The Start of Everything (28 page)

The Duck and Feathers was smoky and crammed full. I wasn’t sure I would recognise his crowd, but I did. Two of them had hung about our house in the summer, smoking in the garden. I’d forgotten their names. They clapped me on the shoulders.

They had girls with them. They were called Heather and Molly, and wore lots of bracelets and brightly coloured hair. Molly, the red-haired one, wore a pendant that hung right between her breasts, in the V of her sweater. Heather, the yellow-blonde, wore a black see-through blouse and lacy bra. There was a football match on the telly, and when Heather jumped to cheer she bounced.

They bought me a pint. I sucked it down to avoid joining the conversation. I was terrified to speak an error and reveal the joke. When I finished I was given another. “Daisy can buy a round when she comes,” Mark said. Mark and Rob. I had to get the names right.

Molly plucked darts out of the board. “Who wants to play?” she asked.

Nobody did. I just wanted to watch her pull her arm back to throw, making her sweater taut around her chest.

“Stephen!” she begged, stretching out the name and pulling both my hands.

I demurred. “I’m terrible at darts,” I said, then froze.

Was Stephen good at darts? Had I just contradicted the illusion?

“I
know
!” she said, grinning. “I want to win.”

I was on my third pint, and rarely had more than one at a sitting. I’d be lucky if I could hit the board.

“Stee-
ven
, Stee-
ven
,” chanted Mark and Rob.

I carefully watched her have a go, so I could mimic her technique. You hold it back by your ear to start. She got seventeen points, then twenty-six, and twenty-five.

I threw. The dart lodged into the wall, between panelling. Molly cackled. Heather laughed so hard she had to lean against the bar.

“I told you I’m not good at this,” I said. I was next to a radiator, and sweating.

“Don’t pout, big baby boy,” said Heather. She stuck out her lips. She looked like a duck.

These were his friends? I excused myself to the toilets.

I pissed away three pints of beer and splashed water on my face. What was the point? I could get an eyeful of bouncing tits on the computer if that’s all I was here for.

“George?”

A boy from school was washing his hands in the sink next to me. His name was Andy … something. We’d had a couple of classes together.

Before I could answer, Mark shoved the door open and unzipped his trousers at the urinal. “No,” I said to Andy. “George is my brother.” I pushed back my shoulders and widened the gap between my feet.

Andy didn’t look convinced. “Oh. Tell him I said ‘hello,’ then.” He left. Mark followed him without washing his hands.

When I came out, karaoke had started. I got another beer.

Molly was singing a Mariah Carey declaration of love to Rob. When she squeaked out the high bits at the end, Rob barked. After she gave up the mike, she walloped him on the chest. “Are you saying I’m a dog?”

“I’m saying you’re a dog
whistle
, fuckwit,” he said. “Luckily, brains isn’t what I’m after.” He pulled her head back by her hair and stuck his tongue in her mouth.

I finished the pint. “I think I’m going to go,” I shouted to Mark. Two girls were attempting drunken harmony over the thumping amp.

“Daisy isn’t here yet,” he shouted back.

That was the point. This was stupid. She’d know me for a fraud.
Breathe
. There was time. Extricate, exit. I had to get out. “Tell Daisy I’ll see her at home,” I improvised. Stephen
would
see her at home, so that was all right.

The crowd had got thick. I had to walk sideways and shoulder-first to make a way. I got almost to the doorway when she walked in through it.

I’d seen Daisy, briefly, Christmas morning. She’d brought a bathrobe for Mother, and stayed for an instant coffee. Then she and Stephen had gone off to her parents’. I’d seen enough of her then to recognise her now: pretty, slim, and blond-haloed. Tonight she had on white jeans and a tight white pullover under a wide-open fake-fur
jacket. She had small breasts and no bra and cold tits. I forced myself to look at her face.

“You complete arsehole!” she said cheerfully, linking an arm in one of mine. “Were you going to leave without waiting for me?” I let myself be pulled into the group as if I belonged, as if I were Stephen. She thought I was. She believed it.

She bought a round for the gang, and started up a group sing of “We Are the Champions.” Her breath hit my face. My lungs filled.

I belted out along with the chorus. This was
it
, this was fucking
it
. It’s like my blood was pumping for the first time. Rob slung an arm around my shoulder and we rocked, the whole room rocked. Daisy cheered at the end, holding the mike over her head and clapping her hands up there.

“You’re just, you’re just so beautiful,” I slurred at her after.

“How much have you had?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer she added, “I’d better catch up!” She tossed back a shot, then she and Heather danced.

I shouted, “We are the champions! Whooo!” I held my hands up over my head.

“Shut up, arsehole,” a woman behind me said. But Daisy smiled. She put her hands in her hair and turned to wiggle her hips at me. I licked my lips.

The walk home was almost all uphill. All that tilted ground made it that much harder to figure out exactly what angle “upright” was. I overcorrected and lurched backwards. We put our arms around each other to hold each other up.

“You’re so, so beautiful,” I said again. My mouth mashed up against her ear.

She giggled.

I almost dragged her past the house because, of course, I’d never seen it before. It was in the middle of a terraced row, slanting up. She stopped, and my head pitched back. The sky was clear, freckled with stars. Daisy had freckles. I bumped my mouth onto her nose.

“Ow, Stephen!” she said, still laughing.

We stumbled up the steps. I pressed her against the front door. I pushed against her.

