The Silence

by Luca Veste

  Eleven years old, scared of a new situation, we found each other.

  That same day—that same lunch hour, in fact—we found Nicola and Alexandra. They were the only other pair sitting at our table and whispered to each other for five minutes before I turned to Chris. I raised my eyebrows and leaned across the table to him.

  “I think we should whisper as well,” I said, loud enough for the girls to hear me. “It’ll make it look like we’ve got something interesting to say. Like a secret or something.”

  Chris grinned back at me and gave an exaggerated nod. “Yeah, definitely. Like we’re spies, right?”

  Nicola—I didn’t know her name yet, but I would discover it soon—rolled her eyes at us, but Alexandra smiled and gave a small laugh.

  “Me mum says it’s rude to whisper, but I try to do the opposite of what she says,” Alexandra said, leaning across and looking at my dinner tray. “That looks revolting.”

  “Chicken supreme and rice,” I replied, picking up my fork and plonking into the gray and white mess on my plate. “Nothing better.”

  “I’d rather eat pig’s arse and cabbage,” Nicola said, pushing her half-eaten sandwich away and grimacing.

  “What the hell is that?” I said, glancing at Chris and noticing for the first time that he didn’t seem to be able to stop himself from staring at Nicola.

  “It’s what me dad says is for tea all the time. No idea what it is, but I know I don’t want to eat it. That,” she said, pointing at my plate, just as I shoveled a forkful into my mouth. “That looks even worse.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” I said, swallowing the food down and wishing I hadn’t. “Although pigs make bacon, so it can’t be all that bad.”

  “What, even arse?”

  “Still the same animal, right?”

  “If you say so.”

  I swallowed another mouthful and tried to think of something funny to say. I couldn’t think of a single thing. It didn’t matter though, as Chris came to life. He asked them questions, made them laugh, and managed to keep them at the table even though they’d finished eating. I found my voice eventually.

  By the end of the day, Chris and I discovered we were in most of the same classes. We walked home after our last lesson, talking about what things we liked, what we didn’t like. He’d gotten a Sega Genesis for his birthday a few months earlier, so I ended up going back to his home for an hour. He let me play Sonic the Hedgehog and World Cup Italia ’90.

  That was it. We were best friends, just like that.

  Over the next few weeks, we’d have lunch with Nicola and Alexandra almost every single day. We’d see them around the school, say hello, but it was me and him mostly. We were inseparable from that first lunchtime. We were eleven- and twelve-year-olds, playing on his Sega Genesis, watching Power Rangers on his Sky TV, and eating as much candy as we could get from the store on any given day.

  That was the beginning of the group.

  Twelve

  The WhatsApp message arrived as a ping of noise. Simply a notification on my cell, that I glanced at, then ignored.

  That’s how we live our lives now. A series of moments, interspersed with cell phones vibrating or dinging away to let us know what is happening around the world. We’re instantly contactable. When the world ends, we’ll find out from a breaking news notification, I imagine.

  I ignored it, thinking it was something as innocuous as a Sky or BBC news banner. An email from a sender I didn’t want to immediately check. A message from a friend that I didn’t immediately need to see.

  I didn’t wonder when I’d changed from the Matt Connolly who would snatch up his phone at the slightest bit of noise. I can’t imagine being that way again.

  Outwardly happy. Ordinary. Nothing special.

  My phone buzzed on the desk—a call from Chris coming through. I ignored it, trying to concentrate on my work. I could call him back later.

  You never know the moment your life changes forever. Not until later, when you can look back and pinpoint it. Say That’s it—that’s when it all went wrong. Until then, you’re just battling against the tide. I sometimes tried to look back and see if there was something before that moment that predicted what was to come later. Some thread on the tapestry of my average life that had come loose, began to fray, threatening to tear the whole thing down if something inauspicious was caught on it.

  Memory is never the same for everyone.

  An event happens, and six people can experience it differently when they remember it later.

  That’s what I feel. We all have a certain version of events in our heads. What happened and what our individual part in it was. We imagine ourselves as the hero. The one who made all the right decisions.

  I remember the quiet.

  I remember hours later, as I washed my hands again and again. Never able to make a difference to the way they felt. I was already changing the way the whole thing unfolded. I could feel myself doing it, but my mind wouldn’t stop.

  I remember.

  I think.

  The cacophony of silence would lie there on the edge of my consciousness forever, I imagined. The blurred images, never crisp and clear. I could never escape the silence. It would always be with me, like a dark passenger.

  It was already fading away a day or two after that night.

  Becoming memory.

  My memory.

  Fractured.

  I remember it in flashes. Every detail a little different each time. A millisecond of change that makes me question the whole. Sometimes, I wonder if it happened at all. Whether I had dreamed the entire thing and that’s why no one would talk about it.

  Then I remember Alexandra’s face in the days that followed and know that can’t be the case.

  I knew I could ask and find out for certain if what I remembered was reality or not. That would fill in some gaps. Large, open spaces of recollection that weren’t there.

