by Luke Walker
A spark grew inside his chest. Pain came with the spark. Grief welcomed him and he said their names in his heart.
Andy. Mick. Will. Geri.
He said their names over and over as grief took him.
Stu stared at the floor and tried to think of nothing.
***
Later, the last.
The school sat where it had for four decades. Its field rose up in a bank to the tennis courts and the grounds and the languages department. It stretched its pathways in and out of the grounds and its newer blocks grew side by side with the older ones, fresh bricks with old. In Block, three people sat on the floor as close to each other as they could. The school knew two of them and welcomed the third just as much as it welcomed the others. It felt the body of a fourth and was sad for the life gone. It wished for it back and knew it couldn’t return.
The school breathed.
It breathed and the world of real things returned to it. The world how it should be, how it is, not what it was.
Police sirens sang.
And the school breathed.
It breathed and one dead day returned to its place in the past, leaving the present with its grief and its hurts and its future.
Ninety Five
Stu paused with his hand on the fridge door as the voices and from the garden came through the living room into the hall and reached him in the kitchen. The kids’ voices, their happy shouts. Letting himself smile a little, Stu reached for a fresh beer from the fridge. His fingers closed around the cold bottle and the memory bloomed as it always did: quick, sharp and pained.
They’re at Mick’s and it’s hot, so hot. The party’s here and they’ve got weeks ahead of nothing, of parties and all of them together. He’s in the kitchen and he knows Mick is coming up behind him, ready to try to make him jump while the girls watch from the doorway. He sees Mick’s shadow sliding over the kitchen floor and he times his move perfectly. Mick comes at him and Stu whirls around, beer in hand and he shouts a meaningless word into Mick’s face and Mick jerks back, laughing, swearing at him. He steals Stu’s beer and Stu laughs hard. He takes another beer from the fridge and walks with Mick, Karen and Geri through the house to the back garden. Will’s there, fiddling with the stereo, skipping tracks on the CD until he gets to Oasis and Mick tunelessly sings Wonderwall and Stu sees Karen’s smile just as he sees Geri studying Will in a way Will hasn’t yet noticed. Stu has. He notices a lot and that’s a fine thing. It’s his. And they are his.
Stu let the memory go. It slipped away with a little promise it would return whenever it wanted to, return to prick at him whenever it wanted to.
He let out a trembling sigh and swallowed it when he sensed someone behind him.
‘You all right?’ Karen said.
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak at least for the next few seconds, then faced her.
Wordlessly, Karen extended her hand. He stared at it, not understanding. She didn’t move, only smiled a little. Laughing, Stu handed Karen the beer and took another from the fridge.
‘Kirsty says can you bring Lucy some squash,’ Karen said. ‘And she’ll have another splash of wine.’
Stu set his bottle down and poured squash into Lucy’s favourite cup. He concentrated on pouring the liquid, conscious of Karen’s eyes on him.
‘Sure you’re all right?’ she asked quietly.
‘Yeah.’
‘Thinking about it?’ Karen said.
‘Sort of. Mick. Fat bastard.’
She clenched her jaw for a moment. ‘Yeah.’
‘He’d love this. Always liked a party.’
‘Yeah.’
Stu forced himself to smile. Standing in the kitchen and getting maudlin with Karen would do neither of them any good.
‘Always liked getting drunk and blocking the toilet with puke,’ he said and Karen giggled.
‘That was you, wasn’t it?’
‘Never.’
He diluted the squash and kissed Karen’s cheek. She squeezed his arm and he welcomed the good weight of her hand.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘Any time. But I draw the line at snogs.’
She smiled, lips not parting. It was perfunctory, Stu saw, but that didn’t matter. Any smile was better than no smile these days.
Stu limping only a little and Karen keeping close to his side, they joined the others in the garden, Stu gave his daughter her drink; she ran to join Susan and the two boys in the paddling pool, and Stu handed the wine to Kirsty. She blew him a kiss. Stu took the chair between her and Jodie, stretching his leg with a little grunt. Karen seated herself and opened her beer.
‘Cheers,’ she said and Stu wondered if the other women had noticed the little shine in her eyes.
