I was on my feet in an instant, shouting. I managed to get one leg over the barrier in front of me before Jacob grabbed one of my arms and Andy got the other. Malcolm got himself between me and the barrier, pushing me backwards, speaking words I couldn’t hear. All my attention was focused on Robert’s smirking face. I shook one arm free and pointed at him, screaming words that would come back to haunt the next time I was in this courtroom. Between them, Andy, Jacob and Malcolm manoeuvred me back toward the door of the courtroom. As they pushed me through the door, I saw the Judge looking at me, his hands flat on the desk. He’d not said a word, not banged his gavel and shouted “Order” like I’d seen on the television. He was just looking at me.
“Please,” I looked him in the eyes as I shouted just before I was unceremoniously shoved through the door.
“Please, this is wrong.”
Once Robert’s trial had finished, and he’d been led into one of the back rooms to sort out his sentence, such as it was, Andy, Jacob and myself went to the pub next door to the courtroom. I guessed that no one who worked in the court went anywhere near the pub, as it would be full of people visiting the court. Just like we were. I ordered a round of drinks for all of us, and sunk the first pint in about twenty seconds before going back to the bar for a refill.
“Gareth, slow down, mate,” Jacob said as I sat down. I stared at him as I drained half the pint glass.
“Why?” I replied, not even trying to hide the rage in my voice.
“It won’t help,” he replied. I knew he was right but really didn’t care. I sat there, waiting for the gas in my stomach to disperse so I could drink some more when Andy joined in.
“Jacob’s right, Gareth,” he whispered, sipping at his lager. “It’s not going to do anything, change anything. The only thing it’ll do is make you even angrier than you already are.” I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to control myself. I didn’t want to lose it in front of these two, the only connection I had left to Jennifer. The next thing I knew there were tears streaming down my face and I was blubbing like a baby. Jacob just looked at his pint glass while Andy put a hand on my shoulder for a moment. Without a word, I got up and walked out of the back door of the pub, ignoring the look that the barman was giving me. I figured I wasn’t the first person to break down in his pub given its location, and wouldn’t be the last either.
I sat on the bench outside in the smoking area and lit up a cigarette. As the nicotine kicked in, I felt myself calm down. That was bloody embarrassing. Not that long ago I could walk into a pub and look around, seeing people glance my way and then avoid my gaze as if I wasn’t someone to be messed with. Now I just walked in and started crying. I heard the door to the pub open behind me and, hoping it was Andy, turned to see Jacob walking across to join me.
“You okay, mate?” he asked, a look of genuine concern on his face. I could feel the tears well up again.
“No, I don’t think I am,” I replied a few seconds later. “This whole thing, it’s bollocks. He’s got away with it, Jacob.” I looked at Jacob for confirmation. “Hasn’t he?” Jacob didn’t reply straight away.
“I think he has, yes,” he said, the sadness obvious in his voice. “Times like this, I wish I smoked.” He looked at the packet of cigarettes I’d thrown onto the table.
“Help yourself if you want one,” I nodded my head in the direction of the packet. He smiled wryly.
“No, I’m good thanks.”
“Do you know what really gets to me, Jacob?” I said a moment later.
“What?”
“We’d had a bit of a barney that night, me and Jennifer. I’d forgotten she was going out, and she got the arse on with me about it.”
“Yeah,” Jacob said. “She was good at that sometimes.”
“So I sent her a text after she’d left, just to say I was sorry, she looked great, that sort of thing.” Jacob didn’t reply, but just looked at me. “And then after she’d died, the Old Bill gave me back her phone in a plastic bag. It was all smashed up, covered in stuff.” It was blood, but I didn’t tell Jacob that. Someone had tried to clean it up, unsuccessfully. “I could see she had one unread text message. The one I’d sent her to say sorry. I never even got to say sorry.”
I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. As the sobs racked my body, Jacob shuffled his way up the bench and put an arm around my shoulder, squeezing me tight. God knows what anyone would have thought if they’d seen us, but at that moment in time, I couldn’t have cared less.
