The Race (21 page)

From then on we were kind of an item and I suppose it showed. “Oh fuck,” Robyn said when she returned from Cambridge and found us cuddling on the sofa. “Just don’t go all lovey-dovey on me, that’s all I’m asking.”

I wasn’t sure if Peter and I would stay together, but even then I found it difficult to imagine my life without him. Things were so different from the way they had been with Tim. With Tim there had been this
thing
, this high-octane yearning uncertainty, the sense that something was expected of us, ready or not. With Peter, sex just happened and it was no big deal. It was my friendship with Peter, more than anything else, that made me see that Derek and what Derek had done to me didn’t have to define the way I thought and felt.

Being with Peter showed me that I could say no to Derek controlling my life, the same way I’d have said no to Derek raping me, if I’d known how. Slowly I began to realise that my brother’s opinions and his violence and his cruelty could be relegated to a part of my mind where they no longer held any active influence over my future. I think that’s why when Linda asked me if I had a boyfriend I said no. I didn’t want the news getting back to Derek. I didn’t want Derek to know anything about me or about my new life or what I was doing.

“There just isn’t time, not with all the essay-writing and everything.” I said to her. I tried to laugh it off, to make it seem unimportant, but Linda’s question made me feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. I sensed it wasn’t me we were talking about, that already we’d moved on to something else, the thing, whatever it was, that had prompted Linda to ask to see me in the first place.

“That’s a shame,” Linda said. “College should be fun, shouldn’t it? It’s no fun if it’s all about work.” She glanced quickly around the restaurant. “Listen, Christy, do you mind if I ask you something?”

“What’s wrong?” I said. For a minute I thought she was going to tell me my father had died, but then I realised almost at once that didn’t make sense. Dad being dead wouldn’t have made her start acting antsy the way she was. She wouldn’t have bothered coming up to London to tell me, either. It was hardly big news that he was on the way out. Derek would have phoned me instead.

“It’s Derek,” Linda said. “He’s all set on me selling my flat, but I don’t want to do that. I think we should wait, you know, with your dad being so ill and everything. But every time I suggest putting it off he gets all in a state. I’m in a bit of a fix, actually. I was wondering if you’d mind having a word with him.”

“He won’t listen to me,” I said hurriedly. “We’re not all that close.”

I realised that Derek and I hadn’t had a proper conversation, just the two of us together, since his assault on me. Most likely we never could now, not ever. I couldn’t tell Linda that, though. And what I knew for sure was that the idea of me advising him to back off from Linda was simply ridiculous. He would tell me to piss off out of his business and that would be that. I felt annoyed with Linda for not seeing that, for even suggesting it. The whole thing was her fault anyway, for letting Derek believe they were engaged. My stomach felt bound in a knot, like a woodlouse someone had prodded with a piece of twig. Linda clasped her hands together on the Formica tabletop then started fiddling with her rings, the diamond-and-pearl cluster Derek had given her and another one I hadn’t seen before, a narrow gold band set with a tiny arrow of yellow quartz.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is my problem. I know you tried to warn me. I’ve been so stupid.”

“Is there anywhere you could go?” I said.

“Go? What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” I replied. I felt stupid for even mentioning it. “I just thought that if you went away for a while he might calm down.”

“That’s just crazy though. I can’t let him rule my life like that. Anyway, there’s my job.” She turned away from me and started fumbling in her handbag. I thought she was looking for cigarettes, but after a moment’s searching she pulled out an envelope. It was grimy and slightly crumpled, bent at the corners. She glanced quickly at the front of it then handed it to me across the table.

“I found this in the glove compartment of Derek’s van,” she said. “It’s addressed to you, and I thought that you should have it.”

The envelope had an Oxford postmark and had been torn open along the top. I recognised Tim’s handwriting immediately.

“I haven’t read it, in case you’re wondering,” Linda said. “It was like that when I found it.”

