Rachel Ward - Numbers

“I had a blast with you, Jem. These last few weeks, they’ve been the best time of my life. Don’t go without me. I love you.”

He was ready to go. We could dive off there together. His number would be right, after all, and I’d join mine with his.

And then I suddenly thought, Fuck the numbers, fuck it all. How many people meet the person they’re meant to be with? If we stayed indoors, out of harm’s way, maybe we could cheat the numbers after all. What if Karen was right, and it was all in my head – what if the numbers didn’t mean anything at all? If I ignored them, eventually they might go away. Spider and I could have our “happily ever after” ending.

“I love you, too, Spider. I can face anything with you. Let’s go inside, I’m freezing.”

He smiled at me, let go of my hand, and formed a fist. Our knuckles touched. “Safe,” he said.

“Yeah, safe.”

I bent my knees, put my hands on the tops of the stones, and slowly lowered myself back down. When I looked up, Spider was dancing along the top, easy as anything, enjoying the buzz of it, just like he’d danced on the railway sleepers the first day we’d talked, down by the canal.

“Get off there, you silly sod, you’ll break your fucking neck.”

He spun ’round to face me, big daft grin on his face, ready to jump down. Our eyes met, and we held each other’s gaze; my warmth and love for him reflected right back to me. It was going to be alright.

And then his foot slipped on the wet stone, and his balance was gone.

He teetered on the edge for a split second, eyes still on me, thrashing his arms wildly…and then he was gone, falling backward, a look of surprise on his face.

It was so quick, so unreal. I didn’t scream, although someone did far down below. I just watched as he tipped over and over in the air, arms thrashing, hands desperately trying to get a grip on something.

He didn’t hit the ground. His fall was broken by the roof. His fall and his back. Spread-eagled, lifeless, he lay staring upward. I looked into his eyes for the last time. They were still wide open, surprised, but he wasn’t looking back at me. There was no one there anymore.

His number had gone.

It had pissed down rain all the way over there, but by the time we’d parked the car it had stopped. We walked down the pier, the wind whipping off the sea around us. Clouds were racing across the sky like a speeded-up film clip.

Karen kept asking me, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Difficult to imagine a time when I’d been less fine, but you know what I meant. I just wanted her to leave me alone.

Halfway down, Val linked her arm through mine. She didn’t need to ask me any stupid questions; she knew what I was going through. She’d waited until I was out of the hospital to do this. They’d had the cremation without me – obviously they couldn’t put that off forever – but she’d kept the pot with his ashes in it until everyone felt I was strong enough to cope.

She’d come to see me in the ward. The first time, I couldn’t speak, not to her or anyone. My head was still trying to take it all in. I couldn’t look her in the eye, either. She’d asked me to look after him; she’d trusted me with him. And I’d let her down. I’d taken him away, knowing he wouldn’t be back. She wasn’t angry with me, though – Christ knows why not. She was angry with him.

“What was the silly sod doing? He had to show off, didn’t he? If I could get my hands on him, I’d wring his neck…” Her hands were trembling in her lap, fiddling with the unlit cigarette she was holding. “Isn’t there a smoking room we could go to, Jem? This is killing me…”

She’d come back again, despite me not talking the first time, and despite the company I was keeping these days: the silent, the screamers, the deluded, and the sad. I managed to get a word out the second time. I’d spent days forming it in my mind, trying to remember how it started, what your mouth did to form the sound. She was talking, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying, I was concentrating so hard on what I needed to get out. She stopped when she saw me lean forward, saw my jaw moving as I forced my mouth to work.

“Sss…sss…”

“What is it, Jem?” She leaned forward, too, breathing her stale, smoky breath into my face.

“Sss…sso…rry.”

“Darlin’, it’s not your fault. It’s not anybody’s fault. Well, it’s his own silly fault, I suppose. How were you to know? He was always doing daft things, wasn’t he?”

I wanted to tell her that I had known. It had all happened just how I thought it would, so fast that you couldn’t stop it, and so slow, each minute leading inevitably to the next. So many chances to do something different, to change the path we were set on. I’d played it over in my mind a thousand times. I should have kept him safe. I should’ve…should’ve…should’ve…

“I saw him, you know, in the police station,” she said. “I sat in when they questioned him. They didn’t want me to – I’d been questioned, too, see, but I insisted. I was responsible for him. I was all he had. Apart from you.” She picked at the side of her yellow thumbnail with her index finger. The skin was very red, near to bleeding. “He said you two were heading to Weston. Gave me a start, that did. Didn’t know he remembered. I took him there, you see, when he was little. A sort of holiday. I’m glad he remembered…”

She trailed off into silence, and we sat there, while in a chair in the corner another patient rocked backward and forward, backward and forward.

“I’ve been thinking, Jem. When you’re a bit better, we could take him there, to Weston. Say good-bye properly. Only when you’re better. No hurry, love.”

I didn’t notice anything getting any better. One day was much like the last to me: flat, empty, crushed under a huge weight. After a few weeks, though, everyone ’round me started saying they were pleased with my progress. I was able to string words together now, when I felt like it, and was managing to eat a few mouthfuls at each mealtime. I’d still wake up in the night, tormented by nightmares, too scared to scream or cry out, and would lie there for hours, unable to close my eyes again. During the day, the nurses encouraged me to draw, to start to let the feelings out. I didn’t mind that, sitting at the table with some paper and colored markers – I could do it for hours.

Karen was a regular visitor, too. Fair play to her, no matter how often I kicked her, she still came back for more. One day she said, “Jem, the doctor says you’re ready for a change. Come home, love. Come home with me. Let me look after you for a bit.”

She’d kept my old room free. “I’ll decorate it for you. We can start again. What color do you want?”

And so I went back to Sherwood Road, to walls painted “Crème Caramel,” warm and honey-colored, the color of Bath stone. I stayed in my room and listened to music and stared at the walls, until one day I heard Karen going out to take the twins to school, and I started drawing. The first one was by my bed, an angel watching over me, keeping me safe; and I worked outward from there until they were everywhere, walls and ceiling: creatures with wings, climbing up and falling down. Some of them had their faces missing, or an arm or a leg. One of them had ridiculously long limbs and springy Afro hair – I put him at the top, spreading his wings and flying across the ceiling. I did a little bald one right down by the skirting board, sort of hunched up, wrapping her wings around herself.

When Karen brought my dinner in, she dropped the tray. Spaghetti Bolognese splattered on the walls.