Forever Is Over

by Wade, Calvin

  The smugness had not yet left Ray’s face.

  “I know what I’ve not told you! Something weird happened to me yesterday!”

  I loved Ray but a drama without him being central to it, would only interest him for so long. I’m sure he felt genuinely sorry for me, that I was having to deal with the crisis created after Vomit Breath’s death, but ultimately he knew I wasn’t in the depths of despair, so he was happy to change the subject to one where he was the central character. As I say, I loved the man, but Ray’s favourite subject was always, “RAY”. I was happy to allow him to talk. At times, his incessant talking could become a little irritating, but following on from Vomit Breath’s death and the countless questions I had been asked, it was a welcome distraction.

  “Someone kissed me yesterday!”

  I think Ray was hoping I would be furiously jealous, but after the twenty four hours I had been through, all I could manage was to feign minor interest.

  “Really? Who?”

  “You’re not going to believe this!”

  Only Ray could try to trump the unexpected death of my mother by a story about someone kissing him! I was bored already.

  “Just tell me, Ray!”

  “Honestly, Jemma, you won’t believe it!”

  “I’m sure I won’t. Who?”

  “Guess!”

  “Ray, at this moment in time, if it was Madonna or the Pope, I’m really not bothered. Just tell me.”

  “Richie!”

  “Richie? Kelly’s boyfriend, Richie?”

  Still smug.

  “The very one!”

  This sounded odd. Then again, I suppose Richie was odd. He had slept with me and then denied all knowledge. Kelly loved him dearly, but he was odd.

  “When did he kiss you? Was it when Everton scored?”

  “No, no, it wasn’t a celebratory kiss, Jemma, it was a romantic one. He must have a bit of a thing for me. It was mad! He pulled me to him in a vice like grip, started kissing me, tongue and everything and when I pulled away, you should have seen his face. Furious he was. Got out the door, slammed it and stomped off. We were at a petrol station just off the M6 and he wouldn’t even get back in the car, I had to leave him there!”

  “Is this the God’s honest truth?”

  “Swear on your life, Jemma! He told me I was disgusting for repelling his advances. He must be one of those pro-gays who thinks everyone who is not gay is weird!”

  All things considered, it was probably an inappropriate time to be laughing, but I couldn’t help myself. It sounded ludicrous!

  “Ray, there is no way that Richie is gay!”

  “Well he was doing a very good impression yesterday! He started crying about the Hillsborough disaster, I started comforting him and he obviously read my signals all wrong and started kissing me. He’s gay, as sure as a puff is a puff!”

  “So are you not interested then?”

  “NO!”

  “He’s a good looking lad!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Jemma, I’m no arse bandit!”

  “But you think Richie is!”

  “I don’t think Jemma, I know. If I’d have kissed him back, he’d have been up my bum like a rat up a drainpipe!”

  Richie

  Kelly and I sat in the early morning sunshine on the “Sunny Road” only speaking intermittently. We both had a lot to take in. As I thought, questions were raised in my head so I would occasionally break the tranquillity by asking Kelly for explanations. I needed to fill gaps in my understanding. One of the biggest shocks for me was learning that Kelly’s Mum used to regularly beat Jemma. I knew she was an idiot, I just hadn’t realised she was a psychopath.

  “Why did you not tell me all this had been going on?”

  “I couldn’t, Richie. I was ashamed of myself for not doing anything to help.”

  There was also the shock of coming to terms with the simple fact that my girlfriend had ended someone’s life. My girlfriend who seemed to me like the most beautiful and gentle girl you could possibly hope to meet, had killed someone. Finally, I had to deal with the shock of being asked to run away with the aforementioned killer.

  “Kelly, where would we run to if we ran away?”

  “Abroad. They would find us if we didn’t go abroad.”

  “Whereabouts are you thinking?”

  “We’d need to keep moving. Anyway, there’s loads of places I’d like to go. Places that are culturally a million miles from here, places like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.”

  As I was no stranger to home comforts, Egypt and Saudi Arabia did not exactly appeal. I managed to smile.

