Stranger Than Kindness

by Mark A Radcliffe

  ‘I suppose they have a lot to lose,’ said Laura.

  Anna looked at her, how close she was standing to Tom, the tops of their arms touching. He must have been so worried to call her, and she found herself wondering how he would have done that, given that Laura had left her phone at her mother’s house.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said.

  ‘Sounds like a good bit of research,’ Adam said quietly. ‘How did it get the funding?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I know I’m out of date, but why would anyone fund that sort of research?’

  ‘Apparently one of the drug companies, Leichter and Wallace funded most if it.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’ asked Adam quietly.

  Anna shrugged. ‘I assumed they have a portfolio of research activities that help the profile of the company and they regard that as a better use of money than paying tax.’

  ‘Where did the rest of the money come from?’

  ‘I don’t know. There’s an organization, a government quango that takes care of all that sort of thing. Gathers together the different funders for a project, oversees it, co-ordinates progress and ensures dissemination. That way everyone gets their money’s worth.’

  ‘Unless the results of the research are not what their money requires?’

  ‘Maybe…’

  What are they called?’ Adam asked. ‘This co-ordinating body.’

  ‘CROCK? No, that’s not it. Centre for Research, Evidence and the Advancement of Knowledge.’

  ‘CREAK?’

  ‘Yeah, CREAK. They oversaw us. Paul had to report in to them. Leichter and Wallace kept a polite distance.’

  ‘But you assume CREAK must have told the drug company the results and the drug company is out to get you?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Because you assume CREAK—stupid name by the way—wouldn’t do anything… bad?’

  A couple came into the shop. They were in their early thirties and had been chatting loudly when they opened the door but quietened in the presence of books, even second hand ones. They seemed surprised to see so many people gathered around the counter and Adam remembered that he ran a shop.

  ‘Shall we go and get a coffee?’

  ‘Isn’t it bad for business to open late and close after a couple of hours?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Yes it probably is, but I wasn’t thinking of closing. Jim? Do you and Grimy Nige fancy keeping an eye on the shop for an hour or so?’

  ‘What, like run it?’ said Grimy Nige.

  ‘Well, I don’t want you making too many major decisions like refusing to sell any books or turning us into a cycle repair shop while I’m out, but broadly, yeah.’

  ‘Cool, thanks Mr Sands. We won’t let you down.’

  Adam wrote his mobile phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Jim. ‘Any problems, call. I won’t be far away.’

  ‘Right.’ Jim turned to the new arrivals in the shop and said loudly: ‘Can we help you at all?’

  ‘There’s a decent little coffee shop not far from here,’ Adam said. He handed an old Nokia phone to Anna. ‘Here, can you make that work please?’

  She took it and turned it on. ‘I’d forgotten how much these weigh. You’re low on battery. What do you use for stock control, an Etch-a-Sketch?’ She handed it back.

  Tom hooked his arm through his mother’s and they walked ahead of Adam and Laura down the tiny, dated high street, waiting for directions to come from behind them.

  ‘Do you feel safe?’ asked Tom, which felt like a grown up question to Anna.

  She tried to smile and squeezed his arm with hers. ‘I think I do,’ she said dreamily. ‘But I don’t feel very centred.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I mean I am off balance, not feeling in control of things, and I like to be in control.’

  ‘Really?’ Tom mocked.

  ‘I also think, if I’m honest, that I didn’t fully realize how much I still worry about you. I mean I know I worry, and I will until I die, but I thought it had lessened, what with you being six-two, twenty-three and living 203 miles away. But when I got scared, I got scared for you.’ Anna was crying now.

  Tom couldn’t remember having seen her cry before. Shout, yes, throw a plate at a wall once, and kick a door so hard she needed crutches for two weeks, but cry? ‘It’s alright mum,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s going to be alright now.’

  Anna was struck by how young he sounded.

  ‘This one on the left.’ Adam was directing them into an orange-fronted coffee shop that looked modern and incongruous.

