by Jamie Adams
I tried to start a conversation with him a few times, but it never developed until we had a break and sat down with two large flake ice creams on the nearby park bench. We had both eaten them within seconds and sat side by side, staring at the empty beach.
“You know I didn’t mean to hurt him,” Alfie calmly announced.
“I know you didn’t, mate.”
“I just get so frustrated with him.”
“What do you mean?” I wanted more details but tried not to be interrogating.
“Sometimes he takes soooo long to say what he wants to say. Sometimes he bugs me for ages, and I just don’t know what he is on about,” he went on.
“I see…” I was trying to be passive here.
“He can be friendly and stuff, but he is just so boring. I don’t like how long he takes to do everything. He bores most of us.”
“But you do like him deep down? Maybe he just wants to be your friend?” I tried to counsel him quietly.
“It’s like Mum. She is always so soft and timid and boring. I love her, but she is never much fun to be around.”
“I won’t have you speak about your mum like that!” I snapped as the conversation suddenly hit a raw nerve.
“I just mean he is dull. He collects comics. I mean…who even reads comics these days!?”
“It is good to enjoy something like that.” I took some deep breaths and got back to being reasonable.
“Mum does the same…her stuffed owls are everywhere.” His eyes were down, looking at a small crab which seemed to have crawled from nowhere and was journeying diligently across the sand in front of us.
I tried to be clever and link our chat to this.
“Crabs have a lot to deal with, you know…” I went for it. “They have huge pincers and strong shells. They have to carry these around with them, which makes them quite slow and tempting for animals that want to eat ’em. They just want to get from one place to another and guzzle their food and hang out in rock pools.”
“Dad, you are stupid, you know,” he laughed out loud and with some raucousness.
I had not seen him laugh so freely in a while. It was a welcome release.
“It is just like us. We carry lots of crap on our shoulders, and all we want to do is eat, sleep and chill out.” I started to laugh back at him, as sometimes watching him laugh full pelt made it impossible not to join him.
“You know, I may be stupid, but I am also your dad and always will be,” I reminded him and gave him a head lock, brushing his head with my fingers to tickle him reassuringly.
He swung one arm around me and clutched me tightly, causing me to let go.
“I do love you,” he nudged his face against me and rubbed cheeks before we happily sat watching the crab, reminiscing to the sound of the large waves crashing against the deserted pebbles. Still we had no idea of what was to come.
Chapter 8 (Matt)
When I got in she wasn’t even there. The neighbour, George, was sat, watching the telly; and his wife was in the kitchen, boiling the kettle. It was 11:00 p.m.
“Hello, did you have a nice evening?” George enquired politely. “Ruby has got the tea on for you.”
“I had no idea you were babysitting. If I had known, I would have come back earlier.”
“Oh, don’t worry, mate. She got called out with work, so we came around for a bit,” Ruby replied, happily.
“Called out by who?” I asked, with some bewilderment.
“Work. Apparently they have a big case on tomorrow and need to go over their questions,” George said, calmly.
“So what time did she leave?” I asked, innocently.
“About half an hour after you went down the pub,” Ruby mumbled as she came in with a quivering tray of tea and cakes.
She wobbled so much that some of the tea overflowed onto the tray, nearly drenching the cakes.
I could not understand why she had not even texted me about it.
“It all seemed such a rush, so last minute…a bit urgent to be honest,” Ruby carried on as she mopped up some of the drink with a towel.
“We made Max go to bed though. It was nice to get to read him a story,” said George, with a satisfied look shining across his face.
“Well, I am really grateful, but it all seems a bit strange to me.”
As I said this, messages began to come through on WhatsApp, as my wireless reconnected. It turned out she had messaged me several times, but I had had no signal at the pub, as usual. She had told me that she had to go and meet Kevin and Kim and go through some new evidence relating to their court appeal tomorrow. At least she wasn’t being sneaky. Although I still reckoned that she could have tried texting me normally or even giving me a ring. I was beginning to think that she spent so much time apparently at work that surely there must have been more to it. Right now though, my mind was elsewhere.
I checked my own Facebook page and found a few people gossiping about the Alex thing. I noticed that Nicole had sent me a message to say that it was all true. Michelle had apparently passed away, and the police cars were still there. I wanted to message Alex but realised I would be the last person he would want to speak to right now. My mind changed again as I saw the ‘people you may know’ streak straddled across my home page. It was as if the computer had known that I had just met up with that teacher, Josh. It was suggesting we had mutual friends, and I found myself just clicking it, requesting him as a new contact. I assumed if other people had him on their Facebook, then he would be up for connecting to me as well. My mind skipped back to the matter we were concentrating on. I searched the local news website and low and behold there was an article about a suspicious death in the locality. Police at this stage were apparently just making enquiries and not ruling anything out.
