In the Bag

by Jim Carrington

  ‘How d’you feel this morning?’ Joe says. ‘You got a hangover?’

  I nod my head without looking up. ‘I feel rough,’ I say. My voice sounds croaky.

  I open up the text inbox on my phone. There’s one from Dad: I’m sorry, Ash. Let’s talk so I can explain. It makes me angry just looking at it. How can he even write that? There’s no way he could ever begin to explain this to me. I’ll never forgive him. Never. I close the message and look down the list again. There are two texts from Mum. I remember reading the first one: Where have you gone? I open the other one up, the one I don’t remember. Ashley, come home so we can talk this through. X. I shake my head as I read it. Like hell I’m going home. I don’t want to talk about this. Not with them.

  ‘I’ll go downstairs and get some breakfast,’ Joe says to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him get out of bed and put his dressing gown on. ‘You feel like eating?’

  I shake my head. My stomach and my throat feel disgusting. I feel like I could be sick.

  ‘How about a drink? Tea, coffee, water, juice?’

  I nod. ‘Water.’

  Joe opens the door and leaves the room.

  I open the sent text messages to check if I sent any to Mum or Dad last night. I scan through them. Right away my heart sinks. There’s one I sent to Dad. I open it. How cld u do this to us? I hate u. I put my phone down. Shit. I lie down and close my eyes.

  A few minutes later, the door opens again. I prop myself up on my elbow as Joe comes in with a glass of water and some toast. He shuts the door with his foot and brings the glass over to me. I grab it off him and gulp it down. But it doesn’t make me feel any better. It just makes my stomach feel like it has water swishing around inside it.

  ‘I got you some toast too,’ Joe says. He puts the plate down on the floor. ‘In case you change your mind.’

  I feel too sick for that, though. ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Hey, Joe, I really need the toilet. Can you check the coast is clear?’

  He nods his head. ‘Everyone else is downstairs,’ he says. ‘Go quickly. If anyone comes up the stairs, I’ll talk to them loudly so you can hear. Just stay in the bathroom if I’m talking, right?’

  I nod. And I get up from the floor, stumble a bit. I head straight for the door and then across the landing to the toilet, shut the door and lock it behind me. And then I start to pee. It feels good. And it goes on for ever and ever. Or at least it feels that way. When I’m finally done, I go over to the basin and run the cold tap, splash water over my face, cup some in my hands and drink it down. Then I go and stand by the door. I can’t hear Joe talking. The coast must be clear. I unlock the door, open it and hurry across to his room. By the time I get there, he’s dressed in his school uniform.

  ‘You better go home and get your uniform,’ he says to me.

  I hadn’t even thought about school. ‘I’m not going,’ I say. ‘I’m done with all that bullshit. What are they gonna teach us today?’

  Joe shrugs. ‘It’ll be a laugh,’ he says. ‘You can get your shirt signed and stuff. I heard there was gonna be a flour and egg fight too.’

  I shake my head. ‘Nah,’ I say. ‘I’m gonna take it easy today.’

  ‘Are you gonna go home?’

  I shake my head. ‘Not right now. My mum and dad’ll be there. I don’t want to see them.’

  Joe sits down on the edge of his bed. ‘What happened? What’s the matter?’

  I don’t answer. I weigh it up in my mind whether I want to explain it all to him or not. If I’m honest, I want to. I want it to be out in the open. Except I can’t. I feel kind of embarrassed about it. Why is it that my family have to be the fuck-ups when everyone else has a normal family? I sigh. ‘Ah, it’s just . . . stuff.’

  ‘You should let them know where you are,’ Joe says. ‘They’ll be worried. They might even have called the police.’

  I sit up as soon as he says the word police. He’s right. I nod. I get my phone out of my pocket. ‘I’ll send them a text,’ I say. ‘Just to let them know I’m OK.’

  Joe nods. And he starts getting all his stuff together ready for school.

  I sit down on the edge of his bed and write a message: I’m safe. Going to school now. I send it to Mum.

  I sit and stare into space, not wanting to think but unable to stop the million thoughts going round my head. Questions that have no answers.

