Something to Live For

by Richard Roper

  They were only feet away from Andrew now, and suddenly he was overcome with a desperate desire to stop and bottle the moment. To see Peggy rushing toward him like that, for him to be needed, to be an active participant in someone else’s life, to think that maybe he was more than just a lump of carbon being slowly ushered toward an unvarnished coffin; the feeling was one of pure, almost painful happiness, like a desperate embrace squeezing air from his lungs, and it was then that the realization hit him: he might not know what the future held—pain and loneliness and fear might still yet grind him into dust—but simply feeling the possibility that things could change for him was a start, like feeling the first hint of warmth from kindling rubbed together, the first wisp of smoke.

  — CHAPTER 17 —

  Andrew jammed the doors open, incurring both the anger of the guard on the platform and the unbridled tutting of passengers in the vestibule. Peggy frantically ushered the kids onto the train before jumping on herself, and Andrew released the doors.

  “Well that’s probably the most rebellious thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “I imagine this is the same feeling you get after a skydive.”

  “What a hell-raiser you are,” Peggy said, struggling to catch her breath. When she looked at him she seemed to do a double take. “Wow, you look . . .”

  “What?” Andrew said, running a hand through his hair self-consciously.

  “Nothing, just . . .” Peggy picked a stray bit of cotton from his blazer. “Different, that’s all.”

  They held eye contact for a moment. Then the train began to pull away.

  “We should find our seats,” Peggy said.

  “Yep. Good plan,” Andrew said, and then, suddenly feeling rather devil-may-care: “Lead on Mac . . . lovely . . . duff.”

  To Andrew’s great relief, Peggy had turned to her daughters, who were waiting patiently behind her, and didn’t seem to have heard this. He decided to leave devil-may-careness for another day. Perhaps when he was dead.

  “Kids, say hello to Andrew,” Peggy said.

  Andrew had been worried about meeting Peggy’s girls, and had turned to the subforum for advice, waiting for a spirited but good-natured debate about the best way to replace valve gear pins from driving wheels to finish before bringing the conversation around to his nerves at meeting Peggy’s children.

  This might sound rather odd, BamBam wrote, but the best advice I can give is NOT to talk to them like they’re children. None of that patronizing, slow-talking nonsense. They’ll spot such bullsh*t a mile off. Just ask lots of questions and essentially treat them like you would an adult.

  So with a general air of suspicion and mistrust, Andrew thought. Though he replied: Thanks, mate! and worried for two hours about the implications of his now being the sort of person who used the word “mate.”

  As it turned out, Peggy’s eldest, Maisie, happily ignored them all for the duration of the journey—only lifting her head away from the book she was reading to ask where they were, or what a particular word meant. Her younger sister, Suze, on the other hand, conversed entirely through the medium of “would you rather” scenarios, which made things infinitely easier than Andrew was expecting. She had a twinkle in her eye that made it seem like she was constantly on the cusp of laughing, so Andrew was finding it hard to treat the questions with the gravitas they clearly warranted.

  “Would you rather be a horse that can time-travel or a talking turd?” was the latest conundrum.

  “Would it be okay for me to ask follow-up questions?” Andrew said. “That’s what Peggy—your mum, I mean—and I normally do.”

  Suze yawned as she deliberated. “Yeahhh, okay,” she said, apparently satisfied that this was aboveboard.

  “Okay,” Andrew said, suddenly aware that both Peggy and Suze were looking at him intently, and trying not to feel embarrassed. “Can the horse speak?”

  “No,” Suze said, “it’s a horse.”

  “That is true,” Andrew conceded. “But the turd can talk, though.”

  “So?”

  Andrew didn’t really have a response to that.

  “The problem you’ve got here,” Peggy said, “is that you’re trying to apply logic to the question. Logic is not your friend here.”

  Suze nodded sagely. Next to her, Maisie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, frustrated at the constant distractions. Andrew made sure to lower his voice.

