by Graham West
At first, his friends and family had been there, listening as he poured out his heart over a beer at the local pub, but after three months, they had pretty much run out of sympathy. Alex was off everyone’s guest list. He was the one to avoid—the one they dodged in the supermarket and whose messages they conveniently forgot to return.
After fifteen months, he was still following Danni’s friends on social media, still checking her home page, and even though she’d unfriended him six weeks after the break-up, he could still pick up links and look at her latest profile pictures. His father had provided a shoulder to cry on, with several pep talks about love and relationships in general, but nothing seemed to work.
Alex had never made love, not with Danni nor with anyone else, and that, his father believed, was at the root of the problem. He had never known intimacy. She hadn’t been ready so Alex had waited. But three months after the break-up, she’d updated her profile picture. Danni had a new love. Lazy day in bed with my babe.
Alex had stared at the photograph for several minutes. His heart raced, thumping like a bass drum, guessing that beneath the sheets they were naked. The image had received thirty-six likes and twenty-eight comments. Everyone was so happy for Danni. Everyone was pleased that she’d found a decent bloke. But that night, Alex raided his father’s drinks cabinet and finished off a half-bottle of whisky along with a handful of pain killers.
It hadn’t been enough to kill him, but the cocktail had taken the lining off his stomach, and it was over a month before he could eat a full meal without vomiting. His mother hadn’t helped by telling him he needed to grow some balls because no woman would want to hook up with a needy man.
But Alex was broken. Each time he took a peek at Danni’s photographs on social media, or checked out her friends, he knew. To love someone so totally, so completely, was surely a testament to the finer things of which the human heart is capable, but this? This was obsession. “If you love her, let her go,” they said. How he hated that cliché. How easy it fell from the lips of his tired, well-meaning friends.
Thankfully, stalking was not his scene. He hadn’t messaged her since the break-up, hadn’t waited silently in the shadows watching her house or threatened to kick the shit out of the new guy. But in his mind, Alex had pursued her relentlessly. It was foolish, yes, but how was he supposed to let go? How? There was no switch to flick, no flame to extinguish. Danielle Stevens had her hand around his heart, her fingers like icy tentacles gripping so tightly that sometimes he would wake exhausted, feeling the life draining from his very soul.
It was one of those mornings, and Alex woke with palpitations, wondering if Danni’s new man had his tongue down her throat or maybe, with any luck, she had broken his heart too. He brushed his teeth for a few seconds and spat out the blood and the paste. The dentist told him he had gum disease; he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything much these days. Danni played on his mind every second of every waking moment. If only they had slept together. If only he had something to recall apart from those kisses and the feel of her arms around his neck.
It was his mother who cracked first. She’d had enough of her son moping around the house, calling in sick and threatening to quit his job. She presented him with an ultimatum: he either got himself together or got the hell out of her house. They had offered to pay for therapy, hoping a professional might be able to help, but Alex didn’t want a shrink. He wanted Danni. Besides, he could never tell a total stranger what was really going on in his head.
He lay awake at night, recalling the time Danni had bent forward and he had caught sight of her underwear above the line of her denims. It tormented him, but how could he tell anyone such a thing? He’d sound like some kind of sad, sex-starved teenager or worse still, a pervert. So maybe leaving home wasn’t such a bad idea.
Mosswood Adventure Park had built several chalets for staff members. They were small, with a single bedroom, a tiny kitchen and a toilet with a shower, but the rent was low and the money came straight out of their wages. So Alex Keller moved out six weeks later with a broken heart and his possessions packed neatly into a brown leather suitcase.
***
Cody Nelson hated school. He never thought twice about letting his teachers know how he felt about their attempts to educate him, either. Of course, this prompted the usual questions from the staff on parents’ evening. Laura Nelson insisted that her son merely required a little time and understanding. They never mentioned Cody’s invisible friends, but his antisocial behaviour concerned them.
A mother always protected her offspring, but Laura was running out of excuses. Cody was, quite frankly, rude to his classmates and they avoided him like the plague. Maybe he just thought he was telling it like it was. Maybe he really did think they were stupid, obsessing about things that didn’t interest him. Maybe—just maybe—he really was somewhere on the autism spectrum.
They thought the week at an adventure park might give them all a break, but someone called Jacob Root had arrived on the scene. Who the hell was he supposed to be? Laura could understand why a boy who seemed unable to make real friends might cook up a few imaginary kids to keep him company, but why invent a grown man? And why would he be sitting at the back of the church on a Sunday morning?
Cody was excited about his holiday at the adventure park, and his parents looked forward to getting him out on his bike. He might even meet a few kids his own age away from the school environment he hated so much.
“He’ll relax there,” Peter Nelson assured his wife. “You wait and see. Give that little boy two wheels and a forest and he’ll be off. No voices. No imaginary friends.”
They had checked the website, showing their son photographs of the park: the crazy golf, the archery and the climbing wall, along with one of the largest soft-play areas in the country. Cody loved swimming too, so he’d keep himself occupied in the newly opened, state-of-the-art pool with its waterfalls, fountains and slides. They would be able to keep him busy from the moment he got up to the time he went to bed, and a week might just be long enough to make a difference. But the Nelsons could never have known what awaited them at Mosswood. It would be a week they would never forget.
