The History of Us

by Jonathan Harvey

  And then there was the whole passive-aggressive air to it. All the ‘oh look I really support the gays but . . .’

  I looked out of the window again. Jay-Jay was lighting up his second fag.

  I snatched up my phone. Scrolled through my contacts. Then called her.

  It rang out for a while, to the point where I thought it would go to voicemail. Good. I would give her what for in an angry voice message, the way she’d given ME what for all those years ago.

  But then she picked up.

  And was all sweetness and light.

  ‘Baby boy! What a gorgeous surprise!’

  ‘Don’t you fucking baby boy me, missy! I’ve seen your newspaper column. I know you’re having a go at me.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Which one? Which one? You know which fucking one, Jocelyn. Well, I’ll have you know that in order to get this kid in our care we had to prove that there’d be a female influence in his life, and thank God that influence was our nanny and not you.’

  ‘You’ve got a baby?’

  ‘Don’t come the innocent with me, arlarse.’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Oh fuck off, Jocelyn.’

  ‘I didn’t. I’m so sorry. When I write those columns I just . . .’

  ‘D’you know what, Jocelyn? Like you said to me when you told me never to contact you again, just coz I went to see someone in rehab: I’m not interested in your lies and excuses. You’ve done your worst. I’ve said my piece. Now let’s go back to the status quo where we never speak to each other again.’

  She said it again, quietly. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Coz if you don’t shut up about my kid, I’ll go to the press about yours. Now do I make myself clear? Never EVER criticize my parenting skills again. Or you know what’ll happen.’

  And before letting her say anything else, I hung up. And heard a round of applause.

  I looked over and saw that Jay-Jay had come into the room.

  ‘Go Adz!’ he said, then stopped clapping.

  I couldn’t help but smirk. I felt so much better for my little rant.

  ‘If you were gonna kill someone, Jay-Jay, how would you do it?’

  ‘Ooh, I like this game. Let’s walk and talk.’

  We walked down Kentish Town High Street. When I’d first moved here ten years ago it had been a rough-and-ready mix of native working-class folk and the odd pretentious wannabe. In recent years, as all over the London, the wannabes had taken over and created the asylum. Where once an underground public lavatory sat, it has now been converted into a subterranean wine bar that served cocktails in those pretend-jam-jar things. It was called Ladies and Gentlemen. And as I pointed out to Jay-Jay, I’d had a much better time there when it had been a pissoir extraordinaire.

  Jay-Jay cackled, and then fixed me with a glare.

  ‘You asked me how I’d kill someone. I like games like this.’

  ‘Who said it was a game?’ I countered, provocatively. He liked it when I was cheeky.

  ‘I have the perfect way to kill someone,’ he said. ‘I’d employ them to send out my Christmas cards. So they had to lick hundreds of envelopes.’

  ‘Sounds ominous. I send out your flaming cards.’

  ‘I know, but I don’t hate you. And then I’d lace the sticky bit on the envelopes with something like hemlock.’

  ‘Hemlock?! How old-school!’

  ‘I know, right?’

  We chuckled for a bit.

  ‘Hemlock kills people in the following way. It acts as a paralytic that keeps the mind awake. It takes out the muscles, then attacks the respiratory system. Death comes from, get this, waking asphyxiation.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

  ‘When you’ve ingested as many chemicals as I have, you get to know a thing or two.’

  ‘I’m never coming to you for my blue rinse. I’d be leaving in a wooden box.’

  ‘Why? How would you kill someone?’

  ‘Oh, I’m a bit boring, really.’

  ‘What, bore them to death?’

  ‘I’d make it look like suicide. Set it all up so they look like they had a reason to do it. Then just do it for them. Gunshot to the head, food poisoning.’

  ‘I like your style.’

  ‘Or, you know. Push them from a tall, tall building.’

  Our laughter grew guttural as we turned onto Highgate Road.

  JOCELYN

  London, 2015

  It’s hot on the tube, and sweat is forming in the crevice above his top lip. I wanted to see him sweat, the way he made me sweat. But now I’ve told him, I feel nothing but guilt.

