by John Marrs
‘Should I go over and say something?’ Nicole asked Eric. ‘I don’t want to embarrass her, but this isn’t right. She’s going to get arrested for loitering or stalking or something.’
‘She’s not doing any harm,’ replied Eric, momentarily sympathetic towards Ruth’s pathetic figure. ‘I think we should leave her be. It’s none of our business what she’s doing or why she’s doing it.’
‘If this is some sort of delusional disorder or if she’s having a breakdown, don’t we owe it to her to help?’
‘She’s not Kathy Bates in Misery and you’re not a nurse any more, Nic. You need to let this go. You can’t save everybody.’
The friends remained in silence for another couple of minutes, neither knowing what they were expecting to happen.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ said Nicole eventually, and reluctantly began the journey back down the hill.
‘You owe me twenty bucks, by the way,’ added Eric.
‘Technically, I don’t. I bet you she’d be at his house. You didn’t specify she had to be in it.’
‘Cowbag.’
‘Whatever.’
*
Unaware she’d been followed, Ruth carefully placed her scrapbook back inside her handbag and turned around to look at Zak Stanley’s home again.
She smiled when she imagined what it was going to be like when Zak left his house and saw her for the first time; how she’d walk up to him and explain how much he meant to her and how grateful Zak would be and how she might even receive a hug and a peck on the cheek. And if she made a really good impression, he might even invite her inside for refreshments.
So until that happened, Ruth vowed to remain where she was, and removed a club sandwich and a bottle of Sprite she’d bought in the convenience store. After many failed attempts to diet, she no longer cared about what she ate. Zak would love her no matter what size she was.
Ruth had piled on a stone in weight for every year her father had been absent from his family, and there had been seven to date. Many of their family friends thought of Phil as a cliché for leaving his wife for a secretary less than half his age. Denise was humiliated and hadn’t seen it coming, and dutifully, their friends promised to shun him. With her reputation meaning more to her than anything else, Denise would’ve been mortified if they’d ever discovered Phil’s secretary was a nineteen-year-old called Robert. She only discovered her husband’s double life when, by chance, she stumbled on Robert’s Twitter feed. He and Phil were supposed to be on a business trip to Italy, not lying on a beach and holding hands in Thailand.
Once Phil moved into an apartment in the city with his boy toy, Denise banned him from ever entering the family home again. Even years later, Kevin still remembered being coached by Denise into telling the police that his father had placed his hand in places no adult should ever touch a child. Kevin tried to go along with the lie but his mind became muddled, and after gentle interrogation from a sensitive officer, the investigation didn’t lead to a charge.
Meanwhile Ruth tried to maintain contact with her dad, but as the years went on, he made it increasingly difficult. She missed his hugs and him calling her sunbeam, and sometimes she only remembered how his voice sounded from the recorded voicemail messages she’d hear when she called him. She wouldn’t have recognised his handwriting now even if he had remembered to send her a birthday card.
She took another bite from her sandwich and recalled how in the beginning, she refused to believe her mother when she claimed her husband was abusing Kevin, and later when she said it was Ruth’s fault for his departure, that because she was a big girl, he was embarrassed to be seen with her. Then, as the contact between father and daughter shrank to virtually nothing, Ruth came around to thinking her mother must be right – why else would a father wilfully ignore his child?
She suddenly snapped out of her thoughts, removed her phone from her handbag, and took a grinning selfie with Zak’s home behind her. She was about to email it to her dad, to give him good reason to be proud of her.
Then she remembered why she could never contact him, or anyone else back home, again.
CHAPTER 54
Tommy returned from his bathroom break and dry-retched when he came across Joe lying face down, sprawled across the landing floor.
The stench of Joe’s urine on a hot day was overpowering, but it was another smell that made Tommy nauseous.
‘Jesus, Savannah, he’s actually shitting himself! Shall we call an ambulance or something?’
‘We should probably leave him,’ she replied, her arms folded, all too aware that her cash donation had probably contributed to the situation. ‘He’s too high to control his bodily functions, that’s all.’
‘How’s it going to get any better for him? Get money, buy drugs; get high, shit yourself; sleep it off, then get do it all over again?’
‘Maybe he hasn’t hit rock bottom yet.’
‘How far down is there left to go?’
‘I don’t know, honey, and it breaks my heart, it really does.’
Tommy shook his head, stepped over Joe’s body and made his way towards the hostel’s courtyard where he’d left Jake. The sun had moved behind two large buildings that overlooked them, leaving the rarely used courtyard in a cool shade. Tommy joined Jake on cushions placed upon empty rusty upturned beer kegs, and hunched over a table to continue their game of chess. The board was frayed but the squares were still visible, and missing pieces had been replaced with random objects like bottle tops, pen lids and coins.
‘I’ve not really met anyone like you before,’ said Tommy, moving his rook horizontally.
‘Is that a good or a bad thing?’
‘It’s all good, don’t worry. It’s just that you’ve seen it all, you’ve done it all . . . you seem, you know, pretty sorted. I wish I was like that.’
‘Oh, it’s all just an act. I’m just as fucked up as everyone else in this building.’
