Life's Lottery (49 page)

You worry that if you finished the book, you’d give yourself away. A skilled detective could read it and deduce what you and Laraine had done, following clues unconsciously left throughout the text. Or, worse, you’d be so successful in excluding the one thing you didn’t want on the record that the book would be empty, worthless, impersonal. That’d be another betrayal, another spasm of treacherous cowardice, invalidating your last chance. The last chance to rush into the copse to help James.

You feed a sheet of paper into your typewriter.

Once
, you type,
I fucked a fourteen-year-old. who was drugged out of her mind and didn’t know what she was doing.

There, that’s honest. Not pretty, but it establishes your
bona fides.

You shift carriage-return and indent, for a new paragraph.

Yesterday, I made love with my sister.

Typing it out has given you a half-erection.

You pull out the sheet of paper and read it. You tear it up, and sort out the pieces with words on them. Those, you eat. You scoop the rest into the waste-bin by the desk.

This is not going to be something you can deal with easily.

* * *

You go back to London, book abandoned. You tell Anne it went too deep and that you were worried about upsetting your mother. You let Anne think you’ve discovered things about James that would distress Mum – which is at least partially true, though it didn’t stop you digging deeper – and that you’ve closed the book because of that. She buys it, but only because you hold back enough about James to let her know you’re not telling the whole truth.

Wheels within wheels. But you got into this.

You get back to work. To avoid thinking about Laraine, you dig up other painful things. You write burning, angry, insightful pieces. Your reputation grows.

If you can’t resolve the Laraine thing, you can deal with the other insanities in your life.

Chrissie.

Her parents were lecturers. You haven’t seen her since 1980. Your first thought is that she probably continued her drugged-up fuckpig career arc and is on the streets of Brighton or London, screwed up on smack, turning tricks for violent businessmen. You weren’t the first student to fuck her and you certainly weren’t the last.

You think about her. At the time, you just thought about your dick and her body.

You nurture the guilt and shame.

You remember the afternoon. Her vagina was small and you only managed penetration with not a little pain for the both of you. When you were ready again, after half an hour and a couple of pills, you buggered her. That’s not something you’ve tried again. You remember it as consensual but at this late date you’re sadly sure that’s just a rationalisation. You think of Chrissie’s face screwed up. In your memory, she’s younger than fourteen. She looks ten, six, three.

You can’t do anything for James. And Laraine is off-limits. Which leaves Chrissie.

You look up your student diary, which has a blunt, self-satisfied five-line account of the afternoon. At least you thought to write down the thing you’re most ashamed of forgetting, her full name. Christina Zoe Temple. You draft and redraft a full, honest version. Your first attempt reads like a letter to a porno magazine, so you rework it more clinically, more emotionally. You write about pain. This feels a lot like flagellation.

At the library, you set out to track her down. They have phone books for the whole country. Her parents are still listed in the Brighton Area directory. The sensible first move would be to call them. But that might lead to a conversation you don’t want to have. Not now, not ever; never.

She’d be twenty-one now. Maybe twenty-two. You imagine her in a ragged school uniform, on a street corner, walking over with an affected strut to a car, bending down to barter with a greasy driver. Eyes dead, body wasted.

You look at her parents’ number again. Your phone call would certainly intervene in a ghastly situation. What if she’s dead? Overdosed in a squat? Or fucked and killed and dumped?

But it’s the only way. You have to call them.

You look up the page. There’s a separate listing above Chrissie’s parents, for ‘Temple, C. Z.’. An address in Rottingdean.

You make the call. A young-womanly voice chirrups that Chris and Danny are out but you can leave a message. So she’s living with a boyfriend. Or else it’s Dani and she’s sharing with a girl. If it’s a Dani, that might be the voice on the machine. You can’t remember anything distinctive about Chrissie’s voice – you didn’t know her very long – and, thinking about it, probably wouldn’t recognise her in the street. She had dyed hair, punky purple. That might be gone now. Her sparse pubic hair was blond.

Later, you call again. Danny – a man – answers.

‘I’m a friend of Chrissie’s,’ you say. ‘From a while ago.’

‘Chrissie?’ Danny hasn’t heard the name; he thinks of her as Chris.

