by LK Fox
‘You don’t understand. I have to do something.’
‘No, Nick. Please. No. If you do—’ He calmed down a little. ‘Please, just stay still. Sit down, drink some black coffee, try to be calm. Don’t leave the house. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.’
I hung up and returned to the camera on my phone. Maybe I’ve made a mistake, I thought. American football sweaters are cool in Gabriel’s year, and a lot of the kids look alike at that age. It could have been another boy. I was sweating ice. I re-examined the screen with shaking hands. My panicked thoughts were chasing each other in circles.
I tried Matthew at home – no answer – so I called him at work and got his voicemail. He was probably on a bus heading in from his flat, on his way to our office. He was epileptic and wasn’t allowed to drive.
I studied the photograph again in painful detail, breaking it down into carmine smears and silver patches, deep greys and unfathomable coal-blacks. The image was obscured by rain and poor light. The yellow tiger on the window got in the way. I stared at it until I could no longer tell if it was Gabriel or not. And then the boy just broke up and vanished from the photo completely. When I looked away, all I could see was the blur of migraine-pixilation.
Uploading the shot to my laptop, I lightened the tones to bring shapes from the shadows, then enlarged the whole thing until it became an abstract blur of digital geometries. The doorbell made me start.
I could see Ben’s shape beyond the glass. He no longer had keys to the flat. I unlocked the door and he walked straight into the hall, heading past me. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ he said.
His voice was tense with indignation. He’d changed his look: shaved the sides of his head and grown a black beard, switching his corporate greys for a narrow hipster suit and a navy jacket I’d never seen before, vaguely military-looking.
‘You call me to tell me Gabriel has been abducted. Abducted?’
‘Can you not – just not – yell?’ I asked, massaging the bridge of my nose, trying to send away the pain, trying to think of something more useful to say.
‘I’m sorry, but I’m really angry this time. What have you got to say for yourself? I can’t go through this again, Nick.’
‘Ben, I know it sounds crazy, but you have to listen—’
‘You stink of booze. I should have known.’ He shoved a slicked curl back from his eyes and sighed. ‘I told you to make black coffee.’
He headed for the kitchen, and I followed. ‘I can’t deal with this alone,’ I told him. ‘I did what you said. I haven’t called anyone else yet.’
Ben took a steady, assessing look at me. ‘Nick, I was raised in a Presbyterian family. We’re meant to look out for each other, so I always try to help you. But there really is a fucking limit.’
‘You left me. That didn’t help much.’ Great, that was just what he wanted to hear. I flopped down with my head in my hands, hating to have to go through this. The kettle clicked off, breaking the silence. Ben glanced at the landslide of dirty crockery that was advancing towards the back door like a glacier before beginning the task of making the coffees, checking the cupboard for packets without having to ask where they were kept.
‘These are the same teabags I bought before I left.’
‘How would you even know that?’
‘How likely are you to buy Fairtrade single-plantation-source tea, Nick? You buy PG Tips.’
‘You haven’t been here for months. You don’t know what’s been going on,’ I said. ‘I need to show you something.’
I led him down the hall to Gabriel’s room, opened the door and stepped back.
‘You go in first,’ he said, suddenly wary.
‘I’m not going to turn psycho on you, okay?’ I went ahead and held out my hands as if to say, See? Nothing weird here.
He took a careful step inside and looked around. There was a tall window that overlooked the street, the rumpled bed with the jet-fighter cover, a partially assembled electric racetrack on the floor, school clothes on the back of a chair. One wall was covered with posters of Star Wars characters, Rio Ferdinand, Iron Man, maritime navigational maps and an old poster for the movie Waterloo that had belonged to my father.
A large part of the end wall was papered with pictures of Gabriel from when he was small up to the age of seven, with Ben, me, my parents, some of his family and friends. The scribbled notes, diagrams, maps, newspaper clippings, printouts and profiles that hung from the wall looked like evidence from a police investigation.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, studying the wall. ‘What is this, a shrine? Do I need to spell it out to you?’
