‘You wanted to make a difference, Gabe. It’s the reason you ran for office, it’s the reason our marriage failed.’
‘Don’t blame the party for—’ he began, but she cut him off.
‘Our marriage failed because Parador was the most important thing to you. I just want to go out into the barrios and show the world what’s happening.’
Gabriel stopped and looked at her. ‘This is about Angel Cay, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘What? What, I . . .’ she stuttered, remembering the time she had told her husband about the island. He’d once asked her if she had ever done anything bad and after Caros’ death she’d admitted what had gone on that hot summer night.
‘Just because you once found a body and did nothing about it doesn’t mean you have to spend the rest of your life being a saint, Grace. The charity work, the photographs, the documentaries. It’s all atonement for one stupid mistake.’
‘It’s not,’ she said vigorously.
‘Are you papering over the cracks, Grace, or is this really making you happy?’ he asked her, his blue eyes boring into her. ‘Because I want you to be happy, I really do.’
‘Gabe, I . . .’ she began, but just then Gabriel’s wife Martina appeared at the French windows of the house and came across the lawns with a tray bearing three cold drinks for them. She was in navy slacks and a cream silk shirt; elegant, decorous, the politician’s wife Grace had never been able to be. Grace watched Gabriel’s face as Martina approached and she didn’t miss the little smile, the softening of the eyes. He loved her, there was no doubt of that. She wished she could feel happier about it.
‘Will you be staying for lunch, Grace?’ Martina asked, hooking her arm through her husband’s.
‘No, no. My car should be here in twenty minutes to take me into Palumbo.’
‘But you’ll be back for dinner?’
‘Si dios quiere,’ said Gabriel, shaking his head.
If God wills it.
She spent eight hours in ‘El Tumba’, Parador’s worst slum, which clung forlornly to the hillside overlooking Palumbo. She interviewed orphans and farmers who had lost everything after the paramilitary sequested their land. She spoke to them of hunger and suffering, she spoke to them of disease and squalor, but most of all, she spoke to them of hope and their amazing, inspiring belief that God would provide, that one day they would come down off the hill and make a new life for themselves.
Back at El Esperanza, she stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower, tipping her head back as the hot water washed away the stench. Wrapping herself in a clean white terry robe, she sat at the desk by the window watching the sun set across the jungle, a sight at once so familiar and yet so alien to her now.
Gabe peeked around the door. ‘Can I come in?’ he asked.
‘I’m decent,’ she said, thinking, Nothing you haven’t seen before.
‘How was it?’
She shook her head slowly. ‘A quarter of a million people in one slum,’ she said. ‘It beggars belief. Did you know one child dies a violent death there every eight hours?’
‘Do you think you got enough for your film?’
‘I wish,’ she said ruefully. ‘There were so many stories to be told: happy, sad, some even terrifying. But I’m still missing the angle. At the moment it’s just a lot of very poor people in appalling circumstances. I need a narrative to pull it all together.’
Gabriel took a piece of paper from his pocket and held it out to her.
‘What’s this?’
‘Phone numbers,’ he said. ‘The first one is for Father Diaz. He looks after six hundred orphans in twelve sites around Parador. His brother was Pablos Cavalas, one of the most notorious drug-dealers in the late eighties. The second number will help you arrange an interview with the president.’ He smiled. ‘Although I doubt you’ll get much there, I’d be interested how he justifies El Tumba to you.’
‘And the last one?’
‘The third number is for Felix Philipe, coach for the Parador national football team. Five years ago he opened a soccer academy for the children of the slums. Half of his squad are men who’ve grown up in the barrios.’ Gabriel shrugged. ‘I think you should find your angle in there somewhere.’
Grace stood up and hugged him. ‘Thank you, Gabriel,’ she said simply, resting her chin on his shoulder. They stood like that for a long moment, then Gabriel turned back to the door.
‘I’m proud of you, Grace,’ he said, his eyes flicking to hers and holding them for a second. ‘I really am.’
And for the first time in a long time, Grace felt the same way.
58
April 2009
Alex came to, jerking awake.
‘What the hell?’ he mumbled, before wincing at the pain in his neck.
I fell asleep on the sofa again, he thought numbly. In the corner of the room, the TV was still playing with the sound off. Breakfast TV. Bloody hell, I haven’t seen that in years.
Squinting, shading his eyes from the bright morning light, he pushed himself on to one elbow, shook a bent cigarette from the pack and lit it, coughing the smoke straight out again. He sat forward, trying to ignore the thumping in his head, and picked up the various cans and bottles crowding the coffee table. Empty . . . empty . . . a-ha! An inch of whisky sloshing around in the bottom of the bottle. He tipped it up, feeling the chink of the glass on his teeth, and gagged it down in three swallows. And that was when it hit him, as it did every morning: the sinking, churning feeling in his stomach – the feeling that he was still alive and had another day to face. He ran to the toilet and vomited.
