Fear

by Nina Manning

  I shocked myself at how much I was taken aback when I first laid eyes on him in the flesh. I had seen him so many times posing next to other businesspeople on the back of a local magazine or on a social media site, or even sitting on his boat on his Instagram account, that it almost felt like meeting a celebrity.

  I had entered the large conference-style office upon his command and was welcomed by the warmest of smiles as he sat at the head of the table.

  If he knew that he had gained substantial status in this town, he neglected to show it. Instead he was charming and unaware, it seemed, of his own mystique and striking features. He was tall and slim, immaculately dressed in a grey suit that looked so soft that I felt an overwhelming desire to reach out and stroke it. Underneath he wore a white shirt with the collar unbuttoned. He had a smattering of salt and pepper stubble. His eyebrows cast down towards the middle and his forehead wrinkled; he rubbed his hand across his cheek as he looked down at my CV. It was a completely unconscious act that felt more intimate than it should have done under the circumstances. Then he looked up and shot me a smile that seem to come more through those ocean-blue eyes than anywhere else.

  ‘You’ve some great experience, Frankie.’

  He ran his finger across the stubble on his top lip, leant his chin in his hand and looked at me; his head was tilted and a small smile crept across his lips. I felt an exquisite rush of excitement shoot through my belly.

  But the most unexpected element of the interview was when I told Mason about losing my brother. I barely even spoke of it to my own husband. No one had been able to extract that sort of private information from me so quickly. Mason looked at me and said, ‘I can sense you have lost someone special.’ I felt my arms and shoulders erupt into goose bumps. I had unconsciously allowed more of myself to come out than I had intended. But I felt perfectly calm. Mason knew I had lost Kiefer and that was okay. What I didn’t tell him was that it was more complicated than that. That more lives had been taken and ruined that night, and it was all because of me.

  4

  Now

  I dumped the heavy shopping bags on the floor. Within seconds my arms were full again with a little body, his limbs wrapped round my waist and draping off my neck as my knees hit the floor.

  ‘Mummy.’ Maddox snuffled into my neck and then untangled himself from the grip that I hadn’t even realised I’d enforced upon him. ‘Come. And. See. What. I. Have. Built,’ Maddox said with the intensity of a wild-eyed three year old. I picked up the supermarket carrier bags and followed my son through into the kitchen.

  Before I had even entered the room, I could sense what was seconds away, the dreaded after school chaos. My eyes fell upon the usual scene. Damian sat at the table with his iPad open and scrolling; toys, jumpers and school bags were strewn around the kitchen.

  Pixie sat on the stool at the kitchen island, furiously writing on a large piece of card. Pens, coloured pencils and shavings adorned the space around her.

  ‘Mummy, I’m going to do a concert, I mean, um, I have been practicing with my guitar for weeks now and Daddy said I could, so can we do it?’

  I shook my head with bewilderment, my mind suddenly in disarray as I took in the mess and tried to listen to Pixie at the same time. I placed the carrier bags down in the middle of the island. The sound brought Damian to and back into the room.

  ‘Hey.’ He gave me a tired smile that suggested he had found the last few hours of the day pretty hard. The familiar edgy feeling was creeping its way back into my system. The feeling that had been absent for the past few hours when I had been away from the house and from Damian. How, after so many years together, had I forgotten how to be around him?

  ‘A concert?’ I raised my eyes at my husband. He laid the iPad flat and clicked the screen to blank.

  ‘Apparently,’ he said, standing up, scraping the chair hard against the floor. I winced at the sound. Without noticing, he walked over to the kettle.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘I bought this,’ I said, as I retrieved an expensive bottle of red wine from the top of the carrier bag.

  ‘Ah, celebrating or commiserating?’ he said flatly, pausing with one hand on the tap.

  ‘Depends how you look at it,’ I felt a wave of apprehension fall over me.

