Ghosts in the Morning (15 page)

Outside, away from the
serpent qu
eue
that
s
lid
towards
the club,
it was quiet.
The club was situated on the outskirts of town, and the taxis hadn’t yet begun to gather.
I pulled out my mobile phone, thought about phoning a cab, but I decided to walk for a while. There was another taxi rank about half a mile away, the walk would do me good. I needed to calm down,
I could feel my breath puffing through my nostrils, I felt like a raging bull
.
I needed to breathe slowly, needed to
order my thoughts
.
I hated arguing with Anita, she was one of the few good friends I had, we didn’t usually disagree. Perhaps that was because I usually just went along with her opinion, I didn’t confront her, she had always been stronger than me. But lately...

The night was still, it was mild for the time of the year. I looked up. The moon was
about a third
full,
and
there was the odd twinkle of a star dotted in the patchwork quilt of the sky. The road here was abutted on both sides by fields with trees at their edges, their branches reaching out like an old man’s fingers.
The fields were surrounded by electric wires to keep the cows in.
I jumped and swore as a
car backfired in the distance.

Then I saw something ahead. No, not something –
somebody
. It was a man – tall, broad – walking towards me. He was drunk, stumbling from side to side, as if one foot was heavier than the other. As he got closer, I saw that he was clutching a bag of chips. His hand was dipping
into the bag like a piston, shovelling chips into his mouth, there was grease and what appeared to be tomato ketchup on his chin.

He suddenly stopped and squinted at me. ‘Hey, love, hello, hello, hello, I wonder if, do you, um–’ He paused and smiled a lop-sided smile.
A tinge of recognition played at the edges of my haze of my anger, but I couldn’t think why.
‘Sorry, love, sorry,
’ he slurred. ‘
I’ve had a drink or three
. Um,
thing is, right,
basically, yeah, can you tell me, love, am I going the right way for Mitti’s?’

‘You mean Mizzi’s?’ I
spat at him. I stared again
, there was definitely something familiar about him,
I knew him somehow...

‘Yeah, whatever, look, is it this way or what?’
His voice was still slurred, but it was laced with rudeness now.

Suddenly I remembered.
It was the rugby player, from the pub when I met Anita for lunch, the one I had confronted.
‘Don’t fancy yours much, bit of a chunky one
, be like shagging a bouncy castle
,
’ he had said.
A coincidence, bumping into him like this, life was full of them. I thought of a story I had read in the newspaper, many years ago; an Israeli man had been on a business trip and had arranged for a prostitute to come to his hotel room. When he opened the door to let her in, he had suffered a heart attack
–
because
he had found himself staring at his
own
daughter.
Coincidences...

‘I know you,’ I said coldly.

‘What, hey
, what
? What the fuck are you on about?
Look, do you know where the bloody club is or what?
’
The
easy drunkenness had disappeared, maybe he sensed my tone, I could see a curl on his smeary lips.

‘I
said I
know you
, you bastard
.
The other day at the pub.
The Hound’s Tooth
.’

He shook his head, his drink-addled brain trying to seek clarity. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about,
and I don’t know why you’re calling me a bastard. Y
ou
’re a
fucking fat cow.
But
to be honest –’ his speech was slurred, it came out as ‘honiss’ – ‘to be honest, yeah, I don’t give a shit
what you’re on about
. I’m going clubbing.
You fucking fat cow.
’

He walked past me, in the direction I had come from,
his shoulder banging against mine.

The blood began to course through my body like a torrent.
‘
Do
n’t fancy yours much, bit of a chunky one
’
. I looked around.
There was a gate in the field, held in place by two pillars of granite. At the bottom of one of the pillars there was a
block –
granite
-
perhaps the
owner of the
field used it to hold the gate open when he was driving through.

I picked it up.

The rugby player was several yards away, still rocking from side to side. He had tossed the chip bag at the side of the road. I could hear him humming to himself. He didn’t hear me.

I felt the surge of blood and anger
pulse again
and
I
lifted the block high above my head. There was a dull, damp sound as the granite met his skull, but he didn’t fall at first. He turned, a look of glazed shock on his face. Blood was trickling down his face, mingling with the tomato sauce on his chin.

I lifted the block
again and smashed it. There was a crack - perhaps his nose bone - and he fell. Again and again, I lifted the stone.
Again and again, I brought it down.

In the distance, I could hear a car. It seemed to be heading this way. I walked quickly down the road a few yards, and then I squeezed between the electric wires
.  A brief buzz as the low voltage current fizzed through me, then I was through. I would cut through the fields, head to the town centre, it wouldn’t be hard to find the way.

I was still clutching the granite block. I could see a dark spot on its edge – blood. There was a small piece of hair
stuck
there too. I crossed another field, and heard running water. A stream. I followed it down for a few yards, saw where it pooled deepest. I dipped the edge of the granite block in and rubbed at the dark patch with my palm. The hair dislodged and drifted downstream then I threw the block into the
deep part of the stream
.

