This Is Not Forgiveness (20 page)

I look around for the key that Grandpa used to keep under the brick, third geranium from the left. The plants have withered and died, crisp leaves on hollow brown twigs, but the key is still there.

I let myself in. The hall is quiet and dark. I shout out, but there is no reply. I’m coming back down the hall when I sense rather than hear a movement upstairs. It’s as though someone is up there, on the landing, hovering, waiting for me to go. I stop. There’s definitely someone there.

‘Rob?’ I call. ‘You there?’

Nothing. Just silence but the sense that someone is there is even stronger now. It doesn’t have to be Rob. I feel the beginnings of fear creeping through my gut. Maybe it’s a break-in. Someone up there and I’ve disturbed him. There’s all kinds of stuff here. Not just Rob’s stuff but Grandpa’s medals. And his guns. I think about legging it out of there but I find myself gripping the banister and mounting the stairs.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

Rob is standing at the top of the stairs in a pair of grey jersey trunks. The scarring livid on his leg. His arms folded, biceps bulging under his tattoos. He keeps in shape, doing weights, and it shows. His torso gleams with sweat like it’s oiled, his stomach muscles ribbed and distinct beneath the powerful chest.

‘I came over to ask you something. Then I thought there was someone upstairs . . .’

‘Well there is. Me. As you can see. How did you get in?’

‘I used the spare key from the garden. Grandpa used to keep one there.’

‘Did he?’ Rob frowns, like he knew that but had forgotten. His arms tighten across his chest. ‘Well, I don’t want every fucker in here all times of the night and day so you can just leave it on the table and go.’

‘No. There’s something I want to know.’

‘Not now, Jimbo.’

He looks behind him. He’s not alone. There’s someone up there with him. That accounts for why he didn’t answer, why he’s upstairs in the middle of the day, why he’s only wearing a pair of trunks, the sheen of sweat across his body.

‘Yes. Now.’

I go to mount the stairs, determined to see who he’s got up there. He comes down to meet me, barring my way.

‘I said, not now!’

He takes me by one arm and turns me, forcing me back down the stairs. He frogmarches me to the front door, yanks it open, and suddenly I’m outside. The door slams and I hear the chain lock thrown across.

I step back and look up at the house, helpless. The curtains are open a bit now and he’s standing at the window watching me. I can see a shape, an outline, the shadow of a girl. She comes up behind him and puts her arms around his waist. I can’t see her face but silver flashes in the sun. She’s wearing bracelets, lots of them. They slither down her arm as she reaches up to embrace him.

It could be another girl with bracelets, lots of girls wear bracelets, but I know it isn’t. This is what’s been in my head, but I didn’t want to believe. A little, tiny bit of me was expecting a reprieve. It’s like being in a car that is going to crash. Part of you is watching,
seeing
what is about to happen, but your brain can’t accept,
won’t
accept that this is it. I have that sick feeling deep inside me. This is
bad
. The kind of feeling you get when you lose something irreplaceable. You know that it has gone but still you look and look for it, revisiting the same places, not accepting that it is lost for ever.

I don’t feel angry; I’m in a place beyond that. The betrayal is so deep, so complete, that I just feel empty, as though my insides have been hollowed out of me. I haven’t felt like this since I was a kid when I’d run down the street crying because of something he’d done to me, some hurt or rejection, teased me beyond endurance. I don’t cry now. I bite down hard on my lip until I taste blood in my mouth and just walk away, leaving my bike in the road, back wheel ticking. I don’t look back. I know that nobody will be there.

Chapter 27

Absinthe

n. 1. A highly alcoholic bitter aniseed-flavoured spirit,

usually green in colour, traditionally distilled from wine flavoured with wormwood (
Artemisia absinthium
) and other herbs, and served diluted with sugared water

Vanilla

n. A pod produced by one or other species of the genus
Vanilla

Oxford English Dictionary

Absinthe and vanilla ice cream. Can’t I like them both at the same time? Aniseed, sharp at the root; vanilla, sweet on the tip of the tongue. Can’t I have a taste for both of them?