  My phone starts ringing. Mum mobile calling, it says. I stare at it as it rings. Before I can change my mind, I press Answer and put the phone to my ear.

  ‘Ashley,’ Mum says. She sounds relieved. Upset.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ I say.

  ‘Where are you, Ashley?’ she says. ‘I’ve been up all night, worried sick.’

  I don’t answer. I feel guilty, like a coward. I confronted Mum with all this shit, stirred it all up, and then I just left her to it. ‘Sorry, Mum,’ I say. ‘I slept at Joe’s last night.’

  It’s quiet at the other end of the phone. I can hear Mum breathing. ‘Are you coming home soon?’

  ‘I’ve got to go to school, Mum,’ I say. ‘Last day.’

  ‘Right,’ she says. Then she pauses. ‘I’m sorry about last night, Ashley.’

  As soon as I hear her say that, I feel like a total, ungrateful little shit. ‘It’s not your fault, Mum.’

  There’s another pause. ‘I’ll see you after school, though, won’t I?’

  I don’t answer right away. But deep inside, I know I’m gonna be there. ‘Yeah,’ I say eventually, quietly. ‘I’ll be back.’ And then I hang up.

  I slip out of the house with Joe. After he’s gone to the bus stop I walk aimlessly, without really knowing where I’m going or what I’m gonna do when I get there. One thing’s for sure, though – I’m not going home. Mum doesn’t start work till eleven on a Friday and I can’t go back when she’s still at home. Especially seeing as I’m meant to be at school. I’ve got myself in enough trouble this week as it is.

  So I end up walking the back way into town, through all the executive housing estates. And before I’ve even realised that I’m doing it, I’ve walked to the supermarket. I feel in my pocket and take out my money. I have some change and a ten pound note. I head straight for the sandwich bit just inside the doors, take an energy drink down and then look at the sandwiches. Prawn mayonnaise, cheese and onion, beef salad, ham and cheese, et cetera, et cetera. Just the thought of all the flavours makes me want to vom. So I go and grab a big pack of crisps instead and take them up to the tobacco kiosk.

  The lady behind the counter takes the can and crisps and scans them.

  ‘Two pounds thirty-five, my love,’ she says.

  I put my hand in my pocket, take out the tenner and casually ask for a packet of my usual smokes too.

  The lady turns round and picks up a packet from the shelves behind her and scans that as well. And I can’t believe my luck. She didn’t even ask for ID.

  ‘That’s eight pounds and four pence,’ she says.

  I pay, grab my stuff and my change and go.

  I walk back to the rec, smoking a cigarette and swigging from my can. There’s no one there. No one sitting on the wall. No one in the little kids’ playpark. No one walking their dog. Just me. I open the gate and walk straight across the field over to the bench, sit down and try and work out what I’m gonna do. With the day. With my life.

  Around ten o’clock, I decide it’s safe to go home. Mum’ll be on her way to work by now. So I walk back along the main road. And as I do, I pass the flats where they found the body. There aren’t any cops outside any more. They must have got all the evidence that they think they’re gonna get. But it makes me think of the bag. And of the gun, still buried in the woods. It makes me shiver to think about it. We were lucky. Things could have turned out much worse for us. We could have been tracked down by the guys who wanted the bag back, or by the cops. God knows where we’d be by now if they had. It’s not worth thinking about.

  I walk on. I still feel really rough. I need to get back
to the house, have a shower, change my clothes and eat something. Maybe even have a sleep. Cos I don’t wanna be feeling like this. Especially not if I’m gonna be home when Mum and Dad get home. I wanna be fresh, thinking straight.

  Joe

  I am now a free man. School is officially out and all I have left is exams. It feels really good. And tonight it’s Rabbit’s party. After the weird week I’ve had, I think I deserve a good night.

  School today was a bit of an anticlimax, to be honest. Everyone was going on about how all this stuff was gonna happen, like a water fight, and an egg and flour fight. And none of it happened. Everyone just signed each other’s school shirts, we had a leavers’ assembly, and loads of girls started crying. Then that was it. We were free to go.