You almost say you knew her at university. But, of course, she wasn’t at university. She was at school when she bothered to go.

‘She’s teaching today, I’m afraid.’

Teaching?

‘Were you on her first degree course?’ Danny asks.

‘No, I just knew her.’

‘I don’t think she’s ever mentioned your name.’

Danny sounds older than you, obviously educated. And this Chris, with at least one degree behind her, working (?) for another, hardly seems a credible extrapolation from jailbait fuckpig. But it has to be the same girl. A weird cloud dissipates. You don’t have to feel guilty about Chrissie’s imaginary death or degradation.

‘Should I say you called?’

You make up a story about being only briefly in the country. You’ll be off to Ethiopia again tomorrow but Danny is to say ‘Hi’. Your guess is that his Chris won’t remember your name among the others – though you suspect adding ‘Just say I was the one who sodomised her in 1980’ would jog her memory – and they’ll have a laugh together trying to work out who you were.

When you hang up, you know your ‘Fuckpig’ article won’t happen. But you feel better about it.

You’re able to admit not everything is your fault. You aren’t spreading moral cancer or a dreadful curse or Timmy’s Germs to everyone you touch. James and Laraine and Dad and Sean and Hackwill and Anne and Clare aren’t what they are or in the states they’re in just because of you. A knot unties inside you.

You wonder what Chrissie looks like now. What Chris looks like. Slim and blonde and cool and together. Not deadmeat.

You call Anne and arrange for her to come over to dinner. You want to tell her about your discovery. You’ll even tell her about Laraine. She’ll understand – her family are weird too, weirder than yours.

Then the phone rings. It’s Mum. Laraine is in hospital. Sean put her there. He’s missing. The police are after him. Mum is completely shell-shocked.

Your entryphone buzzes. Still listening to Mum, you stab the button to let the caller in. Anne has made it over quickly, you think, between your mother’s halting sentences.

You try to be soothing.

Your door opens and hands clamp round your neck. You drop the phone.

Mum’s voice gets tiny. ‘Keith, Keith, this line’s gone…’

You are on the floor, with a knee in your back. Your lungs burn. You can’t breathe easily.

A tiny flame of calm lights in you. Danny – whoever he is – will never know your talk with him cleared so much from your mental attic that you can die if not happy or content, at least free from a guilt that threatened to blot out everything wonderful in your life.

Sean shouts at you but rushing seas of blood obscure his words.

Obviously, in a moment of calm counter-cruelty or shrieked self-defence, Laraine has told him.

Poor fool, you think. What a waste.

Go to 0.

‘
T
hank you, Dad. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You won’t rue this, I pledge.’ Jasper is all over you.

It was Zazza’s eyes that convinced you.

‘I can set this right,’ Jasper says. ‘You’ll see. Come, let me show you.’

He sits you in his hoverchair. ‘Glove yourself,’ he says.

You slide your hands into the gloves.

The screen comes alive, projecting holo-columns.

‘Sit tight, now.’

Jasper fiddles with a waferboard. ‘There,’ he says.

Pain floods in through your fingers, reaching for your heart. You are shot back into the chair.

‘Dad, Dad, Dad!’

You can’t say anything. The pain-waves run through you.

Jasper is at the door, summoning help. ‘Malfunction,’ he cries.

A woman comes in and looks at you. Her hand comes toward your face. ‘Don’t touch him,’ Jasper says.

The program completes, with one last jolt.

You see Zazza’s eyes, open with love. And Jasper’s, half-closed with a shame he can’t afford.

You don’t want to leave. But you have to.

Go to 0.

‘
Y
es,’ you say. ‘I’ve never thought of it like that, but you’re right. It’s been years since the copse. We should let it go. We can make lives for ourselves without Hackwill. We can grow, reach the light, put it all behind us.’

A pause.

‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding,’ James says.

‘Yes,’ you agree.

‘We’re going to
demolish
the bastard, boyo.’

‘You said a fucking mouthful.’

You and James slap hands in the air.

Go to 163.

T
here’s a big do for Sean’s leaving. A hotel ballroom is hired and a lot of people show up. You spend the first hour of the evening on the door, checking invitations and taking coats, then Candy takes over from you.

