23.
Ed
So, once upon a time Ed met a girl who was the most optimistic person he had ever known. A girl who wore flip-flops in the hope of spring. She seemed to bounce through life like Tigger; the things that would have felled most people didn’t seem to touch her. Or if she did fall, she bounced right back. She fell again, plastered on a smile, dusted herself down and kept going. He never could work out whether it was the single most heroic or the most idiotic thing he’d ever seen.
And then he stood on the kerb outside a four-bedroomed executive home somewhere near Carlisle and watched as that same girl saw everything she’d believed in stripped away, until nothing was left but a ghost who sat in his passenger seat gazing unseeing through the windscreen; the sound of her optimism draining away was audible. And something cracked open in his heart.
He had booked a holiday cabin on the side of a lake, twenty minutes from Marty’s – or rather his girlfriend’s – house. He couldn’t find a hotel within a hundred miles that would take the dog, and the last receptionist he had spoken to, a jovial woman who called him ‘duck’ eight times, suggested he just go self-catering, and told him of a new place she knew, run by her friend’s daughter-in-law. He’d had to pay for three days – their minimum stay – but he didn’t care. Jess didn’t ask. He wasn’t sure she even noticed where they were.
They picked up the keys from Reception, he followed the path through the trees, they pulled up in front of the cabin and he unloaded Jess and the dog and saw them inside. She was limping badly by then. He remembered suddenly the ferocity with which she had kicked the car. In flip-flops.
‘Have a long bath,’ he said, flicking on all the lights and closing the curtains. It was too dark outside by now to see anything. ‘Go on. Try and relax. I’ll go and get us some food. And maybe an ice pack.’
She turned and nodded. The smile she raised in thanks was barely a smile at all.
The closest supermarket was a supermarket in name only: there were two baskets of tired vegetables, and shelves of long-life food with brand names he hadn’t heard of, sitting, as they might well have done for months, under flickering strip lights. He bought a couple of ready meals, some bread, coffee, milk, frozen peas and painkillers for her foot. As an afterthought he bought a couple of bottles of wine.
He was standing at the checkout when his phone beeped. He wrestled it out of his pocket, wondering if it was Jess. And then he remembered that her phone had run out of credit two days previously.
Hello darling. So sorry you can’t make tomorrow. We do hope to see you before too long. Love Mum. PS Dad sends his love. Bit poorly today.
‘Twenty-two pounds eighty.’
The girl had said it twice before he registered.
‘Oh. Sorry.’ He fished around for his card, and held it out to her.
‘Card machine’s not working. There’s a sign.’
Ed followed her gaze. ‘Cash or cheque only,’ it said, in laboriously outlined ballpoint letters. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’
‘Why would I be kidding you?’ She chewed, meditatively, at whatever was in her mouth.
‘I’m not sure I’ve got enough cash on me,’ Ed said.
She gazed at him impassively.
‘You don’t take cards?’
‘’S what the sign says.’
‘Well … do you not have a manual card machine?’
‘Most people round here pay cash,’ she said. Her expression said it was obvious that he was not from around here.
‘Okay. Where’s the nearest cash machine?’
‘Carlisle.’
He thought she was joking. She wasn’t.
‘If you haven’t got the money you’ll have to put the food back.’
‘I’ve got the money. Just give me a minute.’
He dug around in his pockets, ignoring the barely suppressed sighs and rolled eyes from those behind him and by some miracle from his inside jacket pocket and the bottom of his wallet he was able to scrape up cash for everything bar the onion bhajis. He counted it all out and she raised her eyebrows ostentatiously as she rang it up, and shoved the bhajis to one side, where they would doubtless be shoved back into a chiller cabinet some time later. Ed, in turn, shoved it all into a carrier bag that would give way even before he reached the car, and tried not to think about his mother.
He was cooking when Jess limped downstairs. At least, he had two plastic trays rotating noisily in the microwave, which was about as far as he had ever immersed himself in the culinary arts. She was wearing a towelling bathrobe and had her hair wrapped in a white bath-towel turban. He had never understood how women did that. His ex had done it too. He used to wonder if it was something women got taught, like periods and hand-washing. Her bare face was oddly beautiful.
‘Here.’ Ed held out a glass of wine.
She took it from him as if she barely noticed. He had started a fire, and she sat down in front of the flames, apparently still lost in her thoughts. He handed her the frozen peas for her foot, then busied himself with the rest of the microwave meals, following the instructions on the packaging.
‘I texted Nicky,’ he told her, as he stabbed the plastic film with a fork. ‘Just to tell him where we were staying.’
She took another sip of her wine. ‘Was he okay?’