Of course they have, Will whispered to him. They’re women, you knobhead.
Stu bit his cheeks to stop his laughter and opened his beer.
‘Cheers,’ he said and lifted his bottle.
Jodie and Kirsty did the same; the group drank and for a little moment, the only sound was the children in the pool and birdsong. Then Jodie shifted in her seat and Stu glanced at her. She was watching the kids and Stu thought that might be on purpose.
‘Any of you heard about the new Tom Cruise film?’ she said.
Stu shook his head and knew at once where this was going. He stayed silent and waited for Jodie to continue.
‘I read about it the other day. Andy’s last screenplay, it’s the film. They bought it a few months ago.’
She fell silent. Stu sipped his beer and felt Kirsty’s eyes on him. He knew what she’d be thinking: he was the man, he’d been Andy’s friend long ago and it was down to him to reply to Jodie.
‘He’d be pretty chuffed about that.’
It was weak. It was much too small but it was all he had.
Sorry, Andy.
Stu kept his eyes on the hedge at the end of his garden. The occasional bee flew in and out of the greenery.
‘Jodie?’ Karen said.
‘Yeah?’
‘The boys. What have you told them?’
Stu took a long swallow of his beer and wished it was all easier than this. Two years, a handful of days like this when they all got together, got their kids here, drank too much and talked too little; two years of that and talking about Mick, Will, Andy and Geri was like digging knives into each of them.
Although tears were in Jodie’s words, her voice was surprisingly strong.
‘I told them their dad was a good man and that he died helping a friend who was in trouble. They cry sometimes but they’re not old enough to understand what it means. Not yet.’
Stu glanced at her around the rim of his bottle. She saw his look and attempted a smile. It almost appeared genuine.
‘They’re good boys,’ Karen said.
In the pool, Mark and Kevin splashed water towards Susan who goggled at them, then splashed back.
Good boys. Good boys with good girls.
Stu’s thought was a pleasant one. It was easy to watch the kids in the pool and think about them as they’d be tomorrow or next week or next month. Beyond that was a featureless grey world.
Stu only realised he’d spoken aloud when Kirsty said his name a few times to get his attention.
‘Yeah?’ he said.
‘What did you say?’
He blushed. ‘I don’t know. Thinking out loud.’
‘Too much beer,’ Karen said and Stu snorted.
‘Never too much beer.’ He patted his stomach which jutted over the waistband of his jeans. ‘Fat and forty. It’s the way ahead.’
Kirsty laughed; Jodie threw a crisp at Stu. It landed on his chest. He threw it back, laughing. He knew why Karen wasn’t laughing, why she was watching him. It was simple.
She knows you in old ways.
The thought wasn’t his own. Nor did it belong to Andy, Mick, Will or Geri. All of them talked to him occasionally. He replied but only if he was drunk enough.
The thought was cold
but not without feeling. It was easy to think of the voice announcing bad news and regretting having to do so.
Stu glanced at Karen. She winked at him and he flashed back to the last day of school again.
Geri.
Geri noticing his appraisal as she watches Will at the stereo. She meets his gaze, eyes cool, a little smile sitting at the corner of her lips. A second spins out into something longer; she lifts a hand, brushes her hair back from her forehead and winks at him, a sly gesture of amusement. Another second comes between them, long enough for Stu to see Geri as he never has before, and long enough for him to want to tell Will to do whatever Geri tells him to, to be whatever she wants him to be. She crosses over the patio to the grass and stands with Will, and then Karen is there, talking to Stu, blocking his view of Will and Geri and he knows what this is, he knows where he is and he knows what is coming in the weeks ahead.
Stu watched Karen place her drink on the little table beside her and lower her hand to her jeans pocket. Jodie and Kirsty also saw the movement and their conversation fell into silence.
‘I wasn’t sure if I should bring this,’ Karen said and touched her back pocket. In the pool, the children played.
‘What is it?’ Jodie said in a voice too light to be real.
‘I put it in a box when I got home the day after,’ Karen muttered. ‘Not looked at it since. Didn’t open the box, didn’t even go in that cupboard.’
‘The diary?’ Kirsty said.
