by Rob Parker
Peter. He forced his way into her mind again, as he had many times last night, through no desire of his own. After he had stormed out like an obstinate child, she had been left alone with the other men. Fletcher had been condescending and crass, and despite what he had said when Peter had been there, he made considerable allusion to a woman’s place being at home, working wonders with the bread provided by the bread winner. Pam had been too dumbstruck to say anything, his duplicity so fickle and obvious. Christian and David made swift excuses and left, leaving Pam to clear up.
Having cooled a touch, she had gone to the front door to see where Peter had got to, and she saw him emerge breathless from the bushes with her. The fucking bimbo.
Why, of all the neighbours they could have had, did they have to have some ode to youthful Scandinavian beauty just over the road? She’d already noticed Jacob peeking at her house through the blinds, but now her own husband…
This was not helping her feelings about the move at all. Not one bit.
Click.
Pam paused, and looked in the direction of the sound. The hallway. This couldn’t be what their marriage had descended to, could it? Surely not. She ran to the front windows, and separated the blinds with her fingers.
Yes, yes it was. Peter was getting in his car, dressed for work. With no glance back to the house, he slammed his car door shut and started the engine. Pam let the blinds fall shut again, in the hope of remaining unseen while she worked out her feelings on this turn of events as well.
When Peter had seen her last night, confused and hurt, she turned back into the house and went straight upstairs. Peter had run after her, saying it wasn’t what it looked like, and Pam thought there couldn’t be a more guilty sounding phrase in the whole world. She had shut the bedroom door, and told him she didn’t want to see him. Peter had given her the space and never actually made it to bed, and when she emerged this morning, she heard him showering in the main family bathroom off the middle floor landing.
Pam had then come down and sent the kids off to school, waiting for Peter to emerge so they could dissect what had happened and how they were to go forward.
But Peter had walked out without saying goodbye.
And Pam now felt bad that she hadn’t listened to him when she had the chance, instead of giving him the cold shoulder.
No. Her feeling bad was Peter’s plan. He wanted her to see his hurt, wanted her to sweat on it.
Wanted her to want him.
She started trying to unpack and fathom the utensils for the espresso machine, all still in their individual plastic packets. If there was one thing she would get right today, it would be this bloody contraption.
Pam didn’t think for one minute her husband had been in the bushes having sex with that girl, not at all. But there was no denying that he had humiliated her in front of their new neighbours and when he’d got pulled up on it, he’d run straight off to her. They looked like they’d had a chat, walked the dog, and had a laugh. Maybe even a bit of a flirt. And there’s no denying how bad it looked when they both emerged flustered from the bushes. And the look on her face. She looked… rumbled. Embarrassed. And Peter did just the same when he noticed his wife on the doorstep, calling the tom cat back in.
The machine, nor its instructions made any sense, so she bunged it all back in the box and went to get ready for the day, applying make-up direct from a removal box, which was filled with foam packaging peanuts. It reminded her of an earlier move, when Alice was just a baby. She had sat her in such a box stuffed with those soft peanut-shaped blobs of foam, and Alice had sat there happily chucking them all out in greedy handfuls, while never catching on that Pam herself was replacing them. It seemed to keep her happy for hours.
That was during their first move.
That move was when they had been happy.
At about eleven in the morning, the doorbell chimed again, a sound that was becoming as regular in their new house as a cuckoo clock. It was Joyce, Fletcher’s wife. She was dressed in sweats and appeared from her pink cheeks to have just got back from a jog. She was holding a bottle in her hand. Pam was thrown a little off kilter by the fact that it was a wine bottle and not a water bottle.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she said, sweeping her damp hair over her shoulder. Pam felt a pang of jealousy, seeing Joyce look fit and toned in her workout gear while she was indoors mooning about. She also felt a small unwanted spike of competition.
‘It’s no trouble at all!’ Pam said, opening the door wide. The gesture was a subconscious invitation, on the back of having truthfully enjoyed her company the other night.
‘Oh I won’t come in, I must stink!’
