Something to Live For

by Richard Roper

  “Are your lot still going to be up when you get in?” Peggy said.

  Andrew winced. Not this. Not now.

  “Diane, maybe,” he said. “The kids should be asleep by now.”

  They were approaching the station Andrew guessed Peggy was getting her train from.

  “Is it bad,” he said, fighting the voice in his head warning him that this wasn’t a good idea, “that sometimes I just sort of wish I could escape from it all?”

  “From what?” Peggy said.

  “You know, the family . . . and everything.”

  Peggy laughed and Andrew immediately backtracked. “God, sorry, that’s ridiculous, I didn’t mean to—”

  “No, are you kidding?” Peggy said. “I dream of that on a regular basis. The bliss of it all. The time you could actually spend doing things you wanted to do. I think you’d be mad not to fantasize about that. I spend half my life daydreaming about what I’d be doing with myself if I wasn’t stuck where I was . . . and then that’s usually when one of the kids ruins it by drawing something beautiful for me or being inquisitive or loyal or kind, and I feel like my heart’s going to explode with how much I love them, and then it’s all over. Nightmare, eh?”

  “Nightmare,” Andrew said.

  They hugged good-bye outside the station. Andrew stayed for a while after Peggy had gone, watching people coming through the ticket barriers, blank face after blank face. He thought of the property inspection that morning and Terry Hill with his knife, fork, plate and water glass. And that’s when the thought hit him so hard it practically winded him: living this lie would be the death of him.

  He thought about how he’d felt in the brief moment Peggy had hugged him. This wasn’t physical contact through formality—an introductory handshake. Nor was it the unavoidable touch of the barber or dentist, or a stranger on a packed train. It had been a genuine gesture of warmth, and for that second and a half he was reminded about how it felt to let someone in. He had resigned himself to the fate of Terry Hill and all those others, but maybe, just maybe, there was another way.

  — CHAPTER 12 —

  When it came to model trains, one of the most satisfyingly simple things Andrew had learned was that the more you ran a locomotive, the better it performed. With repeated use, an engine starts to glide around the track, seeming to grow in efficiency with every circuit. When it came to making connections with people, however, he was less of a smoothly running locomotive and more a rail replacement bus rusting in a rest stop.

  After he’d left Peggy at the station he’d practically floated home, suddenly buoyed by possibility. He’d half considered turning on his heel and running after her to improvise some sort of grand gesture—perhaps spelling out “I am terrified of dying alone and I think it’s probably weird when adults make friends this late in life but shall we do it anyway?” in discarded Coke cans at the side of the tracks. In the end he managed to contain himself and jogged halfway home, buying four cans of lukewarm Polish lager from the corner shop, drinking them in quick succession and waking up hungover and afraid. He forced himself out of bed and fried some bacon while listening to “The Nearness of You”—Ella and Louis Armstrong from 1956—five times in a row. Each time the vocals kicked in he could feel the sensation of Peggy’s arm interlinked with his again. If he closed his eyes tightly enough he could see the smile she’d given him as they parted from their hug. He looked at his watch and decided he had just enough time for one more spin of the record, but as he went to move the needle back, the miserable sound of “Blue Moon” suddenly came into his head, as clear as if it were coming through the record player. No no no. Not now. Stay in the moment for once. He scrabbled to put “The Nearness of You” on again and bent down by the speaker, his ear so close that it hurt, his eyes screwed shut. After a moment there was a piercing shriek and he opened his eyes to see the room was hazy with smoke, the alarm triggered by the now-cremated bacon.

  * * *

  —

  It was still too early to go to work, so he sat at his computer with two cups of tea in an attempt to alleviate his hangover—taking sips from alternate mugs—and pondered on how he might go about cementing a proper friendship with Peggy, something that elevated things above simply spending time together at work. Just the idea of suggesting they go for coffee, or to the cinema or whatever, left him firmly out of his comfort zone, and god how he loved that zone. It was a world where Pickled Onion Monster Munch was seen as the height of culinary experimentation, where ice-breaker games were punishable by death.

