by Andy Jones
Feeling a little exposed in her tight t-shirt, she pulls on a jumper, picks up her keys and phone and heads outside. When she hits the high street, Zoe has two options: up the hill towards the tube station is the new organic deli and the refurbished real-ale pub; downhill (she has never before made the connection) is the Aldi and the slightly scary locals’ pub. If Alex were fetching breakfast provisions, would he have gone to Aldi or the deli? And if he were watching the game, would they show it in the downmarket drinker, the hipster ale-house, or both? Zoe turns right, heading up the shallow incline. The traffic on her side of the road is flowing freely, while the vehicles on the opposite side of the street are backed up halfway down the hill.
Maybe fifty yards from the deli, she sees the parked police car. A uniformed officer is leaning casually against a white van, talking to another man, this one wearing a fluorescent orange boiler suit. Her heart rate increases, and she quickens her step – trying not to think, but simply to cover the distance between here and there without running. The men appear relaxed, there are no flashing lights and no sirens, but a section of road is cordoned off with striped blue and white tape. She looks for an ambulance, but doesn’t see one. A female police officer wearing a high-vis jacket is standing in the road, waving traffic past, and a second man wearing a boiler suit is sighting down a tripod-mounted device. Zoe wonders if a pipe has burst, or something similar – but then why the police?
As she draws closer to the area, she becomes aware of people standing on the pavement, talking solemnly and looking in the direction of the zoned-off area. There are fragments of broken glass, orange and white, scattered across the road; chalk marks have been drawn around a short quartet of skid marks. A splash of liquid, not blood, but it seems ominous and conspicuous on the dry tarmac.
As if coming out of a dream – or a nightmare – Zoe realizes she has stopped walking. She turns to the police officer leaning against the van and starts towards him; he sees her approaching and stands up straight, as if suddenly found out. He watches Zoe approach, and the man in the orange boiler suit goes to join his colleague at the tripod.
‘Can I help you, Miss?’
‘What happened?’
‘There was an accident.’
‘What accident? Was someone hurt?’
‘You’re shaking, Miss. Would you like to sit down?’
‘My boyfriend,’ she says. ‘He left the house, a few hours ago I think and . . . what happened here?’
The man takes hold of Zoe’s elbow and walks her to the police car; he opens the passenger-side door and Zoe sits inside without being asked. The officer walks around the front of the car then climbs in beside her.
Zoe turns to the man; he’s removed his hat and she notices he is prematurely bald. Alex is beginning to recede in the same area; in two years his hair will look like this man’s.
‘Was somebody . . . did somebody get . . .’ She can’t finish the sentence, but the police officer understands. He nods.
‘Can you describe your boyfriend?’ the man says.
‘He . . .’ Zoe’s voice sounds as if it belongs to someone else. ‘He used to be a DJ.’
PART 2
Henry
A Ribbon-Wrapped Brick
It’s past midnight and the surrounding fields are black and silent, disturbed only by me. Eight days ago I left my fiancée at the altar, but already it feels like an event that happened to someone else; an actor in a play, an other, a him. Not me. Surely I could never do a thing like that. A fox’s eyes or maybe a cat’s flash in the headlights, Oh, it’s you alright, we see you, Henry Smith.
That’s me; sneaking home undercover of the night, the way I snuck out on April just over a week ago. As the rental car emerges from a tunnel of old oaks reaching towards each other across the single lane, the road forks. To the left it curves back towards the castle; to the right, the village via the train station. Cold nauseating anxiety floods my empty spaces.
What were you thinking?
What are you thinking?
I turn off the engine and the silence envelops me like a dropped cloak. We tore down these lanes in this dark at this hour – me, Brian, and whoever else. Five or six to a car, taking the black corners at idiot speeds on old tyres. If anyone had been coming our way it would have been a busy week at the funeral co-op, but nothing ever did. We came out here in Mad George’s Cortina once, April’s big brother taking his hands from the wheel and holding them over his eyes. As the car veered towards the edge of the road, I went to grab the wheel and George lashed out, punching me in the ear. And then he was laughing and passing around cigarettes like nothing had happened.