  “Okay, I’m going to go with the horse.”

  “Obviously,” Suze said, apparently baffled as to why it had taken Andrew so long to get there. She tore open a bag of lemon sherbets and, after briefly contemplating, offered the bag to Andrew.

  As the train snaked into Newcastle, the Tyne Bridge sparkling in the sun, Peggy took out the photograph of Alan and “B.”

  “What do you reckon, kiddos. Think we’re gonna find this lass?”

  Maisie and Suze shrugged in unison.

  “That seems about right,” Andrew said.

  “Oi,” Peggy said, kicking him gently in the shin, “whose side are you on?”

  * * *

  —

  Peggy’s sister, Imogen, was, by her own admission, “a cuddler,” and Andrew had no option but to submit to her bosomy bear hug. She drove them to her house in a car with an alarming amount of gaffer tape holding it together, with Andrew sitting in the back next to the girls feeling a bit like an awkward older brother.

  Imogen had obviously been busy that morning as the kitchen was teeming with cakes, biscuits and puddings, many of which Andrew lacked the critical vocabulary to describe.

  “I see you’re catering for village fetes now,” Peggy said.

  “Oh give over, you all need fattening up,” Imogen said. Andrew was glad that while cuddles were compulsory, pokes to the belly were apparently restricted to family.

  Later that evening, with the kids in bed, Imogen, Peggy and Andrew settled down in the living room and half-watched a romcom, Imogen thankfully interrupting a dire scene involving bodily fluids to ask about Alan and the ducks.

  “You’ve never seen anything like it, honest to god,” Peggy said.

  “Well, it’s very sweet what you’re doing,” Imogen said, stifling a yawn. “I mean, you’re both mental, obviously . . .”

  Peggy started to make their case again. She was sitting with her legs tucked back to one side, her sweater slipped off her shoulder. Andrew felt an ache somewhere in the region of his stomach. It was then he glanced over and saw that Imogen was watching him. More specifically, she was watching him watching Peggy. He looked away and focused on the TV, glad the room was dim enough to hide his reddening cheeks. He got the impression that Imogen wasn’t someone easily fooled, and just as he’d had that thought she cut across Peggy’s questioning of the protagonist’s Irish accent.

  “So what does your wife make of your chances of finding this person, Andrew?” she said.

  Well, what would she make of them?

  “She hasn’t said much about it, to be honest,” he said.

  “Interesting,” Imogen said.

  Andrew hoped that was the end of it, but then Imogen spoke up again.

  “Surely she must have been curious, though?”

  “Imogen . . . ,” Peggy said.

  “What?” Imogen said.

  “I don’t tend to talk too much about my work at home, to be honest,” Andrew said, which was technically true, he supposed.

  “How long have you two been together?” Imogen said.

  Andrew kept his eyes on the screen.

  “Oh, a long old time,” he said.

  “And how did you get together?”

  Andrew scratched at the back of his head. He really wasn’t in the mood for this.

  “We met at university,” he said, as casually as possible. “We were friends for a while—mainly bonding over our shared hatred of all the idiots o
n our course, or the ones who’d taken to wearing berets, at least.” He took a sip of wine. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt compelled to keep going. “She had this way of looking at me over the top of her glasses. Used to make me feel a bit faint. And I’d never met anyone I found it so easy to talk to. Anyway, we were at this party and she took me by the hand and led me away from all the noise and people and, well, that was that.” Andrew looked at his hand. It was the strangest thing. He could practically feel the sensation of that firm grip, confidently pulling him out of the room.

  “Ah, sweet,” Imogen said. “And she wasn’t particularly intrigued about you coming all this way . . . with Peggy,” she added pointedly.

