Isolation

by Jenni Regan

  As Tom went to get another bottle, he vowed to wake up early the next day to go for a jog, hoping he would find some green amongst all the high-rises. Rachel smiled a genuine smile as he replaced the bottle in the cooler, and he immediately felt guilty for judging her.

  ‘So, little brother, when did you get so suave and sophisticated? Last time I saw you, you had too much Sun-in in your hair and your clothes were from BHS.’

  Tom cringed at the memory. ‘I guess that’s what New York does to you. That and the fact that gay men really have to keep up appearances to fit all the diabolical stereotypes we are forced to endure.’

  ‘So do you love Judy Garland and do you have a dog the size of a rat then?’

  ‘I’m more of a Marilyn Monroe fan, and sadly our very lovely rent-controlled apartment doesn’t allow pets, so no, I fail on both counts.’ He chuckled.

  ‘Wow, New York sounds so glamorous! Are you out at lovely restaurants and parties all the time?’

  ‘Actually, yes, which sounds very exciting, but as I get older, I would love a bit more time on the sofa, you know? It can get routine going out every night of the week.’

  ‘I tell you what: let’s swap. I will go and live in New York for a week and live your life, and you can stay here in my home, cooking every night, looking after my kids and watching as much TV as you like.’

  This actually sounded like bliss to Tom, and he wondered if he should make the effort to come and spend a few days with Rachel and her family. Not that he could ever have her over to his home. She would never fit in his world anymore.

  ‘What about kids?’ Rachel asked. ‘Do you want them? Lots of gay men are doing this these days, aren’t they? Adopting or getting someone else to pop one out?’

  Tom thought of his ordered life and felt sad that there was no room in there for a child. ‘No, I have always quite liked being the fun, gay uncle, you know? Well, at least to Alice, I mean,’ he explained, treading on eggshells.

  ‘I really appreciate that you have looked out for her all these years, you know? I know I was a terrible mother, but it wasn’t all my fault, you know,’ replied Rachel, opening the can of worms an inch more.

  Tom tried to change the subject. ‘So, you work in a school now; what’s that like? Can’t think of anything worse, really!’

  ‘Do you know what? I really love it! I am a teaching assistant. I wanted to retrain as a teacher at one point, but you know money, time and the usual crap put a stop to that. I look after the kids in the school who have special needs, and sometimes it is like herding cats, but every so often a kid will do something that makes it all worthwhile. Anyway, it’s better than my last job; I was wiping shitty arses years after my kids had grown out of nappies, and it sucked the life out of me.’

  Tom was surprised to see the side of Rachel as a carer; after all, she had shown no care to her firstborn.

  Rachel inched open the can again. ‘You know, I am not trying to shift the blame, but there were reasons beyond the fact that our mother was a tyrant that I went off the rails. I had a very difficult time with Dad, you know?’ Tom realised that Rachel was slurring her words slightly. She obviously hadn’t been sipping her water between wine.

  ‘I know, I was there too, you know. He used to beat me to a pulp if I ever stepped out of line.’ Tom almost added that this hadn’t driven him to seek solace in a needle.

  ‘Yes, but it was different for me as a girl. He didn’t just punish me with his fists.’ Rachel was staring at him intently as though she wanted him to guess what horrors had gone on.

  ‘What, you mean he took away your pocket money and called you a few nasty names? Get real, most kids go through shit with their parents, and they don’t completely screw up their lives because of it. I hate it when people blame the parents; it is so lazy. I am surrounded by gay men in New York who spend half their lives and salary on their shrink because mummy didn’t understand me.’

  Tom was getting angry now. He was usually a mellow drunk, but jetlag was bringing out the worst in him.

  ‘What I don’t understand is how you could have fucked up Alice’s life so spectacularly as well. I mean, it wasn’t her fault you hated your parents so much, and the poor cow ended up with them!’

  Rachel spoke quietly, all defiance having left her. ‘Tom, he raped me.’

