The Fathers, the Sons and the Anxious Ghost

by Jamie Adams

  She had underlined ‘better off without me’ three times.

  “This is so bad!” I said, feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand I wanted to continue to be her confidante, and on the other, I wanted to go and tell Alfie and Alex straight away.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” she said, with a serious face. “If you do, I don’t know what I’ll do. Mum trusted me with this. I need to deal with it somehow.”

  She trembled as she spoke. Her words were clear but somehow resonated in a darker way than usual. All of this made me feel like she was in a very bad place. I knew that I couldn’t risk knocking her over the edge. She really was capable of anything.

  “And I don’t want to see Max,” she said, as we both got up, ready to go.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, with concern.

  “I just can’t deal with him at the moment. He is too in my face!” She called out as she ran for the bus which was heading to the gate. I would not be going anywhere yet. I needed to gather my thoughts. I dragged myself over to the canteen and sat, stirring a coffee for a while and dwelling on this awful set of revelations. I had to speak to someone. The only person it could be was my dad. Luckily, Max was still in the library, and I was able to grab a lift from him. As we drove home, I did everything in my power to keep quiet about Tess, and he spent much of that time quizzing me about her. I managed to put him at ease and convince him that she was just being a teenager, and there was nothing major going on. It made me uneasy that she wanted to block him from her life, though. Had he made a move on her? Had he tried something? It definitely wasn’t his style. He was into Lisa and had been for ages. I dismissed those thoughts and arrived at dads. Funnily enough, he was out somewhere. He left a note to say he would be back by 11:00, and there was pasta in the fridge. I cooked it up and gave myself a sofa night, watching Netflix and drinking coke, trying my hardest to forget everything that was going on. Falling asleep next to the cat, Dad must have come back and covered me with a blanket, because I woke up again at around 3:00 in the morning and crept to bed. Just as I passed his room, a tall figure emerged, diving into the bathroom.

  “Sorry Sam,” he said.

  “No worries,” I replied as Matt darted past.

  No worries indeed, I thought as I tried to make myself disappear, embarrassed by the complete surprise plastered across my face. This was the first time he had stayed over. I really needed to sleep at Mum’s place when this was happening. I wasn’t ready to be seen condoning their relationship. I didn’t judge them for being gay, but he was still a married man. His wife would be at home, missing him, while he was having fun and games with my father.

  Chapter 21 (Max)

  Whilst Mum was out, I was struggling to get my iPad to connect to the printer, so I decided to try and see if I could print my homework out on her computer instead. She kept it in her room, and I wasn’t sure if she used it much, but I knew that the password would probably still be the same as before; so I opened her door and had a look. Shrouded by a couple of skirts that she had dumped on top of the keyboard, Mum’s computer looked as if it hadn’t been touched in months. I switched it on and opened up a screen where I could type in the password. ‘BradPitt20’ still worked and made me chuckle, as she had always had an obsession with him. I myself had not seen any of his films and didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Anyway, while trying to find the printer settings, I accidentally opened her emails up. Trying to close them again, I flicked the arrow which took you to the earliest messages in her box. This turned out to be the worst move for me to make. It led me to witness something that totally spun my world upside down.

  I was shocked to see that the oldest messages in her box were from Michelle, Alfie’s mum. I could not believe my eyes as I scanned a screen consisting only of message threads between the two of them. To me, what made this all the more surprising was that I never knew they were even friends. Perhaps there was something in these emails that gave a clue as to why Michelle had done what she did. Maybe she had confessed her feelings to my mum. I took a sharp intake of breath and opened one of the messages to find out more.

  It read:

  "Hannah,

  If you do not stop harassing me, I will report you to the authorities. You have no right to treat me like this. I have always done what you asked of me. Leave me alone!"

  Horrified, I opened the preceding message from Mum, which said:

  “Michelle, you little bitch. Why are you still here? You should have left by now. Nobody likes you here, and you know that’s the case. Leave the village and go somewhere you can make a fresh start. As a kid, you were always a walking disaster, and now you are just hanging around like a bad smell!”

  I had never felt so uncomfortable before. This had come as a total surprise to me. Why were Mum and her arguing? Why was Mum being so mean to her? I read another one from Mum.

  “You know you don’t deserve happiness. That day when you hurt me will always be there, reminding me of what a cow you are.”

  Michelle replied:

  “I didn’t hurt you on purpose. You chose to stand on the back bar of my bike. It was out of my control. It was an accident, but you won’t let me forget it.”

  On and on these emails went, arguing about things that had happened when they were kids. Sometimes the things were trivial, and sometimes they were not so trivial; but it certainly seemed like Mum had a sort of controlling influence over her, and she felt she was somehow in Mum’s debt.

