by Luca Veste
It wasn’t silence.
It was soothing.
Twenty-Four
I reached home with just enough time to get inside and switch on the coffee machine before Alexandra arrived. The drive back had been a blur. I tried to remember it as I waited for the cup to fill but found myself unable to recall any part of it. Just the sound of the music filling the car as I turned the volume louder and louder, until it hurt.
Her car pulled up behind mine as I watched from the window. I was holding the cup in my hands, cradling it, enjoying the warmth, humming a tune to myself. I breathed deeply as she got out and paused, looking at the house. I averted my eyes briefly, worried about being seen, then checked myself in the mirror.
I walked into the hallway and opened the door just as she was opening the gate and walking up the path. She smiled tightly, then I felt her hand on my shoulder and her lips on my cheek briefly. She murmured a greeting, then she slipped past me and inside. The smell of Armani Code perfume drifted along with her, and I wondered if she was still using the bottle I’d bought her on her last birthday. Then I realized that would have been fifteen months earlier and very unlikely.
There was a moment when I almost said “Make yourself at home” out of politeness but managed to stop myself.
The awkwardness I was feeling wasn’t something I expected.
I didn’t need to say anything, as it happened. Alexandra went straight into the living room and sat down on the sofa. As I followed her in and stood opposite, against the fireplace, I realized she had chosen the same space she’d always occupied when we lived together. I chuckled softly as she looked up at me. “At least some things don’t change,” I said, knowing she’d get it.
“It was always the best seat in the place,” Alexandra replied with a smile that showed her teeth. It disappeared as quickly as it came. “Anyway, how have you been?”
“You know,” I said, placing the cup of coffee on the mantelpiece and folding my arms across my chest. “Same old, same old.”
“Liar.”
“Want a drink?” I said before she could say anything more. “Coffee, tea…a large gin and tonic?”
“No thanks.”
“Good. I don’t have any gin, and the tonic water has been open in the fridge for about a year. Probably less fizzy than water by now.”
“I’m fine,” she said, looking me over. “Still not sleeping?”
“I get enough.”
Alexandra saw right through me, but didn’t push me on the lie. She breathed deeply and looked away. “Everything looks the same.”
“I never was much of a decorator.” I unfolded my arms and moved across the room, back to the window. I didn’t want to sit down, wasn’t sure why. “So, how are you doing?”
“I was doing okay—not great, but well enough—until a few days ago. Now…now I’m not so sure.”
I knew what had prompted the visit now. “Michelle.”
“She called me last night,” Alexandra said, sitting back and seeming to struggle with the urge to slip her shoes off and tuck her feet underneath her. That’s what she would normally do on that sofa, but that was a different time, I felt. Now, she wasn’t sure what to do.
“She told you,” I replied, as I watched her continue to battle against habit. “What’s been going on, what she thinks is happening. All of it.”
“Yes. She’s scared.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“Of course. Doesn’t mean any of it is right though. She said you’d been over. You can’t have believed what she thinks is happening if you just left her there.”
I hesitated, just long enough for her to read me like a cheap paperback.
“I can’t believe you…”
“It wasn’t like that,” I said quickly, not meeting her eyes as she looked at me. Shame almost drowned me. “She didn’t want me to do anything, and I knew I couldn’t stay there. She wouldn’t let me. And she wouldn’t come and stay here, didn’t want me to call anyone.”
“That doesn’t matter and you know it. You’re supposed to be her friend. You’re supposed to be there for her. How could you just leave her on her own if you thought she was in danger? For God’s sake, Matt…even if this is all just your overactive imagination, I would have thought you would care for her a little more than that.”
“Have you been over there yourself? I doubt Chris or Nicola have either, and they both know now as well. And I’ve not heard you once say you believe her. Don’t lay all this at my door. That’s not fair.”
Alexandra made to argue more, then held up her hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, this isn’t helping. None of us have done the right thing. Yet.”
“I spoke to Chris a few hours ago. I told him what I think we should do.”
“I’m guessing it’s the same thing Michelle wants to do,” Alexandra said, sliding a finger through her hair as it dropped across her eyes. “Bring this all out in the open? To tell them what we did?”
“Yes,” I replied, struggling to resist the urge to cross the room and sit down next to her. To place a hand on her leg, like I always did before. I screwed my eyes shut as I turned away from her and folded my arms again. Tried to ignore every part of me that wanted nothing more than to be normal together again.
Absence hadn’t made the heart grow fonder. My feelings hadn’t changed at all.
I still loved her with every part of my soul.
“We can’t do that,” Alexandra said, her voice soft but without a trace of doubt. “Not yet. We still all have so much to lose; can’t you see that? I don’t want to go to prison. None of us deserve that. We all made a decision last year, and now we have to live with it and that means through all of it. No one said it was going to be easy, but that’s the call we made.”
“We’ve all been ignoring the important part of this—Mark Welsh.” I reiterated what I had said to Chris. What I’d discussed with Michelle. About how he was the important factor we could no longer ignore. “We’ve all been waiting for the police to knock on our door, but instead, someone else has come. Someone who was there that night. Who saw what we did and wants a different outcome. Not prison. Revenge.”
