Cath Staincliffe - Split Second

‘No.’ Louise smoked, heard a burst of laughter from inside the club rising above the jazz funk that was playing. She shivered, stamped her feet.

‘What will you do if Luke doesn’t wake up?’ Deanne said.

Louise froze; she felt her skin chill and a frisson of fear bubble through her veins. And then a hot needle of anger at the question. ‘He’s going to wake up,’ she said sharply. And ground out her cigarette underfoot.

Andrew

Garrington. It was like a small seed stuck in his teeth, grit in his shoe. He ignored it for long enough.

They made love, the first time since it had happened. The familiarity, the physicality, the release were a reassurance. Val slept afterwards. He lay and watched her. So busy in her waking life, so active and energetic, when she slept she was still. Would lie in one position all night long. He saw she had lost weight, her face thinner, almost gaunt. He felt a crush of fear that she might get ill, that he might lose her too, and promised himself that he would help her.

In the becalmed weekend after the funeral, waiting for life to resume, he and Val found tasks to occupy their time. A blitz on the garden: clearing up the last of the leaves now the snow had melted and bagging them for compost; tidying the borders, the straggly spikes of lavender and the desiccated remains of Michaelmas daisies and asters.

He sorted out the polytunnel, repaired a small tear near the back, checked over the cabbages and leeks and dug up some of the potatoes. There were a couple of squally showers on the Sunday, and as the rain drummed on the plastic, he closed his eyes and took himself back to camping holidays: the three of them, and later just him and Jason. The smell of earth and wet wool and wood smoke. The murmured conversations that they held, rolled side by side in sleeping bags, the delicious hooting of an owl in the night, and dawn waking them as light seeped through the canvas. Showering in whitewashed sheds, littered with moths, and Jason reluctant even to use the toilets.

The past was solace, but the future stretched ahead barren, hopeless, hostile. A place of thorns and bones and sinking sands. Andrew decided the trick was not to think about it, not to look ahead, beyond. Not to imagine.

They had lost a date palm. The brutal frost left it scorched and black.

‘We should get rid of it,’ Val said. ‘It looks awful.’

Andrew tested it with the saw. The dead wood was fibrous but not too tough. He began to cut it into sections, and Val put the perished leaves in the recycling bin and hauled the pieces of trunk over to the drive – they’d go to the tip.

Garrington. Still there as he drove the saw to and fro, the pungent smell of sap in the air and a burning in his shoulder, still a little tender from falling when he’d chased after them.

Val brought out tea and he took a break. Sat beside her and gulped hot mouthfuls, his fingers smearing the mug with dirt.

‘Nearly done.’ She nodded at the stump.

‘The roots’ll be the worst bit, spade and fork job.’ He thought of their ragtag procession for Jason. The coffin and the tree, the spade and the watering can.

‘I’m going back in on Tuesday,’ Val said.

He nodded. He’d already decided for himself that he’d start back then, but Val had spare holiday left that she could have taken.

The phone went. He’d reconnected it eventually, and they hadn’t been pestered by the press since. He groaned as he got up, his muscles stiffening already.

‘I’ll get it,’ Val offered.

‘No,’ he said, moving towards the house. ‘It’ll be my mother, or Colin.’ They rang every day. ‘They said they’d do a meal tomorrow.’

‘Hello?’

‘Hi. Is Jason there, please?’

Andrew went dizzy; he felt as though he’d been kicked in the skull.

‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice, young, an unfamiliar accent.

‘I’m sorry, there’s been…’ His words were thin and dry. ‘I’ve, erm…’ He faltered.

‘I can’t get him on his mobile.’

‘I’ve some very bad news,’ Andrew said. ‘Jason died on the seventeenth of December.’

‘Died?’

‘Yes.’

‘But… Oh God!’

‘He was attacked when he tried to stop a fight; he was…’ Andrew didn’t want to say killed. ‘There was a knife.’

‘Oh God.’ She sounded shell-shocked.

‘I’m sorry, we told everyone we could.’

‘I’ve been home – Denmark.’

A foreign student? ‘You knew him from university?’

‘Yes. I’m so sorry.’

‘No, no, that’s fine.’ And of course it wasn’t.

‘The funeral was last Thursday.’

‘Yes. Yes, I see.’

He heard her breathing change and understood as she quickly ended the call. He replaced the phone. Allowed his mind to swoop around those unforgettable images: the crimson snow, Jason’s blanched face as he sat in their lounge, his body in the hospital anteroom. Then he forced himself back outside to dig up the roots of the palm. He continued even when the drizzle came and made the spade slippery to handle. Even as the crumbs of soil sneaked into his gloves and rubbed against the skin. He tugged out the last of the roots and discarded them. Broke up the clods of soil and forked it over. It was dusk by the time he’d finished.

He showered while Val prepared a meal. He complimented the food, hoping to entice her to eat more.

‘What time are we round at your folks tomorrow?’ she asked him. He hadn’t told her that the call had been from one of Jason’s new friends.

‘Six,’ he invented. He would call and fix that up with his mother after tea. If it didn’t suit them, then he could easily tell Val the plans had altered.

Garrington. Like a splinter under his nail. The more he tried to disregard it, the more it nagged at him.

He lasted until late in the evening. Val had gone up, and he was having a nightcap, ostensibly watching a rerun of Coast , the documentary series about the British coastline.

He moved abruptly, went through to the study and wrestled the phone book from the stack of directories.

Frost… Gane… Gardner… Garrington. One entry: V , 22 Waterford Place, M20. He felt a shiver of excitement, a sort of sickly triumph. He tore the page out and folded it up. Put it in his pocket. The thrill of discovery beating inside him like a new heart.

Louise

Carl had brought vodka. Cherry vodka. From the distillery near his village, he said. The Poles were big on vodka, Louise had learnt, usually flavoured with fruit or herbs or honey. He’d brought duty-free cigarettes too. It was good of him, but within half an hour of Carl being there, Louise found her mind wandering. It was hard to concentrate on his stories from home; she felt irritated at the way he shook his head when he chuckled.

Driven to distraction, she thought, that’s what it feels like: everything’s popping up and zipping about and none of it is important any more. Too much clutter in her head, and all that mattered was Luke and Ruby.

She looked at Carl, the broad cheekbones, the honey colour of his skin, blond hair, his eyes, cat-like, wonderful eyes, and sighed. ‘I think we should give it a break – us, I mean.’

He looked dazed. ‘Really?’

‘It’s not you, Carl, it’s me, Luke, everything.’

‘But I want to help.’

‘There is no help.’ She turned her glass to and fro on the table. ‘It’s all I can do to give Ruby the time she needs, with work and hospital.’

‘You make it sound as if I am work for you,’ he complained. She saw petulance in the set of his jaw.

‘I don’t mean to.’ She didn’t want to get into it. Her mind was made up and nothing he could say would shift it. She didn’t want to pick over it, analyse it. Or hurt him any more. ‘You’ve been really good. I’m sorry.’ She frowned, pinched at the bridge of her nose. Now please, go.