You, Me and Other People (22 page)

Just for a second, I think about it. I could just walk ten feet and fall in front of one of these cars. It feels so simple a solution. I won’t have to deal with the awful anxiety I can feel invading me. I won’t ever have to feel like this on Christmas Day again. I can really make it look like an accident, just a little stagger. It’s as though my mum and dad are summoning me.

From the corner of my eyeline, I see Ben standing at the window. He has me in his crosshairs and I feel his osmotic thoughts penetrate. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he’s saying. ‘Think of me; think of the poor driver whose life will never be the same.’ My shoulders slump forward and I hate myself for even contemplating it. I stand up, breathe deeply, blow circles out of my mouth and make my way back to the heavy oak door – to Ben and Karen, to Harrison and his remote control car and to mediocre Christmas pudding that tastes nothing at all like Beth’s.

Back in the flat, I corner Ben.

‘So, Romeo, where’s the ring?’

He shushes me, tells me he’s going to wait until the next day, until they’re alone.

‘Not having second thoughts?’

He shakes his head.

‘Will you still want children?’ I whisper. I’ve had just enough shitty wine to make me brave. ‘Because she’s forty, you know. You might be out of the frying pan and all that …’

‘I love her. If we can have kids, great. If not—’

‘They turn into Harrisons anyway. Little shits with noisy cars.’

Ben smiles. ‘Or Georgias?’

‘Little she-devils with a noisy Nintendo thingy.’

‘I remember Meg as a child,’ he begins.

‘Meg,’ I point a finger at him, ‘was a
noisy
baby. She cried a lot.’

‘I remember her as a thoughtful child.’

‘She was. Thoughtful, chatty, funny. After about two, she was great fun.’

‘Not all Georgias and Harrisons then …’

I shake my head. ‘No, I hope it works out for you both.’ I put my arms around him and pull him into a bear hug.

‘What’s this love-in about?’ Karen’s head cranes around the doorway from the living room to the hall, where Ben and I are standing. ‘Can anyone join in?’

I open an arm and she merges into the clasp. We all hear my phone ring in my pocket and, moving apart, I pull it out. ‘Kiera, everything all right?’

I listen to her broken sobs and am immediately aware that it’s this moment in time that I’ll recall in the future. This split second where my life is ripped into two halves. The before and the after. I can feel my legs fold under me, feel both Karen and Ben reach out to grab me. The phone drops to the floor and Kiera’s desperate keening sounds from four feet away. It battles with a sloshing, gurgling sound in my head which must be my brain melting.

‘He’s gone,’ I whisper. ‘My lovely little boy is gone …’

I love you, need you, you’re my glue,

I fall apart without you

© Beth Hall 2014, ‘Fall Apart’

Love, could you taste it, was it real?

This love you made me feel.

Love, did you get its heady scent?

This love was heaven sent.

Now that you’re gone, who will I love?

Now that you’re gone to a world up above.

Now that you’re gone, my life’s no longer whole,

I’m empty, alone, no heart and no soul.

I’ve got my writing mojo back. Up early, I’ve been in the loft for hours when the smell of burning toast makes me take the stairs down, two at a time. Meg is on the phone and oblivious. I point to the smoking toaster. Too late, the fire alarm sounds and she goes outside to continue the call. My eyes rise to the heavens – it’s pissing rain and she has no coat on. What can be so important? I wave a tea towel at the alarm, waft the smell out of the window and make myself a strong coffee.

The neon clock on the oven blinks. Mum will be up in ten minutes. Jack is obviously sleeping in. It’s New Year’s Eve. We’re all still here; no one has quite made it back to their own bed since Christmas. Thankfully, Sylvia is having some sort of soirée tonight that will take our minds off the fact that Noah is being buried the day after tomorrow.

Meg is ashen when she returns.

My stomach plunges. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘That was Ben. Dad’s gone AWOL …’

There’s some Scottish guy dancing to ‘Mull of Kintyre’ in Sylvia’s hallway. Meg, Mum, Jack and I are standing on the edge of the kitchen, each of us nursing a glass of champagne, none of us feeling like celebrating. I check my phone. Nothing. This is ridiculous. I swear I will finally kill him this time. I’ll make it painful and slow, so he feels every moment. My murderous thoughts are interrupted by the phone actually ringing. I dart out of the back door, away from the music, plugging my free ear with my finger.

‘Ben?’

‘I’ve found him.’

‘Is he okay?’

‘Not really. He’s cold, soaking wet, delirious.’

