by Terry Tyler
"You weren't joking about first dibs on the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, then."
Again, I find this funnier than he does. Okay, he doesn't find it funny at all.
"Of course, I'd forgotten," he says. "This is the way it works, isn't it? I have an idea, you pour scorn on it."
"Can't I disagree with you?"
"An intelligent debate I wouldn't mind, but you don't think your arguments through. You react rather than think, rendering any further discussion frustrating and pointless. It's never a considered opinion; it's just negativity."
My mouth drops open. The pompous git. Unfortunately, a suitably intelligent retort escapes me. 'Piss off' won't quite cut it.
He abandons his boxes, picks up his coat, and walks out without saying goodbye.
Probably gone to see Naomi. Or to get off his face with Wedge.
I sit on the floor amongst his boxes, and try to work out which one of us is being unreasonable. He's wrong about 'the way it works'. I do consider my opinions, it's just that he's not interested in them unless they coincide with his. What happens, what has always happened, is that he makes decisions without finding out what I think, first. Then he gets arsey if I don't tell him how clever he is.
Maybe I can't complain; it's always been this way. The difference is that I didn't used to mind.
Chapter Eleven
Wedge
April
He keeps himself to himself, mostly, but once or twice he's joined the lads in the Monk's Head hotel. Place is a fucking state. Sticky tables covered in drink rings and candle wax, chipped plates piled high with dog ends. Broken glasses, nothing washed. Bette and Jodie clean up sometimes, sweeping rubbish into bin liners that pile up outside, but not often enough.
The pile fucking stinks, too.
Bette used to keep their flat like a new pin, but she's usually the worse for drink now. Only clears up when she's off her box on speed, Cleary said.
In Seal Cottage, he keeps his books in a tidy pile, clothes laid out in the small bedroom. He even washes up. When he is back in charge, the hotel will be cleaned up, disinfected, the rubbish burned. He's not going to live in a fucking pigsty.
The lads are wary, worried he's going to throw some punches, but he's biding his time. Says he understands that Hodgson was acting President when he was inside. That he did good to keep 'em all safe.
He enjoys their wariness.
He's much too clever to act on every emotion that enters his head.
Kai, indeed. That's what Bette calls him. Daft whore.
She's his daft whore, though.
They found Jodie, the cute sister, in some shit-hole commune in Beaumaris Castle on Anglesey. Hungry and cold, place stank, people dying; the virus was slow getting to Wales, 'specially that part. Hodgson found her just in time, gave her one of the vaccinations they'd swiped from the units.
Jodie fancies Wedge. Sat on his knee when she was pissed, and grabbed him in the crotch. Wedge is sorely tempted to hoy some beans up her, but he resists; he needs to keep the moral high ground. Once he's got rid of Hodgson, he won't be needing any earache of the well, you fucked Jodie so we're equal variety.
Dex wants to fuck Jodie. Said so when they were over at Club Trop.
"Fill y' boots, man, she's there for the taking," Wedge said.
"Tempting, but I'd best not," said Dex. "I just got back with Vicky; got to watch my step for a bit."
Dex ain't a bad bloke, for a soft cunt. And a useful person to have on side. Wants their communities to become one, so the Hadrian can help defend the place when trouble arrives. Wedge is in favour of this, 'cause they've got regular scavenging groups, and they're growing food, baking bread in this big brick oven they made out the back of their hotel. Fishing for crab and lobster; sweet. Better than living on junk food and tins, like they're doing now.
Soon, he will be taking it all back. He's talked to Bette. She cried, and swore she wasn't shagging that white-haired fucker while Wedge was banged up, that she only went with him to get away from the disease.
Lying bitch.
"When you first went inside I was so lonely, and I was skint ‘n’ all. Kai kept coming round, giving us money, said it was his duty as VP. Then Mam died of the fever and I was heartbroken, and I didn't know what to do, I was all alone. I'd be dead now, too, if he hadn't got them vaccines and got us up here."
She owed him, she says.
Wedge knows she was spreading her legs for him before the virus hit, but he doesn't tell her he knows.
