Being

by Kevin Brooks

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘See you later, Robert.’

  She opened the door and went out.

  It felt really strange, being on my own again. I hadn’t been on my own for a long time and I’d kind of forgotten how it felt. And I still couldn’t remember now. Because things were different now. I was different. So being on my own felt different. And as I walked across the empty flat towards Eddi’s bedroom, it suddenly dawned on me that whatever I was now, and whatever that meant, I’d never know again how it was to not be like this. Whatever I was now, that’s what I was.

  Eddi’s pistol was exactly where she’d told me it’d be – in the bottom drawer of her bedside cabinet. It was an automatic, just like Ryan’s, only this one had a slightly longer barrel and an ivory grip. I thumbed a little catch and the magazine slid out. Sixteen bullets. I replaced the magazine – snick - and stared at the gun in my hand.

  Why hadn’t she told me she had it?

  And why tell me now?

  Why?

  I sat down on her bed and looked round the room, wondering what else she might be hiding from me. I’d only been in Eddi’s room a couple of times before, and even then I’d never stayed long, so it felt quite odd to be sitting there on my own, casually looking around at her things. This was her space, her private place. It wasn’t meant to be seen by anyone else.

  The room was a mess. Clothes were piled all over the floor, the bed was unmade. There were empty wine bottles and cigarette packets, overflowing ashtrays, a dressing table strewn with make-up things. The air smelled of stale smoke and nightmares.

  I opened the top drawer of the bedside cabinet. Inside it was a little bag of grass, a packet of cigarette papers and a Bible. I took out the Bible, flipped through the pages, then put it back in the drawer.

  ‘Paradise,’ I muttered.

  And for a sickening little moment, I thought I was still there. The Paradise Hotel, the hotel room, the pistol, the Bible, the endoscopy video in the VCR… I was still there. I’d never left. I was still drunk, still bleeding, still sitting on the bed, still staring at those unbelievable images on the screen…

  ‘Shit,’ I said, shaking the thoughts from my head.

  I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to go there. If I started thinking about what was inside me, I’d start thinking about cutting myself open again and I didn’t want to do that.

  I rubbed my eyes, put the pistol back in the drawer and started searching the room.

  I didn’t like doing it – poking around through Eddi’s things – but I knew that I had to. If I didn’t, my fears and doubts about her would just keep growing, eating away at me like a cancer. Why was she still with me? What did I mean to her? Had she really gone to Granada?

  I had to know.

  I had to try looking for answers.

  I just had to…

  I nearly changed my mind. As I crouched down beside her dressing table and started rummaging around through the drawers, the cheapness of what I was doing lurched up inside me and filled me with a dirty shiver of guilt. It was a cold and sickening feeling, and it was almost enough to make me stop.

  Almost, but not quite.

  I closed my eyes, shook off the shiver and carried on searching.

  I didn’t find anything in her bedroom. No secrets, no mysteries, no shocks, no answers. I didn’t find anything anywhere else either. Bathroom, kitchen, front room… drawers, cupboards, cabinets. I looked everywhere. Nothing. The only place I didn’t look was her laptop. Not that I didn’t try. But when I opened it up and turned it on, the first thing it did was ask me for a password. I thought about taking a guess, but I knew it was pointless. Eddi wasn’t stupid enough to use a password that I could guess. And I was pretty sure that if I started putting in loads of wrong passwords, the computer would tell her about it the next time she logged on. And then I’d have a lot of explaining to do…

  So I just gave up.

  Now that I’d done what I had to do, but still hadn’t found any answers, I wasn’t sure how to feel. Should I feel good because I hadn’t found anything bad, or should I feel bad because I hadn’t found anything good?

  Or should I just feel ashamed of myself?

  Or scared?

  Or stupid?

  Or lonely?

  As I sat by the window and watched the night come down, I tried not to feel anything.

