Another Place

by Matthew Crow

  ‘That’s sweet.’

  ‘You can’t save Sarah. But you can help in shaping how she’s remembered. Why not try to tell people about the good parts?’ he asked. ‘Show that she was more than just… just what everybody thought she was.’

  ‘I’m not sure there were any,’ I said after a while, ‘at least nothing she enjoyed.’

  ‘She was a sixteen-year-old girl. She must have had the same hopes and dreams as everybody else your age, no matter how muddied her waters became. Find them, let people hear the good bits.’ Dad went to collect the tea tray.

  ‘Look closer, Claudette, focus on the task at hand instead of the unmanageable whole. Sometimes there is no context.’ Dr Chastin’s words played through my mind.

  Right now, the whole world seemed to be doing just the opposite. No one could not accept that a person, more than likely a person they knew, had simply taken Sarah, hurt her and destroyed her because their urges were greater than their notion of consequence. No one could not accept that if they’d looked more closely when she was alive then maybe they’d have seen just how much danger she was getting herself into.

  The more I thought about her, the angrier I became. In Sarah I saw parts of myself – a girl trying to escape something she might never be able to outrun. Perhaps she had gone about it the wrong way, running from her demons by throwing herself at monsters. But the fact remained: we had all failed her. Myself as much as anybody.

  Even if I hadn’t looked away from the awful things she did, what exactly had I done about it?

  I hadn’t been able to help her in life, but in death I would do my best.

  I would give her the peace she had never found for herself.

  It would be my mission; my gift to the friend I had lost.

  14

  To The Lighthouse

  The lookout stank of rotting fish and old saltwater.

  ‘This is not what I had in mind,’ Jacob said with a sigh.

  He had met me as promised, albeit ten minutes late and lacking the enthusiasm I’d hoped he’d bring to the operation. Because of his lax approach to timekeeping, we’d been forced to wade to the lighthouse across a low, approaching tide, stopping occasionally so that he could take pictures with his freshly replaced lens. I’d had the good sense to wear ample footwear. Jacob, ever the indie darling, wore his barely fastened Converse knock-offs, which he’d had to remove, tying the laces together and wearing them around his neck so as to avoid coming down with trench foot.

  It had not put him in the best of moods.

  ‘Teamwork makes the dream work,’ I said, once we’d made it over. I pushed a lid off a tin drum which turned out to be empty, save for a cloying odour that gripped my throat tight and refused to let go for some time. ‘You could try and be more help.’

  ‘I told you, this is sightseeing for me,’ he said, taking a close-up photograph of the brickwork in the old stone shack that sat at the foot of the lighthouse. ‘Your business is your business. Anyway I still think you’re wrong. If there had been anything here to find, they’d have found it by now.’

  ‘Oh ye of little faith,’ I said, stepping over a pile of petrified old rope that had been abandoned many years ago, coiled up into a point like a sleeping cobra. ‘Whatever she was hiding, it’s here.’

  I knew Sarah used this island as her safe space. She didn’t have a room of her own, but this lighthouse was the next best thing; and like any teenager, she needed a place to tell her secrets to.

  Sometimes I’d sit alone on the beach.

  Sometimes Mr Fitzpatrick would be in the distance, out talking to the ocean, oblivious to my presence.

  Sometimes there would be people having sex in the sand dunes. Or in the back of family station wagons in the unlit car park.

  Sometimes the night air would be broken by the sound of music swelling and dimming as the doors to the nightclub were thrust open, muffling to a hush as they closed again.

  Sarah would always walk alone to the lighthouse. If ever she was carrying something with her when she left, she never was when she returned.

  I walked carefully around the base of the lighthouse now, kicking larger rocks with the side of my foot, desperate to unearth any clues that may have been hidden. Jacob had left me alone and was at the edge of the causeway, now sealed off with a low ocean that would be impossible to cross for hours, taking photographs of the land from behind a pile of artfully arranged rocks.

  The mission was proving to be futile. There were shopping bags and condom wrappers. Occasional syringes and Coke cans dotting the rocks like rubies. Sections of rope and seaweed clung to surfaces, and the air felt damp and off.

