The Harder They Fall

by Debbie McGowan

  “Last year, I did a really stupid, selfish thing,” Kris continued. This was the part he wasn’t too happy to admit, and they hadn’t intended to tell anyone, never mind Adele, whose propensity for gossip would see it spreading around their friends in record time. But he was doing it for Shaunna, he reminded himself, and took a deep breath. “I had an affair.”

  Adele gasped in horror.

  “With a married man.”

  Adele gasped again.

  “And Shaunna found out and threatened to tell everyone what I’d done.”

  “You’d deserve it too. That’s despicable.”

  “But I’m so ashamed,” Shaunna mumbled incoherently through her hands.

  “Why are you ashamed? You didn’t have the affair. He did. I can’t believe you could be so…”

  “Selfish and stupid. I know. But I was. I am. I hurt Shaunna and I love her so much.”

  “How can I trust you anymore?” Shaunna wailed from behind her hands. Adele pulled her close and Kris turned away, struggling to contain himself. He was somewhere between laughing and crying, for what he was saying was true, but they’d been through it all and rebuilt their friendship. Everything was how it would have been if he’d been honest with Shaunna from the very start.

  “It’s OK. There, there,” Adele comforted.

  “We’re going to stay together for now. In the house,” he explained sorrowfully, “and maybe one day, if Shaunna ever learns to trust me again, we might try and make it work like it used to.”

  Adele scowled at him, then lifted Shaunna’s chin with her finger. “Is that what you want, sweetie?” she asked. Shaunna nodded. “Then I’ll be here for you.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t take this anymore,” Kris said, and ran from the room. The front door slammed a second later.

  “I’ve got to go after him,” Shaunna cried, still through her hands.

  “You can stay here if you want. Dan won’t be home until next weekend, and I’m sure we can fix up something, just as soon as we get back from Wales.”

  “Thank you, Adele. You’re such an amazing friend.” Shaunna hoped she could carry this off long enough to hug her and leave. She accomplished the hug, and slowly walked to the door, her face turned downwards, occasionally affecting a sob. “I’ll phone you in the week,” she offered as her parting words.

  “OK, sweetie. You know where I am,” Adele replied, giving her friend a final hug, and watching her trudge down the path and onto the pavement.

  “For God’s sake, shut the door already,” Shaunna muttered through gritted teeth. The door closed and she picked up her pace, meeting Kris at the corner of the road.

  “And the award for Best Actress in a Leading Role goes to…” he said. They high-fived each other and burst into fits of laughter.

  “Right. Which way to the nearest pub?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

  BUMPY SMOOTH RIDE

  Kris had phoned George to give him permission to tell Josh, and after carrying the secret for nine months, he was eager to share. Indeed, he would have done so immediately, but for one not so minor problem: Josh wasn’t talking to him, which is to say, he wasn’t ignoring him entirely, but since Saturday night, their conversations had consisted of George saying something and Josh responding with, at best, a singular word, more often a shrug and sometimes a nod. For instance, to the question “Would you like a cup of coffee?”, he generally found it in himself to nod in agreement, whereas “What’s the matter?” resulted in a shrug, and “Are you OK?” usually deserved an utterance in the affirmative, even though he clearly wasn’t. George had no idea what he had done to upset him, or even if that was what was wrong, but one thing was for sure: it was the first time ever he was glad to be going to the prison for the day, in spite of Sophie’s suggestion that he just email to tell them that he wasn’t going back. So off he went, on a train journey with three changes, followed by a bus that stopped half a mile up the road, relieved that it was the very last time he’d be doing it, whilst appreciating the opportunity to try and figure out why Josh was being the way he was. He couldn’t help thinking that, if anything, it should be the other way around. For now, though, there was the more pressing matter of getting himself out of jail.

  Thus, George’s tactic with the prison psychologist was to tell her that he’d had a change of heart and didn’t want to work with offenders after all, which was true, although it was her attitude towards him that had led to this realisation and he was well aware of the possibility that with a different placement he might find he’d made the right choice to begin with. Her response only cemented his certainty that it was the correct decision; she knew he didn’t have it in him, she said, and he’d had it fairly easy. Well, he thought, if being dumped with your friend’s psychotic ex-husband, a man with an addiction to cottaging and a group of eighteen year olds, each with a list of GBH convictions too long to fit on one A4 printout, was ‘having it fairly easy’, then she was right. She granted him permission to finish off his paperwork and leave straight away, making him feel like one of the offenders they treated when she took him to hand in his ID badge and other paraphernalia.

  Back on the bus, three trains, and home again, unsure how he was going to pass the rest of the day, his thoughts constantly switching between the obnoxious cow at the prison and Josh’s current mood. What he didn’t expect to find was that Josh hadn’t gone to work at all. Instead, he was sitting on the sofa, reading an old hardback book and sipping at a very large cup of coffee. George stood in the doorway and watched him. He was trying hard not to pay attention, but it was utterly pointless trying to fool George, of all people.

  “Are you ever going to tell me what’s wrong?”

  Josh shrugged but said nothing.

