by B P Walter
I’m standing by the entrance to the hotel when someone takes me by surprise. He must have come round the side of the building, like Alec and I had, from where the car park loops round to the back. It’s a teenage boy – he can only be sixteen or seventeen at the most – and his face lights up when he sees me. I give him a weak smile and move to the side to let him pass, but he stops in front of me. He seems to be waiting for me to say something, but I just stare at him.
‘God, I’m glad you’re here – was worried you wouldn’t show.’ He embraces me, his arms going round my shoulders, his hand resting against one of the large bruises on my shoulder, and I wince and pull myself away. I bump back against the concrete of the hotel wall and I jar my hurt arm, the pain sending crackles through my vision, my head spinning. I can’t speak for a few seconds, only gasp, trying to steady myself. The boy is evidently alarmed, trying to help me get my balance back. ‘Ah fuck, I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Did I hurt you? Do you have, like, injuries?’
I don’t know what to say, so I just nod. My tears can’t be held back any longer – they start to run freely down my face, a rush of pain and confusion.
‘Oh God, don’t get upset. I’m sorry if I hurt you. I’m really sorry.’
‘It’s OK,’ I manage to whisper.
‘I’ve been so worried. I can’t sleep. I can’t concentrate at school. I can’t do anything.’
With heart-sinking dread, I start to piece together what’s going on here. It can’t be true. It can’t be. This boy is… well, a boy. Almost a child. Can barely be older than Jessica. He can’t know me. I wouldn’t… I just… couldn’t. Could I?
‘Shall we go up to your room? Not to do anything. Just to talk. I want to talk.’
I look at him, baffled. ‘Talk? What about?’
It’s his turn to cry now. ‘Are you angry with me? I’m sorry I didn’t come to you – when that car smashed into you. I was scared. I was really scared. I just ran away, went back to my room, hid under my duvet. I thought you might be dead, but then I came to the hospital and there was a man there, holding your hand and I didn’t… I didn’t want to make things, I don’t know, bad for you…’
I’m still staring at him. Unable to talk. Unable to really comprehend what is happening.
‘If I fucked up, I’m sorry. The guy just looked so unhappy, I thought it would make things awkward. And you might not like it. You seemed pretty mad when my mum chucked you out my bedroom.’
I can’t help it. Something explodes out of me, a laugh and a shriek and a sob, all at the same time. The ridiculousness of it. The absurdity of what he’s saying is so outrageous to me, my mind is rejecting it as a fantasy. It can’t possibly hold an ounce of truth.
‘I can’t do this,’ I say, tears obscuring my vision, my body starting to shake.
‘Please, just wait…’
‘No. Stop.’ I dodge his attempts to embrace me again. ‘Whatever is going on here… it isn’t. Or at least, isn’t any longer. I could be your mother. Christ, I’m probably the same age as your mum, or older!’
He nods. ‘A bit. But it doesn’t matter.’
‘Fuck!’ I shout, then freeze. A family – a man, a woman, and a little boy – are standing at the top of the steps to the hotel, staring at the scene unfolding before them, my shrieked expletive still swirling around us, as if caught in the howl of the wind. Eventually, the little boy says, ‘Mummy, why’s that lady crying? I don’t like it.’
It jolts them out of their statue-like state, and the mother pulls the child close, as if I’m a danger to him and might suddenly attack, and says, ‘Be quiet, Jimmy,’ and they edge round us and disappear off into the entrance to the hotel.
‘We can’t stay here. I can’t stay here with you.’ I too am turning to go back into the hotel, away from all this weirdness, but he stands in my way and blocks my route. ‘I’m not letting you go again. I’ll always be wondering.’
‘Wondering what?’ I say, starting to lose my patience. He’s acting like one of those lovesick teenagers in those silly books for fourteen-year-old girls. His words sound odd, even slightly comical, in his Essex accent and I realise how different I must sound to him, my once broad Australian vowels now more or less softened and ironed out after many years living in suburban Kent.