  I knew either way it was never going to be great news for Damian. He was officially a computer technician but hadn’t worked for an actual company for years. He had managed to slowly retreat from the workforce, so subtly at first I barely noticed he had stopped taking on as much freelance work. Now he was the stay at home parent and had been since Pixie was little.

  ‘I got the job.’ I rushed out the words without any hint of emotion. It was the first time I had been offered a job on the spot.

  I was constantly torn between the need and desire to be at home with my kids and my career. But I had got used to being away from them, and now the latter felt more natural. I knew feeling this way was wrong. But to be offered a new job with a bigger pay packet, more responsibilities and another step on the career ladder gave me the opportunity to smash through that glass ceiling, which most women at thirty-seven would kill for.

  ‘Wow.’ Damian looked at me, his eyes wide.

  Was that excitement he was feigning? For the kids’ sake?

  ‘That’s great,’ he added.

  I ignored his awkwardness at congratulating me. We both knew it was the most practical option while Damian decided what it was he needed to be doing, and the longer I stayed out of the house and at work, the better it was for all of us. In so many ways.

  ‘Better open the wine, then.’ Damian took the bottle and lifted two glasses out from the cupboard.

  ‘Did you get the job, Mummy?’ Pixie said with the high-pitched enthusiasm she had for most things in life.

  ‘Yes, darling, I did.’

  Pixie jumped down from the stool and wrapped her arms around my waist. ‘That’s great, Mummy, well done. Let’s have a toast.’ She laughed at her own attempt to sound grown up and took a wine glass and filled it with apple juice from the fridge. Damian handed me a glass filled with the wine that I had deliberated over for twenty minutes in the supermarket.

  ‘Cheers.’ Pixie led the toast and Damian and I followed suit, allowing our eight year old daughter to smooth over one of the many cracks within our relationship.

  ‘Well done, Mummy,’ Damian chanted.

  I waited to see if he would address me, give me that look that he charmed me with fifteen years ago; call me Frankie instead of Mummy. I gave it a few extra seconds before raising my own glass and extracted my best smile, mainly at Pixie who stood so eagerly with her glass poised.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ I said, clinking her glass, and she giggled in that endearing awkward way before sipping her juice like she thought a proper grown up lady might. I looked over to Damian, my glass still raised, but his iPad was already on and his head was bent. The familiar look of intent back on his face. I looked around the kitchen with a heavy heart and took a large gulp of wine.

  5

  Now

  I played that memory of Mason over and over as I sat in the kitchen with just Maddox on a bleak Saturday afternoon, ready to start my new job on the Monday morning. It had been over two weeks since I had last seen him, and I was feeling that familiar fizzing in my stomach at the prospect of a new beginning. I needed it now more than anything. The darkness had already begun to seep into the shorter autumnal days. I could feel the weight of its presence growing closer every day. As the clocks would make their way back an hour, so would the darkness coat the afternoons an inky black. Then I would be thrust back to that time when I lost Kiefer.

  The prospect of a new job was a welcome distraction. I had just over a week’s holiday left at my old job, so the manager had agreed on me finishing before the full month was out. I figured they were as keen to get rid of me as I was to leave.

  But now I was trying to decide how to entertain a hyperactive three year old boy on a Saturday
afternoon. Pixie was on a playdate down the road with her friend and Damian had ‘popped out’. One of his many talents, to disappear at the weekend when there was family life to deal with. He dropped Pixie at the playdate, so I figured he felt this was his contribution to the day.

  I heard the post land with a thud on the mat.

  ‘Maddox, go and grab the post for Mummy, please,’ I said. I didn’t have to wait for him to jump up and scurry into the hallway, his keenness to appease his mama still spilled out of him. He was back moments later, envelopes of all shapes and sizes falling out of his awkwardly bent arms.

  ‘There go, Mummy.’ He opened his arms and the envelopes scattered around my legs where I was sat next to a pile of LEGO. I felt a sudden surge of love for my son, which started in my belly and ended in my chest. I puckered up for a kiss and he planted his own tiny lips on mine.

