Black Flowers (2 page)

Sullivan turns back to the little girl.

He notices the handbag again. It is far too grown-up for her. It looks dirty now, as though it has been left outside somewhere, but he has the sense that it might once have been expensive.

‘Can I have a look in there, please?’

She hesitates.

‘I’ll be careful,’ he says. ‘I promise. You can have it back again afterwards.’

Still unsure. But she does pass it to him.

‘Thank you.’

The zip is stiff: as he suspected, crumbs of dirt block the teeth. When he finally opens it and looks inside, he is expecting to find a small purse, handkerchiefs – keys, perhaps – but the handbag is almost entirely empty.

Except for … a flower.

Sullivan reaches carefully in and lifts it free. The stem is fractured and half broken; the petals, which at some point have been pressed, are grey-black.

His fingers tingle.

And there is that feeling again, only now far stronger than before. Something is wrong here. Sullivan looks at the girl’s dirty hair, the odd dress. For the first time, he notices there is the slightest hint of a bruise on her cheek.

The little girl says, ‘Jane.’

‘Is that your name?’

She shakes her head, then motions almost imperceptibly at the flower.

‘That’s Jane. She doesn’t talk to me any more.’

Sullivan stares at her. He does not understand what she means, of course – not yet – but the answer is strange enough to send a chill shivering across his back. The next tram is rattling down the street; he can hear it growing louder. And in front of him, the little girl’s fragile resolve finally disappears entirely and she begins to cry.

She says, ‘Please help me.’

My father was a writer. I wanted to be one too, so I would have been thinking about him that day anyway, even without what happened later. But for most of the morning, I’d been thinking about goblins and changelings.

Well – and students too, obviously.

It was nearly lunchtime now. I walked round my desk and raised one of the slats in the blinds. Outside, an angle of midday sunlight cut across the flagstones below my office. A stream of new students was flowing past. They looked almost impossibly young. The boys all seemed to be dressed for the beach, wearing shorts and T-shirts. The girls wore floaty summer dresses, enormous sunglasses and flip-flops that slapped at the stone. It was Freshers Week 2010, so the whole campus was one big party. For most of the morning, I’d been able to hear music thudding from the Union building, more of a constant heartbeat than an actual song.

I allowed the slat to click down, then returned to my desk. In comparison to the bright, carnival atmosphere out there, my office was small, drab and grey. The air in here smelled of dusty box files and the rusted metallic radiator that underlined the window. I’d wedged the door open. Ros – my boss – was down at the sports hall handling module admissions, and the common room was deserted. Aside from the thump of the music, and an occasional muffled bang echoing down the corridor, the
only real sound in here was the electrical hum of my old monitor.

Right now, I had two files open. The first was the student records database I’d been stringing out for weeks now, pretending it was far more difficult to construct than it actually was, while the second was the short story I’d been working on all morning instead.

I scanned through it again now.

By my standards, it had turned out pretty weird. At the beginning, a young guy finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. It’s an accident: they just got carried away in the moment, then grinned about it afterwards. ‘That was stupid, wasn’t it?’ they say. ‘It won’t happen to us.’ But it does happen to them.

The girlfriend decides she can’t have a termination and the guy accepts that, even though it’s not what he wants. He tries to be good, but as time goes on he resents her decision more and more – and then he starts to notice hooded gangs huddled on street corners. They’re watching him, following him. He gradually imagines the existence of a shadowy crime lord – a kind of Goblin King figure – who is reaching out to him. Like the goblins of fairy tales, these urban equivalents will be more than happy to steal his child away: all the man has to do is wish for it to happen. Eventually, selfishly, he does.

For two days afterwards, nothing happens – enough time for him to doubt it was real – and then the pregnancy mysteriously disappears.

The story ends years later, with the main character encountering one of the hooded minions on a street corner and recognising enough in the boy’s face to know it’s his son.

Pretty weird, Neil
.

It was, but I sort of liked it. And anyway, I was procrastinating too much. Weird or not, successful or not, it was as done as it ever would be. So I saved the Word file, and opened a quick email to my father.

Hi Dad

Hope you’re okay – I know it’s been a couple of weeks, so I’m guessing everything’s going all right? Meant to be in touch. Failed miserably.

Got some news, but in the meantime I wanted you to have a look at this. I don’t know whether it’s any good or not, but maybe you can have a read if you get the chance? I’ll give you a bell properly soon and we can chat.

Love always,

Neil

I took a deep breath and pressed send.

Oddly, I felt nervous. My father had published twenty novels over the years and was always honest about the technical side of my writing – that was why I sent him things in the first place. It wasn’t that; I wasn’t quite sure
what
it was. Just that, as I watched the email indicator circling, I wished I could take it back.

Then it changed to a tick.

That was that. My story had gone out into the world.

Forget about it
.

When I checked my watch, it was close to twelve. So I minimised the email program, locked up the office and headed out.

Ally was working at Education now, but today she had a conference on at the Union Hall building. It was on the far side of campus, so I had to follow the throng of students right through the thudding heart of everything.

The combination of sunshine and the time of year made it feel like the first day of a festival. Outside the Union, the grass was bright and sunlit, and everyone seemed to be sitting around with plastic glasses of foamy beer. The tarmac around the steps was a multicoloured carpet of discarded flyers; speakers were balanced on the upstairs window ledge, pumping out music. A
skinny boy in sunglasses and a pork-pie hat was standing up there with his foot on the ledge, shouting what sounded like static and occasional words through a megaphone, haranguing passers-by.

