A light clicks on in Sarah’s house. Mikey’s bedroom.
A moment later the window opens, and out slinks Jake, hopping deftly down from the sill and onto the porch, from where he drops silently onto the pavement, pausing briefly to sniff the air before slinking into the night, away from the two cosy identities he has made for himself, that I know of, and off into the night. He doesn’t even give me a second glance.
I see some movement behind the nets in Mikey’s room, and the light goes off. And then I see her face for a moment, small and white at the window, and she sees me. I must look like the sort of weirdo who hangs around outside people’s houses, hoping to catch a glimpse. And perhaps that is what I am doing. Talking to Stella, that helped; she’s one of those people who I seem to understand right away, and who seem to get me. But I have never felt more like I need comfort for the longest time, and it strikes me that, in a life that’s been carefully constructed with acquaintances and colleagues only, there is no one I know who I can ask to give me a hug.
I am opening my gate a few seconds later when her front door opens and she appears in a white T-shirt, with bare legs, make-up free, and with her long black hair tumbling loose over her shoulders, and I am quite uncertain as to where I should direct my gaze.
‘You all right, Hugh?’ She says my name as if it is an unfamiliar, foreign word, but I love the sound of it on her lips.
‘Um … not really,’ I confess. ‘You know my mum, who I thought was dead? It seems rumours of her demise were greatly exaggerated.’
‘She’s not dead?’ Sarah takes one barefooted step out onto the cold damp path. ‘Are you sure?’ She thinks for a moment. ‘Is this you drunk?’
‘I am reasonably sure,’ I say. ‘And I am not drunk; though actually, now I think about it, I don’t know why not.’
‘Fuck.’ Sarah takes another couple of steps forward and peers at me. ‘Hugh, you’re crying.’
‘Am I?’ I let her take my hand – my numb fingers freezing against the warmth of her palm – and lead me inside her home.
‘Sit there.’ She points at her overstuffed sofa, and I oblige, shuddering as the warmth of the house works its way into my blood, feeling the cold in its aftermath, making my fingers itch. ‘I’ve got some rum, somewhere. My ex used to drink it all the time. I hate it, but you never know when you might need emergency booze.’
After a quick hunt in the kitchen, she returns and thrusts a mug full of dark, potent-smelling liquor into my hand and sits in the armchair opposite, pulling her T-shirt down over her knees and leaning forward, her fingers entwined in one another. Without make-up, she looks younger; her naked eyes are wide and beautiful.
‘You know what?’ I say, feeling suddenly as if I am intruding. ‘The last thing you need is me here, at this time of the night, or day, or whatever it is. You’ve got work, Mikey’s got school …’
‘It’s Sunday tomorrow, today, whatever.’ Her expression settles into one of concern. ‘And you look like you can use a mate. Go on, Hugh. Tell me about it.’
‘I told you that my mum died, and I thought that was true. For twenty-five years, I have believed that was true,’ I tell her. ‘I didn’t tell you that I thought she’d killed herself. But she hadn’t, you see; she didn’t go through with it. She just ran away. And now, well, a nurse at the local hospice where she is about to die at any minute came and delivered a letter in which she says, and I’m paraphrasing here, “I was a shit mother, so I thought I’d top myself, but then I didn’t. But I love you anyway, and it was all for the best. And, oh, by the way, I know it’s taken you most of your life to get over your abandonment issues, so I thought now would be the perfect time to fuck you up for another quarter of a century. Love, Mum.”’
Sarah doesn’t move; she only sits, chewing at the ball of her thumb.
‘That’s not really what it says, though, is it?’ She reaches out her hand, palm facing upwards, and after a moment I deliver the letter to her and watch as she reads it.
I watch her as she reads, the shadows at the base of her throat, her neat bare feet, turned towards each other as if in quiet conversation.
‘Brave woman,’ she says finally, handing it back to me. I do not take it.
‘Brave?’ I say. ‘Brave? The woman who ran away from everything until someone rescued her? Who had twenty-five years to come back and face up to what she did, but only decides to do that now, when she’s dying?’ I hear my voice rising, and I catch myself, covering my mouth. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. This gets to me, that’s all.’
