by Alex Barclay
‘What are you going to do? Does Edie know?’
‘She does not,’ said Johnny. ‘Are you mad? She’d have a meltdown. So don’t say a word.’
‘Of course I won’t. Jesus.’
Johnny took another drag off his cigarette. ‘I wasn’t smoking, either.’
Laura took a packet of Silvermints out of her pocket, broke them in half, and handed them to him. He laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ said Laura.
‘Nothing. Just you.’ He put them in his pocket, put his arm around her, and gave her shoulder a squeeze. She patted his hand.
‘Where were you off to, anyway?’ said Laura. ‘You looked like you were on a mission.’
She looked up at him. They locked eyes. Laura’s flickered briefly wider.
‘Right,’ said Johnny. ‘You’ve got your drink, you’ve got your cigarettes – is there anything else?’
Laura opened her arms wide.
‘Aw,’ said Johnny. He smiled and gave her a brief hug. She watched him walk away, then flicked the end of her cigarette through the dark like a little red meteor.
Clare and Edie sat in the library – Edie on the sofa, Clare in the window seat.
‘You look very elegant,’ said Edie, getting up to grab a box of matches from a shelf by the fire. Clare turned back to the window and looked through her reflection into the black night.
Edie lit two red taper candles on the mantelpiece. ‘That’s better.’
‘It is,’ said Clare, without turning around.
‘Will you be all right here for a little while?’ said Edie, turning towards her. ‘I need to go down and behave like a hostess.’
‘You’re being the perfect hostess.’
‘Abandoning everyone.’
‘Stop,’ said Clare. ‘You were bringing one of your best friends to the beautiful suite you clearly spent a lot of time preparing especially. You’ve taken me to my favourite spot, and, don’t forget, everyone is dying to have a gawk about the place. And what’s the alternative? A group tour? I have no doubt we’ll all find our way back to the bar in no time.’
‘Do you want me to bring you up a drink?’ said Edie.
‘Stop!’ said Clare. ‘Stop worrying about us. Do what you have to do and I’ll be back down.’
‘OK,’ said Edie. ‘See you in a while.’
Clare stood up and walked over to the window that overlooked the rear garden. She leaned in, and tilted her head.
‘Bonjour, Clare!’ she said. She smiled, and it quickly faded.
21
PATRICK
The Sisters of Good Grace Convent
26 October 1988
Patrick was pushing the lawn mower across the grass at the front of the convent, his arms fully extended, his head half-bowed between them. It was the last cut of the year. It was a mild afternoon and his black-and-white football jersey and black tracksuit bottoms were stuck to him. As the severed blades of grass flew up around him, he was thinking about all the As in Maths he had got and how he would make millions that he would grow into hundreds of millions. He stopped for a moment, and glanced up at the convent. He could see a shadow in the window of the library and he knew it was Clare and for the first time, his heart skipped. She came every Wednesday afternoon and the nuns always let her because she was one of the smartest girls in school and she had run out of books to read. Patrick knew that half the time she was in the same corner, looking out the window. Always in the same place – sitting on top of the table, the book on her lap, her feet on a chair, looking up from it to look down over the garden. He didn’t think she was going to come today. He thought she might be too embarrassed. Last week, Sister Consolata had made a show of her in class. She had caught her in the middle of writing I HEART PATRICK in her homework journal and she’d picked it up and said to the whole class, ‘Oh. You love Patrick, do you, now?’ and Clare’s face had gone as red as he’d ever seen a face go, and he knew his had done the same from his corner of the classroom. And Sister Consolata had said to her, ‘Do you want to finish it, Clare? It must be far more important than anything I’ve got to say. You’ve only one letter to go. Go on – pick up your pen. What comes next? Pick up your pen! If it’s so important! Pick it up!’
Clare picked up her pen and her hand was shaking.
‘What’s next?’ said Consolata. ‘P-A-T-R-I-C?’
Clare was just crying, staring down at the page.
‘What comes next?’ Sister Consolata was saying to her.