  ‘Order me an espresso,’ Anna said to Tom. ‘I have to make a phone call.’ Anna stayed outside, pacing up and down talking into her phone. The others sat down at a table in the window watching her.

  ‘So, are you going to tell her?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Tell her what?’ Tom said.

  ‘Tom!’ said Laura.

  ‘If you don’t tell her she’ll see anyway, if she hasn’t already,’ said Adam.

  ‘No she won’t,’ said Tom.

  ‘She will. She can. I did and I don’t know you. For all you know she’s on the phone to your mum now, Laura, telling her that you two are a couple and to get the hell down here now so they can…’ Adam was mocking them gently.

  ’So they can what?’ Laura smiled at him.

  ‘I think we like having a secret,’ said Tom.

  ‘There are other secrets. Get a tattoo.’

  Anna came in and sat down. The tears were forgotten, the tiredness lifting. She felt efficient. ‘I just phoned Simon, Paul’s son. It occurred to me that that young man has been through enough and to hear these lies about his dad… Well, I suppose there are two ways to go with something like that, and he has gone for fury. Not at Paul but at whoever is making the story up. He says he and his dad share the only computer in the house and nobody has so much as looked at it let alone seized it. He says the girl that Paul is being accused of assaulting remains unnamed because she is both underage and non-existent. Paul’s best friend is a lawyer and Simon has been in touch with him. He was on it anyway. Still no word from Paul but it seems to me it must be time to start taking the fight to them.’

  ‘Whoever they are,’ said Adam.

  Anna kept glancing at Tom and Laura and then away out of the window. Finally she turned to Adam. ‘Hello, by the way. How are you? You look good.’

  ‘I swim a lot. Hello. Did you know Grace was pregnant when you came down that time?’ Anna nodded. ‘Sorry. She made me promise not to say. She was worried about you…’

  Adam blushed, something he had not done for over twenty years as far as he was aware. Anna stared at him for a moment and then looked at Tom and Laura.

  ‘And Tim,’ Adam said. ‘Did you know about Tim? Having cancer?

  ‘No, no I didn’t. I would have told you that, Adam. Grace didn’t tell me until later.’

  ‘Did it help Grace?’

  ‘You two don’t do small talk, do you?’ said Tom.

  Later, after they had finished their coffee, Adam decided he should get back to the shop. He hesitated before getting up. ‘So, are you heading back to London straight away?’ He was suddenly aware that all this activity was about to be stilled and that when it was, when everyone was gone, things would have changed.

  ‘I’d like to get home,’ Anna said vaguely.

  ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ asked Tom. Anna noticed that Laura edged just a tiny bit closer to Tom when he spoke and it occurred to her that her son might be meeting his dad for the first time.

  ‘Grace said she was going to go round with a couple of friends just to make sure. I’ll phone her.’ She paused. ‘But we don’t have to go back today. Maybe we could stay over? Where are you staying Tom?’

  ‘I have a roo
m in a B and B in Margate.’

  ‘Well, maybe I could share it? Just for tonight?’ Anna said. Tom was silent.

  ‘I could cook you all something to eat if you like?’ said Adam. ‘I’m almost certain I could borrow some plates.’ Anna was looking at Tom and Laura as Adam was speaking.

  ‘That would be nice, thank you,’ she said and without a pause: ‘So how long have you two been together?’

  ‘A while,’ said Tom with a tinge of the petulance he had employed from the age of fourteen through to seventeen.

  ‘I thought you were gay,’ said Anna.

  Laura burst out laughing. ‘I told you,’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ Anna asked.

  ‘You taught me a lot of stuff, mum, but not much about telling.’

  *

  Malcolm drove a Range Rover. He was built like a bodyguard but was prettier and smelt nicer. A powerful black man who walked gracefully while noticing the people around him who dressed well. Ben was white, taller, thinner, with the build of a 400 metre runner. When Grace was with them she felt a bit like Shirley Bassey, only not as loud. She had explained that she was concerned for a friend and wanted to see if her flat was safe. They were quick to offer to come with her and insisted that they knock on the door and when nobody answered Malcolm used the key Grace had to let them in.

