12-08

by Bethany Chester

  Well, I’m not getting up. I have actual work to do, unlike some people.

  A couple of minutes later, the phone is still ringing. How is that even possible? Surely it should have stopped by now. It almost seems to be getting louder. There’s no way I can concentrate with that din going on.

  I slide off my bed and storm into the kitchen.

  “Will someone please just answer the bloody phone?” I demand. “I’m trying to work.”

  Jamal and Annemarie look blankly at me.

  “Phone?” says Annemarie.

  “Yes,” I say. “You know, that thing on the wall over there.”

  “You mean the one that isn’t ringing?” Jamal says. He isn’t wearing headphones. Is he deaf or something?

  “Of course it’s not ringing anymore. We spent so long arguing that it stopped.”

  “Eddie,” Jamal says patiently. “The phone didn’t ring. You must have imagined it.”

  “Pin it on me, why don’t you?” I huff. “Just answer it next time, will you? I was trying to concentrate.”

  My friends exchange a look.

  “Are you feeling okay, Eddie?” asks Annemarie.

  I falter. I’m starting to wonder if they’re telling the truth. Annemarie looks genuinely concerned; Jamal seems amused. Then again, he finds everything funny.

  “It must have been ringing,” I protest. “I heard it. It was really loud. Wait, was it someone’s mobile?”

  Annemarie shakes her head. “Mine’s out of battery.”

  “And mine’s off,” Jamal says. “So no.”

  “Did you check yours?” Annemarie asks.

  “No, I – ”

  Jamal snorts. “Then it was yours, silly. Go and look.”

  I’m sure I turned off my phone when I got back from the café, but since I already feel like an idiot, I don’t contradict him. He calls after me as I leave the room. “Oh, Eddie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where did you go this morning?”

  “How did you know I went anywhere?” I stall.

  “I heard the front door closing,” he says, smugness personified. “So, out with it. What’re you hiding?”

  “Nothing,” I protest. “I just went for coffee with a friend. I thought you guys were asleep, and I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  “And who is this friend?” he asks, arching his eyebrows. I can tell what he’s thinking.

  “Not like that,” I say hurriedly. “A girl friend. Her name’s Clemency. She works in the library.”

  “Ah,” he says understandingly. “She’s one of your kind.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You people who don’t get the Internet. They should send you all back to Elizabethan times.”

  “No, they should send you History nerds back in time. Maybe the past wouldn’t be so boring if you got to, say, experience the plague first-hand.”

  “Why don’t you go crawl back to your poncey books?”

  Making a face at him, I retreat to my room. I look around for my mobile. Maybe I did forget to turn it off after I gave Clemency my number. I mean, I use it so rarely I can’t even remember what my ring tone is. Then again, I’m sure I left it in my room, and the ringing sounded further away.

  I eventually find it in my handbag. Pressing a key, I wait for the screen to light up. Nothing happens. I did turn it off, after all.

  So where the hell was that ringing coming from?

  *

  Annemarie goes to bed at half-ten, since the History course resumes tomorrow. Jamal, however, is rather less conscientious. I go into the kitchen in search of him. I’m not tired yet, so I might as well make conversation.

  But he isn’t there. Weird. I glance into the living room, but he’s not in there, either. Then I notice a silhouette outside the French windows. I smile to myself. I guess I found him.

  I slide open the door and step out onto the balcony.

  He keeps his back to me at first. I hear a click, then there’s a flash as he lights up. Only then does he turn around.

  “I came out into the cold just for you,” he says. “Aren’t I good?”

  I wince a little. I know he’s trying to guilt trip me, and I refuse to fall for it.

  “It’s not that cold,” I say.

  “Maybe not for you,” he says, taking a drag. “But you’re wearing one of those enormous jumpers of yours.”

  “You can borrow one if you like,” I laugh, leaning my elbows on the rail.

  He sniggers. “I don’t think I could pull it off, do you?”

