Love Lives

by Emlyn Rees

  ‘Hoping to,’ Jimmy admitted.

  Scott’s brow furrowed and, for a second, Jimmy thought he was going to pursue this line of conversation further. But ‘Good for you’ was all Scott said as he slipped the membership card into his black canvas wallet.

  ‘And the Donen film?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘You’ve kind of put me off,’ answered Scott, nudging the case aside. ‘Perhaps you’d better recommend me something more original that I can watch instead. And something I haven’t seen already, mind.’ The easygoing smile was back on the Australian’s face. ‘And that might be harder than you think.’

  Jimmy wavered for a moment, thinking that maybe he should just tell Scott no. But it was too late now. He’d messed up on the ‘ignore’ plan already and switching back to it now would only mark out his behaviour as odd.

  And in truth, his dread over seeing Scott again was diminishing by the second. He’d been being paranoid, he decided. Scott hadn’t even mentioned the documentary. No, so long as they were just chatting about movies Jimmy had no reason to be afraid of Scott. And anyway, there was nothing that Scott and Ellen could possibly find out about Lost Soul’s Point that wasn’t already common knowledge.

  You’re in control, Jimmy reminded himself. No one can see inside your mind. No one can make you speak about the things you saw or tell about the things you did.

  And it was true. It was true. Everything was still OK. Everything was going to stay OK.

  He felt the weight slowly slipping from his shoulders. ‘We’ll soon see about that,’ he told Scott, safe in the knowledge that, no matter what Scott thought, this was one challenge Jimmy was certain to win.

  Half an hour later Jimmy was sitting in the snug bar of the Sapphire. He was in a good mood. He’d fulfilled his promise to Scott, having produced a copy of Election, an overlooked modern classic, he reckoned, which left the over-hyped American Beauty (which had been released in the same year) for dead. Plus, he’d just been paid and had cash to spend and cash to put into the bank tomorrow. Half a crafty spliff down (courtesy of Tara in one of the cubicles in the draughty women’s toilet five minutes ago) and with a pint of Stella in hand, he was feeling more relaxed than he had all week.

  The bar was small, but then again so was everything about the Sapphire and the other ancient squat buildings here in the centre of the old town. Polaroids of New Year celebrations were pinned across the lengths of the blackened oak beams in the low ceiling, which was bowed itself as if a flood were gathering above, waiting to cascade down. The windows looking out on to White Lion Street were greasy with condensed cigarette smoke and the red lino floor was scuffed and cracked.

  Sitting with Jimmy were Mark, Charlie, Toni and Danny, all of them seventeen and all of them wrapped in some hush-hush bitch-off which Jimmy had missed the start of and Tara hadn’t seemed interested in when he’d arrived. Skateboards stacked against the wall, Ru and Tim were over at the pool table, all slick stances, crew-cuts and hard-hitting shots. They’d all known each other since primary school, the same as Tara, who was sitting on Jimmy’s left, sucking on a cigarette and grinning at him over what he’d just confided in her.

  Tara was short and skinny, and this week her hair was dyed red and was combed round her face in such a way that you couldn’t see her pointed pixie ears or the tiny black snake tattooed on her neck. She was wearing an oversized So Solid Crew T-shirt and her eyelids flashed silver whenever she blinked, which she hadn’t done for whole seconds now. ‘But how’, she finally asked, ‘can something be over when it never even began?’

  ‘Because …’ Jimmy started to reply, but got no further, because he already knew that Tara was right: everything that had existed between him and Verity had only ever existed in his mind.

  ‘I don’t get what you see in her myself,’ Tara reflected. ‘I took French with her last year and she never so much as spoke to me. So either she’s a snob, or she’s got nothing to say. Probably both.’

  Jimmy’s eyes glazed over. He already regretted telling Tara about what had happened with Verity on Monday morning and blamed the spliff for loosening his tongue. ‘You’ve got her figured out pretty well for someone you don’t know.’

  But Tara hadn’t finished. ‘And besides,’ she went on, ‘if you’ve made a resolution not to think about her, then what are you doing banging on about her now?’