‘Don’t be,’ Sarah says. She meets my eye and smiles gently. ‘You have got every right to be fuming, but that doesn’t take away the fact that this woman is brave.’
‘Brave?’ I ask her again.
‘She could have died, and you would never have known. But she wrote you this letter to give you the one gift she could as a mother. She gave you the truth, because she reckons that the truth can heal, even if knowing it hurts you first. The truth will heal you in the end, but a lie will always fester. I think that’s kind of brave.’
Closing my eyes, I feel the tears begin to flow then, free and easy, and I let myself go, let myself drown in them. I sense Sarah take the mug from my hands and replace it with her fingers. I bend my head and give in to the grief, like I never have. I let it tear at me, pull itself through me with every sob, and eventually I feel arms around my neck, her hair against my cheeks as I cry, and I cry and cry until there is nothing left in the small dark living room except silence and the ticking of a clock.
‘Oh, Christ.’ I pull away. ‘You must think you’ve moved next door to a … I don’t know. Nightmare.’
‘I don’t.’ She pulls herself up from kneeling to sit beside me and hands me the mug of booze again. This time I knock it back, feeling it blister down my throat and hit my empty stomach with a queasy lurch. ‘I’ve been through crap too, you know. I’ve cried my guts up, more than once. It’s not easy, being in this world. Picking yourself up, getting yourself together, time after time, only for some bastard to whack you back down. But what else can you do? Right? If you keep on getting up, sooner or later something or someone is going to show the reason why it’s worth keeping on trying. Sometimes they might be the last person in the world you’d think.’ Her expression is perplexed as she looks at me, as if I puzzle her.
‘Look, Hugh, your mum isn’t dead. She’s going to be dead really soon, though. Do you really think you want to live the next forty or fifty years knowing that you were too scared or pissed off to go and look her in the eye?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I don’t want live like that. I don’t plan to. Fight to the end, that’s my motto. I just made it up tonight.’
‘Good,’ she says. ‘Just lie down for a minute, rest your head. Close your eyes; get a little sleep. Everything will seem better when you wake up, I promise you.’
She gets up, and I let her lean me back against the cushions. And with a little effort, she takes off my shoes and drags my feet up onto the sofa. I’m so tired, suddenly. So very, very tired.
‘I can’t sleep – I have to go and see her,’ I say. ‘I don’t know how long she has left.’
‘You can’t go like this. You can barely stand.’
‘I could go home,’ I say drowsily. ‘It’s only next door.’
‘I think you’ve travelled far enough for one day. You can rest easy here.’ At least, I think that’s what she says, or perhaps I’m dreaming already.
Dear Irene,
Under the floorboard, in the dining room, back left-hand corner, by the window, there’s a biscuit tin with £14,589 in it.
Don’t tell anyone about. It started as cash I saved up over the years – a little bit I won on the horses. I didn’t tell you because I knew you didn’t like me gambling, and I felt bad about going behind your back. So my rule was only gamble money you’ve won gambling. That way I felt better about it.
To be honest, over the last twenty years I’ve lost a lot more than I
won, but a few months ago, after the diagnosis, before I got my head together, I thought, sod it. I wanted to feel alive, to feel my heart racing again. So I took everything that was in the biscuit tin, which was nearly two grand, and I put it on an accumulator. I’ve never felt so alive in all my life. They all came in – every single one of the buggers came in.
It feels good to leave you something, so please, don’t be too cross about the gambling.
Your Ron
THE SEVENTH NIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY
HOPE
‘Why does it always take so long to get out of these places?’ Mum says, a little too loudly, so that her voice carries down the corridor. She has already packed my bag: everything clean, neatly folded and rolled; everything dirty, still neatly folded and rolled inside a carrier bag. I love her. I love her, but I want to do my own laundry.
‘I think we should all just feel lucky that she’s getting to come home,’ my dad says, gently closing the door.