  Right now, I’m upstairs in my room. I’ve been here since I got home. First thing I did was check the news on the internet to see if there was any mention of the bag or anything. But there was nothing.

  Since then, I’ve been rereading the messages people wrote on my school shirt and then messing around on my guitar. But now I’m bored of playing guitar. So I put it down on the bed, get up and go over to my wardrobe. I’m gonna choose what to wear tonight to the party, though looking for clothes in my wardrobe is always depressing. My clothes are all . . . what’s the word? Lame? Unfashionable? Shit? All of the above, really. Apart from my new trainers. And every time I look at them, I feel a little pang of guilt. There’s nothing I can do about it now, though.

  After standing in front of my wardrobe for ages, I choose a band T-shirt – a black one that really could do with a wash – a zip-up hooded top, a pair of dark blue jeans and my trainers.

  Ash

  I slept most of the day. I feel a little better for it – not hungover, at least. Right now, I’m sitting on the sofa in the lounge. I see Mum walk up the drive. I feel nervous. My hands are sweaty. I don’t know what’s about to happen. I don’t know how I’m gonna react, or how Mum’s gonna react. I don’t even know what I want to happen here. I don’t know what would be worse – Mum and Dad splitting up, or Mum and Dad trying to make things right.

  The front door opens and then shuts with a plasticky clunk.

  ‘Ashley? Are you home?’

  ‘In here, Mum,’ I say.

  A few seconds later, Mum pokes her head round the door. She smiles. At least, she tries to. Only, when she looks at me, I can see a tear appear in the corner of her eye. She walks over to me with her arms outstretched. I stand up and we hug.

  ‘Are you all right, Ashley?’ she says into my back.

  I nod. ‘Yeah.’

  We both sit on the sofa. I still feel nervous as hell. This is strange and horrible. I look at Mum. Her make-up has run. She wipes a tear away and smudges her mascara even more.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ashley,’ she says. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Don’t say sorry, Mum. It’s not your fault.’

  Mum shakes her head. ‘It’s . . .’ she starts. But then she falls silent and stares across the room.

  I close my eyes and put my head in my hands. I take a couple of deep breaths. I feel like I wanna cry. I feel hopeless. But I don’t wanna cry in front of my mum. Someone’s got to be strong. Someone has to be the grown-up here. I look up. ‘What happened last night?’ I say. ‘After I left?’

  Mum doesn’t answer right away. I can see her thinking. What’s she thinking about? Maybe she’s trying to work out whether to tell me the truth or not. Maybe she’s trying to think what I want to hear, so she can say it. ‘We had an argument,’ she says after a while.

  ‘Yeah?’ I look at her. She doesn’t look back at me.

  She nods. ‘I called him all the names under the sun.’

  ‘Good,’ I say. My voice sounds flat. ‘And what did he do?’

  Mum stiffens a little. ‘He cried, he begged me to forgive him. He said he’d made a mistake. He said he’d already ended the affair.’

  I nod. ‘Did you believe him?’

  Mum shrugs. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. Then there’s a pause and all I can hear is the sound of birds singing outside. ‘I think so.’

  I sigh. I can’t believe she bought his lies, that she’s gonna give him another chance. I mean, I want to believe that what Dad told her is true. It would make everything easier. But why should I believe him after what he’s done?

  We sit in silence.

  ‘How was your last day of school?’ Mum says eventually.

  It shocks me. My stomach turns. Guilt. I make sure I look her right in the eye as I answer. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t easy to concentrate, though. I was just thinking about you and Dad.’

  Mum nods. She sighs again. ‘Sorry.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘And you stayed out of trouble?’

  I nod. ‘Of course.’

  I wonder whether this is a trap, whether she knows that I didn’t go to school today. But then she doesn’t say anything. She looks sad and small and not really like my mum at all.

  ‘Your dad should be home after seven,’ she says.

  I nod my head.

  ‘Maybe we should all sit down and talk things through. Iron all the problems out.’

  I snort with laughter. And then I wish I hadn’t. It’s just that it’s stupid, what Mum said. How on earth can you iron out a problem like this? I shake my head. ‘I’m going out tonight.’