  Jimmy said nothing. He blamed the spliff for the weakening of his resolve on that front as well.

  ‘OK, OK,’ she answered for him. ‘You’re male and your brain’s in your pants, and Verity Driver’s fit, I’ll grant you that. But beauty, remember, is only skin deep.’

  Jimmy grunted. ‘Spare me the clichés, eh?’

  ‘You’ve got to be practical, that’s all,’ Tara continued. ‘Put things in perspective. Don’t just think of her, think of yourself. You’re bright and cute enough, I suppose. You’ll find other girls to be with. Another year and you’ll be out of here, off at film school and making a name for yourself in the big wide world. Trust me, you’ll forget all about her.’

  Jimmy stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, come on, Jim,’ she said, hooking her elbow round his neck and pulling him close, ‘don’t be like that. I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘Well, you’re not.’

  ‘OK,’ she decided, releasing him, ‘there’s only one way to deal with this.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Ask her out properly. Don’t fart about giving her CDs and crap like that. Just come out and say what you mean: Will. You. Go. Out. With. Me?’

  ‘That easy, eh?’

  ‘At least that way you’ll know.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘She’ll tell you to piss off and we can take your life off pause.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Or’, Tara said, getting to her feet and squeezing past him, her loose black dress trailing over his thighs, ‘she’ll say yes.’ Standing beside him now, Tara looked down her thrice-studded nose at him. ‘And you’ll get to find out just how dull she really is and you’ll dump her and we can take your life off pause again.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘Either way, Jimmy, we’ll get the real you back.’

  ‘That’s why I respect you so much, Tara,’ Jimmy called after her as she walked off towards the Ladies, ‘you’re a born optimist.’

  Jimmy took a swig from his beer. She was right, of course, about asking Verity out. And for real this time, not just some feeble attempt like on Monday.

  Will. You. Go. Out. With. Me?

  How hard could that be? His blood raced at the possibility and no matter how hard he tried to look casual and normal as he sat here waiting for Tara to get back, he just kept picturing Verity’s face in the seconds following his question and, for once, all he could see her lips framing was the word ‘Yes’.

  Only then, his pint halfway to his own lips, he froze. Because there, at the table to his right, where he already knew that Denny Shapland was sitting, he’d just heard somebody speak Verity’s name.

  Slowly, he moved his pint to his mouth and drank. He looked across at Denny and the man – thickset and suited – he was talking to. Jimmy didn’t even taste the lager he swallowed, because all he was doing now was listening.

  ‘Which one’s she, then?’ the guy in the suit asked Denny. ‘Is she part of the Searchlight crowd?’

  The Searchlight was the name of one of the town’s two late-night bars. It was something of an under-age den, frequented by the town’s older-looking teenagers and subsequently the source of the majority of Shoresby’s petty gossip and scandal.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t know her,’ Denny answered with some confidence. ‘Clubs aren’t really her thing. She’s more the quiet type. Shy, you know? She’s hot, mind,’ he added tantalisingly. ‘Long hair, long legs. I mean, if she did ever pitch up at the Searchlight, she’d certainly turn a few heads.’

  ‘How did you meet her?’ asked his friend, lighting a cigarette.


  ‘She just walked into the shop the other day and said hello.’

  ‘Christ, I should be so lucky.’

  ‘Must be my good looks and natural charm, mate,’ Denny told him with a grin. ‘Seriously, though,’ he continued, ‘I’ve been giving her the eye all year, every time I’ve seen her, hoping she might get the hint.’

  Please, Jimmy thought. Please let me have misheard her name. Jimmy didn’t like Denny Shapland. He didn’t like him because of his money and the way he flashed it about, and he didn’t like him because girls Jimmy’s age fell for guys like Denny over guys like Jimmy all the time.

  But he hadn’t misheard her name. He’d heard it exactly right.

  ‘So there it is,’ Denny concluded, stretching luxuriously. ‘This Saturday night, I finally get it together with young Verity. And you know what? I can’t bloody wait. I really think this could go somewhere, I really do.’