“You think I don’t think about what happened every day?”
“It broke us apart, Alexandra.” I breathed in and tried to control the feelings that were simmering away underneath the surface of every word I said. “I know you think about it. We spent years apart after we split before university and then found each other again…only for this to happen and break us. I know you better than anyone—I know you think about it. That’s not my point. I just want to do something so we can actually deal with all of this.”
“There’s still too much we don’t understand.”
“What is there to understand here?” I replied, feeling brave enough to face her again now. “We’re in trouble. We have been since last year, and we’ve ignored it for too long. Tried to pretend it didn’t happen and that we can just move on. Now, we’re all in danger—”
“Is that what you believe?”
I hesitated again, but not long enough for her to say anything. “Yes. There’s more than just what Michelle has told you. I went to Stuart’s house before hers yesterday. Spoke to his sister, who let me look around his place. I thought I could find some kind of suicide note, but if there was one, they would have found it long before I got there. I just thought there must be some explanation for what he did, but there was nothing to find. Instead, I found something else. Want to know what it was?”
“A red candle.”
“A damn red candle,” I said, finding myself on the other side of the room suddenly. I realized I’d been pacing up and down as I’d been talking. “Same as in Michelle’s house.”
“It’s hardly a rare thing, Matt,” Alexandra replied, but didn’t seem to have any conviction left in her voice. “People have th
em in their homes. I bet you’ve got one in here somewhere, from back when we moved in.”
“Are you kidding me? First thing I did when we got back was get rid of the damn things. All of them. I didn’t care what color they were, I couldn’t have them in the house.” I stopped pacing, moving closer to the sofa where Alexandra was sitting. I perched on the arm of it across from her. Sighed as I locked my hands together and leaned forward. “And both of them in those storm lantern things? Some coincidence. Tell me—do you have any red candles in your house? Do you go out of your way to avoid them now?”
“I—”
“Of course you don’t have any. You know what they mean to us now. Chris and Nicola are the same. Michelle too. And Stuart wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with them. Such a small, insignificant thing, but it’s a symbol of what we did that night. A daily reminder of the man we buried. And Mark Welsh. Moving his body across that field and then it disappearing. Now, it’s back in our lives. This is no coincidence. It’s been a year this week. It all fits together. We’re in trouble, Alexandra. That’s the truth of it. How can we live like this?”
“We have to,” Alexandra said, her shout bouncing off the walls and around us. She was on her feet in an instant, and I thought for a moment she was going to leave the room. Instead, she turned away, put her head in her hands, and made a low guttural sound.
There was a silence that grew between us. I was about to end it when she lifted her head and looked at me.
“We have to live with it,” she said finally, leaning against the door, looking like she was going to collapse to the floor in an instant. “There’s no other choice here. If we don’t keep going, then he wins. Don’t you get that?”
“I just don’t see any other way out of this. Stuart’s already dead. Michelle could be next. Are we supposed to just sit around and wait for it to happen without doing anything?”
“Of course not,” she said, moving back to the sofa and lifting her bag up. She reached inside and pulled out a small laptop, opening it on the coffee table. “We’ve all read up about Mark Welsh, but how much did we look into the…man?”
“What are you saying?” I replied, moving onto the sofa next to her and looking at the screen. “Believe me, I’ve thought about him. I’ve thought about little else but that night since.”
“I’m not saying that. I’m saying you’ve thought about this wrong. You’ve thought about what happened to him and not who he was. That’s the key here.”
I frowned at Alexandra, looking away from the boot-up screen on the laptop and trying to read her face. I couldn’t. “I’m not following you.”
“If you and Michelle are right and there’s someone after revenge for his death, then there’s a bigger question we need to answer.”
“What’s that then?”
“Who was the Candle Man, and what was he doing there that night? And I think I’m close to an answer.”
1999
Three months into first year at university, it was New Year’s Eve. I was still a little too worried about the Y2K millennium bug to really enjoy the night. I’d woken from a dream that morning of a plane falling out of the sky and landing on the student dorms. For some reason, I’d been outside and looking to the sky, watching it crash onto the building. I was confused when I’d opened my eyes and found myself lying in bed, daylight streaming through the thin curtain that covered the window. There had still been a part of me that believed it was actually real for almost a minute after I was awake.
“It’s all a conspiracy,” Stuart said, handing me another drink. Vodka and Red Bull had become our beverage of choice since we’d started university I reckoned about half of my student loan had gone on the drink alone. We were in the large common room at the student dorm I now called home. Around thirty of us at least, with more arriving by the minute. Once people had seen the prices that nightclubs in town were charging for entry, it became the place to celebrate New Year’s Eve for those who hadn’t gone home during the break. My parents’ house was a twenty-minute bus ride from the dorm, which meant the decision to stay had been easy. I’d seen them on Christmas Day but came back soon after.
