by Edward Hogan
“You’re good enough now. You can do it. And remember, Frances, you can’t save everyone.”
I shook my head. The question I really wanted to ask was this: What about you and me? But I didn’t.
“Frances?” he said. “Tell me you understand. It’s very important to me that you understand. You’re important to me, as a friend. But I just can’t have any contact with you for a while.”
“I understand,” I said flatly.
He hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and piled a few nonessentials into a box that he left on the grass behind the hut. Then he came back round and padlocked the front door. “I’ll call you,” he said.
I walked toward him, and I can honestly say that I was planning to kiss him. A kiss from a girl changes everything. It makes men stay when they say they’re leaving. I’d seen it happen in films. And anyway, I desperately wanted to do it. I stared at his lips as I got closer. I stopped. We were so near to each other that I could feel his breath on me.
I kicked him in the shin as hard as I possibly could, and I ran.
I ran toward the sun without looking back. I knew the kick hadn’t hurt him. He hadn’t even flinched. He was strong. Physically.
I tried to drain myself with running. I tried to pour all of the energy and disappointment and fear out through my feet. I ran along the sea path, and then I went down the steps to the beach so I could hear the churning of the sea. The stones made me go slow. The last thing I remember about that morning was seeing the big rusty girders that held up the pier. Then I blacked out.
I must have lain on the beach for a long time. Eventually I staggered up onto street level, made my way onto the pier, and collapsed on a bench. The sea rolled in gently, and the rides and games pinged and whirled. I was numb, exhausted, but I tried to keep focused. I held the postcard in my hand, facedown, and had a good, stern word with myself. Come on, Frances. You’ve got to look at it. There’s no time for self-pity.
It looked like a photograph. I couldn’t believe I’d managed to draw something of such detail. It wasn’t like any death scene I’d ever drawn, and it wasn’t like any death scene Peter had ever painted.
It featured a man suspended in midfall above a pavement, his legs off the ground, his chin to his chest, an expression of pain on his face. He looked like he’d fallen into the drawing. Tiny grains of smashed glass surrounded him, like he’d just shaken water off his body. There was a lot of fine detail: the stubble on the man’s face, the fields in the background, the shadow on the pavement. But there were hardly any clues. Hardly anything to look at but the man, the glass, and the fields. He was in his early twenties. His hair was closely cropped; he wore a vest and jeans and big aviator sunglasses. Johnny.
Peter would’ve said it was inevitable, but I didn’t believe in that.
I couldn’t look at it for too long. My vision kept going gray, as if there were a part of my brain trying to turn out the lights because it didn’t want my eyes to see the picture.
Pull yourself together, I thought. I tried to look for clues. Peter had taught me that there were always clues, even with a heart attack. But you could usually see more of the death scene — the context. This was too hard. Perhaps death was evolving again.
There was only one person who could have worked it out, of course, and that was Peter. But I didn’t know where he was, and he wouldn’t speak to me even if I did.
I had twenty-four hours to save my brother. I looked at my watch and could hardly believe the time — 4:30 p.m.
Twenty hours.
When you’re in shock, you can force yourself to shut out the horror of a situation. It helps you to do what’s necessary. That’s where I was at. I had tunnel vision, and I wasn’t thinking about anything but my next step.
By the time I reached the library, it had already closed. The Internet café didn’t have the software I needed to zoom in on the picture, so I decided I’d have to do that when I got home. I took the postcard to the man at the desk.
“I need this photocopied, please,” I said.
He looked at it and sighed. “Is this supposed to be art?”
“Just copy it,” I said, sliding the money across the desk. He shrugged and did as I told him.
Outside, I started to get angry. I started to hate Peter for leaving me in this mess. I began to doubt that he was the person I thought he was. And yet I went back to the hut. The padlock glinted in the early evening light. The remaining box of his stuff was well hidden. I thought about throwing it in the sea, worthless as it was. Would he ever come back there? I didn’t know. I set down my rucksack, took out a piece of paper and a Berol Venus, and I wrote.
