by Tim Weaver
‘What did you do in France?’
‘Worked some crappy jobs, cleaning toilets, waiting tables at cafés. I just tried to keep my head down. I didn’t spend more than three months in each job, just in case the police were on to me.’
‘So, what brought you back?’
‘I got homesick. I ended up hating everything about my life there. The jobs were terrible, the places I lived in were worse. I spent five years doing that, and every day ground me down a little more. So I found a boat that would take me back, and went and saw Michael.’
‘You knew him from before?’
‘Yeah,’ Alex said. ‘He used to be a friend. A good one. Back when I lived with Mum and Dad, he worked
‘That was when you bought the birthday card in the box?’
He nodded.
‘Why did you go to Michael after you came back?’
‘I thought he would know what to do. I thought I could trust him. I couldn’t go to Mum, because of Dad. I couldn’t go to John, because of his job. Kath wouldn’t have understood. None of them would have. I thought Mat might. So, he made a few calls and arranged for me to be driven up to the farm. They were fine for a few hours. Took my picture, talked to me, told me everything would be okay. But do you know what they did after that?’
I shook my head.
‘They knocked me out. I turned my back on them once, and they knocked me out. And then… Then they tried to take my memory away. I could feel my body pleading for the drugs, but I had some fight in me. I managed to cling on to something. And so, even in the darkest times, I could see the outline of the
‘Do you know how they faked your death?’
He nodded. ‘They used Simon.’
‘Simon was supposed to be you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘We had the same blood type. I remember that from when Simon and I used to give blood at uni. That made it easier to disguise the fact it wasn’t me in that car. And I think maybe Andrew and the others on the farm… they liked the symmetry of it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, one friend making the ultimate sacrifice for the other.’
Based on what I’d found at the farm, I imagined Alex was right.
‘Simon had been on the farm for a few months. They’d fed him drugs – but he’d fought them. He fought back against the programme. He pushed down the terror he felt at everything that was going on, and he pushed back at them. But in the end he pushed back too hard. One night, when one of the women came in with his meal, he launched himself at her. He beat her so badly she lay there until morning in a pool of her own blood.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘There was a girl with me in the room with the rings. Rose. She was drying out when they put me in
Darkness. And then light. Hands grab at him and pull him out of the boot of the car. Cool air bristles against his skin as he’s dropped on to a patch of grass. A foot comes down and pins him to the ground. He can feel wet mud against one side of his face and the last weak rays of evening sunlight against the other. Fields and a dirt road stretch out in front of him, and an old Toyota is parked further down, rope attached to its underside.
‘So, they killed him in that car crash.’
‘Yes. When I saw him, when I watched them take him away on that leash, it was the day after he beat that woman. I could smell the petrol on him right from the other end of the corridor. It was only afterwards, when I found out I was supposed to be dead, that I realized why – and what they did to him.’
‘They used your teeth.’
Alex left one hand on the wheel and peeled back his lips with the other. He placed a finger and a thumb on his two front teeth. And pulled. The teeth came away.
They were all false.
‘One of the women on the farm used to be a dentist. They put my teeth into Simon’s mouth, plied him with so much alcohol he could hardly stand, and
Through the windscreen of the Toyota he can see a car close in front. Maybe only three or four feet away. The two vehicles are attached by a length of rope.
Everything in the car smells of petrol: the dashboard, the seats, his clothes. He glances at the speedo. They’re still accelerating. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. He tries to move, but can’t. He looks down. His arms and body are paralysed.
Suddenly, there are headlights up ahead.
And something pings.
There’s the brief, grinding sound of metal against metal, like a clasp being released. Brakes squeal. Then the car in front veers left, the rope trailing behind it, swinging across the road.
A horn blares.
Simon desperately tries to jab at the brakes, the insides of the Toyota swimming in the light from the lorry. But his feet don’t move. Not an inch.
And then there is only darkness.
Alex pulled into a parking bay at a train station about a mile from my house. I gave him enough money to get a ticket, and some more so he could get wherever he needed to go. He climbed out of the car and shook my right hand.
For the first time I glimpsed the wounds in his fingers.
‘It’s ten o’clock, Alex,’ I said.
‘Why don’t you just stay at mine?’
‘I’m still on the run,’ he said. ‘I think the less time you spend with me, and the less you know about where I’m going, the better it is for you.’
He got ready to go, but then turned back. He ducked his head inside the car again, and stared at me for a moment.
‘Do you know what the last thing you hear is?’
I looked at him. ‘Last thing before what?’
‘Before dying.’
I knew. I’d heard it myself when I’d been bound to the cross.
‘The last thing you hear is the sea,’ Alex said, and nodded as if he knew I understood. ‘Waves crashing. Sand washing away. Seagulls squawking. Dogs running around on the beach. If that’s the last sound I hear in this life, it won’t matter to me. Because I like that sound. You know why?’
I shook my head.
‘It reminds me of sitting on the sand, in a cove in Carcondrock, with the person I loved.’