  “Imogen!” Peggy snapped. “Don’t be so bloody rude. You’ve just met the man.”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” Andrew said, keen that this didn’t end up in an argument. Thankfully, a neat solution presented itself. “In actual fact, I better give Diane a ring now, if you’ll excuse me.” His left leg had gone numb from his sitting position, so he had to limp away to the guest bedroom as fast as he could, like an injured soldier retreating from no-man’s-land. The room was freezing, the window having been left open on the latch. He wondered if he should actually fake the phone call in case anyone could hear him. Just come out with some generic stuff about how the journey had been, what he’d had for dinner—the sort of thing he imagined most people would say in real life.

  In real life. He was going to get fucking committed for this. He slumped onto the bed. Out of nowhere, the tune came into his head—Blue moon, you saw me standing alone—and then came the feedback and static like a wave smashing against rock. He tried to shake it away, getting so desperate for it to end he found himself facedown on the bed, pounding the duvet with his fists, shouting into the pillow.

  Eventually, the chaos subsided. He lay still in the resulting silence, fists clenched, short of breath, praying that his shouts hadn’t traveled. He looked at his reflection, pale and tired, in the dressing table mirror, and suddenly he felt desperate to be back in the front room with a glass of wine in his hand and the rubbish telly on in the background and—even if half of it was suspicious about him—the company.

  He wasn’t sure what made him do it, but he found himself pausing outside the living room door, which was open just wide enough for him to hear Imogen and Peggy speaking in hushed tones.

  “You really think his missus is fine with this?”

  “Why wouldn’t she be? She’s away herself, remember. With her parents. They don’t get on with Andrew, apparently.”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

  “What then?” Peggy hissed.

  “Come off it, you really think he isn’t interested in you?”

  “I’m not answering that.”

  “Okay, well, are you interested in him then?”

  “. . . I’m not answering that either.”

  “I don’t think you have to.”

  “Please can we just change the—”

  “I know things are shite with Steve but this isn’t the answer.”

  “You’ve no idea what things are like with Steve.”

  “Of course I do, I’m your sister. He’s obviously up to his old tricks again. And the sooner you get out of that the better. It’s just like Dad—constantly begging for forgiveness and saying it won’t happen again. I can’t believe you’re being so naive.”

  “Don’t. Just don’t, okay?”

  There was a pause, then Peggy spoke again.

  “Look. It’s so lovely being here. You know how much the girls adore you, how . . .”—her voice broke ever so slightly—“. . . how I do, too. I just want to relax for a few days, get myself together again. If things go the way I think they are—with Steve, with work—I need to be in a good frame of mind to deal with it all.”

  Another pause.

  “Ah, pet, I’m sorry,” Imogen said. “I just worry about you.”

  “I know, I know,” Peggy said, her voice muffled by what Andrew guessed was another bear hug from Imogen.

  “Peg?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Pass us the cookies.”

  “You pass us the cookies, they’re equidistant.”

  “Are they bollocks,” Imogen said, and Peggy let out a slightly tearful giggle.

  Andrew retreated a few steps, both in an attempt to calm his thumping heart and to make his entrance seem more genuine.

  “Hello hello,” he said. Peggy was sitting on the sofa where he had been before so she could look at her phone, which was charging nearby, meaning he had to choose whether to sit next to her or Imogen. Peggy smiled at him as he hovered, the light from the TV showing the dampness in her eyes.

  “Everything . . . okay?” he said.

  “Oh, aye,” Imogen said, patting the space next to her. “Sit yer arse down here.”

  Andrew was glad to have his mind made up for him, even if it meant a missed opportunity to be closer to Peggy.

  “Let’s finish these buggers off then,” Imogen said, divvying up the remaining cookies.

  “You get through okay?” Peggy said.

  “Huh? Oh, yes. Thanks.”

  “Good-o,” Imogen said. “The signal can be pretty patchy that side of the house.”

  “My luck must have been in,” Andrew said.

  It was then that his phone—which had been on the mantelpiece where he’d put it when he’d first arrived that afternoon—began to ring.

  — CHAPTER 18 —

  So, yeah, I’ve got two phones. One’s a work one that I got ages ago. I’m not sure if Cameron even knows about it so, you know, best keep shtum!”