  “Perhaps not,” I admit. “Rock stars don’t tend to wear knitwear.”

  Grinning, he rests his forearms next to my elbows. “Rock stars. Huh.”

  I watch the particles of cigarette ash tumble down towards the city. They’re mesmerising, those pale angular shapes that contrast with the dark of the night.

  They’re almost like snow.

  It’ll be winter soon. Life has been strange lately, and if all this carries on into November and December, it may just become terrifying.

  It’s a clear, chilly night, and the stars are stunning, in spite of the light pollution. I won’t try to describe them, because I know I can’t do them justice. Has anyone ever successfully captured that feeling in words? You know the one I mean. It’s that feeling you get when you’re standing somewhere high on a clear night, and you look up and see the whole of infinity above your head. And you feel it, too, in every cell of your body. It doesn’t matter that we’re only two storeys up. Nothing matters, except the indescribable beauty of it all.

  “It’s a nice night,” says Jamal, surprising me. He’s not usually big on the whole appreciating-the-scenery thing. I assumed he didn’t care to talk about it. I could never judge whether it was inspiring emotion in him or not.

  “That’s an understatement,” I say. I can’t quite make out his face, but I can feel his smile.

  “Hey, did you find out whose phone was ringing?” he asks.

  I hesitate, before deciding to lie so he won’t think I’ve lost it completely. “Oh, yeah, it was mine. I thought I’d turned it off. That’s why it confused me.”

  He shakes his head mockingly. “You’re developing amnesia in your old age.”

  Playfully, I shove his arm. The cigarette tumbles from between his fingertips.

  “Shit,” Jamal says. “I think you just set fire to the city.” He shakes his head sombrely. “Shame on you.”

  Worried, I squint over the railings.

  “It landed in a puddle,” I say, relieved. “Thank God.”

  He’s silent for a moment. When he speaks, he sounds almost nervous.

  “We’re playing at some bar tomorrow evening,” he says. “Me and the band. Do you – would you like to come along?”

  “Is this a date?” I ask carefully.

  “Not if you don’t want it to be,” he says quickly.

  “In that case,” I smile, “I’d like to come.”

  “Good,” he says, smiling back. “The other Conquerors will be glad to see you again.”

  I laugh. “I still can’t believe you lot named your band William and the Conquerors. It’s just embarrassing.”

  “That’s what happens when you let the history geeks pick the name,” Jamal grins. “Not that it had anything to do with me. Will has a lot to answer for.”

  Jamal’s band are pretty good, but I think his solo stuff is better, although I’m not exactly an impartial judge. The Conquerors are a rock band, but Jamal doubles up as an acoustic singer-songwriter, and he’s pretty good at what he does. When I tease him about being a rock star, I’m being semi-ironic. I guess Jamal sees the band as a vehicle, a way to establish himself as a musician.

  I glance at my watch, but it’s too dark to make out the time. My eyelids are beginning to droop, though, so I decide I should probably try to get some sleep.

  “It’s getting late,” I say, yawning. “I’m off to bed.”

  “Okay. Night.”

>   “Night.”

  *

  I’m looking forward to a night of uninterrupted sleep in recompense for the weirdness I’ve put up with recently. I don’t think that’s too unreasonable. Someone, however, evidently disagrees.

  I manage to get to sleep okay. I have a fairly peaceful dream where I’m drinking ginger tea with Clemency in the library. For some reason, she turns into Annemarie halfway through. Dreams are funny like that.

  Anyway, just when I’m starting to get into the whole tea-party thing, we’re rudely interrupted by a ringing sound.

  “What’s that?” asks dream-me.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” says Clemency/Annemarie. “It’s probably someone’s mobile. Have you checked yours?”

  Dream-me unsuccessfully hunts through her bag for her mobile. She can’t find it, so she dismisses it, picking up her tea to take a sip.

  That’s when I wake up and realise I can still hear the ringing. Why is it that you always wake up from your dreams before you can taste anything? It’s as if the sleeping mind can’t deal with simulating all five senses at once.

