“I know she wrote the letter before she heard my voicemail,” Alison said, “and wouldn’t have done it if she’d realized, but even so...she could have given me a chance to explain. I know there was the other thing, which was all my fault, but I don’t know how many times I’ve apologized for that, and she’s always said that she’d forgiven me, and that we’d moved on. I really didn’t think that she still hated me for that—but even if she did, she really could have given me a chance to explain before doing that. And now she won’t return my calls. She won’t even let me try to make it right.”
“Oh,” was all Steve could say. Alison had not, in fact, burst into tears, but she still looked as if she might. He had no idea what to do in a situation of this sort, so he stayed silent.
“I’m sorry,” Alison said. “You must think we’re all completely mad—all three of us. Didn’t bargain for this sort of palaver, I imagine, when you first started dating Janine.”
“No,” Steve admitted.
“We aren’t like this really,” Alison said, regretfully. “We weren’t like it when we were at school. You don’t teach at our old place, do you—you’re at the other one?”
Steve nodded.
“Still,” Alison went on, “You must know what it’s like—the kind of friendships schoolgirls form, and try to hold together when their schooldays come to an end. There was a bigger group of us at school, of course, but we three were always the core of it. When we decided not to go away to university—which was a sort of mutual decision, in a way, and a perverse one, given that Milly, at least, was certainly university material—we got tighter. I suppose we got tighter still when Milly’s parents moved to Bath and she stayed, apparently staying with us rather than just behind. She was the one who was most insistent on us staying friends then, although Jan had never got on with her parents, so she needed the unholy trinity too. So did I. I think I always needed it most, even though I didn’t have that kind of practical reason. I was always the hanger-on, not as pretty as them. I always had to work harder to be part of it—to entertain them. It was as if they were two queens and I was the court jester. Sometimes, it was as if I were doing things on their behalf. Janine and Milly talked incessantly about losing their virginity, but I was the one who did it first. They talked incessantly about screwing this teacher or that, but I was the only one who did it at all. Half the things I did, I only did so I could tell them about it, because it amused them so much—and then Milly puts it all in a bloody letter to the Town Clerk! If only I hadn’t made up all those gory details! If only I hadn’t done the things I did do, in order to have some gory details to embroider! You can see, can’t you, why it’s all so bloody unfair?”
Steve contrived a hesitant nod.
“Don’t look so frightened, Steve,” Alison said, with only a slight harshness in her voice. “You’re in no moral danger. Jan did suggest, when she gave me your address, that if I found you on your own I could get my own back on Milly by doing my thing again, but she really wanted me to get her own back, and she didn’t really want that. It would be too much, even for me—and it’s not really my thing at all. I’m really not that sort of person. I mean, it’s one thing to get carried away in a reckless moment, and screw someone else’s boyfriend without giving a thought to the possible consequences, but it would be something else entirely to plan something like that, wouldn’t it?” She waited for Steve to nod again before adding: “So you’re quite safe. I won’t throw myself at you. Okay?”
“I understand,” Steve said. “I’m sorry—I didn’t know about all of this. It’s taken me by surprise. I suppose Milly didn’t want to confess to me that she’d made a mistake, and didn’t think it would matter if she let me carry on thinking that her original conclusions were justified. She wouldn’t have told me about the letter anyway, I don’t think...and, to tell you the truth, I’m not so sure I needed or wanted to know about that.”
“I’m sorry,” Alison said. “I really did come here looking for Mil, not to make trouble. It might be best, on reflection, if you don’t tell her I called. I’ll ask Jan to let me know when she comes back from Bath, and keep on trying her at her flat until I find her there— preferably on her own. Jan will know when she comes back, won’t she? I know they’re not talking to one another, but Jan still sees her al that UFO group they go to, doesn’t she?”
“Yes,” Steve said. “But it only meets once a fortnight.”
“Well, maybe Jan will start returning Mil’s calls, and they’ll begin patching things up. Then, maybe, we can get the whole thing patched up. I suppose it shouldn’t matter, really, now that we’re all grown women with our own jobs and our own lives. We should all have our own boy-friends too, I suppose, but Mil seems to have the monopoly for the moment. If we could just get one each, and stop borrowing one another’s...sorry, that’s a bit undiplomatic, isn’t it?”
“Don’t mind me,” Steve said. “I’m sorry for my part in causing you all such distress. If I hadn’t slept with Milly behind Janine’s back, you wouldn’t be in difficulties either, so I suppose I’m as much to blame for your troubles as Milly is...more, even.”
“You weren’t to know,” Alison assured him. “The roots of the problem go back a long way. You were just a catalyst. You just did what men do. You disappointed Jan, mind—she thought you might be better than that.”
“I don’t know why,” Steve said. “She knew my track record. I never have been any better.”
“Fair enough,” Alison said. “What she probably really thought was that she was special enough to break your pattern and keep you in line. She’s always been the prettiest one of the three, you see— she probably assumed that what had happened to Milly could never happen to her. I love her dearly, but she’s always had that hint of smugness about her. That’s why she’s so terribly broken up about it.”