  The sea made a different sound towards the back of the lighthouse. It was a hollow sound; a tight echo like a space being filled and emptied over and over again. I followed the noise, stepping down towards the lowest edge of the island where the water kissed the land like the seal of a love letter, and followed the broken paving to the back of the lighthouse.

  The grate covering the tunnel was rusty and almost sealed shut. A girl like Sarah could have snuck through the gaps with relative ease but, as I discovered, for anyone with a fair set of tits and a noteworthy arse it was a chore to squeeze through the bars that shed dirty brown smears onto anything they touched. You had to crouch down to make it into the tunnel, but once you were inside there was room to stand.

  The floor dipped in the middle, collecting a pool of filthy water that channelled steadily beneath the lighthouse and out of sight. On the walls were old hooks long since stripped of purpose, and a long, stone bench the colour of dirty pennies. In the middle of the bench there was a box, so rusted it was almost undistinguishable from the stones around it, and secured by a metal clasp with no padlock.

  I snapped a fingernail the first time I tried to open it. The gritty catch had sealed itself shut and the lid was heavy and sharp at the edges. My second attempt was just as futile and I was about to call for Jacob when the lid came open with a loud clang which echoed around the tunnel and made my skin tingle.

  Strapped to the box’s lid were two fading orange lifejackets, side by side, with once white strings that had come loose and hung like Halloween decorations.

  I reached in and felt along the bottom.

  It was beneath a long tarpaulin sheet that I found Sarah’s stash.

  There were three sandwich bags full of money – tightly packed wads with elastic bands at their waist. Two carrier bags full of clothes, most of them about Sarah’s size, some of them children’s, all of them still with the labels attached, a few smeared with ink from an exploded security device. Piles and piles of undelivered flyers from Dan’s club night created a safe layer for the stash against the damp base of the lockup.

  I lifted the items out one by one and sat them on top of the box. Each item of clothing had been carefully wrapped and placed inside of a carrier bag. Paper, folded up like a treasure map, was revealed to be a child’s drawing of two girls, one older, one younger; in its creases was a small, red friendship bracelet, with tiny shells beaded through it.

  ‘What’s that?’ Jacob asked and I jumped, grabbing the bag I was holding tightly.

  ‘It’s Sarah’s stuff. I found it.’

  ‘Careful,’ he said, pointing to the carrier that had flopped to the edge of the tin box.

  ‘Shit,’ I said, doing my best to save the entire thing from falling into the water before stopping in my tracks. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ I asked as dozens of small white plastic bags – like no-brand sugar – fell into the water.

  ‘That’s a shit-tonne of drugs, is what it is,’ Jacob said. ‘We need to get out of here.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said, as the packets began to disperse on the water’s surface and were slowly sucked into the stream, wherever it went. ‘The police need to know this is here.’ I bent down to grab as many of the packets as I could, only to be met by Jacob’s hand grabbing my upper arm and yanking me to my feet.

  ‘Don’t touch them,’ he s
aid angrily as I shook from his grasp.

  ‘It’s not like I’m about to hoof the lot, for God’s sake. I just want to put them back where they were.’

  ‘You don’t want to be involved in this. You don’t want any trace of yourself here. Look…’ he said, moving in front of me and squatting down towards the water. ‘Hold on to me.’

  I grabbed his hand and he lowered his leg into the water, kicking the bags up and back onto the bench. ‘There, that’s enough for them to get the gist,’ he said, standing back up. ‘The rest is up to them to fish out.’

  ‘But I need to put everything back where I found it,’ I said, suddenly concerned with the exact placement of each item beneath the tarpaulin. I placed the money to the far left hand side, with the bags of clothes next to them.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, nervously jerking his knees up and down.

  ‘I just need one thing before I go,’ I said, carefully raising the lip of the old first-aid box and ferreting through the bag.

  ‘Claudette, this is getting far too dark.’

