The Shock of the Fall (Special edition) (22 page)

‘I can’t do my toggles, Matt.’

‘Do you want me to help?’

‘No. I can do it. Are we really going to see a dead body?’

‘Yeah. Put that one in there.’

‘I can do it.’

‘Shhh. Fine. I was only—’

‘Done it!’ He smiled at me, his big daft grin.

‘Come on then. Let’s go.’

I can see my hand reaching to the door handle of the caravan, but I do not recognize it. I cannot see the thread of time that turned that child’s hands into these hands; tobacco-stained, ink-stained, nails bitten to frustrated stubs.

I opened the door, and stepped into the last half-hour of my brother’s life. He followed, breathless with excitement.

‘Where are we going? Where is it?’

‘It isn’t far, up here.’

‘I can feel some rain.’

‘Pull your hood up then.’

We didn’t need the torch until we were past the caravans, and onto the narrow road leading towards the place where you stood if it was your turn to close your eyes and count to a hundred.

The rain started falling harder. Simon was trailing now, looking over his shoulder. ‘We should go back, Matthew. I’m tired. We’re not supposed to be out at night. Nobody’s awake. Let’s go back.’

‘Don’t be a baby all the time. It’s around this side. Here. Hold this.’

I thrust the torch at him, and led us round the side of the camping shop, to the patch of overgrown grass near to the recycling bins. It was darker there.

I felt afraid, perhaps.

I probably felt afraid because at night-time everything is more frightening, but more than that, I felt angry. I felt angry that I was always responsible for everything, how Simon got all the attention, that I’d been shouted at when I fell and hurt my knee, and I felt angry that the girl with her stupid doll had thought that she could shout at me too.

I felt angry with Simon for not holding the torch still, for the way he shifted his weight from foot to foot, whining that it was time to go back, that he didn’t want to see a dead body. I pushed my hands into the wet soil where the wooden cross was placed, until the tips of my fingers reached something soft.

‘I don’t like it any more, Matthew. I’m getting wet. There isn’t a dead body there. I’m going back. I’m going back now.’

‘Wait! Hold the torch still, hold it down here.’

I pulled away a handful of mud, and another. With Simon beside me wiping rain from his cheeks. He wanted me to stop, he was frightened. I didn’t stop. I lifted her into the air, she was dirty, sodden, her arms flopped at her sides. I held her, and began to laugh, laughing at Simon for being so pathetic; ‘It’s a doll Simon, it’s just a stupid doll, Look! Look! She wants to play with you.’

He was backing away, clutching his chest in the way he did when panic took hold, when no words could calm him down. He was begging me, Stop! Stop! STOP! His trembling hands holding the torch, pointing it at the doll. Her button eyes glistened in the beam.

‘She wants to play with you, Simon. She wants to play chase.’

He tried to run, his stupid way of running, hunched right forwards with his legs wide apart, lumbering through the gap between the shop and the recycling bins.

‘She wants to play.’

I looped behind the water tap, leaping into his path, cutting off the route back to the caravans. He froze, dropping the torch. It clattered on the ground. I picked it up, still laughing, and shone it to see his face.

It wasn’t funny now. It stopped being funny. He was full of tears, strings of snot dripping from his nose, clinging to his wet lips. He didn’t look like the moon any more. He looked terrified.

In the distance waves crashed against the cliffs, and somewhere, the girl, the girl who had shouted at me, who had told me I wasn’t welcome any more, somewhere she whimpered in her sleep.

‘Simon. I was joking. It was a joke.’

‘NO, NO!’ He punched me in my stomach, as hard as he could.

I was always such a wimp. My body crumpled, I couldn’t get my breath back.

‘It was—’

I couldn’t catch my breath.

He turned, heading along the path, away from the caravans, away from me. ‘Simon, wait. Please.’

But he was faster now, reaching the side entrance, onto the main road, down onto the cliff path, into darkness.

‘Simon, wait.’

I couldn’t reach him.

I couldn’t.

The end of Simon Anthony Homes was cruel and sudden.

It was dismissive.

That’s how I think of it now. It was the whole universe turning its back and walking away, incapable of caring.

He didn’t fall far, or particularly hard. It was no harder than I had fallen only a few days before. And at the exact same spot; the same twist in the path where exposed roots snare unsuspecting ankles. There was the shock of the fall and the blood on my knee and Simon had carried me. He carried me all the way to safety, all by himself, because he loved me.

The difference – a difference – was that in the moment before Simon fell, he turned. He glanced back over his shoulder to look at me. It was the briefest moment.

‘Talk to me.’

It happened so fast and I can never slow it down.

I don’t know why I should expect to. But I do, in a way. I am a selfish person and I feel cheated out of the sensation that you sometimes hear people describe, when they talk about how the enormity of a situation made everything appear to move in slow motion.

It wasn’t like that.

‘Please. Say something.’

He had turned back to look at me, and I try to convince myself that he was smiling. That the joke was on me. He wasn’t scared at all. It was all a game, and he was happy because for once it was me who was tricked. Or else I tell myself it was a look of forgiveness. In the final moment, he knew that I loved him, and I would never want to hurt him.

But it happened too fast. My world didn’t move in slow motion. I sometimes wonder if his did, and if so, what lasting final image did I offer? Did it give him any comfort, or only betrayal?

It was the way he landed, his neck still turning. It was the weakness in his muscle tone, a symptom of his disorder. It was a chance in a million, a grubby statistic. It was the movement of his body, the speed, the trajectory, the slipperiness of the rain-soaked earth, the exact and stubborn location of an exposed root.

And it was me.

Whatever wave had been swelling in the sea in the seconds before he fell, would break in the seconds after. This dismissive and uncaring universe simply carried on with its business, as if nothing of any consequence had happened.