Walking back into the lounge, wiping his mouth, he could see that every available surface was covered in crushed cans, open tins and pizza boxes. What a shit-hole, he thought. He had barely left his west London home since he’d returned from his mum’s funeral six months earlier. He had an arrangement with the man in the off-licence to bring him a box of booze and snacks every day, taking the empties away when he left, although Alex had to admit he’d been getting a little lax on tidying up over the past week.
Maureen had died in her sleep, but that brought him little comfort. He had watched her suffer for weeks, months, the pain creasing into her face. She’d been brave, of course, hadn’t wanted Alex to see how much she was suffering, but the cancer swept through her so quickly, the doctors had struggled to keep up with the morphine. During the last days, they had let her come home, and Alex had even allowed himself to think she was getting better. She was sitting up in bed, her eyes bright and clear, talking about the old days, when she and Alex’s father had bought their first car, a Hillman Imp, and had taken it for a run out to Southport. Now, Alex thought it had all been for his benefit, to make him feel better, not her.
‘It’s going to be OK, love,’ she would say whenever he cried.‘You’ll be strong for me, won’t you?’
Back in London, Alex closed his front door and quietly fell to pieces. He felt utterly lost, adrift in the world with nothing solid to cling to. All he could do was blot it out, drinking anything that came to hand: sherry, gin, the ouzo he had brought back from his trip to Greece with his mum. Drugs were all around him in his part of London, and he tried them all, plus a long list of prescription drugs. He just wanted the pain to stop.
He walked over to the TV and snapped it off, then slowly climbed the stairs, running a tepid bath. When he was ready, he took a cab into Soho. No one bothered him in the West End’s busy, grimy streets. Two weeks’ beard growth and unwashed hair helped, as did the bottle in his hand. No one wanted to bother the crazy drunk guy with the red-rimmed eyes. Besides, since his split with Melissa, Al Doyle was no longer a ‘celeb’. He was back to being an everyday, common or garden musician. He barely rated a mention on Perez Hilton any more.
He dropped in at the Coach and Horses, still quiet before the lunch rush. He ordered a double brandy and a pint and retreated to a corner to read his book, an account of the ‘Enfield Poltergeist’, a malevolent spirit th
at had apparently possessed a teenage girl in the 1970s. He had always been interested in the unexplained, but since his mum’s death he had begun to think about it a lot more. Maybe good spirits could come back and watch over you, he thought. Or maybe bad ones, angry ones, could come back and screw you up. Maybe we’re all ghosts, thought Alex. Maybe this whole thing is all an illusion.
By seven o’clock, Alex had been in eight pubs, an off-licence and a sushi restaurant, where he drank the sake and left his teriyaki untouched. By nine o’clock he was in Soho House, slurring his words as he said, ‘Dom Perignon, barman,’ banging his hand on the counter. ‘And make it snappy.’
That was the last thing that Alex would remember clearly, the point where his anchor gave way. Time seemed to be telescoping and contracting. He felt shaken up and disorientated, like he was on a rollercoaster he couldn’t see. He was blacking out, then tuning in again, with no idea what had happened in between. First the waitress was bringing the champagne over to the table, then the bottle was empty, upside down in the ice bucket. Next he looked up and there were two girls sitting next to him, then he glanced away and they were gone. Drink through it, said a voice in his head. Keep drinking and it will all go away. He ordered some tequila, then some brandy, then some exotic beer that tasted of leaves. Then he found himself sitting on his own. Had he been asleep? Suddenly all these jump-cuts were starting to scare him. He wanted to get home. But where was home exactly?
‘Here you are, mate,’ said the driver. ‘Camden High Street.’
‘What? Why are we here?’Alex couldn’t remember getting into the cab, let alone telling him to go to north London.
The cabbie gave a world-weary shrug. ‘You tell me, pal.’
Alex looked around as the cab pulled away. At least now he knew where he was. He was standing at the door to the flat where the rest of Year Zero had lived all those years ago. The buzzers were the same; only the labels had changed. The top flat bell, which the lead singer had labelled as ‘Jez and the Others’, now read ‘Taya B.’ In fact, now he looked, a lot of things had changed. The kebab shop opposite the station was now a florist’s and the corner shop that sold cheap bread was now a bistro. It had been cleaned up a lot. Alex didn’t feel at home here either. He stumbled along the street, the headlights of the passing cars blurring into streams and trails, the people walking past giving him a wide berth. Another drink, the voice whispered, just to steady your nerves. Haltingly, he approached a pub – wasn’t it a bank? – but a penguin-suited bouncer stepped out, one hand up. ‘Not tonight,’ he said not even recognising him. Alex began to protest, then saw the look in the man’s eyes and kept walking, turning into a convenience store with a neon sign in the window: ‘24/7’. That’s me all right, thought Alex, giggling to himself. He pinballed down the narrow aisles, bouncing off shelves either side, colliding with a carousel display of cheap plastic children’s toys and sending some crashing to the floor. ‘Sorry! Sorry!’ he said, gathering them back up. ‘My mistake, no harm done.’ Glancing towards the counter, he grabbed a water pistol and stuck it into his pocket. That’ll teach the buggers to rip me off, he thought crazily.