  Tom wasn’t following. ‘Who, Alice’s dad?’ He immediately lost the attitude. ‘Oh god, Rach, that is terrible. No wonder you lost it!’

  ‘You don’t understand. When I say he, I mean Dad. He abused me—had been doing so for years.’ With this, she sobbed openly, oblivious to the onlookers enjoying the show.

  Tom felt his blood turn to ice. He didn’t know if he could believe her or if this was just another of Rachel’s excuses. How could this have gone on under his roof without him having a clue?

  She spoke, still quietly sobbing but with determination in her voice. ‘It started when I was about nine. Do you remember when they finally got us into our own rooms? He used to come in and “tuck me in”. I was lucky that he broke his “little girl” in gently, so he didn’t actually rape me for a couple more years.’

  ‘But why didn’t you stop him or tell someone?’ Tom really didn’t want to hear any details, and he still wanted her to be making it up for attention.

  ‘I always knew what he did was wrong—we had those awful sex education lessons at school, after all—but he told me it would destroy the family, you would have no dad and that no one would believe me, which actually was true. When I finally told Mum, she called me an attention-seeking whore.’

  Sadly, Tom could picture this being said and remembered how Rachel had gone from the girl who could do no wrong to something that his mother wanted to scrape off her shoe. This was around the time that Rachel had started staying out ‘til all hours and rebelling against the suffocating family.

  ‘But why didn’t you go to the police, anyone?’

  ‘I know it sounds ridiculous, Tom, and I really, really hate him for what he did. He was a monster. It’s only now that I have girls of my own that I realise how wrong it was, but he was also my dad. I have some incredible memories of when we were kids, and I guess I really didn’t want to be the one that tore that apart. Plus, if you are a young girl whose self-esteem is through the floor and you are told enough times that nobody will believe you, then you think that way yourself. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.’

  Tom was fighting back tears. ‘I should have known. I should have done something. I could have stopped it.’

  ‘No, Tom, you could never have stopped it, and it is nobody’s fault but his. He was a paedophile and an abuser, and Mum turned a blind eye. They were the adults that were meant to be looking after us. And you didn’t exactly get off lightly, either; I know how handy he was with his fists if you ever crossed the line.’

  He moved around the table and hugged his big sister. It was the first real hug they had shared as adults. They hugged for the childhoods they had lost, for the time they had spent apart and for the girl who had bought them together again.

  The siblings spent the rest of the evening being ‘normal’. They caught up on years of their lives, both in wonder of how the other one lived. Rachel spoke a lot about her kids, and they made a plan for him to meet them the next day. He would spend the next day as a man on a mission trying to uncover what had happened to his niece. He wasn’t sure he knew where to start but felt a lot more confident now that he was physically in the country.

  They were both a bit worse for wear as they left the wine bar, holding onto each other for support. He had a stain on his beautifully expensive shirt and could see that most of Rachel’s makeup had long since been wiped away. Tom insisted on getting an Uber for Rachel, despite her suspicion over getting into a stranger’s car. He was just opening the app when he spotted the kebab shop on the other side of the road. ‘You know what? Despite all my years of fine dining in New York’s best restaurants, I still get a craving for a good old kebab.’

&nbs
p; Rachel practically squealed. ‘Oh, now you are talking! I haven’t had a donair in years. Do you want to share some chips too?’

  ‘No way, get your own.’ Tom laughed as they headed across the road.

  They were inside the hot kebab takeaway, littered with other drunk people like them, and waiting for the pile of food they had finally ordered when they noticed a commotion outside. They could see that a man had been stopped by the police and was being forced to stand with his hands in the air by the side of the road.

  ‘You know that he wouldn’t have been stopped just because he is in a nice car if he was white,’ Tom commented.

  They could see that the police were pulling the car apart. They probably didn’t even know what they were searching for.

