“Eddie!” Jilly shouted.
“He read it somewhere!”
“I did no such thing.”
“Then you’re a mind reader.”
“I beg your pardon.” The freak stood.
“Please, Eddie—”
“Sir,” said a voice accompanied by footfalls in the silence, “may I ask you to leave?”
“Shut it before I nail you to the fucking floor!”
The footsteps ceased and the voice mumbled something about calling the police.
Eddie took hold of the freak’s shirt collar and marched him backwards, and all the while Jilly was screaming for Eddie to let him be. Eddie slammed him into the wall, fist under his neck, eyes inches from eyes. “This is the last time I lower myself to your level; now you tell me and my wife where you got that shit from that you fed me today?”
The freak’s eyes flitted around the room, pleading for help, and when Eddie jerked his crumpled collar, they stopped dead, pointing right at Eddie. “What can I say, I didn’t make it up, I’m not an impostor. Please, I’m sincere. You have to believe me.”
“Eddie, let him go, babe.”
Eddies eyes sprang wide. When was the last time she’d called him babe? Must be eight months ago. And her voice had lost its glass-shattering quality. She was calm, serene. Eddie’s grip relaxed slightly.
“I didn’t read your mind, Eddie.”
“Don’t call me Eddie. I’m Eddie to my friends.”
“I swear to you, I’m genuine.”
Eddie laughed. “Genuine, my arse. No such thing.” He let the freak go, flexed his fingers and thought hard about punching the bastard. But what would it earn him apart from a night in the cells and an eternal cold shoulder from Jilly. “You stay the fuck away from my wife. You hear?”
The freak looked from Eddie to his wife and back again, confused.
“Come on, Eddie.” Jilly put her hand on his shoulder and he turned, head up, chin out.
“Eddie?”
Eddie stopped in his tracks. Jilly looked over her shoulder at the brave freak.
“Do you know a man called Stuart?”
Eddie said nothing.
“Watch your back around him. He’s stuck-up, and he’s out to get you.”
— Three —
In silence they walked through the rain. They were only a minute from Jilly’s front door; maybe the need for talk had arrived, and it was Jilly whose need was greatest.
“What did he mean by that?”
Eddie shrugged, still trying to swallow both episodes of that particular soap opera.
“Do you know a Stuart?”
“I know a Stuart, alright. And I have to take my hat off to the guy, he was spot on; Stuart is after my blood.” He looked across at her through the rain. “Spooky, really. That’s my nickname for him: Stuck-up Stuart. Don’t you find that a bit… unsettling?”
“I find a lot of things unsettling.” Jilly took her keys out, “Coffee?”
Eddie dithered. He’d had a day right from the anus of life, and he wasn’t so sure he could handle the splashback; all the games she played these days were going to be too much, despite the whole point of tonight’s encounter was just to get her back on side. “I think I’ll pass, if you don’t mind.”
“Well, I do mind. Come and get dry.”
* * *
She threw the towel at him and then put a steaming mug on the floor by his chair.
“Go on,” he said. “Ask it.”
“Okay, I will.”
“It’s why you insisted I came in, isn’t it?”
“Partly.” Jilly sat, kicked off her wet shoes and took a breath. “What did he say to you?”
“There. Wasn’t so hard, was it? You could have asked that right away and saved yourself a cup of coffee.”
“My, aren’t we feeling sorry for ourselves?” She smiled. Barely.
“I’m having a fucking ball, Jilly.”
“So just tell me.”
“It’s the same shit he told you before, about how Sam still loves me and how he forgives me.”
“But you went mad; you were white as a sheet when you came out the first time.”
“Sorry,” he said, “didn’t know it was illegal to feel like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like my guts had been on a spin cycle.”
“You’re so flippant. Why can’t you just open up? Why can’t you just admit that you got a message, tell me what it was and stop acting like a tough macho idiot.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. There are some things even your scientific mind can’t rationalise. There are some things that we cannot understand. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be a little cynical, Eddie; I’m just saying open up your mind to the things that haven’t been explained yet.” She watched him, sitting there like a petulant kid, sipping his coffee, clenched up, not letting anything out. “I bet a hundred years ago, if you’d said to a scientist you could catch a criminal by analysing a single hair from his head, he would have laughed you out of the building. Some things just aren’t explainable yet.”
Eddie rocked his head. “Really.”
“Now what did he say?”
His eyes fell away from her as he whispered, “He said Sam thought the altar I made was wonderful. He said he forgave me. Happy now?”
“Oh, baby,” she said. “What altar?”
“His NY cap. That’s all. I keep it on the mantel.”
“That’s nice.”
“Nice?” It had my son’s head inside it, woman! And that’s it: nice?
“I mean I think it’s good that…”
“I’d best be going. Thanks for the drink.”
“Wait.”
He braced himself. Tonight was a stupid idea.
“Don’t go.”
“Why?”
“I think you need me.”
“What?”
“Okay, okay. I think we need each other.”
