An Extra Shot

by Stephen Anthony Brotherton

  Amy sobbed like a baby when I told her. ‘Oh God, Mum. What are we going to do without him?’

  ‘Let’s just get through the funeral,’ I said, not knowing what else to say.

  I felt sad for Amy, but my overriding emotion was apathy. A chance meeting at a student party over a quarter of a century earlier had morphed into something so malignant, it needed cancer to pull our lives apart – that’s how it felt. One of Jason’s last requests was to have Tanya’s family at his funeral. They all came, but none of them acknowledged me. Whatever afterlife Jason had travelled to, he’d be searching for Tanya. And that was okay. Tanya was his soulmate. We all had them.

  Freddie – February 1982

  Jack and I were in the gym at the Forest Comprehensive School in Walsall, attending an engagement party for Pete and Maxine. Pete, a police cadet, was a family friend of Mavis, the manageress of Preedy’s newsagents in Cannock, where I’d been working for a couple of years. Squeeze’s ‘Up the Junction’ had just finished playing, everyone singing along with Glen Tilbrook as he punched out the last line of the song, when Pete, who had striking copper-red hair, which Jack thought was really funny given his job, climbed up on stage to make a speech. ‘There’s a girl in the room…’ he started. Jack and I looked at each other. Jack bit the top of his beer glass, trying to stifle a laugh.

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said into my pint.

  ‘… a girl who has made me the happiest human being in the world by agreeing to become my wife…’

  ‘Make it stop,’ whispered Jack.

  ‘… a girl who is my soulmate… a girl who I’m lucky to have met in this existence…’

  ‘You two enjoying yourselves?’

  We looked around. Mavis was behind us. It took me a second to register it was her. The weekend before she’d had her beehive hair cut into a short bob, which had shocked everyone, including her customers. ‘It’s time I acted my age,’ she’d said to one of the regulars, which made me feel a little sad.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’re having a great time.’

  ‘Terrific,’ said Jack. ‘Thanks for inviting us.’

  ‘… a girl who I will love for all eternity…’

  ‘They really love each other,’ said Mavis, nodding towards the stage. She met my eyes. ‘What happened to that girl of yours, Freddie? The one you brought into the shop.’

  Jack bit his beer glass again.

  ‘Jo-Jo,’ I said. ‘She went off to university.’

  ‘Shame,’ said Mavis. ‘I thought you two suited each other.’

  ‘This is for you, sweetheart,’ said Pete, nodding at the DJ.

  ‘I Second That Emotion’ by Japan started up, dragging the couples onto the dance floor. Mavis walked off in the direction of her husband.

  Freddie – September 1971

  I was lying on my side, rubbing my forefinger and thumb in a one, two, three, four rhythm across the brushed cotton sheet. The breeze from the open window was cooling the sweat on my forehead, but I snuggled deeper under the two thick woollen blankets to ease the shivering that was overtaking my body. I kept my eyes transfixed on the silhouetted wooden tallboy in the corner of the room, which was lit up by the bathroom light spilling across the landing. ‘Leave the light on, Mum. Please leave the light on.’ I quickened the rubbing across the crisp dry sheet. One, two, three, four. I could smell pineapple chunks and see air bubble fairies at the foot of my bed, streaming their way from floor to ceiling. ‘Dad,’ I said. One, two, three, four. Bang. I was standing on a tower block, the ground looming up at me. Mum was at my side. She was trying to pull me towards the edge. ‘I don’t want to jump. You can’t make me jump.’

  ‘It’s okay, Freddie. I’m here.’ Bang. Blackout. I opened my eyes. Mum was holding me, mopping my forehead with a warm flannel. ‘I’ve called the doctor,’ she said.

  ‘I want Dad,’ I said. She started to cry.

  Freddie – August 2015

  Two members of staff, one of the bar workers, a man, mid-fifties with a Kevin Keegan hairdo that he’d dyed blonde, and one of the kitchen assistants, a woman, early twenties, anorexic-thin with jet black hair pulled into a tight ponytail, were sitting on the metal patio chairs. They were smoking cigarettes and chatting. I nodded at them as I walked across to the far side of the beer garden, clutching my mobile phone and cursing my stupidity.