Jake was far from being fucked up, thought Tommy. In fact he was probably the most level-headed, laid-back and engaging person he’d ever met. Their day together had flown by, peppered by laughter, anecdotes and Jake’s traveller’s tales. And Jake was pleasantly surprised by just how much he enjoyed being revered by his spirited younger sidekick.
‘Have you stayed in touch with your family and friends much?’ Tommy asked.
‘No, not really.’
‘Don’t you get homesick?’
‘Again, no – it’s the sacrifice you make for a fresh start. What’s that saying? “In change we find purpose.”’
Like Jake, Tommy didn’t feel homesick either. Instead, he felt nostalgic for everything he’d lost the day of the car accident.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ Tommy asked suddenly.
‘Sure.’
‘I don’t mean to get all heavy and stuff, but do you ever think you might have had the time of your life already and didn’t stop to notice?’
‘If you think like that, the next forty or fifty years are going to be very dull.’
‘I dunno. I can’t shake the feeling travelling might be as good as my life gets. This could be my “moment”.’
‘Don’t be daft, there might be hundreds more moments or there might be just one. Or the “moment” might be a person. I see it like this – people are like the tide. Some come into your life and bring things you’ll only need for a short time, and others will bring things you’ll carry forever. But some are just destined to disappear.’
Tommy wondered which category Sean had fallen into.
SEVEN MONTHS EARLIER – GRAND CENTRAL STATION, NEW YORK
‘We’re here, mate, we’re actually here.’
Neither Tommy nor Sean looked pleased as they nervously glanced around the main concourse of New York’s Grand Central Station. They craned their necks towards the enormous stars and stripes flag hanging above them and puzzled over the zodiac constellations painted on the terminal ceiling. As they turned, their faces became bathed in yellow light pou
ring through six high arched windows.
‘Take a picture of me up there.’ Sean pointed towards one of the pristine marble staircases and Tommy waited for the rush hour commuters to thin out so he could take his shot. When they just came thicker and faster, Tommy gave up waiting so Sean ended up resembling a ‘Where’s Wally’ drawing.
In the eight hours since their plane had left Heathrow and landed at JFK, they’d negotiated their way to the terminal via the AirTrain and an alien subway system that used colours, letters and numbers and made little sense. Their back muscles already ached under the weight of their over-packed rucksacks, so they found a quiet spot and began unpacking under the four-faced golden clock atop the information booth.
‘We need to streamline,’ began Tommy, removing a travel hairdryer, electric razor and smart dress shoes. ‘There is so much crap here we don’t need. We’re going to have to bin it or my spine’s going to start slipping out of my arse before the end of the day.’
‘I don’t think I’ll be needing these,’ answered Sean, removing three cans of Heinz beans, two toilet rolls and a jar of Marmite.
‘Keep the Marmite!’ protested Tommy, taking out hair straighteners from a side pocket and pointing to them. ‘I don’t remember you complaining when I put these in.’
‘Those are an essential!’
‘Nope, if the Marmite goes, they do too.’
‘Fine. But when it gets humid, you’re going to be looking like a dick hanging out with the only white boy in America with a blond afro.’
Tommy and Sean put their discarded goods into a plastic bag to dump in a trash can, rolled up their sleeping bags, secured them under the backpack straps and hung their spare trainers by their laces from side pocket zippers.
‘Right, where are we going first?’ asked Tommy.
As they moved towards the departure boards, their bulky presence became unwelcome with the locals when their rucksacks clipped several shoulders.
‘Careful, man!’ barked one. ‘Asshole, are you blind?’ yelled another. Sean tried to apologise but nobody listened. New Yorkers walked with absolute purpose, he noted.
‘This is too intense,’ said Tommy. ‘I think we should get out of New York, start off slowly to get acclimatised to America and then come back when we’re a bit more used to it.’
Sean nodded his agreement and studied the departure boards. ‘We need a plan. There’s a train leaving for Stamford in ten minutes, and another one going to Newark in fifteen.’
‘No plans needed, I’ve got a better idea. We’ve got no timetable to stick to; we can go anywhere we want, whenever we want. Follow me.’
They walked towards the platforms searching for a rare ticket booth without a closed shutter. Eventually they settled on a machine, and Tommy closed his eyes, pushed a random destination button and inserted a $50 bill.
‘Let’s see where we’ll end up, shall we?’
Sean grinned and gave Tommy a high five.
*
Sean shielded his sombre face from the lashing rain with the hood of his cagoule.
‘We should’ve checked where the train was going before we caught the first one out,’ he began. Tommy glanced around the near-empty station platform as Sean’s finger traced a train line in a map book. A vending machine lay on its side, its glass door smashed and emptied of its confectioneries. Both signs informing them of where they’d reached were covered in graffiti, rendering them illegible.
‘So where are we?’ asked Tommy.
‘I wasn’t really listening to the conductor when he said where the final stop was,’ admitted Sean. ‘But we’re about an hour out of New York so we could be north or south. Or west. Or maybe east.’
‘Big help, mate.’
‘We could be in Rensselaer. No, it’s Denville. Or maybe Fairfield. Like I said before, we need a plan.’
‘Well at least we’re on the move.’
