Can't Let Go (14 page)

I had lived with fear for most of my adult life and I
knew its ups and downs, its moods, its variations, the
way it manifested itself. I knew about low-lying
unease, how it could leach life and energy from me with
its little physical symptoms, like nausea and upset
stomachs. I knew about apprehension, the next stage on
the dial. I knew about dread, how it could flood over me,
paralysing me like a poisoned dart would. I knew that
fear, in all its forms, was cold and remorseless. But what I
still didn't know was this: was fear internal or external?
What happened first? What was the trigger? Something
that happened outside of me, outside of my control? Or
something inside me, making me hyper-alert?

Just before my life fell apart, I stood in a car park
outside a pub in Southampton, on a still hot summer's
evening, and I felt the cold wash of dread. Every hair on
my arms and on the back of my neck stood on end. I could
feel the heat of the tarmac through the soles of my sandals
and yet I was shivering. Was that a premonition of what
was to happen later? Did I know? Did I suspect? Had I
seen something – unconsciously, apparently unnoticed –
that had made me afraid? Did I see a figure out of the
corner of my eye in a dark shadow? A movement, a
disturbance, a ghost? Or am I imposing false memories on
that moment? Maybe the fear I remember actually came
later, when it – the thing I'd been dreading – actually
happened. Maybe I had felt fine all evening until then. Or
maybe I was just picking up on Zoey's apprehension.

I'd never known her so nervous. Early that Saturday
evening the M3 was busy. There were caravans and
cars with roof-racks piled high with luggage, the back
seats packed full of children wearing headphones and
playing video games. We were on our way to
Southampton for a gig, and I had offered to drive Zoey
down there in exchange for petrol money and a meal. It
seemed a better choice than spending another evening
with Danny quizzing me about my childhood, his new
favourite hobby since my parents' party.

Zoey was sitting in the passenger seat, alternately
shredding a paper tissue and rubbing her hands up and
down her trouser legs. There was some new material she
was planning to try out, more stuff to go into her
Edinburgh Fringe show. She'd been pale and subdued
when I'd picked her up earlier that afternoon. I had never
seen her like that, so apprehensive, so scared. She was
often nervous, yes, like when she'd spilled the drink on me
that first time, but she was usually full of a jittery energy,
bouncing around like a boxer in his corner before a bout.
That day she was different, so different that I asked her if
she was feeling all right. She looked almost green as she
answered. 'I hate doing shows out of town,' she said.
'That's all. I don't know where these places are, what
they're like. Southampton – I've never been there. For all
I know it could be some tiny remote hamlet where they
hate Americans.'

It wasn't often that I was less scared than the person
with me. It wasn't often that I found myself reassuring
someone else. But that day it was my job to calm Zoey
down, to tell her that everything would be all right, that
there was nothing to be scared of; which was ironic, in
view of everything that happened later.

'It'll be fine,' I said. 'Southampton's just a normal
town. Well, a city, I think. Just a normal city where
people live. Quite big in the scale of things. It's perfectly
civilised. It's not some rural backwater. It'll be fine. Don't
worry. You'll be great. You always are.'

Using a map I'd printed off the internet, we found the
pub quite easily. But as I pulled into the crowded car park
I started to wonder if Zoey's fears would be justified. The
pub was in a down-at-heel suburb of the city and looked
unpromising: a big, squat, grubby-looking mustard yellow
building, with tiny windows covered with posters
advertising two meals for the price of one, karaoke,
quizzes and a meat raffle. We got out of the car into the
warm evening, and the air was sluggish. I'd been hoping
for a sea breeze but there wasn't one. There were tables
outside the pub and people turned to look at us – well, to
look at Zoey, I guess: the frizzy-haired woman in the
orange T-shirt and the weird purple wraparound skirt,
her feet in bright green Crocs, followed by the neat,
ordinary-looking woman in a white shirt and jeans.