I stumbled upstairs towards the toilet and peaked into Max’s room where he was fast asleep. He had had a difficult day, and it struck me that his mother probably didn’t spend any time with him before she left for work again. Part of me always felt that she was not right to be a mum. She was so moody. So uninterested. I often thought to myself that I must have been on drugs or something when I agreed to marry the bitch. Funnily enough, she had asked ‘me’ to marry ‘her’. To be honest, I am not sure that I would have stuck with her if she had not trapped me by telling me she was pregnant with Max.
He was worth it all though. He was always well behaved and grateful for anything we gave him. Max was polite and thoughtful and never really moaned about much at all. That is except for the fact that he worried a lot. He was a worry wart. He would spend all his spare time scratching his head and thinking about stuff. Anything and everything would get to him. I just wished I could make him relax more and not take things too personally.
There was one time when we visited a zoo, and he was in such a great mood. He was laughing, and we were doing monkey impressions; his mother even joining in momentarily. We got as far as the giraffes, and one of them came towards him. He thought it wanted to meet him. His face was grinning from ear-to-ear.
Suddenly it lurched. Its foot was caught on a rock, and it leaned forward before stumbling and kneeling to the ground. It looked as though it had hurt its knee, and Max was horrified. I remember seeing the colour drain from his skin. His lips looked grey, and his face was the colour of ashen.
It took us about 15 minutes to pick him up off the floor and get him back to normal. A lot of coaching was needed…and chocolate. He worried about that poor giraffe every day since. I even sometimes found him logging onto the zoo website, trying to establish if the beast was still alive or not. He assured me it was! I dreaded the day when it wouldn’t be!
My mind flashed back to that time we do not speak of. As I saw my little boy laying there peacefully, I remembered being younger, being excited about the future. The dark times that came over us after that would always leave a mark on me. I had to shake those thoughts away, as sometimes they could eat me up inside, especially at night time. I really did need to focus on the positiv
es. I was a ‘together’ kind of person, and right now I must keep everything together…for Max’s sake at least.
When I got out of the toilet, my phone screen lit up with a notification that Josh had accepted my friend request. I found myself instantly dropping him a message to say thanks for adding me back. Ruby kissed me on the cheek as she left, and George gave me a thumbs up in that ‘old man’ kind of way. I put my head on the cushion of the settee and changed channels on the telly until I came across a cheesy late-night show about dating on a tropical island. Just as my eyes started to tire, a message came up on Facebook, and I was alert again.
Chapter 9 (Josh)
As I lay there watching couples do ridiculous tasks on some Spanish island to test their relationships, I was surprised to see his message flick across the screen of my mobile. I reached out to check it and saw that he was thanking me for the add. I was about to put my phone down again when I suddenly felt the urge to check through his photos. Why couldn’t I just leave it alone? After all, he was the parent of one of the kids in my class. Regardless, I flicked across several pictures of him on holiday and doing things with Max. After scanning through a few photo albums, I began to realise that he really had very few pictures of him and her. In fact, apart from a few formal occasions where she was in the picture by mistake or was in a group shot, he really had left her out of the albums altogether. It was like she didn’t matter to him. Or maybe she just took all of the photos herself, and that is why she wasn’t in front of the camera, but it still seemed peculiar to me.
I wondered what tomorrow would be like. The death was going to create a stir in the community. The mum had always been very active in school, and everyone knew her. I suppose she might have seemed neurotic to some or maybe even a touch clingy. She certainly came across as confident and happy to comment on things to do with school that she didn’t agree with. I remember how cross she was when Alfie cut his hand on the branches of a bush. Even though a first aider had dealt with it, and he had recovered well, she was mortified that we had not bothered to phone her straight away. Overprotective did spring to mind when trying to describe how she behaved. She was quite controlling on the PTA even and had to have a say in every decision and every event. Yet when I think about it, she might actually seem quite timid to someone who didn’t know her. Her quiet yet insistent voice, her neatly tied back hair and her fragile demeanour made her difficult to truly sum up.
I lay there, restless on the settee, and a friendly shadow emerged by the living room fireplace. Sam was tired-looking and confused. He asked if he could sit with me for a while. Beckoning him over, I made room on the settee and grabbed a pillow for him.
“I guess you know Alfie’s mum died,” he said, calmly.
“I had heard,” I replied as he leaned towards me for a hug.
“Everyone is talking about it on WhatsApp.”
“I don’t think we know all the facts yet.”
“Seems weird it was only this morning we had that fight. It makes me feel guilty.”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty at all. None of us could see this on the horizon.”
“I wish we had not given him a hard time,” he began to cry into my shoulder.
“Alfie hurt you both. It was one of those things. It is what it is.”
“I don’t know what I can do.”
“Just be there for him. When he is ready, you all need to be there and support him.” My arm engulfed him as he whimpered more loudly.
“Thanks, Dad. You always know what to say,” he said, honestly, and with an attempt at a smile budging through endless tears.
“What on earth has happened?” Millie called as she came into the room flat-footedly.
We both looked at her with surprise and soon ushered her over to join us. We had a group hug, and Sam began to describe the unfolding news.