“We can do it inside. Just let me find my key,” she said. It was at the very bottom of her purse. Finally she opened the door. I pushed her through after. The narrow stairs up were right there, and we fell forward onto them. I got my knees between hers. “Ow, my back!” she said, pushing me up. “I need a coffee first, if you don’t want me to fall asleep!” She yawned elaborately, showing the inside of her mouth as a tease.

The house was once-grand, embellished by chipped plaster mouldings and an elaborate but listing bannister. The carpet had been rubbed away in paths starting from the bottom of the stairs: to the kitchen, to the lounge, to the door. She walked the one to the kitchen, kicking off her shoes. She flicked on a fan heater as she passed it. The house was otherwise frigid.

She put on the kettle. I got my arms around her from behind and pushed her against the counter. “Oh, all
right
,” she agreed.

I nuzzled her neck and rocked my hips against her. Her jeans were tight; I didn’t know how to get them off her. “Please,” I said, still pushing.

The kettle screamed. A slow clapping beat from the hallway. Stephen laughed and applauded. I went soft.

“I can’t believe it!” he said, laughing so hard he bent forward. “You dog! I can’t believe you pulled it off!”

Daisy had got away into the corner, clutching her furry jacket around her chest. She looked at both of us, me to him and back. Her eyes got big when she got the joke. She ran at him, fists swinging. “You bastard!” she said.

He grabbed her wrists and held her easily. “You’d do it to anybody,” he sneered.

She picked up one of her shoes and threw it at me, then stomped upstairs.

“Seriously, congratulations,” he said. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

He went upstairs after her. Their arguing rattled through the whole house. Then their doing it rattled the house. I knelt in front of the toilet and was sick into the unwashed bowl.

I flushed. I wiped my face on a cheerfully red-and-white-striped towel, which I dropped as I stumbled out. I kicked the fan heater, wishing it was Stephen’s face.

I don’t remember the walk. I suppose the downhill journey just rolled me home. I woke up in my bed in my boxers. Stephen’s clothes were on the floor. Mother was screaming in the lounge.

I wrapped a dressing gown around my body and ran.

Every step sparked a pain behind my eyes. Movement hurt. Light hurt. I stalled in the doorway.

She stood in front of the telephone table, tethered receiver in hand. She held it out in front, facing her, and she howled incoherently towards it.

I slammed it back into the cradle and shook her shoulders to make her stop.

“A fire!” she said. “A fire on Windmill Hill!”

“What?” I swear I was surprised. None of it had been real, of course. None of it had actually happened. It was stupid. I wouldn’t have done any of it.

“Katherine Ward says that girl’s house is in the thick of it. That Daisy. Three fire engines. There was an evacuation of the whole street. At least one house is gutted and the two beside it damaged. There were ambulances there. She said she saw two bodies come out covered. She hasn’t been able to raise Stephen on the phone. Two bodies covered!” It turned into screaming again.

“Stop it!” I shook her again, until her chin hit her chest and snapped back up. “You have to stop that sound.” I squeezed my eyes until all I could see were white sparks on dark. Stars like freckles. Daisy’s freckled nose.

She grabbed on to my wrist. I wrenched my arm away, but she reached again with her other hand. I still had the watch on.

Everything stopped. She put her finger on it, tapped it, then stroked the band. Her face crumpled up, and she threw her arms around me. “You!” she said. “It’s you!” She shook. Her face had never been so close to mine.

“No,” I said. The watch didn’t change who I was.

“You didn’t know I overheard, did you?” She picked at and patted my dressing gown. “I knew what you were up to last night. I thought you were only going to embarrass him, give him a taste of what he did to you.”

“What?” I hadn’t planned anything. Stephen had planned it all.

Realisation smacked me hard.

“No,” I repeated. “It wasn’t like that.”

She pressed her face into my chest. “He should never have accepted a place he didn’t deserve,” she said. “It was rightly yours. You only did what you had to do to correct that. It’s the University’s fault, getting it wrong. It’s their fault.”

“No, Mother, I— I’m George. I’m at Cambridge. Stephen’s …”
Dead
. Stephen was dead.

Had I done it? Had I started the fire? Not on purpose. No, I wouldn’t. I hadn’t known the towel would catch. Where had I dropped it? How close to the heater? There wasn’t a way to know that, was there? Not when I’d had so much to drink. Not when I was so angry.

Angry enough to start a fire?

No. No, of course not
. Who would do that? It was impossible. Easy to be careless; impossible to be so malicious. Killing, over a joke? Over a stunt? Who would do that?

“You never would have done it if you didn’t have to,” she said.

Did I have to do it? Did I? Maybe I did.…

Then I understood. She meant Stephen had had to kill me. “No.”

She released me, and stepped back with a sweet smile, nodding. “I’ll never tell.” She put a finger to her lips. Snail-trails of tears striped each cheek.

“I’m George,” I said. “Stephen’s …”
He’s moved out. He doesn’t live here anymore. He doesn’t go to university. He didn’t get into Cambridge
. “Stephen’s dead,” I said. And Daisy. Two bodies covered. The stripes from the hand towel flashed behind my closed eyes.

“We’ll say that,” she said, patting my arm.

The doorbell chimed. The top of a police cap loomed in the glass window at the top of the door.

She clawed at the watch. “Give it to me,” she said. “I’ll hide it.”

I let her get at it. She ran upstairs with it and sent me to answer the door.