The Shut Eye (5 page)

But saved her for what?

For more pain? For more guilt? For more agony?

She stared at the flyer. If she’d been prepared to end her torture that irreversibly, wasn’t this worth trying? Wouldn’t it bring some kind of relief to know
something
? – even if that something was that Daniel really was dead?

For the first time since he had disappeared, the thought did not bring tears tingling into her eyes, only a deep, dull ache in her chest.

THE DEAD ARE WAITING TO SPEAK TO YOU.

Anna felt the words tugging at her in an insistent and seductive undertow.

Quickly she folded the leaflet again – once, twice, three times – and put it with the other junk mail. Then she pushed the whole bundle so far down into the kitchen bin that she had to scrub her arm with Dettol.

AFTER WORK ON
Fridays, the lads from Pigeon’s MoT & Diagnostics all went for a drink at the King’s Arms.

They were a motley crew. Tall, silent Pavel – always with an exotic black cigarette in his mouth that made him look like an angry poet; Mikey – as pale as a pint of milk, with ice-blue eyes, and hair of almost pure white on his head, brows, lashes and legs. His negative was Ang, with his tan skin, and jet-black hair and eyes.

Ang couldn’t buy a proper drink; he swore he was twenty, but he had no ID to support his claim, and it would be years before he looked more than sixteen, so they’d long ago stopped trying to con the barman and just got drunk without him.

Every time they did, Mikey got louder and Pavel got darker, while Ang joined in by laughing at jokes he didn’t understand – even if they were at his expense.

James got drunk too. With every beer he could do a better impression of a young man whose wife still loved him, and who hadn’t lost his son. Sometimes, through the blur of the beer, he could barely see his own cracks.

But it took a lot of blurring.

Mikey had his leg propped on a chair and was showing his curly white shins to two giggling women.

‘Is it white
everywhere
?’ one of them said, predictably, and they both giggled like mad at their own daring.

‘White as ice cream,’ leered Mikey. ‘If you’re lucky I’ll show you my 99.’

They shrieked and clutched each other and swigged their vod-bombs.

‘You girls are gorgeous,’ said Mikey. ‘Specially
you
.’ He pointed at both of them and they roared with laughter.

He’d take them both home tonight; James would have put his next paypacket on it. Mikey was no oil painting – hell, he was barely a
finger
painting – but he had the swagger of a man twice his age, and girls were putty in his fluffy white hands. The kind of girls who drank vod-bombs, anyway.

James stared down into the dregs of his third pint and wondered whether it was worth going on, or if he should just stop and save the money. Take Anna to the movies, maybe.

He snorted into the glass. They hadn’t been to the movies since before Daniel was born. So he finished his drink and got up to get another.

It had been a bad week, and he needed the blur.

The bar was three people deep, all waving their twenties at the sweaty staff. James stood and waited, letting the noise and the heat fill his head, pushing out any thinking he might do, any guilt.

Slowly he became aware of Mikey’s voice above the hubbub – ‘… and him over there, so feck you too if you think you’re hard enough!’

James turned slowly to look over his shoulder. Mikey could start a fight in an empty room, but on this occasion he was still in his chair, pointing him out to three clean-cut young men. They were in good shoes and neat-but-casual shirts, but James could see that the leader had a tattoo on his neck, low enough to be hidden by a collar and tie. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought it was a swastika.

Although Mikey and Pavel hadn’t got up, James noticed that Mikey had placed his pint on the window-sill, out of harm’s way, and Pavel had rested his cigarette on the edge of the table, which for him was tantamount to loading an Uzi.

Ang was on the edge of his seat, his dark eyes drawing rapid triangles between Mikey, the men and the door. He twitched, as if to get up, and Pavel put a big hand on his forearm, forcing him to stay put.

James couldn’t blame him for wanting to run; Ang had been beaten up a couple of times. Only a few months ago Brian had sent him off to Fryer Tuck’s for lunch and he’d returned with a split lip, a swollen eye and the tattered remains of cod and chips five times, with extra gravel.

