Alex Preston - The Revelations

‘I’m not sure I want all that,’ said Marcus quietly.

‘What?’

‘I don’t know if I want to be a senior member of your church, David. I don’t know whether I can live up to what you expect of me. I never felt about it in quite the same way as the others. I believe in God. I’m pretty sure that I believe in God. I just don’t know if I believe everything that goes with it.’

‘So what are you saying, exactly?’

‘I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know anything at the moment. One of my best friends may be dead. Everyone is talking about her suddenly as if she’s dead and yet there’s no body, no real explanation of how or why she died. My wife is three thousand miles away and won’t answer my calls. I’m sorry, David, I just need some time to think.’

The priest knelt down in front of Marcus and laid a hand on his arm.

‘I understand, I really do. If we don’t question our actions sometimes, then we find ourselves leading our lives on autopilot, and we can never achieve fulfilment. Take some time, but remember that we need you. The people at St Botolph’s love and need you so very much.’

David stood up and walked down the corridor to the doorway. Marcus followed him.

‘I’ve big plans for you, Marcus,’ David said over his shoulder. ‘You must remember that no other Christian movement has the money, the connections, the marketing savvy of the Course. We are going to be a global brand before long, and we’ll need smart people like you to run it. Keep strong. Things will get better, you’ll see.’

When the priest was gone, Marcus microwaved a bowl of minestrone and sat down at the dining table. He cleared a space for his bowl among the photographs and began to flick idly through them as he ate. He had taken more photographs at university than he did once he was in London. He smiled at photos of the four friends. They looked so young back then. Mouse and Lee seemed like children in the pictures. He couldn’t believe that he and Abby had been so fresh-faced, so innocent. He noticed how close they all seemed: not just the four of them, but all of their friends from university. There had been so many of them, so many friends left behind once the Course became the most important thing in their lives.

Daffy was in almost all of the photographs from that period. Marcus remembered how the mouthy, energetic Welsh boy had followed them around, had always been the last one drinking at the college bar, an ever-dependable companion for pub crawls or spontaneous trips to seedy nightclubs in town. Marcus had tried to keep in touch with him once they moved to London: he had come to the wedding and they still exchanged occasional emails, but Marcus knew that Daffy felt excluded by the prominence of the Course in their lives. He thought he should probably call Daffy and tell him about Lee. He found the number on his phone and dialled it.

‘Hello.’ Daffy was in a pub. Marcus could hear fruit machines and music and people shouting to be heard at the bar.

‘Daffy. It’s Marcus Glass.’

‘Hold on.’ Marcus heard Daffy move through the bar and then outside. ‘Sorry, it’s carnage in there. Is that you Marcus? Brilliant to hear from you, man. How are you?’

‘I’m OK. Listen, would you like to meet up? I mean, I know I’ve been rubbish at keeping in touch, but I wondered if you’d like to hook up for a drink?’

‘Of course. It’d be great to see you.’

‘What about Saturday?’

‘Day after tomorrow? Sure, why not? I have a thing later on, but we could get together about seven if that works.’ He named a pub in Shoreditch.

‘Yes. Great. See you then.’

Marcus fed Darwin and sat back down at the table. He started to look through the pile of pictures of Lee, realising that Abby had arranged them chronologically, so that he watched his friend age as he thumbed through them. He saw her blue-green eyes lose a little of their naughtiness, saw her face grow thinner and her hair more blonde. And in each photograph the unmatched earrings, one blue, one turquoise, which she had told him once had been a present from her first real boyfriend. She had left the boy behind in Suffolk, but continued to wear the earrings, pleased with the disconcerted glances they provoked and the way they brought out the colour of her eyes.

He went back to the beginning of the pile, preferring to see Lee when she was at her best: young and wicked-looking. He came to a photograph of the band on stage. Lee was standing up at her keyboard, her head thrown to the side so that her hair shot out horizontally. Abby was beside her, the two girls singing into one microphone. Marcus had his head down and was pounding his guitar, while Mouse grinned, slightly out of focus, in the background. The photo had been taken at a college ball. It was still early in the party and dusk was falling behind the stage. The band’s name had changed several times during their university years. He thought at this point it had been Edwin and the Droods.

It was the first college ball they had played, and they had all been nervous, but so many of their friends were in the audience, and the band looked so young and happy that the reception was rapturous. People had been drinking for a few hours and the band played songs that everyone loved, songs that people knew how to dance to. Marcus remembered looking down and seeing couples with their arms around each other as he and Abby took turns singing the verses of a song that had been a hit several years earlier. People were kissing and laughing and getting drunk in the day’s last light. The band had come off stage to a riot of applause and delighted revellers had bought them drinks all evening.

At the end of the night, Marcus had to carry Abby back to their college draped over his shoulder. He tucked her up in her bed and then Lee and Mouse followed him over to his room. He switched on the desk light and opened a bottle of wine. Lee lolled in an armchair, a cigarette hanging from her lips. Marcus called Daffy and some other friends who had been out clubbing in town. They turned up carrying bottles of beer and vodka and someone started rolling joints on Marcus’s desk. Mouse put on a CD and people began to dance in the corners of the room. Marcus crossed the quadrangle to check on Abby. She had kicked the duvet onto the floor and was snoring loudly. He draped the cover back over her and placed a kiss on her clammy forehead. She moaned in her sleep and rolled over.

When he went back into his room, more people had turned up. He didn’t recognise some of them, but Daffy threw an arm around his shoulder and yelled: ‘It’s OK. They’re with me’ in his ear. Mouse was involved in a drinking game that Marcus could already see he was losing. His shirt was wet with beer and he kept tilting backwards on his heels, very nearly toppling over. Lee was still sitting in the armchair, coolly surveying the party. Marcus crouched in front of her and she reached over and tousled his hair. He smiled up at her.

‘You were amazing tonight.’ Marcus took one of her cigarettes and lit it. Her skirt was hitched up around her thighs and he placed his hands on her thin legs. Lee giggled.

‘I really enjoyed it,’ she said. ‘It’s so fun to be up there with you guys.’ She leaned towards him and spoke in a whisper. ‘Listen, I’ve got a bottle of champagne in the fridge outside my room. If no one’s nicked it, do you want to go and drink some?’

They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and Lee took the bottle from the fridge. They went into her room and sat down on the bed. It was always a mess in there: books everywhere, face-down or piled in corners awaiting her attention. Clothes were strewn across the floor, dropped where she took them off. Lee created extraordinarily complicated essay plans in many different shades of ink. When she was done with them she used them to wallpaper one side of the room. Marcus leaned back against a plan that seemed to be dealing with Ancrene Wisse and the contemplative life. Lee opened the champagne and clamped her mouth over the neck of the bottle to stop it fizzing over.