Screams of Thy Neighbour
Page 15
“I wanted to show you what I wanted to show you. On my terms.”
“But these provide such a vivid insight into your state of mind. We can work towards helping overcome the trauma of that day—”
“Don’t say it.”
“That day when you lost your parents, Edward.”
Edward glowered but clamped his mouth shut.
“Out of interest, can you remember your first diary entry? Or your first scrapbook entry?”
Edward well remembered the earliest entries he made. The inaugural entry in his journal – he’d barely started school by then – covered a family trip to the local pet store. He’d tried his best to sketch out all the animals he saw and stroked. The unmistakeable odour of small mammal pee on beds of straw. He spoke fondly to Dr Wells of the fish, some small and others absolutely minuscule, darting hither and thither in their gleaming tanks.
Referencing the first page of his missing scrapbook, he had stuck a photo of a beanstalk that he’d grown in a Year 1 science class. “Where you take a jar, line the inside with damp cotton wool and paper towels, and put a bean in it. I was so proud of growing that. I wanted it to be the tallest in my class, and that I would be able to climb up it like in Jack and the Beanstalk. When the beans had fully grown, I picked them and gave them to my dad for his lunch the next day.”
His manner became progressively more expressive: gesticulating freely with his hands, widening his eyes and keeping his mouth slightly open. Dr Wells could tell there was an irrepressible boy trying to break free. Brimming with confidence. Longing to return to a point where innocence and love were part and parcel of his childhood.
“I think you are greater today than the sum of all these activities. What’s their significance?” Edward did not react. “I’m just thinking out loud and helping you rationalise the loss of your diaries. What did you intend to do with them?”
Edward considered this for a moment. “I wanted to look back on them as I get older. It would've been comforting to know that my life had meaning in some way. And then, store it in a kind of time capsule for future generations to uncover. Like a legacy, when I die.” His glassy eyes came across dewy with nostalgia.
Dr Wells paused her note-taking and pondered something for a short while. The seconds hand on the clock ticked away softly in the background. It was the only distraction from the eerie quiet.
“Don’t forget what I’ve said before, Edward. It’s important when you’re feeling worked up by these negative feelings, to always be in the present moment. You might find it useful to start writing again and keep adding only positive memories to your new diary each day.”
“Is that something to do with the new technique you wanted to try with me?” Edward asked.
“No it’s not. I hoped to start that when you’re ready. My plan was to introduce a treatment called EMDR. It sounds complicated. The theory is that negative thoughts and feelings you experience are caused by incorrect processing of memories, following a traumatic event. We can hopefully use EMDR to stop difficult experiences overwhelming your brain’s own coping mechanisms.”
“Sounds like rubbish,” Edward said coldly.
“I know you’re a bright young man with a curious and analytical mind, could you give this a go? As scientists, maybe your parents would have wanted—”
“Could you just not keep bringing them into this,” Edward responded in anger.
“If you choose to give it a go, I will ask you to think back to the crash. At the same time, I want you to follow my index finger as it moves side to side,” she raised a digit in front of her chest, “only with your eyes.” She demonstrated the act of moving her arm – finger pointed upwards – left to right and back again.
“Seems to me like a load of crap.”
“We’re in no rush Edward. We’ll start if and when you feel the time is right. Do you trust me, Edward?”
“Maybe.” His attention homed in on the folder sitting atop her lap. “What bits of my diary have you got in there anyway?”
“Good question. I managed to piece together some extracts.” She delved in and held up a crumpled piece of paper, almost intact save for a large chunk ripped off one corner. “This picture, do you remember drawing it?”
“Yeah, of course. My art skills were no better twelve months ago.”
“Twelve months ago?” Dr Wells made a quick note. “Right, can you tell me who these figures are?”
She pointed at a man’s crumpled face, with dots for stubble and short yellow hair, in the driver’s seat of a crudely drawn SUV. His eyes were represented by single flat lines; he was at peace. “Your father?”
