* * *
Sunday I was left alone out there. Then in the evening I came in the house and found my cold lamb roast dinner in the microwave. On Monday I went back to work. It dawned on me around lunchtime that I hadn’t seen or heard from Al since Saturday night, and I felt an immense guilt; which I managed to suppress with thoughts of how if anything had happened to him I would have heard. He must have just gone home like George thought he had. It wasn’t unusual not to see each other for a couple of days after a big night out. I think it helped to bring you back to reality not having any reminders of the weekend around you.
I knocked for him on the way home, his mum answered the door.
“Yes?” she asked as she looked down at me.
I obviously didn’t want her so it should have come as no surprise when I asked, “Is Al in?”
“He isn’t, no, and you won’t be seeing him for some time,” she replied.
“Why? Where is he?”
“He should be landing in South Africa about now, providing the change in Amsterdam went on time. I found him in the small hours of Sunday morning sobbing on the kitchen floor because he thought you’d been murdered. I would have phoned the police if he hadn’t been so obviously off his head. I don’t suppose you know where he got that idea from do you?”
“No, Mrs Sutton.”
“I didn’t think you would,” she frowned.
“Is he gonna be gone long?”
“Six months at least. His uncle is going to have him working with him.”
Six fucking months without Al. What the fuck was I going to do? My head spun at the thought of all those evenings alone.
I left her unhappy at the doorstep. She obviously knew it was my fault she wasn’t going to see her son again for six months, and I knew it was her fault I wasn’t going to see my best mate. Head still reeling I walked back down towards the church, passing Ship’s house on the way. Jasper barked at me from over the front gate meaning Ship must have still been OK.
I couldn’t go home and I didn’t know what the fuck else to do. I wandered round the churchyard, laughing as I passed places I recognised from Saturday night- the field out the back and the big stone tomb where I’d first seen the ghost with the pipe. Then I sat down on the bench in front of the devil’s door.
On the ground beside the bench was a cigarette box. I picked it up. There was one in there and a red lighter I recognised as being Al’s. I took the cigarette and lighter out then spotted an old lady tending to flowers on a grave was watching me. I walked over to the nearest bin and dropped in the empty box.
She smiled and said, “You’re one of the good ones.”
I politely nodded back.
Then I walked over to where the main road turned into the church, taking a seat on the green BT cabinet Al had been sitting on when we first met. So those stories about his uncle had been true all along? I lit the cigarette and took a deep drag, while I looked back at the church hall where it had all begun. In the glass box on the wall hung god’s most recent communiqué:
‘PEOPLE COME AND GO. JESUS IS ALWAYS BY YOUR SIDE.’
How fucking poetic.
The End...
Epilogue
You know it’s funny sometimes; this life thing.
One minute you’re sailing on the winds of youth. The next you’ve got yourself so fucked up you don’t even recognise who you are. And that’s if you ever even were the person you remember being.
Whatever. Time heals, and more time heals more or less completely. And you find yourself looking back with glossy eyes on even the parts you promised yourself you’d forget... but only when you realise that the years keep passing, no matter how you remember things.
So I guess this is the part where I own up. Well here goes:
There is no Michael Brightside. He’s just a pseudonym I adopted to help detach myself from the writing experience. My real name is closer to Luke Keane, but in the interests of legality, and also in abstaining from sounding boastful, I’ll have to keep my full identity hidden for now. Like some junkie superhero.
Everything else I’ve told you is real- Church group; the pill box; Ship and Tabitha; the drugs and the parties... the names and the places may have been changed, but the story itself is truer than you’d believe.
Now what of the other characters?
After Al disappeared, I wondered whether Kyle and I would hook up again, and whether we’d sink quickly into our old roles as useless idiots. I’m happy to report that for once, Kyle had the sense to do something in his own interests. I eventually bumped into him again, but the world had moved on; and we both knew that it had ended at too perfect a moment to risk ruining through selfish resurrection. I wish him all the best, whatever he is doing now.
I never saw James again. He had his own life outside of us, and without our relentless drug taking to hold him back, he finally found the time to perfect his DJing. The last I heard he’d teamed up with another DJ and they’d done a few nights in London, as well as touring the festival scene up and down the country. I’ve not gone to one of his gigs yet, but I promise myself that one day I will.
After six long months, Al returned from South Africa, with a head full of balmy evening skies, and a mind set on better things. He’d put weight on and had colour in his cheeks, for the first time in as long as I could remember. The time away had changed him, and having seen another side to the world, a side that didn’t involve living from one tiny plastic bag to the next, it was inevitable that he would want to spread his wings. So Al lives far away now; not in Africa but somewhere nearly as hot. But I make sure I see him as often as I can, and when I do, we drink and laugh about the way we used to be...
So that just leaves me: your protagonist/author.
Time fixed me too. And I settled down and that fixed me more. And though I did eventually move away from that tiny village, I never could escape the draw of the sea. And with a newfound calm to my life, I found a passion for writing that I realise must have been lurking under the surface since those English classes at school, that I met with such reluctance.
So if you were to meet me in the street- not that you’d likely know it was me, and you felt the need to ask me why the story ended the way it did. Just do what I do... whenever I wonder why things turned out the way they have, and think back to the words of the homeless man, on that cold February night in King’s Cross, ‘Who says a story has to have an ending? What if we’re that story now?’
And you know what? I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Church Group Page 56