Years later, when her brother and sister were older, she was able to go back to school. She went to the local art college where she became involved with a troubled young artist. He was supposed to be really brilliant – they told the story like it was from the pages of a woman’s weekly. But he was unbalanced, a mental case, and their relationship was always up and down. He was supposed to have hit her at one point. Then he got on drugs, and although she had kept going back to him, that was the final straw.
She left him for good one night. Then she was in an accident – a hit and run. Her mother was supposed to pick her up and found her lying face down in the road.
You could’ve knocked me over with a feather at that moment. Was that what was I hearing? The last words of a doomed girl? An innocent who put herself at the service of others all her life, struck coldly down in the rain, dead, like she was nothing to no one?
But there was more to come. In the aftermath, the boyfriend, the artist, whose name they could not remember, was accused of the crime. There was a big brouhaha locally; she was popular with those who knew her and commended for her social work. But the police could not prove he was at the scene, or that he had access to a vehicle. He was committed soon after and they never found the car, or another culprit.
The girl’s family lived in the house a little longer. But apparently they started to get phone calls, strange phone calls. They always thought it was him; but nothing was ever proven. He lived in the area for a while after his release from hospital, but was forced to leave – they said this in a serves-him-right sort of way.
They wanted to know what phone calls I was getting. Could this maniac be back in the area? Pretty startled, I said it was nothing, just silence at the end of the line. They looked at me bleakly; when they first moved in, they had been phoned a couple of times by someone. Someone who had never spoken, but they could hear them on the other end of the phone, breathing.
I was upset to say the least. And they could see it, despite my attempts to hide it. They were probably more afraid that I would use this as some kind of excuse to get out of my contract and move out.
I went back upstairs and tried to make myself some lunch. But I was too shaken, too upset. I logged-on to the web and started searching; I didn’t trust second-hand tales told by old couples with nothing better to do with their life than gossip. I searched through the local stories on the BBC site; there were a horrifying number of hit and run stories there.
But the number in Croydon was few. And the story was there, ‘Hit and Run on Saxon Road’.
I wasn’t prepared to see her face. She was so young. I suppose now that I think about it, she was actually older than me, at least when she had had the accident.
Her name was Catherine; it was only then did I realise that I hadn’t known her name.
Catherine Holden. I put it into Google and narrowed my search down to the local press, which had followed the story in a big way. She was indeed painted as an angel. Left school to help her mother, worked as care assistant at a local old peoples’ home. She was described as being caring and understanding: ‘good with all the residents, even the difficult ones’.
And then there was him – all but accused of being the culprit. He was judged to be talented; by who, I don’t know. But he had had lapses in the past. Catherine was described as being taken in by his mystique, and by her need to look after others. But he was ‘troubled’ and could sometimes be ‘violent’. Catherine’s mother was adamant that he had killed her.
But he was not trialled: ‘Artist Not Charged with Hit and Run’. There was a lack of evidence. Anthony Smith – that was his name – did not have a car. They never found the vehicle responsible; there would have had to have been substantial damage to it. No vehicle Mr Smith could have had access to had that kind of damage. And no abandoned vehicle was found that exhibited any such damage. There were no witnesses; Smith did not have a ‘satisfactory alibi’, but had recently been committed.
There were no further stories. I tried to find something more about Anthony Smith. But the name was too common, and I couldn’t find anything.
I started to cry. Properly cry, not just a few tears, full on weeping. Those words, those helpless words: “I only wanted to help him”. A beautiful caring girl run down like she was nothing. I couldn’t help but think back to my own girlfriend, who I too had supported and helped, only for her to piss off with some junky guitarist. Is that what I’d done? Been seduced by the mystique of it? A musician, a sexy, hot musician? Allowed myself to be taken advantage of? Let her walk all over me just because I thought she was out of my league? Had she been at it for years? Screwing other guitarists then coming home to safe old me to support her and to clap along to her rubbish lyrics and stolen cords?
Fucking artists. Prententious tortured fuckers; they didn’t suffer, just the people all around them.
Poor Catherine. She deserved better. We both deserved better.
It was then that I went back to the phone. I picked up the cord, plugged it back into the slot and then waited. This time I would know her name, could listen to her cry, somehow try to touch the troubled soul that was reaching out to me.
I watched the clock as darkness fell and it turned round to eight-thirty. But there was no call. I even picked up the phone to check the line was working. There was nothing. I called the phone with my mobile; it rang on queue. But it didn’t happen every night… I didn’t always get the call.
So I waited the next night, made sure I was at home. And the night afterward – but nothing. She didn’t call. I felt like I’d abandoned her. That I was the last person she had tried to reach and I had rejected her. She was lost, wherever it was that she was. I had left her adrift…
Part of me knew that even if she had called back, I could do nothing; that she never heard my voice anyway. But some part of me wanted to do something, anything, no matter how small. Even if, in the tiniest of ways, just being there, to listen to her cry for help, somehow meant I could be there for her – then I wanted to do it.
But she stopped calling. A week went by – not a call came.