"I'm weak, I know I am, but I couldn't face all this on my own." She clutches at his arm, black make-up mingling with tears, streaking down her face.
Fucking whore.
When she is his again, he will forgive her.
Won't be long; he's just got to decide how.
Chapter Twelve
Heath and Aria
Aria
When I'm zooming down those empty roads with my arms around Heath on the back of his bike, I think, I could ditch Travis and be with him. But it's just the exhilaration of the ride. Got to listen to my head, not my heart. Once you let your heart win, it's over.
Travis says he feels more for me than he'd ever thought he was capable of feeling. He's crazy in love with me, but part of this is because he knows I don't feel the same.
We all want what we can't have. Human nature.
Heath lusts after me, but that lust grows more urgent because he can't see me whenever he wants. Not only am I loved by tall, strong Travis—which proves I'm worth having—but I'm not available.
I had a friend once, who was knocking off this guy behind her husband's back. The lover kept on about how much he adored her and wanted her to leave her husband. Said he wanted to marry her. One day she sent him a message to say that, yes, she'd go with him, and what happened? He literally disappeared. She never heard another word from him.
I could have told her that was going to happen.
To keep Heath's interest, I must stay with Travis.
Anyway, I like T. He takes care of me, makes sure we have everything we need. He boils water for my baths when I'm tired and cold. He washes my hair, even puts conditioner on. He makes meals interesting when I can't face yet another bowl of rice and soup. I've never had anyone do all that for me before. If I hurt him, I'll get bad karma coming back at me in waves. Believe me, that shit works. My dad's pub burned down, with him asleep upstairs. He survived, but was disfigured for life. Mum didn't make it. Serves 'em both right.
I can't imagine who started the fire. I simply have no idea.
I've found out something interesting. Before I got here, Heath was close to Vicky, who Dex is with. She and Heath were all set for the whole relationship thing when she gave him the heave-ho, and went back to Dex. I know he's still hung up on her, because he won't talk about her and averts his eyes if she's so much as mentioned.
I know people. I know this stuff.
That's my worry. That she'll do an about-face, and his interest in me will disappear like a wisp of fag smoke on the wind.
I need to up my game.
And keep my head screwed on.
When we're out, I get stuff just for me and Travis. On supply runs, anything we collect is taken back to the St Aidan Hotel, where this stuck-up bitch called Rowan puts it into stores. There are whole rooms for food and drink, for toiletries, cleaning materials, sundries, whatever. Medical goes to the post office, overseen by Audrey. I think, fuck that. I risk my neck going out. We've come up against barricades on roads, arseholes with guns outside shopping malls, even bigger arseholes who'll stick a knife in you to steal what you've got. I scavenge, I want first pick of the spoils. I fill the bags with necessities, but my little backpack is just for me and Travis. I like bringing him surprises. It makes him happy, and then he does even more for me. It works. It's a trade-off. All relationships are trade-offs.
Travis says it's not in the spirit of community, but I say, fuck the community. He didn't mind when I found him a bottle of Midor
i the other day. No way was that going into Bitch Rowan's storerooms. Who's to say she doesn't nick all the best shit, anyway?
Heath
Aria soothes the pain of losing Vicky. She appeared at just the right time, before I fell back into the pit. Even with the pills, I felt like nothing I did was going to stop me spiralling into self-destructive gloom, and I need to keep level for Jax. Then Aria came along, all wild eyes and great body, flirting like she's got a PhD in it, and giving me something to focus on.
Vicky's with Dex; she's not thinking about me any more. She made her choice, and I don't want to spend my days storming around feeling hurt and angry.
Aria lives with a quiet guy called Travis, and I don't like her for what she's doing to him, but I don't owe him anything.
Anyway, nothing's happened yet. Though some say infidelity begins with the intention, not the act. The emotion, not the sex.
Sarah screamed loud enough when she learned about my ships-in-the-night one-night stands, but it was the slow-burn affair with Emily that really got to her.