  “Agh! What’s the fucking point?” George stormed upstairs, slamming his door, and not for effect. Josh lifted his head and stared at where he’d been, then closed his eyes. A few more crashes and bangs, George came back downstairs and went straight out again. Josh threw his book across the room, followed by his coffee cup.

  Several hours later, when George returned from his sitting alone in the library until they told him to leave, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “Why are you doing that?”

  “I don’t like it,” Josh replied.

  “My God! Four words. In one sentence!” He took his bag upstairs, pausing in his room as he tried to decide whether he should just stay where he was and forego food, or risk yet another rebuttal. He was too hungry.

  “You eaten?”

  “No.”

  “D’you want something to eat?”

  “Do you normally ask?”

  “No, but the way you’re acting, I just don’t know what to do for the best.”

  Josh grunted.

  “So. Shall I make something for both of us?”

  “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” Josh responded indifferently and waited until George was out of sight before continuing up the wall with the scraper. He didn’t really hate the paper that much, although having the same as Sean Tierney didn’t sit too well, but that wasn’t why he was taking it down. The coffee came out of the carpet fairly easily, but the lighter parts of the wallpaper pattern were completely ruined. It was an outrageous act, which surprised him; he didn’t lose his temper, ever, and it was just as well, because making a habit of it could turn out to be very expensive. Luckily, the coffee had only hit the one wall, and he’d been thinking about replacing the paper anyway, so the other three, which weren’t the same as Tierney’s, as far as he knew, could stay just as they were for now. In the kitchen, the sound of pans colliding heavily with the hob signified that he wasn’t the only one who was feeling it, and that helped tremendously. It was George who had done this to him, so why shouldn’t he suffer too?

  They sat in silence for the rest of the evening, both picking at their meal, and Josh taking the plates to the sink, although not trusting himself to wash them, for fear that a fork might accidentally fall ou
t of the cutlery drainer, or some other such irritation that in the general scheme of things would remain just that, but right now had the potential to wreak considerable damage. He hated feeling like this: he was used to being in control of his emotions, but he was so wound up that even if he did want to tell George why, he wouldn’t have been able to do so. He collected his book from the lounge and went upstairs; a minute or so later he came back down with a box, took it out to the car, and repeated this action once more before he stayed upstairs for good. All the while, George had pretended to be watching TV, waiting until it was safe to go to bed himself.

  The next morning there was more of the same, both recognising that they had just hours to reach some sort of truce, before James’s stag night. Neither of them was especially looking forward to an evening in a jazz bar with all of Eleanor’s male relatives and James. With this breakdown in communication, it was going from bad to worse. However, as George predicted, seeing as Eleanor was Josh’s best friend (he was sick of hearing this phrase), he finally took it upon himself to break the silence.

  “I will tell you what’s pissed me off at some point,” he started, “but for now we just have to make the best of it.”

  “Well that’s not going to work, is it?”

  “Why shouldn’t it? You only need to know that I’m angry, and it’s because of something you did. I’m sure it will come to you if you think about it hard enough, and if it doesn’t, then that merely serves to illustrate that I’m right to be angry.”

  “Come again?”

  “No. Figure it out for yourself,” Josh said tersely. He was dressed for work and left soon after. George washed up from the previous night’s meal, even though that wasn’t how it was supposed to be, and threw himself into the vacuuming (for the sake of something to do) and deep contemplation. A few hours on and all he had to show for it were the most spotlessly clean carpets in the western hemisphere and a headache. There was, he thought, one person who would know, if anyone did, what was the matter with Josh, and much as he didn’t want to bother her with anything so ‘trivial’ at the present time, he didn’t see as he had any choice. He gave Eleanor a quick call to ensure she was in, and headed straight round, using the walk there to formulate a means of working the problem into a rundown of the arrangements for the rest of the week. This turned out to be a very useful approach, as she didn’t seem to pick up on how terrible things really were, for he presented Josh’s bad mood as part of a more general narrative of how he was avoiding him by tidying his room, or decorating, or drawing up cleaning rotas, speculating that it was because he was worrying about the wedding. She listened to everything he had to say, whilst folding tiny clothes and adding them to a precarious pile that toppled several times during his oration. She just picked them up, folded them again and continued to listen. At the end, she filled the kettle, led him to the lounge and sat him down.

  “You need to stay out of the way for a while,” she said. “Have a coffee with me, go home, get your stuff for tonight and come back.”

  “Oh, it’s not that serious. Is it?”

  “Probably not. As you say, he’s most likely just stressing about the wedding, and he hasn’t said anything to me about you upsetting him.” She left the room to make the coffee and called back from the kitchen: “There’s nothing I can really think of that you’ve done wrong.” She came back with the cups. “I mean, he did see you with Kris on Saturday night, but we were more worried for Shaunna than anything else. We didn’t know about them not being together anymore, of course.”

  “And Josh still doesn’t know. Kris said I could tell him, but the opportunity hasn’t actually presented itself, seeing as he’s not talking to me. Worse than that, I’ve known since it first happened.”

  “Yeah, Kris told me that.”

  “So what did he say, Josh, I mean? About Kris and me?”

  “Nothing much. Well, nothing at all really.”

  “Maybe not that then. Ah, man! Why can’t he just tell me what’s up?”