  ‘I don’t believe you. You’re lying. It’s . . . it’s a sob story.’

  ‘It’s not The X Factor, Billy.’

  ‘Do you really want to hurt me that much?’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘Yeah, so you made that up.’

  ‘Why would I make something as sick as that up?’

  He looks angry. He actually looks like he might hit me.

  ‘You know,’ I continue, ‘I used to wonder how you could be so evil to me. But I guess you were born of evil, so it’s coming out now.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘I’m only telling you the truth. It’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it? Who your bloody dad was? Well, now you know. So you see. I wasn’t a slut, I wasn’t a whore. I was a fourteen-year-old girl and that dirty bastard forced himself on me. Now I’m sorry, Billy. I know it’s not what you wanted to hear, but it’s the truth. And it’s why I had to get away. Because every time I looked at you, I was back there. That night. And it was too much for me to handle.’

  The energy between us is so intense. The tube is now packed and we are speaking so firmly but quietly that, although nobody else can make out what we’re saying, people are looking over. It’s obvious there’s some major disagreement going on.

  ‘Is he hassling you, love?’ a stranger asks.

  ‘No. No, he’s not.’

  ‘You sure, love?’ someone else asks.

  They might not be so nice if I didn’t have my shades on so they can’t see who I am. I look back to Billy. We’re pulling into King’s Cross now, and this is where I change.

  ‘I get off here, Billy.’

  He says nothing. But when the doors open and I step off, I am aware that he is following me still. And when I get on the connecting tube, I see him step into this carriage with me too. He sits a few seats down from me and avoids eye contact. It’s like he can’t help himself. He can’t bear me but can’t bear to be away from me, now that he knows the truth. Maybe he’s working out his feelings. Maybe he is realizing for the first time that I am not all bad. But also, maybe he is hating himself. It must be the most awful thing imaginable, to learn that you weren’t born of love or even carelessness. That you were born of evil. That must be some cross to carry.

  He asked for it.

  He did.

  It’s what he wanted to know, and now he does. He knows the truth.

  When I get off at Westbourne Park, he is following me still. As we get to the flats I turn and look at him.

  ‘What do you want, Billy?’

  ‘A glass of water.’

  I buzz us both up.

  He looks round the flat silently.

  ‘Thought it’d be posher than this.’

  ‘Nothing is ever quite as you imagine, eh?’

  He rolls his eyes and does the most sarcastic laugh. I get him a glass of water from the fridge.

  ‘Bottled. Now that’s posh.’

  ‘Not really.’

  He downs it in one. He sits on my sofa. This is not quite how I envisaged today panning out.

  ‘Well,’ he finally says, ‘there’s one way I can work out if you’re telling me the truth or not. I mean, for all I know you seduced this fella.’

  ‘I certainly did not.’

  ‘Who was he? What was his name?’

  ‘I’m not prepared to tell you that
.’

  ‘I’ll find him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll ask the woman from the sweet shop.’

  ‘Dorothy? Adam’s mum?’

  ‘She usually knew everything, from what our darling sisters told me. Or I can ask them. Or Grandmama. I’ll find out, Jocelyn, you know I will. “Who was Mum seeing when Jocelyn got pregnant?” It won’t take long. So you may as well just tell me now.’

  ‘My word not good enough for you?’

  ‘Of course not. You lie for a living. I bet you don’t believe half the bullshit you write.’

  ‘I didn’t write this. It happened.’

  He goes and looks out of the window.

  ‘That’s quite some view. Can I go on the balcony?’

  I unlock the door, and he walks out. He peers over the concrete wall.

  ‘It’s a long way down.’

  He is unnerving me.

  ‘Davey,’ I say. ‘His name was Davey O’Hara.’

  He looks at me and smiles. ‘Thank you.’

  He asks for my phone number. Says he’ll want to be keeping in touch. I give it to him. He’d only find another way otherwise. He leaves.