After that, he turned around and disappeared into the crowds.
I didn’t want to go home, so I stayed the night in a motel across the street from the train station. The woman booking me in glanced up a couple of times at the dried cuts around my cheeks, at the streaks of purple and black on the side of my head, but didn’t say anything. As I limped to my room, I could see her reflected in a thin strip of glass by the elevators. She was looking again. My body was exhausted, and a dull ache coursed through my system, but the cling film had helped to quell some of the pain, even if the injuries to my face were more difficult to hide.
The room was small and plain, but it was clean. I set the holdall on the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress for a while, breathing in and out, trying to relax. But the more I relaxed, the worse I started to feel; as the adrenalin ebbed away, it took the numbness with it. I got up again and went to the bathroom. Alex had stopped outside a pharmacy before we got to the train station so I could pick up some medical supplies. The smell of the bandages, of the antiseptic cream, of peeling away the plasters, suddenly reminded me of Derryn’s years as a nurse. Then a memory formed: of her attending to my face three weeks after she’d come to join me in South Africa. I’d fallen into
‘It’s a Steri-Strip today,’ she’d said, placing the transparent plaster over a cut close to my eye. ‘I don’t want it to be a coffin tomorrow.’
My eyes fell to my newly bandaged fingers, and – finally – to my body. Cling film was still wrapped around it, blood pooling at the sides, crawling around from my back in thick, maroon tendrils. I couldn’t see the lacerations themselves; wasn’t sure I ever wanted to. One thing I did know, though, was that I didn’t have the courage to start removing the cling film.
Not yet.
Once I was cleaned up, I went back to the bed, dropped on to my stomach an
d faced the door. And twelve, restless hours later, I woke again.
It was 13 December, eleven days after she’d first come to me, when I headed to Mary’s for the final time. It was late afternoon by the time I got there. I drove, but with difficulty, sitting forward the whole way. My back was still stiff from sleep, and I could feel the cling film loosening. By the time I got out of the car, pain was crackling along my spine.
I slowly moved up the path and on to the porch. Snow had collected in thick mounds at the front. Christmas lights winked in the windows of the house. Mary answered after a couple of knocks, lit by the fading dusk sky.
‘David.’
‘Hello, Mary.’
‘Come in,’ she said, backing away from the door.
She looked at me, at the cuts and bruises I’d patched up. I inched past her, my body aching.
‘Your face…’ she said.
‘It looks worse than it is,’ I lied.
‘What happened?’
‘I got into a fight.’
‘With who?’
I looked at her, but didn’t reply. She nodded, as if she understood that I didn’t want to talk about it. At least not yet.
She disappeared into the kitchen. I made my way to the windows at the back of the living room. They looked out over the garden. The snow was perfect. No footprints. No bird tracks. No fallen leaves. It was like no one had ever been out there.
Mary came through with two cups of coffee, and we sat on the sofas.
‘Where’s Malcolm?’
‘Upstairs,’ she said.
‘How is he?’
She paused. ‘Not good.’
On the table in front of her I placed the envelope she had given to me with the rest of her money in it. She looked down at it, studied it, but didn’t reach for it. Instead, her eyes flicked back to me.
‘You don’t need any more?’
‘No, Mary,’ I said. ‘We’re finished now.’
There was little emotion in her face. I wondered whether she’d already talked herself into believing it had all been a mistake.
‘Finished?’ she said.
‘He was in Scotland.’
‘Alex?’
‘Alex.’
She took a moment, her mouth opening a little. All the doubt, all the times she’d told herself she must have been seeing things, fell away. Her eyes started to fill with tears.
‘What was he doing in Scotland?’
‘Is he still there?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Have you spoken to him?’
‘No,’ I lied again, and when I could bring myself to look at her, I suddenly wasn’t sure this was the right path, despite Alex having asked me to play it this way. ‘I think he wants to see you, but I think he’s also confused.’
‘He can come back home,’ she pleaded.
No, he can’t. I looked at her, a single tear breaking free.
‘Why doesn’t he come home?’
I didn’t answer. It had to be like this. Alex had to decide when the time was right. He had to find his own way back in. They all had to find a way back into a world that had forgotten they existed. A world that had given them nothing the first time. It would be easier for Alex in many ways, despite the baggage he carried with him. He had something to grasp on to, memories he’d never let go. For some of the others, what awaited them was simply a blank. No memories of their first lives. No life to fit back into. Perhaps no chance at starting again.
‘After he left home, he went to France,’ I said, hoping that would be something. ‘That’s where he went before he came back.’
‘Why did he go there?’
I looked at her and thought of Al, of Malcolm, of the way he had shut Alex out. Kept secrets from him. From the family. I guessed his brother was also unknown to Mary. It was up to Alex to bring that to her, not me.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, but couldn’t look at her when I said it.
She broke down and started crying into the sleeve of her cardigan, using her arm to cover her face. Eventually, she calmed a little and I looked at her. She was staring into space. I saw what I might do to her with these lies, but I’d given Alex my word.