“Just a way of keeping us in line,” Stuart continued, sipping on his own drink and sighing in satisfaction. Music was playing on someone’s CD player they’d dragged down from their room. The more people that arrived, the lower the sound was. I could barely hear the different girls’ names that Lou Bega was singing about needing.
“That’s all it is,” Stuart said when it became clear he wasn’t going to be interrupted from going on another rant. “Make us worry about something that won’t happen, so we ignore the fact there’s something else going on. Probably gonna raise taxes or privatize the National Health Service or something. We’ll all be sitting around feeling relieved about the lack of Armageddon to notice.”
“Yeah right,” I replied, laughing a little now. Stuart had only been a friend for a couple of months, but I had already been wound up by him on numerous occasions. It made me question whether he was ever serious about anything, but I couldn’t help but be endlessly entertained by him. And by the glint in his eye, I could tell he enjoyed it too. “I bet Tony Blair is sitting in Number Ten laughing at us all now, while holding onto a big conspiracy lever of some kind.”
“Sure it’s got nothing to do with the moon?” Chris said, sidling up to us with a smile on his face. When Chris and I had first met Stuart, he’d launched into a half-hour rant about the moon landings being faked. It was impassioned enough to make us interested in listening to him, while also being ridiculous enough to be hysterically funny. “Maybe we’ll wake up in the morning with the news that they’ve really found aliens on a base up there and they’ve only just found out because we never actually went there before.”
“I’m telling you, that flag shouldn’t be moving…”
“Thousands of people, Stuart,” Chris said, pointing his own drink toward him, but smiling as he did so. “That’s how many would have to keep the secret. And not one of them has ever come out and said a word. That doesn’t strike you as odd?”
Stuart bridled and was about to argue when he noticed the look on Chris’s face and shook his head. “I’m not getting into this again.”
“Only because you’ll lose the argument again,” Chris replied, looking across the room and then waving toward someone. “Anyway, I predict this whole millennium bug thing will be a bigger disappointment than The Phantom Menace. Nothing will happen, and we’ll forget it was even a problem afterward. I reckon this is all a distraction from the real truth anyway.”
“And what’s that?” Stuart said, suddenly interested again. I could see from Chris’s face that he wasn’t being serious, but Stuart didn’t know him as well as I did.
“It’s simple,” Chris replied, leaning toward Stuart as if he were about to reveal a huge secret. “They’re going to round up all Mancunians called Stuart tomorrow morning and force them into public demonstrations of penance as an apology for bloody Oasis.”
I laughed as Stuart gave Chris a playful punch in the arm. Nicola arrived from the other side of the room, slipping an arm around Chris’s waist and leaning her head into him.
“Oasis is the best band in the world,” Stuart said proudly, sticking his hands behind him and mimicking Liam Gallagher’s signature pose. He began singing “Wonderwall” out of tune. It wasn’t much different to the original, to be fair, but still rattled my teeth.
“They’re a Beatles cover band at best,” I replied, rolling my eyes and pretending for a moment that I didn’t own all of the group’s CDs and had hated Blur with a burning passion for a long time a few years back. “And probably not even the best one in Manchester.”
“What the hell are you lot talking about?” Nicola said, releasing her arm from around Chris to sip from a bottle of alcopop. “It’s New Year’s Eve. The millennium. Can we have one night when you thre
e don’t argue the finer points of Northern music?”
We murmured an agreement, lapsing into silence as the track playing on the CD player ended and Vengaboys entered the fray. A collective groan went up. It was quickly skipped and the Offspring came on to a collective cheer.
“Is she coming?” I asked Nicola, as Chris and Stuart began talking animatedly about something else. “I haven’t heard from her.”
“Who, Michelle? She’s over there chatting up some bloke from Birmingham. I couldn’t listen to his accent anymore, but she seemed to be enjoying it.”
“You know who I mean,” I said with a groan. “Have you spoken to her?”
“I don’t know. She knows we’re all here, but I’m not sure if she’s going to grace us with her presence. Got those new friends in Chester, hasn’t she? Not sure she wants to be seen with the likes of us now. Gone all posh probably.”
I chuckled in response, knowing it was just the usual sarcasm from Nicola. Truth was, she was probably more than a little defensive regarding her oldest friend. While the three of us had decided to stay in Liverpool for university, Alexandra had moved to Chester instead. Michelle was forgoing university altogether, going straight into work as an office junior. It meant she had more money than any of us, but still didn’t mind slumming it with us for parties.
“She’s doing okay,” Nicola said, looking up and tilting her head a little. “Seems to have coped with the split well after a month or so of moping. Your name isn’t the first thing she says when we talk now.”
I wasn’t sure if I was happy with that or not, but decided it was probably for the best. I wasn’t exactly moving on quickly myself, but if she was doing better, maybe I could finally do that.
There was part of me that thought it was a bad decision, even if it was mutual. We both wanted different things, different experiences. I didn’t want to wreck the relationship. She didn’t want to resent me for not being able to enjoy university life to its fullest. It simply ended because both of us were scared. That was the reality of it. We were in separate universities, didn’t want a long-distance relationship, it wasn’t the right time for both of us.