‘I think moving again very soon could be a good idea.’
Tommy looked puzzled until he saw what Sean was staring at. Ahead of them, a bearded man in a tatty army uniform, dirty trainers and pushing a baby buggy loaded with empty soda cans shuffled towards them. It was the breadknife in his hand that caught their attention next. They quickly rose to their feet, threw on their backpacks and frantically searched for an exit sign.
‘You lookin’ at my blade, muthafucker?’ yelled the man, wide-eyed, ‘’cos it’s lookin’ at you.’
‘Oh, fuck,’ muttered Tommy, just as a train appeared from around the corner and stopped at the platform. As soon as the doors opened, they darted inside, scurried through the carriages and threw themselves onto seats. They breathed more easily as they slowly pulled away while the man with the breadknife walked alongside the moving train banging on the windows. Sean leant towards a woman sitting opposite him.
‘Excuse me, where’s this train heading, please?’
*
Tommy and Sean walked towards the departure board at Grand Central Station, no longer caring who they bumped into or what insults were hurled in their direction.
‘Let me spell this out for you. We. Are. Making. A. Fucking. Plan,’ growled Sean, and Tommy nodded obediently.
CHAPTER 55
TODAY
Nicole never commented on it so as not to inflate Eric’s ego any further, but she was always impressed by how he seemed to know every lyric to every song he heard on the radio. And he didn’t have a bad singing voice either.
As they drove back to the hostel from their reconnaissance mission to learn what Ruth was really up to, Eric sang along to both parts of Beyoncé and Shakira’s ‘Beautiful Liar’ playing on a pop radio station. Nicole struggled to keep a signal on her phone long enough to open up Google and seek inspiration on to where to travel to once they left Los Angeles.
‘Found anything yet?’ Eric asked, flicking on the dipped headlights as dusk fell.
‘No,’ Nicole replied, and, frustrated, threw her phone into the glove box. ‘I remember Mrs Baker saying something about her and her husband sleeping in the back of the car one night by a lake. If I could get a bloody signal I’d look up lakes near Route 66.’
‘That sounds pretty vague, Nic.’
‘No more or no less than your suggestion of going to Bakersfield just because it sounds like her surname.’
Eric fiddled with the dial on the radio and picked up a classic Seventies music station as the opening bars of a song played. A small part of him still quietly harboured a desire to sing professionally, but, as it was harshly pointed out by Geri Garland when he auditioned to be part of the group Lightning Strikes three and half years earlier, he was more ‘old boy’ than ‘boy band.’ He remained grateful that humiliating clip never aired.
‘“A long, long time ago,”’ he sang along, ‘“I can still remember how that music used to make me smile . . .”’
‘What’s this song?’ Nicole asked, noting its familiarity.
‘How on earth could you not know? It’s Don McLean’s “American Pie”, but I bet you only remember the Madonna version,’ Eric sniffed. ‘His was a classic but she ruined—’
‘Shut up!’ Nicole interrupted, and turned the volume up. Six verses and eight minutes later, she slammed her hand down on the dashboard triumphantly.
‘It’s in the song!’ she yelled. ‘Where Mrs Baker wants us to go, it’s in the bloody song!’
ELEVEN WEEKS EARLIER – GREAT HOUGHTON, NORTHAMPTON
‘We trekked halfway across London, then into the middle of nowhere for that?’ asked Eric in disbelief.
Before them was an old, left-hand drive white pick-up truck. Caked in a film of dust, the two right tyres were flat and gave it an awkward stoop.
‘We could have cut out the middleman and bought a car from Exchange & Mart,’ Eric continued.
‘It’s more than that,’ said Nicole. ‘It’s the truck Mr and Mrs Baker travelled America in on their honeymoon. She didn’t mention they’d brought it home with them.’
Nicole peered t
hrough the passenger window and spotted a wooden box on the tan leather seat. The door opened with a creak and she lifted the lid to find a handwritten letter inside.
‘What does it say?’ asked Eric, still disappointed their quest had resulted in such a rusty old treasure. Nicole began to read out loud.
To whom this may concern. Since my beloved husband died, I have spent years searching for a like-minded soul to appreciate what Joseph and I worked so hard to achieve. Reluctantly, I ruled out my family as they were not there when their father took ill or to support me afterwards when I struggled to pick up the pieces. But if you are reading this, then I have chosen you. Like me, you long for adventure. My body will not allow me to travel any further in this lifetime, but yours will. And only when you allow the warmth of new experiences to fill your heart, will you truly realise how precious a gem your life is. With everlasting gratitude, Grace Baker.
‘What is any of that last part supposed to mean?’ Eric asked.
As Nicole reread the letter to herself, Eric put his hand inside the box and took out ten rolls of bank notes. He took the elastic band off one of them and counted the £50 notes.
‘Jesus, Nic, there’s £10,000 in this! So she has left you money after all.’
‘No,’ pondered Nicole. ‘There’s more to it than that. What else is in the box?’
Eric dug out a business card with a British address that appeared to be a company exporting vehicles to the US, and some car registration documents.
‘There must be a clue in the letter,’ said Nicole, before picking up an atlas from under the box and flicking through it.