Peter,
I know you don’t want to see me, but this is serious. I blacked out and when I woke, I drew Johnny. I can’t work out the message. I can’t do it and I’m frightened. I can’t find any clues.
I have less than a day to save my brother, and I don’t even know where he is. I don’t know where you are, either. I don’t know where you live. You always said messengers should keep a low profile, but maybe you were just making sure you could dump me and run when it suited you. I need you now.
And not just because of Johnny.
I crossed out the last line until I tore through the paper, and then I slid the note, along with the copy of the drawing, halfway under the door and weighted them down with a rock. I imagined what it was like inside the beach hut. A dusty wooden void.
Maybe, I thought, I was to blame for what I’d drawn. Perhaps, deep in my mind, I wanted to find Johnny so much that I’d drawn him on purpose. But my inability to read the message just added to the frustration.
As I marched back to Auntie Lizzie’s, I started to develop a plan of action. It was more a plan of desperation, really, but I had to try to kick-start my mind.
– Scan the photo, zoom in, and look for clues. What was happening in the picture? Where was it happening?
– Call Mum, call anyone who knew Johnny and might be able to guess where he would go at a time like this.
– Tomorrow: go to Hartsleigh very early and try to find Joe Davies. Even if he wouldn’t tell me anything, he might accidentally lead me to Peter.
I told myself I could do it. I could figure it out. It was really just a question of following procedure. My self-assurance lasted about fifteen minutes, and by the time I got to Auntie Lizzie’s house, I was a mess. The hope was draining out of me. My hands were shaking, and it felt like my throat was closing in. I was losing it. The sketch was in my rucksack, and I still had the pencil in my fist. I held it so tight that it felt like another bone in my hand. The drawing was, I suppose, just a few scratches on a postcard, but it had become the center of the world, and it was dragging everything — including me — toward it like a huge black hole.
I stood in the hallway with my back to the door and listened to the silence of the house. It was broken by footsteps on the stairs. They were quick and heavy, then they slowed, so I didn’t need to look up to know that it was Uncle Robert.
“Hello, Frances,” he said.
I glanced up at him, but I couldn’t respond. The postcard, and what I had to do with it, filled my head so completely that there was barely even room for language. Uncle Robert stood there with his hands together. Auntie Lizzie emerged from the living room. “Hey,” she said, her eyes cast down sympathetically. “Everything OK, love?”
“No,” I said.
“We’re sorry it had to come to this, but we really didn’t know what else to do. You wouldn’t talk to us, and we were worried,” said Auntie Lizzie. She took a couple of steps toward me, but I didn’t move.
“I spoke to my friend Brian, who works with the city police force,” said Uncle Robert. “I asked his advice. That’s all. About your friend —”
“Peter,” I said quietly. What they were saying seemed so completely trivial, given what I had just drawn.
“Right. He’s quite a bit older than you. Brian looked into things. We don’t want to judge, but app
arently Peter has had his problems. We didn’t know if you knew. With his mental health and so forth.”
I started to cry. I had kept my feelings under control for so long. I had been strong for my mum at home. I had been strong for Johnny, strong for Peter. But I was alone now, and I just couldn’t do it anymore. I wasn’t crying out of sadness or self-pity, though. It was fear.
“Oh, Fran, baby,” said Auntie Lizzie. “I know it’s hard.” She put her arms around me and I began to shake.
“Johnny,” I said through my tears.
“Johnny?” Auntie Lizzie said, slightly surprised. “Johnny will be OK, Fran.”
“No,” I gasped. “No.”
“He will. We’ll work something out,” she said. “Robert knows a couple of people in law, and —”
I snapped. “You don’t understand! You don’t fucking know what’s happening! He will not be OK! He’s going to die! Johnny is going to die! Oh, Jesus. It’s my fault. I have to . . .”
