Cath Staincliffe - Split Second

‘They might want to know about the funeral,’ she said about one family who came back to the UK most holidays, getting her phone out.

‘It’s Christmas Eve,’ he said.

She glanced at him, then accepted that it wasn’t a good time to ring anyone.

‘There’ll be time after,’ he said.

Now he couldn’t settle. He and Val had emptied their holdalls of the assortment of clothes and toiletries that had accumulated at his parents’ house, then picked at the casserole that was in the fridge. Val was adding to her lists. He fed another log into the stove.

‘His room,’ she said, and Andrew’s head swam. ‘Can we just leave it?’

‘Yes, of course.’ He imagined it would be messy: the bag Jason had brought home only half unpacked, crusted cereal bowls and dirty coffee cups strewn around the place. ‘He might have pots need bringing down.’

She smiled and nodded, faltered, her eyes brimming. ‘I can’t bear it.’ She ran her hands through her hair, pulling at it, her face crumpled.

‘I know.’ He went to hug her.

‘We’ll have a look,’ she said.

His heart beat hard in his chest as they went upstairs. Jason’s door was ajar. Val moved ahead of him to push it open. That’s how she copes with it, he thought; she says she can’t bear it, but then she meets it head on.

The door swung open. There was the bag, jeans and dirty socks on the floor. The smell of him there, the smell of Jason. Posters on the walls: the Gorillaz Plastic Beach album, a Guinness ad, photos of Jason and his mates mucking about in Cornwall, a Peters projection world map.

There were no cups or bowls or plates, no apple cores. No chewing gum wrappers.

‘His bin’s empty.’ Val frowned.

‘Colin – he’ll have cleared up.’

Val sat down on Jason’s bed.

‘I’m going to lie down for a bit.’ She bent to pull her shoes off.

‘Shall I wake you?’

‘No.’ She swung her legs up on to the bed, pulled at the duvet.

‘Okay.’ He shut the door.

Desperate for distraction, Andrew plugged in his laptop. The first time he’d checked his emails in days. The inbox filled: 4… 11… 28… 36… 41 new messages. His junk box gobbled up most of them. Three were from colleagues or acquaintances expressing sympathy. He skimmed them quickly, not wanting to engage.

There were two messages from the hospital speech therapy unit, referrals for the New Year. He replied acknowledging them, feeling unreal. Impossible to imagine being back there, though what else could he do?

He thought about the Facebook site for Jason. He’d still not looked at it, though Val did. She kept mentioning it and had even added her own thoughts and some pictures. She’d tried to read them to him, but he had left the room, unable to stand with her on this. She had sought him out later, wanting to talk about it, began with, ‘It helps me, Andrew, to see how many people care, to read about him.’

He didn’t answer.

‘It’s as if you don’t want to remember-’

‘It’s not that.’ He cut her off. ‘I can’t do it this way.’ Wallow, he wanted to say, but it felt so cruel he bit it back. ‘Not yet. I’m sorry.’

‘I need to be able to talk about him, like we do with your mum and dad – all of us, even the kids.’

Two evenings where in some sort of wake they had sat up late sharing stories. His parents, Val and him, Colin and Izzie and their kids. He had wanted to stop their mouths and cast them out, silence the peals of laughter and murmurs of soft fond recognition. Watching their eyes shine with affection and sparkle with tears, hands moving with gestures to illustrate their tales, he had seethed with rage. Did she not notice that he had said little, contributed nothing, drinking steadily, way more than anyone else, and been the first to leave, escaping with ‘a bad head’ or ‘need to lie down’?

He closed the laptop, took a tea bag out of the jar, found a cup, stared at it, then put it down. He fetched his coat and hat and gloves and set off in the darkening light.

Louise

‘Hello.’

It was Andrew Barnes again.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said.

Louise stared at the man. What did he want with them? She hadn’t mentioned his earlier visit to either Ruby or Carl. Didn’t know how to put it. It seemed private somehow, and puzzling.

‘How is he?’ He looked anxious, apprehensive, as though he feared she might send him away.

‘The same,’ she said.

Andrew gestured to his own face, then at Luke. ‘He’s not got the mask.’

‘He’s breathing on his own but nothing else.’

‘But he still might…’

She nodded quickly. ‘Yes, it’s totally unpredictable. They say that the longer time goes on, the less chance there is that people’ll wake up, but it’s still quite early on, really.’ Seven days. Only three since they stopped sedation, she told herself. No time at all.

‘Yes,’ he said quietly.

It felt stupid, him standing across the other side of the room. She pointed to Ruby’s chair. ‘If you want to…’

‘Thanks.’

He didn’t look any better than last time, she thought, and knew she looked worse. She’d caught sight of her reflection in the visitors’ toilets, shocked to see grey in her hair. She had always thought that was a myth. And marks like bruises under her eyes. ‘They asked for pictures,’ she said. ‘The police: before and after.’ The memory was bitter in her mouth. ‘They used them in the appeal.’

He nodded.

She had known immediately which picture of Luke she would give them. Ruby had taken it when they were in Ibiza the summer before last. Luke at the restaurant table, relaxed, smiling. Rush matting and grapevines in the background, a knickerbocker glory with sparklers in front of him – his birthday. They’d teamed up with her mates Fee and Deanne and their kids to go. Deanne had got them a good deal because the apartment was her mum’s timeshare. The cheap flights meant travelling at god-awful hours both ways, but it had been a brilliant week for them all. Louise had worried about Luke; it was not long after he’d been in trouble over the graffiti, and before that the fireworks, and he’d been bunking off school. He was the eldest of the kids in the group but he was really good with the others, and then halfway through the week he’d met a girl from London, a holiday romance. Louise hoped they were taking precautions and said so to Luke, who grimaced. ‘Leave it out, won’t you,’ sounding a bit cockney himself. Louise hadn’t warmed to the girl, who had a habit of smirking at her whenever they met. She was glad when there was no mention of her after they got home.

‘They sent someone in here to take a photo.’ She gestured at Luke. She had sat there feeling furious, though not sure why, as the man had adjusted lights and moved drip stands and used a camera with a huge lens on the front then checked to see what he’d got on his screen.

‘The fight,’ Louise said, a cramp in her guts. ‘What happened?’ Putting together what the police had told her and what had been reported in the news, it was still so patchy. She knew there were three people involved, thought to be in their late teens, two boys and a girl. All white.

‘They think it started on the bus,’ Andrew said. ‘There’s a stop near the house. Jason was coming back from town.’

Had Luke been on the bus? A lurch in her stomach as the possibility struck. Declan said he had gone into town for some Christmas meal with his day-release course. If he had got the number 50 back instead of one of the buses down Wilmslow Road, which he sometimes did, then he could have been on the same bus as Jason. Then what? He’d made some smart comment, stared at them the wrong way? Or they’d homed in on him – a mixed-race kid, someone to taunt, to bully.