  The evening had ended with us kissing goodnight in the car on the hotel car park, the parking attendant watching us from his sentry position by the bins, arms folded tightly across his chest. Jo-Jo had got out of the car and ran up the hotel steps, disappearing through the reception doors and into the lobby. I’d selected Springsteen’s ‘Tunnel of Love’ album from the iPod Shuffle connected to the Mini’s entertainment system and drove out of the car park with ‘Ain’t Got You’ playing through the speakers. Arranging to see her again had not crossed my mind.

  I pressed her name on my Windows phone.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Jo-Jo.’

  ‘Freddie. I was just about to call you.’

  ‘You were?’

  ‘Of course. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’ve just realised we haven’t arranged to meet up again.’

  There was a pause, a nanosecond, but definitely a hesitation, enough to roll my stomach and dry my mouth. ‘Jo-Jo,’ I said.

  ‘We need to talk, Freddie.’

  ‘I know. There’s so much we…’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I need to talk to you. We need to meet and talk.’

  I walked back into the pub. Jack and Bob were staring at me like expectant fathers. ‘Well?’ said Jack.

  ‘We’re meeting up tomorrow. She sounded strange. Maybe she’s changed her mind, maybe the daughter’s put her off me.’

  ‘You’re overthinking it,’ said Bob.

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ said Jack, taking a sip of his coke.

  Jo-Jo – August 2015

  ‘That pause was a bit obvious, Mum.’

  ‘I know. I’m not sure what I’m going to say to him.’

  ‘Like I said, you don’t have to tell him anything. It’s ancient history.’

  ‘He was the father, Amy.’

  ‘And he’d walked out of your life. It was your decision.’

  ‘I wish I’d have known he’d come to find me.’

  She reached across and put her hand on my knee. ‘You didn’t, and he didn’t try again. He jumped to conclusions. You were kids.’

  ‘I wonder every day if it was a boy or a girl, but I couldn’t get out of that hell-hole quick enough.’ I looked at her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. ‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘I’m an insensitive cow. This has got nothing to do with you, sweetheart. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  She reached into her Gucci handbag, pulled out a paper tissue and blew her nose. ‘That’s not why I’m crying, Mum. I wish I’d have been there for you. You were all alone. It sounds like a nightmare.’ She hugged me and whispered in my ear. ‘You should have told me years ago.’

  ‘It’s not the sort of thing you say to your daughter,’ I said into her neck.

  Freddie – August 2015

  Jo-Jo had asked me to meet her on the wooden bench by the oak tree, opposite the house she lived in when we were seeing each other thirty-five years ago. I got ready early, went through my leaving the house ritual and decided to road-trip the Mini around my old estate, reliving some of the places from my childhood. Down Severn Road where my mum and dad lived, the greens where Jack and I played marbles with ironies and fobbers, past Dad’s white double gates, still standing nearly five decades after his death, past Green Rock Primary School where me and Nigel Hale collected insects in jam jars, down Wye Road where Mickey Lawton lived – he’d thrown a house brick at my leg when I was seven and Dad had got out of bed, come down to the lounge in his pyjamas and looked at the brui
se. ‘You should have thrown one back,’ he said. It was the year Dad died. The year I was fractured.

  I parked up outside the shops on Lower Farm estate and was astonished at how little it had changed. The newsagents, the hairdressers, the Saddler’s Arms where we’d buy Pukka Pies from the outdoor, King George’s park where Jo-Jo and I used to kiss for hours, putting our freezing cold hands inside each other’s coats, desperately seeking body warmth. I got out of the car and walked across the road to the Buxton Road street sign. I looked on the back of the wooden board and felt my heart jump – our initials inside a love heart, scratched there three decades ago, covered in layers of paint.

  I looked at my watch. I had five minutes to walk to the bench.

  Jo-Jo – August 2015

  I could see the oak tree and the bench as I walked down Buxton Road. I was thinking about Karen – us at twelve years of age with Charlie Brown and Snoopy Dog posters covering our bedroom walls; us at fifteen years of age walking out of the back entrance to T P Riley wearing our thigh-length navy blue school uniform skirts and, inspired by the TV show FAME, black leg warmers. We had an inch of leg flesh on show, enough to make Rob and Nigel, our boyfriends at the time, stare open-mouthed as we headed down the slope towards them. I hoped Karen was okay. The last I’d heard she was married to an army guy who was a bit of a control freak.

  I reached the bench, sat down and looked at my old house – the house where Mum’s schizophrenia had lived with us like a squatter, but I’d found an order to accommodate her craziness, her voices, her paranoia, her lethargy; the house where Dad’s affair had made him human, taking away my big hugs God of a Dad and leaving me with something common; the house where Freddie was my Sir Lancelot, my big-hearted, sweet Freddie who’d rescued me, given me hope. And then he hadn’t phoned.