But sometimes you had to make a stand …

James straightened up, and the man with the tattoo looked him up and down. James could almost watch him think: now it was four against three, although Ang barely counted. James wasn’t big, but he was an extra pair of fists, while Pavel was tall and unafraid, and Mikey looked like an enthusiast, even with the leg of his jeans rolled up.

James felt relief in his gut. Nothing was going to happen.

And nothing would have, if Ang had held his nerve.

But he made a sudden break for it – twisting off his chair and diving into the Friday-night crowd.

It stopped him like a wall and in a second they were on him, and James and Pavel and Mikey were on
them
, and a dozen lads who’d been preparing all night for a fight –
any
fight – joined in on any side that would have them.

It was the first fight James had been in for years, but by the time someone shouted that the police were coming, he had cleared a space around himself and a circle of people were regarding him warily. The three young men were nowhere to be seen.

Someone tugged at his sleeve and he knocked them away and turned to fight, whoever it was.

‘Whoa there!’ It was Mikey, ducking a bit. ‘Come on,’ he added urgently, ‘let’s go out the back.’

‘Where’s Ang?’ said James, and Ang and Pavel appeared as if by magic. They were all a little dishevelled, and Ang’s lip was split, but they were all in one piece.

‘Thanks a bunch,’ Ang panted sincerely. ‘Thanks a fucking bunch.’

They started laughing then. Partly Ang’s words and partly the adrenaline high of having fought and won.

James led them giggling around the bar, starting to jog. By the time they passed the toilets, they were running full pelt and laughing, and he hit the back door so hard he almost took it off its hinges.

It was raining outside but nothing could dampen their spirits – not even the kegs that Pavel knocked over, or the rusted nail that dug into Ang’s hand. All of it was just hilarious, now they weren’t dead.

Looking down the alleyway alongside the pub, they could see the flickering lights of a police car, so they turned round, following the high wall along the back of the yard. A train passed under the bridge and James pulled himself up the wall high enough to watch its curved, wet roof disappear into the darkness.

‘Yahhhhh!’ he shouted after it. ‘Yahhhhhhhh!’

‘Nutter,’ laughed Mikey.

‘Motherfucker,’ laughed Ang, and the other three looked at each other in surprise. Then James said, ‘More tea, vicar?’ and they all laughed so hard that Mikey actually cried and they all had to shush each other constantly so the police wouldn’t find them here behind the bins that smelled of chip fat and gangrene.

When they stepped out of the alleyway, it was into the crowd that had emptied from the front door of the King’s Arms, illuminated in slow blue flickers by the lights of the police cars.

Mikey whistled for a taxi, and he and Pavel climbed into it. They lived in the other direction from the garage.

‘You OK?’ said Mikey.

‘Yeah, mate,’ said James. ‘Bloody brilliant.’

‘You’re a nutter,’ said Mikey, in a voice that sobered James up, because it didn’t sound like Mikey was joking. He was looking at him hard, and James wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, in case he had blood there – or food, even though he hadn’t eaten a thing.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Nothing,’ said Mikey. ‘Maybe get some peas for your hands.’

‘Yeah, I will,’ said James, although he didn’t know what the hell Mikey was talking about.
Mikey
was the nutter; everyone knew that.

They all said goodnight and fuck off and up yours, and then Mikey saw the two girls from earlier in the pub and called them over, and James and Ang watched as – somehow – he charmed them both into the cab and drove off across Bickley Bridge.

‘Unbelievable,’ said James.

‘Shit,’ said Ang.

They walked the short way to the garage together, both hunched against the rain.

Ang peeled off and started patting his pockets.

‘Got the keys?’ James hoped he did, because otherwise he would have to take him home with him, and Anna would be angry. They used to have Ang up for supper all the time, and on cold nights he would stay on the sofa. But now Anna wouldn’t have anyone in the flat because of the germs. James suspected that even he wouldn’t be welcome, if he wasn’t the one paying the rent. Ang never said anything about it, and the only time James had tried to explain, he’d just nodded and smiled and said, Is good –as if he had never wanted a decent meal or a warm sofa in the first place.

Ang took the garage keys from his pocket and dangled them at James.

James opened his own front door just a few yards away, and they both raised a hand in goodbye.