  He thought about what he and Peggy had bonded over so far. Well, there were the chats about the meaning of life and loss, and the idea of “the club.” But it wasn’t as if he could go steaming in there and suggest they get matching litter picker tattoos via a quick trip to the aquarium, was it? At the heart of that conversation, though, had been the fact that Peggy had been trying to comfort him. She’d used the Apocalypse Game as a fun distraction—that had been a gesture of real kindness. And now it was Peggy who was clearly in a bad way because of Steve. If he was able to comfort her as she had him, then that would surely be the basis of a real connection. So what could he do to try to cheer her up?

  What he really needed was advice, and there was only one place he could go to for that. A few clicks of the mouse and he was on the forum. The only issue was that he felt too embarrassed to just come straight out with it and ask for help. He’d have to improvise, see where that got him first. Morning, chaps, he wrote. I’m after some advice. I happened to meet someone recently who’s having a bad time with a seller. They’d been promised a China Clay 5 Plank Wagon Triple Pack but the seller lied and ended up going with another bidder at the last minute. They’re very upset, so any help on how to cheer them up would be greatly appreciated!

  TinkerAl replied within seconds: Hmmm. Well it’s the Beckenham & West Wickham Vintage Toy Train Show next weekend. Could take them to that?

  BamBam67: Why would they POSSIBLY have wanted a China Clay 5 Plank Wagon Triple Pack when for the same money they could probably have got a Dapol B304 Westminster?

  Hmmm. Andrew drummed his fingers on his knees. If he was actually going to get any useful advice he’d have to take the plunge properly. He wrote and rewrote a message several times, eventually hitting “post”:

  Okay, truth be told, the person I was talking about is having a bad time of it at the moment, but she’s not actually into trains (for her sins!). I’m just a bit rusty when it comes to this sort of thing. Any advice on fun activities and the like would be really helpful.

  BroadGaugeJim: Aha! I’d been curious about whether there was a Mrs. Tracker on the scene!

  Tracker: No, no, it’s nothing like that.

  TinkerAl: Ah. Sounds like Tracker isn’t that keen to expand on the specifics, Jim. But we’re here for you, mate, if you do want to!

  Andrew felt a pang of something between embarrassment and affection.

  Thanks, TA. In all honesty, part of my being so rubbish at all this, hence why I’m asking for advice, is because I’m not exactly a people person. But it just feels a bit different with her. In a good way. It’s been a very long time since I had someone in my life like this, and it’s been really nice. But there’s still a nagging doubt that I should just leave things as they are.

  BamBam67: I can understand that.

  TinkerAl: Yeah, me too.

  BroadGaugeJim: Ditto. I’m not the biggest people person myself. Sometimes it’s just easier to go it alone in life. No dramas that way.

  Andrew went to the kitchen and put the kettle on (just a single tea, this time), thinking about what BroadGauge had said. He knew that he was comforted by how much control he had with this simple little life of his. It was consistent and unspectacular and he had absolutely no desire to jeopardize that. But there were moments—when he saw groups of friends sitting in neat, symmetrical rows on pub benches, or couples hol
ding hands in the street, and he felt a wave of embarrassment that he, a forty-two-year-old man, hadn’t exchanged so much as a cup of tea with an acquaintance or a flirtatious smile with someone on a train in years—that he scared himself with how intense the feeling of longing was. Because maybe, actually, he did want to find people to be close to, to make friends and perhaps even find someone to spend the rest of his life with. He’d gotten adept at sweeping that feeling away as quickly as he could, telling himself that it would only lead to unhappiness. But what if he let it grow—nourished it, in fact? Maybe that was the only way forward. The past was the past and maybe this time, once and for all, he could stop it from dictating his life.

  He sipped his tea and replied to BroadGauge.

  I don’t know, BG, I thought maybe I was too stuck in my ways, but maybe not! Anyway, perhaps we should get back to train chat, eh? I appreciate the help, though. Opening up like this isn’t really my forte. Feels a bit unnatural, like going for a poo with your coat on. (He decided on balance to delete this last line before posting.)