Mum shoots Dad a look – that look she gives him when she’s being all overdramatic and he’s being sensible, and she resents him for it.
‘They’re doing this as fast as they can,’ I remind her. ‘They need this room for the next person; they’re like gold dust. Do you know, they only get eighteen per cent of their funding from the NHS? The rest is from fundraising … I was thinking, I’d like to do something for them when I get out of here.’
‘A sponsored run,’ Dad says, with a smile.
‘Well, let’s not go crazy – a sponsored read could work,’ I say, thinking of Issy. ‘Or maybe I could write a song, put it on iTunes, or something …’
Mum and Dad exchange a glance that they hope I don’t see.
‘What?’ I say. ‘Am I that bad?’
‘Nothing. I think that’s good, really good,’ Mum says. ‘We’re not used to seeing you … putting yourself out there. We’re pleased, we are.’
‘We are,’ Dad says, because he never likes Mum to speak for him, although she always does.
I look out of the window. It’s the last time I will see this view that I have gotten used to of late. The sun seemed to set so early, today; it was night again even before I noticed it, and I haven’t heard from Ben all day. There are many reasons why I wouldn’t have heard from him. The whole awkwardness of the sex-attempt thing, that would be reason enough, or because he does have a life – a sort of job, other friends. Reasons that I could happily obsess and dwell on, if it wasn’t for the other thing: everything that he said last night.
I look out of the window, beyond the reflected room and into the night, hoping he might appear like he has every evening about this time; hoping that the natural world order might just have been miraculously restored.
We had both behaved as if it had been when he’d walked me home last night – with him telling me a long and hilarious story about an old man who came into his shop to ask about how to post an email. He’d left me at the green door, without so much as a second look. And when I got in, after I did my physio, I must have been exhausted, because I slept right through until two and the next lot of medication and physio. And then Mum and Dad arrived, and the last several hours has all been about waiting. Waiting to be allowed home, waiting for Ben to come, waiting to begin – not again, because I don’t think I have ever really begun in the first place, not since I came home from university. Waiting to start my life – properly, this time.
I called Ben, and after he didn’t answer his phone, I sent him a text: ‘Am getting out today!’ But there was no reply; he’s busy, maybe. Selling phones, playing stupid customer bingo with his friends, hating me.
I pace, and my mum thinks it’s because of my impatience to be out of here and back at home, tucked up on a winter’s night in our sweet little semi, with the TV on and dinner on a tray. And in a way it is. In a way, I long for that safe and sheltered little life – the place behind a closed door where I don’t have to worry any more – but that time is gone now. How many more second chances I’ll get, I don’t know. But what I do know is that the first thing I’m going to do on Monday is look for a house share. It might take me a while, and I’ll need to start treating the book-cover-designing stuff like a business instead of a hobby, but the countdown to my moving out has started. Just no one tell Mum yet.
I check my phone again; still nothing. Honestly, anyone would think it was me who had done the romantic declaration about being in love – me who was on tenterhooks about hearing from him. Me and Ben as a thing, as an item; as a kissing, sexing item. I know what this is: this is like when we were about fourteen and he decided that he wanted to be Jewish. He just started telling everyone he was actually Jewish, even though he wasn’t. When we finally got to the bottom of it all, he’d turned to me and said, ‘I just hate being so boring, Hope. I hate being so normal.’
I’d told him right then and there that there was no chance of him ever being normal. It’s laughable, really. If he thinks about it, if he really thinks about it, he’ll laugh. I look at my watch.
‘Still the same time as it was five minutes ago,’ Dad says.
‘Well, it’s not,’ I say. ‘It’s five minutes later.’
‘A watched pot …’
‘Who watches a pot?’ I snap, and Dad shrugs apologetically. And it occurs to me that I am probably too old to be playing the cute but rebellious teen.
‘I’m going out,’ I say, feeling suddenly incredibly hot. ‘For a breath of fresh air.’
‘Going out?’ My mum looks at my father, expecting him to stop me. My father plays his role to perfection.
