The Silence
Page 16
“You could stay at my house,” I replied quickly and confidently, while another part of me wanted to be as far away from her as possible. “You’d be safer there.”
“How long can that go on for though?” Michelle said, shaking her head, turning back away from me. “How long do I keep running?”
I understood it now. Why she was talking in riddles and not running as fast and as far as possible.
She wanted this.
“Michelle, you can’t let this happen.”
She looked at me through eyes that were no longer alive. The light that had always shined in them was gone now. “Why not? Don’t you think we deserve it?”
“No, of course not,” I said, getting to my feet and feeling the room spin a little again. “We screwed up. I’m not saying we haven’t. It doesn’t mean we have to give in. He was evil. If he’d been given the chance, he would have killed us all. He was going to kill Stuart. We did what we had to. That’s it. Yes, we have to live with that, and it will mess us up for the rest of our lives, but that doesn’t mean we deserve…this. I don’t care if someone is out there now, looking for revenge or whatever. We did the right thing.”
“I keep having the same nightmare,” Michelle said, her voice quieter now, as she moved back across the room and sat down. “Ever since it happened. I’m in the woods and there’s a banging coming from somewhere. I’m running, trying to find where it’s coming from. Every time I feel like I’m getting closer, the noise moves to somewhere else. I can’t find it and I just keep going and going, until I can’t breathe anymore. That’s what life feels like all the time now. Like I’m just waiting for that noise to get closer, while we all pretend it’s not coming. I can’t handle it anymore. I either have to tell someone what we did, or just wait for whatever noise is coming to arrive.”
“We can get through this—”
“No, I can’t,” Michelle said, cutting me off as I started to speak. She got to her feet and opened the living room door. “I shouldn’t have told you what was going on. I should have kept it to myself.”
“It’s okay. I can help you,” I replied, standing up but not moving closer to her. “It’s just a blip, okay? There’s no reason to let whoever this is win. We all need to just get together and work this out, that’s all. All of us. If we can make some sort of plan, it’ll all be okay.”
“Because the last time we made a plan worked out so well? There’s nothing we can do now. Just…just leave me alone. I’ll think about it, okay? That’s all I’ll say.”
“Michelle, come with me back to mine. You can stay a few days until we sort all of this out.”
She smiled at me, but I knew there was no changing her mind.
“I’ll be okay here,” Michelle said finally, stepping aside so I knew it was time to leave. “I’m probably worked up over nothing. Maybe I did buy that candle and just forgot about it. I’ve not exactly been in the right frame of mind recently. I just need a good night’s sleep.”
I knew she didn’t believe that. Someone had been in her house—had left her the same candle as the one I had seen earlier in Stuart’s house. The idea of it shook me again—the unreality of it making me want to laugh.
This couldn’t be happening.
I wanted to stay. I wanted to convince her that this wasn’t the place she should be right then. That there was another way out of the mess we had created. It would be pointless, I could see, but I should have tried harder.
Instead, I left her there and went back home.
I left her to make myself safe again.
1997
“Alexandra.”
She looked up at me and her face was blank. I couldn’t read it at all. Even as an inexperienced sixteen-year-old boy, I still felt like I could work out some things in life. This wasn’t one of those things. We had become girlfriend and boyfriend only a month or so earlier. I was still learning.
Alexandra.
“Why do you call me that?” she said, brushing a finger through her bangs to take it away from her eyes, then not flinching as it settled back in the same place. “Everyone else calls me Alex, but you don’t. Why?”
I opened my mouth to give an answer, but my brain didn’t seem to want to cooperate. I closed it again, waited a few seconds for it to catch up, then made another attempt. “I like your name.”
“I love my name, but that doesn’t answer my question.”
Truth was, I didn’t really have an answer. I just enjoyed saying it. Everyone else called her Alex, which was fine, but I felt like I wanted to be different. Maybe that was a good enough answer, but at that moment, I wasn’t sure what her reaction would be.
“Do you want me to call you Alex?” I said instead, trying to maintain the eye contact she was intent on giving me. I failed. “I can if you want?”
“No. Keep calling me Alexandra.”
The summer was almost over, what there had been of it anyway. A typical August in the north of England. The stress of exams over. The wait for results had been worrying, but we had all done well. Further education awaited us—sixth form and the start of A-levels—although it would be different. No school uniform, for a start. We were growing up. I was enjoying the breeze, which was lifting from the sea—calming and warm. The sun was dipping behind the odd cloud, but I was sitting in a T-shirt and feeling comfortable.
“What did you want anyway?” Alexandra said, turning her head in my lap and looking back out across the Irish Sea.
“What?”
“You said my name…?”
I shook my head, trying to remember if there was a reason. Failing to think of one. “I think I just wanted to say it aloud again.” I looked down at her, seeing her face in profile. Her face softened and the corners of her mouth turned upward a little.
