by A K Reynolds
There was an awkward silence.
Come on, Jaz, I said, without, of course, moving my lips or anything. Get this conversation going. Then I took a slurp of merlot and asked, ‘What kind of music do you like?’ It’s one of my go-to questions whenever I meet someone new. It gets almost everyone talking. And if someone happens to not like music, that’s good too. It tells me to run a mile and never have anything to do with the freak again.
Simon looked relieved, probably because I’d gotten us past the awkward moment, and maybe also because I was talking to him, rather than to myself.
‘Music, let me see. Rock mainly, but I’ll listen to pretty much anything when it’s live. Jazz, Funk, Blues, you name it.’
After that the evening took on the quality of looking through a kaleidoscope. The pieces were all milling around, and as soon as they turned into a pattern I thought I recognised they tumbled into a different pattern, and I couldn’t keep track.
Then, all of a sudden, the evening was gone, and I was in bed feeling dehydrated with a horrible taste in my mouth. I threw off the covers. Daylight was coming in through the curtains.
I needed a pee and got out of bed. Then I saw I was fully dressed. What was going on? I’d worry about that later. The urge to go was desperate. After I’d been to the loo I drank some water, fragments of the night before bubbling up from the recesses of my mind. I vaguely remembered drinks in the Westhow and food in an Italian place with a medic called Simon who insisted on being called Si. How I’d gotten home I didn’t know.
My head was pounding and in spite of the water I still felt dry. I needed coffee. As I made my way downstairs my head began to spin. When I got to the bottom of the stairs I heard the clink of crockery in the kitchen. There was an intruder in my house. I stopped dead, thought about tiptoeing back up and calling the police on my mobile. Then I thought, Don’t be daft, Jaz, an intruder wouldn’t take time out from burgling you to make a coffee. It’s got to be Simon in the kitchen.
I pushed open the kitchen door and saw Simon sitting at my table, head down, staring at the screen of his mobile phone, with a steaming mug in front of him. He looked up when he heard me come in. The expression on his face told me he wasn’t too pleased to see me. ‘You’ve surfaced at last,’ he said.
‘What time is it?’
‘Nine. I’ve taken the liberty of making myself breakfast. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all.’
The kettle had just been boiled and there was enough hot water left in it for me to make myself a mug of coffee.
‘What happened last night?’ I asked. There was no point in pretending I remembered it. I didn’t, and he’d catch me out easily enough if I tried to lie about it.
‘You got very drunk and I ordered a taxi and got you home.’
Oh dear. As I’d feared, I hadn’t made a good impression. There was another issue I was curious about. ‘Did we have sex?’
‘That was never on the cards. I only came home with you to make sure you didn’t have alcohol poisoning. You threw up as soon as we got here. I slept on the sofa and checked on you now and again to make sure you were okay.’
Exactly what you’d expect from a medic.
I’d woken up feeling oddly calm because all the drink had made me feel so ill I forgot to feel stressed. As I sipped my coffee, my current desperate circumstances came back to me. I’d killed a boy, was worried I might have my collar felt by the police, had a dark secret buried in my past which might sink me and a lot of others, there was a school reunion to go to tonight to meet people I never wanted to see again – but I had to see them, or they’d come after me. And I remembered why I’d met up with Simon in the first place: I wanted to meet someone who’d be willing to go to the reunion with me. Thinking about it, that’d never been a plausible aim in the timeframe I had available. In the cold light of the morning, it seemed positively outlandish I could ever have thought it possible. Nevertheless, I was so desperate I decided to see if I could pull it off.
‘Simon?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve got a favour to ask you.’
He pressed the button on the side of his mobile, put it in his pocket, and met my eyes with his own. ‘What’s that then?’
‘I’ve got a social event tonight and I need someone to go with. I’d feel like a loser if I went on my own. Will you come with me?’
