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A leafy cul-de-sac, dead still in the grey afternoon. Not a fucking soul about, not a breath of the living anywhere. He felt it when he reached the end of the close, felt the anonymity, twelve detached, four-bedroom houses, twelve neat tarmac driveways, twelve double garages, twelve freshly mown front lawns. He could picture the scene, twelve fucking lawnmowers on Sundays, the whir of machinery, the unravelling of hoses, sponges and chamois leathers, twelve pristine people carriers for twelve wives and twenty-four perfect fucking kids. He’d almost arrived at that place himself. Almost. He’d been teetering on the brink of it for months. And then the proverbial shit had hit the fan.

The shit of fifteen years.

He scanned the numbers, thinking it could only ever have been this way for Neil Hopley. Number nine. Our Nigel’s number. Our fucking Nigel.

He walked up the drive. Two o’clock on a Monday afternoon. A couple of doves on the telephone wire. No sound. Not a breath of wind. The old town living up to its mediocrity, almost revelling in it.

The most boring town in England.

The iron bitch’s roots hung out to dry. Her ignominious burden.

He pressed the doorbell. Somewhere inside the place he heard it sound, quiet, reserved, polite. The patter of feet. An image of a child behind the frosted glass, a child’s voice calling out. A girl? He couldn’t tell just yet. And then a second image. A mother. Hopper’s wife.

‘Ellen, come here.’

A girl.

Somewhere in the house, a baby crying.

He saw her hesitate, Mrs Hopley, not expecting anyone, probably thinking he was one of those men who turned up on doorsteps in the middle of nondescript afternoons like this one to hawk household products, five dusters for a pound, the latest revolutionary aid to clean, well-ordered living. He thought about Janet Allen coming home to her perfect suburban dwelling to find death waiting in her kitchen. The summer of 89 rearing its ugly fucking head, choosing the opportune moment.

Fifteen years.

Fifteen fucking years.

A breath away.

The lock clicked open and then the door, to reveal a beige carpet, magnolia walls, the scent of pine-fresh.

To reveal Mrs Hopley. Neil’s missus. Neil’s lady wife.

A look. Suspicious. A foot resting against the frame. A nod all the same. A quiet voice.

‘Can I help you?’

Prettier than he expected, but burdened, by motherhood, by a four-bedroomed house in a cul-de-sac, by keeping up the fucking pretence.

He realised he was nervous, ridiculously nervous, looking guilty, feeling guilty. He shouldn’t have fucking come. He really shouldn’t.

‘Is Neil in?’ he asked.

‘He’s at work.’

Of course he was at work. It was two o’clock on a Monday
afternoon. Every fucker was at work. Every fucker except John Finch.

‘Can I ask who you are?’

‘An old friend,’ he said. ‘We went to school together.’

‘Okay?’

‘And we watched football…’

She was still looking at him, seeking more, wanting answers to questions a wife wants to know about a husband she thinks she knows but sometimes wonders about. At times like this, times like now.

‘I’m up for a few days, from down south,’ said Finchy. ‘I just thought I’d catch up…’

… to ask your husband about the day we went to a football match and witnessed a fucking tragedy, to ask him how he’s dealing with that after all these fucking years, how he’s coped, how he’s managed to get himself a wife and two kids and a fucking people carrier and a lawn that looks fit for the 18th green at Wentworth, how he’s managed those things.

The little girl pushed past her mum’s legs. He looked down and smiled at her. She stared up at him.

‘He’ll be in this evening,’ said the mother, Mrs Hopley, Neil Hopley’s fucking wife. ‘Can I tell him your name?’

He hesitated. He wasn’t certain. He hadn’t thought things through.

In the end he said, ‘John. Tell him John called.’

‘A surname?’

‘He’ll know me as John. John from football.’

He retreated after that, back down the drive. He could feel her eyes on him, working him out, calculating the risks involved in allowing this man to rekindle a relationship with her husband, thinking about what it might jeopardise, what skeletons it might unearth. He wondered how it might have panned out differently if he’d turned up with Kelly and the children they were yet to have, a dog perhaps, turned up in a great fuck-off people carrier, the latest fucking model and all
the trimmings, called Mrs Hopley by her first name, trendily kissed her on each fucking cheek.

Curtains twitching as he wandered back into the estate, on to the lane, into town, back to the fucking hotel, the church spire bearing down upon him, the room shrinking, his head shrinking with it until there was no room for anything of the present, only memories that pressed against his consciousness, seeking recognition, demanding attention.

And the room was too warm. There was no air.

DO NOT OPEN THIS WINDOW plastered on the glass.

What the fuck did they think he was planning to do? He thought about complaining but he didn’t have the energy. He flicked the TV on and stared at that instead, trying to get himself back in the land of the living, desperately fending off the memories threatening to tumble out and bury him.

At seven he ambled down to the hotel restaurant. Nobody there. Monday evening, dark October chill in the room, Polish waitress smoking a cigarette in the doorway, blowing smoke
into the night. When she saw him she took one last drag, threw the cigarette out into the darkness and pulled the door shut behind her. He picked up a menu, scanned it briefly. He wasn’t hungry. He dropped the menu and made his exit. The waitress stared after him, brushing ash from her uniform.

Out into the night then, fog descending on the old town, clinging to the trees, an eerie glow from a solitary street light. A car traipsed past, a silent ghost. He thought about faces pressed against wire mesh, blue lips, the dead propped against the living, bodies on advertising hoardings, bodies laid out in rows along the touchline like fucking stewards at ninety minutes, frantic CPR, sirens wailing but no fucking ambulances, heads covered by jackets, jumpers, football flags that read Liverpool FC, the Liver bird. He thought about being penned in, forced to watch it all unfold before him.