  ‘Jo-Jo.’

  I turned at the sound of his voice.

  I still hadn’t worked out what I was going to say to him.

  He hugged me and sat down on the bench. ‘You okay?’ he said. ‘I’ve been for a walk around the estate, parked the car up by the shops. Hardly anything’s changed. We should go down the lanes, see what’s replaced Sam’s caravan.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s still there, do you?’ I said.

  ‘I’m damn sure he’s not. He was in his seventies when we knew him.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘The house is still here then,’ he said, nodding across the road.

  ‘Still here,’ I said. ‘I wonder who lives there now.’

  ‘We could knock on the door and ask. Perhaps they’ll let us have a look around, see what’s changed.’

  ‘It’s just a house, Freddie.’

  He went quiet. I squeezed his knee. ‘It was a nice thought, though,’ I said.

  ‘You wanted to talk,’ he said. ‘It sounded serious. I thought Devon went well. Have I done something wrong?’

  ‘It’s not about Devon,’ I said. ‘It’s about Lincoln, something that happened in Lincoln.’

  ‘Lincoln? When you were at university?’

  I met his eyes. ‘I did something, Freddie. Something awful that I think you’ll hate me for.’

  He touched my face. ‘I could never hate you,’ he said.

  ‘Promise you’ll just listen to me,’ I said. ‘It’s too painful to drag it out.’

  ‘If it’s about you and that bloke I saw you with…’

  ‘Promise me, Freddie.’

  ‘I promise,’ he said, holding my hand.

  Freddie – August 2015

  I could feel she was waiting for me to say something, but my body and brain had gone numb as soon as she’d said the word. I had so many questions, not least what she’d told them about me, but it was another lifetime ago.

  ‘I thought you’d gone, Freddie,’ she said.

  ‘A baby,’ I said. ‘You and I could have had a baby?’

  ‘That’s the point. There was no us. I thought you’d gone.’

  I realised that I’d let go of her hand. I held it again and she smiled at me.

  ‘You should have told me,’ I said. ‘Got in touch. I could have helped.’

  ‘I know. Years later, I knew, but it was too late. I was married, Amy came along…’

  ‘I mean at the time, Jo-Jo. I’d have come back.’

  I let go of her hand again.

  ‘You’d left me, Freddie. I thought you’d gone for good.’

  ‘You should have contacted me,’ I said.

  We stared at the house in silence. I thought of my daughter, Becky, a picture of her as a baby, hair in pigtails, her mother leaving me, another town, another man. I thought of another picture, Becky sitting on a wall grinning a false grin at the camera. We’d just been to Gimbles to buy her some clothes, which they let us have on credit. Another memory, me coming home from a forty-eight hours’ on-call shift, her mum racing out to work, taking over the car, Becky kicking me because she didn’t want her mum to go.

  I felt Jo-Jo take my hand.

  ‘What happens now?’ she said.

  ‘I need to think,’ I said.

  Jo-Jo – August 2015

  Amy was waiting for me when I arrived back at the hotel. We walked across to the gardens and sat down on the bench underneath the eucalyptus trees. I sniffed at the menthol aroma from the trees, closed my eyes and sucked in the bird song and the woo wooing of the pigeons.

  ‘He needs to think?’ said Amy.

  ‘It’s the shock. He’ll be talking it through with Jack.’

  ‘It’s about time he grew up. Did he ask about you? How did you leave it?’

  ‘He said he’d call.’

  ‘I can’t believe him. It was thirty-five years ago. I’m going to phone him, ask him what he’s playing at.’

  ‘Leave him alone, Amy.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re so calm. I’d be steaming at him.’

  ‘To be honest, I’m relieved he knows.’

  ‘And what about next? Do you still want to be with him?’

  I opened my eyes. ‘I think so. I never expected it, but I still love him.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, what a mess.’

  ‘It’s fine, darling. I’m fine now I’ve told him.’

  She put her arm around me and hugged me into her shoulder. ‘I think we deserve a stiff drink,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not drinking any more of that bloody awful whisky,’ I said.

  About the author

  Photograph by TC

  Stephen Brotherton lives in Telford and is a Social Worker.

  An Extra Shot is the second book in the Freddie and Jo-Jo trilogy. The first book, Another Shot, was published in November 2017.