“Is she?” Steve said, genuinely surprised.
“Oh yes. She won’t thank me for letting you know, but she’s taken it very hard. Not because you’re anything extra special, perhaps—more because she lost out to Milly. It won’t last forever. It can’t, because she needs us as much as we need her. The fact that she’s seeing so much of her parents will be a constant reminder of that. In the end, she’ll have to patch it up with Mil, and Mil will have to patch it up with me, because we’re still best friends, in spite—or perhaps because—of the fact that we’re all so jealous of one another. At least, I hope we’ll patch it up.”
“And what about me?” Steve asked.
“Pardon?”
“What happens to me, when you all get back together and patch it up?”
“God knows,” she said. “What do you want to happen to you?”
Steve couldn’t answer that one without betraying someone, so he said nothing.
“It’s not my problem,” Alison told him. “I’ve got enough of my own, and I’m certainly not going to add yours to my list as well as Jan’s and Mil’s. If it’s any help, Jan really does want you back desperately, even—but I’m not sure that she’d be willing to take you back. I don’t know how much pride she has, but it’s a lot more than I’ve got. What Milly wants, I don’t know—she won’t return my calls. What do you want?”
There was still nothing Steve could say, so he said it.
“You don’t know,” Alison said, on his behalf. “Or, if you do, you daren’t say. Don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault. You just happened to fall into the whirlpool. Being abducted by aliens is a breeze compared with getting caught up in this sort of maelstrom, I dare say.”
Steve could see that Alison was no longer on the brink of tears, even though the rain hadn’t quite evaporated from her face; indeed, she seemed to be growing more robust by the minute, drawing strength from the knowledge that he was in a predicament as awkward as her own.
“You’ve never been abducted, then?” Steve said, knowing how feeble the remark was as a riposte.
“I get abducted by aliens all the time,” she replied, trying to con
trive a laugh but not succeeding. “I’m the group slut, remember: the Scarlet Woman of Salisbury. Aliens are always probing me in uncomfortable places. Mil used to pester us to go to AlAbAn meetings with her, in the beginning, but Jan thought it was too silly, and I thought it was unnecessary. I used our girls’ nights out as my confessionals, you see. I never believed for a moment that Milly really believed she’d been abducted, but I could never figure out why she was going to the meetings. You probably understand that a lot better than I do.”
“I think so,” Steve said. “Actually, I don’t believe for a moment that I was physically transported into the distant future by a time-traveling spaceship armed with a tractor beam—but that’s not the point. The point is that the experiences are real, even if they’re just a particular kind of hallucination. Milly’s not lying, and it’s not some kind of game she’s playing with Janine and you. Something really did happen to her, and it really did disturb her, even if she never left her nice warm bed.”
“Right,” Alison said. “Maybe I ought to start coming to the meetings, now that Jan’s a regular. It might help us get back together and settle our differences. What do you think?” While she was speaking she stood up, obviously having decided that it was time to go. Because she’d never so much as unbuckled the belt of her raincoat, there were no further preparations to be made.
“It’s up to you,” Steve said, standing up in his turn. “I don’t have an opinion, one way or the other.” He walked her to the door of the flat, and opened it for her.
“Thanks for listening,” she said, hesitating on the threshold. “You did me a real favor—I needed to talk to someone, to get it all out in the open. I could hardly spill the beans to anyone at work.”
“You’re welcome,” Steve said.
“You can tell Mil whatever you like,” Alison added, “or nothing at all.”
“We don’t have anything to hide, do we?” Steve said.
For the first time, Alison smiled. “No,” she said, “we don’t. Nothing at all. Not so much as a single wicked thought. You’d almost think that we were the kind of people who could learn from our past mistakes. Thanks again.”
“You’re welcome,” Steve repeated, automatically. Instead of going back to his PC, though, he went back to the settee and sat down, carefully avoiding the slight damp patch left by Alison’s coat-clad backside.
He couldn’t help wondering what might have happened had he made the first move that Alison had so ostentatiously refrained from making—maybe by making a heroic effort to comfort her when she’d almost been in tears—even though there had never been the slightest possibility that he might have done anything of the sort, in this or any other universe. He had, at the end of the day, proved to be better than that.
* * * *
Milly phoned later that evening to say that she’d be in Bath all weekend and perhaps most of the following week. Her father was still in the Intensive Care Unit, because he couldn’t breathe unaided, but he was stable at present. If he managed to recover sufficient control of his muscles in the wake to the stroke to breathe unaided again, there was a chance that he might also be able to talk again, and live some sort of a conscious life—but if he didn’t, he might relapse into a permanent vegetative state. Only time would tell—and even the best possible outcome, it seemed, would not restore him to anything that would pass for a normal life. It was unlikely in the extreme that he’d ever be able to walk again, or feed himself.