“I’ve been living in a flat that’s one step down from a squat for five months, and you finally decide we need each other. I needed you months ago, and I told you that. And now I’ve had some kind of miraculous contact with my dead boy we can give it another go? Is that all you were waiting for, for me to get in touch with my inner feelings?”
“Eddie, I don’t know what—”
“That’s it! Now I’ve shown my caring side by signing up to Freaks Inc—”
“Who?”
“You’ve decided we can all be one happy family again. We can go down to the Memorial Hall once a week and meet up with Sam and have a good old laugh at the times we enjoyed watching him play football and the birthday parties we threw for him. Gee, that’d be great!”
“You’re in shock.”
“Damned right I am! And what about my drinking? Is that suddenly alright?”
“Well, I would have—”
“Like fuck.” Eddie stood. “You’ve now decided it’s worth another go, this relationship of ours.”
“I thought it was what you always wanted.”
“It was!”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is your timing’s lousy. All this time I’ve wanted to be back here, and now I’ve dared to expose these people as charlatans, everything’s fine again! I’ve been drinking this whole time, I’ve been immersed in bottle after fucking bottle of brandy, trying to pickle myself so I don’t have to stand the agony any longer, and now it’s all okay and I can curl up next to you in bed tonight. Jesus, Jilly, your motives are shallower than a teaspoon.”
Jilly stood, the tendons in her neck bulging. “I want you back, you arsehole, because you gave it a try. I never thought you would, I always thought you’d be the stubborn idiot I kicked out, but you’re not. I know you don’t believe anything he said tonight, and that’s fine, and I know you’re still a drunken piss-head – not fine – but I do know you’re trying. And I know you tried for me. And that’s the important thing.”
“You had some kind of contact tonight. I know it because you were shitting it when I bumped into you. And whether you admit it, doesn’t matter. I know Sam spoke to you.”
“This is two-faced, Jilly. I can’t stand my life where I sit all evening in a rotting green chair and watch a portable TV with a glass of brandy in my hand and death wish in my mind – but at least I know where I stand. I don’t like it, but it’s flat, even ground, the kind you’re never going to trip up over, no matter how pissed you get. But,” he looked around, “I’m not sure I can give up on that for a life with you on a mountain side. One wrong move and I’m back on the floor.
“This doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. “You hate me for killing Sam, you hate me for drinking, you hate me smoking too much. Jilly, you hate me. I kind of got used to begging you, but I don’t want it if it means setting up a standing order to those fucking freaks back there.” He shook his head, looked earnestly at her. “Why would you want me back?”
“You’re an arsehole, Eddie. Let’s just get that straight.”
“Loud and clear.”
“But I can see that you’re trying to be good again. I can see it now.” She brought her palms together, shoulders forward. And her eyes said, bear with me on this one. “And I don’t hate you. And you can’t say I hate you for killing Sam—”
“You’ve said it often enough.”
She sighed. “I have, I know. I was wrong, I suppose.”
“Oh, you suppose you were wrong.”
“Just shut up and let me finish, dammit!”
“Sorry.”
“I lost my son,” she began. “I had to have someone to blame; can’t you see that? I don’t know who ran him over, but I figured if you’d been on time…” she shrugged. “I blamed you. Past tense.”
Eddie retook his seat, folded his arms defiantly. Headway demanded a hard stance. “And the drinking?”
“I want you to stop. Am I wrong for that? If for no other reason than it’ll stop you killing yourself. And I don’t want you to kill yourself. I’m not angry with you anymore, Eddie.” Jilly flopped back into her seat. “That’s why I want you back.” Her big eyes never strayed from his.
He searched her face for traces of the hatred he thought she still had for him. And a pang of homesickness, the kind of sweet nostalgic pain that grips your heart and tweaks it, blundered back into his mind like an old friend falling through a door with a six pack under his arm a silly grin on his face. It was good to be back.
He almost allowed himself to begin feeling at home again, to take off his coat, kick off his shoes and lie on the settee with his arms behind his head flicking through the channels. Like he would in the old days.
In the old days.
The days when nothing mattered. When Sam was out back playing on his swing and Jilly was out playing bingo or trimming the plants in the rockery.
How strange things can get. You wish so hard for something that you can’t quite believe your damned luck when it lands, plop, in your lap as though all you had to do was say please. And when finally your wish comes true, you can’t help but treat it with suspicion. After all, how many wishes do you make in thirty years, and how many of the damned things ever come true? So when one does, your eyes slit up, you take a deep breath, and you poke it once or twice, making sure your worst nightmare isn’t rolled up cunningly inside the fabric of your wishes.
It was this suspicion that caught Eddie as squarely as a pike on a barb. Two things had happened, like something out of a reverse psychology game show. Both had changed perspectives. She wanted him back. And he didn’t trust it; it came too easily. It would have been much easier to close the door behind him and head home to the empty flat in Wakefield City centre, safe in the knowledge that the only pain he would ever feel again, came entirely from himself.
Hey, think it over. Surely the offer will still be on the table this time next week. Call it a cooling-off period where either party can change their mind without recourse to legal action. And then, call it a safety net. If she blows hot and cold like this, you don’t want it to blow cold when you bailed out of your shitty slum with nowhere to go except the back seat of your car.