My head shakes involuntarily. ‘What’s he playing at? Where was he?’ The rest of my body shivers in the December chill.

‘At the cemetery … He was in Highgate. With Mum and Dad …’

I’m completely confused. Adam never visits his parents’ grave. In all the time I’ve known him, even when I’ve asked him about it, he waves it away, tells me that it’s only a resting place for their bones. ‘I don’t … Why? Has he been out all night in this weather?’

‘Just all day, he must have spent the night in the car. I don’t know. Look, Beth, he’s not making sense. What he needs now is a warm bed and some rest. Can I bring him home?’

My senses prickle. ‘This isn’t his home any more, Ben.’

‘Beth, he’s in a bad way.’

‘Mull of Kintyre’ has been replaced by The Proclaimers walking ‘Five Hundred Miles’. I stare through Sylvia’s window at the revelry, rub the cold from my arms. ‘Just bring him back,’ I tell Ben before hanging up.

In Sylvia’s hallway, I learn that the strange man in the kilt is a true Scot as he waves his tartan skirt suggestively at my thighs. I have no energy to laugh. I gather what’s left of my family and we leave as quietly as possible, knowing Sylvia won’t need an explanation.

Mum and I change the linen in her room. She can sleep with me tonight.

‘Would you not …?’ she begins.

‘No, I would not.’ Adam is not coming back to my bed tonight.

‘It just seems an awful lot of work to—’

‘Mum!’ My voice is louder, sterner than I want it to be. ‘Please?’ I plead with her. ‘Not tonight. He needs our help, but this is still
Adam
?’

She looks at me, eyes narrowed, reluctantly nods, and together we change the sheets in the green room.

Ben brings him straight upstairs. No small talk. Adam sits on the edge of the bed. He’s filthy and silent.

‘Should you try and shower him?’ I ask Ben. I wring my hands together, unsure if I should help or leave.

‘Let him sleep,’ is his reply.

Meg comes into the room with a large whisky. ‘Dad? You okay?’ She sits beside him and guides the glass to his mouth. He swallows it in three gulps, whispers a thank you to her.

‘Do you want something to eat?’ I ask as he lies down fully clothed.

He shakes his head. I glance at Meg, envious of how she’s just got this moment so right and I … I have no idea what to do, how to react.

Practical, I tell myself. Just be practical.
‘You should get him out of those wet clothes.’ I direct this at Ben and leave the room to find something. Outside, on the landing, I take several deep breaths as I walk to my bedroom. In the closet, where I’ve put most of Adam’s clothes, my hands root through the piles until they land on something suitable, an old pair of pyjamas – that will do.

They seem to rise of their own accord to my nose, but the scent I inhale is only of fresh laundry. They no longer smell of him. I walk back to the spare bedroom, open the door and hand the pyjamas to Ben. Adam is sitting on the edge of the bed, trousers already removed, staring out through the window into the black night. He looks small, curled and vulnerable, and a lump catches in my throat.

As I leave, Ben looks at me and shrugs.

Shortly after, Ben joins the rest of us in the kitchen. My heart goes out to Jack who is almost as silent as Adam in this whole exchange. An innocent bystander in the fragmented family of the girl he loves. I was so wrong about him, my initial instincts unfair – he really seems to care for Meg. Ben looks at his wrist and I can tell he’s worried. He only has an hour to the countdown.

‘Go,’ I tell him. ‘Get back to Karen. He’ll be fine. We’ll look after him.’

‘I’m sorry …’ he starts.

‘Don’t be.’ I practically usher him out through the front door.

He turns. ‘I’ll come back for him first thing Friday morning.’

Meg is suddenly beside us. She reaches up and hugs Ben tightly around the neck. ‘Don’t,’ she whispers. ‘I’ll get him there.’

‘Are you sure? You said you didn’t want to go. It’s no problem.’

‘I’ve changed my mind. I want to be there and I’ll take Dad,’ she says.

This is news to me and I’m unsure how I feel. Somehow, Meg’s refusal to acknowledge Noah – other than what she felt she had to do for him; was obliged to do for him as a fellow human being – has somehow meant she’s been on my side. I instantly hate myself. Since his death, all bets are off.

We do the countdown together. It’s a rather muted affair, champagne-free, all of us clutching a warm cup of hot chocolate instead. My mother and I head up to bed, leaving Meg and Jack with some time alone.