Steve didn’t mention Alison’s visit. It didn’t seem to be the kind of thing that he ought to try to explain on the phone, especially when Milly’s father was lying at death’s door.
The situation eventually extended throughout the entire week. Steve spoke to Milly every evening on the phone—which seemed to emphasize the fact that he was suspended in a kind of existential limbo, always at a loose end, playing internet poker or surfing. He did three stints of after-school supervision on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, but when he volunteered again on the Friday Rhodri Jenkins actually turned him down.
“Have to share the burden, boyo,” the deputy head explained. “Can’t get into a situation where the shirkers can get way with it because the suckers are willing to do all the work. Can’t get too dependent on you, either, as you’ll doubtless be making up for lost time when your girl-friend finally gets back—although it’s beginning to look as if that might not be before the end of term. Don’t go getting up to any mischief in the meantime, mind. It’s high time you settled down, and a traffic warden’s exactly the kind of woman you need to keep you in line.”
In spite of this instruction, Steve attempted to call Janine that night, for the first time in three weeks, thinking that she had probably seen Alison since the previous Friday, and that Alison might have put in a good word for him, in the cause of getting all the warring factions together to settle their various differences. Janine refused to talk to him, and told him, not for the first time, never to call her again. Evidently her pride still had the upper hand in its ongoing contest with her desperation.
By the time Saturday night rolled around, Steve was feeling seriously restless. He’d spent the afternoon betting on the exchanges, but he’d ended up thirty pounds down and exceeded his self-imposed limit for the week. He knew that he had to resist the temptation to think that he had to go on line to win it back at poker, because that was the way to addiction. He was well up to date in checking out the other websites on his favorites list, and he couldn’t face the thought of an evening watching television, even though his ability to cope with cliffhangers had been recently tested, and not found wanting. He didn’t dare try to call Janine again so soon after his last knock-back, and also rejected the possibility of trying to discover Alison’s phone number, after only a few moments’ consideration.
Eventually, Steve looked Walter Wainwright up in the phone book and rang him to ask if he could have a quiet word in private about AlAbAn rules and etiquette, as he was planning to volunteer to tell his story the following Thursday.
“I’m very busy, Steve,” Walter said, apologetically, “especially with it being quiz night at the Royal Oak. I haven’t missed one of those in twenty years. The quiz doesn’t start till eight, though, so I suppose we could have a quiet drink beforehand, if that would be convenient for you.”
“I don’t have anything else to do,” Steve assured him. “Where is the Royal Oak, exactly?”
It wasn’t until Walter told him that the Royal Oak was in Codford St. Mary that Steve remembered having been there once before, when Janine had reluctantly taken him to meet her parents, who lived in Codford St. Peter. That didn’t prepare him, though, for the shock of walking into the pub’s lounge at five past seven and running straight into Janine, who was carrying a pint of lager in one hand and two gin-and-tonics in the other. Steve almost ducked, but it was obviously her father’s lager, and Janine wasn’t the kind of girl to use someone else’s pint to make a futile gesture.
“Are you stalking me, you slimy bastard?” she demanded hotly.
“Actually,” Steve said, in his best martyred tone, “I’m meeting Walter Wainwright.” In the meantime, he put two and two together, and realized that the reason Walter was giving Janine lifts to AlAbAn meetings probably had something to do with him knowing her parents, as he’d mentioned more than once when Janine started going to the meetings. Presumably, that acquaintance was not unconnected with Walter’s twenty years’ experience of quiz nights in the Royal Oak. Steve also realized that Janine was so short of something to do on a Saturday night now that she’d dumped him that she was volunteering for her Dad’s pub quiz team, in spite of the fact hat she didn’t get on with her parents at all.
Steve found Walter without further ado, and asked him what he was drinking. He returned from the crowded bar with a whisky and water for Walter and a glass of Shiraz for himself. “The reason I wanted to talk to you,” he said, without further ado, “is that I’ve formulated a theory that might help to explain what’s really g
oing on in people’s abduction experiences, and I wondered if it would be within the rules to present it to the group along with my own experience.”
“You aren’t the first person to have a theory, by any means,” Walter told him, dolefully, “and you wouldn’t be the first to tell the group all about it, if that’s what you want to do. I’m always reluctant to tell people that there are things they shouldn’t say, because we’re a support group, and we want people to feel free to say whatever they need to say—but you’re a teacher, so I’m sure you can see that there’s a slight problem...well, of course you can, or you wouldn’t be here now, would you? The thing is that, in order for us to support you, as fully as we’d like, we do need you to show a little reciprocity. If you were to start using other people’s experiences as fodder for your theories, you see, that might not seem very supportive to them. They might feel that their experiences were being questioned, or even undermined, and that’s not what AlAbAn is all about. Theorizing your own experience is perfectly fine—the search for explanations is always part and parcel of coming to terms with the experience, but it might be polite if you stuck to your own experience, and didn’t involve anyone else’s.”
Alien Abduction - The Wiltshire Revelations Page 29