Suddenly the shopkeeper, a small Korean man with half-moon glasses, was standing in front of him.
‘What you want?’ he asked. It was only then that Alex noticed the man was clutching a broom.
‘Drink,’ he said. ‘Just want a drink. Tequila.’
‘No tequila!’ shouted the man, waving his broom angrily. ‘You go!’
‘What about gin?’
‘No drink!’ barked the man, prodding Alex with the end of his broom. ‘I call police.’
‘Just a half-bottle,’ said Alex, almost pleading now. It looked as though the old man had taken against him for some reason and he really wanted that gin.‘Look, I have money ...’ He reached into his pocket for his wallet and instead pulled out the water pistol.
The shopkeeper jumped backwards as if electrified. ‘Police!’ he yelled, running towards the door. ‘Call police!’
Alex looked down at his hand, the misunderstanding slowly dawning on him. ‘Oh no, this is just a toy . . .’ he said, tripping over a pile of newspapers and crashing into a shelf of baked beans.
‘There he is!’ shouted the shopkeeper. ‘He smash up store!’
Next to the old man was another figure, wearing all black, talking into a radio.
‘Stay calm, sir,’ said the policeman, walking forward. But Alex wasn’t waiting. He ran towards the back of the shop, crashing through a door. All he could think was that he had to get away. It was some sort of storeroom: stacks of cardboard boxes, pallets of tins covered in clear plastic. He ran towards a door at the rear. It was locked. He looked around. There were no windows.
‘Let me out, you fuckers!’ he shouted.
Outside he could hear the wail of police sirens.
‘Oh shit, oh shit,’ he said, running back and slamming the storeroom door, bolting it closed. He’d read about people getting shot by armed police. He leant against the door and pulled his mobile out of his pocket. Who to call? Who could help? His heart was hammering, and sweat was rolling down his face, despite the coldness of the storeroom. Outside he could hear shouts and heavy footsteps. He picked up the phone and scrolled to a number he hadn’t used for years.
‘Miles. You have to help me.’ Alex spoke quickly, his voice trembling.
‘Go on,’ said Miles. Calm, unflappable. The police were banging on the door now.
Alex quickly explained. ‘What should I do?’
‘OK, I’m in New York,’ said Miles. ‘But I’ll call my lawyer, he’s in London. His name in Michael Marshall. He will find you and I promise you he will fix this.’
‘Thanks, Miles, thank you, thank you.’
‘A friend in need and all that,’ said Miles.
The door lurched inwards. ‘Miles, they’re kicking the door in, what should I do now? Miles, help me.’
‘Stay calm, Alex. Don’t do anything stupid. Michael will come and find you. Leave it to me. Oh, and Alex?’
‘What?’
‘I’d get away from that door.’
Just as Alex moved out of the way, the wood splintered and flew inwards, rapidly followed by three policemen. Alex started sobbing. He drew the water pistol and pushed it against his temple.
‘Stop there or I’ll shoot,’ he cried as a policeman wrestled him to the ground and cuffed his hands behind him.
‘I only wanted a drink,’ he whimpered. And then he blacked out.
59
May 2009
Approached along the long crunchy drive, Second Chances looked like a particularly elegant country house hotel, the sort where guests took high tea and debated which spa treatment to try next. But the eighteenth-century Bath-stone manor house was a very different type of residential property. The front door could only be opened with a master key, the rooms had narrow beds with foam mattresses and the food tended to come from large catering tins, warmed in a vat. You didn’t come to Second Chances for a holiday; you came here because you had no other choice. Its literature described it as a ‘rehabilitation facility’, but this was no overgrown health farm for stressed-out celebrities who’d overindulged on the party circuit. Second Chances was a real hospital, for people with real problems. And for the last three weeks, it had been Alex Doyle’s home.
He could only remember fragments from the first few days of his arrival. He had been isolated and sedated, a nurse monitoring him around the clock. He’d vacillate between shivering, begging for more blankets, then rolling sweats and diarrhoea as the drugs and alcohol left his system. It was a little-known fact – to Alex at least – that withdrawal from alcohol was infinitely more drastic and life-threatening than from drugs such as heroin. Booze could take days, even weeks of physical pain, hallucinations and genuine sickness. Alex ran the gamut. But slowly, very slowly, he had come up for air.
After isolation, he was assigned to share a room with a young man named William – everyone was
paired up with a buddy; no one was allowed to sit and mope alone. Their illness, they were repeatedly told, could be mastered, but only through constant vigilance. The addiction wanted you to be weak, it wanted you to feel sorry for yourself, it wanted you to go and get wasted. So all day and late into the evening, in group sessions and individual one-to-ones, they were told to confront their shortcomings, confess to their transgressions. Alex found he had plenty to say.
‘Don’t rush it,’ said Dr Wilson, the morning of Alex’s fourth week. ‘If you’d broken your leg, you wouldn’t expect to be able to run the hundred metres so soon, would you?’
‘But I do feel better,’ said Alex. ‘I’m not shaking or nauseous and I’m sleeping better than I have in years.’
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