An Extra Shot

by Stephen Anthony Brotherton

  3 May 2005 @ 22.39

  I draw so much strength from your words. I’m in the spare room. My daughter’s just left and they all keep coming to check on me. I’m okay. I just feel a little broken. I needed to tell you what was happening in case I lost all control. Can I see you tomorrow? X

  4 May 2005 @ 21.45

  I love you so very much. Thank you for today. You’re my great rock pillar of moral support. I would have gone under long ago without you holding my hand. X

  5 May 2005 @ 21.37

  I am still at my parents’ house. There has been no communication with him today, which is giving me the space I need. Going back tomorrow. Enjoyed the funeral this morning – which is a bit sad, I know. X

  6 May 2005 @ 16.13

  I’m home and depression has hit me like a ton of bricks. Trying to snap out of it. Been like this since 2 P.M. X

  13 May 2005 @ 21.52

  My chest is much better, but I keep feeling depressed and tearful. It’s becoming evident. Yesterday, I went to my daughter’s for lunch and she hugged me for the first time in months. I do everything my family ask, but keep feeling trapped and dreaming of going somewhere. Not sure where. X

  14 May 2005 @ 20.55

  I wish I could be with you. My support for you is tiny in comparison to the continuous help and guidance you give me. X

  21 May 2005 @ 19.21

  I remember every magical moment of our time together. Lying in your arms for hours, my eyes not leaving your adorable face, the feeling of ecstasy from the lingering passionate kisses, whispering words of love to each other. I now have my memories to outweigh my difficult moments. I may have chosen to part with you, my love, but you will always reside deep in my heart. Take care. X

  26 May 2005 @ 12.00

  Isn’t fate cruel? Bringing us together at this stage in our lives. I must have said goodbye to you a thousand times. And then I panic and get distressed, thinking I will never see you again, trying to imagine what my life would be without you. I really don’t know what this is all about. X

  30 May 2005 @ 21.12

  I think people know about us. Some may even resent our closeness. How shall we deal with this? X

  2 June 2005 @ 13.01

  My definition of love: lying in your arms with my head resting in the hollow of your neck, my cheeks flushed with the afterglow of our embrace, thinking about the prospect of eating cookie-dough ice-cream. X

  5 June 2005 @ 19.09

  I wanted to say so much to you afterwards, but I became overwhelmed. I am haunted by the letters and may never recover. That’s why I’m no good for you and you deserve someone more stable. My greatest loss will be to miss the heaven I always experience in your arms. Take care. I will always love you. X

  20 June 2005 @ 07.25

  I’m not in a good place at the moment, but I still love you very much. It’s the only thing that helps me get through the day. X

  24 June 2005 @ 21.55

  Hello. I have been dreaming of you every night last week. Don’t know what that’s about. Things seem to be calming down here with a quiet depression descending. X

  30 June 2005 @ 11.04

  I’m sitting here missing you very much and there is nothing more I want than to be with you. But the thought of being caught is overwhelming and raising anxiety and panic to such a degree I know I will not be at ease. I was so worked up when my mobile phone constantly rang the last time we were together that the moment was lost in worrying rather than cherishing our contact. And this feeling of panic remains with me for days. A really sorry situation and it’s not doing my mental state any good. X

  9 August 2005 @ 18.06

  I don’t tell you anymore, but I am still subjected to his ridicule because of my actions. I am repeatedly told it is the most unforgivable act anyone could commit, especially someone of my age and with my responsibilities. I am still not trusted and feel I am being watched all the time. I manage okay, but occasionally I get to breaking point and lose the plot a bit. In another life I will be the proudest woman being with you. That is my dream. X

  9 August 2005 @ 18.41

  I wonder how many lives I have walked with you. Give me some of your time tomorrow. I need to be with you for a short while. X

  9 August 2005 @ 18.56

  Our love isn’t shameful, but it is forbidden. And because it is perfect, this drives me crazy. X

  17 August 2005 @ 06.22

  I still feel engulfed in the bubble of our loving moments. I pray nothing will happen to cause a shadow. X

  1 September 2005 @ 02.33

  I am in a hopeless trap, but I will not let it change our love for anything. X

  16 September 2005 @ 22.52

  Just to share this with you. Certain things in my life have become unbearable, knowing that I’m not going to see you. X

  6 October 2005 @ 22.18

  Love me or hate me, both are in my favour. If you love me, I’ll always be in your heart. If you hate me, I’ll always be in your mind. Goodnight. Sleep well. X

  25 October 2005 @ 22.13

  I wish you well. You are the best thing that happened to me in my life. I shall not bother you again. X

  2 November 2005 @ 23.10

  We are not destined to be together in this life, my darling. We will walk side by side in a future existence, but not now. I have to let you go. Thank you for a wonderful year. X

  Freddie – December 2005

  I was lying in bed, watching the red digits on my alarm clock tick away the night and thinking about my year of serving Poonam. She’d taken my sanctuary and used it as a crutch to prop up her bloodless marriage – that’s how it felt. Starry skies and magic carpets were what we wanted. What we got was hurried back-seat car-sex under a stained duvet, texts from her prayer room at six o’clock every morning, e-mails from her Hindu temple in the middle of high worship – forbidden communications to an illicit lover from a holy place. Jo-Jo’s face dropped into my head. Her auburn hair, her nose-freckles. I wrapped my arms around my body and hugged myself tighter.