“My mum is still going on about this Diana thing you know,” Alexandra said after a few moments of comfortable silence. “Talking about going down to London for the funeral. Not sure what she expects to see.”
“Queen of hearts, wasn’t she?” I replied, wishing I could sit there forever. “I’m just glad it didn’t happen while we were at school. Not sure I could have handled all the crying. It was bad enough being woken up at six o’clock in the morning to be told about it.”
“It’ll be different in high school this year,” Alexandra said, sitting up and leaning on her elbows next to me, her long body stretched out on the wall. “First year of sixth form. Got to start thinking about university and all that grown-up stuff.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I’m exactly looking forward to that. At least when it was just us, no one could say a word against us. When we’re all apart, it’s only going to be harder to keep people from finding out what a complete geek I am.”
“Not true,” Alexandra replied, pulling herself up and sitting next to me. She leaned close and placed her head on my shoulder. “Plus, if I find out someone is teasing you, they’ll have me to deal with. No matter where you are.”
“Is that right?” I said, chuckling softly as I spoke. “Alexandra Thompson is going to come to my rescue?”
“Damn right,” she replied, laughing along with me. “I’ve got a mean right hook on me. I could knock out Mike Tyson, me.”
We were still laughing as the others joined us. Chris and Nicola refusing to let go of each other’s hands as they sat down next to us, Michelle singing a No Doubt song that had been top of her playlist that summer. “Just a Girl,” being belted into the skies. She had a great voice, but we weren’t about to tell her that.
We were just happy she’d moved on from “Barbie Girl.”
“Do you think it’ll always be like this?” Nicola said, as wistful as a sixteen-year-old girl could possibly be. “The five of us, I mean.”
“I doubt it,” Chris replied, sharing a look with me. “Someone is eventually going to be able to put up with her singing long enough t
o get off with her. Probably just to shut her up, to be honest.”
Michelle stopped long enough to aim a wayward kick in Chris’s direction. He didn’t even flinch, all of us laughing as she placed her hands on her hips in indignation. “I’d like to hear you sing.”
Chris needed no further invitation, belting out a tuneless version of Oasis’s latest song. It was barely recognizable, even though it was just the chorus over and over, until we were all screaming at him to stop.
“You just can’t recognize talent when it’s in front of you,” Chris said finally, a smirk of triumph on his face.
When we’d stopped laughing and allowed the silence to creep over us, it was almost a minute before someone spoke again. It was Alexandra who broke it.
“We need to make a pact.”
“Not this again,” Chris said under his breath, shaking his head. “Every time with the pacts. Remember how we all promised not to get as drunk as we did in the park last New Year? What happened a month later?”
“This is different,” Alexandra cut in, standing up now and facing us all. “This is about us. We’re mates, right? That comes before everything else.”
I didn’t like the look she gave me as she said that, but I tried to hide my fear. Chris and Nicola had been together forever, so it seemed redundant for them, but I was starting to worry about something I shouldn’t have. A voice inside me, telling me this was just a summer romance for Alexandra and that we had a finite existence as a couple.
“So, no matter what happens in the next year or beyond, we always have each other’s backs, right? No. Matter. What.”
We didn’t disagree.
I thought back to a year earlier. About a scrapyard. About running away, forgetting about Chris and Nicola.
And when I looked at Chris, I knew he was thinking the same thing.
Later, as we headed to the bus stop to go home, Chris and I fell in step. I caught his eye and raised my eyebrows.
We had barely spoken about that night since. I hadn’t wanted to talk about it, and it had seemed like he’d felt the same. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
“You did what you had to, mate,” Chris said, as if he could read my thoughts. “We lost each other. It was dark. We’d filled our heads with silly ghost stories, and you were on your own. I would have done the same thing.”
“You had Nicola to look after,” I replied, stopping and looking away and out toward the river. I could see Crosby Beach in the distance if I strained my eyes hard enough. “I’m still not sure what happened.”
“Neither am I. And that’s what I told the police.”
Chris and I talked about everything. I knew his life, his dreams, his hopes and fears. I knew him better than even Nicola, I reckoned. Yet we had made some sort of unspoken decision never to talk about that night in the days afterward. At first, it had been all we had spoken about—what we should do, what we should say. Then, nothing. Not until now.
It was as if the worst thing that would ever happen to us had made us shut down. We had instead concentrated on other things. Michelle would try to bring it up, but Chris and I would refuse to be drawn into it. Nicola dealt with her. As did Alexandra. Yet me and Chris…we didn’t want to know. “Same,” I said finally, turning around and facing him. The girls were still walking to the bus stop, oblivious to our not being behind them. “They reckon that guy will get life.”