  “I can’t imagine us there, Kelly!”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m too used to my Mum making my bed, cleaning the dishes, putting the TV on for me and making me a pot of tea. Can you see me riding through the desert on a camel?”

  “No, but I could picture us riding through the desert on horseback, like in Lawrence of Arabia!”

  “I think you’ve watched too many films, Kelly! I wouldn’t even be able to get on a camel or a horse, I’d probably end up facing the wrong way!”

  For the first time all day, Kelly giggled a little to herself. It was a sweet giggle.

  “OK. You win! Egypt and Saudi are out. Where do you want to go?”

  I wanted to stay in Ormskirk but I knew that was not what Kelly wanted to hear.

  “Somewhere they speak English. My French is crap and I can’t roll my “R”s so anywhere Spanish speaking is out! Somewhere like Australia or America would be great.”

  After I said Australia, I cringed as I thought Kelly may latch on to the ancestral convict link, but luckily she didn’t.

  “I’d be happy going to either the US or Oz, I just need to get away from here.”

  “Today?”

  “No, but soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “This month.”

  “I don’t think we could get into Australia that quick, you need a visa. You might need one for America too.”

  I was trying to slow things down. Ultimately, I was going nowhere, I just didn’t want Kelly to either.

  “I need to go this month, Richie.”

  “Kelly, that’s daft.”

  Kelly’s bottom lip quivered a little. I could tell she was offended.

  “No it is not!”

  “Kelly, it is! I saw that policewoman with you earlier, there is no way in the world that she thinks that you killed your Mum. If you try and leg it this week, then all of a sudden, you are looking guilty.”

  “When do you suggest we go then?”

  This was another surreal conversation. I had a lump in my scrotum the size of a marble and pretty soon I’d be listening to a urologist tell me whether or not I had cancer. Going on the run with a sixteen year old killer was not high on my list of priorities, despite her being the prettiest girl in the world.

  “Let it all die down. We could go in a few months time.”

  I didn’t mean this. This was a halfway house that was meant to placate her. It didn’t work.

  “I might be in jail by then,” Kelly complained.

  And I might be lifting hot coals with your mother, I thought.

  “There are too many reasons that we can’t just up and leave.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ve already mentioned two. One is the fact that we’ll need a visa to get in any decent country and the other is that if you make a run for yourself, you may as well tattoo, ‘I killed my mother’ on your forehead.”

  “Those reasons aren’t enough to stop me.” Kelly stated.

  “Well, they’re enough to stop me! So a third reason is that if you go now, you go alone.”

  “What else?” Kelly was mad now. Not mad crazy, mad furious.

  “Money, for starters. How could we survive as runaways, we’re skint!”

  “I’m not. I’ve been saving the money I made in Woolies in case I stayed on into Sixth Form.”

  “How much have you
got?”

  “Two and a half grand!”

  I thought she was lying.

  “Two and a half grand! From working at Woolies?”

  “No, most of it came from my Granddad before he died, three years ago. He gave me a passbook from a building society with my name on and two thousand pounds in it. He said to keep it away from Mum because she’d just fritter it away on drink and drugs. He did the same for Jemma.”

  Inadvertently, Kelly had just handed me my ‘Joker’!

  “There’s my final reason.”

  “What?”

  “Jemma. Could you leave Jemma to deal with all this crap on her own?”

  I knew I had her. Kelly thought long and hard about this conundrum, before eventually replying,

  “No, you’re right, Richie. I couldn’t. I’ve let her down too much already to leave her on her own. In a lot of ways, Jemma relies on me. If we ran off and left her here, on her own, she’d never forgive me. So I’m trapped, aren’t I?”

  “You’re not trapped, Kelly, you just have to sit tight. No-one will ever suspect you of killing your Mum. They may suspect, Jemma, but you, never!”

  I felt guilty saying that but it was true. If the police suspected anyone of killing Kelly’s Mum, it would be Jemma. Problem was, if Jemma was arrested, Kelly would confess. There was no way Kelly would let Jemma go to jail for a crime that Kelly had committed.