  ‘Just one minute,’ I said, finding the refolded picture with the friendship bracelet inside. I slipped it into my bag and as I did, I felt the envelope full of flyers from Dan Vesper. I smiled to myself as I carefully removed them from my bag and placed them tidily beside Sarah’s undelivered stash, before teasing the tarpaulin back over the haul and closing the box.

  ‘Now we’re done.’

  We sat on a rock, watching the seabed emerge slowly as the tide moved back out.

  ‘Nearly time,’ I said. ‘It shouldn’t be long before it’s low enough to cross.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Jacob said. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Tell the police.’

  ‘I don’t want to be involved.’

  ‘I’ll call it in from a phone box. Do it anonymously. Nobody will know it’s us.’

  ‘Jesus, Claudette.’

  I fastened the bracelet around my wrist. I had asked Jacob to help but he’d refused to touch it. ‘It’s not like we’re the villains of the piece.’

  ‘So what are we? Heroes?’ he asked sarcastically and I shrugged.

  I knew I shouldn’t feel so energised. I knew the gravity of what we’d just done, and knew that I should react with severe caution. But in the midst of it all, all I felt for certain was that I had been right. I had known Sarah – not well, perhaps… but enough to have helped.

  ‘Whatever we are, we’ve found more than anyone else has so far. And I think I know what we need to do next. Are you busy on Friday night?’ I asked as Jacob’s face clouded.

  In Mr Fitzpatrick’s front room. We ate some biscuits that I had brought with me, and looked through some photographs. It was becoming a routine for us both by that point.

  ‘She was a beauty,’ I said about the dark-haired woman who seemed to appear in photo after photo, and he told me about his first ever trip to the cinema with his soon-to-be fiancé. The woman he would go on to marry.

  Turning a page, I found a brilliant hand-drawn copy of a painting I recognised from an art book at school.

  ‘Did you trace that?’ I asked, and he’d relayed his time at university.

  Then, retrieving a photo of a young man that had slipped onto the floor beneath his chair, I held it up. ‘What was your son’s name?’

  He went quiet and just offered me more tea.

  ‘You’re keen on the boy from the café, I assume?’ he said now, as he sipped from his small cup of water.

  ‘Jacob?’ I asked. ‘God no. I just need a friend at the moment.’

  ‘So no romance?’ he asked, with a soft smile.

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Good. Tattoos are a sign of bad things to come. He seems like trouble.’

  ‘He’s harmless enough. Strange, but harmless. I like him. Have you been to the new fish and chip shop yet?’ I asked him, keen to shift the conversation away from a subject even I wasn’t too certain of.

  One of the advantages of growing up with a dad who never shuts the hell up is that I’ve just about learnt to ape the process of small talk. That’s not to say it comes easily to me. The truth is that every bone in my body wants to break free in conversation and bombard people with a list of personal questions until I’m happy that I’ve accurately coloured the outline of them I have in my mind:

  How much money do you earn?

  Have you ever been arrested?

  When did you lose your virginity?

  Have you ever said you loved someone and not meant it?

  If you could have your time over would you really have kids again, given the chance? Honestly now…

  Important stuff. The things that make the story come to life.

  With Mr Fitzpatrick I never meant for it to happen. I never wanted to pry or be hurtful. It was just that it had been nagging at my mind for as long as I’d known him, and with the photo still in my hand, I heard myself blurt it out.

  ‘Your wife and son. What happened to them? Did they leave or are they…?’ I felt the room grow heavy and let the unspoken word linger between us.

  ‘Excuse me?’ he asked as he lowered his cup from his lips and returned it to the table with a gently shaking hand.

  ‘All these photos. You must have loved them. Still love them. But you never talk about it. I don’t understand.’

  ‘Not everybody feels the need to broadcast their every thought and feeling, Claudette,’ he said. ‘It’s the curse of your generation, assuming your every private moment has the right to be heard; that the world is interested in how you think and feel. We can’t all make a song and dance out of every cloud like you do.’ He sunk resentfully back into his chair.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ I said, sitting up from the sofa. ‘I’m sorry, Mr F. I wasn’t asking you to make you angry. I’m asking you because I am interested in you. And because I care.’