  Andrew kept replaying his garbled explanation over and over in his mind. Neither Peggy nor Imogen had seemed to know what he was blathering on about, which just meant he carried on and on, digging an increasingly large hole. Thankfully, they’d continued to just look at him blankly, like two bored customs officials ignoring a foreign traveler’s desperate attempts to explain their plight, and the climax of the romcom provided enough of a distraction for the conversation to move on.

  Andrew had assumed that they would be going to Barter Books the next morning, but Peggy and Imogen had other plans. What followed over the next couple of days were boat trips to the Farne Islands, where Andrew was unceremoniously shat on by a puffin (much to Suze’s delight), and blustery coastal walks punctuated by tea and cake pit stops (much to Imogen’s delight), followed by delicious dinners back at Imogen’s and two occasions where Peggy fell asleep on Andrew’s shoulder (much to Andrew’s delight).

  Alone in the guest room, he thought of the conversation he’d eavesdropped on.

  “Okay, well, are you interested in him then?”

  “. . . I’m not answering that either.”

  “Interested in him.” Could that have meant anything other than romantic interest? Maybe it was from a purely anthropological point of view—that Peggy was planning to make scientific field notes: A squat specimen, frequently observed making a twat of himself. Either way, Peggy had refused to answer the question, and Andrew had watched enough episodes of Newsnight to know this meant she was avoiding telling the truth. He only wished Imogen had gone full hostile BBC interviewer on her.

  * * *

  —

  Finally, the following morning they headed to Barter Books. Andrew got the sense that Peggy had been delaying the visit not because she’d somehow lost interest, but because she was scared that it was going to end in failure.

  The kids had stayed behind with Imogen, who had promised to make them a cake so chocolatey it would send Bruce Bogtrotter into a diabetic coma. Peggy had taken Imogen’s Astra, Imogen explaining all the car’s various problems and how to cope with them, many of which involved punching things and swearing.

  “Bastard,” Peggy grumbled, yanking the gear stick vio
lently back and forth and making a joke about her first boyfriend’s eyes watering that caused Andrew to wind down the window for a moment.

  They passed a sign saying they were fifteen miles from Alnwick.

  “I’m feeling a bit nervous,” Andrew said. “How about you?”

  “Dunno. Yeah. Sort of,” Peggy said, but her attention was on the rearview mirror as they merged onto a busy road.

  The more miles they chewed up, the more fraught Andrew felt, because the closer they got to the bookshop, the closer they were to their adventure’s ending. Most likely they’d just be returning home, deflated with defeat, and Alan would be buried with just them and a disinterested vicar for company. Then it would be back to the daily grind.

  They passed another sign for Alnwick. Five miles, now. Someone had somewhat unimaginatively graffitied the word “shit” onto the sign in angry red. Andrew was reminded of something he’d seen coming back from a rare school trip to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He remembered the evening sky being scorched pink, his eyes following the telegraph wires silhouetted against it as if they were a blank musical score, when he noticed the letters painted white and bold on a fence in the distance: “Why Do I Do This Every Day?” The memory had stayed with him despite his not understanding its commuter-baiting message at the time. It was as if his subconscious was saying, This won’t mean much to you at the moment because you’re too young and your major concern is whether Justin Stanmore is going to Chinese-burn you again, but just give it thirty years or so and its significance will really hit home.

  He sat forward.

  Maybe he’d just tell Peggy everything. Now. Here. In an overheating Vauxhall Astra on a dual carriageway.

  He shifted in his seat, half exhilarated, half terrified at the possibility. Everything could be out in the open. Not just about his growing feelings for her, but about the big lie, too. Peggy would hate him, maybe never even talk to him again, but it would end just . . . this. This relentless misery—of still clinging on to something that barely provided him solace anymore. The realization came to him like a radio signal finding its way through static: a lie can only exist in opposition to the truth, and the truth was the only thing that could free him of his pain.