‘I’ll just check in on him,’ I tell Mum as I pass the green room. She nods, already through my bedroom door. The room is quiet, completely still, dark apart from the crease of light from the landing. Approaching the bed I see his body, a foetal curl under the duvet. He’s dressed in the pyjamas I’d found earlier and his clothes lie on the back of the bedside chair. I catch a whiff of cigarettes from them as I pick them up with my left hand. My right hand I place under his nose, feel the breath exhaled, and for now I’m relieved he’s alive. Just so I can strangle his stupid neck tomorrow.

‘My parents took me camping once.’ His voice is weak.

‘Adam,’ is all I say.

‘We went to Scotland, up near Loch Ness. It was freezing.’

I wait.

‘Ben was on a school trip so it was just the three of us. They had a big fight. Took it outside our tent, like the difference of a canvas sheet meant I couldn’t hear. I could hear. They always argued about Ben. Yet he was still the blue-eyed boy …’

He moves his head, seems to frame me in the dark.

‘She used to take pills.’

I say nothing.

‘Ben thinks I need pills but I did it to protect him, you know. And other shit. I did it to protect you …’

‘Get some sleep, Adam.’ I sigh as quietly as possible. ‘You—’

‘I don’t need pills, Beth. ’

I give him a reassuring tap on the leg through the duvet, say nothing, and leave him to sleep.

I don’t want to be seen here so, at first, I stay in the car. Sorry as I feel for this poor child, this is another family’s pain. This is Adam’s pain. I have had enough to deal with. I cannot and will not be a part of seeing this child buried. Not when I resented his very existence, and grieving by his graveside feels a little like I’m lying. My mother looked right through me when I tried to explain this to her over breakfast. She’s gone back to the Cotswolds and I’m sure her disapproving head is still shaking.

I walk to the far end of the graveyard, the area where Ben told me his parents are buried. Finding the plot quite quickly, I’m not sure what to do when I get there. Do I pray? Since I met Adam about a year after his parents’ death, I never knew them. And he has never seemed to feel the loss of them, so I assumed they weren’t close.

The grave is a surprise – well tended with fresh, potted, flowers. The inscription gives no clues: ‘Myriam and Ian Hall – they lived and died together.’

I read it a few times and wonder what it is I wanted to learn here. What the hell is wrong with Adam? Has the loss of a child he didn’t even know really tipped him over some edge? I walk away, button my coat and am none the wiser.

Back in the car, parked well away from the funeral cortège, I see Ben and Meg walk towards me, Adam propped up between them. Part of me wants to go and smack him. For fuck’s sake, pull yourself together, I want to say. Then, as he nears the car, I see his face. There is pain etched in the lines around his eyes that used to be laughter lines. The frown lines that run from each side of his nose down to the edges of his mouth look deepened, furrowed. His eyes are sad. The words of my latest song echo in my head:

Now that you’re gone, my life’s no longer whole,

I’m empty, alone, no heart and no soul.

And, despite myself, my heart aches for him – my sad, flawed, altered husband.

I have mentally counted the days of the week since New Year’s Eve, now remembered as Black Wednesday. The countdown appears in my head as a picture – six vertical black lines on a wall and a seventh forward slash mark diagonally placed through the other six. Robinson Crusoe-style. Noah’s funeral, line number three. Two days spent in bed, lines four and five. Life decisions, line number six. Talk to Beth, forward slash, day seven …

When she calls this morning, the conversation is brief. Josh is taking her to a black-tie do at the Royal Albert Hall tonight, can I check and see if her long black dress is here at Ben’s flat, the one with the thin gold belt? I know the one she means immediately, remember her wearing it to a client dinner we had when she was living here with me. I look on her side of the wardrobe and tell her yes. Yes, it is. She swears quietly, then tells me she’s on her way to get it. She’ll come by train – it’ll be quicker. When she hangs up, my lungs feel tight. Beth has unwittingly made face-to-face conversation with me – today, day seven – unavoidable by coming here.

I pace the flat like an expectant father. Talking to myself, I open the balcony door to allow some air in, then close it again because it’s bloody freezing. I go over and over my reasons for doing this at all; talk myself out of it, and then tell myself I have no choice. I try and imagine the questions she’ll ask.

When she arrives, her cheeks are pinched pink by the outside temperature, her hair rolled up under a brown trilby. At first, she looks as if she’s just going to grab the dress and run. I persuade her to stay for a coffee, the scent of the Arabic brew already permeating the space.

‘What’s up?’ she says, blowing into her mug. ‘You look particularly tightly coiled.’ We are seated less than eighteen inches from each other at the small breakfast bar.

