would be better off without me.”