The honesty caught Pam off guard and made her laugh. ‘Get in here, the air round here is shocking, you’ll be like pot pourri.’
Joyce crossed the threshold and shimmied out of her trainers on the mat. They headed for the kitchen.
‘Good run?’ asked Pam.
‘Not bad. I can’t find a route that fits to be honest. Everything is either too short or too long. I enjoy it, and it passes the time, but I don’t want to be doing it all day. Oh God, sorry this is for you. Return the favour and all that.’ Joyce put the wine on the centre island.
‘You shouldn’t have, thank you.’
‘I wanted to!’ said Joyce with obvious warmth. ‘I have to say it’s such a relief to see a kindred spirit here.’
Pam was genuinely touched by the gesture, and after the fight with Peter, felt a lot less lonely in an instant. She looked at the wine.
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Pam said, off the cuff, and caught Joyce’s eyebrows flick upwards. ‘Oh, I didn’t mean…’
‘No, I wasn’t…’ Joyce said. ‘I meant to say…’
They both looked at the wine, and Pam felt a desire, after their horrible night, to take the edge off, just a bit. The longer the silence went on, the louder it seemed to get. The corner of Joyce’s mouth broke cover and spread into a smile. That was all Pam needed.
‘Oh sod it, it’s midday somewhere, right?’ she said, as she reached for the bottle.
18
The first thing Peter could smell when he opened the front door was the booze, and that stale sweaty sweetness of people enjoying it. It wafted in from the kitchen like the musk of old garbage, given how unexpected it was. It reminded him of university halls at 4pm, returning from the day’s last lectures to find your cohabitants have started early.
He kicked his brogues off and dumped his work bag, following the sounds of female laughter, riffling his pencil tie from his shirt collar. He’d been ready to come back to apologies and explanations, not… a piss up. As he rounded to the corner, it was plainly obvious.
Two empty bottles of wine stood on the centre island like sentinels guarding a third that bore little but dregs. He couldn’t see anybody, but he could hear them, and as he rounded the island he spotted two lycra clad calves topped by feet in hot pink sports socks. He had somehow worked out they weren’t his wife’s, when his wife herself suddenly popped her head over the other side of the countertop. Her eyes were wide and lazily bandit-masked by smudged mascara, and her hair was messy. There were wet-looking chunks of dark something on her cheeks, which were altogether pinker than usual.
‘You’re home?’ Pam said, a bit too loud.
‘It seems you weren’t expecting that?’ Peter replied with surprise.
‘It’s five o’clock?’ she asked, as if this was the most normal thing in the world.
‘Five forty-five,’ he replied. With a grunt and a sigh, the pink socked visitor got up and stood beside Pam. She too looked worse for wear, with those funny blobs smeared on her cheeks.
‘Oh my god—is that the time?!’ said Joyce, suddenly jolted into life.
‘Yeah it is,’ Peter said, trying to hold his reaction—and anger. He never really gave a damn what Pam got up to while he was at work, as long as she was responsibly looking after the kids. He wasn’t sure that this little get-together ful
filled that remit. And he felt he’d already made a tit of himself by speaking out of turn in front of the neighbours last night, so he wasn’t about to do it again so soon after.
‘I need to go, the boys will be back,’ said Joyce, before a minor fit of giggles seemed to come for her. ‘They’ll be staring at the empty kitchen wondering where tea magically comes from.’
‘Are our kids in?’ Peter asked, while Joyce shimmied out to the hall.
‘Yeah, they’re all upstairs. Jacob’s playing on his PS4 and Alice is having a shower,’ answered Pam, through a lazy grin.
‘Speaking of a shower, you two look like you need cleaning up yourselves.’
That paused Joyce, who stopped at the hall mirror and suddenly burst out laughing.
‘How long have we been like this?!’ she asked.
‘I was hoping you wouldn’t notice,’ said Pam, herself now creasing with laughter. She chucked a tea towel at Joyce from the counter, which she caught and cleaned herself off.