We both sat like that in silence for a few minutes, each lost in our own thoughts. I started to get a grip, helped just having him sitting with me. He’d not said a word, just sat there with his arm around me while I cried, and I loved him for it.
“I was talking to Dad last night, Gareth,” Jacob said eventually, moving away so he could look at me. “About everything.” He looked at me. “About you.”
“What about me?” I replied, not liking where I thought he was going.
“Well,” he continued, crossing his arms loosely over his chest. “We both wanted you to know, that no matter what, you’re still family. You’ve got us, and we’ve got you.” I was on the verge of welling up again, so I kept quiet and waited for him to continue. Jacob just sat there, silent. I reached forward to pick up the cigarettes and shove the packet back into my pocket.
“You sure you don’t want one, mate?” I asked, trying to smile as I did so. To my relief, he smiled back.
“Nah, thanks. Bit late for me to be starting, really.” Another silence, this one a lot more comfortable, sat between us before I decided to ask him something I’d been wondering about for ages.
“Can I ask you something, Jacob?” I said, tentatively.
“Of course you can mate, you know that,” he replied with an earnest look. I paused, not sure quite how to continue.
“Well, I’ve been thinking. You and Jennifer being twins and all. The night it happened.” I paused, lost for words. How could I ask this?
“Did I feel anything?” he replied. “Did I know something had happened to her? Is that what you’re wondering?” I nodded in reply. “No,” he said, almost under his breath. “I went to bed, and when I woke up the next morning, she was dead.”
I considered telling him about waking up on the sofa, unsure why I’d woken up, at what I now thought was the exact moment Jennifer had been hit. Was it a crack of thunder from the storm, or was it more than that? But I thought better of it. He was her twin brother and might wonder why he felt nothing. Knowing someone else might have wouldn’t help him, would it? I finished my pint and added another cigarette butt to the overflowing plant pot on the table before standing up at the same time as Jacob. We stood there for a couple of seconds before he stepped toward me and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into a bear hug. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, and I squeezed him back as the tears reappeared in my eyes and streamed down my face.
It was probably ten minutes later when I felt together enough to walk back into the pub. Andy saw us walking in and stood up, collecting his empty glass from the table and walking towards the bar. I diverted to the toilet to get some tissues to blow my nose and make sure I didn’t look like too much of a mess. I needn’t have bothered. Confirming I looked awful wasn’t going to help. As I looked at my red-rimmed eyes in the mirror, I felt some of the sadness fade away, to be replaced by what was going to become a very familiar friend. Cold, hard, anger.
We only stayed for one more pint in the pub before leaving. Andy called a taxi, and he and Jacob dropped me off at my flat on the way past. I still couldn’t get used to the idea it used to be Jennifer’s and mine, and now it was just mine. Standing on the pavement, I watched the taxi as it drove off. As soon as it was out of sight, I turned and walked in the opposite direction to the off-licence at the end of the road. A few minutes later, I was unlocking the door to my flat with a bottle of cheap whisky in my hand. I knew it wouldn’t solve anything, but I couldn’t help myself. I w
alked into the flat, wrinkling my nose at the musty odour inside. Maybe I should open a window or something?
I made my way into the lounge and took up my usual position in the middle of the sofa, ignoring the half-empty containers of Chinese food that littered the floor. As I prodded at the remote control to turn the television on, I nestled the bottle of whisky between my thighs and opened it. No point creating any more washing up, I thought as I took a long slug from the bottle. The television came to life, and I started up the DVD that had been in the player since Jennifer’s funeral. As I watched David’s home movie of our wedding day start up, yet again, I took another much longer drink.