I sank further into depression. I would come home from work and sink into the sofa. And I do mean sink; I would bury myself in the cushions, sometimes for hours, with or without the TV on. I ate only takeout food, anything that required the least amount of preparation. I put on weight. I looked pale.
My work suffered. My colleagues saw me show up with bags under my eyes, my clothes scruffy, smelling of cigarettes and alcohol. I was eventually called in by the surgery manager, who gave me a very strict telling off. I didn’t take it well; I was still drunk from lunch. He said I was on my final warning.
I hit a new low. That night I went to the pub and hooked up with the pub slag. You know the type: dresses too provocatively even for an 18-year-old, but is somewhere in her mid-forties, and that’s if you’re being generous. Bad permed hair, cleavage wrinkles, always stands as if she’s holding a cigarette. I was so pissed I staggered back to her place, a dirty dump down a back alley with fag burns on the furniture and mould in the coffee cups. I remember waking up next to her and wanting to vomit; that sounds excessively cruel I know, but bear in mind that I had also drank enough to floor a heavy Irish wrestler.
I tried to tidy myself up for work that morning, but everyone, including myself, knew I was in no fit state to be there. I told the receptionist that I was going home ill at lunch. She didn’t believe there was anything really wrong with me, beyond the obvious.
I went home, and after a short period with my head amongst the sofa cushions, I started to drink again. It was the only thing I wanted to do.
I passed out sometime late afternoon. I don’t know when, all I know is that I awoke when it was dark.
The phone was ringing. It was a few moments before I realised what was happening. It was half-past eight. The room was spinning; I stumbled to my feet. Barely staying upright, I went for the phone. I picked it up and dropped it.
I fell t
o my knees with a thump and scooped it up. It was her, the sweet, but frightened voice spoke out to me:
“You were right, he’s a lost cause. I only wanted to help him.”
“Catherine, I’m so sorry,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “I’m so, so, sorry. You deserved so much better. So much better...”
After a short silence, I heard “Hello?”
My jaw dropped open: she had spoken to me! I started to tremble. “Hello,” I said back.
“Who’s there?”
She was speaking to me; she was real, she was alive!
“I’m coming to get you,” I said triumphantly. “Stay where you are!” I don’t know why I said it, why I believed that anything could be done. But right then, I believed that I could save her.
I slammed the phone down and leapt across the floor. I took my keys, not my coat, out to my car. It was pouring down with rain. I started the engine without considering that, A: I was in no condition to drive; and B: that I had no idea where Saxon Road was. I took off quickly and drove on to the main road before considering this, but a copy of my trusted A-to-Z helped me find what I was looking for.
I found myself diverted down a series of quiet suburban streets, the last place anyone would expect an act of violence and death. Saxon Road was no different; old Georgian houses, now split into flats.
The rain was coming down thick. I drove slowly, looking carefully between parked cars and trees and lampposts. Where was she? Was she even there?
Then, as I approached the road’s end, I saw her. I could not see her face, but knew it was her – it had to be. She was dressed in a thigh-length white coat, with a long cream-coloured dress with a ragged floral trim. Her head was shielded by her hood – her arms were folded, hugging herself for warmth. She stood under a street sign pointing to Selhurst Station. I stopped in the middle of the road, got out of the car, and ran to her.
“Catherine,” I yelled.
Startled, she turned to me.
It really was her. Her skin was pale, her eyes marked by smudged mascara. She was soaked, absolutely dripping with water; it was as if she’d been there forever.
“Catherine,” I said again. I ran right up to her; too close, she took a step back in hesitation.
“Who are you?” she said, frightened.
“I got your… ” I didn’t know how to explain it, explain how I’d come to be there. So I said, feeling like some romantic hero from a movie: “I’ve come to take you home.”
She stared at me, her mouth hung open, unsure what words to say. But then in the distance, we heard the sound of tyres screeching across a road.
It was pouring down after all, hazardous conditions to be driving in. Yet, in that moment, to us both, it must’ve seemed like fate – like time running out...
She looked towards the sound and then back to me. And then she said, after a deep breath: “Take me home.”
I nodded. I dashed back to the driver’s seat, quickly leaning over to open the passenger side door.
With a slow but determined walk, she came to join me inside. She really was soaking; her clothes squelched against the seat. I did my best not to stare at her as she sat down. It wasn’t until I had turned the keys in the ignition and had started to drive away that she pulled down her hood and showed her face.
I could see it only in the passing glow of the street lights – she looked tired; there were bags beneath her eyes. She was thin, her cheekbones prominent, unlike they were in the photographs in the paper – taken no doubt in happier times.
Yet she was beautiful. Maybe it was the all-white look, soaked blonde locks and ice-white complexion that made her look like an angel. Like someone who did not belong in this world with the rest of us.
A word did not pass between us as I drove. She stared blankly ahead, barely changing in her expression. And I, I could think of nothing to say to her. I kept glancing across at her, looking for signs of thought or feeling on her face, but she remained blank. How was I to find the words, find the words to describe how I felt? This bizarre mix of sadness, guilt and joy that she was here, here now with me, and safe. I was so confused; I barely paused to consider that all this was impossible, that what was occurring to me, to us, was a bona-fide miracle.