Walking down these monotone lanes last week, I was breathing so heavily the sound filled my ears like surf and I wondered if I would hear an approaching car before it smashed the guts out of me. I closed my eyes and counted twenty-three steps before I slipped on something wet, and fell into a patch of gorse, scratching my cheek and twisting my ankle.
Sitting in the quiet car now I depress the brake as far as it will go and experience a jolt of pain in my ankle. I turn on the engine, put it into gear and turn right, towards home. If that’s what it still is.
Last week I caught the first train from the station without worrying about where it went. It was a new day, eight-thirty in the morning, when it arrived at Liverpool Lime Street, and from there – not on a whim exactly, but something similarly automatic – to Manchester airport. I’ve had time and solitude since to wonder why I went there, and the best I can come up with is simply that it was the next place I was meant to be. As if I could mitigate my failure to turn up at the altar by at least arriving at the airport. Our honeymoon flight was due to depart in a day and a half, and while I had no means or intention of taking the flight, neither did I have anywhere else to go. So I booked myself into the airport Hilton, punched the wall and opened the minibar. When I stepped out of the shower an hour later, my phone was fit to crack the glass with messages and missed calls from Brian and my mother. The messages progressed from concern to anger to incomprehension to threat. I listened to them all twice. It became apparent Brian had slept in, and when neither he nor I showed up for breakfast, the general consensus was that we were doing ‘groom and best man things’. It wasn’t until Big Boots all but knocked the door off the hinges that it was discovered Henry Smith had left the building. The note had been discovered but, so far, the only people who knew about it were Brian and my parents.
I sent the same message to Brian and my mother:
I’m sorry, but I can’t go through with it. Am safe, will call in a day or so. Sorry.
One of them was going to have to break the news I was too much of a coward to break myself. But there was no turning back now. My phone started ringing within seconds. It would ring all day and nothing would change. And Jesus Christ, can’t they trace your whereabouts with these things? I wrapped the phone inside a towel and smashed it against the corner of the sink, again and again until I heard the glass break and the device folded in on itself. And then I threw up the two minibar beers and packet of peanuts I’d eaten for breakfast.
As I pass the train station, I let the speed drop to below twenty. Eight days felt like a long time while I was isolated in the Manchester Hilton, eating room service and working my way through the minibar. But now, approaching the village in which I must surely be the most hated resident, it is obvious that one week and one day is no time at all.
As I pull into the car park at the back of my parents’ pub, the headlights of the rental pick out my own car, parked in one of the three spots reserved for staff. I am relieved and surprised to see that – as far as I can tell – the windows are intact and the wheels appear to be inflated. There is also something balanced on the bonnet – a single house brick wrapped in a pink ribbon. And it’s as if the temperature all of a sudden drops by ten degrees. After I’ve parked the rental at the far end of the car park, I walk back to my own car, a three-year-old Audi that felt like a foolish indulgence
at the time, and feels even more so now with my almost-father-in-law’s wedding present balanced on the hood.
I lift the brick slowly and rub my finger lightly across the uncovered paintwork – it appears to be unscratched. It’s not until I move around to the side of the car to check the tyres that I see the twin gouges running the length of the car from front to back wings, gouged, at a guess, with the corner of a red house brick. The same has been done on the opposite side, two sets of parallel score marks reminiscent of the racing stripes on Mad George’s Cortina.
‘Time you call this?’ says a gruff voice, and I whirl around to find my father standing in the doorway at the back of the pub kitchen. He’s dressed in pyjamas, his hair messy.
‘Dad.’
Dad holds a finger to his lips and beckons me inside with a movement of his head.
‘Drink?’
I nod, and place my brick on the bar while Dad pours two large whiskies. He hands one to me and taps his glass against mine before taking a drink.
