Catherine O'Flynn - News Where You Are

Michael buries his hands in his pockets and walks up with Phil.

A lorry pulls up and the school disappears behind it. The traffic is heavier now and the queue for the roundabout reaches right down to the bench where Michael sits. He can’t remember a single word of what Phil said to Elsie and her friend. But he remembers Elsie’s eyes settling on his for the first time and he remembers the shock of the knowledge that passed between them.

The motorway was quiet, but he stayed in the slow lane tucked behind a beaten-up van travelling at fifty. Frank secretly held a strong suspicion that he should not be in charge of a vehicle after dark. On city streets all was fine, but on country lanes or unlit stretches of motorway he was alarmed at the sullen lack of communication between his eyes and his brain. Something had gone wrong between them in the last year or two and now the brain would periodically choose to ignore or wilfully misinterpret visual input. The familiar patterns of tail lights, road signs, catseyes and oncoming headlights had broken down into a free-form floating abstract projection through which Frank hurtled wide-eyed on leather upholstery. At times he mistook the retreating tail lights of the car ahead for headlights coming towards him, at others he would mistake reflections on his side window for vehicles swerving into his lane. His progress along a deserted stretch of motorway was often punctuated by sudden braking at phantom hazards on the road ahead. He waited for the day the police pulled him over, breathalysed him, and imagined their disbelief slowly turning to unease when they discovered no trace of alcohol in his blood.

He indicated and took his exit from the motorway, making his way along the A-roads and country lanes towards home. His journey tonight was even longer than usual after having to attend a work ‘away day’ in Surrey. His daily commute however was fraught enough and just another reason for him to dislike where he lived. He was always happy to get back to Andrea and Mo, but dearly wished that this nightly reunion could take place somewhere other than their home. He had never felt so little affinity with anywhere he’d lived before, not even the bleak shared houses of his student days with their swirling carpets and pungent sofas. He and Andrea had moved out of the city when Mo was born with some vague idea of the country being a better place in which to raise a family. They bought a five-bedroomed detached new build on a large plot of land thirty miles out of Birmingham. It certainly wasn’t the city, but neither could it be called the country. It was handy for the motorway and that had seemed like a good idea.

That first damp, grey day that they’d moved in Frank had felt a terrible emptiness to the place, but put it out of his mind. In the first few months Andrea settled in easily and Frank had high hopes. He’d always lived in cities, but he held in his head an ideal of country living. He looked forward to doing all the things he thought people who lived in the country must do.

He bought a book of local walks and set out many times in the early days in full Gore-tex regalia, but found the landscape charmless. Try as he might he could find nothing inspiring in trudging over ploughed fields or along narrow lanes with cars screaming past at murderous speeds. He would walk through a field, cross a stile in the hedgerow to emerge into another identical field. Apart from the screaming crows, he saw no other living creature. Sometimes he imagined that he was the last person living after the bomb had dropped, and such thoughts inevitably failed to lift his mood. After persevering through each weekend in October and November, he gave up. There was, he concluded, nothing to see out there.

His other efforts centred around the local facilities, such as they were. The nearest village was three miles away. He was intent on shopping locally and imagined how much better food would taste when sourced from nearby farms. The hub of the local village consisted of a post box, a phone box, a franchise convenience store, a Chinese takeaway and a small pub. The shop sold nothing grown locally. Frank learned that the surrounding farms were producing food on an industrial scale to service the large supermarkets. The local shop had little to distinguish it from the convenience store he used to live by in the city except, Frank noticed, for an alcohol selection twice the size and the presence of serious porn titles alongside the usual lads’ mags. He bought a tin of baked beans and a Yorkie bar on his one visit. After that he drove the ten miles to the nearest twenty-four-hour Sainsbury’s.

Andrea and he had realized too late that this was not a good environment for Mo. Although she was happy enough at school, none of her friends lived nearby and when Frank thought of the future he could think of nowhere worse for her to spend her teenage years. He’d often see two or three forlorn characters in hooded tops sitting on the back of the bench in the village, lighting matches and throwing them in the gutter as they passed a bottle of Thunderbird between them.

He pulled on to the drive now past the faded ‘For Sale’ sign. After two years he’d given up hope that anyone would come and take the place off their hands. Andrea was in the kitchen and greeted him with a raised ladle.

‘How was the away day?’

He kissed her. ‘Utterly inspiring.’

‘I bet. Were there jumbo flip charts?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘A PowerPoint presentation?’

‘Several.’

‘Did you learn anything new?’

‘Only that I’m getting too old for all this.’

‘You knew that already.’

Frank took off his jacket. ‘Have you spoken to Mo? Is she having fun?’

‘Yes, she’s happy. She was very excited about something Laura’s mum had given them for tea. Potato with a face apparently. She was delighted by it. I think that might be the highlight of the whole sleepover for her.’

Frank sat down heavily and stared at the reflection of the room in the black window. After a few minutes he became aware that Andrea had been talking.

‘Sorry. What were you saying?’

Andrea looked at him. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah. I’m fine. It was just a bit weird today.’

‘What? Gritting your teeth through all the corporate piffle?’

‘No. Not that. It was on the way back. I ended up driving down the road where Phil died.’

Andrea sat down next to him. ‘Oh.’

‘The conference venue was a big house in the middle of nowhere and I got lost on the way back. Well, very lost, in fact, driving along endless country lanes — no signs anywhere — and at some point in the midst of all this I saw bunches of flowers and photos stuck to a tree. I thought nothing of it at first, but then I caught a glimpse of Phil’s face on some of the photos. I wouldn’t have thought there’d still be any trace, but there were loads — some of them looked quite new.’

‘I wonder if it’s local people who leave them there or if people travel there especially.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t understand it — this need to leave flowers for people they’ve never met.’ She stopped. ‘I don’t mean you. I mean that’s weird too, but in a different way. At least you’re remembering the forgotten; Phil was hardly that.’

‘Perhaps it’s a way of people feeling close to him. They had no tangible connection with him when he was on television, but maybe by putting flowers at the spot he died they feel some link to him.’

She shrugged. ‘It seems odd to me.’

Frank looked at Andrea and smiled. ‘Oh, people are odd. All of them.’

Andrea grinned. ‘Not like us.’

Frank shook his head vigorously. ‘No, not like us. Everyone else. Not us.’ He poured a glass of wine. ‘I couldn’t understand how it happened, though.’