Thanks For Nothing, Nick Maxwell

by Debbie Carbin

  He shrugs. ‘Well, it wasn’t . . . I mean, it was mostly me, you know. He’s just a kid. I was probably about seventeen or eighteen, he was probably ten or eleven. Something like that.’ He’s not looking at me.

  I nod. ‘Oh.’ But something is definitely wrong. His voice is different, he’s nervous and agitated. Is this Sean some kind of threat to Nick now? Is there more to their friendship than the ‘big brother’ picture that Nick has painted? Did they get up to more than just building ramps for their bikes? Illegal activities, or something dangerous?

  I know it’s ridiculous and immature but thinking about that is a bit of a turn-on. Suddenly there’s a side to Nick I don’t know about, a dark side, and it excites me. I put my hand on his leg and he turns to look at me at last. ‘Let’s go,’ I say, my pupils dilated and my breath laboured. He doesn’t need telling twice.

  Let’s move on to next morning. You don’t need to see what happened next. Suffice to say that he didn’t stay over. He never does. I don’t know why – it makes perfect sense to me seeing as he’s got decorators in his own flat at the moment. That’s why we always come here, and that’s why he has to go home each night, to make sure they’ve locked up and turned everything off properly. And then he has to stay there the night so he can let them in the next day. He says he pays them extra to work all over the weekend, so it should be finished soon and I’ll get to see it at last.

  It’s Saturday again so naturally I’m working through my chores. There’s the laminated list on the counter top in the kitchen – see it? You can see I’ve crossed out the first third, which is not bad going seeing as it’s only just gone one p.m. Look at me though, compared to last Saturday. What a difference! I’m together again, and collected, now that Nick and I are definitely an item. On top of that, I’ve got this new feeling of temporariness about this flat now, so I’m not putting as much effort into the cleaning as I used to. It seems like only a matter of time before I’ll be moving in with him, so I’m a bit more relaxed about the list. In fact, I have crossed a few things out without actually doing them. I really don’t see the need to wipe round the edge of the kitchen clock every week. It’s only Mum that looks up there anyway. I’ll do it five minutes before her next visit.

  Ooh, there’s the phone – that’ll be him. Although we’ve been official for a week now, it still gives me a thrill when the phone rings and I get all bouncy and excited again, even with Marigolds on.

  ‘Hello?’ Please please please.

  ‘Hi there.’ Yes!

  ‘Hi, Nick.’

  ‘Hi, beautiful. Feeling OK this morning?’

  This morning? I glance at the clock, but I know what the time is. ‘I’m fine but it’s not morning, Nick. It’s quarter past one.’

  There’s a moment of silence, during which I check all the clocks in the flat, thinking I was the one who had got it wrong.

  ‘One fifteen? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah, absolutely. You must have slept—’

  ‘Shit. I’m dead. Shit.’ There’s a muffled rustling at the other end as if Nick is trying to do something with his other hand. ‘Look, Rachel, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to go. I didn’t realize . . . I’ve got—’

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, no, everything’s fine.’ He’s breathing heavily and moving around a lot at his end. Something clearly is wrong. ‘I’ll see you later, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I’m saying, but he’s already hung up. ‘Bye then. Love you too, darling. Kiss kiss.’

  I stare at the phone for a moment. That was a really odd call. He obviously rang me for a reason, but then never mentioned what it was. In fact, as soon as he realized what the time was, he was off. But how on earth could he not know what the time was? Not even to have a vague idea, like whether it’s morning or afternoon? Either he’d have to have spent all morning somewhere with no access to a telephone, clock, radio or television, which is highly unlikely, or he’d literally just woken up, rolled over and dialled my number without even looking.

  I like this alternative. It tells me two very important things. One: I’m the first thing he thinks about the minute he opens his eyes in the morning; and two: he knows my number by heart, because surely if he’d had to go and look it up, he would have spotted the time somewhere.

  I’m smiling now. But then frowning again. Why would he possibly sleep in until one fifteen in the afternoon? We weren’t out that late last night. He left here at about one a.m. again, so if it took him, say, half an hour to get home, he could be in bed by two. Surely no twenty-five-year-old healthy male needs eleven hours’ sleep?