  Although, doing that would take something from me. I was almost pleased to have something intangible of my own.

  I would never ask the question. Chris was the only one who could, or would, answer me now. Alexandra was gone. Stuart had drifted away. Michelle was a stranger. Nicola…I’d rather not open that wound with her. She had been adamant from the beginning that we should never talk about it again.

  Instead, I turn the flashes of memory into a narrative and write my own version. Every night a different outcome. Every night a victory.

  And every night that same crushing feeling of reality.

  I didn’t need to wonder at when my life changed.

  I lived it every single day.

  It was when I killed someone.

  I picked up my phone, saw the message waiting, then ignored it. Continued working for a short while, then sat back in my chair and looked outside to the yard. Earlier in the year, I’d been able to sit outside and work in the heat. Now, the leaves from a neighbor’s tree were lying on the ground, being whipped up by what I knew would be a biting wind. Magpies landed on the tree as I stared, and I instinctively saluted.

  It was late morning, and the second cup of coffee was already wearing off for me. I’d slept fitfully the night before, which was the norm of course, but that morning I was still a little more tired than usual. I could feel the pressure in my temples, the stabs of pain behind my eyes, as looking at the flickering of a laptop screen began to grate after an hour or two.

  The sound of music in my ears, emanating from the speakers on the almost-new laptop I’d bought on credit a few weeks earlier. I’d created a playlist of over four hundred songs twenty-four hours after it had arrived. A day of procrastination, as I put off some job or other. As long as there were enough songs, there would never be quiet again.

  The message waited to be read.

  Deacon Blue gave way to Childish Gambino as I continued to
type. An eclectic shuffle, even for the streaming app I’d downloaded. I wasn’t fast, but the words filled the screen at a good enough tempo—mostly in the right order and correctly spelled. Working from home was the dream, no matter that it was becoming increasingly more difficult to find regular paid jobs. It was too easy now to build your own website using templates and stock images. I had enough of a reputation by then to keep ticking along though. And some extra work was always available for someone who could do the fancy design stuff I could do.

  My work space was a little sparse, but I’d decorated as best I could. A few framed posters on the wall, a bookcase holding the novels I’d read years earlier, the dresser in the corner. It wasn’t a standard home office. Instead, I was in what should have been the dining room, but I’d converted it when I’d moved in a year earlier.

  When we’d moved in.

  My phone buzzed again on the desk, so I stood up, taking the phone with me as I left the office/dining room, and entered the kitchen. Flicked on the coffee machine and began scrolling.

  I didn’t read the message straightaway, looking at what else my various apps had decided I needed to know about first. More bad reports from two different sources of news, a football manager’s thoughts on a previous game, a new friend request from someone I’d never heard of on social media.

  I read the WhatsApp message as I stirred sugar into an already sweetened coffee. Dropped the spoon on the kitchen counter as the words began to blur and blend into one another.

  “Stuart…” I heard myself say before I placed the phone down next to the discarded spoon and leaned back, a hand across my mouth. I closed my eyes and shook my head.

  It couldn’t be true.

  The message had been scarce on detail, but it had said enough. Sent from Stuart’s cell phone, but written by his sister.

  Matt, it’s Stephanie, Stuart’s sister. I’m not sure if you’ve heard the news (and I think you would have been in touch if you had), but in case you haven’t, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Stuart died suddenly last Saturday. I know you were friends for a long time, but you perhaps weren’t in touch with him lately. He’s had some issues, but this has still come as a shock to the family. The funeral is on Friday at 4 p.m. I know you were close, so it would only be right to have you and the rest of his oldest friends there.

  It ended with details of where the funeral was taking place and more platitudes. I wanted to read the message again, but I knew it wouldn’t change at all. The details would still be the same. Outside, the magpies squawked at each other, piercing the back door, but I didn’t salute this time. It seemed too late. The coffee was sitting untouched, so I risked a swig to give me the energy to keep standing. My mouth burned a little at the taste, but I pretended it had given me a jolt of something.

  I picked the phone back up and saw the missed call from Chris. Called him back.

  “Chris?”

  There was a pause, an exhalation, then his voice came through. “All right, mate.”

  “Is this real?” I said, knowing the answer already. Knowing Chris would already know. I could hear it in the three words he’d said. We spoke often enough for me to recognize that. He was pretty much the only person I still spoke to, if I thought about it. At least that friendship hadn’t died yet. “I can’t believe it. Do you know what happened?”

  “I don’t know anything more than what you probably got told,” Chris replied, tension in his voice. Sadness too. “I’m guessing there’s more to it, but I don’t know right now. I’m with you. Wasn’t expecting that at all. Unbelievable.”

  I started to say something but couldn’t find the words. Instead, I walked back into my sham of an office and sat down. “I didn’t even know he was ill or anything.”

  “I don’t think he was,” Chris replied, a voice in the background talking, seemingly asking a question that was quickly shushed. “I’ve only just told Nicola. She’s as devastated as we are. We haven’t spoken to him since… Well, it’s been a long time.”

