Kate Pullinger - Landing Gear

He had to get rid of that bag. He’d take it to school. He’d find Ruby—where was Ruby?—and ask her to give it back to her brother. He wasn’t expecting his money back or anything like that, he knew Ruby’s brother wouldn’t offer sale or return, refunds within twenty-eight days, money-back guarantee. But it seemed like the most logical thing to do—get the drugs back to the drug dealer, where they belonged.

So Jack packed his lunch and packed his school bag and got together his PE kit for football training after school. His mother offered him an apple, and he agreed to take it because he knew it would make her happy. At the last minute, he ran back upstairs and pulled the little plastic bag out from where he’d hidden it inside his old piggybank—“Acorn-fed Iberian jamón!” his father used to say whenever Jack got out the piggybank—and thinking about this now, the innocence of it, his parents and their middle-class ways, made Jack want to cry.

He ran back down the stairs and, once again, his parents were having some kind of a faceoff in the kitchen, though this time no one was hitting anyone else. He said goodbye to them both without breaking his stride, though he saw a sadness, a despair on both their faces that he’d never seen before. Out the front door, into the April sunshine, and down the street.

Jack was alarmed to see two uniformed officers in the parking lot of the school. He waved at a few of his friends, but kept his head down and went straight into the library, where he knew he’d be left to his own devices. In the corridor there were new notices stating “COUNSELLING AVAILABLE.” He passed a huddle of sixth-formers, several of whom were crying. Most of the staff was back at work by now, but the school had a hush to it, as unusual as the absence of planes had been the previous Monday.

In his form group, the teacher, Mr. Rushdie (not a popular member of staff; otherwise known as Fatwa, though Jack had no idea why) stood up, cleared his throat, looked uncomfortable and said, “I’m sure you’ve heard the very sad news regarding David McDonald. I don’t have any other information to give you—there’ll be an assembly later this week. The police are here in case anyone has any information they’d like to pass on—you can talk to me or talk to them directly. Classes will proceed as normal. Have a good day.”

Fatwa had never told them to have a good day before. That in itself was disconcerting.

At first break Jack rushed over to the far side of the playing field, near the trees, where Ruby usually hung out with their friends. There was no sign of her. A group of kids was standing in a tight circle. Jack nudged Frank to one side so he could get in and see what was happening. Louise was standing in the middle and she was crying.

“Fuck, that’s bad,” Abdul was saying, shaking his head. “Really bad.”

“Why’d you come in today?” Frank asked her. “Did your mum make you?”

Louise nodded, but she couldn’t speak. The other girls had their arms around her.

“We were there,” Frank said. “God.”

Jack looked around sharply, trying to see where those police officers were. “Where’s Ruby?” he asked Louise.

Everyone looked at him as though he was an idiot.

“She’s in hospital—didn’t you know?” one of the other girls said.

“Hospital?” said Jack.

“Don’t you know anything?” Abdul asked. “Weren’t you there?”

Frank stepped away from the group, motioning to Jack to follow him, as if he didn’t want the others—Jack guessed Louise—to hear what he had to say. “Look, man, they took a bunch of stuff,” said Frank. “Ruby, David McDonald, I don’t know who else—five of them. They all got really sick. David had something wrong with his heart that they didn’t know about. It stopped. He died. The other four, they’re in hospital. But they’re not dead. And they’re not going to die.”

“Where’d they get the drugs from?”

Frank shook his head. “No idea.” He lowered his voice further. “Ruby, don’t you think?”

“Shit.”

“Full police investigation,” Frank said, knowledgeably. “They’ve got the names of everyone who was at the party.”

“Why are you going around saying you were there, then?” Jack asked.

“There’s a difference between actually being on the list and saying you’re on the list.”

Jack snorted.

“But you’re on the list, Jack, I’m sure.”

Frank returned to the huddle around Louise. Jack walked across the tarmac toward the school, not completely sure where he was going. What was he going to do with the bag of weed? He couldn’t just throw it away—what if the rumour that there were surveillance cameras hidden all over the school was true? Jesus. What was he fucking going to do with the motherfucking drugs he was carrying in his bag?

Two days after he replied to her message, Harriet arranged to meet George Sigo in a pub in Brixton. She hadn’t been to Brixton since the 1980s. It was changed, and yet unchanged, like most of London, a little more gentrified, a little smarter around the edges. There are bits of London that feel newer now than they did in the past, as if getting richer had made the city younger as well, but less authentic too, more plastic, like a rich old woman with a brightly sliced and pulled-taut face. Brixton had that feeling in parts, though the dense crowd still rushed from the tube station up to the bus stops along the pavement. Harriet walked down Electric Avenue, unsure whether she was hearing music for real or hearing music from her memory.

The pub was just the same, the same old men playing dominoes out back, the same Eddy Grant record playing. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, so the place was nearly empty. Harriet sat at a table with a view of the door, waiting for George Sigo.

He looked the same, if a little craggier, as though time had roughed him up instead of aging him. He still had his black Irish good looks, though his short dark hair was flecked with grey. She hadn’t known him well, really. And then he’d gone to prison, something to do with his Republican politics—she’d taken care to stay well clear of anything to do with that. She’d wanted nothing more to do with him, in fact. She disappeared from her old life, changing her name when she married Michael. She was untraceable, she thought. And here she was, at her own instigation, revealed.

“George,” she said.

He stood in front of her and did not look friendly.

“Take a seat,” she said. “Let me get you a drink.”

He nodded, said, “I’ll have a pint of ale,” and took off his jacket, hanging it over the back of a chair, straightening the shoulders before sitting down carefully. Harriet squeezed by him to get to the bar. As she ordered their drinks she could tell he was watching, staring at her, measuring. He stood up and came toward her. The barman was pulling the pint of ale; he’d poured Harriet’s ginger beer already. Harriet took a few steps along the bar, closer to the barman.

“I looked for you, Harriet,” George said.

“Why don’t you sit down?”

George nodded, but he didn’t move as Harriet got out her purse. She noticed the barman was watching them both closely. She picked up the drinks and walked back to the table.

She sat. George followed but remained standing. He towered over her. He was dressed in fitted black trousers, a slim white shirt, the jacket he’d hung so carefully on the chair, and a skinny black tie, as though it was still the 1980s. “I looked for you when I got out,” he said, “for the better part of a decade.”

“I went my own way. I thought it was for the best.”

“Why have you contacted me now?”

“Why don’t you sit down?”