by Paula Daly
The street was quiet. Eerily quiet, in fact.
A fog had settled and though I could make out Lawrence’s house opposite, it was undefined; the rooftop and windows were occluded by murk.
‘Bonit-ahhh!’
I heard an engine start further along the street. Someone revving gently. I looked over. The car was parked on the opposite side, three houses along. A black saloon. Or was it grey? It was hard to tell in this light.
The driver switched on their headlights, turned them to full beam, and instantly I was blinded, the car itself disappearing behind the glare.
Then the engine revved again, loudly this time.
It pulled away from the kerb and crawled along, coming to a stop outside my house. My mouth went dry. I could see only the bonnet. The windows were obscured by the garden wall, but I felt sure it was the same car filmed by Leon.
The engine revved again. A warning. A threat.
And my heart stuttered in response.
I ran inside.
29
I lay with my eyes open, listening for the return of the car, until after 1 a.m.; it didn’t come back. I tried to tell myself it was a coincidence. That the car had nothing to do with me. But I didn’t believe it.
I reasoned that if the occupants had really wanted to scare me they’d have approached the house. They’d have got out and approached me. And I could only think that their reason for not doing so was that they were looking for Leon instead.
The following morning, I phoned Ledecky. I told her of the dark-coloured saloon on Leon’s home videos and the appearance of a similar car in the street last night.
‘Registration plate?’ she asked.
I told her I didn’t know it and she sighed heavily. She said she’d have someone take a look at the CCTV from both Aigburth Road and Ullet Road, at around 8.30 p.m., but: ‘Dark saloons are remarkably common, so …’ She let the words hang.
Afterwards, I called the vet’s, and I was told that: ‘No, a small tortoiseshell female has not been brought in … either alive or dead,’ but I was asked to stay on the line as Bonita was microchipped. They would check the Petlog database. No luck. The receptionist said Bonita had not been handed in elsewhere – or they’d certainly be aware of it. ‘She’s probably locked in someone’s shed,’ she said, trying to be helpful. ‘You know what cats are like.’
I told her I did.
‘You might want to print out some leaflets … ask people to check their outbuildings.’
My morning class at Toxteth Library didn’t start until eleven and so I headed up to the attic to put together some ‘Have you seen our cat?’ leaflets. I’d already promised the kids that if the vet didn’t have Bonita then we could pin them around the neighbouring streets when they got in from school. They were looking forward to it – I think because they’d seen it done on American TV, so it was lodged in their minds as something little kids did. Like running a lemonade stand, or selling cookies to neighbours, both of which, I’d had to explain, wasn’t something English children made a habit of doing. Probably because we didn’t like our neighbours all that much.
While I was waiting for the leaflets to print, I gazed out of the window and watched for Bonita. I’d been doing this pretty much every time I passed a window. ‘Where are you?’ I’d whisper, before panic started to seize me as I thought through the possibilities: Was she lying dead somewhere? Would we still be waiting for her to come home in a week? A year?
Was she trapped, slowly starving to death?
Or could she be nearby? Practically right on the doorstep? And if only I’d looked a little harder, been more thorough, I’d have discovered her before it was too late?
I refocused and checked my emails.
At the top of my inbox was one from Teresa, the course coordinator, forwarded on from Walton Prison. The gist of it was that there would now be extra measures put in place to make sure there was no repeat of last time’s session. Ryan Toonen would naturally not be in attendance and they had allocated a prison officer to supervise as the class had proved to be particularly popular, and they were reluctant to pull it from the schedule altogether. In a nutshell, they wanted me back. If I could bring myself to go back.
I fired off a quick reply saying I would have to think about it but would have an answer for them by the following day.
Would I return there?
Not likely.
It saddened me because of all the classes I’d conducted, Walton was the one where I felt I was being most useful to people who were not usually accustomed to receiving any help. The one where the students might actually benefit from committing their thoughts to paper. But no. I couldn’t go back.
I scrolled down my emails. Junk. Junk.
More junk.
And then, at the bottom of the screen, a reply from Alistair Armitage, sent late last night.
My breathing quickened. I didn’t think he’d respond. I’d constructed another quick message to him in one last-ditch attempt, telling him I’d come across a manuscript in Leon’s files. A file that I thought might belong to him. The subtext of what I was saying was: I believe you. I believe that you were wronged by Leon.
I opened his response.
Jane,
I beg of you. Do not contact me. I am in fear for my safety now and cannot help you.
Alistair
I stared at the screen. His safety?
I read it again thinking he’d become terribly paranoid. I felt certain if I could just talk to him, if I could meet him in person, tell him I’d found the manuscript, that I really did believe him, then he could open up about what had actually happened. About how Leon came to have his manuscript in the first place.
I replied, telling him we could meet in secret, that we could keep this totally between us, but my message immediately bounced back.
Mail Delivery Failed: Returning Message to Sender.
I slammed the desk with my fist.
He’d deleted his account.
Why wouldn’t he talk to me?