He shook his head. ‘Sorry, no. You’re not my type. I like you, but you’ve got a drink problem. Seriously, you need help. And you need to be careful when you go on dates with strangers. I could have been a rapist or murderer for all you knew, but you didn’t take any precautions. I’ve ordered an Uber and I’ll be going now. Take care of yourself, Jaz.’
He stood up and awkwardly brushed my cheek with his before leaving.
And that was it.
I was on my own. I’d blown it. Mind you, it might’ve been mission impossible. Who else could I ask? I racked my brains. What about Bernie, my counsellor from the AA? No, he wouldn’t be any good. In the unlikely event he agreed, he wouldn’t want me drinking – and I’d need to drink something to get through the evening. I wanted someone to make sure I didn’t drink too much, not stop me altogether.
I showered, worked myself up into a lather, took a walk through the park, and before I knew it, it was time to get my glad rags on and go. I changed into a pair of faded jeans with a low-cut sleeveless navy top and a couple of bangles adorning one of my wrists. Naturally I wore heels as they gave me a feeling of power, God knows why, maybe the fact I stood taller in them was the reason. Somewhat unimaginatively, I wore my hair up again and chose a different pair of dangly silver earrings. I thought gold was vulgar, and even if I was going to my doom, I wanted to do it tastefully.
The reunion was held in the function room at the Selhurst Park Conference Centre, part of Crystal Palace Football Club. That was just as well, because the event was difficult for me to stomach, and if they’d had it at St Benedict’s – our old school – it would’ve been intolerable.
I checked my make-up for the final time, ordered an Uber which would be ten minutes in coming, opened my last bottle of red wine with trembling hands, poured a measure which must’ve been 300 ml at least, and tried to pretend to myself I was taking modest sips of it, but the truth must’ve been different because the glass was empty by the time my taxi arrived. I began the journey to the conference centre with jangling nerves but by the time I got there I was feeling just a tiny bit drunk, and that had a calming effect.
The conference centre was a huge red brick and grey metal structure tacked on to the end of the football stadium. The club had done its best to make it look inviting at night, by placing an array of outdoor lights strategically around the exterior, but nothing could conceal the fact it was essentially a large, ill-shaped box of a building.
A burly security guy wearing a dark suit stood in front of the door. He had a shaven head and a threatening bruiser’s face. I was willing to bet that beneath the suit, his body was covered in unsightly tattoos. I had clients who looked like him. He gave me a hard stare when I arrived, then checked a list when I gave him my name. He allowed himself a half-smile as he waved me inside. It occurred to me he should’ve checked my ID, but then, it was only a school reunion, so why go to such lengths? Who was going to crash it, and why? It wasn’t as if it was Glastonbury or anything. There was probably no need for any security at all. The drinks weren’t free. We all had to pay for our own. The only benefit anyone would get from crashing the place was the enjoyment of the room in the company of people they didn’t know, most of whom they wouldn’t want to know.
I checked-in my jacket – a black number with the cuffs rolled up – and made my way into the room where we were having our party.
It always amazed me that year after year, so many of my former school friends showed up to the event. There must have been nearly the whole of my year there – which amounted to about three hundred former pupils. The place was heaving. But her
e’s the thing: only half-a-dozen of us had a compelling reason to show up. The rest – people like Beth and Adele – were doing it because they actually wanted to.
I walked among them, giving a cheery wave here, a grin and a nod there, and even the occasional girly giggle – which was larding it on a bit thick, to be honest. Soon I heard a familiar voice, ‘Jaz, great to see you! We haven’t been in touch since last year.’
It was Emma, who might’ve been a nice person and worth knowing, but I was on a mission.
‘Oh, hi, Emma. I’ll be with you in a minute. Please excuse me.’
My objective was dead ahead – it was the bar – and I wasn’t going to be side-tracked for anybody. I was going to get there as quick as possible, and order a large glass of red wine. I upped my pace, pushing people to one side in my eagerness to reach the bar. One or two of them gave me dirty looks, but so what? If only they’d known how badly I needed a drink, they wouldn’t have been standing in my way. The whole crowd of them would’ve parted just like the Red Sea did for Moses and his tribe of Israelites as they fled from the Egyptian army.