  Around seven in the evening, I went out to get something to eat. I didn’t feel like going to El Corazón on my own, so I thought I’d just get something from the shop and take it back to the flat – bread and cheese, bacon, ham… something like that. The shop was at the church end of San Miguel, so it didn’t take long to get there. It was a dark little place, cool and shady, and it sold just about everything you could ever want – food, drink, cigarettes, stamps, postcards, beach balls, newspapers, toys. It was owned and run by the Valdez family, and when I went in, Señor Valdez himself was sitting behind the till, writing something on the back of an envelope.

  ‘Buenas tardes, John,’ he said, looking up. ‘¿Qué tal?’

  ‘Bien, gracias,’ I told him.

  ‘Bueno.’ He smiled. ‘¿Qué deseas?’

  I asked him in my clumsy Spanish for some bread, ham and cheese (pan, jamón y queso). He scuttled around the shop, picking it all out for me and packing it into a paper bag, then I paid him and left.

  It was a nice clear evening, the sky bright with stars, and it felt good to be out and about. So instead of heading straight back to the flat, I decided to take the long way round – down San Miguel, across the church square, then up through the narrow side streets to the other end of San Miguel.

  I’d been in Tejeda for almost a month now and the locals had got used to seeing me around. Most of them seemed to know my name – John Martin – but they didn’t seem too bothered about knowing anything else about me. No one ever asked me what I was doing here, or who I really was, or where I was from. I suppose they just assumed I was with Eddi, or Maria as she was known to them. And that was fine with me.

  As I ambled along that night, chewing on a crust of bread, I was constantly nodding at passers-by, exchanging a few words, smiling and waving at the old men and women who sat in their doorways watching the world go by. It felt good. Like I belonged here.

  And I’d never felt that about anywhere before.

  Just as I was leaving the square, a voice called out from behind me.

  ‘Hey!’ it said.

  It was a man’s voice, not harsh or loud, but full of confidence. It was the kind of voice that’s used to telling people what to do. I froze for a moment, and in that moment everything suddenly came back to me – what I was, what I was doing… hiding, running, living a lie… I hadn’t forgotten any of it, I’d just let it sink down into a place where it wasn’t killing me all the time. But now it was back, the cold reality of it all: nothing was normal, nothing was safe, everything was a fragile sham.

  ‘Un momento, señor,’ the voice said. ‘Quiero hablar con usted.’

  I wasn’t sure exactly what he was saying – something about wanting to talk to me – but at least I knew he was Spanish now, which probably meant he wasn’t one of Ryan’s people. I didn’t know that for sure, though, and as I slowly turned round, still chewing on a piece of bread, I wished I’d brought Eddi’s pistol with me. But then, when I saw who it was, I was glad that I hadn’t. The man standing in front of me, with his hands on his hips, was León Alvarez, the local police officer. I didn’t really know him, but I’d seen him around the village before. He never seemed to do very much. He’d just drive into the village, hang around for a while, chatting and laughing with the locals, then he’d drive off back to wherever he came from.

  ‘Hola,’ he said to me now. ‘¿Eres Juan, no?’

  ‘¿Cómo?’

  He smiled at me. ‘¿Juan? ¿Juan Martín?’

  ‘Sí,’ I told him, glancing at the pistol strapped to his belt.

  He nodded his head. ‘Lo he visto en El Corazón con Maria.
Ella es una buena, muy hermosa.’

  I shrugged, showing him that I didn’t understand. ‘No entiendo,’ I said. ‘No hablo mucho español.’

  ‘You are English, yes?’ he asked me.

  ‘Sí.’

  He smiled again. ‘I speak English.’

  ‘Bueno,’ I said.

  He gazed at me for a moment, still smiling, then he raised his chin and looked around the courtyard, pretending to check things out. There wasn’t anything to check out, of course – he was just reminding me that he was a policeman. I watched him, wondering what he wanted with me. Did he know anything? Was he after anything? Or was he just nosing around?

  ‘You with Maria,’ he said, turning back to me. ‘Señorita Lambarda.’

  ‘Lombard,’ I corrected him.

  ‘It’s what I say. You with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded. ‘She’s good lady. Very fine.’

  ‘Yes… yes, she is.’