Take it all in. Take it all in because you are never ever going to put this to bed. Run, hide, do what the fuck you like but don’t try to forget, don’t ever try to forget because you can’t. It will find you. It will fucking find you.

He made his way down the Parade and into town, turned up towards the commuter estate that transformed the old town in the eighties. A heart transplant. For better and worse. The old town’s heart still beating but it wasn’t the same. The commuter estate grew, a malignancy, until it hit the railway line and then it stopped, nowhere left to go. Another estate popped up somewhere else, commuterville in the bloodstream of the old town, altering the fabric of the place, bringing its money, its aloof superiority.

Bad blood. Death in the veins.

Janet Allen, arriving home in the middle of the day, into the big house with the big driveway, not knowing what was waiting in the kitchen, who had let themselves in through the French windows that backed on to the railway. The roar of the 11.35 to Leeds smothering her screams.

A second car in Hopper’s driveway. Lexus. Smart. Parked
behind the people carrier, boxing it in. Curtains closed. Warm light beyond the curtains, the cul-de-sac transformed now, a snug security blanket. Him at the end of the driveway, half in and half out, uncertain of himself. Beyond the porch, beyond the light that snapped on when he stepped on to the drive, Neil Hopley. Hopper to his mates. Fellow fucking witness number two, rising from the sofa at the sound of the doorbell, puffing out his cheeks, sharing a look with his wife, knowing only too fucking well who would be standing at the front door when he opened it, why the fucker was there after all these years.

John fucking Finch, no less.

He’d aged. Of course he fucking had. The same round face, the same glasses, but taller, much taller than Finchy remembered. And more confident. More at ease. Obvious from the start.

Hopley didn’t say anything. He just stood in the doorway, guarding it.

What the fuck are you doing here? What the fuck are you doing outside my house?

‘Alright, Neil?’

Nothing.

‘You haven’t changed.’

Not a thing.

‘Nice car. Nice house. Your parents still around the corner?’

Somewhere up the line, a train sounded its horn.

‘Before you begin, I’m not interested.’

Hopley. Some sort of fury behind his eyes. Steadfast in the doorway, protecting his own. Everything to fucking lose.

‘Why are you here?’ he asked.

Rhetorical question.

‘T-Gally tells me you’re engaged,’ said Hopley.

Finchy nodded.

‘Then why aren’t you at home with the missus?’

‘I came to talk…’

‘I don’t want to talk. Not about any of that.’

What
might that be?

‘I thought you might fancy a drink,’ said Finchy.

‘I don’t. I don’t want to talk about Stimmo either. I haven’t seen him in fucking years. He’s just a name in the paper…’

‘He was our mate…’

‘He was a stranger from another lifetime.’

Train thundering through the old town. The air reverberating. Lights flickering through the dead growth. Hopper giving it some. Train hurtling through the old town, sucking the oxygen after it.

‘You come here, set my wife off asking questions, cause a row, upset my fucking kids.’

‘Sorry, Neil…’

‘It’s not their fucking burden. Do you understand? I don’t want anything to do with you or anything to do with what we used to be. You stopped going before any of us. Do you remember? You weren’t part of the Cup run in 91. You weren’t with us in Europe 95.’

‘I couldn’t be a part-timer, could I?’

‘So what the fuck does any of this have to do with you?’

Hopley shifted his weight. The doorstep creaked under it.

‘Fucking turning up here after fifteen years. I take my eldest to games. He loves it and he knows nothing about any of that shit. Why should he? It was a different time. A different fucking world.’

‘Old habits die hard,’ said Finchy, forcing a smile.

‘Go and do your dying somewhere else,’ said Hopley.

‘I was just—’

‘Fuck off back down south, John, Fuck off and deal with whatever you’ve got to deal with. If you need help, go and get counselling.’

‘Neil?’

A woman’s voice calling from the end of the hall.

Hopper, over his shoulder.

‘Coming love.’

Hopper turning back. Barely a whisper now.

‘See?’

Mouthed words through gritted teeth.

‘You’re a cunt. A cunt for coming here, ploughing that shit out of the fucking ground. It’s buried. Fucking leave it there and fuck off.’

The sound of the train faded into the distance, the sound that punctuated his life through nights as a kiddie, nights as a young man, mornings on the papers, mornings on the post. Summers and winters. Every fucking weather. Hopper didn’t move. He was still stood in the doorway, seeing him on his way.

‘And keep off my fucking lawn.’

Short fucking shrift.

Finchy backed away into the night until Hopper closed the door and the hallway light went out. He crossed the road in the direction of the embankment, pulled himself up over the fencing and dropped down on the other side. He traipsed up the slope, stood there looking at the rails, the darkness bleeding in from both directions. North and south. The old town somewhere in between. He considered stepping on to the rails, laying himself prone across the fucking tracks. If the live rail didn’t take him the next HST would. But hadn’t he read somewhere that fast trains were bad for suicide? Hadn’t he read that a person was more likely to be mauled than killed outright, more likely to wind up a paraplegic, wind up with a head, a torso and nothing fucking else?

He laughed at himself in the darkness, laughed at the black slab of darkness, laughed in its sorry-arsed fucking featureless face.

He was losing his fucking mind.

It was quiet when he reached the hotel car park. A single light in the lobby. No one on reception. He was two steps from the revolving doors when two shadows appeared from the darkness.

‘John Finch,’ said one.

Hoods up, scarves tight to noses. No fucking faces.

‘How’ve you been, matey?’

The two of them blocking the doorway. One a big fucker. The eyes of the first vaguely familiar.

But it had been fifteen years.

‘Alright,’ he said. ‘How’s yourselves?’

The two of them dancing from one foot to the other, ants in their fucking pants.

‘What you been up to?’ He knew the voice too. He knew the fucking voice…

Names and faces.

Faces and names.

‘Nothing much.’