  I sit up in bed. This time, I have to get up. I need to know for certain that the phone is really ringing, and I’m not losing my mind. I stagger blindly into the hallway and flick on the kitchen light – just in time to realise that the ringing has stopped. It’s not abrupt. It’s almost as if it faded away so gradually I didn’t notice, and yet I was listening intently the whole time. It doesn’t make sense.

  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. In the end, I do neither. I wait a moment, but nothing happens, so I flick off the light and go back to bed.

  This time, I sleep all the way through till morning.

  Chapter Five

  I can’t decide what to wear to Jamal’s gig. It’s not a date, I tell myself. There’s no need to get dressed up for it. We’re only going to a bar.

  In the end, I pick out some jeans and a nice blouse. My hair is too short to style, so I drag a comb through it and hope for the best. I stick with subtle, natural make-up – I’d probably mess it up if I tried anything more ambitious.

  Why am I getting so worked up over this? I’ve been out with Jamal countless times, both with and without Annemarie, and I usually wear whatever I put on that morning.

  It must have been the way he asked me. He made it sound like a date, even though he knew that wasn’t what I wanted.

  “Eddie?” Jamal calls from the hallway. “You ready?”

  “Coming,” I shout, grabbing my handbag and going out to meet him.

  He’s effortlessly casual, all ripped jeans and checked shirt and messy hair. His guitar case is slung over his left shoulder.

  He smiles when he sees me. “You look nice.”

  “Thanks,” I mutter. Why am I getting weird about this? Friends can compliment each other, right?

  “Shall we go?” he asks tentatively.

  I shake myself. “Sorry,” I say. “I spaced out. Yeah, let’s go.”

  Jamal leads the way without hesitation. I guess one of his bandmates gave him directions. The bar isn’t too far away, thankfully. I instantly forget the name; it’s something generic I make no effort to remember. The place is a bit fancier than I expected. I’m glad I made some kind of effort to look nice.

  I spot the rest of the band on a small platform at the other end of the room.

  “I’ve got to go warm up,” Jamal says. “We’re playing for half an hour, then there’s some singer-songwriter on. I’ll see you then, okay?”

  “Uh huh,” I smile. I look around for somewhere to sit, and spot an empty table in the corner. I don’t feel like making conversation with tipsy strangers.

  I don’t feel much like drinking, either, but I decide I can handle one cider. I sip it slowly. It’s not bad, actually.

  I glance over at the stage, where Jamal is tuning up his electro-acoustic. He doesn’t really like full electric guitars; he says the sound has no depth. I kind of get what he means. He actually taught me to play a little last year. I’m not bad, but I doubt I’ll ever be half as good as he is.

  He looks up. I catch his eye, smiling. His expression is almost bashful.

  Will goes to the mic to introduce the band, and they launch into a Blur cover. I’m still not sure why Will is the lead singer and not Jamal. He’s okay, but Jamal’s voice has so much more emotion in it. But again, I’m a little biased. Besides, Jamal insists that Will has more charisma than he does, and you need that in a frontman, apparently.

  After the cover, they play a couple of their own songs. The first is one Will wrote, which is quite good. The next is one he and Jamal co-wrote, which is better. Pete, the drummer, doesn’t really contribute to the songwriting. He “just likes to hit things”, as Will once rather accurately put it.

  Jamal does the backing vocals on the next song. It’s a little bit magic. Will announces that Jamal will sing the next song, since he wrote it by himself. I wonder which one it is. He keeps most of his own songs for himself.

  I don’t have to wonder long – I recognise it almost instantly. It’s Colosseum, one of my favourites. The title is kind of nerdy, but the song itself is a clever metaphor. It describes something that was once beautiful and majestic, crumbling over the years and becoming a ruin, without ever losing its beauty. That’s the best line in the song – “you’re a beautiful ruin.” It gives me the shivers.