‘What you wanted to speak to me about. Can’t we go for a walk, or something?’
I stare around us at the stormy weather and gape at him.
‘Yeah, I know it’s not great, but if you don’t want to go back into the hotel, we need to go somewhere.’
‘I do want to go back into the hotel, just not with you.’
‘Please, this has been killing me for ages now. I kept thinking you’d die and I’d never know. You knew my address. You came to see me. You wanted to tell me something. What is it? Please!’ He’s starting to shout now. Inside the hotel I see the family who just passed us talking to the receptionists. They’re all craning their necks to look at us.
‘Fine,’ I hiss. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
I march away from him, down the steps, wincing with every stride as the pain in my shoulder throbs angrily. I just need to get him away from the hotel, away from my safe haven, and try to take control of the situation. He may be shockingly young. He may say things that will upset me and anger me and disgust me. But he may also be the key to working out how I got into this mess in the first place.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Mother
May. Three months after the attack.
When I was a little girl in Saudi Arabia, my father spent his time living the high life in the oil industry, profiting from the rising prices in the trade and doing business deals that always sounded both complex and boring. My mum and I were left to amuse ourselves, with me going to an international school for a short while, being taught by a loud, irritating American woman, while my mum drifted around whatever hotel or flat we were staying in at the time. But sometimes, when my dad got home from work, we would journey to Half Moon Bay near Khobar and I’d run along the beach, scooping up the silk-like sand, enjoying the feel of it moistening my fingers. I don’t remember anything very fun about my early years there, but the beach trips stick in my mind. I was free. Joyful. Content. My parents around me, not arguing – or at least not in earshot. And then it all went to pot. We moved to Australia. Our local beaches were full of shrieking families and teenagers smoking. I could no longer be the girl running free along a stretching coastline. I was an anxious, cynical, borderline-depressed young teenager, living in an alienatingly large house that didn’t feel like home, miles away from anything very interesting, with two parents who hated each other.
Walking along the Southend coastline now, I think back to my childhood moments of beach freedom. The wonderful rush of the air gushing through my hair, like it is now, although the wind in Saudi was notably warmer than it is here in Essex. And, back then, I didn’t have a teenage boy following me like a lost dog.
‘Please, can we just stop and talk,’ he says, keeping up the pace next to me. I slow down, though more from the pain rather than out of respect for him. I didn’t want to talk, but I knew I needed to.
‘Let’s cross the road and go into that little thing over there,’ I say, catching my breath. ‘I don’t know what it is, a bus stop?’
He shrugs. ‘I dunno. Never seen a bus there.’
I don’t reply, or even wait for him, just cross the empty road and walk towards the alcove built into the side of the hill overlooking the seafront. The white walls that look like they haven’t seen any fresh paint since the 70s are cracked and stained, and spiderwebs loop around the upper reaches. At any other time I would feel extremely uncomfortable, but right now I am already so far out of my comfort zone, I barely register it.
The boy settles next to me and I try to look at him but my shoulder aches so much, I settle for facing straight ahead at the sea.
‘Look,’ I say, trying to choose my words carefully, deciding how much I should tell him
. ‘The crash sort of… confused me. I forgot some things. And I need your help.’
I feel him stir beside me, his hoodie brushing against me. I can smell his cheap aftershave. It probably isn’t even aftershave, just some supermarket Lynx knockoff – extremely sweet. Almost nauseating. Could I ever have had sex with a boy like this?
‘OK. What sort of things do you want to know?’
I sigh. ‘Well, the point of me staying here is for me to try to work out what’s going on – what I’ve done or been doing and, to be completely honest, the arrival of you kind of horrifies me… I expected at least someone in their thirties.’
His feet start scraping on the ground. He’s tensing. ‘What? You don’t… you don’t remember me?’
His face is a mask of horror. His sharp-cut jaw is pulled inward, his eyes glaring at me.
