The Butterfly Effect (11 page)

“No, don’t be stupid,” he said, kissing me. “We’d have to see if you could get a visa, and if you could get work too, and obviously we wouldn’t do it unless we’d both be happy, but … well … it would be an experience and it couldn’t be much worse than this!”

In the end, we didn’t go out at all that night. We talked, we researched, we talked some more and, by the time we went to bed, we had determined to at least find out if it would be possible. If our school would agree to the exchange, if I could get a work permit, if I was allowed to live with him … if, if, if. If all those questions were answered and it was a possibility, then he would apply and I would resign my post, as there was no chance of it being held open for me. It was a risk, but we were young and we felt as if our youth and energy were being stolen from us. We would give it a try.

After that, everything happened so quickly that even Richie, who was most logical person you could ever hope to meet, said that it seemed as if it were meant to happen. It was like watching a computer-generated sequence of a jigsaw being completed, each piece sliding effortlessly into place, with no hesitation, no false moves. By half term I had handed in my notice, and shortly after that, Richie received all the details of his new school, his flat, even some of his teaching commitments. We were going to Ontario, to a town called Hamilton, and now that it was a reality, I couldn’t wait.

We decided to have our leaving party a couple of weeks before the end of term. Even though we weren’t due to fly out until the end of July, many of our teacher friends would be on their way to France or Spain or Italy as soon as the holiday started, and the last week of term was always busy. It was to be on the Saturday and we had booked the back room of The White Horse for the venue. It seemed fitting, given that our relationship had experienced its first faltering moments there, and of course the band was going to play. This would be my last gig with them for a year, and of course I was sad, but they had assured me I could step right back in as soon as we returned.

“A year isn’t that long,” said Olga, laughing and crying at once when I told her. “We’ll probably still be playing most of the same songs!”

So, by the Friday, everything was more or less ready. Richie’s flat – our flat, as it was by then – was still in disarray, with half-full storage boxes everywhere, but we had plenty of time to finish packing. The party was our priority, and we both had our tasks that evening. Mine was to go to The White Horse with Olga and put up the decorations and Richie’s was to go into town. He had to visit the Indian restaurant providing the buffet, check that everything was in hand, then meet his parents at the station. He’d go with them in a taxi to their hotel and settle them in, before having a last drink with a friend who was leaving the country the next day and so would be unable to attend. We had a list of things to do taped to one of the kitchen units, and I got a strange, muddled feeling of excitement and panic every time I crossed something off.

Olga was an absolute star. She had told me to leave it all to her, saying that this would be her contribution to the party, and nothing I could say would change her mind, so I did, arriving at the pub completely empty-handed. She was already there, and had started arranging the tables so they formed a horseshoe around the dancing area. There were balloons and little arrangements of dried flowers in pots already in place, and boxes of other decorations by the stage.

Tears came to my eyes as I saw her there, working so hard to make everything right. She was my best friend and I was leaving her. Was I doing the right thing?

“Don’t be daft,” she said, when I had finished snuffling on her shoulder. “It’s absolutely the right thing to be doing. I wish I was coming with you, the way things are here, and you’ll be back before you know it, all refreshed and enthusiastic. You know I’m right.”

I did know, but that didn’t make it any easier, and it wasn’t the last time I shed a few tears that evening, but the room looked brilliant by the time we had finished. It was almost unrecognisable from the fairly spartan back room we were used to, and Olga’s eye for design had given it an ambience that was at once chic and cosy. It was all I could have asked for and more, and so I insisted on taking her into the bar for a drink before we left, even though we were both driving and it would have to be fruit juice. Richie would probably be quite late, and the flat was hardly welcoming, so I enjoyed an hour or so with her, just the two of us. There wouldn’t be many more opportunities for this, and I wanted to make the most of it.