I turned and opened the door, but Auntie Lizzie kept hold of my arm, and pretty soon Uncle Robert had hold of me, too.
“Let me go!” I screamed. “I have to go! I’ve got to do something!”
Uncle Robert was stronger than I would have thought. He had me around the middle, and I couldn’t break free. I knew I’d completely lost control, because Auntie Lizzie and Uncle Robert stopped talking to me and spoke to each other instead. “Have you got her?” “Yes. Close the door.” “Should we call someone?” “Let’s get her upstairs, give her a chance to calm down.”
“For God’s sake, let me go!” I screamed.
It was all a bit hazy after that.
When I woke, it was already morning. My head felt heavy and my mouth dry. The room was a shambles. There were clothes everywhere; the bedside lamp was smashed, the glass from the bulb all over the floor, and the curtains had been dragged off the pole. I must have really lost it.
I looked at the clock. It was past ten. Disaster. I had less than two and a half hours. I put on my jeans and T-shirt and ran into the hallway. Auntie Lizzie was standing there with a glass of juice. She looked like she’d hardly slept.
“Are you OK?” she said. Her voice was low, serious, worried.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Thank you,” I said.
“You were in a bad state.”
“I’m sorry about the mess,” I said.
She shrugged. “We got you to calm down a bit, then gave you some sleeping tablets. Here, drink some fluids. It’s lime cordial, like you used to have at Nana’s when you were small.”
I took the glass. It occurred to me suddenly that since I hadn’t delivered the message, then someone might be starting to feel very sick right now. “Christ,” I said under my breath.
“Frances, what’s wrong?” Auntie Lizzie said.
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with me. How about you? You’re not unwell?” I stared at her closely, checked her eye whites and her lips.
“I’m fine, Frances, what are you talking about?”
“What about Max? Is he OK?”
“Yes. He’s playing video games. He’s going to keep you company while I sort out some breakfast downstairs.”
“Keep me company . . .” I said. She obviously meant guard me. “Listen, I really need to go out. It’s . . . it’s very important that I speak to . . . certain people.”
“We just can’t let you go, Frances. You are clearly feeling unwell. You weren’t rational last night. It would be wrong of us to allow you to leave the house.”
I kept hold of my temper. I knew that the angrier I got, the harder it would be to get out. I sighed. “Right,” I said.
“That’s my girl. You’re going to be just fine. You need to rest,” she said, and kissed my cheek.
I went back into my room and tried to think. My loved ones were supposed to get sick if I didn’t deliver the message, but who were my loved ones? Auntie Lizzie and Max were fine. Maybe, I thought for a second, Peter, who had now become my closest friend, but I dismissed that idea.
Fragments of conversations with Peter came back, and suddenly it became clear. I was in the double bind, just as Peter had been with Tabby. Johnny was the person closest to me, and Johnny was the recipient. So if I delivered the message, he’d die, and if I didn’t, he’d die anyway.
What was I going to do?
At least if I could get to him and deliver the message, I would have a chance of saving him. If I just sat there and let it all happen, he was doomed.
I tried to direct my energy toward getting out of that soft, plush prison. I stuck my head out into the hall and listened. Auntie Lizzie was in the kitchen, so both the front and back doors would be in her line of sight. In any case, I was aware that even if I got out of the house, I still didn’t know where Johnny was or how I was supposed to get there.
My mouth was dry, so I gulped down half of the lime cordial in the bedroom. The nostalgic taste was painful. I wished I was a little girl again. How much would I alter if I could go back? I shook my head. There was still a chance, however small, that I could change what was happening now.
I took the message out of my rucksack and stared at my brother’s face. I saw how it had changed since I’d last seen him. He looked wasted and weak in the picture, like he hadn’t been eating. But there were no further clues.
I looked up at Peter’s painting of the boat, which I’d leaned against the wall on the bedside table. I remembered what he’d written at the bottom. Just because something is off to the side doesn’t mean it’s not the point.