‘So,’ he says, regarding the ribbon-wrapped brick, ‘I would have brought it in for you, but your mother . . .’ He shrugs. ‘She thought you should see it.’
‘Sleeping?’
Dad nods, swallows half of his drink.
‘How’s it been?’
Dad laughs quietly. ‘How’d you think?’
‘Fucked up a bit, haven’t I.’
‘Just a bit. Nice girl, too.’
‘I know, but . . .’
My father appears to stare through me, the way he did on the night I left the castle. He will have gone to bed with the knowledge of what would unfold the following day. The following morning, as my mother flitted about the room in a state of high excitement, he would have shaved, combed his hair and dressed in his tuxedo knowing – or at the very least suspecting – that it was all in vain.
‘That night,’ I say.
Dad nods, three slow, solemn movements of his thick neck.
‘I’m sorry I put you through that.’
Dad widens his eyes sardonically.
‘The morning must have been . . .’
He opens his mouth, but the floorboards creak upstairs and he closes it again. Dad glances towards the ceiling, puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. He finishes his drink then nods at mine, and when I’ve drained the glass he takes them both to the optic and refills them with tall measures.
Feet on the stairs, then my mother’s voice: ‘Clive?’
‘In here.’ He looks at me, nods, mouths the word Okay? And I nod back.
The door at the foot of the stairs opens. As if her still-waking brain has decided it’s not yet ready to process the situation, Mum directs her attention to my father, standing behind the bar. ‘What are you doing?’ she says, rubbing her eyes. ‘I heard . . .’
And then her brain catches up.
She freezes for a second, then slowly lowers her hands from her face. I’ve seen tapes of my father’s fights and the way he would stare down his opponent before the referee told the boxers to touch gloves and protect themselves at all times. My father never looked away, and the threat and menace he was able to project with nothing more than his eyes was unnerving. I have stood across the ring myself, looking into the eyes of an opponent who is doing his best to conceal his own fear and dial up mine; sometimes it worked, other times I could see through the scowl to the doubt. None of it comes close to the way my mother looks at me now.
‘Mum.’
‘You.’
‘I . . . hi . . .’
‘You.’
Dad clears his throat and my mother turns slowly to face him. ‘You’d better put something in a glass for me,’ she says.
‘Wh—’
‘I really don’t care, Clive,’ she says, walking towards the bar. ‘Anything.’
Dad selects a tall tumbler and mixes a gin and tonic complete with ice and a slice of lemon. The whole process is ludicrous. He puts the drink down in front of my mother, who is sitting two stools down from me, as if she can’t trust herself to be within arm’s length of her son.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Hotel.’
My mother snorts derisively. ‘Hotel. Alright for some, isn’t it? Have fun, did you?’
I almost answer, but Dad catches my eye and shakes his head slowly.
Mum takes a sip of her gin and tonic, turns on her stool and throws the rest of the drink at me. Typical of a landlord’s wife, she is an excellent shot, and pretty much every drop of cold liquid hits its mark. One of the ice cubes catches me on the lip, another bounces off my forehead.
‘Jesus, Mum!’
And she’s off her stool and on me before I can raise my arms to defend myself. She is hitting me about the face, neck, chest and shoulders, slapping me, hitting with her forearms and the sides of her fists. She’s shouting, too, an incoherent garble of yous and stupids and bastards and poor poor girls. When she runs out of breath she stops, and how I have managed to remain on my stool is a miracle. My mother’s face is red and wet with sweat and tears, strands of hair stuck to her cheeks and forehead.
Like a fighter at the end of a round, my mother returns to her stool. Big Boots puts a fresh gin and tonic in front of her, and I note that this one contains considerably less ice. We all sit in silence while my mother regains her breath and decides what to do with her drink. She takes a sip, and my father refills my glass.
‘How could you?’ she says.
My mother looks me in the eye, and when she continues to hold my gaze in the echoing silence, I realize that the question is not rhetorical. It crosses my mind to shrug, to try and communicate in a simple physical gesture the confusion, sadness, regret, hopelessness and complexity of my dilemma and actions. But it might be interpreted as indifference.