I decide to just come out and say it. ‘I don’t, no. I don’t really remember anything.’
‘What… nothing?’
‘I don’t even know your name.’
He looks at the floor. ‘It’s Michael,’ he says quietly. Then his face contorts. For a minute, I think he’s going to start shouting. Then he bursts into tears. I am completely at a loss what to do. I just sit there and stare at him as he cries in front of me. Then the mother in me takes over. I take him in my arms and he’s sobbing into my hurt shoulder but I don’t care. I feel how lost he is. How confused he is. And I know how he feels.
‘Let’s… let’s just sit down,’ I say, and we settle back on the narrow seats and he sniffs and inhales. I hand him a tissue and he blows his nose enthusiastically and sniffs some more.
‘You can keep that,’ I say. ‘And stop crying. Come on. We’ll work this out. I realise this is probably a bit strange for you. I can assure you it is for me.’
He nods, the tears still running. ‘It’s not strange, it’s great. Or it was until you were in that crash and I ran off like a fucking child.’
I hold up my hands. ‘Don’t blame yourself, honestly. It must have been horrifying. You shouldn’t have had to see that. And I didn’t die. Things could have been a lot worse.’
‘It’s just… Every day is just so fucking shit, all the time. Nothing ever fucking changes. And then suddenly you tell me I could do modelling, but you’re clearly coming on to me and invite me over, and you get angry… and then you tell me you’ve come to tell me something, like it’s something important… and I think, for a moment, maybe this is it…’
‘It?’
He sniffs and nods, ‘Yeah. It. The moment it all changes. Like, you tell me something that changes everything for ever?’
‘What, did you think I was there to tell you you’d won the lottery or something?’
He lets out a small laugh, ‘Not likely – never bought a ticket. But I could tell it was something really important. The way you said it. The way you looked at me. I think about you all day every day. And I feel shit about it all, as I left you and you could have died.’
‘Right,’ I say, buying time as I digest this. His reference to modelling also puzzles me. Did I lie to this kid, tell him I was some kind of modelling scout, merely to get him into bed? The extent of my psychological breakdown before my brush with death is fast becoming so bizarre, it feels like the plot of one of my more outlandish screenplays. Key words of what he’s told me are sinking in. And what also strikes me, crucially, is the absence of some words.
‘Michael. Please tell me, honestly: did we have sex?’
His eyes meet mine and I see sadness and worry deep within them, as if it’s something physical, something you can point to. ‘No. I think I fucked up. I started things way too soon. You seemed… I don’t know… you seemed put off. Each time I thought you wanted it, you then seemed scared or angry.’
Relief floods through me. I’m not entirely sure what difference this makes or if it helps get to the bottom of what’s going on here, but at least I haven’t done that. At least I haven’t stepped over that personal moral line.
‘Don’t feel bad about the crash,’ I say gently. ‘I told you, it isn’t your fault. Any of this. I clearly just… went a bit mad. Acted out. Lost it a bit. I shouldn’t have put you in that position.’ I’m trying to make sense of it as I say it, aware of the innocent, slightly adorable, young face staring at me. ‘There’s something I should tell you. I don’t know if I told you this before… before I was in hospital… I can’t remember…’ I take a deep breath and then say it, as calmly and slowly as I can. ‘My daughter died earlier this year. It was… the worst thing. The very worst thing a parent could go through.’
He looks bewildered and his eyes widen a little. He’s probably realising how far out of his depth he’s been swimming all this time. I can’t have told him this before.
‘I’m… I’m sorry,’ he says, quietly. ‘How did she die?’
‘She was murdered.’
He’s pressing his knuckles against each other, apparently a nervous habit. If he were older or tougher looking, one would expect them to make cracking sounds, but the small bones in his hands don’t make a sound. ‘Fuck. That’s… that’s really bad.’
