The Edge

by Chris Simms

  Looking inside a few days before, the first album he’d seen was Rum, Sodomy and the Lash by the Pogues. Fond memories had immediately surfaced. Alice and him drinking in an Irish bar on Oldham Street as the album was being hammered by a group of laughing lads who spoke with the lilting accent of southern Ireland. They kept returning to the jukebox and selecting ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’, roaring delightedly along to the words, Guinness sloshing in their glasses as they waved them about.

  He could hear the exuberant banjo, uilleann pipe and drums, taste the fug of cigarette smoke in the air. At some stage during the evening, he’d walked unsteadily up to the jukebox, slotted in a coin, selected ‘Dirty Old Town’ and then stood in the middle of the pub, pint raised to Alice as the song described kissing by the gasworks wall and dreaming dreams by the old canal.

  Later that night, they’d walked along beside the Rochdale canal as it wended its way through the centre of Manchester, derelict mills and empty warehouses rearing up around them. He’d paused to lift Alice so she sat on the crumbling wall bordering the tow path and, faces level, kissed her as the song played on in his head.

  ‘It’ll be going cold.’

  ‘What? Oh, yeah.’ He lifted the cup and took a sip of tea. She’s forgot the sugar.

  ‘Nice?’ she asked.

  ‘Perfect, thanks.’

  ‘Good.’ She got to her feet. ‘And another thing . . .’

  He turned his head to see her gaze sliding slowly down the contours of his torso. With one hand, she swept her mane of blonde hair over a shoulder. The gesture was just a little too contrived and he had to concentrate on maintaining his unsuspecting expression. ‘If Holly’s staying over this Friday, we should get some action in tonight.’

  He raised an eyebrow, while picturing the yawning expanse of her bed. The platform on which he’d have to perform, yet again. God, I’m getting old. ‘I’ll get this down me, then.’

  Once she’d closed the door, he sat back and replaced his half-finished drink on the rim of the bath. What the hell, he thought, am I doing here? He let his eyes close. What other options did I have?

  For the first few weeks after Alice had asked him to move out, he’d kipped in the spare room of the cramped flat his younger sister, Ellie, owned. But with his irregular hours, the impracticalities of it soon became apparent. After that was a room in a cheap hotel. But, even with a discount for booking by the month, the cost was too high to maintain on his wage.

  Buying property was completely out of the question, so he’d begun looking at renting somewhere near the city centre. But prices had rocketed in the past few years. He remembered driving around the slightly cheaper areas near Withington one Tuesday afternoon. Students ferrying crates of bargain beer back to their flats. Clusters of uncollected bin bags in unkempt gardens, litter dotting the pavement. Bikes with their front wheels missing chained up to railings. The idea of living there was ridiculous.

  When Carmel made a move on him one evening after work, a night of no-strings sex was too good to refuse. A little to his surprise, there was no hint of awkwardness the next morning. The arrangement grew in frequency until, a few weeks before, she mentioned that he may as well move in. Sharing the bills and rent would save them both a bit of money. Things would also be easier, she reasoned, if he didn’t have to go back to his hotel most mornings to throw on fresh clothes before heading into work. Unable to see any major drawbacks, he’d agreed.

  The skin on the tips of his fingers had begun to pucker and the bathwater was growing tepid. He leaned forward, yanked the plug out and looped the chain round a tap. The plastic nail file which had been floating between his knees began to turn, slowly making its way to the far end of the bath. He felt a slight tickling on his ribs as the level of water gradually dropped. Now the nail file had begun to rotate on the spot directly above the plug, tilting upwards as the vortex of water gathered strength beneath it.

  Soon it was almost vertical, the speed of its revolutions growing faster and faster until its tip finally made contact with the plug itself. It shook and trembled and eventually keeled over as the last remnants of water vanished.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty One

  Thirty Two

  Thirty Three

  Thirty Four

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  The ideas behind the story

  Cut Adrift - Prologue

  Cut Adrift - Chapter One

  Cut Adrift - Chapter Two