I don’t know was it one hour, two hours, or six hours when I came to on the sofa. I blinked my eyes rapidly, trying desperately to recall the dream. Jennifer was in it, we’d been at the beach or the park, or somewhere. I was running after her, and she was laughing as she skipped away from me. Her laughter pealed in my head as she stayed just out of my reach, my arms reaching toward her but always staying just out of range. My chest ached as I realised I’d been dreaming, and then she died all over again. I sat on the edge of the sofa, my mouth suddenly full of saliva. I slipped off the sofa and onto to my knees, knocking the almost empty bottle of whisky over. As the last remnants spilt on the carpet, I leaned forward, and a vile jet of half-digested whisky and bile splattered over the rug in front of me. Eyes watering, I looked up at the television to see the DVD player stuck on the last frame of the movie. Jennifer’s face looked down at me, the smile on it reminding me of the happiest day of our lives.
Then I threw up again on her favourite carpet.
Thinking back, I don’t remember the exact moment I decided that I wanted to go after Robert. It wasn’t as if I woke up in my flat one morning, looked in the mirror, and thought “Right, that’s it. I’m going to kill the fucker”. It was much more gradual than that. It had started with idle daydreams about how I could track him down, hurt him really badly. These daydreams had got more frequent, almost to the point of being intrusive thoughts. They also got increasingly complex as I planned various ways to hurt him. To teach him a lesson he’d never forget. To punish him for what he’d done to Jennifer, to me, to all of us.
Over time, the thought of just hurting him became not enough. No matter how badly I hurt him, he’d still be walking around. Jennifer wasn’t, so why should he be? The drinking wasn’t helping either, and back then, I was getting through a massive amount. Every night. I knew why I was drinking. It was a futile attempt to block everything out, to make the pain go away. To somehow make Jennifer come back. Except that I knew that wasn’t going to happen, so I drank even more.
There wasn’t an epiphany where I decided to pull myself together and quit the booze. I didn’t go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn’t go back cap in hand to see my doctor, there was no mutiny amongst my few friends to make me see sense, and the closest I came to rock bottom was the night I’d thrown up on Jennifer’s carpet. My business had suffered, and I noticed little things like clients taking subtle steps back from me when I met with them first thing in the morning. I’d even tried to reorganise my meetings for the afternoon to give myself time to sober up from the night before. Tommy’s face was full of concern when I turned up for work still half-cut from the night before, but he never said a word. I think he thought I’d punch him in the face if he had said something. The only person who came close to getting through to me was Andy.
I’d gone round to his house one evening, not for any particular reason, but just for a catch up. We tried to get together at least every couple of weeks. I knew Jacob was struggling with his workload in the city and didn’t get back to visit his dad as often as he wanted to, so I kind of assumed the role of a surrogate son. Andy and I had sat there for the evening and demolished the best part of a couple of bottles of wine each. He’d got up and stumbled, laughing as he almost fell over. I got to my feet to help him and he commented on how I’d got a much better tolerance for booze than he had. He was right, of course. The wine had barely touched the sides, much less get me as pissed as I wanted to be. The saddest thing was that I started thinking about how much whisky I’d got back at my flat, and whether I’d need to pick up some more on the way home. I’d helped him up the stairs to make sure he didn’t go arse over tit trying to get up them. At the top of the stairs, he stopped and looked at me with watery, red tinged eyes.
“Wine hath drowned more men than the sea, Gareth. Don’t forget that,” he said, his voice slurring as he spoke.
I waited for him to say something else, but he never did. He turned away and shuffled into his bedroom, leaving me to see myself out. When I got back to my flat that night, I looked up the quote he’d said on the internet. It was by some old vicar hundreds of years ago, but as I thought about them, the words made sense. That night was the first night for months when I left the whisky where it was and just went to bed.
A couple of days later, I found myself sitting in the doctor’s surgery mentally rehearsing what I was going to say to him when I got called through. When my name was eventually called, only an hour and a half after the scheduled appointment time, I was still not sure quite how to say what I wanted to ask him. I walked into his room and took the seat that was offered before clenching my fists a couple of times.
“So, Gareth,” he said, looking at me with kind eyes. “What brings you here today?”