  In a perfect world, the rest of the bar would be as transfixed as I am, but that’s not the case. Some people look only mildly interested, whilst others aren’t even watching the band. One group is so loud that I’m tempted to go over and hush them, but I doubt that would go down too well.

  But I notice a few people who are a little more than interested, people who look almost as engrossed as I do. They get it. And those few people are more than enough.

  They play a couple more songs, and then it’s the end of the set. Will thanks the audience – a thanks which is not quite deserved, in my opinion – and they start to pack up their equipment.

  Jamal leans his guitar against the platform. He mutters a quick word to Pete, before approaching my table.

  “Hi,” he says shyly.

  There’s another feeling I’ve never really heard described – the tingly, trembling feeling you get when you think you might be falling for somebody, terrifying and exciting and a little disorienting, too. Then again, I don’t really need to describe it, do I? Most of us have been there at some point.

  “You were awesome,” I say. I hope he can tell I’m being sincere.

  “Thanks,” he smiles, sitting down opposite me. “Sorry you had to sit by yourself. Maybe we should have brought Annemarie along to keep you company. Although she does have terrible music taste. She wasn’t that appreciative last time she heard us play.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I kind of like sitting by myself – you know, watching the world go by. You know how I am.”

  “I certainly do,” he says.

  This is the first time it’s occurred to me how well he really does know me. Aside from Grandma Edna, I don’t think there’s anyone who knows me better. Even my parents don’t know me half so well as they like to think they do. I often wonder how they’d feel if they could see what really goes on in my mind.

  “Stop thinking,” Jamal scolds, effectively proving my point.

  “Sorry.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Hey,” I say, keen to change the subject. “You didn’t tell me this place was so – well, middle-class.”

  “You are such a hypocrite.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “I didn’t choose to be born to a dentist and an accountant. But seriously, look. The drinks menu has a little ribbon tied around it.”

  Jamal sniggers. “How the other half live, eh?” He picks up the menu and begins to loosen the ribbon.

  “It’s properly knotted,” he grumbles. “Are they trying to put people off or something?”

  He finally pulls it free. The menu uncurls.
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br />   “What was the point of that?” I ask.

  “Well,” he says, “I can see the menu, which means I can order drinks. Stop complaining.”

  “You’re not buying me anything,” I say firmly. “This isn’t a date, remember? Besides, it’s sexist for men to buy things for women.”

  He snorts. “Do you have to bring gender into this? I was going to treat you because we actually got paid to do this thing and you bothered to come along. No offence intended. Since when were you a bloody feminist?”

  “Don’t talk about feminism as if it’s a bad thing,” I scold. “But I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound bitchy.”

  “Apology accepted,” he says. “Now let me buy you a drink.”

  I let him order me another cider. To tell the truth, I mostly protested because he’s often short of money. Jamal’s mother has multiple sclerosis, which means she can’t work. His father left them just after she was diagnosed, maybe ten years ago. He occasionally sends them money, and they get benefits, but it’s not enough. Jamal wouldn’t have been able to afford university if he hadn’t managed to get a scholarship. That’s why I hate letting him pay for anything. I’m actually paying more rent on the flat than he is. He protested violently, but I managed to reason with him. My family has never been short of money, whereas he would’ve had to take on a part-time job to pay his third of the rent. His degree might have suffered as a result, something I don’t want on my conscience.

  I see movement out of the corner of my eye. I look down at the table – I could swear that’s where it was – but everything is still.

  “Did you see that?” I ask.

  “See what?”

  “I swear I saw something move on the table.”

  Jamal gives me a weird look.

  “You’re such a lightweight,” he says. “Two ciders and you’re already seeing things.”

  “This has nothing to do with the cider,” I insist.

  “Sure it doesn-”

  “Oh my God, I just saw it again! It’s the ribbon!”

  The menu ribbon curls into a spiral shape and uncurls again. This time, I know what I saw. I blink rapidly, trying to resolve it into something that makes sense.