‘Well.’ I clear my throat. ‘I wanted to let you know I’m going to The Rookery for a few weeks. It appears I’ve got some shit to work out.’

Her head tilts. I watch her compute what this means. Her husband going somewhere to talk his shit through. Her cup is placed slowly on the worktop. Her lower lip protrudes ever so slightly as she nods. ‘Okay …’

‘I’m leaving later today.’

‘Right … When did you decide this?’

‘Yesterday. Apparently my health insurance in work covers me for losing the plot.’ I attempt a weak smile in her direction.

She doesn’t speak, just removes her hat and shakes her hair loose. It’s long, so much longer than when I last ran my fingers through it. She’s had a fringe cut in. It suits her; rests just above her cat-green eyes. The eyes that I fell in love with. When I first met her, they told me that behind them was a good soul; they told me that they laughed regularly, and they told me that she would make me happy. I look away. ‘But there’s things I need to say to you first.’

‘Adam, seriously?’

I feel the eyes stare.

‘I’m not sure I want to know. I’m not sure I can take any more. I think this, this stay at this place, is probably a good idea. You should probably—’

‘Beth, please … Just listen? I’m trying to be honest here.’

She laughs, and what comes out is a small, sad, unfunny, sound …

‘I know, I know …’ I hold my palms up in surrender. ‘There’s things, so many things that … Look, I wanted to tell you the truth about my parents. No doubt it’ll come up and I wanted to tell you first.’

She frowns. Whatever she had been expecting me to say, it didn’t involve my parents. ‘I’m listening.’

I can tell she’s steeling herself against whatever it is I’m going to say, so I spit it out. ‘My parents didn’t die in a car crash. I lied to you when we met. They killed themselves. My mother, she took enough pills to fell an elephant and my father …’ I lean forward, place my forehead in my hands, my elbows on the worktop. ‘My father felt he couldn’t live without her and so did the same. I found them.’

She’s so quiet, I turn my head in her direction. Her frown has multiplied ten-fold. She goes to speak, then decides against it, looks away so I can only see her profile. The eyes close.

A helicopter hovers overhead. Next door, someone runs a shower. Above all of this, I can only hear the sound of Beth’s breathing.

I want to touch her, but don’t. It would be so easy. Just reach out; she’s only an arm’s length away. Fold her up in my grasp and never let her go.

‘I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell anyone.’ I try and answer the question I think is rolling around her head, my voice no more than a whisper. ‘I couldn’t admit it to myself. They left us. They left Ben and me, Beth. They left us all alone.’

Her barstool scrapes the oak flooring as she stands. She walks across to the balcony door, opens it, inhales the air outside deeply several times, then closes it again. Staying there, she stares south in the direction of the river, arms folded across her chest, her back to me.

‘Why did you never tell me? I don’t understand.’

‘It never happened.’ My lips tremble. ‘I just pretended it never happened. I don’t know. I had no words. I just invented an easier reality …’

‘Any more secrets, Adam?’

I’m silent, trying to figure out my reply, when she turns abruptly. She comes back towards me, grabs the evening dress, her handbag. ‘Whatever else you need to say, however you’re going to answer that question, just hold it for five minutes.’ Glancing at the clock on the wall, she says without looking at me. ‘I need something stronger than coffee. You coming?’

It is ten thirty a.m., the morning after my arrival here. Outside the tall windows of this man’s oak-panelled office, there’s a huge expanse of grounds that I didn’t see in the dark last night. Tapered lawns, still covered in January’s frost, stretch into the distance until they lose themselves in a forest of pines. I glance up at the man behind the desk who has asked that I call him Tom. He’s a bit of an oddball, looks more like a dull accountant than a supposedly educated psychiatrist who deals with nut jobs for a living.

He’s taking notes, writing down what I say and I’m not sure I like this idea. I’ve just told him about my parents, and Ben, and I want to cross the room, rip the pages out and tell him they’re mine. I didn’t want to tell him at all. This morning I convinced myself that telling Beth yesterday, telling her everything I possibly could about anything, would be enough. I convinced myself I’d have a look around, maybe just talk to this guy for this first booked session, then turn around and go home. Apparently not. I’ve only been here half an hour and I’m already thigh-deep in buried truths.

‘How did you sleep?’ he asks.

‘Like a baby, because I took whatever they gave me to help me sleep. Tonight I’m not sure I will.’

‘Why not?’ Tom peers over tortoiseshell spectacles.

