by John Harvey
***
“What was that all about before?” Nick asked, as Marcus passed through the kitchen. “Sirens and everything.”
“Something going on at the petrol station, apparently. Some kind of robbery.”
Nick pulled off his apron, heading for the door.
By the time he arrived, breathless, chest aching, his mum and Jackie Ferris were sitting outside on the low wall, sharing a cigarette. The first drags Ferris had allowed herself in almost two years. Rawlings and company had already been carted away.
“What happened?” Nick asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Dawn said, getting to her feet. “Not now.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Then tell me.”
Behind them, Jackie Ferris stubbed out the cigarette and walked away.
Dawn held out her arms and hugged Nick close enough for him to feel her shake. “I’ll tell you later, okay?”
twenty seven
It was two or three nights later that Nick walked up onto the bridge. The clock by his bed had read 02:42 and he’d been awake for hours, unable to get back to sleep. A voice he thought he recognised sounding in his head.
From where he stood now, he could look down through the railings to the road below, few cars at that time, the occasional lorry, little more. The sky was clear and filled with stars and for a moment Nick thought it was like looking up at the ceiling in his room. Only more so. The moon was almost full.
In the distance, never quite dark, the centre of the city rose against a faint orange glow.
Nick shivered and pulled his leather jacket close.
“Not about to do anything silly, are you?”
Nick turned at his father’s voice and, expecting nothing, saw his father walking slowly towards him, still wearing the clothes in which he’d seen him last, blue cotton workman’s jacket, basketball boots, blue jeans.
“No,” Nick said, a slight tingling at the back of the neck.
“One in the family enough, eh?”
“Something like that.”
“So?” his father said. “Surprised to see me?”
“Yes, I suppose so.” And yet he wasn’t, not really.
“You think I’ve got some apologising to do.”
“Bit late for that.”
“Yes, well… I’ve always wanted to, you know. Apologise to you and your mum. For what I did. Only…” He smiled. “I could never figure out what to say.”
“The truth?”
“What’s that?”
“Why you did it.”
“Why I jumped?”
“What else?”
“Oh, God, Nick, half a hundred things.”
“This was the one that mattered.”
His father was standing close to him now, close enough for Nick to feel his breath, ice cold, on his face.
For some little while he didn’t speak.
Neither of them spoke.
“There was this look,” his father finally said, “would come into your mum’s eyes. Something I’d not done, some little thing. Not so little sometimes, I suppose. And she’d get this look, this way of telling me, showing how she was disappointed. Not surprised. And you — Christ, Nick, you know sometimes I’d go into your room when you were asleep and look at you lying there, arms spread wide, eyes closed, and know that sooner or later that same look of disappointment would be on your face as well. Each time you saw me. Whenever I walked into the room. And I couldn’t wait for that to happen.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have. Maybe it would’ve been different.”
His father looked away.
“Do you ever think of that?” Nick said, suddenly angry. “Do you?”
“Only every day.”
Nick closed his eyes.
“All my life, Nick,” his father said, “I said no to things, all kinds of things, stayed in my own little world, found excuses for turning them down.”
“You stuck to what you believed in,” Nick said.
“Look where that got me,” his father said and laughed.
Nick wanted to hug him, hold his hand.
“Your mum, she’s okay?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“That business where she works…”
“You know about that?”
“She was brave.”
“Yes, she was.”
“And you? How’s school?”
Nick shrugged. “You know.”
“You’ve taken up the guitar.”
“I don’t know for how long.”
“Maybe it’s not your thing.”
“Maybe.”
“Photography, though…”
Nick smiled.
“And the girl? Ellen, is it?”
“What about her?”
“Stop thinking you’re not good enough for her, that’s all.”
“Is that what I’m thinking?”
And suddenly he was no longer there. Nick leaned back against the bridge and felt the iron of the railings hard against his back and arms. The stars, some of them, had been swallowed up by clouds. So many more questions he had wanted to ask. Maybe if he waited, patient, believed, there would be another chance.
Starting to walk, he felt a little sick, a little hollow inside.
But not for long.
Tomorrow, he thought, as he walked down the steps, I’ll give Ellen a call, see what she’s doing at the weekend. Get her to come somewhere with me. Take the camera, maybe.
He quickened his pace as he realised tomorrow was only a few hours away.