  Freddie – July 2015

  We were back in Jack’s lounge. I was sitting in the bucket seat, thinking about Terry, about his years of living a lie, about his advice to find Jo-Jo. Jack and Bob were side by side on the leather sofa. Bob was lying down, legs curled up underneath him, his head on Jack’s chest. Jack was cuddling him and comfort-stroking his hair, occasionally kissing him lightly on the top of his head. They were locked in their private world, like I wasn’t in the room.

  ‘It was a blessing in the end,’ said Bob.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s dead,’ said Jack. ‘Will you go to the funeral?’

  ‘I doubt I’ll be welcome.’

  ‘You were with him for years. He loved you.’

  ‘We’ll see. You okay with me going?’

  ‘You should be there.’

  ‘I’m going home,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks, Freddie,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll call you later.’

  ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’

  ‘You should call her,’ said Bob, his head still on Jack’s chest. ‘One of Terry’s biggest regrets was leaving it too late before he was honest with himself.’

  ‘He told me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘In Sitges. He said he should have told his family earlier. Are you two okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack, kissing the top of Bob’s head again. ‘We’re sad about Terry, but I think we’re in a good place.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Bob, looking up at him.

  *

  An hour later, I was sitting at my kitchen table, a picture of Mum hanging on the wall in front of me, next to the poster of Jack Nicholson’s film, ‘As Good As It Gets’. Mum’s photo was taken in the restaurant of the hotel we stayed in on our last holiday to the Isle of Wi
ght. I have my arm around her. She’s wearing her best dress, her rare outing-after-dark dress. I looked down at the oak table, a strip of my purple beta blocker tablets laid out in front of me, next to them a torn-out page from a notebook on which Jo-Jo had written her contact details and her married name. I felt my mood drop off a cliff as I read Mrs Coulman. She was my Jo-Jo. No-one else’s. I turned my mobile phone over and over in my right hand, remembering her nose-freckles and the mole above her belly button. I pushed the tablets to one side and punched the number into the phone.

  ‘Good evening. Hotel Rushmore. How can I help?’

  Nothing. The words wouldn’t come. I could hear them in my head. ‘Can you put me through to room 242?’ ‘I’d like to speak to Mrs Coulman in room 242.’

  ‘Hello. Hotel Rushmore. Can I help?’

  ‘Yes,’ I stammered. ‘Mrs Coulman.’

  ‘Is that a guest, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have a room number?’

  ‘242.’

  ‘One moment. I’ll check.’

  I could feel the beads of sweat on my forehead, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. I wondered if I should have left the call until tomorrow, but I remembered what Bob had said. ‘Don’t leave it until it’s too late.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Jo-Jo.’

  ‘It’s Amy. Is that Freddie?’

  ‘I wanted to speak to your mum.’

  ‘She’s upset. What do you want?’

  ‘To talk to your mother.’

  ‘Are you messing her about?’

  ‘I want to explain, to apologise.’

  ‘You can explain to me.’

  ‘I want…’

  ‘You’re not speaking to Mum until I’m happy you’re not going to hurt her. Come to the hotel in an hour. We’ll talk in the car.’

  The line went dead.

  I looked at the phone and then back at the beta blockers. I called Jack. He answered on the third ring.

  ‘The daughter wants to see me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now. She said to get to the hotel in an hour.’

  ‘Do you want to borrow the car?’

  ‘I want you to come with me, Jack.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. You need to sort this yourself.’

  ‘I’ll mess it up. I always mess it up.’

  ‘You want her in your life, don’t you?’

  ‘More than anything.’

  ‘Just be honest. I’ll bring the car and get Bob to give me a lift back.’

  *

  I recognised her this time as she ran down the hotel steps and strode towards Jack’s Mini. She was still wearing the tight-fitting black cord trousers and sunflower-yellow pixie boots, but the light-tan leather bomber jacket had been substituted for a cowboy blue denim jacket. I couldn’t see her nose-freckles from the distance she was away, but I knew they were there – a gene present from her mum that made my heart melt. She waved at the parking attendant and I wondered what he was thinking of all this toing and froing. Perhaps it happened all the time, was an occupational hazard in all hotels – English eccentrics and their strange ways. At least he’d been saved the job of guiding me to the visitors’ spaces. I’d learned the drill off by heart.

  Amy opened the passenger door and glared at me. ‘My mum was really upset after you left. What did you say to her?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think she’d react like that.’

  She sat in the seat and slammed the door shut. ‘How was she meant to react?’ she said. ‘I’m still trying to decide if you’re bonkers.’

  ‘I love your mum. I always have.’

  ‘And I think she loves you,’ said Amy. ‘That’s why I’m talking to you.’

  I stared out of the window at the security guard, who was still looking over at the car. ‘That bloke is really getting on my tits,’ I said.

  ‘To be fair,’ said Amy, ‘this has become a bit of an Eastenders episode. He must be wondering what’s going to happen next.’