‘For a breath of fresh air,’ he says. ‘But …’
I know exactly how the conversation will play out as I let myself out on to the small patio, pausing to watch for a moment as they discuss whether or not I should be outside, not noticing that I have already left. I take my phone out of my pocket as I follow the path around the outside of the building, and call Ben’s number. I’m going to talk to him, goddammit; he can’t just say he loves me and then go underground. That’s not how it works, is it? That’s not what is supposed to happen. That’s like … That’s like swimming the Channel and then getting in a boat a hundred metres off Calais; that’s like … like going on X Factor and deciding to read from a book. It’s half-arsed, it’s chickenshit, it’s typical Ben – grand gesture one minute, ignoring you the next.
His phone is ringing, and an unfamiliar voice answers.
‘What?’
‘Um … is Ben there?’
‘Wrong number.’
‘No, this is Ben’s number. Is he there?’
‘This is Ben’s stepdad, and this phone now belongs to me. I’m sick of him sponging off us …’
‘Hey, give me that, you wanker …’ It’s Ben. For a moment, I am flooded with relief. Except that I can’t hear him – maybe he sat on his phone or something? There’s a noise, perhaps a movie, shouting, crashes. I can hear shouting. I open my mouth to do that thing, that thing where you yell ‘hello’, even though you know no one will hear you. I am going to do that anyway, when I hear the cry again, and I freeze. It’s his mum crying, ‘Stop it. Stop hitting him!’
I’m through the safe, green door and into the mayhem of the street before I know what I am doing. I’m not even at the end of the road and my legs are shaking, my chest is aching. There’s no medical reason for me not to exert myself a reasonable amount; I need to build up my stamina, the doctors say. But, even so, the pain, the pain, and the fear that I might die if I run too fast, dog me. However, I don’t stop. I won’t die if I run, even though I’m not fit, but I won’t die if I run, so I jog, as fast as I can go, into the heart of Camden. I jog out past the tube station and then, finally, out of breath, I pause to cough what feels like it might be my lungs up, then turn left into the estate where Ben lives.
He’s always lived here, and I’ve always lived four streets away. He’s always lived in a split-level flat on the fourth floor, with a balcony that runs the length of a ro
w of front doors looking out on to the courtyard, where we used to play as kids. Now we’re older it always seems to be full of menacing-looking teens not much younger than me. But I don’t think about the fact that it’s dark, or that my lungs are screaming. I just know I have to find out where he is, and the only place I can think of to start is his home. The lift, for once, is not out of order, which is good news. The bad news is that it terrifies me; it always smells of stale pee and disinfectant. It’s cleaned all the time but you can still see the ghostly outlines of graffiti that has been and gone. The words ‘You gonna die, bitch’ loom out of the dark, taking shape as I stare for a long time at the place where they almost are. I hold my breath as the metal box rumbles up. I think about the last time I took a lift, with Ben, and remind myself to never get in a lift again. I’m always scared I’ll get stuck in a lift, always; and, worse, I’m scared I’ll get stuck in a lift needing a wee, and then what?
But the lift makes it to fourth floor and, after that terrifying moment of stillness, the doors open. It’s more or less quiet along the balcony that fronts Ben’s flat. Streets in the air – that’s what they were designed to be once. There is a group of girls, smoking intensely, standing between me and Ben’s front door. They are just girls, just girls like me, probably thinking and worrying about a lot of the same things, and yet they frighten me. I have no reason to believe they are going to hurt me, or even notice me, and yet I do believe that. I try to make myself small and avert my eyes as I hurry past. They gossip and laugh as I pass, and I am certain that they are talking about me.
And yet I still stop before I get to Ben’s doorway.
It’s been fifteen minutes, slightly less, since I heard what I thought was some kind of fight and ran out on my parents. What if I overreacted? What if it was just one of the normal run-of-the-mill shouting matches between Ben and his stepfather, and I’ve raced here, arriving dripping in sweat, to what … save the day? Make a cup of tea? What am I even doing here? And then I hear it again. The shouting is coming from inside his flat, and this time I can hear a woman screaming.
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