  TinkerAl: Well, let us know how you get on, mate!

  BroadGaugeJim: Absolutely!

  BamBam67: Indeed!

  * * *

  —

  Despite his newfound determination to get out of his comfort zone, to be part of Peggy’s world and vice versa, Andrew was all too aware that honesty was something of a given when it came to friendship, and as far as Peggy knew he was a happily married father of two, living in relative luxury. He briefly considered the idea of Diane running away to Australia with a surfing instructor, taking the kids with her. But even then, say he managed to convince Peggy it was all just too painful ever to talk about; ten years down the line he still wouldn’t be able to show her a picture of the kids, let alone explain why he hadn’t been out to visit them. His only option was to hope they could get to a point where he could tell her the truth and pray that, somehow, against all odds, she’d accept it.

  But his attempts to try to properly cement their friendship got off to a tricky start. Andrew had spent a frustrating Tuesday afternoon working his way through the contacts on an old Nokia phone he’d recovered from a property search, none of his calls being answered. As he plucked up the courage to call a contact saved as “Big Bazza,” he decided to craft what he hoped was a funny e-mail to Peggy. He crowbarred in some in-jokes and generally tried to come across as charming and irreverent, signing off by suggesting they should run away to the pub “right bloody now!!”

  Andrew had never before experienced regret quite as potent as he did immediately after hitting “send.” He was wondering whether he had time to locate a hammer and smash up the building’s power supply, or his own face, when Peggy’s response arrived.

  “Ha, yeah.”

  Oh.

  A second message arrived. Here it was—the moment where she saw quite how brilliant and hilarious he was.

  “By the way, I finally tracked down the will executor of that bloke who died on Fenham Road. Do you think ‘I want nothing to do with that bastard’ counts as a ‘formal revocation of duty’?”

  This was going to be harder than he thought. He knew he was being impatient, but what if Peggy decided she’d suddenly had enough for some reason and quit the job and moved away? What made things worse was that as each day passed he was increasingly aware of how much she was starting to mean to him, and the more he realized this the more ridiculous his behavior became. How the hell was he supposed to seem like someone Peggy wanted to spend time with when he sat there worrying himself into a state of panic that he was looking at her left eye more than her right and, for reasons that were hopelessly unclear, talking to her for a very long time about soup?

  What he really should just do was casually inquire if Peggy wanted to meet outside of work. If she didn’t want to, then that was fine. He’d get the message that it was just a work friendship situation and that would be that. So the only thing for it was to be very calm and confident and ask her very directly if, perhaps, and fine if not, of course, she wanted to do something one evening, or at the weekend. On balance, he realized the Beckenham & West Wickham Vintage Toy Train Show was probably an ambitious opening gambit, but a drink, say, or dinner, that was what he should go for. And, just so there could be no backing out, he decided to set himself a deadline—Thursday that week seemed as good as any—where he had to ask her by the time they left work. He just hoped she could deal with him being weird until he’d worked up the courage.

  There was, he admitted, a very, very slight chance that he was overthinking things.

  * * *

  —

  Inevitably, by the time Thursday afternoon arrived he still hadn’t asked her. In retrospect he might have decided that delaying things by a day or so was preferable to making his move as they sorted through rubbish in a dead man’s home, but at the time it really felt like it was now or never.

  Derek Albrighton had lived to the age of eighty-four before his heart stopped beating. His flat was right on the borough’s boundary edge—one street across and he would’ve been dealt with by another team. The coroner had sounded unusually grumpy when she’d called Andrew and asked him to investigate.

  “No obvious next of kin. Neighbors called the police after they’d not seen him for a couple of days. The attending officers were about as useful as a mudguard on a tortoise, as per. Would be great to get this one sorted as soon as poss, Andrew. I’m on holiday soon and I’ve got paperwork up to my ears.”

  Derek’s flat was one of those places you felt could never get warm no matter how much you heated it. It was tidy, on the whole, apart from the dull white powder that was spread out on the kitchen linoleum, with footprints in it, as if it were pavement covered in a thin layer of snow.