Every thread I followed seemed to lead nowhere. A dead end. I got up and paced. I glanced at the clock. Did I have enough time to have another poke around in Leon’s stuff? I had forty-five minutes. I opened the first filing cabinet, pulling out the hard copy of Red City. I’d spent over an hour putting the pages of it back in the correct order after Leon had hurled the manuscript across the attic.
I sat back down in the office chair.
This was Leon’s unfinished novel and up until now I’d not read any of it. I still had no clue as to why he’d not been able to finish the thing, so I speed-read it, stopping at the end of each chapter to read the last paragraph – ‘the cliffs’ as Leon called them, short for cliffhangers. They were certainly all there. They made you want to turn the page, made you want to keep reading. So where had it all gone wrong? I wondered. Why had his method stopped working? Why had he had to ask Charlie for a loan, just to keep the wolf from the door?
I flicked forward to here, to where the novel ended, and I put the manuscript face down on the desk. Leon’s books ran close to 400 pages usually. What had happened here to give him writer’s block? What had made him come up here each day to procrastinate, to fill his time with anything but writing?
When I first knew him, Leon used to claim that there was no such thing as writer’s block. ‘Bricklayers don’t get bricklaying block,’ he liked to say.
He did go on to revise this statement, though, in the years that followed, as he published one book after another, saying that he was running out of things to talk about, that he was afraid of repeating himself – and he later came to the conclusion that writers became blocked for two reasons:
Either they didn’t know where they were going, as in they had no idea of the story they were trying to write, and the only remedy for this was to down tools and figure out the main plot points of the story before continuing. And the other, and probably more predominant reason for writers becoming depressed, despondent and full of
self-loathing, when they couldn’t produce good work, was fear. Fear of putting the words down wrong. Fear of writing total rubbish. Fear of people laughing at their attempts. Basically, that all-encompassing human fear of not being good enough.
I suffered from this fear myself from time to time. Just before I made my way to the keyboard to write I’d feel a huge swell of resistance inside my chest as if I needed to flee. As if I should be anywhere other than where I was about to go. This fear would be followed by an intense tired feeling: a heaviness across the shoulders, a dragging feeling in the legs, as if I might not make it to the keyboard.
I read once that Christopher Dean, of celebrity ice-dancing duo Torvill and Dean, experienced something similar as he was about to skate in major competitions. His legs would become so heavy and leaden he feared he wouldn’t make it out on to the ice.
Did all artists suffer from this? And if they did, did that mean that I was in fact an artist and—
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
I froze.
Leon was in the doorway.
He’d returned from his daily run with Eden and his T-shirt was damp with sweat. There was anger in his eyes, and his face was set with fury.
‘What are you doing, looking at my work?’ he demanded.
One fast appraisal of his stance and I could sense his urge for violence. Could feel the charge in the air.
How fast, I almost said aloud in awe, how fast you go from nothing to this, Leon. From zero to a hundred.
Quickly, I ran through all the possible responses I could give that might best alleviate the situation. That might prevent his anger from escalating to the point of him smashing the place up again.
‘Move away from the desk, Jane,’ he warned.
I could smell the adrenaline on him. He didn’t want me up here. Something in his brain was telling him this was not OK. He needed me out of this room immediately. What I was doing was dangerous.
My email was still open. I eyed the manuscript. It was face down, the title page not visible. Did he know I’d been reading his work?
‘Get out,’ he hissed.
‘I’m not doing anything.’
‘GET OUT!’
He eyed the screen. He thought I was in his files. What did he not want me to see?
He began moving from one foot to the other, like a boxer first entering the ring. The energy inside him was building. I’d been around him enough times of late to know it needed to come out. That it would come out.
Did I feign innocence? Did I tell him not to be silly, that of course I wasn’t looking at his work? That I would never look at his work?
‘Go away, Leon,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m busy,’ and I turned around to face the screen and began typing.
I typed like a concert pianist. It was all gibberish, but I made like what I was doing was extremely important and I was not to be disturbed.
I could feel the pulse in my neck. Could hear a mighty whooshing in my ears as I waited to see what he’d do next.
‘I think I told you to leave,’ he said.
‘And I said I’m busy.’
Then I sighed out long and hard before turning back around towards him. ‘I really don’t need you in here interrupting,’ I said. ‘Where’s Eden anyway? He’s supposed to be keeping you out of my hair whilst I sort out this paperwork.’
‘You’re in my stuff.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Jane,’ he said, his voice menacingly level. ‘You need to step away from the computer right now,’ and he advanced towards me.
‘Jesus Christ, Leon!’ I flared, and I stood up. ‘Who is going to do this if I don’t? You? Are you going to do it?’
He stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Come on then,’ I continued, ‘be my guest. Come and log into your account and authorize a payment to United Utilities … What? You can’t? Oh, I beg your pardon. For a minute there, I thought you’d suddenly remembered how to do ALL THE THINGS I HAVE TO DO BECAUSE YOU CAN’T DO THEM ANY MORE.’
I sat down again. Resumed typing.