‘He was fine. They were just about to eat.’ She flinched slightly as he said this, and Ed immediately regretted planting that little domestic tableau in her imagination. ‘How’s your foot?’
‘Hurts.’
She took a huge swig of her wine and he saw she’d downed a glass already. She got up, wincing, so that the peas fell onto the floor and poured herself another. Then, as if she’d just remembered something, she reached into the pocket of the robe, before holding up a little clear plastic bag.
‘Nicky’s stash,’ she said. ‘I decided this qualified as an appropriate moment for appropriating his drugs.’
She said it almost defiantly, waiting for him to contradict her. When he didn’t, she pulled out Nicky’s papers and dragged a tourist guide from the glass coffee-table onto her lap, where she proceeded to roll a haphazard joint. She lit it, and inhaled deeply. She tried to smother a cough, then inhaled again. Her towel turban had started to slide and, irritated, she tugged it off, so that it was just her wet hair around her shoulders. She inhaled again, closed her eyes, and held it out towards him.
‘Is that what I could smell when I came in?’
She opened one eye. ‘You think I’m a disgrace.’
‘No. I think one of us should be in a state to drive, just in case Tanzie wants picking up.’
Her eyes widened.
‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Really. You go ahead. I think … you need …’
‘A new life? To pull myself together? A good seeing-to?’ She laughed mirthlessly. ‘Oh, no. I forgot. I can’t even do that right.’
‘Jess …’
She raised a hand. ‘Sorry. Okay. Let’s eat.’
They ate at the little laminated table beside the kitchen area. The curries were serviceable, but Jess barely touched hers, preferring to drink. She pushed the chicken biryani to and fro on her plate, until it was clear that she wasn’t going to eat more than a few mouthfuls, and he offered to clear it away.
As he put the plates on the side and prepared to wash up, she faced him. ‘I’ve been a total idiot, haven’t I?’
Ed leant back against the kitchen units, a plate in his hand. ‘I don’t see how –’
‘I worked it all out in the bath. I’ve been blathering to the kids all these years about how if you look out for people and do the right thing it will all be okay. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Do the right thing. Somehow the universe will see you right. Well, it’s all bullshit, isn’t it? Nobody else thinks that way.’
Her voice was slightly slurred, its edges frayed with pain.
‘It’s not –’
‘No? Two years I’ve been flat broke. Two years I’ve been protecting him, not adding to his stress, not bothering him about his own children. And all the while he’s been living like that, in his executive home, with his highlights and his designer jeans and his new girlfriend.’ She shook her head in wonder. ‘I didn’t suspect a thing. Not for one minute. And I worked it out, while I was in the bath … that whole “do as you would be done by” thing? Well, it only works if everyone else does it. And nobody does, any more. The world is basically full of people who couldn’t give a shit. They’ll tread all over you if it means they get what they want. Even if it’s their own kids they’re treading on.’
‘Jess …’
He walked around the kitchen units until he was inches from her. He couldn’t think what to say. He wanted to put his arms around her, but something about her held him back. She poured herself another glass of wine, and lifted it towards him.
‘I don’t care about that woman, you know. That’s not it. Me and Marty were over a long time ago. But all that crap about not being able to help his own kids? Refusing to even think about helping Tanze with school fees?’ She took a long gulp of her drink and blinked slowly. ‘Did you see that girl’s top? That designer top? You know how much they cost? Sixty-seven pounds. Sixty-seven pounds for a child’s sweatshirt. I saw the price tag when Druggie Aileen brought one round.’ She wiped angrily at her eyes. ‘You know what he sent Nicky for his birthday in February? A ten-pound voucher. A ten-pound voucher for the computer-games shop. You can’t even buy a computer game for ten pounds. Only second-hand. And they don’t always wipe the second-hand ones so someone else will have got all the points. And the stupid thing is we were all really pleased. We thought it meant that Marty was getting better. I told the kids that ten pounds, when you’re not working, is actually quite a lot of money.’
She started to laugh. An awful, desolate sound. ‘And all the time … all the time he was in that executive home with his immaculate new sofa and his matchy-matchy curtains and his bloody boy-band haircut. And he didn’t even have the balls to tell me.’
‘He’s a coward,’ he said.
‘Yup. But I’m the idiot. I’ve dragged the kids halfway around the country on some wild goose chase because I thought I could somehow better their chances. I’ve put us thousands of pounds into debt. I’ve lost my job at the pub. I’ve pretty much destroyed Tanzie’s self-confidence by putting her through something I should never have made her do. And for what? Because I refused to see the truth.’
‘The truth?’
‘That people like us never get on. We never move upwards. We just rattle around at the bottom, scrabbling over the other people at the bottom like rats in a cellar, everyone trying to keep out of the wet.’