  ‘I thought Asian-looking men with rucksacks were the new target, but it seems black men with shiny cars are still flavour of the month!’ Rachel said.

  ‘Look at him. He is probably a lawyer or doctor, and sadly he probably gets stopped numerous times every week just because of what he looks like. This has happened to so many of my colleagues in the States. It’s not so bad in New York—I mean, people don’t drive in Manhattan anyway—but as soon as they cross the county lines, bam, they are suddenly a person of interest.’

  The scene now had the eyes of the whole kebab shop on it, not that this was a rare occurrence in this area but more because one of the officers was being particularly unpleasant.

  ‘I will go out there and see if I can help,’ Tom eventually said, after he had heard the officer call the poor man a thieving bastard, despite the fact they had found nothing out of the ordinary.

  ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea? After all, I’m not sure if you could walk in a straight line at the moment if asked!’

  ‘You wait here and keep an ear out for our food. This won’t take long.’

  Tom stepped out of the door, the cold air in contrast to the greasy fug.

  ‘Hello, officer, is there a problem here?’

  The mouthy officer looked at the crumpled, pissed Yank with surprise and disgust.

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about, sir. This man is just helping with our enquiries,’ said the other cop, the slightly nicer one.

  ‘Well, OK, I just wanted to check in with this young man. After all, I am a lawyer, and it didn’t look as though you were treating him that well. Did you have any particular reason to stop and search him?’

  The nasty copper looked even more annoyed, but the nice copper looked worried. ‘We stopped him because we had reason to believe he was in possession of something he shouldn’t have had.’

  ‘Oh right, and not because he a young, mixed-race man driving a nice car then? And tell me, have you found anything to incriminate him?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ admitted the nasty copper.

  ‘In that case, I would suggest that you let him get on his way. You wouldn’t want to be accused of harassment or racism, now, would you?’

  The nasty cop looked resigned; he couldn’t be bothered to deal with the paperwork that would accompany any complaint. If he left it now, then it would only be a couple of forms and it might mean he could catch last orders at his local. He let it stew for a few more minutes, writing up some basic notes alongside the name and registration he had already noted.

  ‘OK, so we have completed our investigation and you are free to go for now, but next time you might not be so lucky.’

  The police drove off, and the young man thanked Tom.

  ‘Man, that was amazing. Those twats are always trying to pin something on me, but you totally blew it out of the water. I owe you big time!’ He high-fived Tom.

  Tom was high on the little encounter. ‘You owe me nothing. I hate to see injustice. Here, let me give you my card, and if you get treated badly again, I can advise you on how to complain.’

  ‘Amazing! You are a top bloke. Thanks so much.’ The man took the card. ‘At least let me pay for your dinner,’ he said, pointing at the kebab shop.

  ‘OK, mate, that would be great.’ Tom smiled and let the young man inside. He high-fived Rachel as well when he was introduced and slapped a fifty-pound note on the counter. After they had said their goodbyes, Tom and Rachel grabbed their hot parcels and headed off down the road to find a suitable bench.

  Rachel

  28 October 2018, 9 a.m.

  Rachel was speeding down the motorway again but this time not towards the coast but to the airport to pick up her brother. She had been so shocked when Tom had called her to say he was flying out to London that night. She had known he had kept in touch with Alice, a fact that she had once resented deeply but now, knowing he was putting his life on hold to try and find her, she felt pleased that Alice had always had a Guardian Angel of sorts.

  Rachel hated airports—not that she was in them often. She had only ever managed a couple of cheap weeks in Spain over her lifetime. There was something about watching the emotional hellos and goodbyes between families, friends and lovers that made her feel so alone. If she had flown off alone at any stage in her life, she wasn’t sure that anyone would have waved her off, let alone turned up to welcome her home.