Jamie is a nice boy but I’m a bitch to him. The nicer he is, the more I want to hurt him. I can’t seem to help it. It’s like cutting myself. It’s a similar sensation, a similar relief, although I’m watching someone else bleed. He doesn’t deserve to be with me. He deserves to be with someone who’s nice, like him, someone like Lee or Jesse at the
Rendez
. They both fancy him rotten but he can’t see it. He’s not vain, or conceited, or self-centred, like his friend Cal. He’s good. A good person. Too good for me.

Rob is different. We deserve each other. We are perfectly matched.

Jamie would be better off with both of us out of his life. I’m glad he’s found out about us. It’s a relief. I was getting tired of the pretence. I couldn’t think of a way of telling him without it causing a scene. Contrary to popular myth, I’m not a drama queen and I hate scenes – too many emotions on display and too many words spoken that should be left unsaid.

He was bound to find out sooner or later. I’m going to miss him but it’s best that it happens now. Later could get complicated. The days are counting down.

Chapter 28

I haven’t seen her for more than a week now. I think about her every minute, rehearsing what I would do, what I would say. I haven’t seen Rob, either. My bike appeared in the middle of the lawn. Other than that – nothing. Now that the numbness has receded, I want to kill him. The anger has solidified around me like lava flow.

Alan has taken me back and I work hard because it stops me thinking. I punt and row up and down all day like a wind-up toy and stay late to stack the deckchairs in the shed and secure the boats for the night. After that, it’s straight down the pub with the lads from the boats. Every night, I get well and truly trashed; get into arguments, the occasional fight.

People are coming back from wherever they have been. I’m here waiting for them. It’s all a bit mad. Everyone has been somewhere things were happening: Cornwall, festivals, Ibiza, travelling abroad, wherever. They want to be back there – or anywhere that isn’t here. There are midnight picnics in the park, beach barbecues by the side of the municipal boating lake, cookouts on the common, house parties where people’s parents are still away. Facebook and texts direct us to where it’s happening. Awesome fun, Cal calls it, but it isn’t really. Just endless excuses for piss-ups, ways of denying that term’s coming on fast, the holiday’s nearly over.

Cal and the other guys are in long shorts and flip-flops; Sophie and her friends stride about in pink wellingtons and teeny tiny shorts, or drift in floaty dresses desperate to carry on the summer, to do things before the tans fade, before the weather changes, finding ways to keep the illusion going that bit longer.

I’ve been nowhere. Done nothing except get my heart broken. I welcome them back, looking for diversion – anything to take my mind away from Caro. I’m free now. I can do what I want. ‘You look different,’ girls say, meaning more attractive all of a sudden. I’m deeply tanned from a whole summer on the river; I’ve got muscles from all that rowing and pushing the punts up and down. The OK-looking-but-nothing-special slightly shy but well-meaning kind of a guy goes without a goodbye. I don’t care any more about anything very much and recklessness is attractive. The less interested I seem to be, the more girls fancy me. I’m doing OK, I tell myself. I’m having a good time. No. I’m having a
great
time. It’s Saturday night and I’m at the sort of party I never got invited to before. I don’t need Caro in my life, I’m thinking, while helping myself to a beer from a bin full of ice. All she’s done is bring me trouble. I’m doing all right.

‘Hi, Jamie.’

The voice is low and quiet. I think for one freezing second that it’s her, but turn around to find Lee looking up at me.

‘Oh, hi,’ I say.

‘No need to look so disappointed,’ she says with an ironic half-smile.

‘I’m not. Honest. Here.’ I hold up the bottle. ‘Do you want one of these?’

She nods, so I grab another beer. Everyone is outside in the garden of the house. It’s noisy and crowded up on the patio, so I take her hand and guide her across the lawn to a bench between big rhododendron bushes. It’s getting dark and I put my arm round her, ready to make a move, but she edges away.