  ‘I think he’s a nosy twat.’

  ‘You could be right.’

  ‘Will she see me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She doesn’t know I’m here, does she?’

  ‘Not yet. I want to hear what went on between you and then I’ll ask her. I can’t promise anything.’

  ‘I told her I wanted her in my life and she said it was too late, that I should have phoned.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When she went to university.’

  ‘You mean, you dumped her?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Jo-Jo – December 1979

  Freddie had taken me on a tour of his street, showing me the little green where he’d played marbles, the big green where he’d played British Bulldog, the house where Jack lived with his army of fifteen siblings, the house two doors away with its family of seven brothers, the Tolleys, whose dad used to chase them around the block in his slippers, the house next door to that where Mrs Hedges, a widow with one arm, lived, everyone fascinated because she could still peg her washing out, and we were now standing in front of a privet hedge, which was tall enough to shield us from Freddie’s mum’s three-bedroom, steel council house.

  ‘Are you sure about this, Freddie? We’ve not been seeing each other that long.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She wants to meet you.’

  He pulled me up the tarmacked drive. In front of us were a pair of white double gates and a bay window. A woman with black shoulder-length hair was looking out of the window. She waved.

  ‘What have you told her about me?’ I said.

  ‘That I like you.’

  ‘She’s probably met all your girlfriends.’

  ‘You’re the first,’ he said, holding my hand as we walked up the drive.

  The front door opened.

  ‘Mum. This is Jo-Jo.’

  The woman smiled. I felt like I should be curtseying. There was a panic going on inside my head about what to say, what to call her. I finished up saying nothing, just returning her smile. She stood to one side and gestured for us to come into the house. ‘It’s good to meet you, Jo-Jo,’ she said. ‘Freddie’s told me all about you.’

  We walked through the hallway, past three rows of Freddie’s school pictures hanging side by side on the flock wallpaper. I guessed they were in date order, from infants, through junior and up to senior school. In the earlier ones, he wore burgundy roll-neck jumpers, his shoulder-length hair was neatly combed into a forced parting and his perfect front teeth protruded out of his mouth, until, in one, the chipped tooth appeared. In the last two, the parting had gone, the hair, which was still shoulder-length, was dishevelled, the jumper had been replaced by a black plastic bomber jacket, acne spots covered his chin, and the smile of the earlier photos had been substituted with a horse-length frown.

  ‘These are good pictures,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s so handsome, isn’t he?’

  We came out of the hall into the kitchen. Three Royal Doulton china cups and saucers were already laid out on the walnut worksurface, and a teapot, which was wearing a brown ribbed cotton cosy, was perched on a cast-iron stand, a matching milk jug and sugar bowl at its side.

  ‘Tea, Jo-Jo?’

  ‘Yes please,’ I said, repressing a desperate urge to giggle. It really felt like I’d been granted an audience at Buckingham Palace.

  ‘Go through,’ she said, pouring the tea and nodding in the direction she wanted me to go.

  I walked from the kitchen’s red-tiled floor into the floral-patterned carpet of the adjoining room. A coal fire danced away in the hearth. Next to it was an oak sideboard, its top covered in glass ornaments – Murano animals and a pink dish with a dancing nymph as its centrepiece. I looked thro
ugh the window and saw a dog kennel at the bottom of the garden. I sat down on the two-seater sofa, expecting Freddie to sit next to me, but he flopped into the green velvet-covered rocking chair. His mum came through carrying a tray, which she placed on the dining table at the end of the room. Freddie jumped up, walked over and picked up two of the cups and saucers. He handed one to me and sat back down in the rocking chair. His mum, clutching the third cup and saucer, sat down next to me. She stirred her tea. She smelt of lavender oil. ‘I expect you want to know all about Freddie,’ she said. ‘Where shall I start?’

  ‘Jo-Jo doesn’t want to hear about me, Mum.’

  ‘Of course she does. Don’t you, dear?’

  She didn’t wait for me to answer.

  ‘Well,’ she said, taking in a deep breath. ‘He played Joseph in the nativity play. The kid across the road played the innkeeper. I said to his mother, What sort of a part is that? And then there was the time he sang in the school choir at Walsall Town Hall. He’s got a lovely voice. Gets it from his dad. His poor father. Been gone ten years now. Freddie was only seven. He took his dad’s death badly, locked himself away with his cowboys and Indians, used to talk to them for hours, making up his stories. All that time on his own, muttering away to himself. A creative mind, the doctor said. And then there was the time his dad bought him a puppy. It weed all over him when we fetched it home in the van. She’s in the kennel. He’ll show you later.’

  I looked at Freddie. ‘You didn’t tell me you had a dog,’ I said.

  ‘Didn’t I? I must have forgot.’

  ‘What sort of dog is it?’

  ‘A bull terrier. Tina. She’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Six weeks old when he had her,’ said his mum. ‘Saved his life after his dad died. She’s getting old now. She likes the kennel. A bit of peace and quiet for her.’

  ‘She should come in more,’ said Freddie.

  ‘Yes, well, it’s not you who has to mop up after her, is it?’ said his mum. ‘Remember the budgie? You never cleaned him out.’