  Jimmy had heard enough. Leaving his drink, he pulled on his leather jacket and stood up.

  ‘Looks like Elvis is leaving the building,’ Denny said, glancing up and surveying Jimmy’s jacket with obvious distaste.

  ‘Nice combat trousers, though, eh?’ Jimmy replied, giving Denny’s brain a couple of seconds to make the connection over whose shop they could have been lifted from.

  On his way out of the pub, Jimmy paused only for an instant, and then only to tear down a notice pinned to the door. Community concert, it said at the top in a lurid shade of desk-top-published green. But that wasn’t why Jimmy scrunched it up in his fist and stuffed it deep into his pocket before stepping out into the night. It was what had been written in the small print beneath that had caught his eye.

  It had been Ryan’s name and the date of his death.

  ‘Tossers!’ Jimmy shouted.

  Up on the clifftop, a hundred yards south of Lost Soul’s Point, overlooking the shimmering lights of the town, Jimmy glared down at the crinkled piece of paper in his left hand. His right hand held the strings of a luminous green kite, which idled thirty feet above him, drifting in and out of the thermals which rose upwards from the musty earth.

  Jimmy stared up: the sky was as ablaze with stars as the screensaver on the PC monitor at Video-2-Go. He turned round. There, twenty yards behind him, loomed the silhouette of the Wreck, the Appleforth Estate family chapel, which had been his and Ryan’s home from home as they’d been growing up.

  Constructed of great stone blocks and enmeshed by creepers, it stood at the perimeter of the Appleforth Estate. Whatever mason had built it had chiselled his mark on the lintel above the door: 1804. Apart from that, Jimmy didn’t know much about it. One thing was for sure, though, nobody else gave a damn about it – not even the builders who’d been fixing up the main house this last year. Until he, Ryan and Tara had first forced the door in 1998 and replaced the rusted old padlock with one of their own, no one had set foot in it for years.

  Wintertime, the chapel was freezing and black as a mineshaft. There wasn’t enough ventilation to risk a fire, because they’d stuffed up the two-inch-wide arrow slit windows with old cloths to stop the wind. The nights they’d hung out in there, it had been with the aid of torches and storm lamps to begin with, and later a lighting system which Ryan had rigged up with an old ship’s battery. But it had been worth it for the privacy and, come the summers, Jimmy had known no better place on earth.

  The stuff most kids kept in their bedrooms, Ryan, Jimmy and Tara had kept up here: music, booze, dope, books and magazines. The three of them, sometimes with others, used to come here most days after school, when they’d been too young to drink down the Sapphire.

  Jimmy had been inside only minutes ago, not bothering with a match to light his way, feeling with his fingers and his memory through the familiar space and digging out the kite before retreating back outside again.

  He wasn’t someone given to crying easily, but he was crying now. He couldn’t do a thing about the tears flowing freely down his face, the same as he couldn’t stop sobbing as he thought of his best friend, dying down there on the outcrop of rocks which bulged up out of the sea.

  It had been almost twelve months since Ryan had died, but the way Jimmy felt right now – the way this paper notice made him feel – it could have been tonight.

  ‘Tossers,’ Jimmy cursed again.

  A community concert to remember Ryan’s passing. Passing? What the fuck was that? Ryan hadn’t passed anything. He’d died, mangled in the shrieking metal and poisonous petrol fumes of a stolen convertible car.

  So what was this? This concert to bring the community together? This benefit gig to raise funds for a new, improved Youth Centre? This intention to build a place where Shoresby’s juvenile population could come together and find friendship and support when they needed it? This centre for channelling people’s energy in a positive and creative way?

  It was bullshit, that’s what it was. It had nothing to do with Ryan at all.

  Jimmy shivered. He could feel Ryan near him, drifting up here in the wind like the kite they’d always flown together when they’d been too wasted to speak. What would Ryan make of all this now? Jimmy wondered.

  It didn’t matter. He wasn’t here any more.