A bunch of young lads, pints of lager and bottles of beer
in front of them, their huge legs in tracksuit bottoms
crammed under the tiny table, leered at us; there were
glints of necklaces and stud earrings and menacing eyes as
they summed us up in a glance. Older couples, dressed up
to the nines, looked at us, noted Zoey's clothes and looked
away again. A bunch of girls in denim minis and ballet
pumps paid us no attention whatsoever. Just an ordinary
pub on an ordinary hot Saturday night in a town anywhere
in England: that was what I told myself. But there
was something about the air that seemed to bristle with
menace. There was something about the air in that car
park, something about the atmosphere, that made me feel
cold to my bones. Or maybe I'm just imagining that in
hindsight.

I locked the car doors and looked across at Zoey. She'd
gone white and she had her mouth closed tightly, her lips
in a wavy line. 'Jesus,' she said. 'This is going to be a
nightmare.'

Zoey was right. The gig was a nightmare. It was a big,
rowdy neighbourhood pub and the drinkers were
enjoying their Saturday-night beer. The landlady told us
that it was the first time they'd tried to put a comedy night
on there. The stage was right in the middle of the pub, not
in a separate room, not even in a separate area. I gathered
with the comedians in a huddle at the bar. They were a
bunch of scruffy blokes, as always. Steve was there, the
tall guy with the Jesus beard from the pub in Kingston. He
hugged Zoey and greeted me warmly. There was a skinny
hyperactive bloke with sticking-out ears and a cigarette
seemingly glued to his bottom lip. Stand-up comedy was
not a glamorous or attractive business. Good-looking
guys formed bands, I guessed. The weird-looking ones
had to work at making people laugh.

They were telling each other stories about the worst
gigs they'd ever played. They talked about heckling and
fights and threats of violence, and people invading the
stage. They were psyching themselves up for a bad one.
'Are you up for this?' Steve asked Zoey. 'You don't have
to, you know. We could call it off if you want to. They
don't seem too excited to see us.'

Zoey looked deep in thought. 'Hold on a second,' she
said, and then to me, 'C'mon, let's have a look at who we
have here.'

We did our usual recce of the crowd. I was checking
that there was no one suspicious or sinister, no one who
might suddenly turn into Rivers Carillo; she was getting a
feel for her audience. It was a big, rambling pub, with
nooks and crannies and lots of big groups of friends and
drinkers. It was rowdy and it was full to bursting. A lot of
alcohol had already been consumed. I didn't know how
Zoey's material was going to work with these people. But
at least there was no one unexpected there: every single
person I could see looked exactly the kind of person you'd
expect to see in a pub like that, on a sweltering summer
Saturday night.

The MC, the skinny hyperactive guy, took to the stage
first and it was awful. Not him; he was funny. But hardly
anyone was listening, and those who were were heckling
him, stupid heckles like, 'Wanker!' and 'Get off!' and
'You're crap, mate.'

He cut his material short and introduced Zoey. She
looked pale, but managed to wink at me before climbing
to the stage. She looked like she was climbing up to the
scaffold to be beheaded. She tried her best but it was no
good. No one was there to listen to comedy. Most were
busy drinking. A few blokes took an interest in the fact
that it was a woman on stage – one showed his appreciation
by stroking his crotch and leering at her, a couple
of others shouted, 'Get your tits out!' When it became
clear that she was an American, there were a few shouts of
'Go home!' and 'Piss off back to America!'

After about ten minutes on stage, desperately going
through her usual routine and getting barely a single
laugh, Zoey shrugged and said, 'Well, Southampton,
thank you very much for your support. You've been a
great audience,' and she walked off stage with a grim
smile plastered on her face.

She was even whiter than she'd been before. Steve
bought her a drink and said, 'Fucking hell. That was
tough. My turn next. Any tips?'

I put my arm round Zoey and told her she'd done well.
What else could you say to someone who had just –
figuratively – died on stage in a rowdy pub?