Despite not being a part of the carnival, I knew there were a million worse places to work. Not only was it relaxed enough for me to wear jeans and trainers to the office, there were also lots of times like today when I could sneak some writing in. Technically speaking, I was even being paid for it. But there’s nothing like working at a university to remind you how old you’re getting, even when, at twenty-five, you actually aren’t. It got worse every September, with the arrival of a new and even more fresh-faced cohort. You feel like a bunch of old flowers, maybe not quite past your sell-by date yet, but already beginning to wilt in the corner, and nobody’s choice.

All I’d ever wanted to do was write. My father made only the vaguest of livings from it – his books skipped across too many genres, the publication dates a few too many years apart – and, growing up, I was dimly aware of our relative poverty in comparison to other kids’ families. That didn’t really matter. I was brought up to love books and stories: we always had plenty of the former, and, with my father around, an infinite number of the latter. There was never anything else I’d wanted to do except be a little bit like him.

But I wasn’t.

Since coming to work here, I’d submitted four books to publishers, and all of them had been knocked back with the solid wooden
tock
of a well-hit baseball. Fine. But as much as you tell yourself you need to learn your craft and serve an apprenticeship, all those bleary early mornings and late nights … they start to get to you. You have to take it seriously, so it’s basically like working two jobs. And for me, trying to fit real life around that was getting hard. Maybe it was starting to get impossible. Maybe I was going to have to start facing facts.

Ally was supportive, of course, but it still felt like there were
too many plates to keep spinning and that pretty soon I was going to have to let something fall. It wouldn’t be my relationship with her. I loved her far too much to let that go. So maybe it was writing that would have to get shelved. It was a depressing thought.

But I would do that for her. I really would.

She was already outside the Union Hall, waiting for me on the steps. It was easy to spot her amongst the students – she had dyed-red hair, for a start. But she’d also made an effort for the conference and was wearing a smart black dress and heels. Away from work, she wore baggy jeans, trainers and T-shirts, and normally looked somewhere between a punk and a Bash Street kid; you’d half expect to look down and see her holding a skateboard. A casual observer right now might nod and say she scrubbed up well, but a smart one would realise she was beautiful in anything. Either might wonder what the hell she was doing with me.

‘Hey there, you,’ I said.

‘Ah.
Finally
. Keeping me waiting, Dawson?’

‘Keeping you on your toes, more like.’

She went up on them now to give me a kiss, putting her hands on my shoulders. At first glance, Ally looked small and fragile. She was actually slim and muscled, the kind of girl that might surprise you at arm-wrestling, and would certainly try. The first time we’d ended up in bed together, a year ago now, both of us as drunk and surprised as the other, I’d barely have been able to escape if I’d wanted to.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m starving.’

‘Can’t have that.’

We went to The Oyster Bar in the Union. It was called that because the bar was down in the centre, glistening with mirrors, then surrounded by rising, circular ridges of white seats and tables. We found a space, and, while we waited for the food to arrive, chatted about our mornings over the mingle of conversation around us.

As time went on, though, it was obvious that she was distracted: not entirely interested in the small talk. She was asking questions but didn’t seem to be listening to the answers, and answering mine without saying much. But then, it’s difficult to do small talk when the shadow of big talk is looming over you both.

‘Okay,’ I said eventually. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re thinking something.’

‘All right then, I am. Maybe I’m building up to it.’

‘About the baby?’ I guessed.

But our food arrived, so I leaned back to allow the waitress space to slide the plates onto the table. Ally hooked a strand of hair behind her ear and picked up her knife and fork.

She said, ‘I’ve made a decision.’

‘That you’re keeping it.’

‘Yes.’ She nodded around the bar. ‘I know it’s not wonderful fucking surroundings for this conversation, but I wanted to tell you as soon as I was sure.’

I did my best to smile.

‘I already knew,’ I said.

‘I just don’t think I could
not
go through with it.’

She looked at me now, and it was like an armed conflict was going on behind her eyes.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too. But it’s going to change everything.’

‘It’ll be okay.’

I did my best to sound convincing. Even though I’d been sure what her decision would be, hearing it out loud still made it feel like the bottom had dropped out of my fucking world. Obviously, I wasn’t going to tell her that.

‘It’ll be okay,’ I said again.
‘We’ll
be okay.’

‘Promise?’

How can you promise anything like that? We’d only found out a week ago, and I’d barely had time to get my head round it.

The idea still wasn’t real; it was impossible to imagine what
everything changing
was going to involve for me, for her, for us. Even so, I reached out and rubbed the back of her hand. Around us, the clinks and clatters in the bar seemed to have faded away almost to nothing.

I promised.

Back home later, I took a sip of ice-cold white wine, and stared at the screen of my laptop. Below my makeshift desk, the printer
chittered
. Paper stuttered out of the front, landing face up on the floor. The story I’d written, printing out in reverse order, the end working its way steadily back to the beginning. If only everything in life was so simple to undo.

My front room was my bedroom. Outside the window beside me, I could see the familiar neon row of late-night takeaways and off-licences across the road. I lived in a converted house, which had been divided by the landlord into two studio flats. The entire second floor – all three rooms of it – was mine. My neighbour had the first floor: he was an Argentinean student who didn’t seem to do much besides listen to action films very loudly at random times of the day and night. We shared the stairwell and the communal front door, which was squeezed in-between a newsagent and a hairdressers. As I arrived home after work, I could usually hear the blow dryers through the thin wall and smell, just faintly, scorched hair.