by Steve Mosby
'Mike,' I said.
His eyes went wide.
'Alex? Jesus Christ, man.'
He glanced back into the house, then looked at me again and shook his head, unable to believe he was seeing me. For a moment, neither of us knew what to do.
Then he stepped out and threw his arms around me.
The physical contact was a shock. My hands hovered for a second, and then I hugged him back, a little uncertainly. He stepped away, but kept his hands on the side of my arms, and peered intensely at my face, as though it had done some kind of magic trick and he was trying to figure it out.
I felt helpless. 'How are you doing?'
'How am I doing? Fuck that, man. How are you?'
I opened my mouth to answer - somehow - but he'd left the question hanging, and was already dragging me inside, calling up to the landing above.
'Julie! Come down!'
I had time to look around the corridor and think well, he's decorated, and then I heard Julie coming down the stairs.
'Shhh,' she said quietly. 'There's no - oh my God.'
She" stopped near the bottom and just stared at me.
'Julie,' I said.
'Alex.'
Her hair was shorter and blonder than it used to be, cut in a neat bob now, and she was wearing a light blouse and a dark skirt. As with Mike, there were small changes, but she seemed far more surprised at the sight of me. In fact, she looked like she'd seen a ghost, and I was worried she was going to drop the baby she was holding.
Mike walked over and took the child from her, then glanced down at it with an expression on his face I'd never seen before.
'And this is Josh,' he said, turning his body so I could see.
I said, 'Wow.'
Josh looked to be only a few months old and he was sleeping peacefully right now. I looked from Mike to Julie, then back at the baby. I realised I didn't have the faintest clue what I was supposed to do next.
'Congratulations,' I said.
* * *
Chapter Seven
Half an hour later, I was sitting on my own in their front room, cupping my hands around an empty coffee mug. I didn't know quite what to do with myself. I was trembling slightly.
More than anything, it was the reaction I'd had to Mike hugging me outside that had upset me. Even back in uni, he'd been a tactile guy, and it had never bothered me before - but it had jolted me just now. It was strange to realise just how much I'd frozen up over the last two years. When I thought about it, aside from an occasional handshake, I honestly couldn't remember the last time I'd been that physically close to someone. I almost wanted him to try again so I could have another stab at it. The worst thing was that I wasn't sure I'd manage it any better.
And looking around the front room wasn't helping matters.
In my head, Mike's house was ramshackle. He'd been with Julie for a while before I left, but still - this place had always been his, remaining entirely and no doubt frustratingly resilient against her repeated attempts to civilise it. But now, it was tidy and grown-up. There were new carpets, new paint, new matching units. Even the settees were plush and spotless, positioned at careful angles to the beetle-black plasma screen mounted on the wall.
I should have expected things to change, and been prepared for this. People's lives move constantly, and it's only when you step out of them for a while that you become aware of the motion. But I hadn't seen the friends I'd left behind for such a long time now, and in my mind they'd remained static: sealed in place as the people I remembered, like faces in a photograph. But of course, in reality, they'd carried on without me, becoming different people, in exactly the same way as the city had changed. Just because you don't look at something, it doesn't mean it's not there.
Right now, Mike was busying himself in the kitchen, and Julie was putting Josh down in his cot upstairs. Following that single, brief exchange at the door, it was clear she had no idea what to say to me, and felt at least as awkward as I did. Typically for Mike, he was coping by acting as though I'd never been away at all, and it was the most natural thing in the world for me to have turned up on his doorstep. But I could tell that even he was a little lost. At the moment, he seemed to be finding things to do so as not to have to come through and talk to me. And that brought me full circle, back round to feeling miserable.
What did you expect?
A few minutes later, I heard Julie coming downstairs. Mike must have, too, because he emerged from the kitchen and passed me a glass of wine.
'Thanks.'
'No problem, mate.'
He dodged out again. As Julie walked into the room, he returned with another two glasses.
'Thanks, sweetie.' She took it, then held the back of her arm against her forehead for a second.
'Big effort?' Mike said.
'Mmm. He didn't want to settle tonight.'
'Sleeps for Britain.' Mike smiled at me. 'Well, after a bit of persuasion anyway.'
Julie raised her eyebrows: an understatement.
'Like his dad,' she said.
Then she sat down on the buffet stool by the fire, put her glass down on the hearth and clasped her hands between her knees, as though warming them. Mike sprawled at the opposite end of the settee, his arm resting halfway along the back, and then stared at me as though he still couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.
'It's good to see you, Alex.' He nodded. 'Really good.'
'You too,' I said.
But it was uncomfortable as well. I felt a little like I was standing in the dark outside a house, looking into a bright room full of people I used to know. It was nice to see them, but there was something in the way that stopped me being part of it. Something I wanted to remove, but wasn't quite sure how.
'How old is Josh now?'
Julie said, 'Nearly six months.'
I tried to think where I'd been six months ago.
'Well, I'm really pleased for you both.'