‘It wasn’t right,’ I say.
My mother’s jaw clenches. She pushes her hands through her hair, brushing it back off her face and twisting it into a rough ponytail. With no make-up and her cheeks livid with blood, she is mesmerizingly handsome. So much so I almost comment on it.
‘Not right?’
I shake my head.
‘What exactly wasn’t right, Henry? My God, that girl. She’s gorgeous, kind . . .’ As if answering her own question, my mother’s list of April’s qualities trails off into silence.
‘It’s like in those films we used to watch.’
Mum takes a drink and then, very carefully, sets down her glass on the bar top. ‘Films?’
‘Cary Grant,’ I say.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell,’ I say. ‘They had . . .’ The word I want to say is ‘chemistry’, but I have a strong feeling that it won’t fly. I glance at my father and he winces as if reading my mind, as if braced for an impact. ‘. . . something,’ I say.
‘Cary Grant?’ my mother says again. She glances at her husband behind the bar, paunchy and tired, his thin pompadour hanging in strands. ‘Let me tell you something,’ she says, giving me the full heat of her attention. ‘This is real life, not a fairytale.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum, I just . . . I’m sorry.’
She slides down from her stool, puts her arms around me and hugs me tightly, kissing my neck and stroking my hair. ‘I’m sorry I hit you.’
‘I deserved it.’
‘You deserve a damn sight more than that,’ she says, disengaging. ‘And you’ll probably get it before this is done with.’
‘Probably.’
‘So,’ says Mum. ‘What’s the plan?’
I shake my head.
‘Where will you go?’
‘What do you mean?’ I say, looking around the empty pub. ‘I don’t have anywhere to . . . I thought . . .’
My mother looks at me as if I’ve just said something funny.
‘You’re not planning on staying here?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Henry, love. That’s just not going to work out. I love you to death, son – to death – even if
you are a stupid, stupid bastard. But . . . here?’ My mother shakes her head sadly but emphatically. ‘No. That just isn’t going to work, love.’
‘But . . . what about my job?’
She laughs. ‘Do you really think anyone within twenty miles of here is going to let you near them, Henry? God, they wouldn’t take a pint off you, let alone a root canal. Son, you can’t be here.’
I turn to my father. He shrugs. ‘Don’t see how you can stay, son. Sorry.’
‘I . . .’ I hold up my glass. ‘I’ve been drinking.’
‘I’ll set the alarm,’ Dad says.
‘Set it early,’ says my mother.
Zoe
Triple On The I
We’re at three thousand metres, my parents and me, playing Scrabble in a faux-log chalet and drinking thin red wine (although not as much and as fast as I want). The mountains are thick with snow, but the ski season hasn’t officially started yet and the lifts don’t open until December. Even so, Mum thought the scenery and fresh air would be good for me.
‘I’m suffering from vowel obstruction,’ my dad says – a familiar joke around this dog-eared board – then, nervously, glances up from his tiles, checking whether this mild humour has upset or offended me.
I harrumph a short laugh, and while Dad drops his eyes back to the board I take a long sip of my wine, aware of my mother watching me from the corner of her eye.
‘Have some of mine, I think I’ve got all of them,’ I say.
Mum laughs lightly, putting her hand on my wrist.
It’s been almost three weeks; a fragmented and disjointed sequence of grief, shock, guilt, compassion and bureaucracy – as random and incomprehensible as the seven letters sitting in front of me.
E-E-E-I-G-L-V
One letter short of L-O-V-E. One shy of L-I-K-E. Funny how the two words begin and end with the same letters, identical on the surface, entirely different at their core. Live, too, ironically. This tragic coincidence should jolt me into spontaneous tears, but it doesn’t. In the first days after Alex’s accident, I cried myself to sleep and cried myself awake. I cried myself sick, literally; sobbing hysterically until I dry retched and tasted bile mixed in with the snot and salt of my tears.