Peter May - Runaway

I spat out a tooth, and looked at Maurie through my tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

An echo of the words I had uttered in the taxi. Too few and too late. My voice was hoarse and barely audible. Maurie was breathing hard, and shook himself free of Luke and Dave’s hands, and stood staring at me with hate in his eyes.

‘I’m so, so sorry.’ And I sat back on the floor then, dropping my face into my hands, and cried like a baby.

I didn’t see Rachel all the next day. I stayed at the house while the others went to Bethnal Green, harbouring perhaps the faint hope that she might come looking for me, and that I would be there for her if she did.

Dr Robert insisted on treating my mouth and facial injuries. He reset my broken nose and held it in place with some kind of strong white Elastoplast that he stretched across the bridge of it. I didn’t see him for the rest of the day, although I knew that he was somewhere in the house, probably in his study.

He had given me paracetamol, but I didn’t take it. Somehow I wanted to feel the pain, to punish myself. My face and mouth hurt like hell, and my head was bursting. I couldn’t bring myself to eat, and sat alone in the basement flat smoking for most of the day.

When Rachel finally appeared the next morning, she seemed frail, a washed-out shadow of herself. The life, and the light, had gone from those dark eyes, and it was so painful to look at her that I could barely bring myself to do it.

She came down to the basement, searching for some of her stuff, and I half expected her to pack her bags and leave. She didn’t once glance in my direction, although she said hi to the rest of the guys.

When she had collected her things, she looked at Maurie. ‘I need to talk to you,’ she said.

Maurie nodded, and the two of them disappeared back up into the house. Just in that moment before she left the room, her eyes flickered almost involuntarily in my direction and I saw the shock in them.

Then she was gone.

Dave lay back on the settee, his acoustic in his lap, idly picking at some riff he was working on, a cigarette burning in the corner of his mouth. Luke sat on the edge of one of the armchairs, leaning forward on his knees, staring off into space. I have no idea where he was or what he was thinking, but we all knew by now that the dream was over. None of us felt inclined to speak.

Except for Jeff, who sat at the table rolling himself a joint. He looked at me and shook his head. ‘Ya stupid big jobby,’ he said.

When Maurie returned about twenty minutes later it was with the news that Dr Robert had offered Rachel a job cleaning and tidying the house in exchange for her room. ‘I don’t know how long she’ll stay,’ he said. Then he looked at me. ‘But apparently you guys owe Cliff some money.’

I lowered my head and felt the disapproval in the room. ‘She doesn’t have to do that,’ I said. ‘I’ll pay him back.’

‘Oh yeah, how you going to do that?’

When I glanced up again I saw the oddest look in Maurie’s eyes. Anger, yes. Contempt, yes. But something else. Something it took me a moment to identify. Pity. Which is not what I had been expecting. And I have always thought that no matter how angry he had been at me, in the cold light of day he regretted what he had done to his friend.

‘I don’t know. I’ll work something out.’

‘And you’re so good at that, Jack, aren’t you? Working things out so that someone else has to pay.’ The moment of regret seemed to have gone.

‘It wasn’t my idea. The abortion. I’d never even have thought of it.’ I don’t know why I was trying to defend myself.

‘No,’ Maurie said, anger brimming in his eyes again. ‘And she wouldn’t either. Except that you were too selfish to see her through the pregnancy. And she knew it.’

And there was nothing I could say. Because that was the truth, and everyone else knew it, too.

I couldn’t sleep again that night, lying sweating, covered with just a sheet, light from the street outside shining through the barred fanlight high up in the wall, and falling in a zigzag pattern across my troubled bed.

Sometime around 3 a.m., I got up and slipped on my jeans and a T-shirt, and tiptoed silently through the basement flat. I could hear the sound of heavy breathing coming from the other bedrooms, and eased open the door to the landing and the stairs up to the house.

The whole house simmered in darkness, except where light fell through windows in unexpected angles and shapes. I followed my own shadow, ascending two flights of stairs, and then climbed the narrow staircase to the attic.

Rachel’s was the only door that was closed. When it wouldn’t open I knocked softly. I waited, but there was no response. I knocked again, a little harder.

‘Who is it?’ Her voice sounded small and frightened.

‘It’s Jack. Rachel, I’ve got to talk to you.’

A long pause.

‘Rachel?’

‘There’s nothing to say, Jack.’

‘There’s everything to say.’

‘No.’

Another pause.

‘It’s over, Jack. And nothing you can say is ever going to change that.’

Forty miles from London, the coach from Leeds pulled off into Toddington Services, and their driver drew up in an empty slot in the lorry park. For several minutes he spoke animatedly to someone on his mobile phone before reaching for the microphone. They were taking a short comfort break, he told his passengers, and they might like to take the chance to grab some food or coffee. There was a Costa Express and a Burger King, and an M&S Simply Food if anyone wanted to buy sandwiches for later.

Jack shook Ricky awake, and the young man blinked in confusion. It was obvious that for a moment he had no idea where he was. Then the fog cleared and reality crystallized. And with clarity came depression, his brain flooded with the recollection of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. His life had turned to crap in the space of a day. He glanced ruefully at his grandfather, who smiled at him.

‘Come on, Rick. Time to get yourself a pee and a coffee.’ He paused. ‘And you can take Maurie to the loo.’

Ricky glared at him and got to his feet with difficulty, stretching muscles that had stiffened up in the last three hours. He took Maurie by the elbow and helped him up.

Maurie himself looked dreadful. Worse, if anything. The skin on his face was the texture of clay, but paler and tinged with green. He had taken painkillers earlier, and their effect still dulled his eyes.

Jack watched as his grandson helped the dying man down the aisle of the bus, and remembered how Maurie had flown at him in a rage the day that he learned about Rachel’s abortion. How his fists had torn a tooth from Jack’s mouth and broken his nose. And he thought how young, stupid and impulsive they had all been.

He had never forgiven Maurie for what he did to him that day, because he had never had to. There was nothing to forgive. Maurie had done nothing to him that he hadn’t deserved. What was more surprising was that somehow, somewhere along the way, Maurie had forgiven him. They had gone on to play in a band together until Maurie’s final year at university, and Rachel had never been spoken of once. Almost as if she had never existed. But the affection they had once felt for each other was lost. Until that moment, three nights ago, when Jack had sat on Maurie’s hospital bed and stared mortality in the face. And something of what there had once been between them was there again, in a look and a touch. A bond of fifty years that had never quite been broken.

They were last off the bus, Dave leading the way. But the driver rose from his seat as they approached the door and blocked their path. He seemed much bigger out of his seat than in it. The three old men and Ricky looked at him, and there was a brief stand-off.