She nodded once. 'Thank you.'
Now she'd had a chance to gather herself together, she sounded a lot more formal than she had before: professional and polite, but not friendly. The undertone of that was clear enough. She gave us all a chance to sip our wine and then said:
'So. Where have you been all this time?'
'Just travelling, really.' When there was no reply, I glanced between them. 'You knew that, didn't you?'
'Yes.' Julie frowned. 'We knew that. That's not really what I meant. It's that we didn't hear from you for so long. None of us.'
I didn't reply.
'You didn't answer emails,' she said. 'Or let us know how you were doing. Or anything.'
She spread her hands. Explain this to me.
'I know,' I said. 'I'm sorry.'
'And now suddenly, you're back. It feels very strange.'
'It feels strange for me too.'
Her face went blank. Quite clearly, any strangeness here was of my own making, and she wasn't going to have much in the way of sympathy. We were not negotiating the choppy seas of this conversation in the same boat.
'What happened?' she said.
My wife died, I thought. Could people please leave me alone? And perhaps a blankness settled in my own expression then, because Julie shifted slightly.
'Well, I know what happened. What I mean is, why did you never get in touch? None of us knew where you were. You just vanished.'
'I'm sorry,' I said.
'But it's like we meant nothing. Sarah was really hurt by it.'
'Ah, Julie,' Mike said.
'No.' Her voice jabbed at him like a finger. 'You were too.'
My glass clinked gently as I put it down on the coffee table. This was a mistake, Alex. And the voice was right: it had been a stupid thing to do, coming here. Unlike all my other mistakes, however, at least there was an easy way to rectify this one.
I was about to stand up and leave - but then I stopped myself. Was it really what I wanted to do? I'd known it wasn't going to be easy being back here. Julie couldn't u
nderstand what it was like for me when I'd left, and I hoped she never would, but at the same time, she had every right to be annoyed. And maybe running away again at the first reminder I'd done something wrong wasn't the best way of handling things. It hadn't worked for me so far, had it?
I settled back down. 'OK.'
And then I waited them out, aware that Julie was watching me. It seemed to take a long time for her to come to her decision, but eventually she sighed to herself.
'Well,' she said quietly. 'I suppose you're here now.'
Mike had never been a big fan of awkward silences, and he only let this one ride for a few seconds.
'So,' he said. 'Where have you been?'
'Europe mainly.'
'Oh yeah? Anywhere nice?'
I smiled. The way he said it, anyone would think it had been weeks rather than years. I picked up my glass of wine.
'Just travelling around: going place to place. I've not been anywhere in particular.'
I reeled off a few cities, finding it hard to remember now it came to it. But then, I hadn't been gathering snapshots, or not deliberately anyway. My mind had taken a few, but they weren't filed in any real order; they were more like quick pictures, taken at random by someone just testing the camera still worked.
Mike nodded along anyway.
'Have you got somewhere to crash?' he said.
'Oh - yeah. I'm fine.'
'Because we've got the settee. I mean, it's not much, but it's yours if you want it.'
I smiled again. The offer was just like him, and I was genuinely touched. There was no way I'd have taken him up on it, of course, even if I hadn't already booked the hotel. I suspected Josh would be growing up in a broken home if I did.
'Thanks, but I've got a room in town.'
'Are you staying, though?'
'I'm not sure. I heard about Sarah on the news - I haven't really thought much beyond that.'
'That's why you came back?'
'Partly. I don't know. I'll at least stay for the funeral.'
'That might be a while.'
'I guess so.'
'What did you see on the news?'
'Not much. Just that something happened between James and Sarah…' I trailed off for a second. Saying it out loud had just made it seem more real. 'I saw that they'd found her body.'
'But they haven't.'
'Mike.' Julie glared at him.
I frowned. 'I thought they had?'
'No. They've found the field, but not her.' That got Mike another glare, and he raised his hands at Julie. 'What? He's got a right to know.'
'Has he?'
'It's his brother we're talking about. And one of his best friends.'
'Hang on,' I said. Mike had thrown me a little, so that even the sudden third-person hostility didn't make the impact it might have done. 'But I saw it on the news. And in the newspaper report. The gate, the bottles…'
Neither of them answered.
'What's going on?'
Julie was still looking at Mike. It was her that eventually turned to me.
'We've been in touch with Barry Jenkins,' she said.
The name rang a bell. I'd seen it in the newspaper.
'The guy who wrote the report?'
'Yes,' she said. 'Sarah's editor.' 'OK.'
'The press have more information, but they're not releasing it to the public yet. The police have asked them not to print it until they're sure what's happened. But Barry's kept us in the loop.' She glanced at Mike. 'Confidentially.'
'And what has happened?'
'They know they've found the field where James left her. It's the right place. There's physical evidence at the scene. So they know Sarah's body was there.'
'I don't understand.'
She took a deep breath.