I parked in front of my flat, leapt out of my seat, passed around the front of my car and opened up her door. She stood like a woman in shock; her handbag clutched unnaturally in front of her like a child with a teddy bear.
I skipped to the front door and unlocked it swiftly. I held the door open as she squeezed by. She was briefly more animated, looking around at the walls and the fixtures before saying slowly:
“This is not my home…”
Breathing heavily, I said “That’s because you don’t live here any more.” She stared at me icily – maybe that had been too blunt. “You’ve been away a long time,” I said awkwardly.
Her icy stare gave away to one of sadness, recognition that what I had said was somehow true. With head bowed, she walked inside and slowly ascended the stairs. I followed closely behind and brushed in front of her when we reached the landing.
“Let me take your coat,” I said. I hung it up on the kitchen door and showed her into the living room. I felt ashamed of its disgusting state: the pile of dirty plates, the loose take-away packaging, and the scattering of empty cans and bottles. I did a very quick sweep of the room – gathering whatever rubbish I could and then darted into the kitchen and stuffed the lot in the dustbin, recycling be damned.
I came back into the living room and found her sat uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa, her back straight and her hands crossed on her lap.
“Can I get you something?” I said like a hopeless fool. “Something warm maybe?”
She looked up at me accusingly: “Who are you?”
I had fashioned a footstool out of a plastic carry crate I hadn’t put away after I moved in. I put a cushion on it and pulled it across the floor until I was sat in front of her.
“My name is Johnny, I got your phone call.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but withdrew the words before speaking them.
“Do you know how long you’ve been out there?”
“W…what are you talking about?” her face twisted, confused. “What’s going on?” she pleaded.
“I don’t know how… I can’t explain,” I said, words just pouring out. “But I’ve been getting your calls for weeks. And I found out what happened; I know what happened to you. And when you spoke to me, when you finally answered me, I had to come, and I knew just where to find you. I had to save you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said with panic, shuffling back into the sofa cushions in discomfort. “Where’s Mum? I want to speak to my mum!”
“I’m here to help you.”
“You can’t help me,” she sobbed. She started to cry. If there was one thing I had plenty of, it was take-away napkins – within seconds I had handed her a tissue.
“Everything’s going to be ok.”
“It’s not ok. It’s never going to be ok. I loved him,” she cried. “I really loved him, but he’s destroying himself and I can’t watch him do that. I just can’t.”
I took the chance and lifted myself from the box stool and onto the sofa next to her.
“Do you know what it’s like to love someone so much it hurts? That it tears you up to watch them kill themselves, so much, but you can’t just leave them.”
I reached out to hug her, but her head was sobbing into my shoulder first. Streams of tears running down her face, her whole body trembling with grief. I held her; I held her tight.
She wept. I cried too – unavoidably thinking now of my own former lover. She who had taken my love selfishly and had not returned my affection. She who had betrayed me, betrayed my trust.
“You can’t just take on other people’s problems,” I spluttered. “You have to have something for yourself. You’ve got to keep some of yourself for you, or else you’ve g
ot nothing. If you give too much you just come out empty. You’re a person too. You can’t live your life like a… like a… like a dry sponge, you’ve got to soak up some love for yourself.”
There was a moment of silence. She lifted her head to look at me. Our eyes locked on to each other, both in recognition of what might quite possibly constitute the worst metaphor ever uttered outside of a sixth-form college poetry class.
It broke the tension. We both paused to laugh.
“You know what I mean,” I said sheepishly.
She looked into my eyes again. Her eyes suddenly seemed large, magnetic. I could feel her looking into me, right into me; the movement of her eyes was felt in the back of my skull. I don’t know who made the first move, but our lips were suddenly locked, her arms were around my neck, her hands running through the hair on the back of my head.
It was all so spontaneous, smooth and uninhibited, like an edited motion picture love scene. I pulled off her soggy shirt and she lifted off my stained T-shirt. We fell back on the sofa; she gently caressed my back as I rolled her over slightly to unhook her bra.
We made love for a long time I think. It all seemed so slow, I can’t remember it without blurred edges, a kind of surreal out-of-focus montage. It doesn’t seem real now. I don’t remember the feeling of sweat on my back, or the sound of her moans. I don’t think I even thought for a moment about contraception – and I was normally so courteous about that.
And then, at the moment of climax… it wasn’t like a fade to black, it was like a fade to white. Some great trippy hippy freakout. I must’ve fallen asleep then. You never remember falling asleep, but yet that’s the bit I remember most – fade out. And then sleep. Sleep like I have never had before or since. Uninterrupted, un-disturbed; I did not dream. I remember not dreaming. There was nothing more to say, nothing more to think. I was… whole I suppose. And for the briefest of moments, absolutely content.
I awoke sometime the next afternoon. I lay in my pants on my living room floor, smelling badly of sweat and with more than the slightest hint of a headache. My body ached; I pulled myself up – I was alone.
Eleven New Ghost Stories Page 25