  “‘Died suddenly’—what do you think that means?”

  “Could be a number of different things…heart attack—not very likely at our age. Stroke, probably the same. Accident or something? I don’t want to think of the obvious.”

  I brought up a new browser window and typed in the name. Looked at recent news reports, clicking on the first one that came up. “So you haven’t heard from him at all lately?”

  There was a pause, then Chris sighed again. “No. It’s been months. Not since he moved to that new job. He stopped replying to messages and voice mails. That must be about five months or so.”

  “More like eight or nine, I think.”

  “You?”

  I shook my head as I continued to read. “No, not for about as long. I was…I was leaving him to it, you know.”

  The news report on the screen was a little sparse on detail, but it told me enough.

  Police Name Man Found Dead on Merseyside Railway Line

  “I can’t believe we didn’t know sooner,” I said, scrolling down and finding his name in the report. Seeing it there, in black and white, brought him to mind instantly. Not as I’d known him recently. When I’d first met him, aged eighteen and a curly mop of blond hair perched on a soft-featured face. The disarming smile. “It’s been almost a week since he was found. All it says was he was found dead near the train line south of the city.”

  “Hit by a train?”

  “That’s what it says. Police aren’t treating it as suspicious. You don’t think he…you know? That’s usually the case when they say it’s not suspicious and ‘hit by a train’ in the same article though.”

  “I hope not. He never seemed the type to do that to himself. I suppose we never really know what’s going on in people’s heads though. What they’re hiding and that.”

  “We should have known about this.”

  “It’s not like we kept in touch with him and whoever he was with lately,” Chris replied, a defensive tone creeping into his voice. “We’ve all kinda moved on. Working hard and all that.”

  “Didn’t stop us keeping in touch though.”

  “That’s different, you know that.”

  I sniffed an agreement and tried to find more information online. I stopped when I realized it would probably take a little more than a simple Google search to find more. It could wait. “Seems like he was back in the area,” I said, leaning back in my chair, rubbing my eyes with my free hand. “He was found close enough. You’d think if he was back around here, we would have heard something from him. It’s not like him not to want to see us.”

  “It’s been a tough time. Maybe he didn’t want to see us. Dredge up the past, you know.”

  Silence grew as I turned over the details in my head. Before reading the message, I’d been planning on doing a few little jobs that needed sorting out—a new layout for a website that dealt with designing kitchens, a couple of proposals for some other clients—but now it seemed ridiculous.

  “Are you going?” Chris said, and for a second, I assumed he meant ending the call. Then, I realized what he meant.

  “Of course, aren’t you?”

  Another long sigh. “We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”

  “We have to be there. He was our friend.” Even as I said the words, I could picture Chris’s face. His roll of the eyes, small shake of the head. That was the way he always reacted when I was right—which with him wasn’t often. No acceptance. Just a roll and shake. That was his way. A small smile that you’d miss if you didn’t know to look for it. I’d known him for over twenty years, which was longer than anyone else in my life outside my family. He was more than just a best friend.

  “I just don’t know what to say to them. We never really met his family. And he never really talked about them.”

  “We knew him, mate,” I said, feeling grief hanging over
me now. It was waiting to hit me, it seemed. A dark cloud above me, choosing its moment. I tried to recall the last conversation we’d had. Whether there had been a remark or even a look that I had missed. It hadn’t been that long, but then, memory could play tricks on you. “That’s enough to…I don’t know…pay our respects to his family? We were close to Stuart. It’s only right.”

  I waited to hear the inevitable snort of derision, but Chris was silent. Eventually, he seemed to relent.

  “Okay, I’ll speak to Nicola now. I’m sure she’ll want to be there too.”

  And that was how it began. A simple message. A few lines about the death of an old friend. An invitation and a condolence.

  Only, I knew as I sat back in my chair and tried to think about Stuart once more that it seemed like I’d been waiting for something like this to happen.

  Something that would bring us all back together.

  I tried working but couldn’t concentrate. Instead, I sat in my chair for a long time, wanting a cigarette—despite not smoking for well over a decade now—eyes closed but not falling asleep. Listening to music.

  Waiting for tears that never came.

  I stayed that way until I couldn’t ignore the hunger any longer. I ate a meal that contained more calories than I needed. Ran on the treadmill to burn them off. Watched television for a while, then went to bed.

  Apart from the news about Stuart, it was a pretty normal day.

  Thirteen

  I slowly came to full consciousness, a voice purring softly from the outskirts of my mind. It was always the same way—a few moments that resembled panic as my body protested about being awakened.

  I was in a bed. It’s a double. There’s a window to my right with dull winter-morning light struggling to penetrate through the curtains. The noise was coming from the radio, which sat on the dark oak bedside table situated six inches from my head. Through sleep-encrusted eyes, I could see red numbers staring back at me. Static, 8:00. I watched as it clicked over to 8:01 and closed my eyes again.