Not My Brother's Keeper

by Colette McCormick

  I walked back to the car and got in. I sat looking into the darkness for God knows how long until, gradually, the few places that were open started to close and soon there was almost total darkness. Even the streetlights had dimmed.

  I’d barely slept the night before and driven for hours so I was completely shattered. I couldn’t bring myself to move another inch until I had slept, so I laid my head back against the seat rest and closed my eyes.

  I didn’t get to sleep for a long time. When I woke, it was to the sound of seagulls. A few seconds later I realised that I had a crick in my neck. I’d sort of squirmed around in the seat and was almost in a foetal position with my right hip wedged against the steering wheel. Once I’d slowly straightened myself out I looked at the time. It was almost seven o’clock. It was still dark but there was a faint hint of sunrise way off on the horizon.

  My neck creaked as I moved my head from side to side and though I didn’t feel particularly rested I knew that I’d at least be able to put one foot in front of the other now.

  Not that I did, not straight away anyway. What would be the point? It was still dark and nowhere would be open.

  I wondered how Michelle had slept. I wondered if she was all right and if she’d told her parents about the baby yet. That’s if there was a baby, of course.

  You’re probably thinking that I should have made sure of that before I threw everything away – and maybe you’re right – but even if she wasn’t pregnant and was just using it as a scam to get me to the altar it was still something I wanted no part of. Call me selfish if you like, and there’ll be plenty that do, but I just didn’t want anything that Michelle was part of.

  So there I was in a seaside town, in February, with no home, no job and very little money. Welcome to your new life, my son.

  I went for another walk just to get my kinks straightened out and then, a bit later on, I drove up into the town. I’d established the night before that I wasn’t going to walk into the sea and disappear, so I went in search of the things I needed. First on the list was a strong cup of tea.

  TOM

  Mum didn’t go to work the day after Robert left.

  ‘What would be the point?’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything. And anyway, I want to be here when...’ She didn’t finish the sentence, she didn’t have to.

  ‘When what?’ Dad asked as he grabbed his coat from the back of the kitchen door. He put it on and pulled at the collar to straighten it, never taking his eyes off Mum. He was waiting for an answer but she didn’t have one. She couldn’t even look at him.

  I’d been sitting at the table with her, eating toast that neither of us wanted, before Dad came in, then she got up and cleared the dishes away. Anything to avoid looking at him. The thing about Dad, though, is that he can be a bit like a dog with a bone and he wasn’t going to let it go.

  ‘Don’t be expecting him to come home,’ he said, ‘because you’re wasting your time.’

  ‘He might ring.’ She lowered the dishes into the sink and started to wash them. She’d obviously spent most of her sleepless night crying and I’d felt sorry enough for her when we were sitting at the table, but it was even worse watching her at the sink with her back to me. Her shoulders were stooped and she had a defeated air about her.

  Dad must have felt her pain too because he kissed her cheek tenderly as he grabbed his packed lunch from where she’d left it on the work bench. He mouthed the words, ‘He won’t,’ to me and shouted, ‘See you later love,’ to Mum on his way to the front door.

  ‘Did you get any sleep?’ I asked her as she leant against the sink drying her hands on a tea towel.

  ‘A little,’ she said, turning to face me. I didn’t believe her.

  ‘You were up early,’ I continued after a couple of seconds, and immediately wished I hadn’t because her face looked even more pained.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ I said quickly. ‘I didn’t get much sleep either.’

  She forced a smile onto her face before looking off to the side.

  ‘Are you all right, Mum?’ I asked. I knew it was a stupid question but I didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘Why?’

  Even though she was facing the wall, I heard the question. Not that I knew how to answer her. Was she asking me why I was asking her if she was all right?

  After a few seconds she turned to look at me and asked, ‘Why?’ again.

  This time I knew what she meant. I could tell by the look in her eyes. I answered the only way I could.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did he not say anything to you, Tom?’ she pleaded. ‘Did he not say where he was going?’

  I took in a slow deep breath and let it out the same way. ‘The first I knew about it was yesterday,’ I told her, ‘when I found you holding that letter in your hands.’

  ‘But you talked.’ She sounded desperate, but I had no hope to give her.

  ‘No, we didn’t,’ I admitted. ‘Not recently anyway. Not about anything that mattered.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, as she picked up a plate from the drainer and went through the motions of drying it. ‘How could he do this to me?’

  ‘How could he do it to Michelle?’ I said, as I got up from the table and prepared to leave. I felt an anger rising in my stomach and the chair scraped on the floor as I pushed it in. ‘How could he do it to his baby?’

  She looked embarrassed. ‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘I feel for the girl, I really do.’

  ‘You should,’ I said as I leaned on the back of the chair, ‘because it doesn’t get any lower than this.’ I might as well have slapped her in the face because she visibly flinched when I said that. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I can’t feel any sympathy for him.’

  ‘He’s scared, that’s all,’ she said defensively.

  ‘And Michelle’s terrified,’ I said defiantly, ‘but she can’t just run away from it.’

  I’d turned to leave and was almost through the door when Mum asked, ‘What’s she going to do?’