Edward nodded cautiously, and felt his face steaming up.
Outside the car, another figure with a skirt and flowing hair. Her eyes too were closed as though asleep. Dr Wells pointed to this. “Mum?”
He did not answer this either, instead forcing shut his own eyes and looking away. White knuckles clenched the edge of the settee, and his feet bounced up and down off the floor.
A third, slightly truncated individual lay beside Linda. With open eyes and a misshapen arm, it was clear whom this depicted.
Dr Wells then ran her finger to a fourth character on the page. Here lay a man, next to his own car and surrounded by a large red puddle, eyes denoted by crosses in his ugly square head. “This is the driver of the other car, presumably?”
Edward relaxed, to a degree, and looked at the drawing with an expression that could best be compared to the justified look of withering contempt one might hold towards a thief. Or towards someone who takes the lives of one’s own mother and father.
“Can I ask what this is?”
“His intestines.”
“No, sorry I got that. I was pointing to this. The lightning bolt.”
“It’s a lightning bolt.”
Ever the patient clinician, Dr Wells smiled and let go a long breath through her nose.
Edward continued. “Last year I researched the crash. I found news stories about it. It had made the national papers.”
“You’ve drawn this man’s genitals, and the lightning bolt striking his groin.”
“Death was too good for him,” Edward snarled. “Fucking bastard.”
Dr Wells hung back from the brink of questioning him further. When he was ready, he continued. Time was against him though, for the tears were building en masse, ready to surge down his flustered cheeks.
That mid-October weekend, over five years earlier, he had come face to face with the world’s cruelty, its twisted injustice. He reclined against the backrest of the chaise longue, resting his clenched hands on his thighs. This roller coaster wasn’t losing steam.
He stared vacantly past Dr Wells, harking back to recount that tumultuous day. “I read the inquest reports and articles in the press. The guy was on his phone, texting some bitch for a quick hook-up. The lights were red but he wasn’t paying attention.”
He spoke quicker now, because the tears were ready to mount a charge from his eyelids. “Police found nudes on his phone. He was a businessman, a married father-of-one, and he, and he—”
He broke off. Dr Wells’ mouth moved and she raised a finger and started moving that finger one way then the other and back again. None of what she said, nothing she did, registered with Edward though, because his sights were set on a distant point far back in time.
He imagined the lead-up to the crash, from the other driver’s perspective. How the guy would have sped along the dual carriageway in his fancy four-by-four. Concentrating on exchanging customary sex texts with his lover. Massaging the hard-on growing in his pants. They might have met online mere hours before, but nothing could stand in his way. No roadworks, no traffic lights, no family commitments. No storm, no ill of man, could rein in his primal desires.
The lights were green Dwayne.
Edward felt he ought to finish his train of thought but the tears were in free-fall. The roller coaster juddered to a halt.
Oh jeez.
“It can’t be right to have all the bad luck and all the world’s shit thrown at me.”
“I know you think it’s unfair.” Dr Wells had stopped doing that thing with her finger. On the table between them rested a tissue box, which Edward readily accepted when it was offered.
It took a while before he was able to compose himself sufficiently. Through his bleary vision, he saw Dr Wells returning the picture to its folder. For once, she was not looking at him. He felt sure that it had been her goal all along to break him. She had succeeded, of that much Edward knew. He was broken.
“Time your breaths to the ticking of the clock for me.”
Over a period of a minute or two, Edward’s breathing normalised. Hyperventilation replaced by erratic intakes of air, ceded to subdued sniffles and spluttering, timed to the rhythm of that bland clock on the beige wall, above the fake flowers on the ancient mantlepiece.
“You can forget starting that MERD bullshit.”
“We already started. One of the first steps is isolating and identifying traumatic memories. Then we work out coping strategies.”
“It’s getting to the point where I don’t care anymore. I want people to remember me, not for who I was, but for who I’m going to be,” Edward professed ominously.