  KATHLEEN

  London, 2015

  You see, the thing is, I wish I could remember where I was. That night. That night that Jocelyn died. But I can’t. And I hate myself. And of course my biggest, biggest fear is that I killed her. That I pushed her off the top of the flats and ended her life.

  It’s night time now. Adam left first so thinks I was just going to finish off tidying up and sorting a few bits and pieces, but here I am, sipping a glass of wine, standing on the balcony, looking at the last view she saw of London before she went down.

  You’ll go down for this. That’s what they used to say on the docks in Liverpool. Isn’t it?

  My nan was married to a docker. She told me. She must have.

  Oh no, they used to say, There’s nothing down for you.

  See? I can’t even remember phrases right.

  What did they do? That’s it. They used to put the names of the dockers on a piece of paper and nail it to the wall and the dockers would come, and if their name was on the list they’d be working that day. Bit like a zero-hours contract. And if they hadn’t made the list the others would say, There’s nothing down for you.

  I can’t remember if I have been to this flat before.

  I can’t remember if I killed my friend.

  If I did, I appear to have got away with it.

  And yet . . . and yet . . . something about this building feels so familiar. As if I’ve seen it in a dream. As if I’ve seen it in a drunken stupor.

  I’ve been drinking to forget for so long now that I’ve almost forgotten what I’m trying to forget. And sometimes that’s felt nice. But since Jocelyn died it’s brought it all back in sharp focus. So the booze and the occasional sleeping pill makes the edges fuzzier and that’s much preferable.

  Why would I have killed her? I had no reason to kill her. Unless I was being belligerent and I was in her flat, and we were rowing, and I pushed her. But does that really sound like me?

  I always think I’m a nice drunk. But then I remember the shame of Harry telling me how horrible I was to that waiter, that time in Pizza Express. He was in tears, I was so vile. And of course, I have no recollection.

  And there is a whole period of time unaccounted for on the night she went. I remember drinking in Soho and rowing with someone on a street. Vague memories of being kicked out of a cab. Dried mud on the ground. And then I woke up in a flat I didn’t recognize. There was a man lying next to me. A black guy. I had no idea who he was, though admittedly I didn’t see his face. I was so mortified, I dressed and fled. I appeared to be in Brixton. No memory of going back there.

  So maybe I didn’t go to Jocelyn’s. Maybe I got kicked out of the cab and this black guy rescued me. I don’t think I slept with him in the physical sense, as I was fully clothed and so, I think, was he. But I know what I get like with the devil inside me. Let’s just say I can get quite . . . amorous.

  So I don’t know who my angel was. And it’s doubtful I ever will.

  Maybe I should start doing random acts of kindness again.

  Well, I’ve done one today. I’ve started sorting out Jocelyn’s flat. But I know deep down I wanted to come here to see if anything here was familiar. Outside, it was. But I don’t know if that’s just from looking the flats up online.

  If I drink more, I might remember. I will be in the state I was in that night, and maybe it will spark some memory.

  I want to stay here forever. I have nowhere else to go. I could hide away here, barricade the door, and it could be Jocelyn’s gift to me, her legacy. But then, what does she really owe me? She owes me nothing. I treated her appallingly, and all she ever did was try to protect me. She never once told me what had happened between her and my dad. She could have, so easily. To hurt me, to spite me, to bring me down a peg or two. Especially bearing in mind everything I did to her. But no, she kept her counsel. And it must have bothered her, it must have plagued her. So much so that five years ago she called a telephone counselling service to discuss it. I would like to think that eventually she found some peace. But if she killed herself, clearly she was tormented.

  I’ve drunk all the wine. It lasts such a short time.

  I want to pick out landmarks on the horizon. But they seem to have shifted. Maybe I’m more pissed than I thought I was, but I can’t see the things I saw earlier. It’s gone dark. Maybe they’re not lit up. But I can’t remember what it is I’m trying to see.

  I look over the balcony. I can see the parched mud way, way below. I dangle the empty wine bottle over the side, then release it from my grasp. It falls silently. And then eventually it smashes. I hardly hear that noise, it’s so far away. And then I think how wonderful it must feel, to fall silently. To smash, and nobody hears you.