  ‘Thank you, my baby boy,’ I said and scooped them up and took them to the kitchen island. ‘Can you build me a super big tower whilst I look through all these boring bills?’

  I placed the bills aside and attended to a large white envelope which had caught my eye. It was what I thought it would be: my contract for my new job. On top of the three sheets of contract was a thick compliments slip with the name of the business – Bliss – in large gold embossed letters and then underneath:

  Really looking forward to working with you, Frankie. M x

  I looked at the sentence for a long time, possibly longer than any sentence I had read before, and considered the handwriting. It was long and sloped and suggested it had been written quickly, yet it hinted that there was some consideration in those words. I traced my finger over the ink, felt the rough texture of the paper. I looked at the one kiss, an x. Just a letter, but the very thing I added to the end of a text to my friends, even Damian, when I was caught off guard and I had momentarily forgotten his aloofness. Yet here was the same mark I left as a sign of endearment, posted at the end of a short note from a man who was about to become my employer. Then I was thrust back to the room where I had been with Mason just a few weeks ago. A room that was so large, with a central mahogany table, that it could easily seat twenty, yet he insisted I take the seat to the right of his. At one point I had felt comfortable enough to stretch my legs out and I felt my shoe meet his. He acted as though he hadn’t noticed. But I felt something shift in the atmosphere and I sensed he had too.

  I was just about to start flicking through the contract when I heard a loud clatter coming from the direction of the front door. I put the pages down on the island counter.

  ‘Stay here, poppet,’ I said to Maddox and headed cautiously for the front door. I peered through the peep hole and couldn’t see anyone there. I was curious to see what had caused the ruckus, but I could feel my skin prickling, and my heart rate had increased. I pulled the door back slowly, trying to brace myself for what I could only presume would be danger. Over the years I had surprised myself with just how many eventualities I could envisage happening to me or my family. Some might say it comes with the stress and responsibility of becoming a parent. I knew my insecurities stemmed from expecting tragedy to strike at any moment. I was still learning how to adapt.

  I inched the door open, hoping a reflex action allowing me to slam the door closed at any moment wouldn’t fail me, but then my eyes struggled to take in several things in front of me. To my right, one of a pair of metre high potted bay trees was now a smashed mess on the floor. The pot was broken, and the soil was scattered around it. The sturdy tree still looked intact. Then my gaze settled on the object that was right in the centre of the top step, almost at my feet. I hadn’t noticed it at first because of the fallen potted tree. I could see it was a toy car of some sort. My first thought was that Maddox had dropped it outside our gate and a passer by had brought it to the step. It didn’t explain their haste and clumsiness in doing so. But as I crouched down, bringing myself closer to it, I could see that it wasn’t one of Maddox’s toy cars. A cold sweat swept over my body and a retch erupted in my throat. I would recognise that car anywhere. It was an old green vintage 1969 Mini. The exact same model of car that my brother Kiefer drove. And the very car we were both in the night he died.

  6

  July 1998

  It had been a particularly hot summer already. I would be starting a business communications course at my local college after the holidays, but right now there were six long weeks ahead of me.

  We had all gathered in the local gardens near the bandstand, where a small summer music festival was to take place. It was barely lunchtime, but we had a bag of cold beers, and someone was passing a spliff around. Nancy was lying down, her head in my lap. Her blonde curly bobbed hair was accessorised with a yellow daisy clip on either side of her head and I could smell the coconut from her conditioner mingling with the warm afternoon breeze. There was a CD Walkman on the grass next to us; we each had an earphone and were listening to Bob Marley’s, ‘Three Little Birds’. We were free from the shackles of school, education and exams.

  A few more people joined us. Minty arrived in his trademark black Diesel baseball cap and white t-shirt with combat shorts. He was mocking Dave’s curly blond locks. Dave was far too pretty to be hanging around with us lot. He was the only one who had gone to a private school and would probably go on to do something spectacular and leave us all by the wayside.