  ‘Care?’ he said. ‘Are you sure I’m a not just a distraction for you? Like art therapy or gentle exercise. I’m something you’re doing to make yourself feel better.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ I said. ‘I mean yeah, maybe part of that’s true. But so what? You get to chat to someone, which you moan about but I know you enjoy. Nobody loses here.’

  ‘How dare you come into my home and talk to me like that.’

  ‘Sorry. Look, it came out wrong. Like an accusation. It wasn’t meant that way. Really it wasn’t.’

  He was quiet for a while and shook his head before he sat forward and removed his glasses, wiping the lenses with a cloth napkin on the arm of his chair.

  ‘Well, you have a unique tone, Claudette. It does not always endear you. But I too am sorry. I snapped and that was wrong. But you have to understand, for some of us pain is something we feel we must keep secret. Something private.’

  ‘I envy your restraint,’ I said and he laughed.

  ‘I’m not to be envied. I’m just an old man who can’t let go of the past. It’s the stone around my leg. When you’ve lost the way like I have, life is something that happens around you.’

  ‘I want to understand. You do know that, don’t you? I think deep down you want to talk about it, too,’ I said quietly and he nodded.

  And then Mr Fitzpatrick spoke. And spoke. He kept talking for longer than he’d ever talked to me before. And I listened without interrupting for as long as I could ever remember doing with anyone. Even Sarah.

  He told me about the dance halls, where he met his wife. About their wedding and their honeymoon. He told me about how she had passed away in childbirth and left him with a son, Robin, whom he’d loved, and who grew up to be brilliant and successful. But who had had watched fade and disappear before his very eyes.

  ‘Sometimes he’d leave and walk for miles, for days and days. It was like he was trying to… I don’t know…’

  ‘Escape himself?’ I tried, and Mr Fitzpatrick nodded.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Mr Fitzpatrick said he’d get calls from hospitals, saying that Robin had been found dehydr
ated and exhausted, collapsed by some roadside in a distant town, or unconscious in some forest having been discovered by a dog-walker early one morning. He’d bring him home and nurse him back to health. Tend to his wounds, listen to his ramblings. Try to explain to him that he was loved, that he was safe. Watch with joy as he rebuilt himself and began taking footsteps back into the real world once more, and then watch with horror as he came apart again.

  ‘And then one day he was gone, said Mr Fitzpatrick. ‘He woke up one morning and went out for a walk. They found his shoes on the beach but not him. No note. No body. After seven years they stopped looking. But I never do. I walk to the beach every day, talk to him, ask him to come home. Of course I know he won’t, can’t. Wherever Robin is he’s there for ever. But the thought of living without him, it’s just…’

  ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Robin was… different,’ Mr Fitzpatrick said. ‘He was a brilliant young man, but a troubled one. His mind never quite settled, and neither did he. There were spells, in hospital. Like you had. But of course it was a different time. Robin couldn’t talk about his demons. About the darkness he felt coming for him. At least he didn’t feel like he could,’ he said in a whisper. ‘You’re lucky, Claudette. You live in a world that can hear your story without recoiling in horror. An illness is just that; part of a whole, not the cause and effect of everything you do, of everything you are.’

  ‘It’s hard,’ I said eventually, still shaken by his disclosure. ‘People ask you how you feel and you’re “fine” for so long. Then one day you just think, to hell with it, and tell them, and then they look at you like you’re an alien. People say they want to understand but they don’t. They just want to seem like they do. Nobody really wants to get their hands dirty.’

  Mr Fitzpatrick shook his head.

  ‘You need to give the world more credit from time to time. Don’t ever let your pain be yours alone. Don’t feed it or hide it. Let it become everybody else’s responsibility, too. Make them carry it with you. Hell, make them carry it for you if you can. Because if you don’t it will destroy you completely. The biggest mistake I ever made was going into myself. Sometimes you go so far you can’t get back out. It’s too late for me. It would break my heart to see the same thing happen to you,’ he said shakily.