  Mum looks back at me, disappointed. ‘Oh. Where?’

  ‘Rabbit’s house.’

  ‘Do you have to? Can’t you go out another night?’

  I shrug. ‘I want to go,’ I say. ‘It’s my last day of school. Why should I sit here while my mum and dad split up and my life falls to pieces? I wanna be out with my friends.’

  Mum just sits there. And I feel guilty, like I shouldn’t have said that. But, you know what? I mean it. I don’t wanna be here when Dad gets home. It’s up to them to sort this out. I wanna be anywhere but here. I get up from the sofa.

  ‘I’m gonna get ready,’ I say.

  Joe

  I have a bag from the off-licence balancing on my handlebars as I ride through the woods to Rabbit’s. A few cans of cider, that’s all. Ash has a half bottle of vodka in his pocket and a bag with a big bottle of Coke in it resting on his handlebars. He has some weed as well.

  It’s overcast and windy tonight, though it isn’t really cold. Feels like it should rain at any moment, but it hasn’t so far. The woods smell earthy and damp. And I feel kind of weird and scared riding through them.

  We cycle past the part of the woods where we found the car last week. It’s gone. Taken away by the police, I s’pose. You wouldn’t know that anything had happened there now, except that the tree which had been knocked into the other trees has been chopped down. There are still some tyre tracks, but they’re not fresh any more and they blend in with all the others. You’d only notice them if you knew what you were looking for.

  We don’t say anything to each other for a while after we’ve gone past the spot where the car was. I don’t know about Ash, but I’m thinking about what’s happened in the last week and feeling paranoid, like we’re still gonna get found out by someone. Even though I know in my head that I’m being stupid. Because the facts are:

  1. No one saw me and Ash pick the bag up.

  2. There’s nothing left to link us to the bag except a gun that’s buried in the woods. Finding the gun would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

  3. Whoever it is that the bag belongs to has it back now. They’re not gonna take it to the police and complain that there’s a couple of hundred quid missing.

  4. We dropped the bag off before we told them where it would be. So there’s no way that they can know who we are – they won’t have seen us.

  But, you know, even as I think about all the reasons why we’re not gonna get found out, I can find little loopholes in them, like:

  1. We think no one saw us pick up the bag, but we don’t know for sure. Anyone could have seen us last Friday. We were both half
cut. Who knows who else was in the woods that night?

  2. It’s possible someone could find the buried gun, even if it’s unlikely. And if they handed it in to the police – like we should have done with the bag – the police might link it to us. I mean, they have forensics. All they would need to do is find one fibre of clothing and they could link it to Ash or Rabbit.

  3. We don’t know for sure who took the bag after we left it on the common. For all we know, someone walking their dog picked it up and took it to the police. And if they did, the police could get my fingerprints and Ash’s and all sorts off the bag, couldn’t they?

  4. We went back to make sure the bag had been taken from the common, and we could have been seen then.

  I know I’m being paranoid, but I can’t help it. I wish I could be more like Ash and just treat everything like it’s a joke. But I can’t.

  Ash

  There are a lot of people at Rabbit’s. More than he expected, I think. But he’s cool with it. Anyway, it’s not as if he has any neighbours who can get pissed off at the noise or anything, seeing as he lives in the woods. And so far tonight no one’s being a dick. Everyone’s behaving themselves, just having a nice time – having a little drink, having a smoke, having a dance and a kiss and a cuddle to celebrate the end of school.

  Not me, though, not yet. I mean, I’ve had a little drink. Quite a big drink, actually. But I haven’t done anything else. No dancing, no kissing or cuddling. But I’m on the case. It’s all in hand. It will happen soon.

  Right now I’m sitting in Rabbit’s garden with a couple of people from school. We’re about to have a little smoke cos I brought some of the weed with me. I light the joint and have a puff on it, take the smoke deep down into my lungs and keep it there for as long as I can manage. After about twenty seconds, I blow it out slowly and break into a massive grin. I feel good. I take another drag and then pass it on to Dylan, who’s sitting next to me. He does the same as me, takes two drags from it and passes it round the circle.