‘Sort of.’
Karen pulled a sheet of paper from her pocket. It was folded in four. Its frayed edges fluttered in the wind.
‘I went in that cupboard last week. Been thinking about it since we arranged today. Thought it would be all right to bring the diary and …I don’t know. Give it to one of you. Throw it away.’ She shrugged. ‘The thing is, when I opened the box, this was all that was left. Just one page.’
‘Where was the rest of it?’ Jodie asked.
‘Gone.’
‘What?’
‘Gone. No trace of it. Just this left.’
‘What about the photo?’ Jodie said.
Karen didn’t speak and Stu pictured Block as it had been during their dark time there. Them, huddled on the floor, bleeding, the carpet sticky with patches of their blood. Karen’s hand had crept to his pocket, pulled the diary free and there had been a second of wonder, then panic when he’d realised the photo wasn’t with him.
‘Don’t know,’ he said to Jodie. She studied him. ‘It went at some point. I don’t know if we lost it or what, but it went.’
Stu extended a hand which shook a little. Karen didn’t offer him the page.
‘Do you believe me?’ she said.
‘About what?’
‘About this being all that’s left.’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
She considered that, then handed him the page.
‘When’s it from?’ Kirsty asked.
‘There’s no date and it’s not the full entry. I think that’s the last half of it,’ Karen replied.
‘Can I say something?’ Jodie said.
‘Of course,’ Kirsty said.
Jodie studied the children. ‘I never met Geri, obviously. Mick only talked about her a few times. He mentioned all of you, but he only brought her up when he was proper drunk.’ She smiled and it was bitter. ‘I know what she meant to him and to you but I still wish sometimes you’d never been friends.’ She stared at Stu. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ Karen muttered. ‘I know what you mean. We all lost our friends, the babies lost their father.’ Her voice broke and Stu recognized the stumble. Karen wasn’t about to cry; she was holding onto her anger. ‘Phil didn’t just hurt Geri or Leigh. He hurt us. We paid for what Leigh wanted to do to Phil. We didn’t have a choice about getting involved or getting Phil face to face with Geri and Leigh.’
Stu found his voice. ‘It’s not about Geri. Not all of it. It was Leigh. I don’t want to know what it was like for her. Ten years. Christ.’ He swallowed a large mouthful of cold lager. ‘What he did to her, I hope he’s still screaming. For what he did to both of them.’ He met Jodie’s steady gaze. ‘It was Leigh. With the gun. At the school. Then in the bushes. Then following us to Monk’s Cave, I think. Leigh wanted to hurt people. It was Geri’s diary, her writing, but Leigh writing through her.’
‘She didn’t care what happened to us. She cared about getting to Phil. We were just things she could use to make that happen,’ Karen murmured.
‘I think Geri let her,’ Kirsty said. ‘I think she wanted you all back together like you used to be so maybe you could stop Phil. I told you what he said about being a teacher, about a girl in his school. If Leigh used you all to get to Phil, then maybe Geri used you to stop Phil from doing anything to that girl. And I blamed her. When I was stuck in the house with Phil. I blamed her. It was all her fault to me, and that’s not fair. It’s not true. It was all down to that son of a bitch. God knows what would have happened if Geri hadn’t come back. If she hadn’t got you all together, Phil would have hurt that girl. I know it.’
Stu reached for his wife and held her hand. The sun had warmed her skin. Stu welcomed the sensation and ran his fingers over her wrist.
‘He was a monster,’ she said.
Kirsty kissed Stu’s fingers and let him go. He held the page of Geri’s diary, aware the women were watching him. He didn’t move. His wife, his friend, his friend’s partner: they were here, he was here and how he wished the others were here, too.
For no reason at all, he looked across the garden, beyond the pool and children to the hedge.
There were no ghosts and no visions. There was only the hedge and Stu’s wish that his friends, all his friends, were here at the party that wasn’t a party without them.
Geri came back. So why can’t the others be here now? How the hell is that fair?
Stu closed his eyes for a moment. Fair? What did that have to do with anything? Nothing about the whole shitty business had been fair. So why should it surprise him that his friends couldn’t come back?
