Touched (12 page)

‘So you’ve no idea who she really is?’ said Nick once he had finished.

‘Nope.’

‘Or why she would pull such a trick?’

‘Only that she must be crazy. That’s all I can think of.’

‘Maybe. It’s more likely that she’s after something from you.’

‘But what though? I mean I’m hardly a great catch am I. Virtually penniless, divorced, no prospects. Probably won’t have a job next month.’

‘Oh shit, really? That bad?’

‘Yeah, well it was only meant to be temporary anyway. Just a mate doing me a favour.’

‘Can you manage, if, you know…’

‘Yeah I guess.’

‘I mean, we don’t have much but if you need help…’

‘It’s ok, I’ll be fine.’

They drove on in silence. Dan found himself wanting to say something, wanted to express in words something that only existed in the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind and yet which he did not truly want to face up to. In the end he just decided to say it and take the consequences.

‘I worry I’m imagining it all. Her, Tess and everything. Sometimes I think I’m really losing it.’

‘Really?’ said Nick looking surprised.

‘Well…no, I guess, not really but, you know I was thinking, no one else has actually seen this girl and…well…I’ve begun to wonder about myself.’

Oh don't be silly. You're fine. It's obvious she's the unbalanced one.'

'Maybe,' said Dan, glumly. 'Sometimes I wonder.'

‘You really think you might be cracking up?’

Dan nodded.

Nick bit his lower lip thoughtfully, then said after a few moments thought, ‘I still think you’re fine but you
have
been through an awful lot lately. Just be careful, OK? I’d certainly keep well away from this Tess.’

Dan nodded. He wasn’t sure if it had helped telling someone about Tess. Sure he felt better having her out in the open, so to speak but it hadn’t resolved his questions about her. Who was she? What did she want from him? Was she crazy? Or was it him?

It was this last thought that kept coming back to him, despite Nick’s reassurance. Was he losing his mind? How do you tell if you are coming apart? Would you know, would you really be aware if you started acting more and more irrationally? He had been under so much pressure; in the last year, his life, which had seen so serene and secure, had suddenly been turned upside down.

No one else had seen her. Just him. Had he imagined, invented her? He had thought that so many times. But then no, she
was
real; well, there was a real Tess Williams. Well there had been. Perhaps he had read about her, subconsciously known the address, his mind had made the association without his knowing.

No, that was just too farfetched. Occam’s razor had to apply; when faced with a series of explanations the simplest one was bar far the most likely.

Tess was not Tess Williams. She was someone impersonating her, either for financial gain or else because of some mental problems.

But she was real and he, Dan, was not touched in the head.

He was aware of Nick glancing at him a couple of times whilst he was brooding and he was about to say something to reassure his brother that he was alright when Nick signalled to turn into the car park at Helen’s flat and the moment passed.

In the end it was Nick who broke the silence.

‘Dan, we do worry about you. You seem a bit lonely, a bit wrapped up in yourself and your problems – you don’t mind me saying this do you?’

Dan shook his head.

‘You really need to get out, to unwind, go and see some life again. Why don’t you go out with that girl who called you yesterday? What was her name again?’

‘Jenny. Jen.’

‘Yeah Jen. Go and enjoy yourself. You’ll feel better.’

Dan nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re right.’

‘Of course I’m right!’ said Nick, opening his door, ‘Now let’s get Helen and give you a right good thrashing!’

Sunday Evening

Dan drove back from Sheffield in the early evening. He was stiff and tired and he now was adding worries about his fitness to his other woes. To be fair, this was his first game of golf  for nearly a year and Sheffield’s courses were, like the city itself, amazingly hilly.

And he had surprised himself by playing quite well, he and his partner giving Nick and Helen a good run for their money and, in the end, losing only by one hole. It made the pints in the clubhouse taste all the better.

Even then he had intended to get away early but there was a premier league game being shown on the big screen and they all ended up watching it. When he finally pointed the Skoda over the Snake Pass the sun was dipping down below the hills. By the time he was through the queues at Tintwhistle he knew that there was no way he was going to make his regular supermarket before it closed. That was one of his regular weekend jobs gone for a burton. He  resigned himself to shopping at his local Co-op; it was open until late. The fresh stuff was a bit limited and the prices steep but at least it would tide him over until later in the week. Whilst driving he tried to form a mental list of what he needed; one thing he could remember was washing powder, he had used the last when he had put the load in on Saturday morning.

‘Oh hell,’ he said out loud because that had reminded him of something else. He had left the washing machine on when he had left the flat, it had not finished its cycle. He wasn’t, after all, intending to be long, he was only going to the supermarket when he had left. The washing would have sat wet all weekend. Great. He tried to remember whether he had any clean shirts in the wardrobe but then remembered the pile of ironing in the airing cupboard and groaned. Well that was his evening sorted then, he’d be ironing. He hoped there was something decent on TV to watch whilst he was doing it, whilst making a mental note never to let it pile up again.

Not surprisingly he was not in the best of moods when he went around the Co-op, grabbing things that he hoped he might need off the shelves as he passed rather than working through his normal carefully produced list. At the checkout he winced at the size of the bill compared with the smallness of his shopping.

