The train hurtled on, doing its best. I wrapped my cardigan round myself and folded my arms: it was cold for an August night, the wind gusting in to the carriage each time the doors opened at a station. Or maybe it wasn’t cold and it was just me; I think I was in a state of mild shock. I couldn’t believe what had happened, but my dreamy exhaustion reminded me that it had. It was too soon for guilt, but not for fear: Ricardo must never find out, I wouldn’t even tell Emma, and I’d make sure I’d deleted the text Ali had sent me before I left the hospital. ‘Come early!’ it had buzzed, innocently enough – were it not for the fact that I’d told Ricardo that Ali had already left for Cuba. And anyway, I was keen to delete that embarrassingly prophetic demand.
So I fished in my bag and dug around for my phone. But then it came to me. I saw myself going to the piano to put it in my bag before I left, noting with a heavy heart that there were still no texts or missed calls. Wondering if, after what I’d done, I deserved a text or call anyway. And Ali, with his endearing self-absorption, putting his arms around me and telling me not to be sad, not to worry, we were special friends, always would be, what had happened was natural, beautiful. He’d forgotten about Ricardo, and I must have done too, just for a moment, comforted by the warmth of his strong arms, talking about September, until the taxi arrived. I left, feeling simultaneously wrenched away and yet ready to leave what I’d done behind me. And leaving my phone behind me on the piano.
Oh for fuck’s sake, I said to myself, slamming my head back on to the seat and staring at the roof of the carriage, the luggage rack. Then realising that I might be sitting in the same seat, the same carriage, the same train as when I met Ali for the first time. I seemed to have been haunted all evening by flashbacks of that first meeting, as if today was the culmination of everything that had happened since. Yet, as soon as I thought this I resented it; had that been the goal, to have sex with Alejandro Cortés? No, there was something else that I was being led to.
Eleven o’clock. I shivered. Perhaps at this moment Ricardo was texting me, telling me he’d told Ana and she’d taken it well; perhaps we were telepathic, I thought. Forgetting that a few years back Seb and I used to think we were telepathic: the time he asked Ollie’s mum to take him home, saying he had a headache, when I’d almost knocked myself out on a branch in the wood; the time I turned up at his school to hand in a non-urgent letter when Jack Dunkley was nearly strangling him in the sandpit near the car park.
Haywards Heath. I bounded out of the carriage and down the stairs, sprinted across the car park. Desperately saving minutes, as if they would make a difference.
Ten to twelve. I’d reached the front and pulled in to the usual place. There were still some Dancia-type teenagers walking around, but most were congregating near the doughnut place by the pier. I got out of the car and stood on the pavement for a better look, straining to pick up Ollie’s curly head and square, confident stance – he was supposed to be getting an expensive taxi home but I assumed he wouldn’t leave until Seb did – and Seb’s taller, bendy frame beside him. But there were too many people, quite a crowd. Several police cars, as usual. No doubt the two of them, along with other Dancia teenagers, were gawping at the arrest of some beach druggies.
When I got nearer I spotted Seb’s bright yellow hoodie arms round a girl standing next to a boy that could be Ollie. I kept walking. He’d had his fun, I thought – Dancia, doughnuts and police-drama – it was time to go home. I’d offer to give Ollie a lift.
And yes, I could then see it was definitely Ollie, wearing his stripy designer polo shirt, but clutching himself, his head down. Having got some alcohol from somewhere and overdone it, I assumed. Perhaps he’d be better in a taxi; I didn’t want him throwing up in my car. But that wasn’t going to be necessary, as I could now see his father’s bald head beside him. And his mother.
And then the yellow hoodie arms disappeared, and I realised that Seb’s arms weren’t in them: the girl had had his hoodie round her shoulders and was now clutching it in front of her. Hugging it. Sobbing into it.
As we would be doing.
34.
Your old smoking bench,
The Wood,
Home.
4th August.