‘Oh, dear me, Peter, you must think I’m a proper nutter,’ said Joyce.
‘No, it’s nice to see Pam making friends and having a good time,’ he replied, only partially meaning it.
‘Even if it is with the village idiot. I gotta go—see you later!’ And with that Joyce was gone, leaving nothing but a mucky tea towel on the hall side table.
Peter and Pam stared at each other, neither knowing which way to take the ensuing conversation. They both knew this immediate moment of potential frisson so well that they seemed almost jaded at the thought of falling out again.
‘It’s coffee grounds,’ Pam blurted suddenly. ‘I was trying to get that stupid machine working and…’ Her hand flashed to her face to check it was all still there, which it sure was.
Peter’s anger was punctured slightly at the thought of the coffee machine spitting at them belligerently. He exhaled in mock chastisement and his eyebrows raised.
‘Look, I know,’ Pam said, the straight blade of her shoulders melting into relaxation. ‘I know it’s not perfect, it was just a one off. I felt bad about last night, I felt bad about fighting, I felt… just bad, you know? It’s been a hell of a few days and I just switched off. I’m sorry.’
Peter smiled fully and put his arm around her, a feeling that felt quite foreign to him, such was the lack of times he found himself doing it. ‘It’s okay. I’m sorry too. I’m sorry I was such an arse in front of everyone last night, and I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea about that girl. Honestly when I went down to the bin last night, her dog scarpered off down that passageway, and I was just trying to help. You know, make a good impression and all that?’
‘I know, I should have trusted you…’
‘It’s an emotional time, moving house. It’s weird for us all.’ He hugged her properly, which seemed to catch her by surprise and she dropped away from him.
He looked a little taken aback. ‘What?’
‘Nothing, just the coffee. You look so nice in your work clothes, I wouldn’t want to mess you up.’
‘I’m taking them off any minute, what’s the matter?’
Peter was genuinely confused, lamenting his inability to ever be able to read his wife properly. Before another standoff could ensue, Jacob’s voice broke in from the living room. ‘Mum! Dad! Come here quick!’
Pam and Peter swapped confused glances, before she ran out of the kitchen, with Peter following at a more sedate pace. As he rounded the corner to the living room, Jacob was already leaving through the passage towards the back door, which he threw open with a bang. Pam followed in a panic, and satisfied that Pam was covering the drama from a parental aspect, Peter drifted to the large rear window overlooking the back garden.
Through the glass he could see Jacob on his knees, opening LeBron’s hutch, throwing his hands into the wadded bedding and all Peter could think about was all that piss-soaked sawdust and rodent droppings on his son’s hands.
‘He’s not here, he’s not here,’ he could hear Jacob repeating in a muffled voice. Pam had been reduced to simply rubbing Jacob’s back while he searched, and she sneaked a glance to Peter through the pane. She shrugged as if to say I’ve no idea, but Peter saw something else in her attentiveness to Jacob.
Bare guilt.
19
The sun was drifting lower over the Blackstoke estate, dropping a quilt of dull blue over all within it, forcing the streetlamps to fight back mutedly—while the West family stood around the kitchen island at Iron Rise.
‘He’s not there,’ said Peter. ‘I looked everywhere outside and in. I’m sorry to say it, but I do think he’s gone.’
‘But how did he get out?!’ sobbed Jacob, having spent the last hour trying to hold his emotions in before abandoning all pretence and snivelling heartily. Peter put a hand on his son’s shoulder—a hand that was still dirty from rummaging in the front garden’s flower beds.
Pam watched from the other side of the table, the way her husband exuded a sort of calm under pressure. It was at odds with his lack of coolness in other social situations, although she did remember the old adage of when the chips are down, etc. She admired him for it, then remembered how she had flinched at his attempted hug earlier.
Pam didn’t really know what the matter was, but that level of affection from her husband was so unprecedented in recent weeks that she didn’t know how to take it—and at the time she really was covered in mashed coffee grounds. It wasn’t that her husband repulsed her, not at all. It was more that she simply wasn’t used to the affection. It had jarred. Had the love actually gone? Like an unseen vapour, had it vanished without her even realising?