‘Please, Ben, just stop shouting. I don’t know what you mean – we have to act fast before it’s too late—’
‘Gabriel is dead,’ said Ben slowly. ‘Our son – my son – is dead. You know this. He died on his seventh birthday, one year ago today.’
Ella
When I shut my eyes and tell myself, Concentrate, Ella, concentrate! I can see the pub in gruesome detail, like an environment in a videogame, except I can smell it, too. I remember every stick of furniture, every shred of peeling paint, every cracked tile, every sticky, reeking puddle of beer.
It was officially called the Duke of Buckingham, but everyone knew it simply as the Duke. It was in the most run-down part of town, stuck at the end of a parade filled with stores that had plastic laundry baskets stacked outside, scratch cards piled on counters and offers to unlock phones stickered over the windows. A dingy pub covered in peeling gig posters and ads for comedy nights featuring stand-ups and bands no one had ever heard of. Half of the advertised bands had already split up and only their flyers survived, like time-frayed pleas for missing children and poems to killed cyclists.
Inside, spilt beer had run under the matting and rotted the floorboards. The sepia walls had sucked up a hundred years of cigarette smoke and were still awaiting fresh paint, but it would never come now; the neighbourhood was trying hard to gentrify itself, and the building was six months away from being gutted and converted into the kind of hipster lofts that Harry hated, unless they were in his investment portfolio.
The bands performed on a rickety stage at the rear of the old saloon bar. I guessed the Duke no longer attracted the music stars of the future, as advertised in its toilets, more like the failed bands of the past, singers who had been granted a moment of fame, only to blow their main chance. They returned to the small time, telling themselves that pub gigs were more real, that they’d get it right the next time around, failing to realize that there would be no second chance.
Well, as it turned out, there were no second chances for any of us.
On stage, a shaven-headed DJ in a ragged death-metal shirt, shorts and huge red boots was hopping about selling raffle tickets from a plastic bucket. A little scared and very excited, I followed Tamara through knots of student drinkers to the bar. In the last year, she’d changed so quickly that we were no longer equal. She was suddenly how I wanted to be.
‘It’s fine, Ella. You need to calm down a little,’ she said. ‘Stop playing with your hair, it makes you look childish. You always do that when you’re nervous. I’ll get the drinks, but if you tell anyone I was here you are, like, so dead.’
Tamara could buy alcohol without being carded in a dump like the Duke because the staff had the hots for her, and the manager had some kind of murky arrangement with a very mature Spanish girl her brother knew. So by pulling down the front of her T-shirt and flashing a little flesh, she could load up on another round of Red Bull vodka shots and beer chasers.
‘Don’t worry,’ I shouted back, ‘your secret is safe with me.’ We both had fathers who would have been horrified to see where we were, but that was the point – neither of us would have wanted to do anything our parents wanted us to do.
I had pinned up my blonde hair and tucked it under a baggy grey woollen cap, which I thought would make me look a bit cooler, but I think it probably had the effect of making me lo
ok like a male dwarf. Even so, I always felt more comfortable when I was in disguise; I was happier being somebody else.
We were there to see The Inspectors. I had gone on about Ryder to Tamara, hoping she’d see what I saw in him, but she hadn’t stopped complaining since we arrived. I was annoyed, too; the poster had added an apostrophe to the band’s name and had put the guitarist above the singer, when everyone knew it was Ryder who was the driving force behind the music.
‘This crowd is so not me,’ Tamara complained. ‘I mean, what kind of band has fans like this? They look so suburban.’ It was hot and crowded, and I couldn’t see the stage properly. Even I was beginning to wish we hadn’t come. The place was seriously skanky. Tamara preferred old-school soul, and told me that soul singers always got the classier venues.
Having raved about Ryder, I didn’t want him to let us down. ‘Let’s get closer,’ I said, accepting my drinks and pushing forward.