Chapter Three
Alex threw his case on the bed and kicked off his trainers. His boss had given him the afternoon off. Blakely seemed a decent bloke and didn’t hassle his staff too much as long as they did their job. Alex had always managed to keep himself together during the working day, although there were times he could have happily strangled some of those little brats. Sometimes the parents tested his patience too, but he had always managed to smile and act like a professional.
Alex pulled his iPad from the side pocket of the suitcase and keyed in the wi-fi code before clicking onto Facebook. He just wanted to take a quick look at Danni’s page to see if she’d updated her profile picture. Then he’d check out the friends she hung out with, in case there’d been any parties. Nothing had changed, but he still stopped to scroll through the old photos from the days they were together—the photographs that made his heart ache.
He guessed Danni, like most in his age group, had deserted Facebook for Snapchat and Instagram, but there was one particular picture—a selfie she had taken just after they’d broken up. In his eyes, she’d never looked more like a Disney princess, and he zoomed in on her lips until they were life-size before gently pressing his own to the screen, imagining she was there.
His friends had assured him that while Danielle Stevens was a pretty girl, she was hardly the town beauty, but to him, there would never be anyone else. She was perfect, but his love for her had brought him here. He was alone in a place he knew neither of his parents would be listening on the other side of the door. As the park rang to the sound of excited children, Alex began to cry.
Later, when the tears had dried, he checked out the kitchen area. There were a few sachets of coffee, some UHT milk and a loaf. That meant toast for tea and toast for breakfast, if he got himself some butter from the
onsite shop. The wall-mounted TV had most of the Freeview channels but he’d not seen a movie since Danni walked out, and the stuff they’d watched together on Netflix no longer interested him.
His father wouldn’t be impressed with the new place, but it provided a roof over Alex’s head, and that was all he wanted. There was always the restaurant, where he could eat out on a discount ticket, and the pool was open to the staff after eight-thirty. Life at Mosswood was what you made of it. There were only ten other staff who lived on site: seven other lads and two women. They were nice enough but neither could hold a candle to Danielle. No, it would just be him, his bed and a packet of tissues along with a vivid imagination.
***
Jenny Adams worried sometimes. There were doting dads, she knew that, but then there was Jake. He was something else. From the moment she fell pregnant, he had scoured the internet, researching everything to do with a baby’s progress from foetus to delivery. Jenny didn’t need to ask if he wanted to be there at the birth. He was present, loud, and anxious to impart his Google-fuelled knowledge to anyone who would listen.
On an empty stomach, the three shots of whisky had oiled his tongue. “Did you know,” he’d announced as he’d watched his wife in the final stages of labour, “that a man ejaculates at approximately twenty-eight miles per hour but the semen takes five minutes to travel a mere six inches inside the woman’s vagina?”
The entire delivery room had fallen into stunned silence. Even the baby, who had been busy negotiating the narrowest of passages, seemed to stop. Hey, Dad, that’s a hell of a lot faster than I’m going at the moment!
The midwife, looking a little perplexed, ignored that nugget of information and turned back to Jenny. “Okay, sweetie, one final push.”
Inspired by the desire to get the hell out of the place before her husband recalled something else he had learned during the past nine months, Jenny had pushed hard, and it worked. Isaac Huxley had shot out of the birth canal like a bullet from a gun.
“Goodness me,” the doctor had joked. “You nearly catapulted the little fella through the wall.” Everyone had laughed except Jake, who had stared at his son in adoration, a tiny bundle of life, lying in her arms. And when Jake held his son for the first time, he’d wept openly, overwhelmed by the love he felt for the helpless baby boy he cradled.
Jenny never needed to ask her husband to feed or change him, and it had been nearly eight months since Jake had even been near the gym. Most of her friends would have considered him to be the perfect man, but sometimes Jenny wanted to escape. Every sneeze, every cry, every rise in temperature had sent her husband’s mind into overdrive. Every day he researched a new childhood ailment until eventually Jenny had snapped and snatched the phone from his hand, flinging it across the room.
“It’s too much! You need to back off!”
Jake was bewildered by the sudden attack. “What the hell’s up with you? I’m just worried about my son.”
“Our son,” Jenny had corrected. “He’s our son, Jake. But you’ve totally taken over. I’m his mother, not the friggin’ nanny!”
She had apologised immediately. It was jealousy; all his love was centred on Isaac. She had expected to be the leading lady in this play, not a member of the audience. They had talked it out over a bottle of wine, and Jake had made an effort, buying her flowers and chocolates every other week, but Isaac had stolen his heart, and there was a bond that only death would break. Jenny often wondered if either of them would even notice if she’d packed up and walked out.
“It won’t always be like this,” her father assured her. “It’s all new to him. Just hang in there.”
But Jenny wasn’t so sure. Wasn’t it normally the man who felt like the spare part when a baby came along? Was she just a bad mother? Of course she loved Isaac—he was her perfect little prince—but could she have loved him more? Sure, she was tired, especially in those first few months, when she’d been grateful Jake was there, but now, with a flat stomach and a half-decent pair of boobs, Jenny just wanted her man back.