I never thought I was the 'unfaithful type'. Is there a type? Or are we all susceptible, if we're not happy? But I wasn't one of those swordsmen who can't keep it in his pants. Far from it. When Sarah and I got together, I thought I'd found 'it'. Girlfriends came and went, and then one night there was Sarah. I knew she wasn't into my whole scene, not really, but she made an effort, came out on the bike. I soon discovered, though, that her rock chick credentials extended only to looking fantastic in the clothes; her music collection consisted of those few cheesy commercial numbers that Aerosmith put out to keep the record company happy, and power ballad compilations. What my late mate Tony used to call rock music for people who don't like rock music.
I loved her, though. I was young, she was so damn pretty, and she knew how to charm me. A bit like Vicky to look at, but fairer; she was like an angel. When we decided to move in together I assumed we'd live in either my flat or hers, but no, she wanted to buy a house. What the hell; it was a new experience. She claimed we'd save money by having a mortgage, and I was suckered in.
She chose the house. I would have liked an old terrace with a bit of character, something to do up, but she wanted a smart, new place. It wasn't 'me'. The neighbours weren't 'me'. But I let her have what she wanted.
I wasn't allowed to listen to my music any more. She never said I couldn't, but would sigh loudly and shut doors, or say I was being inconsiderate to the neighbours. Then she presented me with these top of the range headphones we couldn't afford, but every time I put them on she'd pull them off to tell me stuff (usually about curtains), or moan because I wanted to fall away into some old Skynryd instead of watching Emmerdale with her.
She was what they call 'high maintenance', but when I made her happy I'd feel like I'd climbed a mountain. And I got to sleep with her every night. That made up for every frustration of every day.
Within a couple of years she saw a better house in a posher area, with three bedrooms and a big garden. At first I said no, but when she told me what this new place meant to her, I understood.
"I want us to have a real home, where we can bring up our children," she told me. "A better neighbourhood will mean better schools. Heath, this is our future. You've had a few years tearing around on motorbikes and going to see bands, but do you still want to be doing that when you're forty?"
My immediate answer was 'yes', but I didn't want to end up like some of the older guys I knew, propping up the bar every night because they hadn't got anything to go home to. If having a happy relationship meant making a few sacrifices, I'd do it.
Look, I was only a kid. I didn't understand that with the right person, you can be who you really are.
She had her heart set on that house, so I needed to earn more. I was working for a firm that serviced office equipment, but it didn't pay enough. My boss told me I was a hit with the customers, so I applied for sales jobs. Selling it instead of maintaining it. A voice at the back of my head told me that I was shutting the door on my youth, but I ignored it. I didn't realise it wasn't my youth I was saying ta-ta to, but my self.
I had to have my hair cut to be taken seriously by the high-end customers whose business I needed, and I was good at what I did, but the pressure was on. Sarah had aspirations. As soon as I'd paid for one new carpet, or a new fifty-inch TV for the 'den', she wanted something else. Then she discovered she was pregnant, and she couldn't work past the fifth month because her blood pressure was at dangerous levels.
My son meant the world to me from the moment I knew he existed, but once he was born I didn't get much time to enjoy him. We'd planned that she'd be a stay-at-home mum, because we both wanted Jackson to have a stable childhood in his own home, and I thought Sarah might change her priorities to what really mattered, but I was wrong. If anything, she stepped it up. Designer baby clothes, toys that a neighbour told her were the latest educational 'must have'. While I was working long hours, she mixed with other mums whose husbands earned a hell of a lot more than I did, and whose lives appeared to be one long round of one-upmanship.
I had a company car, but she wanted one of those 'people carriers' that yummy mummies drive their kids around in, so my bike had to go.
I never got a chance to ride it, anyway. Never got to see my old mates.
I tried putting my foot down, but she'd just sign up for credit cards. Take out loans. Start crying. Run to Mummy and Daddy and tell them I was mean.
She was so selfish. I worked twelve hour days; Jax was asleep when I left in the morning, and when I got home. I only saw him at weekends. Didn't it matter that he hardly saw his father?
That was when I began to fall out of love with her, and once the love blinkers fell off I saw that I'd hitched myself to a petulant, manipulative child.