  I started to panic. Maybe I had this all wrong. Maybe Kelly was in more danger of being caught for doing this than I thought. On the TV, no-one gets away with murder. Maybe it’s the same in real life. Maybe Kelly should be making a run for it. Maybe I should be encouraging her to do just that.

  Having convinced myself this would all blow over and a new normality would emerge, now I suddenly felt a lot less secure. Everything was falling apart. Kelly’s life, my body. That’s right, I remembered, I had convinced myself this would be the day I told Kelly about the lump. Nothing was going to stop me telling her. I looked at Kelly. Her face was pale and she looked crestfallen. I couldn’t break the camel’s back with this one. It would have to wait. Wait until the good times returned, which if I got the all clear, could be just around the corner, it would be an insignificant news item then. On the other hand, if I had cancer and the truth about Kelly came to light, those good times might be light years away.

  Jemma

  “She was great your Mum! Life and soul of very party! I’m going to fucking miss her! Saturday nights will never be the same again!”

  This was a universal eulogy for Vomit Breath from every druggie and alcoholic, aged over thirty, within a ten mile radius of Ormskirk.

  Each and every one of them turned up for the funeral, probably scenting the smell of free beer. They all wanted to share their stories of nights on the lash with Vomit Breath! She was the patron saint of dipsomaniacs! I refrained from adding my own eulogy as it would have shattered their allusions.

  “She crammed several lifetimes of partying into her thirty eight years, your Mum did! Burnt the candle at both ends! She was generous too, always the first to the bar!”

  Being first to the bar was not generosity as far as Vomit Breath was concerned. It was a shrewd tactic. Buy the first round in the local whilst drinks were cheap, then avoid paying later when they hit the trendy wine bars and nightclubs when prices were almost double. As the night progressed, Vomit Breath’s mates were always too smashed to keep track of who had bought the last round, so she always said she had bought the round before last. At home, she used to brag that in over twenty years of partying, she had never bought two rounds in the same night. Very generous! To a fault!

  All in all, there were about fifty mourners. Over forty drunken friends of Vomit Breath’s, plus myself, Kelly, Ray, Richie, Vomit Breath’s mother “Tut” and my school friend Amy, who I hadn’t seen a great deal of since working in the bank and dating Ray, but she came to provide some emotional support which was really good of her.

  “Tut” was on typical form.

  “Look at these people! Jemma, if you ever needed proof of what a mess your mother made of her life, you would just need to look at the quality of her friends. The lowest of the low! If the caste system existed in this country, these lot would be the great unwashed! How on earth did your mother screw everything up so badly? I feel sorry for your poor Granddad, he’ll be turning in his grave tonight, he really will.”

  I pictured what a body would look like after three years of decaying. Not fit to turn, I wouldn’t have thought.

  Over the course of the day, Ray and ‘Tut’ had formed an alliance. It wasn’t the most unlikely alliance in the world, as other than Amy and me, he wasn’t really left with too many people he could talk at. Ray and Richie were maintaining a healthy distance apart throughout the post-crematorium knees up and I knew full well that Kelly was not Ray’s number one fan.

  By nine in the evening, both Ray and ‘Tut’ had had enough and they looked at the drunken revellers downing whiskey shots in Vomit Breath’s memory, with more than a hint of disdain.

  “We need to kick this lot out soon,” Ray commented to ‘Tut’ looking at his watch,

  “I have experience of dealing with drunks. They’ll wreck this place if we don’t get them out soon!”

  “I’ll tell them to go,” Tut replied, “and if they don’t leave, I’ll be calling the police.”

  ‘Tut’ considered this statement for a moment before re-considering.

  “Actually, no. I’m sure most of these reprobates have spent plenty of time in a prison cell, maybe the threat of the police will not be enough to get them out. More drastic action is called for!

  I tell you what we could do, Ray. We could pour the rest of the alcohol down the drain, that would send them packing!”