  An interesting thought pops into my head. He didn’t go straight home after leaving here. That’s the only possible explanation. Bumping into that Sean freak really disturbed him, so I have no doubt at all that that is where he went after here. He had to go and smooth things over with the Sinks gang. And now he is late for a meeting that could cost him his life. He had definitely said, ‘I’m dead,’ when he realized he was late. I’m getting all goosebumpy just thinking about the danger that he might, even now, be facing.

  I’m still holding the phone and on impulse I dial 1471. The number’s there, and she tells me he definitely rang at one thirteen p.m., so I was right about the time. I write the number down quickly. Never know when I might need that.

  At Nick’s house, he’s in a fluster. ‘Mum, have you seen my bloody football kit?’ he calls down the stairs as he frantically pulls on some clothes. His mum didn’t wake him up at twelve like he asked her to, even though she knows very well he has footie on Saturdays. He looks well annoyed. He shakes his head, smoothing his hair with his fingers. That’s going to have to do. Doesn’t matter anyway, he’ll be having a shower straight after the game.

  Sean is going to kill him. He is supposed to have picked him up nearly half an hour ago and Sean’s already going to be pissed off after Nick blanked him in the restaurant last night.

  He runs downstairs to find his mum holding his shorts and shirt, clean and pressed. He grins at her in relief. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  As he’s stuffing his football boots into a bag, he’s actually deciding that our relationship is over. Look at his face though – no hint of it. So cold. Obviously I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but basically this is it. He’s in trouble with his best mate – Sean – because of me, and now he’s late for footie, also because of me. Had I known that he was feeling like this, maybe I wouldn’t have asked him last night to go to Jake’s party with me in two weeks. Although I didn’t know it, Nick’s Saturday afternoons are always taken up with footie, followed by hanging around with his mates in the arcades for a couple of hours. Then most weeks, he and Sean will come back here and play on the PlayStation and eat Pringles.

  Jake’s party, as it turned out, was the final straw.

  Chapter Four

  EIGHT DAYS LATER. Sunday the thirteenth of August. Sainsbury’s.

  Here I come across the car park now. I hate doing the shopping on Sundays. There’s something really depressing about the supermarket on a Sunday. Here are all the loners buying their two chicken breasts, three apples and seven tins of cat food. All the families, all the happy people with loved ones, are at home on Sundays playing Monopoly while the chicken roasts.

  I’m only here because I was too tired and depressed to come out yesterday. I’m still tired, tired like I haven’t slept in a week, but I’m out of cat food so this trip couldn’t be put off any longer. This fatigue is bone-deep and I drag my feet as I trudge across the empty disabled bays, muttering under my breath. I feel like I’ve had to walk two miles from my car to the entrance, yet here are five, six, seven empty spaces.

  The trolley that I select doesn’t come out of its stack when I pull it. I’ve already put my pound in the slot so I’m not giving up on it. I give it several more hard tugs, my fury increasing in direct proportion to the violence of my tugs. There is nothing visible holding this trolley there, which means either it has been welded to the next one
as a kind of sick joke or some ghostly hand is refusing to let go. I put my other hand on the trolley behind, the one my trolley was inserted into the last time it was used, and push with that hand while pulling violently with the other hand. I’m grimacing now, my teeth gritted, leaning into the pull, digging in my heels, eyes narrowed, grunting.

  ‘Here you go, have mine,’ says a voice just behind me. Abruptly I stop pulling, drop my hunched shoulders and turn. A tall man in a dark T-shirt is standing there holding a trolley, which he pushes towards me with a smile. Then he walks over to one of the other rows of trolleys, inserts a coin, slides the trolley out easily and strolls off towards the store.

  ‘B-but your pound?’ I call out to his retreating back.

  ‘Don’t leave the country,’ he calls back with a smile, and disappears into the store. I scowl at the unrelenting trolley, then let it go. I am beaten.

  Things are no better inside the shop. Sundays are also popular for the very old, have you ever noticed that? It’s a kind of social occasion for them. Sometimes they’re not even buying anything, they just get a trolley, wheel it into the middle of an aisle and then stand and chat for three-quarters of an hour.

  ‘. . . my daughter, Ruth, she lives in Australia, she’s bringing the kids . . .’