‘Please. Talk to me.’

I am trying to lift him, to carry him, but the ground is wet. There is mud in my mouth, in my eyes, and the rain keeps falling. I lift him and fall, lift him and fall. He is silent. I am begging him to say something. Please, say something. I fall again, landing hard against a rock, and I am holding him, holding his face to mine, so close I can feel his warmth leave. Please. Please. Talk to me.

‘I can’t carry you. I’m sorry.’

The little cloth doll is lying beside us in the mud. She looks cold without her coat. I gently, ever so gently, lift Simon’s head, and place her beneath it. I want to make him comfortable.

I am me. I am in my flat, sitting on the chair with the blistered arms. It’s getting late. I have been typing for a long time, and am tired. I’ve stubbed a cigarette out on my forearm. That’s blistered too. I hoped the pain might keep me here, but I can’t grip the thread.

Time falls through my fingers.

In the place in my head where pictures form, I’m seeing another me. I have run away from a psychiatric ward, am standing on a cliff top at the farthest edge of my world. It’s dark now, but the moon is bright. Big too. That’s Simon, watching me. I can hear his voice in the wind. He’s cold, he can’t do his toggles up. I shuffle forward, pushing my toecaps over the edge.

‘Are you listening?’

I imagine how it must be to die, to be dead. What would happen to my body, how would my family find out? Who would tell Nanny Noo? Who would tell Jacob? It makes me feel guilty to think like this. I need courage to take the final step.

‘Come away from there.’

There is someone behind me, I can hear footsteps. ‘Are you even listening? It’s dangerous. You might fall.’

But in the place in my head where pictures form, I am seeing another me; a nine-year-old boy at the foot of his parents’ bed, muddy rainwater dripping from his clothes into a puddle on the lino floor. He is watching his parents, the way they hold each other in their sleep, the way his mother’s face is pressed awkwardly into the nook of his father’s arm, her mouth wide open, hair from his armpit brushing against her forehead, the sheets bunched up at their feet, their ankles not quite touching.

This boy knows he must wake them. If he listens he will hear me, shouting to him: Wake them up. Tell them. There was an accident, Simon has fallen. Something terrible has happened.

Wake them up.

The boy presses his back to the wall, slides silently to the floor, hugging knees to chest, hearing only the last few raindrops tapping at the window and the occasional murmur from his parents, as they hold each other in their sleep.

‘Matthew, sweetheart. What’s happened?’ Mum knelt beside me, shaking me awake. The room was bright with dawn sunshine. I could feel the heat of her breath against my cheek, the faint smell of decay.

In a few minutes my dad would be pacing outside, calling for my brother. Telling him to stop messing about. The sound of sirens in the distance playing a tune to the fear in Mum’s voice. ‘Don’t just look at me. Talk to me. What have you done? Where’s Simon?’

My neck felt tight, stiff from being on the floor, from a night in damp clothes. I started to shiver, my teeth chattering uncontrollably.

‘I’m really cold, Mummy.’

‘Forget being cold. Where’s Simon?’

I didn’t go to the hospital with them. I stayed with Mr and Mrs Onslow, a retired couple who owned the caravan next to ours.

‘We’ve Snakes and Ladders,’ said Mrs Onslow, placing a tray of squash and biscuits on the carpet beside me. I didn’t respond. She went back to the small kitchen area to busy herself with dishes. I guess she didn’t know what else to say.

There was a knock at the door, and Mr Onslow folded his newspaper. I could make out Dad’s voice in their whispered exchange, but I couldn’t hear what was said.

Dad came through to join me. He sat on the carpet cross-legged like I was, which was strange because I’d never seen him sit that way, so wondered why he chose to now. He looked tired and pale.

‘Alright mon ami. How you doing?’ he asked, ruffling my hair.

I shrugged.

‘The police are here—’ His voice cracked and trailed off. He paused, composing himself. ‘It won’t take long. You need to tell them what you told us.’

I looked hard at the floor.

‘I thought I woke you up, Dad.’

Mum hugged me so tight I thought my ribs might crack. She needed to make sure I was really there. I was conscious of the two policemen awkwardly nursing mugs of tea, so as soon as she relaxed her grip I pulled away.

The policemen introduced themselves.

One of them was about Dad’s age and had a bushy ginger-brown moustache and glasses. The other was younger, with slicked-back black hair, sticking up a little in the middle. They both wore uniform, their hats on the table.

‘The first thing to say is you’re not in any trouble,’ said moustache. ‘Nobody is accusing you of anything, nobody is saying you’ve done anything wrong.’

Mum squeezed my hand.

‘We need to take a statement from you, which means I’m going to ask you some questions and we’re going to write down what you tell us. But if you want to stop at any point you can just say. What do you need to do if you want to stop?’

‘Say.’

‘That’s right. Okay, now before we start, I’m going to tell you a story. Do you like stories?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Sometimes. Well, I’m not good at stories, but this one isn’t very long. Once upon a time there was a boy of about your age, perhaps a bit older, and he decided to try smoking. So he took a cigarette from his dad’s pack and started to smoke it in his bedroom. Then he heard his mum coming up the stairs so he quickly put it out. She came in his room and asked, have you been smoking? And the boy said no. So that’s the story, and I did tell you I wasn’t good at stories. But tell me, was the boy lying or was he telling the truth?’

‘Lying.’

‘He was lying. That’s right. Why do you think he lied?’

‘So he wouldn’t get in trouble.’

‘That’s what I think too. But if you remember, you’re not in trouble, and you haven’t done anything wrong. So I need you to tell the truth, okay?’

I felt an emptiness filling my chest, and thought it might swallow me whole.

‘But if you don’t remember something, or don’t know, then you must say you don’t know. What colour’s my front door?’