  So, ‘Tut’ and Ray began the process of discreetly trying to empty the house of booze. To be fair to ‘Tut’ this was one of her better ideas and I have to confess throughout the day she had been unusually tolerable, even making me smile with some of her acidic comments.

  At the crematorium, when Vomit Breath’s coffin slowly disappeared from view, on it’s way to the incinerator, ‘Tut’ muttered,

  “Dear Lord, that woman has so much alcohol inside her, when she

  hits the fire, she’ll go up like a flambé!”

  Prior to that, when the funeral hearses arrived at our house, Kelly, more through guilt than sentiment had started to weep. ‘Tut’ was unsympathetic.

  “Pull yourself together, Kelly! You weren’t even fond of the woman!”

  “It’s not that, Nan,” Kelly replied, “I’m just not feeling too well today.”

  ‘Tut’ huffed.

  “Well, I wish you’d have told me,” Tut replied, “I could have made a two for one deal with the undertakers!”

  Vomit Breath’s funeral service was held at St. Michael’s church in Aughton. The Vicar only consented to the service taking place as ‘Tut’ had been a regular member of the congregation there for many years and at one point was even the Church treasurer. Vomit Breath, however, had not stepped in that church or any other, throughout her adult life and I’m sure if she had had time to plan her own funeral, it would not have included a church service.

  The Vicar read from Matthew Chapter 19 verse 26,

  “But Jesus beheld them and said unto them, with men this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.”

  I think this was the Vicar’s way of saying, in his kind hearted way, that no-one could sort Vomit Breath out on earth, so it was now God’s job to get her on the straight and narrow. Personally, I was convinced Vomit Breath’s escalator would be heading in completely the opposite direction.

  The Vicar mentioned in his speech, (it was definitely a speech not a eulogy), that Vomit Breath had “her own quiet faith”.

  “Silent more like,” I whispered to Kelly, “the only faith Vomit Breath had was faith in her ability to get tanked up every Friday and Saturday night!” Kelly did not laugh, she was taking the whole cere
mony very seriously. From St. Michael’s, the funeral procession headed to Southport crematorium. There were two hearses and about eight other cars, four of which were taxis, all crammed to capacity as Vomit Breath’s mates were permanently unfit or unwilling to drive. Then, after the crematorium, ‘Tut’ had arranged a buffet at the Comrades Club in Ormskirk. The room was far too big for the amount of mourners but ‘Tut’ had chosen it as there were plenty of bar staff and she thought it would be the only place in Ormskirk capable of managing the demand for drink!

  Once the Comrades function finished, we were followed back to our house by about twenty of Vomit Breath’s friends, who had decided to honour her memory by getting paralytic. By ten o’clock, through a combination of the endeavours of ‘Tut’ and Ray who poured drink down the sink in vast quantities and the revellers who poured it down their throats in equal measure, the house was dry. Once they became aware of this, the alcoholic locusts moved on, en masse into Ormskirk town centre, leaving the three family members, plus Amy, Ray and Richie, to clear up their mess.

  The following morning, we realised that several CDs had disappeared along with bed clothes, pillows, jewellery, cuddly toys, a collection of Vomit Breath’s sex toys and £40 in cash. At one point, Kelly and I reckoned that there must have been one thief in Vomit Breath’s bedroom whilst their accomplice was in the back garden catching everything that was thrown out of the window. Classy friends!

  Once everyone had departed that night with the exception of Kelly, ‘Tut’ and myself, ‘Tut’ sat us down and asked how we intended on paying the bills now Vomit Breath had died.

  “I was already paying the majority of the rent, Nan,” I explained, “and Kelly’s going to ask for more hours at Woolworth’s, between us we’ll cover the rent.”

  “Well that’s a good start, but what about the utility bills and supermarket shopping and everything else. Life’s not cheap you know.”

  “Nan, stop stressing. I know. I’ve had to chip in for years. Remember, I used to work at Freeman, Hardy & Willis before the job in the bank? Your daughter has not exactly grafted to pay for us to live like pigs in mud. We will manage. No doubt about it, we will manage.”