And Clare said. ‘K, Sister,’ and everyone was trying not to laugh and Patrick’s face was hot but at the same time, he wanted to take his hands from on top of the desk and slide them under it.
He was surprised that Clare had come back to the convent today. Her love of books must have been greater than her embarrassment or greater than her shame or greater than her hatred for Sister Consolata. Or maybe it wasn’t her love of books, it was her love of him. He looked up at the window again, and she was still there. He waved up at her, but the sun was so bright, he didn’t think she could see him. Then he remembered she was getting French grinds from Mademoiselle Autin, the visiting French teacher and everyone loved Mademoiselle Autin because she looked like a movie star. It didn’t make a whole pile of sense to him when Clare was already top of the class at French.
He bowed his head and kept mowing. He thought about the future, where he had his own home, a mansion, and he would stand at the window, and wave down at a student like him, then come down, and give him a bottle of Coke in the heat, and a one-hundred-pound tip, and explain to him how he could turn that into a fortune, so he could become a millionaire too. He would tell the boy he could use the pool if he wanted to, and he could bring his friends if he wanted to. Then he would head back into the house where he would stand at the bay windows at the back, and watch his beautiful wife – looking like Wonder Woman and Jessie Crossan – walk towards him in a bikini that was still wet. Then he thought of Clare with her even bigger breasts. Then he thought of her short frizzy hair and the darkness of the hair all over her – on her arms and above her lips and by her ears and he thought of how she was shorter and fatter. Then he thought of how she was closer.
Shafts of bright sunlight slanted through the gaps in the blinds of the library windows. He was hidden behind one of the tall bookshelves, his crooked left arm above him, his forehead resting against it. In front of him, just below his eyeline, spread open on a gap he made on one of the shelves was a brochure for Playtex bras.
In his other hand, he was holding his dick as he stared down at a pretty brunette in a white bra that was more modern than the ones he brought in off the washing line for his mother. His breathing was fast and shallow, and his hand was working harder and harder, and he could feel the tightness of the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms, pushed down at the back, and the breeze from the window drifting across his skin and he closed his eyes at the feeling, and breathed the air deep. His forehead shone with grease, and sweat. He smelled of cut grass and petrol. His legs shook. He lifted his eyes from the page, and pictures of Jessie flashed into his mind until he went back to the model, whom he didn’t know, and who didn’t bring him any guilt, and then he fought again for Jessie to get out of his head, because she did something to his heart too, and she had been hurt, and he was as bad as any man who would do a thing like that, and he groaned, and he clenched his teeth, and his eyes were back on the model, on her breasts this time, and no face was in his head. His eyes went lower but the photo ended at the model’s waist and he found himself thinking about Clare and all the hair she might have and how he would cup his hand tight around it and search with his fingers for where it was wet and he could push a finger inside her.
He gripped himself tighter, lost in how that dark hot hole would suck his finger deep and how his finger would suck back and how he would have to push harder to go further and how that hole wouldn’t want to let his finger go until it knew that he was putting something longer and harder in there and he
looked down and it was so much longer and harder than any finger and his breath quickened and deepened and there was a rushing sound in his ears that happened when his body was reduced to one body part, and breath, and nothing could break through.
She was standing beside him. To his right. A chill shot up his spine like a yanked piano wire. He stopped breathing, then turned his head. It was Clare. His breathing started up again at the relief it wasn’t Sister Consolata. Clare’s mouth was open, her eyes wide, widening again when they moved down his body to where his dick was still hard, still in his hand. She looked up and their eyes met. Patrick looked down and back up at her. ‘Do you want to …’
Clare’s eyes were like dolls’ eyes broken, open, but she was frowning too and Patrick felt like his heart had leapt to the base of his throat, and it was lodged there and that it was wrong, but, still, that it needed to be there, like the pin in a grenade.
‘Sorry,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘Sorry … I thought …’ He was pulling up his tracksuit bottoms when the elastic snapped back against him and he came and there was so much of it and it shot past and some of it landed on the edge of the shelf. They both gasped.
‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘Sorry … I thought you … I thought you … liked me.’
Clare’s eyes fluttered with rapid blinks. She took two steps backwards.
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ said Patrick. He was about to reach out for her with his sticky hand and they both froze. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Please. Don’t. I’ll be dead.’
Clare shook her head, firmly, quickly. ‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
‘Thanks,’ he said.
Clare turned her head sharply and walked towards the door with such calm purpose that he thought he had dreamt the whole thing.
22
Murph left the bar and walked down the hall to Reception. Johnny was walking towards him.
‘What the hell’s going on with the lights?’ said Murph, gesturing around. ‘I mean, obviously it suits me, but …’
‘He’s some useless piece of shit, Terry,’ said Johnny.
‘Well, we know that,’ said Murph. ‘But is he making any progress?’
‘I’d need to find him first.’
‘You literally couldn’t have got a worse guy—’
‘Would you shut up about it?’ said Johnny. ‘I fucking know.’
‘Look,’ said Murph. ‘I’m just a forty-six-year-old man standing in front of a way-older, less-attractive man, asking him why the fuck he hired a particular tradesman.’
Johnny looked confused.
‘Wasted on you,’ said Murph. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Quick one,’ said Johnny. ‘Have you talked to Patrick much?’
Murph nodded. ‘I was chatting to him there – he was having a look at your plans for the spa – said he needed to talk to you about it.’
‘What?’ said Johnny. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Murph. ‘I hate all that shite.’
‘And it’s definitely hedge funds he’s in,’ said Johnny.
‘Yeah – what’s that got to do with anything?’ said Murph.
‘Not vulture funds.’
Murph laughed. ‘You know they only buy places that are fucked, right?’
Johnny laughed.
‘In fairness, though – he did view it when it was up for sale.’
‘What?’
‘Your face – would you relax? Viewed it. Didn’t put in an offer. Nothing weird is going on. Patrick is not here to run off with your inn.’
‘It’s not that,’ said Johnny. ‘It’s …’ He shrugged.
Murph let out a dramatic gasp. He leaned into Johnny, eyes wide. ‘Maybe he’s back for vengeance! Against the boarding school prick who bullied him!’ Murph did a voiceover voice: ‘Inn Escapable: the story of Patrick – the boy who waited thirty years to grow muscles, so he could finally face down the rugby hero he hadn’t realized had let himself go.’
Johnny laughed. ‘You prick.’
‘Right,’ said Murph. ‘Are you OK now?’
Johnny nodded. ‘Where are you off to?’
Murph turned around and started walking away backwards. ‘None of your business.’ He shrugged and held his hands out. ‘You’ve lost control of the crowd, Johnny. And you know what happens then?’ He shook his fists in the air. ‘The crowd goes wiiild.’
Helen looked around her suite – elegant, understated, and now award-winning.
Edie had included every item on the wish list she asked her to write – all the things that would make a wheelchair-user’s stay the most comfortable possible: a door to the en suite wide enough for the wheelchair to get through but not too heavy that she couldn’t open it herself, mirrors – mounted at the right height – in the bedroom and the bathroom, room for the wheelchair at both sides of the bed, room to open the wardrobe door and be in front of it, clothes rails at the right height, grab rails by the sink, grab rails by the toilet, shower with a drop-down seat, emergency pull cords in convenient places.
She started to cry.
Edie walked down the hallway and slipped in the door to the Billiard Room.
‘Oh … my God! Murph!’ she said, startled. ‘What are you doing in here?’
Murph was sitting alone in the dark, staring out the window, holding an empty glass on the arm of the chair. He glanced briefly at her but turned back to the window.
‘Are you all on your ownsome?’ said Edie.
Murph nodded, but didn’t look at her. Edie walked to the window and looked out. ‘The silence.’ Some of the force had gone from the wind and the rain had stopped. ‘I’d say it’s only a lull, though.’
Murph didn’t reply. She turned around to him. He looked up at her, his eyes damp.