  There was no sign of anyone having been in the flat. There was a pile of post, a slightly stale smell that suggested no doors or windows have been open and no suggestion that anyone had touched anything.

  ‘I’ll have a look outside,’ said Ben.

  Grace went to Anna’s computer. It wasn’t on and there was no way of telling if anyone had touched it. ‘I don’t think anyone has been here,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll ask the neighbours,’ said Malcolm.

  ‘Is that wise?’ said Grace.

  ‘Yes.’ And he disappeared outside.

  Grace sat down with the mail. Anna’s was a basement flat with a large bedroom at the front and an even larger open plan living room with kitchen attached at the back. She was sitting on the sofa where the light from a set of French doors leading to a very small garden was at its brightest. Grace had helped Anna decorate when they were both pregnant. It had been rag-rolled yellow then. It was a neutralizing blue now, tattier somehow. Less cared about, since Tom had gone. The post was mostly pizza leaflets and Digital TV circulars. There were a couple of bank statements, a bill and a letter marked ‘Private and Confidential’ from CREAK. The postmark was Cheshire. Grace put it on the coffee table in front of her, separated from the other mail, and took out her phone.

  Before she could dial Malcolm came back in. ‘The woman upstairs says that the blue car didn’t come back after Tom had left. She said that she and a couple of other people had been keeping an eye out.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘It’s what people do round here Grace, keep an eye out. She said that it went away when Tom was here and came back the next day. Waited around for an hour or so, which struck her as a bit half-hearted, and hasn’t been back since. I reckon the place is safe, Grace.’

  Grace nodded. ‘Thank you. I owe you Malcolm.’

  Malcolm smiled. ‘You’re welcome.’ He went off to find Ben while Grace called Anna.

  ‘I’m sitting in your living room. I think it needs decorating.’

  ‘Has it been ransacked?’ asked Anna.

  ‘No, sorry, I mean it just needs what it needed last week before all this started and I hadn’t noticed before. It’s fine here, Anna. The neighbours say nobody has been around since the day after Tom was here. You have a letter though…’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Anna. ‘I have someone here who wants to say hello.’ Anna was still in the coffee house and for a moment Adam thought she going to hand him the phone. Instead, she held her arm out straight towards Laura. ‘Just let her know where you are?’ she said meekly.

  Grace was also bracing herself to hear Adam’s voice for the first time in at least twenty-three years and it took her a moment to adjust when she heard the words: ‘Hi mum.’

  ‘Laura? What are you doing there?’

  ‘I came with Tom, mum. We spoke and I came down with him.’

  Grace was surprised by her first feeling, which was of having been left out of something. This was quickly joined by a tiny swelling of pride that her daughter would offer to help her friend and a bit of confusion about why Tom would take Laura with him. Then she added a thin layer of anxiety about the paper that Laura had said she had to write and had prevented her from coming home which was quickly followed by something that looked a little like anger at the possibility that Laura had lied to her about the paper and instead gone to Margate. These feelings arrived like falling leaves and gathered together to form the response: ‘Oh.’

  There was a silence on the line and Laura said loudly: ‘Oh for goodness sake. We have been sleeping together for four years. We love each other. We are a couple. The first time we did it was in—’

  ‘Stop!’ said Adam, which surprised everyone. ‘Some things are meant to be secret.’

  Laura handed the phone back to Anna. Adam mouthed a ‘sorry’ at Laura, who smiled at him.

  ‘I had no idea until today,’ said Anna into the phone.

  Adam turned to Tom and said quietly: ‘Too many secrets can weigh you down.’

