Wendy Jones - The Summer We Loved

“Come on, Pete. Pete?”

A slap brought Pete round and he stirred, disorientated.

“Wake up, mate.”

Pete squinted into the light and colours tore into him. A dark shape formed in front of what looked like… a ceiling. He struggled to pull the shape into focus and then realised it was a face he knew well. He beamed. “Jimmeeee! What’re you doing here?”

James Florin picked up his brother and apologised to the staff and customers around him. He dropped a couple of notes on the bar and hoisted him up to standing. “Come on, mate. Let’s get you home.”

Outside the pub, James managed to persuade a taxi driver to accept them (for a premium) and wrestled his brother inside.

Pete’s home was in an old Georgian building on the edge of town. It had been converted into flats at some stage, badly, without style or grandeur; a basic set of rooms, where doctors on various rotations stayed for the duration of their job.

At the front door, he rifled through Pete’s pockets to find his door key.

“Ooh, cheeky,” Pete teased, wobbling precariously against one arm while James struggled to open the door with the other.

He lugged him across to his bedroom and dropped him down onto the bed. With a lot of encouragement, he managed to get a pint of water down Pete, and on him for that matter, and then he pulled off his shoes and covered him with his duvet. It was going to be a long night.

James picked out his phone and rang home. “Rach, it’s me.”

“Jamie, did you find him?”

“Yeah.”

“Same again?”

“I think so. He’s out for the count at the moment, but I’ll speak to him in the morning.”

“Don’t forget to put him into the recovery position and then you really must try and get some sleep, sweetheart.”

“I might nod a bit. But I think maybe I should stay awake,” he said.

There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

“It’s not his fault, Rach,” he told her.

“It’s not yours either.”

“I know, but I have to help him. I owe him that much, at least.”

“Still?” She let out a long breath. “It was all such a long time ago, Jamie. Haven’t you done enough?”

“I’ll ring you tomorrow,” he told her.

“I love you,” she said.

“Love you too. Give the kids a kiss from me.”

“Will do.”

James made sure Pete was safe to go to sleep and then settled himself in a chair beside him, ready to keep vigil for the night.

At five-thirty the next morning, Pete’s body stirred to the chirruping song of a bird sat on the ledge outside of his window. A groan released the breath from his lungs and he pulled his hands to his head. James awoke from the brief, drowsy haze that had overtaken him just before dawn. He looked across. “Morning,” he said, and waited for the light of comprehension to take form behind Pete’s eyes.

“What day is it?” Pete asked.

“Saturday.”

Pete lifted his head and peered at the light stretching in around the curtains. Apart from the relentless chatter of the birds outside, there was silence all around them. “What time?”

“Early.”

Pete sucked in a deep breath and winced. “My head.”

“Is as much as you deserve. In fact you’re bloody lucky I showed up when I did.”

Pete was confused. He was usually grateful for the blur that followed one of these binges, but this time there was nothing.

“It seems you decided to hit on some poor young woman waiting for her boyfriend at the bar.”

Pete cringed and let out a sigh.

“Where are your pain-killers?” James asked him.

Pete pointed to his bedside drawer and James reached in, popped a couple out and handed them to his brother. He fetched some fresh water and then sat down again while Pete knocked back the tablets with practiced ease. There was a moment of silence between them.

“How long this time?” James asked him.

Pete looked up. His head sank back down again and he rested back. “Thursday night…”

James shook his head. “Why do you keep doing this to yourself, Pete?”

“I-”

“Had the dream?”

Pete opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it again. “Something like that.”

James looked at him, his head shaking slowly. “Why can’t you just let it go, mate? It’s been years . Even Adam’s managed to move on since then.”

“Adam didn’t kill anyone, though, did he?” Pete said, his tone flat.

James pierced his brother with a solemn look. “Neither did you.”

Pete shrugged. “Semantics.”

James rolled his eyes and let out a deep sigh. “The courts exonerated you of all responsibility, Pete. You weren’t the one to blame.”

“Wasn’t I?”

“It was an accident. Shit happens. You can’t carry on beating yourself up over this for the rest of your life. You’re just throwing it away. It wasn’t you killed in that car that night, you know?”

“Maybe it should have been.” Pete closed his eyes and the dream replayed inside his head. Desolation swept across his face as the turmoil of the memory evolved once again. He couldn’t get past it, try as he might. Sometimes he thought he had cracked it, but the dream just kept recurring, bringing it all back and refreshing the agony again.

His voice calmed, aware he had snapped at his brother and he shouldn’t have. If it wasn’t for Jimmy he would have nobody. “I’m not sure I can,” he admitted, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I’m not even convinced I want to.”

“You need to get some counselling,” James told him. “I can’t keep driving around bailing you out all the time. You need to get yourself some proper help.”

Pete let out a puff of derision. “Nobody asked you to keep coming here.” He winced and held onto his head. “How did you know?”

“It was Shane’s stag night last night.”

“Shit! I’m sorry. I’ll call him. Tell him I was ill or something.”

“I’ve already told him. But you can ring and apologise. When you didn’t answer your mobile or your door, I started making my way around the pubs again. I got lucky. Third one this time. You’re getting more predictable, Bro.”

Pete let out a choke of unhappy laughter.

“Look, I don’t mind for me,” James told him. “But I think Rach would be happier if you stopped trying to drink yourself into oblivion.”

Pete smiled and shook his head. “Tell her I’m sorry, won’t you. And I am grateful. Really.”

“It’s your future I worry about,” James told him, after the moment had settled again. “You’ve got some big exams coming up soon and you seem determined to mess it all up again. All that work you’ve put in. Don’t throw it away like this.”

“I know, I know.”

“So you’ll get some help?”

Pete took the path of least resistance. Not in a million years was he planning on sitting down with some poxy counsellor and spilling his guts to a random stranger, but his brother was looking at him, desperately concerned and with such grave fear in his eyes, so he nodded.

“Good. We’d better get some food into you before I get back home to my long-suffering wife and then you can start getting your act together and get things straightened out. You might want to give your liver a break while you’re at it. And the female population, for that matter. There can’t be many women you haven’t been through left around here now, are there?”

Pete gave him a withering look and thought of the face that had pierced him with enigmatic eyes the night before, or was it the one before that? One of the few supposed to be ‘off limits’ (if Kate had anything to do with it). Jenny Wren: stunningly beautiful, bold and disapproving, devastatingly sexy and tantalising as hell. But she had witnessed the rage inside him. Her turbulent nature and mysterious, all-seeing eyes were unsettling to him. It would be dangerous to get too close to her. From the confines of his mind, however, the delicious taste of fantasy was a spectacular thing. “One or two,” he said.