Hey Seb,
Not a single fag end round this bench anymore – rather sad really. Emma’s packed it in, and Kenny’s staunchly anti-smoking – but then so were you at thirteen. He’s at Liam’s pier-then-cinema party this afternoon – bit insensitive of his mother to drag us there today, but I suppose we shouldn’t really expect everyone to remember the date. Five years on.
Remember the last time you and I went to the pier? We’d just done the Brighton Music Festival, must have been the Under 14 Musical Theatre Song. We’d cut the second verse of Chim Chim Cheree but you found yourself putting it back in, and by some miracle I sensed you were going to do it and flicked the page back. Turned out to be one of our best performances. But we came second. Robbed. So we decided, sod it, we won’t take you back to school, we’ll have banana crêpes on the pier.
We sat down on the blue and white deck chairs, maple syrup oozing from the bottom of the paper cone all over your school tie, and re-read the report: glowing, but marred by the Second sticker in the corner. You wanted to drop it into the sea below, watch it get tossed in and out by the waves as they rushed up between the pier and the concrete groyne.
‘Why’s it called a groin?’ you asked.
‘I dunno.’
‘What’s it for, anyway?’
‘Not sure. Well not that kind of groin anyway.’
‘Oh Mum, please,’ you said in disgust.
‘Fancy a bungee jump?’
You looked uncertain, but we left the pier and went down on to the beach level, the stench of fish and chips turning our sweet-sated stomachs.
‘Perhaps not,’ you said, after watching the man throw a small boy in a harness high in to the air.
So we walked out along the groyne.
‘Jumping or Diving from the groy-ne can result in serious injury,’ you read from the sign. ‘I mean, as if anybody would. Doesn’t look much fun, does it?’ You looked over the edge at the swirling grey waves.
‘Probably not too bad from one of those ledges,’ I said.
‘Yeah, but they’re like second and third place, they’re like a... you know.’
‘Podium?’
‘Yes, and we’re in first place, where we should be,’ you said, pressing your tummy against the wall at the end with your arms outstretched and breaking into that song from Titanic. And I found the harmony and joined in.
***
How I wanted to join you then, the next time I was there, standing there in the blinding sun with Dad and Kenny, except I couldn’t have even got to the end of the groyne. Not with all the flowers and banners, plastic-covered letters, huge inflatable guitar defiantly tied to the warning board post. Somebody had even put down a few drum and bass CDs, in case they weren’t downloadable from heaven.
And anyway, the waves weren’t strong enough to carry me away to you. They were caressing the stones then retreating, sucking loudly as if protesting their innocence. The sea had become a simpering two-faced bitch.
‘If only it’d been like –’
‘Don’t,’ said Dad. He’d stopped dwelling on the what-ifs: it had happened, they didn’t change anything. But for me they were a continuous taunt; new ones unexpectedly emerging throughout each dragging day and then playing in endless combinations in my dreams. None more so, of course, than my own guilt: what if I’d been there? But Dad wouldn’t hear of it. Even if I’d been there, he says, you and Ollie would still have left Dancia early, fuelled on the pre-Dancia gin that Ollie had brought, sweaty and elated from your success in the dance-off. I imagine you feeling blissfully released from the painful shock of the day before, the lingering anger about the missed chance for DJ glory at that party, and maybe, even, though you never talked about it, the baffling loss of your earlier ambitions.
&nb
sp; You would still have gone off to the front, Dad says, and – instead of coming to me in the car and getting in, eventually doing your holiday homework, going back to school and developing a modicum of urgency about your GCSEs, getting to know Camden market and tolerating Ricardo, having your first proper girlfriend, choosing a sixth form college, going to drama school or university, dropping out and becoming a DJ, entering the music world, never making quite enough money, falling in love, having some worrying teenagers of your own – instead of all this, you jumped victoriously from the groyne.
He was just having a laugh, Ollie said; high jinks, the police called it. As if drowning was fun. Time of death: eleven o’clock. And you came to me then, I’m sure of it. And you continue to come to me. Don’t ever stop.