  Grace was running through the previous five years looking for clues that she had missed. All that she could come up with was the times when Laura said she couldn’t come home because she had something on. She felt distracted and older than she had this morning. She didn’t know why. ‘There’s a letter here for you from CREAK. I’ve left it on the table.’

  ‘Open it,’ said Anna.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Grace ripped open the letter and Anna put her phone on speaker.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Grace. ‘OK. Dear Ms Newton, it has come to our attention that the research project titled ‘CCT: a mixed methodology analysis of effectiveness of the CCT provision on psychosis in adults’ has been completed. We have become aware of a delay in the release of the findings and, while it may be the case that you find that frustrating, we must remind you that you are contracted to publish all findings on projects overseen by CREAK in conjunction with our media office. We are also mindful that, while the results were of interest, our review panel feel there are some key questions in terms of research protocols that need to be explored. Given the apparent unavailability of the project team leader Dr Paul Stern, we therefore request that you attend a meeting with our Head of Research and his team on September 27th to clarify the protocols you were party to. We look forward to seeing you at Laburnum House, Room 102, at 10am.’

  ‘Where is Laburnum House?’ asked Anna.

  ‘Cheshire,’ said Grace.

  ‘Posh.’

  ‘What research protocols?’ said Anna to nobody in particular.

  ‘Discredit the people, discredit the method, then it won’t matter what the results say,’ said Laura. ‘By the time your results are released there will be so many rumours about your project that nobody will care what it found out.’

  ‘You know what you need?’ said Adam, lightly touching Anna on the shoulder. She shook her head. ‘You need a plan. And you will need dinner too. I have to go back to the shop. Grimy Nige and Jim haven’t ever been in charge of anything bar each other before. I’m surprised we haven’t heard fire engines. Come round later, say seven-thirty. We’ll eat, we’ll talk. OK?’

  Anna didn’t say anything but Tom nodded. ‘I’d like that,’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ said Laura.

  ‘Can you even cook?’ said Anna.

  Adam shrugged. ‘I make food safe.’ He smiled. ‘And I guarantee it will be fresh’.

  Adam wandered slowly back to his shop, aware tha
t the others probably needed some time when he, the stranger, wasn’t with them. More aware that somehow the stillness of forty-eight hours ago, a stillness he had sculpted quietly over many years, had vanished. Aware also that his past, something he had let wash off him in various seas, was not what he had thought it was. And had left an indelible stain anyway.

  When he walked into the shop Jim was behind the counter but there was no sign of Grimy Nige. ‘Any problems?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Jim. ‘Sold four books, too.’

  ‘Cool. Where’s Grimy Nige?’

  ‘Downstairs with the woman from yesterday,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Downstairs?’

  ‘The basement,’ confirmed Jim, in case there was any confusion about what room might be under the ground floor.

  ‘What are they doing down there?’ asked Adam. Jim shrugged.

  Grimy Nige and Alison appeared within a minute or so.

  ‘Nice basement,’ she said casually.

  ‘Thanks,’ Adam said. ‘Dare I even ask?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I came in to tell you that if you wanted to do a stall at the University Freshers reception next week—all sorts of other stalls selling stuff from cakes to dream catchers to journal subscriptions—I have reserved you a slot. And I got talking about the shop and a coffee bar and the boys here said that they thought you had a basement. So we had a snoop around. I’m not sure it’s a coffee shop down there, but I think it could be something.’

  ‘I was only gone half an hour.’

  ‘Nearer an hour, actually. You could have gone for longer. We don’t mind,’ said Jim. ‘And we don’t want paying. Do we, Grimy Nige?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Grimy Nige genuinely.

  ‘OK fellers, thank you. Please take a book each of your choosing as thanks.’

  ‘Oh we couldn’t,’ said Jim in a high-pitched voice.

  ‘I insist,’ said Adam.

  ‘We don’t have to decide today do we?’ said Grimy Nige.

  ‘Take a week if you want,’ said Adam. Both young men looked like it was Christmas, which was ridiculous and a little contagious.