I wanted to ask her how come she’d been poking about in Derek’s glove compartment in the first place, but I couldn’t speak. I took the letter out of its envelope and unfolded it.
Dear Christy
, I read.
I keep hoping that I’m going to hear from you. I don’t understand what’s happened
. The letter was dated the April of the year before. I’d stopped writing to Tim in the December. I remembered how I’d felt, that aching emptiness. It was horrible to know that Tim had gone on writing and waiting and hoping, longer even than I had. That he’d believed in me even when, unbeknownst to him, the version of me he was writing to no longer existed.

My thoughts were racing. I wished that Linda would leave, so I could read the rest of Tim’s letter in private. I wondered how many other letters there had been, if Derek had hidden these also or simply destroyed them. Over the next couple of days I tried to write to Tim, to explain what had been done to us and to say sorry. I must have started two-dozen letters in total, but I never finished any of them and in the end I gave up. It was all too late. Besides, there was Peter to think about.

“Are you okay, Christy?” Linda said.

I nodded.

“It’s from a friend,” I said. “I must have mislaid it somehow.”

“I suppose,” Linda said. She gave me a look. “It’s funny how it ended up in Derek’s van though, isn’t it?”

We stared at one another for a moment in silence, then Linda told me she’d stopped being in love with my brother and probably never had been. There was someone else.

“His name’s Alex Adeyemi,” she said. “We were together for ages before I met Derek, but things went wrong for a bit and we weren’t seeing each other, so when Derek asked me out I said okay. That wasn’t fair on Derek, I see that now. Alex got back in contact just after Christmas and I agreed to meet him. He wants us to get back together permanently. Everything’s such a mess.”

“What are you going to do?” I said. I felt shaky inside, kind of sick. Some of it was Tim still, but mainly it was Linda and what she’d just told me. I couldn’t believe what she’d done, her stupidity. I realised she didn’t know my brother at all. She had no idea what he could be like when he got angry, what he was capable of.

When he found out about this Alex guy he was going to go berserk.

“I’ll have to tell him, won’t I?” Linda said. “Tell him it’s over.”

“Tell who? Alex?”

“No, of course not. I have to tell Derek. It would never have worked out, anyway. We’re two totally different people.” She sighed, and once again I saw how tired she looked. “There has to be a way to make him see that.”

“What about Alex?” I said. “What does he think?”

She shifted in her seat, looking uncomfortable. “I haven’t told him. About Derek, I mean. I didn’t want to complicate things. I’ve been able to keep up the pretence until now because Alex doesn’t want to pressure me – he still thinks of himself as the guilty party, I suppose. He must know something’s not right though. I feel awful, making excuses all the time about why I can’t see him. I can’t keep on with it.”

“Perhaps if you told Alex the truth he might be able to help you sort things out.”

“Maybe,” she said. She was silent for a moment. “But then he would know I carried on sleeping with Derek, even after I said I was still in love with him, and that would be terrible. Anyway,” she said, glancing across at me as if to check I was still listening. “I know this sounds stupid, but I’m afraid that if Derek finds out about Alex he might do something. Something awful.”

“You’re scared of him.” Our eyes met for a second and then we both looked away.

“You think I’m being ridiculous,” Linda said.

“He’s my brother.” It was a strange way for me to answer, not an answer at all really, but at that moment it was the only way I knew to express what I felt. That Derek was my brother and I knew he was crazy. I knew it better than anyone.

“What should I do?” Linda said. She looked close to tears.

“I don’t know yet,” I replied. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“I’m so sorry. I should never have got you involved in this.”

“We need time to work things out, that’s all.”

“I’ve been trying to work things out for months. It’s driving me mad.” She hauled a tissue out of her bag and blew her nose. Her beautiful face looked very pale and very still, the face of some antique maiden carved from alabaster. “I don’t want you worrying,” she said. “It’s simple really. I just have to tell him.”

I walked with her back to the station. It was mid-afternoon by then, and the sun had come out. The train was on time. I saw Linda on to the platform then caught the next train back down to New Cross. By the time I was half way there I’d managed to push the business of Linda and Derek to the back of my mind. It seemed to me that she was right – this was her problem and she shouldn’t have involved me.