  ‘. . . doctor was one of those Pakistani types with really lovely eyes . . .’

  ‘. . . Countdown’s just not the same, now that Richard Whiteley’s gone . . .’

  Can you see me? I’m still at the top of the first aisle, wondering if I stand any kind of chance at all. All the way down to the milk at the end are trolleys arranged in a loose zigzag across the aisle so that a straight pathway is not visible. I need some pasta too, but it’s on the bottom shelf, tucked in behind yet another trolley. I’m exhausted, miserable, queasy and stressed. The perfect temperament.

  ‘’Scuse me,’ I call out loudly, and walk in a straight line down the aisle, ramming willy-nilly into trolleys, legs, feet and handbags. Magically, a path appears through the four-wheeled forest. The people scatter, some swearing, others bleeding, all moving more swiftly than even they thought possible. One trolley remains stubbornly in my way, its owner holding a conversation on his mobile phone.

  ‘Yes, yes, I won’t forget. It’s on the list . . . I will . . . Yes . . . Now, do you fancy pasta?’

  ‘Just what I was thinking,’ I say harshly, barging into his trolley, which rolls obligingly away.

  Unfortunately, I haven’t noticed that that’s the man who’s just given me his trolley outside. It’s a bit embarrassing. As I walk away, I do hear him say, ‘No, no, I’m still here. Sorry. Just got a bit distracted for a moment.’ The expression on my face says it all, doesn’t it? Men who can’t do the shopping without their wives on the other end of the phone telling them what to buy are nothing more than performing dolphins. She’s probably saying, ‘Now reach up and touch the white bleach bottle with the end of your nose. There’s a clever boy! Have a fish.’

  I’m off round the corner by now, getting bread and eggs. The way my appetite’s been going the last couple of days, I could probably manage for a week on nothing more than that, but I do need some cat food and should get some fruit and veg. I don’t need much else so we can go forward to the point where I’m at the till, queuing up to pay.

  This is the biggest test of all. In front of me in the queue is a tiny old lady in a beige felt hat who practically has to climb into the trolley to reach the items at the bottom, which is everything because she’s got such a small number of things. I wonder idly why she didn’t use one of those shallow trolleys designed for people just like her. Anyway, it takes her three weeks to retrieve each item from the trolley, and then she has to put both hands on everything as she puts them on the conveyor, arranging them beautifully and patting them affectionately once she’s happy with their placement.

  God, if looks could kill, I’d be stepping over her lifeless body and loading my stuff on to the belt. You can see how fed up I am by the foot-tapping, hand on hip sighing I’m doing. Trouble is, I think Yoda in the hat there is a bit deaf, so all my impatient noises are lost on her. Either that or she’s intentionally winding me up for some reason. Quickly I check her lower legs to see if any tell-tale traces of trolley injury could explain this torture. Unfortunately her legs are so close to the ground they are completely obscured by the trolley.

  Finally her single layer of food and lavender-scented toiletries glides slowly away, exposing three inches of empty belt at my end. I grab handfuls of stuff, piling it all up two, three, even four items deep, cramming it all into that tiny space, cat food tins on top of tomatoes, bread squashed under bleach. This does me no good at all as I am no nearer getting out of there. Yoda is packing her stuff away into her trolley bag at the other end like a game of Tetris. This is taking an agonizingly long time and I am edging closer to aggravated assault. For relief from the torturous activity going on in front of me, I look up and away to the customers at the other tills.

  The man with the mobile phone is two tills away, chatting easily with the little checkout girl, who is giggling like a teenager. She is a teenager. Her bright eyes are fixed on him earnestly. He’s leaning slightly towards her, gesticulating with his hands, obviously recounting some story that is making the girl smile as he talks and laugh enthusiastically when he stops. As I’m watching, somehow my ears tune in to their conversation and I hear the words, ‘How about pasta?’ and then, ‘Just what I was thinking,’ and I realize in one sickening moment that he is talking about me. His hands are doing a trolley-ramming gesture as he says those last words and they both laugh together, united in the enjoyment of ridicule. My face has gone red, look. It’s not clear whether that’s from anger, humiliation or a combination of both.