By the time I got home I was just about dead on my feet and ready for bed, but Richie still wasn’t back and I wanted to tell him about the room and how wonderful it looked, so I ran a bath and had a lovely soak. I even nodded off for a few minutes, so I dried myself, put on my dressing gown and curled up on the sofa. He wouldn’t be much longer now, after all, it was approaching midnight and most of the pubs in town stopped taking orders at 11pm. Any minute now, he’d be jumping out of a taxi at the end of the street and walking the couple of hundred yards down to the flat. I put on the television, but soon my eyes began to droop and I could not concentrate. I would just have a little snooze.

I was awoken, not that much later, by the sound of voices outside. This was unusual, as our street was a cul-de-sac and was generally very quiet, but I was still half-asleep and inclined to ignore it when there was a loud thumping on the door. I staggered across to the window and pulled the curtain aside, and I could see a figure crouched beside something on the pavement. I couldn’t make out what it was, due to the low wall that marked our tiny patch of front garden, but there was someone else at the door, thumping and ringing the bell then standing back to look at the windows, so I hurried to the hall. Clearly something had happened outside and somebody was in need of help.

A young woman, ashen-faced, confronted me as I opened the door.

“Quick, call an ambulance, the police! There’s a knife in his chest. My mobile’s dead and Simon can’t, he’s … he’s ...”

From the front door I could see that somebody was on the ground, so I didn’t wait to find out why Simon could not phone an ambulance, but rushed inside, found my phone and called for both an ambulance and the police. I was calm and collected and I was first aid trained, so I exchanged my dressing gown for a coat and went outside to help whilst we waited for the ambulance.

That was when two things became clear, and I don’t know which came first or whether it all happened at once, but my life changed for ever in those few seconds, as I saw that the person bleeding on the ground was Richie and that he was certainly dead.

What happened after that is muddled and I don’t care to try to remember it in detail. Apparently I tried to revive him and had to be pulled from his body when the police arrived. Apparently I was covered in blood – as was the unfortunate Simon, who couldn’t bring himself to use his phone when he saw the state of his hands. When somebody is stabbed in the heart  there is an awful lot of blood and they don’t take long to die. I suppose it was meant to be a comfort to me that Richie would have lost consciousness quite quickly, but I couldn’t get it out of my head that he died there alone, on the street. What would have gone through his head in whatever time he had? He would have been thinking of me, I know that, and of all we had, all we had to lose; it was all slipping away from him and he couldn’t stop it.

‘A random act of meaningless violence.’ That’s what one of the newspaper reports said, and the words ‘random’ and ‘meaningless’ were often used by people when they talked about it. I don’t know whether it would have been easier to cope with if it had been otherwise – if somebody had hated him enough to want to kill him, or if he had died saving a child from a burning house – but it was very difficult to make any sense of it, especially as no-one was ever caught. There was no CCTV in our little street. The knife was a standard kitchen knife, the sort everyone has in their homes, unmarked, no prints, not even new. Its blade had been sharpened to a lethal point, but it was unremarkable in every other way. There was no motive. No motive at all. We went over and over it, both with the police and with his family, his friends, our friends, but there was nobody who would have wanted him dead, not even a disgruntled pupil, although quite a few of them were pulled in and interviewed.

The case was never closed, and the police assured me that they would revisit it as soon as any other evidence became available, but it never did. Richie was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, although being right outside your own home should be safe enough. He just happened to be there at the same time as somebody who was clearly deranged. We will never know what led up to it, whether there was some kind of altercation, whether it could have been avoided if only he had handed over his wallet or his phone. I have had to learn to stop thinking about it as there are no answers and no satisfactory endings. Richie died. He didn’t die of cancer, or in a road accident, or from some previously undetected heart condition. He didn’t die of anything that we might have predicted, if we had ever had such a conversation, but he was stabbed. It was random and meaningless, but there was nothing anyone could do about that.