‘Sorry,’ he said. I’m a bit worse for wear.’ He pressed his thumbs into the corners of his eyes.
‘Oh, no,’ said Edie. ‘What is it?’
Murph showed her the photo he was holding in his left hand.
‘Aw – you and Rosco,’ said Edie. ‘What is it? Talk to me.’
Murph let out a long breath. ‘I suppose … I’m listening to you in there and all Helen’s done for everyone … and …’ He shrugged. ‘What have I done, except—’
‘Make everyone laugh?’ said Edie. She touched his shoulder. ‘Move.’ He did, and she sat down on the arm of the chair.
‘Thanks, but …’ He let out another breath. ‘Who have I saved?’
‘Saved?’ said Edie. ‘Gosh, who have I saved? What do you mean?’
‘Do you know when the weirdest thing hits you?’ He held up the photo again. ‘I couldn’t even save Rosco. A dog.’
‘Because he’s a dog and he ran away, didn’t he?’ said Edie. ‘And it’s sad but that’s what dogs do.’
‘He was last seen headed for here, as a matter of fact.’
‘What?’ said Edie.
‘Rosco used to come here with dad when he was working. Until Consolata fired him.’
‘Why?’ said Edie.
‘I don’t know,’ said Murph, ‘but one night – he was in a bad way with the drink – and he was saying something about her blackening his name with her lies. He was in an awful state.’
‘When was that?’
‘It wasn’t long before Mam died. It was right before first year. The same year poor Jessie …’
‘Imagine firing a man whose wife was dying of cancer,’ said Edie.
‘Yup,’ said Murph. ‘Maybe Rosco was coming up to eat the face off her.’
‘I know you loved him,’ said Edie, ‘but—’
‘It’s not that,’ said Murph. ‘It’s … Mam … Dad … Rosco. And then Jessie.’
‘Ah,’ said Edie.
Murph shook his head. ‘I killed Jessie and that’s that. I know no one wants to say it out loud, but it’s a fact. I could have killed you all. My pals. Because I wanted to make you laugh. I mean, I wanted to scare the shite out of you – that was the main thing …�
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Tears welled in Edie’s eyes. ‘Oh, Murph.’ She patted his shoulder.
He looked up at her and gave her a sad smile. She blinked back tears. Then she reached out, took his hand, brought it to her lap and squeezed it tight. ‘You didn’t kill Jessie. And you couldn’t have saved her. Neither could I and neither could Patrick.’
‘You must have had therapy.’
‘It’s not that,’ said Edie. She squeezed his hand again. ‘She didn’t want to be saved.’
‘What?’
‘Patrick and I were there. At the end. We saw what happened.’
‘What do you mean “saw what happened”?’
‘She wanted to go,’ said Edie. ‘She wanted to go.’
Murph looked up at her, wide-eyed.
‘She was so damaged,’ said Edie. ‘So, so damaged.’
‘But why didn’t you say anything?’ said Murph.
‘It would have been too much for her parents to bear,’ said Edie. ‘It was horrifying. That’s all I’m going to say. I can still see it. And I thought … I don’t know. I thought that it was one thing for everyone to think “she was drunk, it might have slowed her down, she wouldn’t have felt a thing” but quite another for them to imagine what we saw, to know it was a choice she made.’
‘Are you sure, though?’ said Murph. ‘It must have been so hard to see.’
‘Sadly, we could. We talked about it. Once. A few months later. And we both saw the same thing.’
Murph shook his head. ‘That’s shocking.’
‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t say anything – it was too much.’
‘I’m sorry for the pair of you having to see that,’ said Murph, ‘but it’s all the same to me – it’s still all my fault.’
‘It isn’t,’ said Edie. ‘I hate to think you think that.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Murph. ‘It is what it is.’
Edie stood up. ‘Can I get you anything before I go?’
‘No, no – I’m fine out,’ said Murph. He sat up. ‘Do you know where Laura is? She was only supposed to be going to the ladies.’
‘God knows,’ said Edie. ‘Will you be all right here?’