“Mind if I think about it?” He looked at her through the tops of his eyes, face downwards, voice quiet, tentative.
She covered her shock well, hiding the embarrassment she obviously felt with an endearing smile. “Sure. But why? I thought you’d snap my hand off.”
“It’s the mountain thing.”
She only nodded, didn’t try to hide the hurt this time.
“Tell you what, Jilly. Let’s give it a couple of days, and if you still feel the same, I’ll bring my toothbrush and all my crap over. What do you say?
“Yeah, whatever,” she puffed the words out through thin lips.
Ten minutes later, Eddie was on his way home with a glowing feeling in his chest and a proud, victorious smile on his lips. He reminded himself how good – and rare – it was to have a wish granted.
— Four —
“You must be mad.”
Mick’s words took away that feeling in his chest. “It was you who suggested I go—”
“Whoa there just one minute. Don’t you dare blame me—”
“Who’s blaming anyone? It’s a good deal, I’m getting back with her, I’m going back home and I can’t believe you’re not happy about it.”
“Hmph.”
Of course Mick wasn’t happy about it. He could live without the debauched language, the binge-drinking and the sloppy behaviour once he was back home. But Mick would find it difficult. “We could still go down to the pub. It’s not as though we have to stop drinking together.”
Mick’s face said, Yeah, right. Prick. “Don’t forget how you managed to change your luck. You found Sam. You now share a common theme again.”
“No we don’t. I told her we wouldn’t be relying—”
“And she believed you?”
“Yes.”
“And you believed her when she said that?”
He paused. “Yeah.”
“I repeat my earlier response: Hmph.”
“I could come over to your place, maybe; drink with you there.”
“We’ll see.” Mick didn’t look up.
“I’ve never been to your gaff.”
“You’re not missing much.”
Eddie drank the brandy, stubbed out his cigarette and stared at the dejection that tumbled from Mick like hail from a winter sky. “You’re really naffed about this, aren’t you?”
“Bet you forgot to tell her you might be heading for the sack, and possibly a Rule One.”
It was true, he had forgotten. Genuinely. She would be mortified when she found out. But it was the way Mick said it, as though he was jealous.
The night had crept up on them; the window was dark now, only the subdued light from the snooker hall showed itself, that and the orange glow from outside. Every time a bus passed, light from its upper deck swept briefly across the wall behind Eddie. In here, it was warm, homely. It also stank like the threshold between the bar and toilets in an old geezers’ pub. But it was safe.
“How’s the investigation going?”
Mick lit a cigarette and looked at Eddie through the rising smoke. “Okay, I suppose.”
“What’s wrong with you? You’ve got a face like a bashed crab.”
“It’ll never be the same, you know.”
“What won’t?”
“Being together again after a while apart. Things’ll feel strained, you know, as though you have to make polite conversation instead of just letting a rasper echo around the room. You’ll feel false and you’ll try to conjure that old you again, but you’ll fail and all you’ll find instead is a plastic you with the real you inside begging to be free again. Because you’ve changed, Eddie; your boundaries have widened and you’ll feel trapped.”
“Christ, you’re cheerful tonight.” Eddie wondered
who Mick was talking about: him and Jilly, or him and Mick? “Thanks for that.”
“Pleasure.” Mick looked away.
“Hey, look; either put a smile back on your face or piss off home.”
Mick stood.
“Lighten up, I was only kidding.”
Mick made it to the door, even opened it before Eddie said, “Don’t you want to know the post-mortem results?”
Mick stopped, hand on the door.
“Got them right here. Interesting reading.”
“You bastard.”
“Yep. I know.”
Mick closed the door, filled the Mick-sized indentation in his chair and lit a cigarette. “Those things I said about getting back with Jilly…”
“I’m listening.”
“I never thought you’d actually do it. I hoped you would, I just never thought you’d have the balls.”
“More brandy?”
“Lots more.”
Eddie half-filled their glasses and raised his to Mick. “You are a dear friend of mine,” he said, “even though all you want me for is information—”
“Hey, that’s—”
“Below the belt? Anyway,” he said, “it might not work out yet. I’m keeping this place just in case it goes tits up.”
“Odds?”
“In favour of me being back here within a week.”
“You think so?” Mick sat forward.
“You ever tasted the grass on the other side of the fence and realised it was just as shitty as your old stuff?”
Mick laughed.
“I got a sneak preview this afternoon. I think she’ll be disappointed.”
Solemnly, Mick nodded. “Where’s the PM results?”
“You’re all heart.”
“Course I am. Now let’s ‘ave a look.”
Eddie pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, smoothed out the creases and passed it across to Mick.
Mick almost danced as he took the paper, but his happiness faded as he read. “Thanks,” he said absently. “I don’t understand all the numbers and the bloody Latin.” He looked at Eddie.
“Basically, they’re all normal. Go straight to conclusions, turn over.”
The Third Rule (Eddie Collins Book 1) Page 32