So, people rallied round to do all the things that could be done. Practical things. I was in no condition to deal with the multiplicity of difficulties arising from Richie’s death, but my friends resolved the issues of the tenancy, my job – everything that had been put in place to secure our new future and now needed to be unpicked. Olga was particularly supportive, but Nat was there too, although he was in almost as bad a state as I was, and others. For weeks I was hardly ever alone, and the flat was returned to some semblance of order. Many of Richie’s possessions were taken away by his heartbroken family and mine were unpacked. The boxes disappeared, food appeared in the cupboards, and I functioned at some level in the weeks leading up to the funeral, although I have little memory of that time now.

Obviously the circumstances of Richie’s death meant that the funeral was delayed. There was an inquest, with the predictable outcome of unlawful killing, but that was a long time later, and at least his body was released in late August. That was how we came to be saying goodbye to him on a bright, sunny morning, with everyone in bright, sunny clothes, as he would have wanted. I don’t remember ever having had a ‘my funeral’ conversation with him, but there were plenty of people who seemed to know what his thoughts would be, if he were here to give them, and I had neither the energy nor inclination to express an opinion. I didn’t even help choose the music, although that was something we had talked about a lot, as it was simply too painful. I didn’t see the point in exposing everybody’s nerve endings in this way, but I endured it when they played Nirvana’s ‘All Apologies’ and something by The Smiths. I don’t know what it was. These were from the soundtrack of Richie’s youth, a time I hadn’t shared, and now we wouldn’t be sharing any more time and there would be no more music in my life.

There were so many people at the funeral that they had to relay it via speakers to the crowd outside and reserve seats inside the chapel for those who knew him best. There must have been a hundred students outside, sitting on the grass, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that many were in tears and others were comforting them you might have thought that a mini-festival was being held in the grounds of the municipal crematorium. Then there were his family, his colleagues, his many, many friends, some of whom would have been at the party that never took place, and were now here together in quite a different mood. And then there was me. I was right at the front, they insisted on that, but I could take no solace from Nat’s supportive arm, from the kind words of all the people who stood up to say what a great person he’d been, or to read poems, or to tell funny little anecdotes about things he had done. I was stony-faced, untouchable, detached and hiding behind my own little wall.

That was until Olga and Tim stood up and walked to the front. Tim was carrying his acoustic guitar, and a deeper hush fell upon the packed congregation.

“I hadn’t known Richie for long,” said Olga, “but I do know Amy.” She glanced over at me, and I saw her take a deep breath. “I know that Richie made Amy as happy as she has ever been, and that tells me all I need to know. This song is for Richie, but it’s also for Amy, to let her know that we will all be here for her, for as long as she needs us.”

It was Bob Dylan. It was ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’, the same song that I had sung all those months ago, when Richie was still a question mark in my mind and life stretched out before me, full of opportunity. It was not the same version I’d sung, as Olga’s voice was stronger and huskier than mine and it was more like Dylan’s own rendition. But it broke down my defences all the same, dismantled my wall, brick by brick, until I was completely exposed and my grief and anger and despair flooded out in one long, animal-like howl.

***

So now it’s evening I suppose. It has been dark for a while, and I’ve eaten a little soup and cried quite a lot. If I carry on like this I will have no strength, no reserves to deal with Greg when he comes. Or, if he doesn’t come, if I have to spend days or even weeks here, what state will I be in, if I am ever rescued? I want to be able to throw myself back into life if I get the chance, not spend more precious months in recovery, in some kind of facility or in the flat again, the threat coming from the outside world in general rather than Greg. Surely there is more to me than this?

I stand up and walk to the door, pull the desk away, and listen hard, my ear against the wood. There is nothing, not the tiniest sound to indicate that anyone else is here, but I shout and bang on the door with my fists. Help! Help! Somebody, please help me! I pick up the chair and heave it against the door, but it only bounces off, narrowly avoiding my head before clattering to the floor. There is a long scrape on the green paintwork now, but hardly a dent. This is a solid wood door, not some flimsy panelled thing that the hero in a film could punch his way through. You would shatter your knuckles before you punched any kind of hole in this door, but I feel better all the same. Come on girl, show your spirit! Don’t let him win! Make Nat proud of you, so you are all in one piece when he comes.