“We can address your anger and vengeful tendencies in our next sessions. For now, shall we call it a day?”
Edward readily agreed and got up to retrieve his hooded top from the coat stand.
“Remember to keep writing,” she told him as he was about to depart. “But fill your life with positivity. Also, keep using those techniques I’ve shown you before, when you need to stay anchored to the here and now.”
Once he entered the crisp late-morning air, Edward rooted in his pocket for his phone.
Blip-ploop-tsh. Tick-tick-tick-tick.
The phone ticked away in Edward’s palm, and he walked to Helen’s car.
“How was it honey? Come on, get in,” she called from across the street.
“Thanks Mum, but I can manage. I’ll phone you if I need anything,” Edward shouted back. He walked past her car in that instantly recognisable, composed manner of someone who hasn’t bawled their heart out to a stone-faced psychotherapist a few minutes ago.
“Fair enough I suppose. After all, it has been barely three months since you last went out by yourself. And look what happened to you then,” Helen said sarcastically. “Now come on, jump in.”
Edward ignored this and her subsequent orders. Against the wintry chill and gusting breeze, he carried on walking. He pulled up his hood and trod across the open field, aiming for the wooded copse. Helen was dumpy and wouldn’t catch him on foot. She called to him but he merely waved back without breaking stride.
Edward had an errand to run.
XXI
The cool air did not give up by the time Edward had disembarked the bus and made his way up the familiar paved driveway. He pulled his hood down to look more presentable for Tom’s parents, should they come to the door. The bracing wind numbed his ears and he instantly regretted doing this.
He pressed the doorbell and could hear it chiming inside the entrance foyer of the plush home. Thirty seconds passed, or thereabouts, until a figure emerged behind the glazed door, unlatched it and pulled it ajar.
“Yes?” A forlorn middle-aged woman looked at him with barely concealed disdain. A scruffy, loose-fitting top hugged her figure. A cross dangled from a golden chain around her neck.
“Hey Mrs Osbourne. I’m here to see Tom,” Edward said politely.
“I honestly thought we’d seen the back of you.” Tom’s mother made no effort to hide her frustration and she huffed loudly.
Edward did not know quite how to respond. He chose tact.
“Sorry, if now’s not a good time I can come back later,” he said.
“No, we don’t want you back Edward. We didn’t want you here to begin with!” the woman retorted, her voice shrill with consternation.
She pushed the door, but Edward stuck a foot in the opening.
“Where is he?” he asked calmly.
“I don’t know! I don’t know where he’s gone or where his father’s gone. And right now I don’t care. Since you came along and pushed yourself into his life, interfered with him, you’ve managed to tear this family apart. And now you have the cheek to come here and ask – get your foot back or I shall call the police – and ask where he is. How should I know?”
This woman was now teetering on the brink of hysteria. Fortunately, the house was of a reasonable size and in a secluded area, so neighbours should not be alerted by her show of disapproval.
Edward glowered at her. “I don’t see what I could have done wrong, other than care about him. It’s more than can be said about your feelings towards him.”
“I don’t know what you’ve done to him, but he’s gone off the rails. He was threatening me and his father. He was menacing towards the neighbours. His decision to leave was his alone. Not that I should need to explain myself to you. He’s better off without you ruining his life.”
Edward was close to losing his patience, but valiantly kept it together as he continued to pressure her.
“I don’t care what you think. If you tell me where he's likely to be, I can leave,” he said.
“Why don’t you phone him – you have his number?”
“He won’t answer, I’ve tried calling him and messaging him but I haven’t heard back.”
“Now it’s my turn to not give a monkey’s. Just clear off my property or I’m phoning the police.”
“Fine, I’ll wait for them, with my broken nose and stitched-up abdomen and bruised ribs and missing teeth. I’ll let them know I’ve been harassed by a homophobic woman at my friend’s house. They may turn up in half an hour, maybe forty-eight hours. Either way, I can wait.”