James closed the door behind him—

never without thinking of Daniel

—and took off his boots.

He winced as his knuckles protested at being asked to perform intricate manoeuvres like pulling on a lace. Only then did he remember what Mikey had said about the peas. Frozen peas to take the swelling down.

He went up the stairs and opened the door of the freezer compartment. It was small, and made smaller by the overgrowth of ice around its entrance.

There were no frozen peas – just an empty ice tray and half a box of fish fingers.

James took them out and stared at the box. Fish fingers were Daniel’s favourite. He put them back.

‘Anna! he said loudly. ‘We got any peas?’

She didn’t answer. It didn’t matter. Where would they be if they weren’t in the freezer? And if they were anywhere but the freezer, they were no good to him.

He shook his head.

With the open fridge cooling his thighs, James spread his hands on the counter. They were red and swollen, and one knuckle had two short cuts on it right alongside each other – as if Bugs Bunny had nipped him.

He must have hit something very hard or very often to have gotten them into this state. He couldn’t remember whether it was one or the other or both, but he felt a lot better for it.

He knelt slowly in front of the fridge and pushed both his hands into the freezer compartment. The overgrown ice pressed around him coldly.

‘Anna!’ he said again, but she was ignoring him.

He rested his head on the top of the fridge and only woke up when melting ice trickled slowly up his sleeve all the way into his armpit.

He got up and shut the door—

such a simple thing to do

—and went into the bedroom.

It was only then that James realized with a shock that – for the first time in four months – Anna wasn’t home.

THE MAN WHO’D
been seen on TV was a big disappointment. Richard Latham was stocky and middle-aged, wearing thick glasses and beige slacks, and when he walked on to the small raised plinth that was supposed to be a stage, he bounced along on his tiptoes with the exaggerated gait of a puppet on strings. Anna thought there must be something wrong with his feet or his legs.

It was comical, but it was also a little bit disturbing.

He tapped the microphone and then bent backwards a little to look up at the ceiling.

‘Can you hear me?’ he said.

An amused ripple ran through the small audience. There were maybe fifteen people in total gathered together in the Bickley Spiritualist Church, which was a grubby little hall next to the King’s Arms. There were bars at the high windows, plastic chairs instead of pews, and fake flowers in a vase: lilies and irises, gathering dust. On the wall behind the plinth was a clock that had stopped at a quarter past six, and a small, apologetic crucifix.

None of it calmed Anna’s nerves.

She had taken nearly an hour just to get past the five footprints. She’d chickened out and gone back inside four times, hot and panicky despite the cold and damp, before finally making a run for it – hurtling down the uneven pavement with the baby jiggling and bouncing in his buggy.

Just being outdoors had been enough to make her nervous. Now that she’d seen the dusty flowers, being indoors was making her nervous too. The carpet was threadbare and crumbly, and nobody but her had left their shoes in the porch. She tried not to imagine the germs, but her eyes already felt gritty. She leaned forward and pulled the rabbit fleece almost up to Charlie’s eyes so that the dust couldn’t settle in his nose or mouth. She almost wished she hadn’t brought him, but leaving him at home would have been worse. Better let him be exposed to the dirty air and filthy flowers than left with James.

James couldn’t be trusted with children.

The woman sitting next to Anna leaned over and peered into the buggy.

‘Awwww, isn’t he lovely!’

Anna nodded, and smiled through stiff lips. She wished the woman would get her face away from the buggy. Her hair was too blonde and permed to within an inch of its sticky life, and she was wafting chemicals and germs all over him.

‘What’s his name?’

‘D— Charlie.’ She’d almost said Daniel. It would have felt so good – to use his name in a normal sentence instead of one that shredded her heart.

‘Awwww,’ the woman said again. ‘Look at him blowing his little bubbles!’

A train rumbled under the bridge below them, and Anna thought of the eight twenty from Victoria. She felt that old desperation fluttering upwards in her like a bus ticket in a sudden gust, and had to slam a door on the feeling. She couldn’t think of that. She couldn’t think of the drop to the rails and the oblivion of the train. She had to stay strong if she was ever going to find Daniel.