Unbelievably, the days kept arriving. Like a pile of unread newspapers. Oh God... the newspapers. Dwelling on the scholarship to the twenty-five-thousand-a-year school, the starry amateur dramatics. And I’m afraid we colluded with this, illustrating the back-timed description with the only decent photo we could find: your passport one, all floppy-haired, even though we knew you’d be livid to be seen as so ‘preppy’. Sorry about that.
But a few days later Ollie came up with some mad snaps from a party, and Brighton Players had some of you laughing at a rehearsal, so we blew these up and used them at your funeral, unintentionally giving the impression that you were highly amused by the entire proceedings. As well you might have been: it was such a bizarrely mixed programme, with Only the Good Die Young, and You Can’t Stop The Beat from Brighton Players, the inevitable Lord is My Shepherd that Grandpa and Auntie Kate couldn’t manage without, and a bit too much of some abrasive dance music that Ollie insisted you’d want.
Then I went to bed. Sometimes cuddling Kenny or Dad, but often alone just staring at the crack on the edge of the bedside table. It was as if your sloth-like bed-bound behaviour had transferred to me, while my role was taken over by one of the ‘team’ – Grandpa and Jan, Auntie Kate or Emma – fussing around in the kitchen with pointless things like food.
But after a few days I heard the washing machine churning and panicked; I sprang out of bed, punched the cancel button and howled into the empty washing bin. But Dad led me to your room and pointed to a shelf in your wardrobe. We got some down: the Mr Perfect t-shirt, the yellow hoodie, and those shapeless grey track suit bottoms that I’d never again have to see hanging half way down your bottom, and sunk our faces into them, breathing in the lemony aftershave, the faint underarm and smoking smells. And we stood there, covering them with our tears, hanging on to each other, until we heard the gravel crunch and realised Auntie Kate had fetched Kenny from Liam’s and we had to get a grip on ourselves. But our reactions were slow, and there he was, bursting into the room.
‘What are you doing in here?’ he demanded.
‘We’re... putting some clothes away,’ Dad said.
‘Are they all mine now?’
‘Yes, for when you’re bigger. If you like,’ I said. ‘But everything’s yellow. I like red.’ He looked from one hollowed-out parent to the other. ‘But I could wear them.’ He pulled on the hoodie, pushed up the enormous sleeves, and with your upturned palms and raised eyebrow droned, ‘Calm down. What is your problem?’ and, just briefly, we heard ourselves laugh again.
Auntie Kate took him off for his bath and Dad put his arms round me while I ran my eyes over your room.
‘Bit tidy isn’t it?’ I said.
‘We’ve just put things away, that’s all... there’s no rush.’
I lay down on your bed, put my head on your pillow. Put my nose in your pillow.
‘Clean sheets.’
‘Well... you changed them on Sunday night after the chocolate cake.’
‘Oh. Yes.’
He sat down next to me on the bed. I waited for him to try and persuade me to sit outside in the garden, eat something. I looked at the biro marks on the side of your bedside table, considered getting under your duvet and spending the afternoon there. And then I saw your phone, attached to the charger in the usual way, for heaven’s sake. I pulled it out and picked it up.
‘How did –’
‘It was in his hoodie. I’ve checked, nobody’s called,’ he said, trying to take it from me.
But I pulled it away and started reading your messages: cheery, text-speak ones from friends, hectoring and ranting ones from me. I slammed it back on the bedside table and covered my face.
‘Come on. He needed telling what to do. And not all your texts were like that... Look at this one.’ He scrolled through and handed me the phone. A text wishing you luck for your final night of We Will Rock You, telling you how proud we were: you’d kept it for nearly two years. Another congratulating you on the punishment essay you were given in lieu of a suspension after that rooftop episode at school; the essay supposed to atone for the ‘concerning’ one that I’d been called to the school about, but had turned out – to your housemaster’s despair – to be a sequel to it: The Fall.
The Fall. I’d forgotten about that. I got up and started looking for it, asking Dad to help me. We eventually found it inside your bedside table.