  As Minty got settled next to Nancy, taking over my turn with the second earphone, and Dave started skinning up, Reese and Kiefer arrived. Reese had been dating my brother for about six months. You could see how madly in love they were but it didn’t take any of his attention away from me. I could still sense his attentiveness when the spliff came my way; he subtly watched to see how much I was taking and the effect it had on me, without ever allowing anyone else to see what he was doing.

  A band began warming up; the twanging bassline came through a small sound system and I felt the tingling effects of the spliff mixed with a few swigs of beer. Everyone was lying on the grass soaking up the mid-July sun and not really thinking of anything beyond this summer.

  Suddenly Todd was next to me, flopped down on his side, the familiar scent of soap as the undertone to a smattering of aftershave lingered in the sweet heat of the summer afternoon.

  ‘Francesca,’ he said quietly, so only I heard. My stomach did a small flip. I felt Kiefer’s eyes on me, and I looked up to catch his mouth open and jaw tensely locked. I looked over at Nancy in her crop top and tight three-quarter length jeans showing off a newly pierced belly button, wondering if Todd would take some interest in her, but I barely saw him look at her the way the other boys did. Todd skinned up and passed me another beer. I could feel the looks from Kiefer growing stronger but I tried to ignore him. As I watched Todd rolling the joint I began to think about how he and I might be if we were together as a couple. The feeling was so novel that I found myself watching him more intently, the way his fingers worked the rizla paper as he lay perched on one elbow. I felt a flutter in my stomach when I saw how close he was to me compared to anyone else, and I allowed myself to bask in Todd’s attention, despite Kiefer’s disapproving glare.

  After another beer and a spliff, Todd leant over and whispered, ‘I’ve got to go, I’ll see you soon.’ The way he looked at me directly afterwards, a momentary glance which held so much promise. I felt a rush of desire, and I didn’t want him to go. As I watched him stand and brush the grass from his trousers and say his departing words to the others, accompanied by a few brotherly handshakes, I wished he would turn around to look at me again. Most of all I wanted him to kiss me. But he didn’t turn back and I had to watch, every inch of my body aching, as he walked away.

  In Todd’s absence the afternoon no longer bore the same promise. The air felt a little cooler and I found I could no longer immerse myself in the conversations I had been having with Nancy and Minty before Todd’s arrival.

  As I sat with my head tilted to the sun, which now felt a little cooler, I heard Kiefer’s voice next
to me.

  ‘Just don’t get too cosy with him, Frank, that’s all. He isn’t all sweetness.’

  I dropped my head down to my brother’s level. His almost twenty years to my sixteen years made him seem like the respected elder, and usually I absorbed his protectiveness. I would have done anything he suggested or asked.

  But my interest was piqued by Todd, and there were so many things I was starting to love about him: the way his hair was on the verge of turning into dreadlocks and how he wore his clothes, layered and loose. I loved to watch him toke on a spliff. He always offered it to me before anyone else, so I got to feel the slightly damp residue from his lips on mine through the rizla paper. I had begun to recognise his distinctive walk from a mile away and my stomach would tie itself in knots as I anticipated his arrival. And so it was all of these things I was feeling and discovering that made me hear the words from Kiefer and then immediately push them from my mind.

  7

  Now

  Later that afternoon, after I had read and digested my new work contract and built endless LEGO spaceships, I settled Maddox in front of a film and found myself staring at the Mini car. It was coming up for Kiefer’s fortieth birthday, and then after that the twentieth anniversary of the crash. Occasionally I would still see some of the old crew but most of them had moved abroad or to different towns. I still had Nancy close by. But there was only one person I thought about still, who haunted me from the shadows of the buildings at the top end of town. Thoughts of him peppered my mind daily. Even after twenty years, he was the one I thought about the most. It was a relationship cut short before its time, so I was left with a bitter longing, as though I had forgotten to do something twenty years ago and still couldn’t remember what it was.