I looked back down at the message and tried to ignore Johnny. In the background, I saw a figure. It was a man, but he was too far away to see any telling details without scanning and zooming the image. I let my eyes wander over the wire fence behind Johnny. I let them wander over the fields behind the fence. I had the uncanny feeling, suddenly, that I knew the shape of those hills. It was as if my recent dreams had spilled over into real life. And then I saw it, way off in the distance: his shed. His old shed on Nana’s land, just as it had appeared so many times in my mind these past few weeks. He was somewhere in Whiteslade.
I went over to the window. If I was quiet, I could drop down onto the garage roof. I took hold of the window sash, but it was locked. They’d barricaded me in. “Let me out!” I shouted, and I heard footsteps on the landing. I was becoming delirious again. I needed to calm down.
I picked up my phone and dialed Peter. It went straight to voice mail. “Please, Peter,” I said. “Please call me. I can’t get out of here. It’s Whiteslade. My brother is in Whiteslade. He doesn’t have long. You know what, Peter? After everything I did for you — I hate you for this.”
There was a knock at the door. I hung up. “What?”
Max came in. He seemed shaken. He sat on the bed, holding a console and his kendo mask. “Do you want to play some games?” he said.
“Games? Bloody games? I don’t have time, Max!” I said angrily. He looked petrified. I had sort of forgotten that he was younger than me.
“I’m sorry, Max. It’s just that I need to get out of here, and nobody is listening to me.”
“OK,” he said.
“Have you been sent in here to be the new prison guard?” I said.
He nodded.
“Max,” I said, realizing that he was probably my only hope, “can you help me get out of here?”
He winced. “Look, Mum said you’re not feeling too good. I don’t want to do anything that puts you in danger.”
“I need to get out!” I shouted. He flinched and I lowered my voice. “Can you answer my questions? Can you at least do that?”
“Nothing wrong with answering questions, I suppose,” he said sadly.
I was about to ask him where the key to the window was, but I changed my tactic at the last moment, knowing that he wouldn’t tell me. Not yet.
“Do you think I’m mad, too?” I asked.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, which looked small without the magnificatio
n of the spectacle lenses. “I’ve certainly thought about it,” he said quietly.
“What did you decide?”
He stared away from me.
“What if I told you that Johnny was in danger?” I said. “Do you think that’s a crazy thing to say?”
“No. It’s obvious Johnny’s in danger. He’s on the run.”
“OK, what if I told you I knew how to save him? What would you think then?”
“I don’t know.”
I hadn’t seen him like this. He was never a chirpy lad, but he usually had a calmness about him. That was gone. The thought arose, fleetingly, that he might be worried about me.
“You haven’t answered my first question. Do you think I’m mad?”
“There’s plenty of evidence to say that you are,” he said. “It’s not only that you smashed the room up. It’s more the other stuff. First you’re trying to stop some woman who doesn’t even know you from getting drunk, then you’re looking after eleven-year-old boys at the skate park. What’s it all about, Frances?”
“My dad always said you should try to do good whenever you can,” I said instinctively.
“Did he?” Max said.
“No,” I said. “My brother said it, actually.”
Max thought for a moment. “Well, if you’re crazy, then as far as I can see, it’s making you do the right thing all the time. You’re pretty much my hero at the moment.”
I nearly broke down. “Bless you, Maxi,” I said.
His shoulders sank back into place now, as if he’d made a decision. The old Max was back.
“Any more questions?” he said.
“If you needed to get to Whiteslade and you had . . .” I looked at my watch. “Jesus. And you had an hour and a half, and no car, what would you do?”
“Whiteslade? Like, near Nana’s old house? God, that’s a bit remote. Well, I’d probably steal my dad’s Vespa.”
“Your dad has a motor scooter?” I said.
“Of course he does,” Max said.
“And can you ride it?” I said.