‘Why in here?’
‘Must have been important to him,’ Dad said.
So I took it to my study, photocopied it, and took the copy out to the garden, ignoring the irritating ‘good-to-see-you-out-there’ comments from Auntie Kate and looks of concern from Dad, but for once tolerating the tea-and-toast that seemed to be forever coming at me. And set to work on it – just the spelling and some of the grammar, don’t worry.
After a while the team started to leave us alone more and we had to start setting the table for three. We became creatures of the night. By about ten we’d have managed to cuddle a tearful Kenny to sleep, and then we watched films until two in the morning, just like we were forever telling you not to do. We felt like you were watching it with us, debated whether you would have liked it, as if asking your opinion.
There were periods of strange calm: our pain was like a prolonged childbirth – we didn’t have to do it all at once. We’d find ourselves managing a few hours’ work. Kenny needed his normal life: we restarted his dance classes, took him, Liam, Keisha and the giggly blonde girl on an outing to the zoo for his birthday. We gave him that lifelike Highland terrier as a present from you, assuring him that you’d seen it. We went to a barbecue at Auntie Kate’s. Let Emma take us to The Lion King. Let Grandpa take us to West Wittering, a beach for heaven’s sake, so that Kenny – if not Dad and I – could somehow recapture a love of the sea. There started to be brief moments of acceptance, where we’d see your life as an inevitable curve: you’d peaked early and then, after a brief decline, you were no more. Like other short-lived beautiful things. Butterflies. Poppies. A firework. It was how you were meant to be.
But then suddenly it would come back from nowhere, catching us off guard and no longer protected by the kind cushioning of shock: the power of it, the stark, brick-wall finality and senselessness of it all, the anger and the searing pain throwing us on to the sofa, doubled up over the table. It divided and conquered, always taking each of us on our own, the other in another room, or looking on helplessly.
Bereavement – along with illness and the chronically demoralising sagging of age – is something you’re never going to have to suffer. Dad added: unemployment, or even insufficient or boring employment. I added: the terror of exams. We developed a list: filling in a tax return, changing a tyre in the rain, having a root canal, food poisoning, queuing in post offices, cleaning an oven – until life seemed such a catalogue of discomfort and numbing boredom that we wondered why anyone bothered with it at all. But at other times, one of us would come up with something like: disappointment in love. Which led us back round again to the question: did you ever make love? Or at least, have sex? We found a packet of condoms tucked into the back of your mobile case, but Dad couldn’t be sure whether they were the ones he’d given you, just-in-case, when you went to that dodgy
sleepover party at Ben’s cousin’s. It was painful not knowing, so we didn’t talk about it anymore.
Until Gina phoned. She was quiet and twittery, saying something about having lent you a white t-shirt. I said you had several, and invited her round to have a look. I thought I must have missed something: how could she be going on about a missing top, after what we’d lost?
She turned up alone, having walked all the way from the station, and looked so intimidated that I motioned to Dad to disappear. Pretty little thing: hot, as you would say, but cute with it. I took her to your wardrobe, where I’d hung all the white tops together like an identity parade: two age sixteen M&S ones for school P.E.; Ollie’s Ralph Lauren left behind after a sleepover; the unworn polo with the unforgivable grey stripe across the chest from Auntie Kate; and the three sleeveless ones you used for your costume in We Will Rock You. All present and accounted for. I watched her little painted fingers picking through them tentatively, until she stopped at one of the sleeveless ones.
‘That one,’ she said, pulling at it. I got it down. It was clearly much too large for her, had stage make-up stains round the neck and a biro squiggle on the front.
‘You know... you can choose any top you like, to remember him, his friends Ollie and Ben have.’ My throat tightened. I fussed with the hangers.
But there was no reply, so I looked down and noticed her chin trembling, and then followed her finger to the biro mark. And then I saw it: the little ‘g’ surrounded by a heart, on the side where your heart was when you were wearing it. When it used to beat.
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