  Jimmy spat. He wanted to hate this town. He wanted to hate the people in it, the ignorant do-gooders who were organising this concert. All that crap wasn’t going to bring Ryan back. He wanted to hate the stupid legend of Lost Soul’s Point and the tourist industry built around it. And he wanted to hate Verity as well, for being shallow enough to agree to go out on a date with that prick Denny Shapland.

  He wanted to hate them all, but he couldn’t. Even as he raged against them now, a part of him refused to let his rage win, because just as a part of Ryan remained behind, so too a part of Jimmy would belong to this town for ever. And there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  Life was so fucking precious. That was all Jimmy really knew. And that was how come Ryan’s death still hurt him so much.

  ‘I miss you, man,’ Jimmy said. ‘I miss you so much.’

  Jimmy brought the kite down on the flat ground to his right. He then stood and ripped the concert advertisement into a dozen smaller pieces and clenched them in his fist. He stood and walked forward to where the land gave way to thin air and slowly unfurled his fingers. The wind took the twelve pieces of paper, first rolling them across his upturned palm, and then carrying them out to sea like a flock of tiny birds.

  Chapter VI

  A FLOCK OF pigeons shot up from the tarnished statue of Alexander Walpole as Ellen hurried inside to where the stallholders were starting to pack up the Thursday farmers’ market. Checking her watch, she headed to Little’s Cleaning and Alterations, one of the small shops surrounding the covered market square.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do,’ said the young woman a few minutes later, as she carefully laid out Ellen’s Donna Karan coat between them across the Formica counter. ‘We’ve all had a look. We could send it away but …’ She looked at Ellen apologetically, before picking up the ragged hem of the coat and tutting at the damage. ‘What a shame,’ she said, almost to herself.

  ‘Then would you mind writing me a note to say that it’s irreparable?’ asked Ellen, realising too late that she sounded terribly bad-tempered.

  ‘Well … I …’ began the woman hesitantly, her hand fluttering to the collar of her white overall.

  ‘It’d make all the difference if you would,’ Ellen said, remembering she wasn’t in the dry cleaners in Oxford Circus and a softer approach was needed. ‘You see it was a birthday present from my partner,’ she continued. After all, there was no harm going for the sympathy vote. She would try to claim for the coat on insurance when she got round to it, but she’d already been to that overpriced Wave Cave place and had bought an all-weather Berghaus jacket, which was much more practical. ‘I could tell you what to write, if you want,’ she added gently. ‘It’s just that something official might mean that I could get some compensation …’ From h
im, she thought, feeling a steely knot of anger in her chest. The arrogant, spiteful, horrible … In a second, Ellen was back on the Appleforth Estate on Monday afternoon.

  Despite her disastrous morning, she’d been quite excited as she’d made her way up there to take her first look around. Having put on a slick of lipstick for luck, she’d parked the Land-Rover next to the other cars and trucks, and stepped into the wind and stared at the impressive Georgian mansion ahead of her.

  Seeing the signs for the site office, she walked round the back of one of the wings, picking her way among wheelbarrows, cement mixers and ladders. Walking gingerly across some planks to where a chipboard door was rigged up, she knocked loudly. Then, stepping back to wait for an answer, she turned to look at the incredible view over the coastline, drawing in a deep breath as she surveyed the distant stampede of white horses racing towards the town across the wide expanse of sea.

  A few moments later the door opened and she spun round with her brightest smile. Standing above her on the step was a man in a hard yellow hat holding a steaming mug of tea. He was laughing, as if at a joke, his face turned to the men in the room behind, and, for a split-second as Ellen took in his profile, she thought of what Beth, her oldest friend would say: ‘Workman! Woof!’, with a suitable whistle for his rugged good looks.

  But then, as the man turned to face her, Ellen realised she’d made a huge mistake. This wasn’t an attractive man at all. It was the man with the mad dog.

  ‘You!’ they exclaimed in unison, their smiles simultaneously wiped off their faces.

  Ellen stared at the man standing before her, slack-jawed with disbelief at the rotten run of her luck.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he said, looking her up and down.

  Ellen hugged her folder to her chest. ‘I’m looking for the foreman, or the person in charge,’ she said. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’ She looked back at him dismissively, before trying to peer round him to the room behind.