  He sniffed and hitched his belt. ‘So… Juan… you OK? You like here?’

  ‘Sí,’ I told him, ‘es muy bien.’

  ‘¿Cuánto tiempo se queda aquí? ¿Está usted de vacaciones?’

  ‘¿Cómo?’

  ‘How long you stay here?’

  ‘No sé.’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t know… Maria’s working… writing…’ I raised my hands and wiggled my fingers, miming someone tapping at a keyboard. ‘She writes,’ I explained.

  ‘Ah…’ he said. ‘And you – you also write?’

  ‘No… no, I don’t write.’

  ‘You do nothing?’

  I shrugged.

  He smiled again. ‘You want work?’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Sí… work, trabajo… a job.’

  ‘What kind of job?’ I asked him.

  He told me that his brother, Jorge, who I’d seen a few times in El Corazón, had just bought up a load of old farmhouses in the mountains and was about to start renovating them, turning them into luxury holiday villas, and he was looking for labourers. It was easy work and easy money, León told me, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. Cash. When I told him that I didn’t know anything about construction work, he just laughed and told me not to worry.

  ‘You carry bricks,’ he shrugged, ‘paint a wall… no problem.’

  I thanked him for the offer and told him I’d think about it… and that was it. End of conversation. That was all he’d wanted to talk to me about – did I want to do some work for his brother? As he said goodnight and walked off across the square, I realized that I was sweating. My palms were moist, my back was clammy and cold with sweat, and I was starting to shiver in the chilly night air.

  Across the square, León was getting into his police car. He started it up, looked over at me and waved, then drove off up San Miguel.

  ‘See you, León,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Thanks for scaring the hell out of me.’

  23

  Eddi didn’t come back that night. She didn’t come back the following day either, and by Saturday afternoon, Christmas Eve, I was starting to get really worried. I’d checked with the Garcias downstairs to see if Eddi had left them a message, but they hadn’t heard anything from her, and now I didn’t know what else I could do. She could be anywhere – in a prison cell, in a hospital. She could have crashed her bike in the mountains. She could be lying dead in the hills somewhere. She could have been arrested. She could have got into some kind of trouble with the drug dealers…

  Or worse…

  There were no drug dealers. Never had been. It was all a big lie. She’d just gone, left me, ridden off to somewhere else. Another town, another country. Maybe she had another flat somewhere? Maybe she’d gone back to England? Maybe she’d done a deal with Ryan and was telling him all about me right now?

  I still didn’t have any answers.

  All I could do was wait.

  So I sat by the window and waited.

  ∗

  The time passed slowly – hours, minutes, seconds… all the time in the world – and inside my head, a thousand things floated and feathered together. The silence of the flat, the emptiness, the bright blue sea in the distance. Eddi’s eyes, jewels of the ocean… her lies, my lies… her absence.

  Desires. Wishes.

  Memories…

  I remembered a birthday party… or was it a Christmas party? I seemed to remember a fat man in a cheap red suit. How old was I? I had no idea. Over five, under ten. A child. There was a long table and benches. Jellies, music, paper plates, plastic cutlery, bowls of boiled sweets. Orange juice in beakers, coloured balloons…

  No, it wasn’t Christmas. The fat man in a cheap red suit was just a fat man in a cheap red suit. It wasn’t Christmas. The room was cold. The walls were painted toilet-green. There were high windows with latched openings, long hooked poles leaning in the corner. Scary poles. And sounds. I remembered sounds: kitchen sounds, the babble of children eating and drinking, excited voices, laughter. Most of all, though, I remembered myself concentrating on a door at the end of the room. Waiting for it to open.

  Please open.

  Please come in.

  I don’t know who I was expecting. I had no one.

  It was some time in the early evening when I finally heard the sound of Eddi’s motorbike buzzing away in the distance. I held my breath and listened hard. The sound was getting louder, getting closer. With a pounding chest, I opened the window and leaned out, hoping desperately that I wasn’t mistaken… and I wasn’t. It was Eddi. She’d already turned the corner at the top of the street and now she was heading down towards the house – the motorbike chugging and coughing, grey exhaust smoke trailing along in its wake. Eddi looked up as she pulled in at the side of the road, and I smiled and waved at her. She waved back, but her face wasn’t smiling. She looked tired. Worn out and dishevelled. She didn’t look happy.