I was as fed up with my brother as it was possible to be. I was sick of thinking about him.

Did I believe that Linda was actually in physical danger?

That’s a question I can’t answer honestly, because I still don’t know.

~*~

The following morning I received a letter from her. She thanked me for a lovely afternoon, and told me I should forget everything she’d told me about Alex.
I’ve decided not to see him again,
she wrote.
If you break up with someone there’s always a reason. I was stupid to think I could make it work. I’m going to tell him it’s over
. She said that Derek had had an offer on the house, and that she was starting to get excited about the move.

I didn’t believe a word of it, or not entirely. I guessed her reasons for writing the letter were much the same as my own reasons for not wanting to tell her about Peter and me: she didn’t want the story getting back to Derek. I also took her words as a sign that she’s decided to sort things out in her own way and I hoped that would be the end of it. But then about two weeks later I had a telephone call from Derek.

“Dad’s worse,” he said. “If you want to see him alive you should come now.” He paused. “I’ve had to put the house on hold and everything.”

“How bad is he?” I said.

“He’s still normal in his mind, if that’s what you mean. But the doctors say he’s only got days. A week at the most. They transferred him to the hospice yesterday, St Mary’s, and you know what that means.”

I said I’d come straight away, and I was on a train from London Bridge in less than an hour. Derek met me at Hastings station and drove me over to the hospice in the van. We barely exchanged a word the entire journey. I remember I was scared, scared that Dad would no longer recognise me, but I was wrong about that.

The man in the bed was still Dad, but a less concrete version. It was like seeing an actor on TV, playing the role of Dad, sick.

It was as if somebody was trying to rub him out.

When he saw me he tried to sit up, but fell back immediately against the pillows.

“Dad,” I said. “Don’t do that. There’s no need.”

He smiled weakly. There was a needle taped to his hand.

“Chris,” he said. “Derek told me you might be coming.”

I sat down on the plastic chair beside the bed. I was pleased to find he had his own room, with a view of the hospice garden. There were crocuses in bloom. Under a tree in the furthest corner I could see two nurses, sitting side by side on a wooden bench and chatting, taking a break. I was normally terrified of hospitals but this place seemed different. Most people when you ask them say they’d prefer to die at home in their own beds, but I felt a deep relief that Dad was here, in this bright clean space, surrounded by people who knew how to help him, instead of alone in the cluttered and airless downstairs room at Laton Road.

I hugged him briefly around the shoulders then quickly withdrew. It had been years since we’d had physical contact of any kind. I was ashamed to find I did not want to touch him now. I felt distressed by what was happening to him, but I had no idea how I should talk to him, not because he was dying but because we’d never talked.

It came to me then that I knew nothing about this man who was my father. I knew he liked Jeffrey Deaver novels and Guinness and motor racing on the TV, but aside from those small details he was a stranger to me. I wondered what he thought he knew of me in return? Did he remember that I was at college now? Other than the daily routine of the business, did he remember anything of his life with us at all?

As a family, we had fallen fatally out of touch with one another. It was easy to blame my mother for leaving, but was it not just as much my fault, or Derek’s? I had never tried to get to know my father properly, to see inside his world. Derek and I had been close once – with one horrible, desperate error that had been ruined. Nobody was to blame and yet we all were. Instead of reaching out to one another we had dived inward, into worlds that lay in close orbit but never touched.

We had forgotten we were even related. It was too late now.

Looking at my father in the hospital bed I felt an immense sadness. I felt disgusted with myself, but also the desire to be rid of this situation as soon as possible. I could do nothing to change what was happening and I did not belong here. The smiling, soft-voiced nurses made me feel in the way.

“How are you getting on, Dad?” I said.

“I’m really all right,” he said. “Since they’ve managed to sort out the pain I’m not bad at all.” He patted my arm briefly, then laid both hands in his lap as if their job was now finished and he had no further use for them. I sat silently beside him, thinking of things I might say and then rejecting them, one after the other. After about ten minutes one of the nurses brought me a cup of tea.