Jon McGregor - Even the Dogs

Which is when you’re most invisible of all. Get a good look at people’s shoes while they’re stepping around you. Like they’ll leave you there for days. Like they’ll leave you there as long as it takes.

And how many times had he been lying on his floor like that. Over the years. Waiting. The way he waited when Yvonne and Laura first left. Must have waited weeks and months before he really gave up. If he ever did. Waking up each morning going What was that. The sound of the softly closing door. Remembering they were gone and thinking about what he could do to make them come back.

Weren’t nothing he could do to make them come back and he knew it.

He knew it but he couldn’t help waiting. What else could he do.

Lying in bed in the mornings, and getting up to watch television, and sitting there waiting for his wife and daughter to come home. Even tidying the flat once or twice, throwing out all the things he’d smashed up, washing the few dishes that were left, opening the windows to clear out the smell of drink so he could sit there in a state of what, like some respectability, while he waited to welcome his wife and daughter home.

Must have known they were never coming home. But he wanted them to. Jesus. Weren’t all that much to ask. He wanted the phone to ring one morning, and to pick it up and hear Yvonne asking if they could talk, if they could meet and talk and like work something out. He wanted her to pass the phone to Laura, and to hear Laura say she missed him and she wanted to come home, and to be able to say You are coming home my sweetheart, you’re coming home very soon.

He told Steve that one time. Steve didn’t say much. What could he.

And here we are. Sitting here waiting and all of this coming to mind.

Yvonne’s tense, whispering voice on the phone.

Saying stuff like I have to put me and Laura first for a change. Saying I love you but I can’t be with you no more I just can’t.

And then her mother’s voice on the phone, talking briskly, telling him he couldn’t speak to Yvonne and telling him not to call them any more.

The sound of the unanswered phone.

The sound of the television while he sat and watched it and waited for the phone to ring. The sound of one morning when he couldn’t bear waiting any more and he threw the phone against the wall, picking it up and throwing it and picking it up and throwing it until wires and circuit boards and silenced voices spilt from its broken body and were trodden into the floor.

And tidying up those pieces as well, eventually, putting them out with the rubbish, the flat a little bit emptier than before.

He could have gone there himself though.

What was he scared of.

It was a long way but it shouldn’t have been too far should it. Instead of just waiting. Waking up each morning going What was that. The sound of the softly closing door. And when there was nothing left to tidy up he started drinking before he’d even got out of bed. Because was there any point waiting.

It was the drinking that had made Yvonne leave in the first place.

That’s what she said, on the phone.

And if she thought it had been bad enough that she had to get away then she should see him now. Was what he thought, then.

She should see him now.

The last things to go, as the flat kept emptying out, were the television and the washing machine. Two men from the rental shop came and collected them, and he didn’t have whatever it might have taken for an argument. Strength, heart, fucking, gumption or something. There’s nothing worth watching anyway, he joked, as they unplugged the television and carried it out of the flat without looking at him. Mind your backs lads, he said, as they eased the washing machine down the hallway, dripping water behind them and taking a chunk out of the doorframe on their way through. When they’d gone, after he’d kicked the kitchen cupboard doors from their hinges and emptied the drawers out on to the floor, he’d sat on the front step with a bottle of cider and started to feel better. And when he’d finished that bottle, and finished another, and was lying on his back on the hallway floor, he’d realised he wasn’t waiting for them to come home any more.

Which is when Steve first showed up, come to think of it.

The way these things all come to mind. When you’re sitting and waiting somewhere. In a room, like this. A waiting room like any other.

We’ve got all the time in the world to sit and wait now.

We watch the hands of the clock tick through the seconds and minutes and hours, and we wait. For someone to come and open one of those heavy doors and roll Robert out. Bring him out to us. Take him away.

We sit and we look at the featureless door. Like, what, keeping watch.

And those hours and days he was lying there like that, in the dark, in the light, in the dark again. No one passing him by but still. Someone could have done something, could they. When Laura got out of the taxi like that. What was she doing. Or Mike, or Ben. What happened in there.

Keeping watch for what though la.

Waiting for what and these things keep coming to mind.

Heather outside the flat again. When was this. Must have been Christmas Day was it. Before she knew anything was wrong. Sort of before any of us knew. Waiting outside with a bag full of cans and snap, waiting for someone to come to the door.

Didn’t usually wait long for someone to open the door so what was going on this time. Heather thought, then. She knows now, sort of. We all sort of know now.

Banging on the door, and shouting through the letterbox, and turning round to look up and down the street. Like he might have been standing out there in the cold morning light, watching her, saying her name. As if.

Banging on the door again, and the old woman with the tiger-paw slippers shuffling out of her flat and saying Excuse me but I think you’d be as well to give it a rest. I haven’t heard a thing for days. They must have gone away.

Heather ignoring her because what did she know. Robert would have said something if he was going away. He would have told her first, wouldn’t he. He would. He would have told her basically if anything was wrong.

Banging on the door again and the old woman still there. Saying If you ask me I’d say something’s probably happened. Saying I’m surprised it’s taken so long.

Heather had only talked to this woman once before. When was it. When she came and knocked on the door herself. This was a few years back. Standing there with her arms folded when Heather opened the door, going Could you keep the noise down just this once, could you please? Basically like trembling with sort of determination, backing away even while she started talking and she was right to be scared with some of the people who were hanging around the flat at that time. No one likes being told what to do, but some of that lot sort of liked it even less than most. Heather just shut the door in her face before anyone else could get to her, and the old woman probably never realised she was being done a favour did she. And now here she was giving it all Oh something’s probably happened, and hurrying back into her own flat before Heather even realised what she meant.

And that was basically the first thought she’d had that something might be wrong. Pressed up against the filthy glass but she couldn’t see a thing. Shouted Robert’s name, and called him a silly fat cunt, and banged on the door. Thought about kicking in the door or something but she didn’t think she could. Thought about climbing up on the garage roof and getting in that way, like some of them did, but she knew she wouldn’t make it. And anyway. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. Not if she was going to find something. She thought about going and getting some help. She thought but surely, a man like that, what’s going to have happened to him. Thought she might say something anyway though, when she got down the day centre, if she saw someone. But probably by then someone would have dealt with it. And it was probably nothing. Because so what if no one answered the door, he was probably just asleep or something, they were probably all sort of asleep in there. So what was the daft cow on about. Heather thought, then.