A memory whispered to him. Karen’s voice from outside Geri’s house with Mick come back to them.
Maybe things, maybe they just have to be in the right place.
Maybe she’d been right. Maybe things had to be a certain way. Didn’t stop it hurting, though. Didn’t stop it feeling like they’d lost so much to stop Phil.
Mick came back to you, remember? He came back to help you. Don’t you forget that.
Stu listened.
So did Andy. On the steps. He saved you from falling so you remember that. And you remember why you did this. You remember that when you think about if all this was worth it.
Was it Geri talking to him in a scolding way? Was he talking to himself?
Does it matter?
And that was all himself. He knew why they’d gotten involved. He knew what they’d been to each other.
Andy. Mick. Will. Geri.
He said their names in his head. He said them in his heart and he wished they were with him.
In the pool, the children played together.
Stu unfolded the page and read.
Ninety Six
She’s Geri. She’s nineteen. She’s the girl looking in the mirror.
Geri reads the page she finished writing a moment before. She reads it again and again and she lets the breeze play on the back of her neck. Nice. Comforting. Warm.
The clock radio beside her bed. Quarter to seven. Time to get ready, to get dressed. Time to put on her new skirt and think about him while she does, time to get ready before Karen arrives and they go to Mick’s. She stays on her chair and touches the pages of her diary. Putting the words on paper is like locking them up. They’re in a secret place and while they’re hidden, she doesn’t have to think about them or what they might mean.
Breeze on her neck. The wonderful sensation of the wind on her skin.
‘Will.’
The name spoken aloud and
it’s full of promise and potential.
Geri traces a finger over her words and reads, her voice a whisper in her bedroom.
‘Will. I’m going to tell you tonight, going to say it right to your face. And what I hope more than anything is that I can get all the words out. I hope that more than I hope you’ll kiss me tonight. Isn’t that odd? I hope I can speak, more than I want you to feel the same. Because saying it all tonight means I’m in charge of what I feel and what I do about it. If you kiss me, if you feel the same, then that’s going to be so good. If you don’t, I can deal with that. I won’t like it but I can deal with it. But if I can speak and say everything and say it all to your face, then I win. Even if it’s just a little bit, I win.’
She falls silent and resists the need to touch her flaming cheeks. How much she blushes. How much she can’t hide what she’s feeling right now. The thought makes her laugh at herself and doing that makes her laugh even more.
Geri stands and crosses to the mirror beside her bed. Her smiling reflection watches her and she looks at herself as if with new eyes. With his eyes.
Will he see her? Will he look at her face and at her eyes? Her beautiful blues. She heard him say that to Mick back near Christmas, the boys talking in Will’s kitchen with no idea she’d been in the hallway, listening.
Geri flexes the long muscles in her legs and presses them together. Tendons stand out. She inhales and her breasts rise. She touches them with new hands, with his hands and heat strokes her. It slips inside her stomach and she relishes the sensation. It’s something new. It’s something clean.
The clock. Five to seven. Twenty minutes. Geri drops her towel to the floor, pulls on her underwear and slides her new skirt up her legs. The whisper of the material on her skin, the tickle of it and she thinks of Will again, and again the same heat lights her.
‘Will,’ she says and finishes dressing. Clothed, she studies herself in the mirror one last time. ‘Going to tell you, Will. Going to say it to your face.’
And maybe the evening will go as she wants it to. And maybe she’ll get what she wants.
Back here.
Back here tonight. The two of them. And what a thought that is. What a picture filling her head. Geri lets out a small laugh, tells herself to calm down and a car pulls up outside: Karen early as usual. Geri pads across to the window and Karen is getting out of her car. She looks up and waves and Geri waves back. Karen walks to the pavement and looks up just before she moves out of sight beyond the fence at the edge of Geri’s garden. She sticks out her tongue, a childish gesture that makes Geri laugh. Then she’s gone and Geri gazes at the pavement and the pretty gardens and the little section of Oakfield Walk visible from her bedroom window. A couple of cars pass each other. Maybe people heading out on a Friday night, maybe people going to see their friends just like she is. Maybe. Maybe. All the maybes in the world.