  But I didn’t mind.

  She was here. She’d come back. That was all that mattered.

  I ran downstairs to meet her.

  She hardly said a word until we were back in the flat, and even then I had to wait until she’d been to the bathroom, changed her clothes and poured herself a large glass of wine. It was a strange kind of silence, and I couldn’t work out what it meant. I’d never seen her like this before. She seemed angry, but angry in an odd kind of way. Angry and sad, perhaps. Or angry with something she didn’t understand. I watched her, waiting, as she drained the glass of wine in one swallow, then topped it up, drank some more and lit a cigarette. She breathed in deeply, blew out a long stream of smoke, and then finally she turned her head and looked at me.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said.

  I nodded. ‘I was worried about you. I was beginning to think you weren’t coming back…’

  She gazed at me for a moment and I thought she was going to say something else, but her lips couldn’t seem to form any words. She opened her mouth, blinked her eyes, then looked away and stared at the floor.

  ‘What is it, Eddi?’ I said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She didn’t answer me, she just shook her head and carried on staring at the floor. I realized then that she was crying. As I moved up closer to her, I could see the tears dripping from her face to the floor.

  ‘Eddi?’ I said quietly.

  She looked at me, her face drained and pale. ‘It all went wrong, Robert,’ she said tearfully. ‘Everything went wrong… they robbed me…’

  ‘Who robbed you?’

  She couldn’t speak any more, she was crying too much. I took the glass and the cigarette from her hands, placed them on the table and put my arms around her. She stiffened for a moment, but then she just let herself go – burying her face in my chest, wailing and sobbing, letting it all pour out.

  She cried for a long time.

  Every now and then she’d try to speak, but she was too breathless and hysterical to make any sense. And when I tried to tell her that I couldn’t understand what she was saying, she didn’t seem to hear me. So I
just held her in my arms, letting her do whatever she wanted, until eventually the tears began to dry up and she fell into an exhausted silence.

  By the time she’d calmed down enough to tell me what happened, the sun had gone down and the evening sky was already bright with stars. I closed the window and we sat down together on the settee.

  ∗

  She’d got to Granada without any problems, she explained. It had taken her a while to track down these people she knew about, but eventually someone had given her a phone number and she’d called the dealers and set up a meeting.

  ‘It all sounded fine,’ she told me. ‘They couldn’t see me until eight the next evening, so I booked into a cheap hotel for a couple of nights. I was going to do the deal, stay another night in Granada and come back this morning.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know…’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know if the dealers stitched me up, or the people at the hotel, or if it was just bad luck…’ She paused to light a cigarette. I noticed that her hands were shaking.

  ‘What happened, Eddi?’ I said.

  She swallowed hard. ‘I met the dealers, we did the deal… everything seemed perfectly all right.’ She looked at me. ‘It was cocaine… really good stuff. I could have made a fortune out of it. God, I was so pleased with myself…’ She shook her head again. ‘They were waiting for me when I got back to the hotel.’

  ‘Who was waiting for you?’

  ‘I don’t know… three guys. They were in my room. As soon as I opened the door, they just grabbed me and dragged me inside…’ She was staring straight ahead now, lost in the memory, and I could see the fear in her eyes as she relived the moment. ‘I couldn’t do anything, Robert… it all happened so quickly. I didn’t know what was going on.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘One of them held a knife to my throat, another one snatched the bag of coke… and then they just ran. It was all over in seconds…’ She paused, trying to control herself. ‘Christ… I’ve never been so frightened in all my life…’

  Her voice trailed off and I felt her shiver.

  I took hold of her hand. ‘It’s all right… you’re all right now.’

  ‘I was just so scared,’ she whispered. ‘I couldn’t do anything. After they’d gone, I just stood there, snivelling like a little kid… God, I felt so pathetic.’