“So he should. Killing a fifteen-year-old kid, just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
There had been a smell of death in that yard. A few victims of the drug trade, I’d read in my dad’s copy of the Liverpool Echo in the days after what happened. Mikey had been found killed in the same way. They’d arrested a number of people over the next week, eventually charging someone for his murder. When I saw his picture in the paper, I tried to put myself in Mikey’s shoes. Tried to think about his last moments, as a thirty-odd-year-old bloke with tattoos up his hands, up his arms, across his neck, loomed over me. Not blinking, not thinking twice, before ending a fifteen-year-old lad’s life over nothing. We’d been foolish enough to think we were invincible, but now, all I could think about was what if that bloke had found me instead of Mikey.
“When they found Mikey’s body, they pulled me in again,” Chris said, kicking at a stone. “Nicola too.”
“Yeah, same.”
“Probably wondered if it was us. Glad they got him. Hope he dies in prison. It could have been anyone of us. We didn’t even know they were there.”
“We heard them. We just didn’t realize who it was.”
“We shouldn’t have been there.”
“Just so you know, that wouldn’t happen again,” I said, fixing Chris with a stare. “I wouldn’t leave you behind again. You understand? Never again. We’re in a situation where it gets a bit scary or whatever, and I’m not leaving you behind. You get me?”
Chris bit on his lower lip, looking away as his eyes watered. “Yeah, mate. Same.”
We wouldn’t talk about that kid dying for a long time. Even though someone had died in our presence—even if we hadn’t seen it—we never spoke about it.
As if the real pact had been about silence. About never discussing death of any kind.
Twenty-Two
After another sleepless night, I managed to leave the house again the following day. Three days in a row. It was a new record. Before Stuart had died, I could go a week without stepping foot outside. With weekly shops now delivering to your door and everything I needed no more than a click of a button away, there was no real need for me to leave.
I could have quite happily gone on the same way forever.
Well, happily might have been pushing it.
I’d messaged Michelle as soon as it was a reasonable time, waiting for a response before contacting Chris. She was okay, but I wondered how true that would actually be. Lying awake the previous night, I knew she’d been doing the same.
Someone was in her house and you left her there.
I’d showered, again, then called Chris. Arranged to meet him in the usual place. Left the house a little quicker than the previous day, then sat in my car, trying to work out what I was going to do.
The only answer I had was to keep going.
The usual place was a pub around five minutes from Chris’s office. It had been taken over by one of the chains a couple of years earlier, but we’d continued to meet up there at least once a week for lunch. Even as it became more and more difficult to leave the safety of my home, I still kept meeting up. It was as if by doing that I could ignore the fact that there was something seriously wrong with me.
I saw him walking up as I got out of the car and raised a hand in greeting.
“Okay?” Chris said as I approached him. “Sounded a bit urgent on the phone.”
“Yeah, let’s talk inside,” I replied, following him and finding our normal table empty as usual.
“I’m buying,” Chris said, as he noted the table number just in case it was different from the hundred other times we had sat there. I’d joked about it with him once, then felt like an idiot a few weeks later when the number had changed.
“You can’t take anything for granted, lad.”
That was Chris. He was always right and always thinking ahead.
It was why I spoke to him about everything I couldn’t work out. It was why when he came back to the table, I didn’t pause and told him what had happened in the previous twenty-four hours.
When I was finished, he sat back in his chair and stayed silent for a few seconds. Then a few more. I was about to speak again when he finally spoke.
“What happened last year, it’s messed with all of us. Now, there’s what happened to Stuart, just to screw us up all over again. We’re going to see things, do things, that don’t make any sense.”
“Someone has been in Michelle’s house.”
“I saw the candle, Chris.”
“You saw a candle, Matt,” Chris replied, shaking his head as he curled a hand around his pint glass and lifted it to his mouth. He set it back down and looked across the table at me. “We all know the story now. She could have bought that thing at any point, then, finds it in the past week and is just forgetting that she lit it in the dead of night or something.”
“Why though?” I said, unable to keep the skepticism from my voice. It didn’t make sense to me, and I wanted to hear that I was seeing things that didn’t exist. I knew Chris couldn’t do that. “It just doesn’t ring true to me.”
“Same thing that Stuart was struggling with.”
I was about to ask what he meant just as our food was delivered. Chris wiped down a knife and fork, but I left the sandwich he’d ordered for me where it was. Waited for the waitress to leave and then spoke. “What was he struggling with?”
“Same thing we’ve all been living with,” Chris replied, placing his cutlery back down on his napkin. “Guilt.”
“Maybe it’s gone on for long enough.”
“What do you mean?”
I took a swig from my own drink and looked out at the busy road outside the pub. Watched cars fly past, wondering where all the people were going at that time of day. I turned back to Chris and bit down on the corner of my bottom lip with an incisor. “Maybe it’s time we told someone what we did.”
Chris breathed in deeply and set his glass back down on the table a little harder than he’d probably wanted to. I didn’t let him speak first. “Listen, hear me out, okay, then you can tell me I’m wrong. We’ve all been living with this thing in our heads for a year. This…knowledge, that we killed him.”