Still, his purchases were heavy enough. The cheap carrier bags cut painfully into his hands as he hauled them up the stairs.

‘Get a ground floor flat or a place with a lift next time,’ he muttered to himself as he juggled with the door and bags, then door bag and keys as he reached his front door. Once inside he staggered the last few yards to the kitchen before one of the bags finally gave up the ghost and split, spilling its contents over the floor. Luckily nothing seemed to have split or broken so Dan sighed with relief whilst he wriggled his fingers trying to get some feeling back into them.

Before putting the shopping away he decided to he had better get the washing out of the machine, hoping that it was still reasonably fresh despite having sat for the best part of a day and half. He hauled it out into the laundry basket and carried the chill wet mass into the lounge, setting it down on the table whilst he set up the clothes dryer by the window.

He stopped.

That was odd.

He always kept the dryer in the same place, propped up next to the radiator in front of the windows in the lounge. It wasn’t the prettiest of things but space was at a premium in the flat and Dan couldn’t find a home for it anywhere else. He knew he shouldn’t really leave it out but there was no one else there to complain about it so he couldn’t see the problem.

Whatever, the dryer wasn’t there. He stared at the spot where it normally was for a full 30 seconds trying to remember when and why he had moved it and, more pressingly, where he had moved it to.

Eventually he found it, tucked almost out of sight between one of the settees and the wall. Puzzled, he pulled it out and set it up. Whilst hanging the wet clothes on it he wracked his brain. When had he moved it? And what had possessed him to put it there? That was just the place where Alice would have put it.

He stopped, shirt in hand. Where Alice would have put it? Well yes, because it was a bit of a girly thing to do to put practical things away out of sight wasn’t it? He couldn’t see the point; not many of his men friends could.

And as he stood there he knew that something else was niggling him, something that he couldn’t put his finger on. What was it? He looked around the room.

Then suddenly he got it.

It was the TV remote. It was always in the same place, on the coffee table where he could always find it. Now it was on the arm of the settee. Just where Alice would have put it, next to where she would sit, in control range. At first they had joked about it; later it was the spark for arguments.

He shivered. This was stupid. He was seeing things, getting paranoid, seeing things in inanimate objects that weren’t there. He must have put it there, just as he had put the dryer in it’s odd place. He’d probably done it when he was drunk last night. He put the fact that he was sure that they were not in these places when he had left the previous day to the fallibility of memory. He continued hanging the washing out, deliberately trying not to look around the flat for anything else that seemed out of place. When he had finished he tossed the basket into the bathroom where it live and went to put the shopping away.

But when he opened the first cupboard he knew that he wasn’t being paranoid.

He jumped back in alarm feeling almost physically sick.

He kept his cupboards in a slightly chaotic, disordered way. It suited him that way, he didn’t like organisation. Now his three cupboards were perfectly organised, cans with cans, rice and pasta together with all the other dry goods, bottles together in the third.

Now he knew for certain.

Somewhere had been in his flat whilst he’d been away.

Alex's Blog

I
do not often have the luxury to write a long piece like this. I am usually far too busy – and where I work I need to be, being surrounded as I am by idiots. I have no idea how they survived before I arrived, before I was forced to work with them. They have not a single original idea between them. Not just the staff but the so-called ma
nagement too. Mental pygmies the lot of them.

But I digress. I know from my twitter followers that many of you appreciate a proper insight into my thinking. I also know that some of them – a minority, admittedly – have expressed doubts about my mental health. I do not care. I personally have no doubts about my mental faculties; my thinking is as clear as my purpose. In any case what is insanity in this insane world?

Some people, even some men I note, call me a misogynist. I do not know how many of those actually even know what the term means but that is by the by. I would argue that I am not, I just follow a simple, standard philosophy. I need certain things. I do not wait to be given them. I see what I want and I take it. It is just like being paid a salary to recompense you for your talents. Instead of being paid by a company this is just society giving me recompense for all I contribute through my intelligence and my life's work.

And why not? It's not as if these women fail to use their special 'talents' to advance their careers is it if they want to play in the boy's world then they should be aware that the game has an entry fee. They should be
honoured that I am the one that is paying attention. They should treat my attention as if it was a job interview.

But there are the others too. The short skirted, fame-seeking tarts who would drop their knickers for any footballer players they find out on the town. They are after just one thing -- no perhaps it is two things on reflection. I was going to say it was just money but in this fame obsessed world where the talentless line-up eagerly to be consumed by the even more talentless, like moths on the arc light of the media, there is little doubt that they court fame and notoriety two.

They have their uses, I grant you that. They are generally more adventurous, more earthly, and, quite frankly, more used to being abused. They also have the advantage of being easier to consume, subsume and inhume. Their passing does not create great waves of interest. If they show any slight hint of unhappiness, if they exhibit any discomfort in my company that sign tends to be their last in this life. This is again where I am  infinitely more sensible than the footballers. Time after time their adventures end up in the courts. Ruined careers, ruined lives, all over a moment of pleasure with a worthless little tart.