  “Because that’s the way he is.”

  They sat and drank their coffee in silence; James had taken Oliver to the park and Toby was fast asleep. It was wonderfully peaceful and quite possibly the best thing about being friends for so long; being able to sit and share each other’s company without needing to talk just for the sake of it.

  “This is all wrong,” George said after ten minutes or more of listening to only the sound of the baby monitor’s occasional click, or Toby squeaking in his sleep. “Why aren’t you in your usual pre-function frenzy? You’d normally be racing about like a headless chicken and fretting that nothing was getting done. Shouldn’t we all have tasks assigned and be telling you to chill out every five seconds?”

  “Well, the thing is, that description you just gave? Let’s just say I’m my mother’s daughter and if you were to go round there right now, my dad and brothers would be tearing their hair out, while she barks orders at them, like a crazed sergeant major.”

  “Right, so everything’s in hand then?”

  “If my mother’s in charge it’s more than in hand, I guarantee it.”

  George nodded his understanding and finished the remainder of his coffee.

  “Are you coming back?” Eleanor asked.

  “Yeah. Not sure why you think it’s necessary, but I would rather keep out of his way.”

  “All I’m saying is the way he storms off when he and Dan fall out is only a teeny, tiny taster—ask that lecturer of yours. He’s been here, done this, got the t-shirt and the leather elbow patches.”

  “Sean?”

  Eleanor raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh really? Tell me more.”

  “I don’t really know anything more than that. Josh turned up in Newcastle once, totally unannounced and in an unbelievably foul mood. He wasn’t exactly up for sharing, either. In fact, he hardly said a word to me the whole time. Sean arrived a couple of days later and they had one hell of a fight—not fisticuffs, obviously, although I did have to intervene on behalf of my flatmates—but they went home together afterwards, so I guess they must’ve sorted things out.”

  George frowned thoughtfully. This sounded like it might have been the start of the on-going dispute between Josh and Sean, and probably wasn’t relevant to his current predicament, other than to demonstrate the lengths to which Josh would go in order to avoid confronting a problem. Nonetheless, he was still curious.

  “And you’ve no idea what it was over?” he asked.

  “None at all. I wasn’t allowed to mention it, but I think Josh just needed some space.” George looked worried and Eleanor patted his arm. “Look, I’m sure it’ll pass, eventually. A bit like really bad constipation.” She grinned.

  “And on that beautiful analogy, I’m going. See you in a bit.”

  Josh was still at work, so the coast was clear for George to grab his things and go straight back out, but he needed to know more about what Eleanor had told him. In fact, by the time he reached the house, the need was so great that he did something he’d never done before: he went into Josh’s bedroom.

  It was an alien place to him and he looked around, trying to decide where he would be most likely to hide any keepsakes. The room was light and airy, with plain walls, curtains and carpet, all in the same shade of pale cream, with very little in the way of furniture: a double bed, a small bedside cabinet with a lamp, clock and a book, a bedding chest, a wall mirror and a shelf lined with bottles of aftershave and deodorant. Fitted wardrobes extended along one wall, with lift-up flaps above them; George opened each in turn, standing on tiptoes to peer inside. Most contained jumpers, folded neatly and piled one on top of the other. He pushed a hand in amongst them to see if there was anything concealed behind or within, but came up with nothing every time. Likewise, the wardrobes underneath contained only what one would expect, although the end cupboard was stacked with ancient psychology journals, and he lifted a couple from the top of the pile: they were copies of the International Journal of Psycho
-Analysis dating back to the 1920s and probably worth a fortune. He carefully put them back, closed the door and pivoted to face the other way, biting his lip thoughtfully. The only other storage space in the room was the ottoman, which seemed too obvious a place to look, but he decided to do so anyway. It was locked and there was no key.

  Now, at this stage, the right thing to do would be to leave well alone. He’d already trespassed into Josh’s personal space, whilst fully aware of what a privilege had been bestowed on him to be invited to share the house. Josh was very private and did everything he could to stay that way, sometimes to an almost extreme level. He wasn’t, for instance, the sort of person one might catch making a towel-clad dash back from the bathroom, not even when home alone; nor, as George had often found to his cost, did he appreciate personal belongings being left lying around shared spaces. So the right and most respectful thing to do was to leave the room exactly as he’d found it and never set foot in there again.

  What George did instead was take out his keys and try them in the lock. None of them came close, so he searched the room again. He knew his friend well enough to also know that he was bound to have a spare key somewhere, but discerning precisely where that might be would take precious time he didn’t have. By now he was so obsessed that common sense was little more than a distant voice calling out to him to stop what he was doing. He needed to know what was inside that chest. He returned to his own room, took a hanger from the wardrobe and unbent the hook on his way back. He didn’t really have a clue what he was doing, but had been led to believe that a straightened length of wire could break most locks. Unbelievably, it yielded straight away, and he soon found out why. It wasn’t a proper lock, but a catch, which lifted when pressed, presumably because most bedding chests contain just that. This one was, on the surface, no different, with a few duvet sets and a pair of cushions at the top. George lifted the cushions free and peered into the space below.