She wanted another baby, but an ectopic pregnancy resulted in a hysterectomy, so that was that. And that was when she went a bit crazy. I tried to support her, I swear I did, but I was so damn tired all the time, and the demands never stopped. Everything was geared towards impressing her friends, she wanted to redecorate every five minutes, and, as he grew bigger, Jax became her verbal punch bag, too. The house had to look like a show home at all times. She'd go berserk if he left a toy out, even in his bedroom. Poor kid.
Jax and I grew closer, united in our unspoken fear of doing anything that would send Sarah off her trolley. She'd scream at us if we left a magazine or comic on a chair, or if the bathroom wasn't laboratory-clean. I'll never forget the day I found my six-year-old son crying as he scrubbed the sparkling clean toilet with scourer and bleach because 'Mummy will say I've left poop on it'. Another time, when he had his little buddies round on what Sarah called a 'play date', he spilled Ribena on the cream coloured carpet and she swiped him around the head in front of all his friends, then screamed at three wide-eyed, terrified kids to take their greasy fingers off her furniture. I had to ring up their parents and explain that Jax's mother was ill; explaining why they were bawling their eyes out was not so easy.
Anything and everything we did sent her off her rocker.
I tried understanding, I tried firm talking, I took her to the doctor, she saw a therapist, she tried every anti-depressant, anti-anxiety and homeopathic remedy you can think of, but nothing made more than a fleeting difference.
We had a beautiful house (albeit one I'd grown to hate), enough money, our youth, basic good health, and, best of all, our son. We were blessed; we should have had a happy life, but she wouldn't let us.
I started to play away.
At first it was just the odd girl I picked up on a sales trip. Then I grew closer to Emily, who worked in our office. We began an affair. It was pretty standard stuff; Sarah found a text when she was inspecting my phone. I wasn't careful about covering my tracks. I think I wanted her to find out so that I could shout, "Look what you've driven me to! Look what you've done! It's your fault, not mine!"
She confronted me, I confessed, and I said more than I needed to, ju
st to twist the knife. I made no bones about my feelings for Emily. I told her about the one-night stands, too.
She screamed the place down, yelled and wailed, smashed anything she could find that belonged to me; I was just picking my laptop off the floor and wondering if it could be salvaged when I heard her storm out of the house and screech off down the road in the car we couldn't afford to run.
I should have gone after her, but I didn't, because I was glad she'd gone.
She never came back. She smashed her car into a brick wall, and the next time I saw her was in the morgue.
She had alcohol in her system; they found an empty bottle in the car. Oddly, that hadn't smashed. Just my wife's head, that was all that was broken.
I was in a bad, bad place. I drove Emily away; it was never the same after Sarah. Jax went to stay with her parents; I didn't want him to see me like that, and I wasn't capable of looking after him properly. Sarah's parents blamed me for their daughter's death, as I blamed myself for Jax losing his mother. But, somewhere in the darkest corner of my mind that I hardly dared explore, I was relieved. It was over. I was free. I have never and will never admit that to anyone, because it makes me sound like a monster, but once I acknowledged it to myself, that black hole sucked me right down.
I knew I was that monster. Am that monster.
People thought I was broken up about losing my wife, which made me feel even worse. I didn't deserve their sympathy. If they'd known the truth they'd have been as appalled as I was.
I sold the house and drifted off to stay with friends in London, sinking into alcohol and anti-depressants. I kept off the sauce for Jax's fortnightly visits, but as soon as he was gone I'd hit it again because I hated myself for being such a useless piece of crap that I couldn't even look after him properly.
I got no money from the house. We owed it all in loan and store card payments.
After eighteen months I kicked myself into gear and stopped wallowing. I wanted to live again, be a proper father and, thank goodness, Jax wanted nothing more than to be with me. Sarah's parents were against it, so we just escaped one night. I changed our surname; I didn't want them to track us down and start some lengthy court case, naming me as an unfit parent. We lodged in Eyam, I started my little garage business, and by the time they caught up with me I was on the straight and narrow again; no court was going to take Jackson away, and they knew it.