  Just at that moment he looks round for some reason, almost as if he could feel me staring at him. Suddenly he finds my horrified eyes and we gaze at each other for a few seconds, accuser and accused. He has the decency to look a little abashed before I look away and focus on getting me and the shopping out of there and back in my flat as soon as I can. Inexplicably, tears are threatening and my throat starts to ache. Not again, I tell myself. I am not going to cry again.

  Ten minutes later I’m back in the car park, packing my shopping into the boot of my car. I have my back to the rest of the car park, so don’t notice the mobile phone man walk past with an empty trolley, obviously returning it to the trolley park. He spots me and slows down, almost stopping by my car, apparently about to say something, but then thinks better of it at the last moment and walks off.

  What I do notice, though, is that chap over by the cashpoint machines, the one in the red vest. It’s the red that attracts my attention and I smile briefly at it. Well, it’s not good on him, is it really? I start to turn back to the shopping, but something about this man has rung a bell with me. There’s something intensely familiar about his gait, the style of his hair, the shape of his face, even though I can’t make out the features from this distance. I stare harder, narrowing my eyes, racking my brains. I know him, but where from?

  I continue to watch him as he jogs back across the car park towards a dark grey car. He reaches it, opens the driver’s door, and then suddenly it hits me. The man in the red vest, now getting into the car, leaning over to the silhouette of his passenger, and giving her a deep, passionate kiss as I continue to gawp is Glenn McCarthy, husband to Sarah, father to Jake. But that’s not his car he’s smooching in and that woman is most definitely not Sarah.

  This sight is almost unbelievable. My eyes feel like they’re extending three feet from my body and making that ‘BAROOOOOOOOOGA!’ noise like in a cartoon, and I blink a few times to make sure they haven’t made the whole thing up. But as I stand there, the car reverses out of the space and drives off down the lane adjacent to the one I’m standing in so I can see more clearly now that it definitely is Glenn in the driver’s seat. His passenger, though, is obscured and try as I might I can’t get a good view of her.

>   Glenn McCarthy having an affair? There’ll be monkeys in space next. I turn back to my car and close the boot distractedly. This is irrefutable proof that there are at least two women on the planet that find him attractive. That’s if you can still count Sarah on that very short list, after something like six or seven years of marriage. Perhaps he’s improved with age. I shake my head. Incredible.

  At the trolley park, the trolley won’t go far enough into the trolley in front for the chain on it to reach the coin slot on mine. I ram it several times viciously – look at that ugly snarl on my face: if I could see that expression, I might think again about using it – but still it won’t slot in. It occurs to me then to check if there’s a reason why it won’t fit and I lean forward to look at the trolley in front. Sure enough, someone has left a small black mobile phone hanging from the metal loop at the front under the handle. I unhook it and look at it. It’s a nice little model, obviously expensive, very slim. It’s switched off at the moment and the blank screen reminds me of a sleeping face. Which makes me remember how dog tired I am and a wave of exhaustion breaks over me, almost knocking me over. The trolley slides in the rest of the way now, so I retrieve my pound and go back to the car.

  Sitting in the car, I look more closely at the phone. I switch it on. What I probably should have done is hand it in at the Customer Services desk, but that’s all the way back in the shop, which is a two-mile walk from here. At least, it feels like a two-mile walk. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I have no intention of keeping this phone. I know I’m a lot of things, but dishonest is not one of them. I go into the menu and search through the address book, looking for an entry that says something like, ‘Home’, or ‘Me’. I find ‘Me’, but when I ring it I just get the voicemail for this phone. What kind of idiot would programme their own mobile phone number into their mobile phone, for God’s sake?

  I keep searching. There’s nothing for ‘Home’, so I go through the entire list alphabetically, to see if there’s anything promising. Mostly just a lot of different names. Dozens and dozens of them. This person has got more contacts in their mobile than me, and that’s saying something. Admittedly most of mine are one-time acquaintances, but I like having lots of names in there. Anyway, you never know when you might fancy getting back in touch with someone. I’m at the Cs now. We’ve got Castle, Carlos, Chester, Cray. On to the Ds. Design (Design? Is that someone’s name?), Danny, Debs, Darlington. The Es are much the same. In fact, it’s like that through the whole thing, just a lot of names, some of which I suspect are surnames, some are place names and some aren’t even names.