Sean is already tipsy. He weaves through the crowd, pressing flesh with town dignitaries and bank people. Tristram Warwick, the new manager, stands to one side, a prince about to return from exile. Councillor Hackwill and the mayor beam like proud parents. They’ll miss Sean and his easy way with smoothing the finance of civic schemes.

Ro, in a revealing but unflattering evening dress, is extremely drunk. You know Vanda is here but can’t see where. You run into Kay Shearer, who has adopted an attitude of superior arrogance to his outstanding debt. He offers you a good deal on some Swedish shelving units.

You haven’t checked but assume Sean has taken care of his own debts. The bank has been repaid and he is leaving in the clear, taking his
HOUSEKEEPING
file with him. He’ll have his fortune, and only you know how he got it.

You still wonder who forged those signatures.

Hackwill signals for quiet. Speech-making time. The mayor gets up on the bandstand and makes bad jokes about Sean having embezzled a million and having a first-class air ticket to Rio de Janeiro in his inside pocket.

As you listen, Ro sidles up close to you, cleavage wobbling. ‘Poor Keith,’ she says, and kisses you.

Sean starts paying the mayor back with jokes about municipal corruption.

Ro snogs you properly, gin-tasting tongue invading your mouth. Shocked, you fight her off. She smiles, lipstick smeared, and staggers back.

Sean finishes his speech. Warwick, face like a mask, leads the applause. Then he hands over the leaving present you have collected for and bought, a state-of-the-art pocket calculator.

‘To help me with my sums, I suppose,’ Sean says.

He hugs Warwick, who looks as if he’d rather be shot.

‘Now,’ says Sean, ‘as I prepare to leave you all. I’d like to thank the one person who’s helped me most at the bank. The person who has literally prevented me from ending up in jail…’

Polite laughter. Your stomach roils.

‘…and who has made my parting so bittersweet.’

You don’t know if you can go through with it. Getting the present was bad enough. Getting up in public and making a speech about how wonderful Sean is will make you knot up inside and die.

Sean holds out his hand in your direction, and says, ‘Come up here and let the people see you.’

You involuntarily move. You know you’ll have to go through with it.

And Sean says, ‘Candy.’

Candy is pulled past you and up to the dais.

‘She’ll manage this branch one day,’ Sean says, eyes locked with Warwick’s.

Candy blushes and stumbles through a few words. Sean gets an arm round her shoulders and lets his hand slide down her back to her bum.

‘Now, let’s party,’ Sean shouts.

* * *

Later, when you’re both much drunker, you have a brief conversation – your last – with Sean.

‘Still hear from your sister?’ he asks.

‘Laraine’s getting married again.’

‘Worst shag in town, your sister. Of course, you wouldn’t know that.’

Sean is whirled away into the crowd.

You look for Vanda and can’t find her.

* * *

You wake up with a dead head.

‘Where’s Mummy?’ Jason asks.

Your mouth and nose seem to be stuffed with packaging. Behind your eyes, pain radiates.

Your son looks at you. You are alone in bed.

‘Where’s Mummy?’ Jason asks, again.

‘I don’t know. In the garden?’

Jason shakes his head and runs away.

You sit up. You got your shoes and jacket off, but are still in your gamey formal shirt and trousers.

At least that bastard Sean is gone. Good luck to him with his investments. Now you don’t have to worry about what you know.

You go to the bathroom, where you take off your clothes and have a long shower. The water helps ease your hangover, but you still feel like one of the walking dead.

You stand at the sink and look at yourself in the mirror. You look like a prat. You are a prat. Your mouth still feels congealed. You reach for your toothbrush and pluck it from its holder.

Then you freeze. You have a four-brush holder. You hold your toothbrush, and Jason and Jesse’s well-used junior brushes are there. But a toothbrush is missing: Vanda’s.

You slide back the mirror-front of the bathroom cabinet. Your shaving gear is there but there’s empty space where Vanda keeps her tampons.

Without wrapping a towel round your middle, you go back to your bedroom and open the wardrobe. All Vanda’s clothes are gone.