The fake log fire seemed to glow more than normal, and its flickers seemed to tell a story as we all sat in silence, staring at it and wondering what we could do to make the world less demanding.
The topic was a mysterious one. None of us had any clue that she was close to taking her life. We reasoned that in reality we hardly knew her at all. When we thought about it hard, it was clear she was always around and on view, but her character was a little cloudy. We just had no idea what sort of a person she really must have been. To me, she seemed regular in bringing Alfie to school and picking him up. When there was a PTA organised thing, we could guarantee she would be involved. She was never the main one running everything, and she was never particularly in our faces about it; so we truly had little to recall about her even though we must have seen her almost every day, both at work and at the post office.
I just mention the post office because Millie worked there part-time, and she had often seen an always heavily made-up Michelle in there posting parcels. Although Millie had talked about this in passing before, it all of a sudden made me want to know more.
“Well she came in twice a week, used the machine and went,” said a tired Millie, scratching her head as though it might help her to recollect more facts and shed some much needed light on all of this.
“What was she like? Sheepish?” I quizzed while brewing another tea.
“Not really. She was always polite. Never needed any help.”
“And yet you did not ask her where the packages were going?” I probed.
“It was not any of my actual business,” she laughed. “It is not like I really cared, to be honest; but if I had wanted to know, I would not have been entitled to an answer.”
“So you didn’t have to take the parcel, read its address, type it into a machine or whatever?”
“No. We have a machine where the customer can weigh it and type in their details to create their own labels and then put their parcels in a box ready to send off.” Millie was very formidable when she was talking about work.
“And I guess this week’s parcel has already been sent off?” I tried just once more to tease out a possibility of helping to solve this problem.
“Well, I imagine so. The last time she dropped one off was yesterday, which means it would have already been sent to wherever it was going.”
She confirmed my fears, sharply. I was at a dead end here, but my mind would not concede.
Sam crawled off to bed, and Millie reminded me that I had to work the next day and so should be in bed too by now. When I got in finally, I pulled the sheets over but could not let go of the idea that somehow these parcels could shed light on everything.
Chapter 10 (Alex)
How could I keep everything as normal as possible? How could I hold my head up high? Nothing made any sense to me anymore. I was overwhelmed, bewildered and out of painkillers. My head pounded slowly as it had for the past ten hours. A night spent at my mum’s house was needed, but I really ought to go back there; to the home I had shared with Michelle. My heart was sat throbbing gently in the soles of my shoes. My ears quietly rang. My nose ran tirelessly. I felt as though reality had subsided, and everything was a mix between chaos and sublime fantasy. My children needed me. No doubt about that. But what could I say? What should I do? Who could I turn to? Why didn’t I see any of this coming? I was not one to cry, but tears fell out of my eyes, like rain from an overloaded storm cloud suddenly offloading. Like daggers, they seemed to cut across my cheeks and dig into my jaw, carving faint yet permanent etchings across my face and staining me forever, like ageing creams; dissolving the past and dripping poignantly onto the floor, as if flooding and muddying the future and any chance of escape.
I had put a few clothes in a bag last night and got out of there as the police had urged me to. They wanted to examine the house and take finger prints and find out exactly what she did. I had accidentally taken her jumper with me. As I picked it out of the bag, I thought about the last time I had seen her in it. Just the other evening. She had been cooking salmon, and I recalled her taking it off because she said it stank of fish. I sniffed it now, and it was clean and fra
grant. It reminded me of spring and the strolls we took through the hills. My heart sank back down into those soles, and I gathered myself together. My kids were stood either side of me as they saw me caress her jumper. They leant into my shoulders, and we stood in silence, looking out of the window, reflecting quietly.
I gathered up their stuff, and we got in the car quickly. My mum asked if I would be alright on the road, driving in this state. I tried to make her believe that I was capable, and I started to drive off without looking over my shoulder. I needed to face up to this. As I drove quite slowly through the mainly car-less roads, the usual warmth associated with going home did not reassemble, and I was left feeling confused, uncomfortable and out of place. I noticed a glazed look in Alfie’s eyes, and the sparkle of partly evaporated tears chalked into his face. I could not determine the way Tess felt exactly, as she looked quite serious; yet I sometimes thought I could see the beginnings of a smile, especially as we passed some of our favourite haunts, like the park, the duck pond, and the place where she went to dancing lessons. I prayed to a god that I had never really believed in that she might get through this in one piece and have nothing but fond memories of her wonderful mother. Little did I know this day was going to resonate with her more strongly than anyone else. Alfie was the one with mixed emotions, so I largely anticipated him suffering greatly.
We turned into our street eventually, and I could still see the police cordon wrapped around our garden. There seemed to be no sign of anyone though, and I had been assured we could return home today. So we got out of the car slowly and were soon approached by our elderly neighbour, who hugged us all in turn and gave me some stew in a little plastic pot.
“It must be so awful for you,” said Margaret as she squeezed Alfie tightly.
“We haven’t really had time to get our heads around it,” I replied, humbly.