‘It’s fine here,’ she said. ‘We’ll only get felt up if we go down there.’ Too late. I was already on the move, and all she could do was follow.
‘Where did you get the money for those?’ Tamara asked, looking at the yards of pink raffle tickets hanging from my fist.
‘Karen’s purse,’ I told her, stuffing the tickets into my leather jacket. ‘It’s really easy to handle her. All I have to do is say how much I miss my real mother and she’s, like, buy yourself something pretty. So binary.’
‘I wish my parents would get divorced,’ Tamara said. ‘Instead, they stay out of each other’s way. You should see them in the kitchen, like repelling magnets. Just as well, really. The thought of them touching each other makes me explosively sick.’
‘Karen will get fed up with Harry eventually. She’ll see what a sad old man he’s become.’
‘I thought you used to be okay with him.’
‘Well, I was, sort of. Before he met her.’
Tamara tactfully changed the subject as she studied the stage. ‘What’s the big deal with this band?’
‘I keep trying to tell you, but you don’t listen. You’ll see when the lead singer comes on. It’s all about him. He’s the star – he sings and writes all their material. Baby’s just a crappy three-chord guitarist who does what she’s told.’ I downed my vodka shot and chugged some of the beer. My face felt flushed and feverish in the spotlights. I knew I’d put on way too much make-up, including thick silver eyeshadow that didn’t suit me. I was trying to appear as old as Tamara, but I think it just made me look like Jodie Foster in Bugsy Malone, sort of boyish and slutty. I would have gone to rinse it off, but I didn’t fancy using the reeking yeast factories they passed off as bathrooms.
The band members filed on stage to unenthusiastic applause, took their positions and launched into their set without stopping to acknowledge the audience. Ryder looked so skinny and craggy he barely matched my last memory of him. Baby now had the look of a seasoned heroin user. We’d been shown pictures of drug abuse at school as a dire warning about what could happen to girls who strayed from the path of Catholic doctrine. ‘It starts with a kiss,’ said Miss Prudence had said, sounding like someone in a late night movie, ‘and ends in the gutter.’
I’d always known that Baby would ruin Ryder’s chances of success. She was jealous of his talent. But as soon as Ryder started singing, I lost myself in his molten voice and knew that I would still walk over broken glass for him.
The band played four songs in quick succession and, even though Ryder stumbled around, slurring the lyrics and losing his place, I could still feel tears on my cheeks when they finished.
Tamara asked if I was all right. ‘Yes,’ I told her, wiping my face, ‘I’m fine.’
I was the only one there who knew all the lyrics. At the end of the set, the smattering of applause died away before the band had managed to file offstage. The DJ came back and made the announcements for next Saturday’s show. Then he drew the raffle.
‘What do you win?’ Tamara asked, trying to see if there were any prizes on the stage.
‘Mostly tickets for gigs, but I don’t want those,’ I said. The spots from the threadbare lighting rig were shining in my eyes. I was starting to feel a bit drunk, so I finished my beer in one to get the full effect. ‘One of the prizes is that you can go backstage. It always is. That means you get to meet Ryder. Hardly anyone else bought tickets, and I bought loads.’
‘Wow. Backstage. Imagine if there was actually a proper stage to go around the back of.’ Tamara was clearly not impressed by Ryder, and I could sort of understand why. He had looked as if he didn’t know where he was. Drugs and rock – it was all just so predictable. I didn’t mind if he let me down, but I didn’t want him to look bad to other people. They say, Never meet your heroes. You could add, Never let your friends meet your heroes.
‘So you don’t win, like, a bottle of no-brand vodka or anything?’ Tamara said sarcastically. She couldn’t see the point of spending any more time in the presence of the band than was strictly necessary.
‘What are you talking about?’ I shouted back. ‘It’s the best prize you could ever want. He’ll go it alone after this and become one of the biggest stars in the world. He has to, and this is a chance to meet him now, before it all really happens for him.’
‘The no-brand vodka’s probably a safer bet,’ Tamara said. ‘Trust me, sweetie, this is a competition you really don’t want to win.’