  I pretended not to hear. I just couldn’t talk about it any more. We weren’t going to agree about what Robert had done or his reasons for doing it and I didn’t want to argue.

  I left her alone to wait for a phone call that wouldn’t come. ‘Have you seen him?’ Michelle didn’t ask it like she was expecting me to say yes.

  Just as well.

  ‘So, what are you doing here?’

  I shrugged my shoulders and felt a bit foolish as I said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ She stepped back like she was inviting me in and I looked at her, not knowing what I should do. I really didn’t know why I was there, so I definitely wasn’t sure if I should go in. I think she got bored of waiting for an answer because she turned away and walked back into the house leaving the door open for me to do what I liked.

  I went in.

  She’d stopped outside the room that I’d seen her parents in a few days earlier. She used her head to gesture towards it. I met her eyes briefly as I passed through the doorway – narrow eyes, like she was trying to weigh something up.

  She indicated the chair that I should sit in and once again I did what I was told. She lowered herself into the one opposite. She looked intently down at her hands and her fingers plucked at each other. When she looked up again, I turned away as quickly as I could. I didn’t want her to think I’d been staring at her.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I thought you’d come to tell me that he was back,’ she said.

  I couldn’t imagine why she would think that, but my guess was that she was living more in hope than expectation. ‘Sorry,’ I said, with an apologetic shrug.

  She was blinking her eyes quickly, obviously trying to stop herself from crying. ‘He’s not coming back, is he.’ She said it as a statement of fact rather than a question.

  I answered her as honestly as I cou
ld.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘ Why?’ Michelle lost another battle with the tears and I saw one trickling down each cheek. I asked myself how many tears it was possible for one person to cry. She looked at a spot over my shoulder and seemed lost in her own world. ‘Why would he do this to me? Why would he do it to our baby? How could he do it?’ She was asking the questions without waiting for an answer and I was thankful for that. ‘I thought he loved me,’ she said as she wiped the tears away from her cheeks and I couldn’t fail to see how sad her eyes looked. ‘I guess I was wrong.’ She pulled a tissue from the sleeve of her cardigan and blew her nose. Then, taking me completely by surprise, she asked, ‘How’s your mum?’

  ‘She’s OK,’ I lied.

  ‘Really?’ I could tell she didn’t believe me.

  ‘No,’ I admitted, ‘not really. She hasn’t been back to work since he left and there’s no food in the house.’

  Michelle looked puzzled, so I explained.

  ‘She’s scared that if she leaves the house Robert’ll ring while she’s out.’

  Michelle nodded her head slowly. ‘I’m a bit like that myself.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ I told her. ‘He’s not worth it.’

  She looked at the floor and caught her lower lip between her teeth. I almost asked her what she was thinking, but decided against it. You didn’t need to be a genius to know her thoughts were on Robert. She sat like that for a full minute. It turned out that she was trying to decide whether she should tell me something or not. She decided to spill the beans.

  ‘Mum wants me to get rid of it,’ she said. ‘She says that I should get something from the hospital that’ll make it go away.’ She finally lifted her eyes and looked at me as though she wanted to see my reaction.

  ‘Will you?’ I kept my voice as flat as I could because I didn’t want her to think that I was judging her.

  She pushed herself into an upright position and slowly said, ‘I’m a nurse Tom. It’s my job to save lives not take them.’ She paused long enough to take in and let out a deep breath. ‘Besides, I want this baby.’

  I didn’t need to ask her why. Even I could work out that if she had his baby she would have a little piece of Robert too.

  I could hear the raised voices before I even got to the door. It was unusual for my parents to argue, but they’d done quite a lot of it in the week since Robert had left. The whole street could probably hear them that day, though.

  I heard Mum shout, ‘But we don’t know where he is,Bob.’

  ‘You want to thank God that we don’t know where he is,’ Dad shouted back, ‘because if we did, I’d kill him. And then we really would need the coppers!’ He came out of the room so fast that he nearly bumped into me and there was a look in his eyes I had never seen before. He wasn’t just angry; he’d left angry way behind.

  He snatched his coat from where it was hanging in the hallway and disappeared out of the door. I looked at the door for a few seconds wondering if I should go after him but, in the end, I decided to go and see if Mum was all right. I popped my head slowly around the door and saw that she was looking out of the window. I stood behind her and we both watched my dad as he sat in the car.

  His back was ramrod stiff and he was looking straight ahead. His hands were on the steering wheel and even from that distance I thought I could see the whites of his knuckles.

  Mum leaned into me and I put my arm around her shoulder.

  ‘He’s hurting too,’ I told her.

  ‘Is he?’ she asked.

  Five minutes later I’d managed to get Mum into a chair and told her to stay where she was. She seemed to be in a sort of a daze so I didn’t think she’d go very far. I went outside, opened the door to my father’s car and climbed in.

  We sat in silence for what felt like ages but was probably only a couple of minutes, if that.

  ‘Your mum wants to call the police,’ he said eventually.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Do you think we should?’

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw him turn to look at me.

  I turned to face him and said, ‘No.’