  I rang Sam. I had to. He came over straight away, and we sifted through these reams of messages. We both sat there for ages, stunned by what we saw. I knew that Mum was out until at least nine o’clock, so we were in no rush to get through them. Every now and again, we stopped and discussed what we had read. My stomach developed an ache as I physically reacted to the realisation that my own mother was a bully. There was no question that she was the hateful one here. I made a copy of some of the messages onto a memory stick, and we closed down the computer, replacing the skirts so that Mum didn’t know we had been in there. My essay seemed to take a back seat as we debated how to move forward. I loved my mum to pieces, but this did not make sense. She could not be like this! I packed a bag and walked to my auntie’s place, with Sam in tow. I had texted Mum to say that Dad needed help with something. Knocking on Nicole’s door, I hoped that he would be there, and Sam and I could explain what we had found.

  He wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t. He was at the gym apparently, and so Nicole took us in and fed us while we waited. She tried to find out why we were so flustered, and we made up a story about having a tough time with school work. Offering to help, Nicole got quite frustrated when we said that wouldn’t be necessary. She was after all a first class business graduate. The lawyer in her was inquisitive to the extent that we felt we were being interrogated by a prosecution. Eventually we both caved in a bit.

  “OK. What we are going to tell you is massive. I mean, you cannot tell a soul.”

  “I am a top class aunt and brilliant at keeping secrets,” she said, leaning into us a little.

  “We found some e-mails. They are a bit delicate. We don’t know what to do with them,” Sam continued, taking over.

  “What sort of emails? You found them? Lying in the gutter?”

  “It was by chance that I found them,” I said, implicating myself to protect Sam.

  She insisted that I showed her them. Plugging the memory stick into her laptop, Nicole sat there glued to them, while Sam and I looked at the news on the telly. Apparently a hospital had been closed due to an outbreak of a serious infection.

  “That must be a pain in the butt,” he said as we then saw news that wild fires had burned their way across some parts of Middle America.

  “Blimey, it’s all going on,” I tutted.

  Nicole put her head up from the screen and cleared her throat.

  “God, this must really make you feel like crap!” she suddenly announced, looking at me.

  “To be
honest, I don’t know how to feel anymore. I am kind of numb to it all,” I replied, honestly.

  “You know, I was in the same class as both of them during secondary school, and I didn’t know about any of this. We didn’t hang out or anything, but you would have thought I’d have noticed some tension between them,” she went on.

  “What do we do now?” Sam asked, impatiently.

  “Well, I am not sure if you read all of the messages but a few of them are about your dad. It is almost as if it all started with Michelle showing an interest in him. It suggests that she made a move on him when your mum was already starting to see him. I am not sure we should bring this up with Matt straight away.”

  We both looked at each other with blank expressions.

  “He is coming back now, so I am going to copy these and shut down the laptop. Time for me to go to bed, as I have clients to meet early in the morning. I have a made-up bed in the spare room, Alfie. Sam, you are more than welcome to stay if you let your mum know.”

  At that, she gathered some of her things up and told us that she would sleep on it and decide what course of action to take the next day.

  Dad came in and was happy to see me. He made us a drink each and then drove Sam home, with me in the car. When Sam got out, I moved into the front seat, and he told me about his night in the gym. Somehow he avoided asking me the real reason that I had showed up that late on a Tuesday night. He seemed genuinely pleased to see me. We played a game on the console and then went to bed. Tomorrow I knew that Nicole would come up with a way forward. She had to!

  Chapter 22 (Alfie)

  Heading to the post office a few days later to send off my passport application, I found it hard to find a parking space. Town was busy, and everyone seemed to have forgotten how to park. One car was at a really strange angle and took up almost three spaces. Another had blocked some cars in, and one of their owners was writing a snotty note out to stick on the window. I just couldn’t seem to catch a break. Eventually I parked right down by the river and walked into the centre, squelching through puddles on the way.

  When I got there, an old lady soon came over to speak to me. She didn’t look as if she worked there, so I was slightly freaked out at first. What did she want from me?

  “Hello young man, you have grown up no end,” she began with a very soothing voice.

  “Hello, I am really sorry, but I don’t remember you.”

  She looked me up and down and said, “You look just like your mother.”

  Figuring that she must have known Mum, I eased up a bit and was happy to talk for a moment.

  “She was an angel. A real, true angel,” she continued kindly. “Every week, she made up food packages and sent them to a care home across the county. It was the one that your gran used to be in before she died.”

  Realising that she worked there after all, I asked her how she knew. She soon explained that her and Mum had chatted most days, and she was always coming in to drop off her parcels. It was so sweet to hear that Mum had done that. Such a charitable act. I felt so proud as she spoke of Mum, as though she were a hero. The lady commented on my dimples and then warned me never to do drugs. I smiled as I thought about the weed that I had been smoking just 20 minutes previous. Hoping that the chewing gum and spray had disguised the smell, I thanked her for her thoughts, dropped off my passport forms and made my way back to the river.

  “I just saw your little sister!” yelled a familiar voice from across the way. It was Mrs Bellamy. I had not seen her for years. She still looked the same as ever. Her smart dress and expensive glasses always made her look stylish.

  “Oh, what was she doing?” I called back.

  “Sitting by the river over there!” she pointed as we crossed paths, with me on one side of the road and her on the other.

  “Thank you! I hope everything is OK with you,” I shouted.

  “You too, dear,” she replied before scuttling off.