But I did want it, more than anything in the world, because it was part of my plan to escape. Without Ryder, I’d be doomed to a life of invisibility, watching from the sidelines while Harry and Karen lived out their entirely separate but equally creepy fantasies.
The DJ began to call out the winning numbers and I nervously checked the tickets in my hand.
Nick
The room tilted. I turned around as if seeing it for the first time. ‘Wait, wait, wait—’
‘You should remember, Nick, you were there.’
‘I took Gabriel to school this morning.’
‘No,’ said Ben emphatically. ‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I did – he was in the back of a car just a few hours ago.’
I pulled my phone from my pocket and accessed the photograph I had taken of the old BMW. ‘That’s the picture I shot through the rear window. I took right it after the accident. I realise it’s not very clear, but I know that’s Gabriel. Okay, the face – the features are blurred, but I’d swear in any court of law—’
Ben barely glanced at the phone before lowering it ‘Nick, think. You’re imagining this.’
I shoved the phone back at him. ‘Just look at it.’
‘There is no child.’
‘No, you’re not looking properly.’ I snatched the phone from him and expanded the image without really studying it. I guess I was anxious to prove the point. ‘He’s wearing his blue Chicago Bears sweatshirt with a hood. You can’t see it very clearly, but I’d know it anywhere.’
Ben stared closely at the photograph. ‘That’s a shopping bag. A blue supermarket shopping bag. There is no child in the picture.’
I frantically increased the size of the shot again. ‘You’re not concentrating. It’s Gabriel. I know it’s Gabriel.’
‘Really? Keep looking, Nick.’
I looked carefully at the phone. What I saw was a rain-spattered BMW with a back seat. And the seat was empty except for a large blue plastic bag with clothes sticking out of it.
‘But he was there in the shot, I’m sure of it . . . I mean, I couldn’t have imagined him—’
‘What, like you imagined seeing Gabriel alive this morning?’
‘Oh God.’ I felt suddenly sick. The familiar throbbing at the back of my neck came back with a vengeance. How could a year have slipped away from me? ‘I was so sure of it. I thought he was right there.’
‘Are you still taking your medication?’
‘No, I stopped a month ago. It gave me stomach cramps.’
He checked his phone. ‘I’m really sorry. I have to
go. I don’t have time for this today.’
‘Please, Ben – stay just for a few minutes. Something’s going on.’ I stared silently at the far window that overlooked the chaotic rear garden, the oak tree and its moss-covered treehouse. It took an effort to find the right words, to even think them. ‘We lost a child. I lost your child. It’s my fault, Ben.’
‘We’ve been over this a thousand times before. I never said I blamed you—’
‘I didn’t see him actually pass through the school door. I thought I did, but I didn’t. There was a gap. Just a few seconds, no more than four or five. We were supposed to show the world how well two men could raise a son. We were meant to set an example, and I wrecked everything.’
Ben’s voice softened. ‘You can’t keep beating yourself up about it, Nick.’
But I knew I would, no matter what he said. I was no longer who I once was. When Gabriel died, I lost the mechanism for living. I looked at old photographs on my laptop and saw different versions of myself, one coasting on a skateboard next to Gabriel, purple Converse All Stars at ten to two, the other standing alone in a grey room in a black suit trying not to break down. The change seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. I no longer had any idea how to get from one day to the next. You stop believing in the world, and you can’t return to your old, innocent self. Ben got over it. I never did.
‘You have to say it,’ said Ben, refilling my coffee mug. ‘Remember what Dr Forrest told you? You have to say the words out loud as well.’ He stood there in the middle of Gabriel’s bedroom, waiting for me.
I raised my eyes to his. ‘I can’t.’
‘Nick, I’m not going until you do.’
I shut my eyes and concentrated on the words. ‘Gabriel is dead.’
Ben meant to be kind, but there was steel in his voice. ‘So you know you couldn’t have seen him alive – why?’
‘Because we both identified his body.’