‘That’s not how it is.’
‘What do you know?’ There was no anger in her voice, just confusion. ‘How could you possibly understand? You’re being done for one of the most serious crimes in the City. Strictly speaking, you did do it. You told your girlfriend what shares to buy so that she would make herself a heap of money. But you’ll get off.’
His glass stopped somewhere near his mouth.
‘You will. You’ll get a couple of weeks inside, maybe a suspended sentence even, and a big fine. You’ve got expensive lawyers who will keep you out of any real trouble. You’ve got people who will argue for you, fight for you. You have houses, cars, resources. You don’t really need to worry. How could you possibly understand what it’s like for us?’
‘That’s not fair,’ he said gently.
‘Don’t talk to me about fair,’ she snapped.
She turned away, and inhaled. She inhaled like someone who wanted to actually black out. She pulled on the joint again and again, closing her eyes and exhaling upwards, the sweet smoke drifting towards the ceiling.
Ed sat down beside her and took it from between her fingers. ‘I think maybe that isn’t such a good idea.’
She snatched it back. ‘Don’t tell me what’s a good idea.’
‘I don’t think this is going to help.’
‘I don’t care what you –’
‘I’m not the enemy here, Jess.’
She shot him a look, then turned and stared at the fire. He couldn’t tell if she was waiting for him to get up and leave. Or maybe shout back at her. Just for once, he thought, I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to sit this out.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said eventually, and her voice was stiff, like card.
‘It’s fine.’
‘It’s not fine.’ She sighed. ‘I shouldn’t … I shouldn’t take it out on you.’
‘It’s okay. It’s been a crappy day. Look, I’m going to have a bath, and then I think we should just get some sleep.’
‘I’ll be up when I’ve finished this.’ She inhaled again.
Ed waited for a moment, then left her staring at the fire. It was a mark of how tired he was that he didn’t think any further than the bath.
He must have nodded off in the water. He had run it deep, pouring in whatever unguents and potions he could find on the side without looking to see what they were, and sinking in gratefully, letting the hot water ease out some of the tensions of the day. He tried not to think. Not about Jess, downstairs, staring bleakly into the flames, not about his mother, a couple of hours away, awaiting a son who wouldn’t come. He just needed a few minutes of not having to think about anything. He lowered his head as far as he could into the water while still breathing.
He dozed. But some strange tension seemed to have crept into Ed’s bones: he couldn’t quite relax, even as he closed his eyes. And then he became aware of the sound: a distant revving noise, uneven and dissonant, a whining chainsaw, or a driver learning how to accelerate. He opened an eye, wishing it would just go away. He had thought that this place, of all places, might offer the tiniest bit of peace. Just one night with no noise or drama. Was it really so much to ask?
‘Jess?’ he called, when it became too irritating. He wondered if there was a music system downstairs. Something she could turn on to drown it out.
And then he realized the cause of his vague discomfort. It was his own car he could hear.
He sat there, bolt upright, for a split second, then leapt from the bath, wrapping a towel around his waist. He ran down the stairs two at a time, past the empty sofa, past Norman, who lifted his head quizzically from his spot in front of the fire, and wrestled with the front door until he had it open. A blast of cold air hit him. He was just in time to see his car bunny-hopping its way forward from its place in front of the cabin, and along the curved gravel drive. He leapt off the steps and as he ran he could just make out Jess at the wheel, craning forward to see through the windscreen. She didn’t have any headlights on.
‘Jesus Christ. JESS!’ He sprinted across the grass, still dripping, one hand clutching at the towel around his waist, trying to cross the lawn to block her before she could get round the drive to the road. Her face swivelled briefly towards him, her eyes widening as she saw him. There was an audible crunch as she wrestled with the gears.
‘JESS!’
He was at the car. He threw himself at the bonnet, thumping it, then at the side, wrenching at the driver’s door. It opened before she could fumble for the lock, sending him swinging sideways.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
But she didn’t stop. He was running now, unnaturally long steps, braced against the swinging door, one hand on the wheel, the gravel sharp under his feet. The towel had long since disappeared.
‘Get off!’
‘Stop the car! JESS, STOP THE CAR!’
‘Get off, Ed! You’ll get hurt!’ She batted at his hand, and the car swerved dangerously to the left.
‘What the –’ With a leap he managed to wrestle the keys from the ignition. The car juddered and stalled abruptly. His right shoulder collided hard with the door. Jess’s nose hit the steering-wheel with a crack. The airbag, as if in afterthought, inflated with a whoosh.