  As she finally saw her brother walking through arrivals being swept along by the crowds, she had to hold herself back from running up and hugging him. Gone was the awkward teenager she had last seen, replaced by a grown man in an expensive suit and greying hair. She looked to see if he had anyone with him; he had mentioned a partner over the years but was relieved to see that, apart from his expensive luggage, he was travelling alone. He reached her, and they stood awkwardly not knowing how to greet each other, every year of their separation pushing them apart. She offered him coffee, but he was keen to get on the road. He hadn’t said how long he was planning to stay, but she guessed he would make it as short as possible.

  Conversation was stilted in the car; they were like strangers with little in common. She asked him politely about work, and he asked about her kids. She was surprised and impressed that he knew their names and their ages. When the initial pleasantries had died off, Rachel switched on the radio, tuning it to a talk radio station to fill the silence. The presenter was taking calls about immigration in the wake of the Bournemouth bombing. Rachel bet it didn’t take much for the conversation to turn to immigration on this station, and so a bonafide situation where people had died as the direct result of the child of immigrants was like all their Christmases had come at once. The callers all generally had the same view—although it was presented in various ways—that all those who were non-white should be stopped at the border, and those that had slipped through should be sent back to where they came from.

  ‘Wow, I thought the States was bad for this type of nonsense, but this is like a segment from Fox News!’ joked Tom.

  Rachel was instantly relieved. She had no idea of her brother’s political persuasion; after all, their parents had been bigots, and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, so they say.

  ‘Has Trump made things worse?’ asked Rachel cautiously, turning down the radio.

  ‘Oh yes, well, he has legitimised hate speech. All that crap about banning Muslims and building walls. One of my colleagues is working on a case at the moment where a man is locked up because he dared to travel to Syria to visit his dying grandmother. He is a proper, upstanding member of the community, has a well-established business, is a philanthropist, and is even married to a white American, but he is being punished just because he happens to be brown.’

  ‘A kid in the school I work in had his house burned down recently after some scum put burning rags through the door, apparently because his family is Polish. It is not just the non-whites that are suffering over here. Since the Brexit vote—a bit like Trump, I guess—it gives everyone legitimate reason to hate and blame.’

  ‘Wow, what do you think Dad would think if he found out his poofter son and druggie daughter had become such bleeding-heart liberals?’ Tom joked, and they both burst into laughter, instantly exchanging stories of his v
iews. He hadn’t discriminated against any particular group of people; he seemed to hate everyone. Bonded again by the one thing they truly had in common, they spent the rest of the journey reliving their childhood and skirting widely around anything too controversial.

  Rachel was relieved when Tom told her he was staying in a hotel. She had shoved a few things under the bed in her youngest daughter’s room, but somehow it was too intimate letting him into her house. He had booked a chain hotel just ten minutes’ drive away from her. She was surprised; she presumed he would be in The Ritz or somewhere fancy but was impressed that he was prepared to slum it for a few days.

  She dropped him off to freshen up, and they arranged to meet for dinner. She had been forced to tell her boyfriend that her brother was on the way yesterday. Tom was the only living relative he knew about, but she guessed she would have to sit him down and tell him about Alice soon. Having a surprise visit from her long-lost brother had probably ignited his curiosity.

  Rachel felt like she needed to impress that night, as she blow-dried her hair and chose her favourite outfit. Despite the fact she was meeting her brother, they were much more like strangers than family these days. Her outfit was really a summer dress, and although it was threatening to rain, she teamed it with a big coat and hoped for the best. Tom was looking a lot more relaxed when she met him in a chain wine bar across the road from the hotel. Funny how these wine bars with their wooden floors and mammoth glasses had seemed so glamorous when they first arrived in UK towns and cities but looked a bit dated now. The fashionable thing now, according to the teachers she worked with, were funny little microbreweries and street food. She had even heard that the massive brewery that had churned out mass-produced beer in her hometown now had its own trendy range.

  Tom got up when she arrived in, and they hugged awkwardly. He went in for a kiss on the cheek; she guessed that’s what Americans did, but she wasn’t ready, and he got her ear.