Eleven

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘She’s not in my ear.’

  ‘Well, you’ve certainly changed since she came on the scene.’

  ‘I know.’

  Murray drains the rest of his glass. Outside the pub, people walk dogs, inspect second-hand books, queue in the supermarket, call after kids.

  ‘And you’ve made your mind up about this?’

  Xavier’s surprised to hear it put like this, because there was no real process of ‘making his mind up’. But it feels no less definite for being so sudden.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, there’s not much else to say, then.’

  Nonetheless Murray looks for a moment as if there are all sorts of things he might say. He gets to his feet and walks quickly to the Gents, catching his hip on a chair as he goes past a family group, and interrupting their conversation. As he continues, one of the children makes a remark; the parents laugh and then look guiltily around.

  In the bar where only a few weeks ago he thought he had fallen in love with Edith Thorne, Alessandro Romano has been drinking with an Italian friend since shortly after they closed at 1 a.m. Having got everyone out and locked up, and made sure the premises were absolutely empty, he called Marco, and by twenty-five past they were raiding the bar. They’ve had a bottle of gin, some wine; Alessandro even made a cocktail, expertly cradling and shaking the silver vessel, thumping it down on the bar, sloshing it out, as his friend cackled in the silence. It was only frightening for the first half-hour, this; now, he doesn’t give a shit what happens. He doesn’t want this job, he doesn’t want to stay in this country. He’ll keep drinking and then Marco can drive them back to Alessandro’s in his car, or if he refuses Alessandro will drive the damn thing himself, who cares?

  The journey back to Bayham Road after the show is a quiet one, but as the Escort crunches to a halt alongside the kerb, Murray says, ‘Good show tonight.’

  ‘It was,’ Xavier agrees, grateful that the silence has been broken. He clears his throat. ‘Thanks for driving me home.’

  ‘I always drive you home.’

  ‘Yes, but . . . after the – the discussion in the pub.’

  Murray’s big hand reaches around and pats Xavier heavily on the back.

  ‘There’s ner, ner, ner, ner, ner, no . . .’

  ‘No hard feelings?’

  ‘Exactly. No hard feelings.’

  Xavier gets out, slams the door shut, waves to Murray, who waves back. All is quiet in Mel and Jamie’s flat. When he opens his own door, Xavier tenses. Something is different, the air is rearranged. He goes cautiously into the bedroom. There under the covers sleeps Pippa, her face turned towards him, drawn into the pose of absolute solemnity that marks her sleeping hours. Her lips, parted a quarter of an inch, admit long, slow, even breaths. Above the line of the covers, her pale shoulders gleam in the light of the two-thirds-moon.

  On the bedside table is a note:

  If you are reading this, it means I am asleep.

  In light of the way you handled the Murray situation I thought I would also stand up to my sister for once and stay here. Some of the language she used would have made a miner blush, I’m afraid. I wrote minor the first time I did this, and had to start the whole note again.

  I was planning to stay up and be here to say hello when you came back, but that bloody floor this morning nearly killed me and I have to be up at eight. So I’ll probably try to let you sleep and slip out. But at least we’ll have had these three hours, eh?

  Love, Pippa.

  PS I have taken the liberty of binning that bread.

  Xavier watches her sleep. Wind stirs the branches of the trees in the little wood behind the flats and from the bottom of the garden floats the faint typing sound, the tapping of light rain on the shed roofs.

  XI

  Pippa must have gone at about a quarter past eight. Xavier can remember foggily registering the blur of her body as it swept past the edge of the bed. When he comes properly to consciousness a little later, Jamie is making a commotion downstairs, so Xavier doesn’t bother going back to sleep: he sits in the kitchen and read his emails. Iris, in Walthamstow, has just worked out how to use a computer, she tells him proudly. She is seeing Tony, the gentleman, for a cup of tea this afternoon. She signs it Yours faithfully.

  Still early in the morning, the bell rings. Xavier goes out onto the stairs, but by the time he’s got there, Mel is talking to someone at the door.

  ‘I was here a couple of weeks ago,’ he hears a girl say, ‘and I was talking to a man about a great way to help people less fortunate than ourselves.’

  Xavier sighs and continues down the stairs. Jamie is frisking about behind Mel’s legs, driving his toy fire engine up and down the bottom stairs, grabbing her clothes, telling her to be quick.

  ‘This is for me, I think,’ says Xavier.

  Mel turns thankfully, swatting her unwashed hair out of her eyes, and gives way to Xavier at the door.

  ‘Hello again,’ says the girl with the clipboard, a lanyard around her neck, the look of professional hopefulness. ‘We met a couple of weeks ago, when . . .’

  Jamie takes advantage of the situation and makes a break for it out of the door, past the girl, propelled forward on his small, restless legs.

  ‘Come here, Jamie! COME HERE, Jamie!’ Mel commands automatically.

  But Jamie has seen something on the road – a stick, or a feather, something he would really like – and this time he doesn’t stop.

  ‘JAMIE, COME HERE!’ shouts Mel again, and her voice rises in a shrill panic.

  Xavier follows her gaze. Mel screams a scream so terrible that the hapless fund-raiser takes several panicky steps, as if thrown backwards by the force.

  Alessandro Romano, many times over the legal limit, and his friend Marco roar unstoppably down Bayham Road in Marco’s car. Alessandro, at the wheel, is dazed and nauseous, well out of control of the vehicle. The engine is rattling; they clatter over a tiny pothole which jolts both men in their seats.

  ‘Slow down, for fuck’s sake, stop, for fuck’s sake,’ Marco shouts, but he is inarticulate, Alessandro’s hands unsteady on the wheel, and they career past the spot where months ago Xavier walked away from Frankie Carstairs.

  Alessandro, the eleventh link in the chain, sees a movement up in front of him and blasts frantically on the horn. At the bottom of the hill the Indian shopkeeper, walking back from a doctor’s appointment, stops still, his mouth slack in horror.

  For Xavier, there are two seconds of life between seeing Jamie charge into the road and realizing that the car, which tears towards them suddenly in a metal blur, will hit and kill Jamie. In the first second his mind alights on many separate thoughts, seeing them all at once, like a card player with a hand fanned out in front of him. He thinks of Michael, not prone on the floor as he last saw him, but as he must be now, walking around on little legs. He registers Mel’s animal howl, feels as if Pippa is in his arms somehow, and visualizes a Scrabble bag into which he is about to delve for an exchange of tiles. He remembers his dad saying that nobody really knows what they are doing, and, like George Weir in the throes of his heart attack some months ago, has a memory from school: Russell lumbering on all fours on the floor, Matilda on his back with her hair in her eyes, traces of dried blood around her nose.

  In the other second, feeling as if hands are pushing him from behind, Xavier sprints wildly into the road. He grabs Jamie and shoves him, with all his might, out of the way. Mel, her hands clasped to her mouth, and the Indian shopkeeper, statue-still, watch from their different vantage points as Xavier is flung up into the air by the impact of the car.

  It may look as though events have come to a head at last, as though this is the end of the chain. But Xavier, floating above the ground for a few instants, feels very differently. Perhaps he senses that, when his body hits the road, it won’t be the end of him; he will survive somehow, because for all the cold logic of the world it is also fond of handing out last-minute reprieves, defying its own rules. Perhaps
he is looking ahead to a different kind of life, a life of consequences: new opportunities for Murray and for Pippa, new paths shooting into the future from the present moment he helped to create. In any case, as he falls to earth, Xavier feels that all kinds of things are just beginning.