A cartoon image of a grinning shark got in my way. Its mouth was wide open displaying a sinister set of teeth. I blinked and focussed. The image was on a colourful tie, the tie being worn by a tall, thickset guy wearing a navy pin-striped suit and white shirt.
I was in such a hurry I didn’t bother looking up at his face, I just tried to push past him, but he stuck out his arm to stop me. I was about to get cross when I looked up and recognised him. It was Seth Delaney. He was the last person on earth I needed to annoy. No-one crossed Seth Delaney. No-one in their right mind, anyway.
I guess a lot of women would have found him handsome. He had chiselled movie-star looks and black hair cut in an extreme version of a short back and sides cut, with the hair on the top of his head left flamboyantly and incongruously long. My heart beat faster when I recognised him – a whole lot faster – but that wasn’t because I fancied him. No, I was feeling my flesh crawl.
‘As I live and breathe, it’s Jasmine Black,’ he said with a grin every bit as sinister as the one on the shark adorning his tie. ‘Here, let me look at you.’
I gave him an anorexic smile. He put his hands on my shoulders, staring at me with an unblinking gaze. Although he was always amiable, Seth scared me more than anyone I’d ever met. I’d seen what he was capable of, but that wasn’t the reason. It was because, in spite of his charm, there was something dead at the back of his eyes.
‘You’re still the same sweet, attractive girl I knew at school, Jasmine,’ he said, kissing me on the cheek. ‘You and I could have been an item, don’t you think? I think so, anyway.’ He lowered his voice and leaned in close so that I was the only person who could hear his next line: ‘If not for Tony.’
The mention of Tony made me shudder, as he knew it would.
He enjoyed fucking with my head like this. It occurred to me he might be responsible for the baseball bat, but I wasn’t about to ask him if he’d sent it. If it hadn’t been him, he’d ask me a load of questions about it, and then, if he thought there was the tiniest chance I was going to say something incriminating about our past to someone outside of our group, he’d end my life. I didn’t doubt that.
His hands continued to rest on my shoulders while he looked at my face, enjoying the deep discomfort I was trying vainly to conceal. I wanted to wriggle free of him but knew it’d be a mistake to do anything which could be interpreted as hostile, so I pliantly allowed him to keep his hands where they were. At least he wasn’t groping me, small comfort that it was. I wondered what I’d do if he did, and decided I’d have to stop him and hope it didn’t lead to anything too unpleasant.
‘I tell you what,’ he said, his dead eyes showing no emotion even though he was grinning, ‘I’ll buy you a drink.’
It was, as they used to say in the old movies about the Mafia, an offer I couldn’t refuse.
He turned to face the same direction as me and put one hand in the small of my back, pushing me gently in the direction I’d been heading – the bar. Didn’t he realise I needed no encouragement to get there? The people ahead of us parted to make way for him, even those who didn’t know what he was, or what he was capable of. They saw him as Seth the charismatic and important schoolboy-turned-successful businessman, that was all. If they’d known the truth, they’d have done more than make way for him – they would’ve fled in terror from the reunion.
Everyone we passed looked his way and said, ‘Hi, Seth,’ or ‘Great to see you, Seth,’ or ‘Buy you a drink, Seth.’
A woman called Kimberley was watching me and Seth, her eyes narrowed beneath a crown of overdone hair. Her eyelids were so weighed down with mascara she could hardly keep them open. Standing there in a too tight lime-green top, she looked envious, even though she was with her husband. She would’ve swapped places with me in an instant, naïve fool that she was. She fancied Seth like mad and rumours were rife she cheated on her hubby.
We got to the bar and Seth made eye contact with a barman who hurried to serve him, leaving a disgruntled customer to get attended to by someone else.
‘What would you like, Jaz?’ Seth said, his shark’s gaze penetrating deep into my soul.
‘Red wine, please,’ I replied in as even a voice as I could.
He got my wine and a tonic water for himself. Seth rarely drank and when he did, he didn’t do it to excess.