‘FUCK.’ Ed landed heavily on his side, his head hitting something hard. ‘FUCK IT.’ He lay on the ground winded, his head spinning. It took a second for his thoughts to clear, and then he scrambled unsteadily to his feet, hauling himself up by the still-open door. He could see, through blurred vision, that they were feet from the lake, its shoreline an inky black near his wheels. Jess’s arms rested against the airbag, her face buried in the gap between them, a faint wisp of smoke curling upwards from its seams. He reached across her and pulled on the handbrake, before she could somehow set the thing in motion again.
‘What the hell were you doing? What were you DOING?’ Adrenalin and pain coursed through him. The woman was a nightmare. She was chaos. What the hell had she been thinking? What the hell had he been thinking, agreeing to any part of this? ‘Jesus, my head. Oh, no. Where’s my towel? Where’s the damn towel?’
Lights were flicking on in the other cabins. He glanced up, and there were silhouettes in windows that he hadn’t known were there, figures looking out at him. He cupped himself as best he could with one hand and half walked, half ran for the towel, which was lying, muddied, halfway along the path, a glowing, crumpled pennant. As he walked, he lifted his other hand towards them as if to say, Nothing to see here (given the cold night air, this had swiftly become true), and a couple of them shut their curtains hurriedly.
She was sitting where he had left her. ‘Do you know how much you’ve drunk tonight?’ he yelled, through the open door. ‘How much dope you’ve smoked? You could have killed yourself. You could have killed us both.’
He wanted to shake her, to show her the madness of what she had just done. ‘Are you really so determined to dig yourself deeper and deeper into more crap? What the hell is wrong with you?’
And then he heard it. She had her head in her hands and she was crying into them, a soft, desolate sound. ‘I’m sorry.’
Ed deflated a little, hitched the towel around his waist. ‘What the hell were you doing, Jess? You must know this is crazy behaviour.’
‘I wanted to get them. I couldn’t leave them there. With him.’
He took a breath, made a fist and released it. ‘But we’ve discussed this. They’re absolutely fine. Nicky said he’d call if there were any problems. And we’re going to get them first thing tomorrow. You know that. So what the hell –’
‘I’m scared, Ed.’
‘Scared? Of what?’
Her nose was bleeding, a dark scarlet trickle winding its way down to her lip, her eyes smudged black with mascara. ‘I’m scared that … I’m scared that they’ll like it at Marty’s.’ Her face crumpled. ‘I’m scared they won’t want to come back.’
And Jess Thomas came to rest, gently, against him, her face buried in his bare chest. And finally Ed put his arms around her and held her close and let her cry.
He had heard religious people talk about having revelatory experiences. Like there was one moment where everything became clear to them and all the crap and ephemera just floated away. It had always seemed pretty unlikely to him. But then Ed Nicholls had one such moment in a log cabin beside a stretch of water that might have been a lake, or might well have been a canal for all he could tell, somewhere near Carlisle. You see, he had once known a woman who had told herself she could do anything – and then decided she could do nothing; a woman who, finding herself at her lowest, did her best to push everyone away. And he realized in that moment that he had to make things right. He felt her injustices more fiercely than he had ever felt anything for himself. He realized, as he held her to him and kissed the top of her head and felt her cling to him, that he would do anything he could to make her happy, and her kids, and to keep them safe and give them a fair chance.
He didn’t ask himself how he could know this after four days. It just seemed clearer to him than anything he had worked out in entire decades before.
And so he told her. He told her, in the quiet tones of someone offloading a confession, that it would be okay. That he would make it okay. Because she was the most amazing woman he had ever met, and it was as simple for him as knowing that he couldn’t not make it okay. And when she lifted her swollen eyes to his, frowning as she tried to make sense of what she was hearing, Ed Nicholls mopped her bleeding nose, and he dropped his lips gently onto hers, and he did what he had wanted to do for the past forty-eight hours, even if he had been initially too dumb to know it. He kissed her. And when she kissed him back – tentatively at first, and then with a fierce, gratifying passion, her hand stealing up to his neck, her eyes closing – he picked her up (he was starting with the broken toe), carried her back to the house, and in the only way he could offer that he was sure wouldn’t be misunderstood, he tried to show her.
Because, in that one moment, Ed Nicholls saw that he had been more like Marty than he was like Jess. He had been that coward, who spent his life running from things rather than facing up to them. And that something had to change.
‘Jess?’ he said, softly, into her skin, some time later, as he lay awake, marvelling at the 180-degree swings of life in general. ‘Will you do something for me?’
‘Again?’ she said sleepily. Her hand rested lightly on his chest. ‘Good God.’
‘No. Tomorrow.’ He leant his head into hers.
She shifted, so that her leg slid across his. He felt her lips on his skin. ‘Sure. What do you want?’
He gazed up at the ceiling. ‘Will you come with me to my dad’s?’