‘Because I want to sleep without pills … I do not need to start taking pills. I want my life back. That’s why I’m here. It’s why I signed up for this. It’s why you experts are being paid a shedload of money.’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘Tell me more about that life. The one you want back. What does it look like? What do you miss most?’

Beth. I miss Beth the most.

I’m a man beleaguered by guilt. I blame myself for my marriage break-up. I blame myself for Meg’s pain when Noah died and – sometimes, some days – I even blame myself for his death. Maybe it was my germs. Maybe it was something off those old chess pieces that found its way into his delicate bloodstream …

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I just want my life back.’

He nods.

‘Talk to me about your brother. How did he take your parents’ death?’

‘Very badly.’ I still remember the sound of his body-wracking sobs.

‘And you?’ He raises his eyes from his notes this time.

‘I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I had to take care of Ben.’ I’m aware my answers are blunt, but so was the time. The stark, frank, blunt truth is that my reluctant memories are of fearful times spent filling out forms, working two jobs, applying for grants for Ben to study Accountancy and reassuring him that of course our parents had loved us, when it felt like they never had and they’d abandoned us. Already, I’d started lying. Already, it just seemed the right thing to do.

He waits for a minute before speaking. ‘So, if I asked you for the first word you think of when you think about the death of your parents, what would it be?’

I crick my neck left to right. ‘Selfish.’ I glance at my watch, willing this time with Tom to be over.

‘Selfish?’ He writes it down.

‘Well, it’s the worst, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve been called selfish in my life and God knows I have been, but that? Neither of them thought about Ben and me.’ I think back to Christmas Day, that brief moment outside the restaurant when I thought how easy it would be to fall from the pavement under a lorry.

‘It was cowardly.’ I nod my head as if it’s the only conclusion I could ever come to. I have never spoken about my parents’ death, and I’m immediately afraid. My life has always existed in safe compartments, my mother filed away safely in the one labelled ‘Mum’, never to be intentionally opened. I close my eyes and she’s there. The memory of her scent is vivid. I feel if I raised my nose in the air, sniffed gently, I could smell the intoxicating aroma of jasmine.

‘She used to smell so good, my mother …’

‘Can you tell me your earliest memory of her?’

‘She’s singing … it’s Christmas because it’s some sort of carol. Ben and I are in the same bed together and she’s kneeling on the floor beside us.’

‘Were you happy?’

‘Yes, very … I was probably only three – aren’t most children happy at three? Anyway, that was then. She stopped singing.’ I am only realizing this. I scrabble around in my head trying to remember when. Was I three, six, eight, fifteen? I can’t remember. I look across at Tom. ‘Will this take much longer?’

‘That’s up to you, Adam.’

‘I think I’ve had enough for today. I’m rather tired.’

He stands, waits for me to do the same and, with an open arm and hand, leads me to the door. ‘I’ll see you in the morning. Ten o’clock.’

I nod and pass through into the hallway. The place reminds me of a hunting lodge. Though there are no stuffed animals or trophy heads of stalked deer hanging on the walls, the copious wood panelling and dated tartan décor gives it the feel of somewhere the gentry would have visited during hunting season. For now, it’s a building that houses people on the edge. People who are struggling for whatever reason and, looking around, there seem to be quite a few of us.

I head outside. My hands, stuffed low in my pockets to keep warm, are trembling slightly. I tell myself it’s the cold. Get a good walk in, then back to my room for a bit. Minutes later, at the end of the gardens just before the copse of pine begins, I find a low-lying wall of uneven stone. I balance myself on it a moment. All around me, the ground is frozen. Tree roots burst forth, rupturing the soil and its icy cap, determined to break through. I stare at them, realize that – now I’m here – my memories will do the same. They will demand to be seen and heard, bursting through whatever fragile wall I’ve built around them. Things I’ve buried for years. Things I’ve never felt the need to acknowledge. Things I’ve kept from the people I love.

I look back at the building where this will all happen, hear the loud gong that must mean lunch. I think briefly of home, of the home I once had. Beth will soon be moving. She told me yesterday – on only the third day that the house had been on the market – that we’d had an asking-price offer, with a short-term, same-day exchange and completion. I told her to take it and move on with her life. Of course I hadn’t really expected her to agree. Some part of me still believes that Beth will walk in here, past Tom’s panelled office, and declare her undying love for me. She will tell me that, despite my flaws, maybe even because of them, she truly loves me.

I walk towards the gong, hope that I will sit, have lunch, then go to my room afterwards. I hope that I can ignore the temptation to walk straight through the building to my car waiting on the other side.