  That must have been what it was like for Jocelyn.

  Who said death was an awfully big adventure?

  It was somebody.

  Maybe it was me.

  Was it Peter Pan?

  How glorious that Jocelyn fell like that. Silently. And then smashed.

  I consider following suit. It would be so easy. I wouldn’t make headlines like she did. Not many would come to my funeral, like they did hers. I lean over and stare. It would only take seconds. And then all this suffering would be over. I get it. I get it now, why she did it.

  And then I feel a hand on my shoulder. It pulls me back forcefully. Adam must have returned. But how did he let himself in? I turn to ask, and see that no-one is there.

  Was it you? I wonder. Was it you, Jocelyn?

  But of course no answer comes.

  I go through to her bedroom and climb into her bed. I want to feel close to her.

  It’s nice she tried to stop me. Well, she did stop me. It’s like she forgives me.

  Her sheets are crisp still. They smell like summer meadows. Actually, I don’t know what summer meadows smell like, but I imagine it’s like these sheets. Maybe it’s Lenor, or something. Anyway, it’s nice.

  I feel myself drifting off. Sleep time.

  A thought makes me surface. A thought I have often now. If I didn’t come here that night, I wish I had. I’d always wanted to tell her that I knew. And in some way, offer up an apology. I know what my dad did wasn’t my fault, but he is my kin and I owed her something, surely. And to apologize for not being there for her. And for her not feeling able to tell me. To tell her I knew, and I was on her side. If I had come here that night, that’s what I would have said. And I don’t know if I did. And now she’s not here to ask. I have this strong feeling now that I didn’t come that night. And I really wish I had. Maybe I could have stopped this from happening. If I had told her, maybe she wouldn’t have killed herself.

  I switch the light off. That’s a positive thing. That’s what normal people do. They don’t wake in the middle of the night, full of fear, the lights still on.


  Tomorrow I will do a random act of kindness, and things will start to get better.

  JOCELYN

  London, 2015

  Everything has spiralled out of control. Me, the control freak, no longer in charge. And now that I have told Billy, all those old feelings have returned. The shame, the revulsion, the self-hatred, the anger. God, the anger. The fear. Nothing positive could ever come out of this, not even a baby being born, because he would always be my ghost child, my memory box, a trigger for my nightmares.

  I can’t even close my eyes any more for fear of seeing myself back there in Alderson Road, pinned to the bed, suffocating in my own pillow. Wishing myself dead rather than wishing it to be over. The blood. Fuck, the blood, and yet my mother still insisted I’d started it. He’s back in my dreams, and I just want it to stop.

  And now I hate myself even more, because this is more now of my own making. Nobody asked me to become a public figure. Nobody asked me to become the Queen of Twitter. Nobody asked me to write those ghastly columns. OK, so Ross put pressure on me, but all it would have taken was for me to say no.

  And now the tinderbox is going to set alight and explode. And I’m going to get burnt. And Billy, and Kathleen, and . . .

  What’s going to stop Ross leaking the story, anyway? Oh-holier-than-thou woman actually had kid out of wedlock. Maybe I should have told him the truth about what really happened that night. I’ve convinced him that it was nothing to do with Mark Reynolds, but I know that won’t stop him spreading the story anyway.

  And I’ve pissed Adam off, and he knows about my days with Black Orchid.

  And now I’ve really fucked up Billy’s life by telling him the truth. What must that be like for him? You can’t sugar-coat a rape. You can’t say, ‘Daddy loved Mummy but Mummy didn’t love Daddy.’ There was no love involved in his conception. Only hatred and power, the misuse of.

  I should have trusted my instincts. I should have just run away and had the abortion, and then none of us would be in this position today.

  All the bad things I have done stem from that night, and that night alone. I know I’m not blameless in a lot of things, but that’s what’s rotten to the core about me. What happened that night. And I just want these horrendous feelings to end. I can’t pretend any more.