‘I know this will probably sound really heartless, but he’s just a guinea pig and we’d had him a while,’ said Alice, hoisting herself up to sit on the countertop. She popped open a can of Pringles when she got there, which made Pam realise that she was famished too. She grabbed a handful for herself.
‘Alice, that’s not entirely helpful, sweetheart,’ said Peter.
‘Better than finding him dead,’ replied Alice through a mouthful of crisp shards. Peter shot her an altogether more serious look, to which she added: ‘You think we still might?’
‘That’s enough Alice,’ interjected Pam. ‘We need calm heads here, that’s all. He can’t have gone far.’
‘Come on mum,’ quivered Jacob. ‘I looked out the window and saw he wasn’t there. So I shouted for you, and you were with me when I got to the hutch, so you know it was locked. It’s not got any holes in it, so how did he get out? He just unlocked it and locked it again before he went? I don’t understand.’
‘I know it seems strange son, but there’ll be a logical explanation. There always is,’ said Peter.
‘Someone must have let him out!’
‘Nonsense, who would do such a thing—we haven’t even had any visitors yet, nobody knows where LeBron lives now.’
‘Yeah they do. Those twins—they know.’
Pam and Peter locked eyes again. It was true, and they both knew it. Aside from those in the room, the only people who knew about LeBron were the twins. ‘But why would they…?’ Pam asked, thinking out loud.
Peter raised his eyebrows to Pam, highlighting that that was a real possibility. Pam herself remembered how unnerving and downright weird they were, not to mention how Peter had described, albeit jokingly at the time, their quiet fascination with LeBron when Jacob had shown the animal to them.
Peter’s eyes had taken a stubborn steel to them and he gave Pam one grave nod. ‘Who’s up for a takeaway?’ he asked, snapping into joviality with a theatrical flourish. ‘Chinese? Thai?’
‘Have we worked out what our local is yet?’ Pam asked.
‘We’ll just use an online order thing like we did at the old place—they’ll find us.’
‘Okay, but use my card, my treat.’
Peter looked at her in silent query, as so much of their interactions around their children were.
Pam nodded, and gave a pensive little smile
. It was a small thing, but something she hoped Peter would recognise. She knew what he was thinking, and hoped to God the kids didn’t feel it too—the horrible nag that if she had just been a good little housewife today, doing the washing, not getting on the wine with Joyce (who she thought was a bundle of fun, but felt too guilty to admit it just yet), she would probably know just what had happened to LeBron. In other words, if she’d done exactly what MP Fletcher Adams had suggested.
Or more likely, nothing would have happened to him at all, if she’d been compos mentis.
As if by magic, the washing machine chimed in the utility room near the back door, which caught Pam a little unawares as she couldn’t remember putting anything on. She excused herself briefly and went through to the back, her mind retracing the hazy map of the day in her head.
The lights on the machine were blinking, the signal she had only yesterday learned meant that the cycle was over. The window on the front was filled with something that looked a bit like a wig, long strands of some mystery garment tangled and pressed against the glass. Before she could really work out what was going on, she had opened the door, and the mystery of poor LeBron’s whereabouts was suddenly solved.
20
When Fletcher Adams entered the West’s house that night, he was not expecting a wake for some pointless fucking pet. Seeing the snot-covered face of their lone son was enough for him, and he resolved to make his visit brief. He held his irritation back, and set his mode to full politician.
‘All of God’s creatures have to go to a better place eventually,’ he announced in his best Sunday School tones.
‘But the washing machine?! Why the washing machine!’ the boy cried. Fletcher really had to try hard not to snort at that. His mother was babying him, both their names utterly lost to Fletcher—but then, when you press as much flesh as he did every day, names just went in one ear and out the other.
He’d remembered the father’s though. Peter. His ally. He always remembered the names of the useful ones, it made them feel important.