‘So, what’s been happening in your life, Jaz?’ he asked.
It was an innocent enough question but it set my nerves on edge. A lot had been happening, none of which I wanted to talk about. I’d run over a young boy and killed him, and was worried that any day now the police were going to call round and question me, maybe even arrest me for it. I’d become an alcoholic and was attending AA meetings – but was drinking like a sailor on leave this evening. So how sincere was my commitment to getting on the wagon? I’d gotten myself drunk and lost a day – a whole thirty-three hours for Christ’s sake – and couldn’t account for it. The thought of what I might have said and who I might have said it to during my lost hours was worrying the hell out of me. And finally, I’d received a baseball bat through the post. Someone, I was increasingly sure, had ordered it online for me. That was nice of them, wasn’t it? A touching reminder of a past I shared with Seth, Kylie and a handful of others. Who’d sent it and why?
A wave of paranoia hit me. Supposing Seth had sent it, it might have been a test of some kind. He might’ve been trying to find out how honest I was with him. If I told him about it, that could mean I’d passed his test. But if I didn’t, it could be a fail and it might carry consequences – fatal ones.
I had to buy myself time and think this through, decide what the best course of action would be. Fess up or keep schtum.
‘Could we talk later, Seth? I need to circulate.’
He put his hand beneath my chin and pushed it up, forcing me to look into his eyes. His irises were so dark they blended into his pupils, adding to the shark-like effect of his unflinching stare.
‘You can circulate after you’ve answered my question,’ he said.
I knitted my eyebrows.
‘Oh, okay. What’s been happening in my life, let me see. I’ve been working all hours defending people from criminal charges, successfully as it happens, and I’ve been off work with a bout of flu which might have been brought on by overwork. That’s about it, really.’
‘No boyfriend?’
‘No boyfriend.’
He pulled his lips back from his teeth, this being his idea of a smile. ‘Maybe we should get together.’
‘The moment has passed, Seth. We had our chance years ago, remember?’
He moved his hand from under my chin. ‘So we did – but no harm in testing the water.’
I felt my features twist into a frown. ‘That water is very cold. So cold it’s beyond icy.’
He threw his head back. ‘Ha, I’m just fucking with you, Jaz. Don’t get so uptight.�
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I felt my frown getting worse. ‘You don’t know the effect you have on people, Seth. You ought to be more considerate.’
‘Oh, but I do. They like me.’
Right on cue, Kylie appeared by his side and touched his arm.
She was wearing a slinky red dress which showed off every one of her curves. You didn’t have to look too carefully to see the line her panties made across her pert butt, or to tell she was wearing a black bra. I was pretty sure those provocative things hadn’t happened by accident.
‘Seth, it’s great to see you,’ she said. It looked like she meant it. The events in our teens hadn’t put her off him, nor had his colourful career. Quite the opposite, in fact. She revelled in his company, loved playing the part of – what? – a gangster’s moll? Was that what she was? I sometimes wondered.
She turned to me. ‘Jaz, you’re looking good.’
This was no more than a brief aside, as she immediately focussed all her attention back on Seth, standing right in front of him, and rather closer than I would have thought normal for a mere friend. Her dress was too short and too revealing for my liking, but she did have a good body and great legs, I’ll give her that, and her tummy was in better shape than mine. No doubt most of the men in the room fancied her.
Kylie and Seth exchanged fond cheek kisses, then Seth put his hands on her hips and they stared into each other’s eyes.
‘Kylie, it’s great to see you, too. Drink?’
She looked as if she wanted the moment to last forever. I remembered her copping off with Seth at school, and had observed her latching on to him at previous reunions, but I hadn’t realised till then she still felt that way about him. She was making it obvious. If she wasn’t his moll, that’s what she aspired to be. And now everyone knew, or at least suspected. While Seth was distracted with her, I took the opportunity to slip away with my glass of red, pushing my way through the crowds to a corner where I stood on my own watching everyone enjoy the event.