“You wicked boy.” She shoved his chest. “Your lifestyle together, it’s deprived Tom of a respectable adulthood. I’ve lost my only child.”
“That will all be irrelevant to you when you shuffle off this mortal coil. No one cares what you think.” He smiled, safe in the realisation of how much better he was than the woman glaring at him from the doorway.
Tears streamed down Mrs Osbourne’s cheeks and her hands shook on the door.
“What does it matter to you if you tossed him out and let him fend for himself?” Edward asked. “Where’s your compassion? You’re miserable, I can see that. Obviously, since he’s no longer in your life, you’re happier than you’ve ever been.” He smirked. “Happier than you’ve ever been, now that you’ve lost him.”
His words had the desired effect. She opened the door a little wider and spoke in a hushed voice. He’d broken her. He had won.
“I think he’s found a small apartment closer to the town centre.” She recited an address that filled Edward with dread. The neighbourhood was set in a rough estate, notorious for its endemic violence and impoverished community.
“He got a letter in the post the other day saying that his mail is being redirected to that apartment. I haven’t spoken or seen him since he left before Christmas.”
She broke down, leaning her head against her arm perched on the doorway. A tragic sight, but Edward had no time or patience for sympathy.
“Was that really so hard?” Edward asked sarcastically. “See, I didn’t want to be standing here any longer than I had to.”
With that, he walked up the driveway towards the street. Behind him, a muffled sob and heavy sniffing were audible.
“I’ll be on the phone to your parents this afternoon,” she whimpered. “This has to stop. You're rotten to the core.”
Edward did not glance back.
He we
nt to board a bus that took him directly to the town centre. It would then only be a short walk to the flats named by Tom’s mother. He stopped once, to buy a sandwich from one of the handful of stores still trading on the desolate thoroughfare.
◆◆◆
From the outset, it was clear that this was not a well-maintained apartment block. Dogs (bloody dogs) barked in the distance. Children loitered on a litter-strewn basketball court, awash with graffiti and infested with weeds. Clothes were hanging out of windows to dry. Clapped-out old motors lined the roadside. Rusting satellite dishes clamped to the exterior of the flats like barnacles on a rock.
Edward didn’t even need to ring the intercom because the front door had not been properly closed by the last visitor. The stairwell was freezing and echoes rang out with each of Edward’s footsteps. He sought out the correct floor and flat number.
Bracing himself for the unexpected, Edward knocked. The door opened and a scruffy face peered out.
“Toshy? Man, you look like shit,” was all that Edward could bring himself to say.
“Yeah, well. You don’t look much better,” Tom said obtusely.
Tom’s face was pale and overrun with stubble that sprouted like a forest of pubic hair. His eyes were bloodshot and he blinked continuously. Edward could not be sure if his pupils were dilated. One thing he was certain of, was that this person in no way resembled the Thomas Osbourne he had known and loved before.
That did not matter though. What mattered was that Edward had rediscovered his soulmate. At last.
“It’s been so long,” Edward said, almost whispering in awe.
Tom sighed and stared at his feet. “Mate, now’s not a good time. I only just moved here and I need to sort my shit out—”
“You think you have it bad! Where were you when I was being resuscitated last year?”
“Keep it down, the neighbours are funny round here.” Tom glanced over his shoulder and dragged out another breath. “Come on.”
Edward stepped into the flat. It was as dingy as the rest of the block. Some fall from grace, he thought as he contrasted this existence with the charming family home Tom had left. It would not have been misplaced in a budget holiday camp. A narrow hallway led past a bathroom and opened out into a puny dining area-cum-living room-cum-bedsit. Edward half feared that if he were to stumble on one side of the room, his head would crack open on the opposite wall. Judging by the state of the peeling wallpaper, covered in dodgy stains that crusted over the skirting boards, infection would be the death of him before he bled out.