Briefly, I thought of another lie; a way to comfort her. It was a lie about the friend of mine who just decided one day that he needed to break away – even if it was just for a short time – to clear his head and decide what he wanted. But I didn’t feed her that one. The deeper I dug, the further away from safety I got. And I didn’t want to get caught out. Not like the people on the farm, making mistakes that cost them their most precious, most necessary commodity. Secrecy.
Mary led me to the basement and we talked in there for a while, like we had before. The wind had found a way in somewhere, making a sound like a child blowing into a bottle. The place was still a mess. The cardboard boxes were still stacked high like pillars, wood and metal still strewn across the floor. There were books in one corner, stacked twenty or thirty high. A lawnmower. More cardboard boxes. Some old walking sticks, different colours and weights, probably all Malcolm’s.
Mary was quiet. I knew she was fighting back tears. It felt wrong to leave, so I offered to sit with her for a while. The last time anyone had sat down and really talked to her was probably before Malcolm got ill. Since then she’d had to fight every demon herself.
‘What did Alex do in France?’ she asked.
‘Just worked some jobs there.’
‘Good jobs?’
I smiled. ‘He’d probably say not.’
She nodded. Rubbed her palms together. Her hands were small, the nails bitten. To her side was a cup of coffee. She reached down to it and placed her fingers over the top, as if trying to warm herself up.
‘How can he still be alive?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘All I know is that he misses you, and he will phone you. He’s just spent a long time on the outside, and now he has to make the step back inside.’
‘What do you mean?’
Above us, floorboards creaked. Malcolm was shuffling across the living room.
I looked back at her. ‘I mean, he needs time.’
Mary glanced around the basement, her eyes locking on the photograph albums in the opposite corner.
She raised her head to the ceiling, then turned back to me.
‘The AD has been really bad these past few weeks.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He can’t retain anything. Not even things he used to repeat before. When I bath him, he looks at me and I can see he has no memory of me at all.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly.
‘I know I can’t do anything about it. But it hurts.’ She looked again at the ceiling. ‘I’d better go and check he’s all right.’
I nodded. ‘And I’d better go.’
We walked up the basement stairs, into the kitchen and through to the living room. Malcolm Towne was sitting in front of the television, the colours blinking in his face. He looked tired and old. He didn’t turn to face us. When Mary went to him, and put a hand on his shoulder, he glanced up at her. His eyes drifted across to me. Total confusion. Behind those eyes,
‘Are you okay, Malc?’ she said.
He didn’t reply – just gazed at her. His mouth was slightly open, a blob of saliva on his lips. Mary spotted it and immediately wiped it away with her sleeve. He didn’t even move. He glanced at me again and I smiled at him, but nothing registered.
‘Would you like a sweet?’ Mary asked him.
The minute detail in his face had become important to her. When a part of his mouth twitched, she took that as a yes. She went to the drawer and got out a bag of sweets. Took one out and unwrapped it.
‘Here we are,’ she said, slipping it into his mouth.
‘Aren’t you worried about him choking on it?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He seems to be all right with these.’
She held the bag of sweets against her, and watched him suck on it. His lips s
macked a little, the only part of him moving with any kind of normality. I could see what she meant about his illness – it had definitely got worse since the last time. After a while, he slowly turned back to the television.
‘Would you like a sweet, David?’
She held out the bag to me. I took one.
‘They’re Malcolm’s favourites,’ she said, following me towards the front door. ‘It’s about the only way he’ll interact with me these days.’
We walked on to the porch and down the driveway
As I flipped the locks on the car, a fierce winter wind ripped up the road. Distantly, something registered – a noise I recognized – and I looked back at the house.
Mary was standing behind me.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
I listened.
‘David?’
I shook my head. ‘Guess it’s nothing.’
I got into the car and pulled the door shut, buzzing down the window. As Mary stepped in towards the car, I unwrapped the sweet and popped it into my mouth.
‘Thank you for all your help, David,’ she said.
‘It will come together, Mary.’
‘Okay.’
‘You will get the closure you need,’ I said. ‘You were right. Right to come to me, right to force me to believe you. But something like this… it’s more complicated than a simple missing persons case. There’s no file, no proper line of enquiry. Your son has been places and seen things that he needs to process himself before he can come back to you. I don’t know everything, but what I do know is that a lot of those things need to come from him.’ I put my hand on hers briefly. ‘He’ll be back, Mary. Just give him time.’
Wind roared up the road again and pressed in at the car windows, so hard they creaked. Mary stepped
And then that noise again.
I looked past Mary to the house. Hanging baskets swayed in the wind. The front door swung on its hinges. Leaves swirled around.
‘What’s the matter, David?’ she asked again.
‘Uh, nothing, I gue…’
Then I saw it.
On top of the house, almost a silhouette in the evening light. A weathervane. The wind buffeted it, spinning it around. And then, as the wind died down again, the weathervane gently started squeaking, as if a part of it had come loose. Metal against metal. A noise I’d heard before.