Chapter Four
Four days had passed, and Alex was beginning to miss home. One of the staff took him aside, tactfully mentioning that he might need to work on his personal hygiene. That meant washing clothes. It had been easier just to spray his Mosswood ranger polo shirt with deodorant each morning, but it obviously hadn’t worked too well. Alex promised to put on a clean top every day and ordered three new ones from the stores.
He’d neglected his appearance for some time now, often forgetting to shave, and although he’d attempted to curb the need to check Danielle’s Facebook page, it had been impossible to resist entirely. She had deleted the picture of that day they spent together on the beach, but that had probably been down to the new bloke. Maybe it was time to make a move—a physical effort—and pray that his heart would follow.
His heart thumped hard as he walked into The Lakeside Hotel. It was just a one-night stand; no-strings sex with a woman he hoped looked something like her profile picture. How had it come to this? A few days ago, he’d have sooner died than hook up with a stranger.
But now he found himself sitting with a glass of lager, checking the time on his phone every couple of minutes. The room had been booked under his own name. A double bed for him and his fiancée. No one was bothered, these days. There was no need for the Mr. and Mrs. Smith thing.
When his date arrived, he recognised her immediately. Blonde, a little heavier than her photograph but attractive enough. She looked around the bar, checking the faces. Alex raised his hand tentatively, feeling like a schoolboy asking teacher if he could go to the toilet. She spotted him and smiled. This is it, he thought. No backing out now.
“Hi there. I presume you’re Alex?”
He nodded, his face burning.
“I’m Ellie,” she said, taking a seat opposite and placing an expensive-looking handbag on the table. “Wanna get me a drink?”
Ellie, it turned out, drank vodka and orange. Alex pulled a couple of notes from his pocket and checked his money, deciding it might be wiser to put the drinks on a tab. His credit card would stand it, even if they managed to drink the bar dry. He returned a few minutes later and slid into the seat opposite. Ellie studied him with a look of bemusement.
“You’re not the type I’d expect to be using that site,” she said. “So why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? Did someone break your heart?”
Alex was taken aback. “What makes you think that?”
Ellie laughed. She wasn’t old but she wasn’t a teenager either. Probably early thirties, he thought. “Well, you ain’t getting any action or you wouldn’t be hooking up online. So I’m guessing you’ve fallen off that love horse and you’re having problems getting back in the saddle.”
Alex nodded. “Her name was Danni. We broke up fifteen months ago.”
Ellie frowned. “Fifteen months? Holy shit! And you’ve not had anyone since?”
Alex shook his head. “I haven’t even looked.”
“So you’ve been dry all that time?”
“Dry?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, dry. You haven’t had sex.”
“Danni and I—” The nerves kicked in. “We didn’t—we never slept together. She wanted to wait.”
Ellie looked stunned. “Wait? What for?”
“I dunno—”
“Was she your first girl or something?”
Again, Alex nodded.
Ellie grinned, leaning forward. “So, let me get this straight—you’re a virgin?” she whispered after checking no one was within earshot.
“Well…yes. I know what to do but—”
“Hey, don’t panic.” Ellie winked. “I think that’s kind of sweet. I can teach you some stuff, believe me.”
Alex managed a rather awkward laugh that sounded more like a giggle. “So what’s your story, then?”
“Bored housewife,” she shot back.
“You’re married?”
“Hey, don’t ge
t all judgemental. He works away, and I can guarantee he’s screwing everything on two legs. So what’s good for the goose and all that shit.”
“Works away?” Alex asked. “How far away?”
“Far enough. He’s in Amsterdam.”
Alex emptied his glass, wishing he could just get up and go. This was starting to feel like a really bad idea.
Ellie sensed his nervousness, but she wasn’t going to let him go. “How about we just go up to the room,” she said with an impish grin.
Alex flinched. “What? Now? Don’t you…I mean…don’t you want another drink?”
Ellie shook her head. “No time like the present. Now, get your arse up there, and let’s make a man out of you.”
***
Cody was busy packing his Star Wars case when Laura walked into the bedroom. He wasn’t particularly into sci-fi but his father had found it on eBay and thought it might encourage his little boy to take an interest in something he could actually discuss with his classmates.
“Hey, Dee,” she said breezily, crouching down beside him. Cody looked up briefly, shoving a sponge ball into the case.
“How’s my little boy? Excited about our holidays?”
He nodded, determined not to catch her eye.
Laura stroked his head. “Hey, why the sad face?”
Cody didn’t answer.
“You not talking to Mummy?”
There was still no reply.
“Dee, it’s very rude to ignore people. I asked you a question.”
Cody shrugged. “You and Daddy keep getting mad at me.”
“And is that why you’re sad?”
“Yep.”
“Dee, we’re not mad at you—we both love you very much, okay? But Mummy and Daddy are worried. We just want you to be happy.”
“But you shout, and that makes me feel like shit.”
“Cody!”
“What?”
“I wish you wouldn’t say that word.”
“But you and Dad say it,” Cody replied with a familiar look of indignation on his face.