His response is rather pathetic, and on another day I might have flared up. Reminded him that being banned from driving for life due to speeding is ‘really bad’, or a conviction for high-level fraud is ‘really bad’, or even beating someone up so they have to press charges for assault would count as ‘really bad’, but having one’s daughter gunned down by a masked sociopath wasn’t ‘really bad’, it was earth-shatteringly cataclysmic. A transcendental avalanche of horror that nobody’s words or attempts at sympathy could ever do justice to. But I don’t say all this to him. I just nod.
‘How old was she? Did they find the guy who did it?’
I nod. ‘They did. He’s dead too now. And she was sixteen.’
‘Well, at least he’s dead. How did he die?’
‘The police shot him.’
‘Fuck. Was it, like, a kidnapping? Did he try and get money or something? Or was he a pervert?’
The insensitivity of his words hurts me inside, but I don’t let him see. I just shake my head. ‘No. He was a member of ISIS.’
‘What… you mean…?’
‘He was a terrorist, yes. She was killed during the attack on Stratford train station earlier this year. You probably heard about it.’
I hear his gasp. ‘Christ, yeah, of course. Everyone was talking about it at school. And we go to Stratford. My friends and me. When we have the money to. It sort of… put us off for a bit.’
‘Well, I can understand that,’ I say, brushing my silent tears away.
‘They killed people in Westfields too, didn’t they? They set off a bomb.’
‘Yes. She wasn’t there though. She was in the station. I don’t know why she was there. But for some reason she was. In the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Something shifts in my mind slightly as I say this. I can’t grasp what it is. Just a strange sense of familiarity, that same feeling of déjà vu, and it lingers around me for a moment, then eventually dissipates.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, putting a hand on my arm now. ‘I’m really sorry. I…’
He stops. A buzzing sound is emanating from his pocket, a persistent vibration against the material of his fraying skinny jeans. ‘Fuck, sorry,’ he says, taking out a cheap Motorola smartphone, ‘it’s my brother.’ He answers the call and goes to stand by the alcove entrance. Although he’s facing out towards the sea and the onslaught of the screaming wind, I can still just about catch his words into the phone.
‘When? Now? Just now? Is she awake? No, don’t call an ambulance, just put her in the bath. Cold water. Yes you do fucking care, otherwise you wouldn’t have called me. Do it now. I’m coming.’
He cancels the call. ‘Fuck!’ he yells at the wall, then sits back down inside and buries his face in his hands.
‘What was that all about?’ I ask.
‘It’s my mum. Well, that wasn’t, that was my
brother, but he’s at home with my mum and she’s taken something. I think it’s just too much drink, but she does other stuff too. Sometimes she mixes things. I need to get back. Help him deal with it.’
I stand up. ‘Come on. I’ll get you a taxi.’
He looks confused, as if he’s never heard of such a thing.
‘You mean, a car?’
‘Yes, of course I mean a car.’
‘I… I can run there in about twenty minutes.’
‘In this weather? If those clouds are anything to go by, it looks like it’s going to start gushing it down again any second. Give me your phone.’
Silently he offers it out, still looking bewildered.
There’s no lock on the interface and the functions are very simple. I’ve never realised how sophisticated an iPhone is until now, navigating this cheap machine’s clunky graphics to Google ‘Southend Taxis’, pick a nearby company and click the number to call. I arrange for a car to be sent to the hotel and am told it should be there within ten minutes.
‘Come on. Let’s get back to the hotel and we’ll get the taxi.’
He’s still baffled, ‘What, you mean… you’re coming too?’
I straighten up, feeling my bones click and complain. If I get a moment before the taxi arrives, I must go up and get more painkillers from my room.
‘Yes, I’m coming too. Because there’s more I still want to ask you. A lot more.’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The Mother
May. Three months after the attack.
The taxi isn’t waiting when we get back to the hotel, so I take the lift to my room to pick up some more painkillers, leaving the boy sitting in one of the armchairs with a collection of old women, all of them eyeing him warily as if he might suddenly do something antisocial or violent.