'Alex, they gave the description of the gate and bottles days ago. People have been looking out for it ever since. A walker found it, but obviously he didn't go and investigate. And when the police went in-'
Julie stopped suddenly, and looked up at the ceiling. My first thought was that she'd heard a noise from Josh, but then I realised she was trying not to cry.
I looked sideways at Mike.
'And when the police went in… what?'
Mike looked at me for a second. It wasn't that he was reluctant to answer. His expression was more like he didn't quite know how. As though what he could bring himself to say wouldn't be enough.
'Mike?'
'Sarah's body wasn't there any more,' he said. 'The police think someone else must have… found it first.'
For some reason, it was the taxi driver's words that came back to me then. You know what gets me the most? It's that she was lying out there all that time. The police had given a description of the scene and the wrong person had followed those instructions and found it before they did. Her body was there, and now it wasn't.
She had been lying out there all that time, and…
'Someone has moved her body?'
Mike said nothing
And I shook my head, because I suddenly understood what that silence meant. It was almost incomprehensible, but it was right there in the expression on his face. He was just unable to speak the word out loud.
Not found, he was saying. Not moved.
Taken.
* * *
Part Two
* * *
Chapter Eight
At first, traffic officer Carl Webster couldn't work out where the screaming was coming from. It made the hairs on his neck stand up. Even though he knew it must be coming from a human being, there was something primal about it, as though he wasn't hearing a man in pain at all, but the anguished cries of an animal.
He'd just parked up a little back from the intersection where the crash had taken place. At first glance, the accident before him didn't appear serious enough to warrant such a sound. Maybe that was what disturbed him. Even as he stepped out of the patrol car, he had a sense that something was off-balance here: out of the ordinary. Every nerve inside him was on edge.
Three cars rested across the junction. The furthest vehicle - facing him - was angled to one side, its front crumpled like a ball of paper, the windscreen shattered. Nearest to him, another car was pointed towards it, the red hazards blinking on its sturdy back end. The driver and passenger doors were open on both vehicles, and a few people were standing hesitantly nearby.
A couple of them were peering into the third car, a black estate that was turned sideways in the middle of the intersection. The front was slightly buckled and the back had popped open.
Immediately, Carl could see what had happened. The driver of the black car had lost control and swerved into the oncoming lane, hitting the furthest vehicle. The car behind had then smacked into it and flipped it round. But the damage to all the vehicles looked relatively minor.
That was what made the shrieking that pierced the air so incongruous.
What the hell is that?
In the distance, at least, he could hear sirens.
'Please,' Carl said, 'step away from the vehicle.'
He made a mental note of the faces around him in case anyone decided to disappear. It wasn't likely. The screaming seemed to have frozen them in place, like rabbits in headlights. Everyone was just looking at him helplessly.
Carl moved between people to get a better look at the black estate, hanging back slightly.
'Who are the drivers here?'
He couldn't see inside properly - the windows were blacked out. A gangster-mobile. But a cheap one, with old, rusted bodywork. It reminded him of a hearse.
He turned back to the people.
'Who are the drivers?' he repeated. 'What happened?'
An ashen faced man in a suit actually put his hand up.
'You're not in school,' Carl said. 'What happened?'
'I'm so sorry. He just… swerved in front of me. I'm not sure why. It looked like he had a wasp in his car or something.'
A young woman was hugging herself. 'I didn't have time t
o stop.'
That was what he'd thought. 'A wasp?'
'He was waving at something.'
Carl glanced back at the estate. The screaming was awful. He'd attended more accidents than he cared to remember, but he'd never heard anything like it. In his experience, as odd as it sounded, the more badly injured a person was, the less noise they made. Like death was a vulture circling, and people kept quiet out of instinct, so it wouldn't know they were available. Or just in shock, an old partner had told him when he mentioned it. Whatever: it generally held true.
It didn't sound like this person was injured. It sounded like their fucking soul was on fire.
'Wait on the pavement, please.'
The people dispersed to either side, and Carl moved closer to the estate. At any other accident, he would have been there already, but he was nervous here. The shrieks were degenerating into wretched, inhuman sobbing, and he couldn't shake that feeling that it wasn't a man in this vehicle at all, but a wounded animal that might snap at him if he tried to help.
'Sir?'
He tried to peer in. Actually, he could see into the front - the windows weren't made of darkened glass after all. The windscreen itself was tinted, but the side windows had been covered on the inside: decked out with black fabric. The driver had decorated the whole interior of the car with awkward, homemade curtains, stretched across the glass like bats wings. But they had fallen away on the passenger side, and Carl could see the front seats.
There was nobody there.
He could still hear the noise; the driver must have crawled into the back. Now that he was closer, he could hear the man was talking to himself. Repeating something. Although not in any language Carl had ever heard before.
'Sir?'
He pulled open the back door of the estate. The man was curled up in a foetal position on the back seat. As the light hit him, he began screaming again, pulling himself into an even tighter ball. Pressing himself against the far door of the vehicle.