There was a ten-minute interval and a lot more
gallows humour from the comics, still gathered in their
little huddle. And then Steve went on stage to try his
hand. I had to admire him. He had balls. He went out
fighting. He slagged off Southampton and the pub, and
told the drinkers they were a bunch of 'ignorant fuckers'.
He shouted and ranted with exceptional, foul-mouthed
eloquence. He told the bitterest, filthiest jokes I'd ever
heard, almost poetic in their scatological nature. He told
a joke about anal sex that was so outrageous that I had to
catch my breath, and some of the crowd actually began
to laugh. But then the atmosphere turned. Steve talked to
one of the guys in the crowd, just asked him his name,
nothing more, and suddenly there was a smashing sound
and a broken bottle being brandished just inches from
Steve's face. The landlady rushed over and stood
between Steve and the broken-bottle guy, arms outstretched,
cool as anything, as if it happened every night
in her pub. Steve walked off stage looking shaken, and
then the landlady came across and started apologising,
and bunches of ten-pound notes were being handed to the
comics.

We couldn't stop laughing as we made our way
outside. It was a kind of release of tension. We – Zoey,
Steve, Jim the MC and I – leaned against the wall outside
and laughed till there were tears in our eyes. Zoey and
Steve were both very 'jingly', the word Zoey always used
to describe her post-gig mood. They were repeating lines
to each other, analysing the performances they'd just done
and congratulating each other on surviving it. I chatted to
Jim, a sweet, quiet lad who said he was heading home to
Portsmouth now, just down the road, because his
girlfriend had just had a baby, and he was glad to be
getting home earlier than he'd expected. And then Zoey
said, 'Can we give Steve a lift back? He lives just round
the corner from my place.'

I agreed. It wasn't out of my way, and it seemed as if
Zoey had already made him a firm offer. The three of us
walked across the car park. Steve stopped to light a
cigarette. He and Zoey tagged behind me, still in full
debriefing mode, while I strode ahead towards the car.
Everything seemed okay. I'd forgotten my fear, my
dread, from earlier. Or maybe the sheer comic awfulness
of the experience had lifted it. It had been good to have a
night out of London, however terrible the gig. We'd
survived. Zoey and Steve were pleased with how they'd
coped. They'd been paid and they'd got a great story to
tell. Everything was fine. And then it wasn't.

There was something white under the windscreen
wiper. I froze, but for a split second I let myself believe it
was a flyer or a leaflet, for another comedy night or a carwash
business or a second-hand record fair, or for
anything else you would get a flyer for. And then I got to
the car and I couldn't pretend any more. I knew it was an
envelope. A white envelope, tucked under the wiper
blade. The kind of envelope I'd seen before. The same
kind of envelope that I'd found pushed into my pigeonhole
in the school staff room.

I needed to act quickly. Zoey and Steve were still some
way away; they'd stopped to talk in the middle of the car
park while Steve finished his cigarette. They weren't
looking in my direction. I leaned over and pulled the
envelope out from under the wiper, hoping they wouldn't
notice. Last time the envelope had been blank. This time
it wasn't. ' T o the murdering bitch,' it said, in that same
neat handwriting that I'd earlier tried to convince myself
belonged to one of my pupils.

I don't know how I managed to drive back to London as
if nothing had happened. I guess it was a good thing
that Steve was with us. I didn't have to talk to Zoey. I
didn't have to try to make conversation. They sat in the
back seat together and talked about comedy all the way
back. They talked about people I didn't know and had
never heard of. They were using comedian-speak, talking
about other comics and other venues and using phrases
like 'great room' and 'neat reversal', and 'I think he's
finally found a way to make his material work' and 'she's
really not connecting with audiences at the moment.'
They were talking about Edinburgh, too; about the
Fringe, and the venues they were going to be playing.

I tried to tune out. I tried to concentrate on the road. I
tried counting cars. I told myself that if I saw five, ten,
twenty silver cars before the next motorway junction then
everything would be all right. I tried to tell myself that if
I kept counting cars all the way back, then the envelope
that I had quickly crumpled into the back pocket of my
jeans would have disappeared by the time I got back to my
flat. But it didn't help. That was all I could think about –
that white envelope in the back pocket of my jeans. It felt
like it was burning a hole in my skin. I wanted to scream
at Zoey and Steve, to open the doors and push them out
of the car so that I could read the note. The murdering
bitch wanted to know what he had to say about her this
time.