‘Anyway,’ I said, after a second, ‘what’s so important that I’m not allowed to see? Another woman’s naked photographs? Secret gambling habit?’
‘Jane.’
‘What, Leon?’
But he couldn’t answer.
Or else he wouldn’t.
He kept glancing at the screen and then back at me. He knew I knew something but was afraid to ask what.
Just how much are you remembering right now, Leon? I thought. Or is this muscle memory? You find your wife at your computer and your body tells you to eject her from the room, even if you don’t fully understand why?
I waited.
I studied his face.
It was unreadable.
He advanced another step but I put my hand up. ‘Here’s something you need to understand, Leon. You can be a hindrance. A total fucking hindrance sometimes. It’s like having another toddler … But I’m trying here, honestly, I’m trying to keep our lives together. I’m trying to be mother and father. I’m trying to pick up the slack and bring money into the house … So, how about you let me get on with it, and stop making it so difficult?’
Leon just stared at me.
He left without speaking.
I put my hands to my face and exhaled. Was this how it was going to be now? Every time Leon got half a memory back he’d become hostile? Aggressive?
After he’d gone, I deleted all the gibberish I’d typed, and I turned over the manuscript of Red City and glared at it, willing it to relinquish its secrets.
‘What happened to Leon whilst he was writing you?’ I whispered to the pages. ‘What made him lose his way, made him dry up?’
I couldn’t work it out. The story was all there, ready to be finished. It made no sense, it—
‘Jane.’
Leon was back. He was standing right behind me.
He’d mounted the stairs without my hearing and I held my breath.
I closed the email. ‘What do you want, Leon?’ I said carefully, bracing myself for another round.
I turned. Leon had changed his T-shirt and washed his face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply.
I blinked at him.
Leon had not apologized for anything since sustaining the brain injury. It was as if that bunch of neurones had been severed and ‘sorry’ just didn’t exist for him any more. I watched him. I had no idea if this was a genuine apology or not.
‘I’m sorry I shouted at you,’ he said.
‘That’s OK.’
He was shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, it’s not OK. I don’t want to keep being like this, Jane. I don’t know where it comes from … this anger. I don’t know how to stop it from coming out.’
I cleared my throat. ‘I don’t think you always can stop it from coming out.’
He nodded.
He wanted to say more. He wanted to say something else, but he didn’t know how. ‘I’m sorry this has happened to you,’ he said eventually. And I could see how hard it was for him. ‘I keep thinking that this has ruined my life, that it’s me who can’t do anything any more, that I don’t know who I am … but I hadn’t really realized that this has affected you too. It’s affected your life a lot, hasn’t it?’
I told him it wasn’t always easy.
‘It must have been really shitty when I came out of the coma and I wanted Gina,’ he said. ‘When I wanted her instead of you.’ He reached out his hand to me. ‘Sorry,’ he said, again.
‘It’s all right … It’ll get better. Eventually, it’ll get better. I know it will.’
And he brushed his fingertips across my cheek. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t pull away and he was examining me closely. He was looking at me intently, really looking into my eyes, as though trying to figure out if I would ever be able to love him again.
He threaded some stray strands of hair behind my ear. ‘Red,’ he said softly, not taking his hand aw
ay.
‘Yes, red.’
‘It’s pretty,’ he said.
And then: ‘I’ve missed you, baby.’
Was it possible to experience the full gamut of human emotions in less than five minutes? It seemed as though it was.
Downstairs, I gathered up my work bag and headed to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water. Eden was in there pretending to look busy, avoiding eye contact. I opened the fridge. ‘Thanks for doing that,’ I said to him.
Eden tried to look blank. ‘Doing what?’
I smiled. ‘Eden, thank you for getting Leon to apologize. It’s really good that you’re here … You’re helping.’
And he went sheepish before looking at his feet.
‘You’re welcome, Auntie Jane.’
30
The following afternoon, Leon and I walked to school together, posting missing cat leaflets through letterboxes along the way. Eden had gone into town to have his hair restyled and to meet up with a few lads he knew from playing Call of Duty online. He had Leon playing it now as well and I’d yet to decide if that was a good thing or not.
Leon and I held hands.
This was a new thing.
And I felt as I might have done had we been a couple in the early stages of a relationship: awkward, bashful, mildly embarrassed, but happy nonetheless. Leon strode along, chest out, gripping my hand hard as though I was a toddler, as though I might suddenly veer off, distracted by a bird, or a blowing leaf, throwing myself into the oncoming traffic.
He beamed at me. ‘We should do this every day,’ he said.
I agreed, not wanting to spoil the moment, as it would not be feasible to do this every day. I couldn’t always get back from my classes in time to make the journey on foot.
We headed on to the playground and a number of parents greeted Leon by name.
‘This is my wife, Jane,’ he said proudly, and to their credit they didn’t say they already knew me, that they saw me at the morning drop-off; instead they smiled, saying, ‘Lovely to see you out together,’ which made Leon beam all the more, and squeeze my hand all the more tightly too.