  ‘There’s no point, Mum,’ I said. Dad and I had come back into the house together and found Mum still sitting where I’d left her. I knelt beside her and stroked her hand while Dad stood behind me. ‘Robert’s not missing, Mum. He hasn’t gone missing – he chose to leave.’

  ROBERT

  I drove up into the town and parked the car in a side street.

  When we’d been there on holiday, we hadn’t spent a lot of time in the town centre, but there was something familiar about it that brought me a bit of comfort. I followed the smell of bacon to a café and went inside. Tempted as I was by the Full English – five items for less than four quid – I ordered a cup of tea and left it at that. I’d checked my wallet and realised that I had less than twenty on me and I wanted to hang onto that for as long as I could. I’d need to find a bank to check exactly how much I was worth. I didn’t anticipate it being a lot.

  There were a couple of blokes eating breakfast at one of the tables but other than that it was just me and the woman behind the counter. I’d thought that she looked about my age when I first saw her, but closer inspection added a good fifteen or twenty years to that.

  ‘Can I get you anything else, love?’ she asked as she put the mug of tea in front of me.

  ‘No, ta,’ I said and I took a long slug of the drink she had brought. I swear to God that nothing in my life had tasted as good as the tea did that morning.

  I nursed the mug for as long as I could because, not long after I’d gone into the café, it had started to pelt it down with rain. The woman behind the counter didn’t seem to mind because once the two blokes had finished their breakfast it was just the two of us and I think she was glad of the company. She told me her name was Tanya.

  I was probably in there for an hour or so before the rain stopped, though it was still grey overhead and looked like it would be back again before too long. I took my chance to head out for a look around the town.

  The shops that sold buckets and spades and holiday souvenirs were still boarded up. It’d be a good six or eight weeks before the tourists started to arrive in numbers. I thought the place looked a bit sad, but that suited my mood to a tee. I didn’t want to be there; I’d far rather have been changing a gear box or stripping an engine that morning. One thing I had noticed was that I hadn’t passed a garage, so I was a bit concerned about my job prospects. Mind, I couldn’t see Bill, my old boss, giving me a good reference, so I was probably buggered anyway as far as being a mechanic was concerned. I thought I might need to consider a change in career.

  A trip to the bank told me that I had £201.96 in my account. I thought about getting some more cash out, but I didn’t want to be tempted to spend it.

  I had another bag of chips at tea-time and slept in the car again that night.

  I went to the café again the following morning. Well, I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so why not? The place was clean, it was handy and Tanya knew her way around a teapot. She was clearing a table when I went in, balancing plates along the length of her arm.

  ‘Morning, Rob,’ she said with a smile.

  My stomach did a funny little turn thing when she called me Rob. I’d told her that my name was Robert. She had shortened it herself. Bob was my dad, Bobby was the bloke that Michelle loved, and Robert was the shit that had walked out on her. Nobody had ever called me Rob before. I liked it. Rob was someone different. Rob was someone new. Rob could be anyone he wanted to be.

  ‘You look like crap,’ Tanya said as she put a mug of tea on the table in front of me.

  I knew she was right but I tried to make a joke of it and said something like, ‘Oh, cheers for that Tanya.’

  She looked at the only other person in the café, checking that he was OK for coffee, and when she was satisfied that he was, she sat down on the chair opposite mine. She rested her elbows on the table and
leaned in towards me.

  ‘Where’d you sleep last night?’ she asked. ‘On a park bench?’

  I tried to ignore her question by taking a mouthful of the tea, which was boiling. I thought a blister or two would be worth it if she changed the subject. She didn’t, she just looked at me with one eyebrow raised.

  ‘Of course I didn’t.’ I tried to force a laugh.

  I could tell from her face that I hadn’t convinced her.

  ‘What are you running away from, Rob?’ she asked.

  Her question took me by surprise and I spluttered out something like, ‘Nothing! What would make you ask that?’

  She shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Call it a wild guess.’ She turned her head at the sound of cutlery being set on a plate. ‘You finished, Charlie?’ she asked, pushing herself out of the chair and giving me one last look over her shoulder as she walked away. ‘Can I get you anything else?’ she asked as she picked up Charlie’s empty plate and empty mug. He smiled, shook his head, and handed her some money. He nodded at me on his way out.

  ‘You had any breakfast? Tanya shouted from behind the counter. I thought about lying and saying that I had but, in the end, I told the truth. ‘Thought not,’ she said. She appeared at my shoulder, ‘Here,’ she said, putting a small plate in front of me.

  I looked at the bacon sandwich on the plate and asked, ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘What do you think?’ she put her hands on her hips and her head on one side. ‘It’s so you can line your shoes and save your insoles.’

  ‘No,’ I actually did laugh that time because I thought it was funny. ‘What... what I mean is... why are you giving it to me?’

  ‘Because I’m soft in the head,’ she smiled and walked away.

  I can still remember how I felt that day. I sat looking at the sandwich with a smile on my face marvelling at the kindness of someone I barely knew.

  God that bacon sarnie was good. Thick buttered white bread with five or six pieces of bacon. I was starving and it barely touched the sides as I wolfed it down. I emptied the dregs of my tea and took the mug and the plate back to the counter. I went to my pocket to get my wallet out but Tanya waved it away.