  It cheered me up to have had two nice things happen. First, meeting Mum’s post office friend and now seeing my old head teacher. I went to try and find Tess, but there was no sign of her when I arrived.

  Later that day, we were going to all go and watch Max in the school play. I had planned to get me, Tess and Dad a take-away beforehand. Tess had other ideas. She texted to say that she had plans with Minty, her slightly gothic friend. It didn’t stop us going though. Dad and I ate our food and made our way over to the school theatre to make sure we got good seats before everyone else arrived. The charity this year was to do with anxiety and depression. Both Tess and Dad had championed this with the committee, and so Dad had been asked to say a few words after the play and thank the actors and director. Obviously this subject was close to our hearts, and we expected that tonight’s play was going to be a tear jerker, especially as this week represented the ten year anniversary of Mum’s passing. We sat fairly close to the stage, and I could see some of the actors, including Max, marching up and down behind the scenes, probably going over their lines for the last time and getting to grips with their nerves. I remembered with shame how I had ruined Max’s first play back in primary school, and I wanted him to know how proud I was of him now, so I texted him to spur him on a bit.

  Sam came in with his dad and sat a few rows back from us. Mrs Bellamy arrived with her husband, meaning that I had seen her twice in one day after hardly setting eyes on her for about seven years. Max’s mum came in just before the lights went down and sat alone, looking serious and stoic.

  The auditorium went dark. The music started softly. This was going to be Max’s big night!

  Chapter 23 (Sam)

  Here we were sat, about to watch Max perform, and his aunt Nicole had still not got back to us about what to do next. The last thing she had said was that we needed to wait until the anniversary of Michelle’s death had gone past. Tonight, it came to the front of my thoughts because I could clearly see Hannah sitting there in the front row, with her eyes fixed on the stage. I remembered how rude she had been to Michelle and started to feel enraged at everything she had done. I wished I could get up and go over there and have it out with her in front of everyone, but I restrained myself and ate some popcorn instead. Dad whispered to me that Matt had just slipped in on the other side of the room. I should have known that Dad would be looking out for him.

  Before I switched my phone off, a message flashed up from Tess on my lock screen. I thought about opening and reading it but quickly decided against it, as the lights were dimming, and Dad nudged me to indicate that the show was beginning. I sat back, crossed one leg over the other and waited excitedly to cheer my friend on. Fingers crossed, he would rise to the challenge and show off the talents that we all knew he had.

  Lisa came on first, performing well and making us all laugh with some well-placed gags. She was a shining star from the start and really seemed very comfortable up there on stage, with the lights glaring at her. The other characters were interesting and varied. Duncan was finding it hard to hit the spotlight every time; and Jane was sometimes pausing awkwardly, which I guessed was not simply for dramatic effect. But it was when Max arrived that the spotlight seemed to intensify. He was in the background of the scene to begin with, watching Lisa going on and on about something. Then it was his moment. He surged forwards and delivered his first lines crisply. He began a heated conversation with John and started to get into character comfortably. I was so proud of him as the story unfolded, and he had his own opportunity to get laughs from the audience. In moments of tension, he was electrifying. Even though he was my best friend, it was clear to anyone that he and Lisa owned the show. They captivated us, and Dad whispered to me that he felt they both deserved Olivier Awards. It sounded ludicrous, but I firmly believed they would have done equally well in any West End production.

  They all took their applause; first one by one and then as a group. I cheered so loudly for Max that Dad leaned away slightly as if to say that his ears were about to fall off. A few wolf-whistles could be heard
from Alfie and the others. We were all so excited because the play had been uplifting and overall the actors had done a brilliant job. As the noise died down, Alex was seen to walk towards the stage, where he took his position next to a microphone. Suddenly the general tone became more sombre.

  The emotion in his voice was heavy; and even from where I was sitting, it was clear that his lip was quivering as he thanked the cast and crew for a delightful night’s entertainment. He came onto the fact that it was all for a charity close to his heart, and then I suddenly got distracted. I had opened the text ready to read, and Dad leaned over me and pointed to it with despair.

  “What the hell is she going on about?” he whispered loudly.

  “Shh! Calm down!” I replied as I noticed the message’s content.

  It read: “Hannah is a bitch who needs to pay for her actions. I have had enough of this shit. She needs to pay. She will pay tonight!”

  “Are we talking about Hannah over there?” he asked, trying to make sense of it.

  “Yes, Dad, it seems that way.”

  “Psst!” Came another loud whisper, this time from Max, who was standing at the end of our row, beckoning me to join him. His wide smile had turned into a distressed appearance. I could tell she must have sent him one too. I tried to sneak out quietly, but with Dad following me, we were soon noticed by almost everyone. Alex looked up from his speech to shake his head at us.

  Getting into the cloakroom, Max showed me his phone.

  “Your mum is a bitch. I am going to make her pay for what she did!”

  The message had stunned him, and he now was close to tears. I was in a panic as I considered the possibilities. What was she going to do?

  It didn’t take too long for us to find out. Max’s mum appeared from nowhere and grabbed his hand, insisting that they had to leave immediately.