  “It’s flour,” Peggy said. “Either that or rat poison. Did I mention I’m a crap cook? Ah, but what have we here?” She reached for a large biscuit tin that was sitting on top of the microwave. She cooed as she removed the lid, beckoning Andrew over to show him the still-pristine Victoria sponge that was inside.

  “Shame he didn’t get to eat it after all the effort he clearly went to,” Andrew said.

  “A tragedy,” Peggy said, reverently replacing the lid, as if it were a time capsule they were about to bury. Andrew decided to try out a lean against the kitchen counter, one leg crossed behind the other, an eyebrow raised in what he hoped suggested an irreverent take on early-years Roger Moore Bond.

  “So, you a big fan of . . . cake, then?” he said. Unfortunately, or, perhaps not, Peggy was busying herself with some paperwork she’d found and was only half paying attention.

  “Yeah, course, who isn’t?” she said. “I wouldn’t trust anyone who says they aren’t a fan of cake, to be honest. It’s like those people who say they don’t like Christmas. Get over yourself, of course you do. What else don’t you like? Wine and sex and bloody . . . ten-pin bowling.”

  Andrew winced. This wasn’t going well. For one thing, he hated ten-pin bowling.

  “Nothing here, no phonebook or anything either,” Peggy said, shuffling the bits of paper newsreader-style. “Bedroom?”

  “Bedroom. Sure thing . . . you,” Andrew said. He tapped out a little rhythm on the countertop to show how devil-may-care he was—how music ran through his soul—pausing only very briefly to deal with the massive coughing fit he was suffering as a result of his jaunty drumming’s disturbing yet more flour. Peggy was looking at him with a mixture of suspicion and confusion, like a cat that’s seen itself in the mirror.

  The bedroom was dominated by a surprisingly plush double bed, with purple satin sheets and brass headboard—incongruous next to the tattered blinds, worn carpet and cheap chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. On top sat an ancient-looking TV and VHS machine. Andrew and Peggy knelt at either side of the bed and began checking under the mattress.

  “I was thinking,” Andrew said, emboldened s
lightly by the fact Peggy couldn’t see him, “you know that pub we went to after your first property inspection?”

  “Uh-huh,” Peggy said.

  “That was nice, wasn’t it?”

  “Not sure I’d say nice, but there was beer there and that always feels like a plus in a pub.”

  “Ha . . . yeahhh.”

  Not there then.

  “I didn’t see what the food was like,” he said. “Do you . . . have a favorite sort of cuisine, for, you know, when you’re out?”

  Cuisine?

  “Hang on,” Peggy said. “I’ve got something.”

  Andrew edged around to the foot of the bed.

  “Oh,” Peggy said. “It’s just a receipt. For some socks.”

  Andrew was starting to feel desperate. He was really going to have to say something now before he bottled it. “So I was just, you know . . . wondering-if-you-fancied-going-for-dinner-or-something-after-work-sometime-soon.” As he went for another casual lean his elbow pushed a button on the television, which began to turn itself on with a series of clunks and whines, sounds that seemed to entirely encapsulate the 1980s. Moments later, the room was filled with the unmistakable sounds of sex. Andrew spun around to see a middle-aged woman on the screen in nothing but a pair of high heels being taken from behind by a man naked apart from a white baseball cap.

  “Oh my god,” Peggy said.

  “Oh my god,” the man in the baseball cap answered.

  “You like that, don’t ya, ya dirty sod?” the woman grunted, rhetorically, it would seem. As Andrew backed away to fully take in the horror, he trod on something. It was a video case—the cover of which featured a shot of the couple on-screen in midflow. Red block capitals announced the film’s title: IT’S QUIM UP NORTH!

  Andrew slowly rotated the case so that Peggy could see. She had already been crying silently with laughter, but this, apparently, was the final straw, and she let out a loud, gleeful cackle. After a moment Andrew began edging toward the TV as if he were going back to a lit firework, weight on his back foot, one hand covering his face, jabbing randomly at the buttons until he hit “pause” and a grotesque tableau shuddered on the screen.