Ten minutes later, and I was back on
the
tarmac
pavement
. I had reached the lip of a hill overlooking the e
dg
e of the town centre. Looking down I could see crowds of people jostling on the streets, drunken laughter mixed with raised voices. Black taxis had begun to swarm, like voracious ants, plucking revellers from the streets like picnic crumbs,
then
swallowing them whole in their rear-hinged jaws. I walked down the hill, and spotted a
n
illuminated
light
on top
of
a taxi.

I waved my hand
and the taxi slowed to a halt. I
climbed in and gave the taxi driver my address.
The taxi driver wasn’t in the mood for conversation and neither was I.

Chapter 9

‘Ian phoned last night.
’

I opened one eye. Graham was stood at the side of the bed with his back to me. He had his hand tucked deep into his faded black-now-grey boxer shorts, scratching his bum. It made me feel sick. I closed my eye.

‘Andrea,
are
you awake?’

‘Huuh,’ I grunted. A dull hammer
y
throb at my temple.

‘Ian phoned last night, I said. While you were out drinking. You know - Ian.
Your son
.’ Graham sounded annoyed. Maybe I woke him when I came in.

‘
Oh yes, I think I remember him,’ I said, leaving the sarcasm hang in the air for a moment. ‘So, is he
alright?’

‘He’s coming home.’

I sat up. ‘Why, what, what’s happened,
is he alright?
I thought he wasn’t
supposed to be
coming back for another couple of months
, what’s up, what’s happened
?’

‘Nothing’s happened,
he said
he’s coming home, that’s all. He said he’s had his fun,
he’s had a great time,
but he’s had enough of travelling
for
now
. He said he
wants to come home and – well, “
get on with his life
” is how he put it. To be honest, I think he’s probably a bit short of cash
.
Strangely enough, I think he may be h
omesick, too,
not that he’d ever admit to that, of course.
’

I grimaced. Graham’s hand had moved to the front of his boxer shorts now, I could hear his
nails
scraping
through
his pubic hair.

‘I did say I’d lend him some money if he wanted,
I mean it’s
silly him cutting short his travels
if it’s just
for the sake of a few quid, but he was adamant. Said he wanted to be home for Christmas.’

‘So,
what, when – ’

‘A week or two, he’s
going to sort out a flight soon,’ Graham shouted from the en-suite bathroom. I heard the intermittent stream of urine splashing into the toilet bowl.

‘Why won’t you shut the bloody door when you go to the loo?’ I muttered, then put my head gingerly back on the pillow.

‘S
imon phoned too
,’ Graham shouted over the noise of the flush. ‘
He should be back around the around
the same time
as well
.’

I frowned. ‘I thought he would be back sooner
than that
.
His u
ni break
’s
up
before then
.’

‘Yes, but he said he wanted to get a bit of extra study done while he was there,
he wants to
keep on top of things.
He said it’s easier to study there, without any distractions, said he can just come home then and
enjoy the
Christmas period.
’

I sighed at the thought of Christmas. It felt like merely weeks ago that we had taken down last year’s decorations.

‘I was thinking
that
we could go out for Sunday lunch today,’ Graham said, reappearing at the bathroom doorway. He was shouting still, over the noise of the
filling cistern
, and I rubbed my head. ‘I mentioned it to Daniel last night, and he
said that he
might
come along too. I thought it
would be
nice,
to go out for a change for
Sunday
lunc
h, to
a pub, yeah?’

I frowned. This wasn’t like normal Graham behaviour at all.
Usually on Sundays, we didn’t
go out for Sunday lunch. Usually on Sundays, Graham and I barely talked,
we sometimes went hours without
exchanging a sentence
, apart from the occasional
yes
or
no
or
can you pass the butter
.
Our Sundays usually consisted of a routine;
Graham
would go and
get the Sunday papers
from the newsagent,
and
croissants and a
baguette
from the French bakery
. Then he would proceed to read the
papers from cover to cover, including all the boring business sections.
Breakfast would therefore take an age.
I ignored the broadsheet papers themselves, I just read the glossy magazines that accompanied them
. I liked looking at the photos of the
super skinny models wearing outlandish clothes and dangerous shoes.
I would picture them eating their Sunday breakfast, probably a herbal tea and four raisins – no croissants slathered with thick Jersey butter for them.
I
would
read the one tabloid that Graham deigned to buy too, just to see if a superstar footballer was sleeping with one of th
os
e super skinny models.

Then,
as morning headed towards lunchtime, I would
clear
up the breakfast dishes,
while
Graham would busy himself with
some chore outside or in the garage; he
would
clean the car, or mow the lawn if it was summer, or tidy up the garage
yet
again.
Then he would
take a shower, and begin to
make the relevant preparations for the great Sunday camping-in-the-lounge expedition. This involved him opening a bottle of red wine and a large family-size packet of crisps and then sinking into his armchair clutching the remote control. From noon until evening, he would watch sport.
Every
bloody sport,
any conceivable sport that was on television, Graham would watch. Even during the summer, when the football season was in summer holiday mode – a break that seemed to last a matter of days – he would find something to watch. Golf or ladies darts, who knew.
I would usually read a book or, if the weather was nice, I would take a walk.