‘You’re not with Caro any more?’

‘Nah,’ I take a drink, ‘it’s over. It didn’t work out. Partly thanks to you. What you told Martha.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.’

I shrug, like no harm done, but she sees through it.

‘I wasn’t spying, or anything, and I didn’t mean to cause trouble.’

‘That’s OK. I believe you. Martha did that for you.’

‘I don’t live far from her. I go for a run every morning. I saw someone leaving her place. I thought it was you. He
looked
like you, I even said hello, but it turned out –’

‘Not to be me. Yeah. Seen him since?’ I
hate
myself for asking.

‘No,’ she hesitates. ‘I’ve seen you, though.’

Her voice is quiet, serious, with none of the brittle banter that’s going on up on the terrace. She looks at me. Her dark eyes say she knows. She knows it’s not over. Not over by a long way. For me, at least. What’s the point in pretending? I have been out there, in the dead of night, in the early hours, watching until dawn and beyond, until the rattle of the one remaining milk round, the first commuters’ cars starting in the drives, paper boys, postman, recycling trucks. Sometimes stoned out of my mind, sometimes so pissed I could hardly walk, sometimes completely sober.

I haven’t talked to anyone about her, about how I felt. Now I find myself pouring my heart out.

‘She’s not a bad person,’ Lee says when I’ve finished. ‘She’s just not like anyone else. She plays by her own rules and she won’t change. You have to decide to go along with it or leave the game.’

‘Yes. I guess. I’m not sure I’m ready to do that yet.’ That’s the first time I’ve admitted that, even to myself. I look down. The bottle in my hands is empty. I get up to go and get another. ‘Do you want one?’

‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘I think I’ll be going.’ She looks to the terrace where the laughter is getting louder, the behaviour more boisterous. ‘Don’t know why I came. I don’t really like parties.’

I follow her gaze. Cal’s having a mock fight with Suzy’s new boyfriend. The girls are squealing as if they mean it. There’s a chugathon going on round the beer bin, can cricket on the lawn.

‘Yeah.’ I laugh. ‘I know what you mean. Hey, thanks for listening, though.’

‘That’s OK. I understand her better than most people. We were friends. Still would be if it was up to me. Still are in a weird kind of way. She cuts herself off, won’t let anyone near her. It’s not what people think. They say she’s arrogant, that she thinks a lot of herself, that she’s better than everyone else. It’s the opposite of that. She’s worried that if she let’s anyone in, then they’ll find out what’s she’s
really
like and run a mile. It’s a deep-down hurt. You did well to get so close to her. She must really like you.’ She reaches in her pocket for her phone. ‘If you want to talk any time.’

We swap numbers and she goes. I don’t stay that much longer. There is nothing for me here.

For once, I go home relatively sober and straight to bed. I go to sleep thinking of her, as always, but in the morning it is Rob who’s in my mind. In the night, I’d woken up suddenly, like I’d been shaken, my body covered in sweat, the bedclothes twisted around me. I knew I’d been dreaming, but the dreams disperse quickly, like smoke in the wind, going beyond my conscious recollection. All I know, the only thing I can say for sure, is that Rob was in them all.

Chapter 29

I go looking for him. This thing between us has to be settled one way or another. I cycle round to his place. No sign of him. I go to the pubs he uses and draw a blank there as well. I even buzz past
hers
. Her car isn’t there, which I take as an indication that she’s not, either. I don’t want to see her, I’m not ready for that, so I don’t go knocking on the door. The last place I try is the allotments. The plot is deserted.

I can’t think where else to go. All that cycling has dissipated some of my energy. I decide to call it a day. The plum tree is laden and some of the apples look ready. While I’m here, I might as well do something useful, like pick some fruit for Grandpa. Mum can take it with her the next time she goes to the nursing home.