I’d known Dr Riley for years, but he never seemed to age at all. He had to be in his early sixties, a shock of white hair that made him look like that Einstein chap. I’d always wanted to ask him to stick his tongue out, like in the poster, but could never bring myself to do it. He was dressed in a crumpled white shirt, cuffs rolled up to just below his elbows, and a pair of creased brown chinos. To be honest, he looked more like a mad scientist than a general practitioner, but the rows of fancy looking certificates on his wall were testament to his pedigree as a doctor. I looked at him before glancing away.
“I need some help, Doc,” I said. He was always “Doc”, never “Doctor”, but I couldn’t remember why that was. I paused, wondering what to say.
“With what, Gareth?” he asked after I said nothing else. “I can see in your notes you saw one of my colleagues a while ago. Is this to do with Jennifer? Or more specifically, how you’re coping without her?” I took a deep breath before replying.
“Yes, I mean no. It’s not to do with that.” His eyebrows went up slightly. Busted. “Well, I guess it is, at least indirectly.” Doc Riley said nothing but just looked at me with his eyebrows fixed, questioning me without a word. “It’s the drink. I’m drinking a bit too much.”
He looked at me for a second or two before turning away to rummage through some papers to the side of his desk. Once he’d found what he was looking for, he turned back to face me. For the next few minutes, he asked me a bunch of questions about boozing. Had I had any blackouts? Was alcohol the first thing I thought about when I woke up? Did I feel like I couldn’t function without alcohol? The answer to most the questions was “yes”, which I knew wasn’t good. We then went through the amount I was drinking, night by night, and morning by morning. The only question that I couldn’t answer was whether any loved ones were concerned about my drinking. I didn’t think I had any loved ones. Not anymore.
Doc Riley used a calculator to add the results up and then sat back in his chair. It creaked as he leaned backwards, looking at the paper through reading glasses that it had taken him a while to find. “Hmm,” he said. “Interesting.” I didn’t reply, but just waited for him to continue.
“What do you think?” I asked when I couldn’t stand the silence anymore. He looked at me, angling his head so that he could see over the top of the glasses.
“I’ve been a general practitioner for almost forty years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone still alive who can drink what you’re drinking.” He had a faint smile on his face. “In fact, in my professional opinion, you should be dead already.” Although the wry s
mile remained on his face, his creased forehead told me that there was a seriousness behind his words.
“That bad?” I said in a resigned voice.
“Can I be honest?” he asked. I nodded in reply. He put the paper on his desk in front of him. “This amount of drinking, it’s not sustainable. I dread to think what state your liver must be in, but I have a professional admiration for its ability to process such vast amounts of alcohol.” His frown smoothed out, and his smile broadened. “Can I have it when you die? Medical science could benefit from it, I suspect.” I smiled back at him, not feeling like it but figuring that it was the best thing to do. He leaned forward, his face back to being serious. “I have one more question for you, Gareth. If I may?”
“Of course,” I replied.
“I asked you just now if you had ever thought about harming yourself, and you denied it most vehemently.” I wasn’t sure what “vehemently” meant, but I had a rough idea.
“No, I would never do that,” I whispered, unsure where he was going.
“Well Gareth, I hate to break it to you, but that’s exactly what you’re doing to yourself. Committing suicide, sip by sip, bottle by bottle.”
I left the surgery about twenty minutes later, having gone way over the allocated ten minutes that was all the NHS allowed for each patient. The sign on the wall was telling the other patients still in the surgery that the waiting time was now two hours but try as I might, I couldn’t summon up any sympathy for them. I had a bunch of paperwork in my hand that Doc Riley had printed off for me, and another appointment for a week’s time. The other thing I had was something that I’d not had since the night Jennifer died. The tiniest shred of hope that things might turn around. The first thing I did when I got back to my flat was open the cheap whisky I’d bought the day before but had been too pissed to drink, and tip it down the toilet. It was ironic, as that’s where it would have ended up anyway, but this way it hadn’t been in my stomach for a while before making it to the toilet bowl. I looked at the wine in the fridge for a few seconds, thinking about emptying that as well. I decided against it, remembering Doc Riley’s words about taking it one day at a time.
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