The Harder They Fall (25 page)

“Ah right, well. Maybe we need to arrange a couple of mentoring sessions and chat about where you want to be heading. How does that sound?”

“That’d be really helpful, thanks.”

“I’ll check my diary later and drop you an email.”

So that was the easy part done, and without stirring things up. All good so far, but how to broach the other bit? He sipped at his tea, feeling very ill at ease, with Sean’s eyes constantly burning into him, interpreting his every action.

“That porridge might be a bit cooler now. Think I’ll give it another try,” he said, the words loaded with subtext. As he passed by, he patted George on the shoulder. “Give you time to gather your thoughts. Then you can tell me what’s really on your mind.”

George was relieved and horrified at the same time. Was he really so transparent? Of course, Sean was a professional; he’d seen Josh do the same thing many times before, reading the subtle changes in people’s body language, the words waiting behind pursed lips. He was starting to get a bit of a knack for it himself, although he was a long way from reaching their level of almost telepathic ability. In the kitchen he could hear the clanging of the spoon against the side of the pan, and a one-sided dialogue between Sean and his cat, to whom he was explaining that they had company and he was to behave. Soon both the clanging and the talking stopped, and George braced himself. Sphinx the cat came in first, jumped lightly onto his lap and curled up in a purring, fluffy ball. He was a truly welcome distraction.

Sean came back and took his seat on the sofa, legs crossed and tea resting on his stomach. He didn’t say a word, instead waiting for George to begin to speak. This was the humanistic approach in full effect and he wondered how many times he was going to be asked what made him think ‘this’, or why he felt ‘that’. But this wasn’t a therapy session; it was an information gathering exercise. Like doing research—yes, that was a much easier way to approach it.

“I’m not sure how to—” he started. Should he just ask outright? Or perhaps gradually build up to it, set some context first?

“You want to talk to me about Josh,” Sean stated.

“Is it that obvious?”

“To anyone else, maybe not. To me, and to your man Josh, yes. Sometimes I think he wishes as much as I do that it wasn’t so. It can be a terrible burden. It would be nice to be able to turn it off, but there you go. I don’t suppose we can have it all the way we want.”

“You and Josh lived together.”

“Shared a house as undergraduates, and for a while afterwards, yes. Until I royally screwed things up. I suppose he told you.”

“Not really. He told me that you left to complete your PhD and he didn’t like how you went about things, but that’s pretty much it.”

“He said that, did he? That’s interesting. Interesting, and fifty percent the truth. I made some bad choices with my research, he’s right about that. But it wasn’t me who left. It was him.”

So Josh had lied about that then. George chewed his lip whilst he pondered the appropriateness of his next question. He ought not to ask it and probably knew the answer already, but it was the only chance he was going to get. “I know this is a bit too personal, and that you’re with Sophie, but were you and Josh ever…”

“Lovers? Not at all, no. As you say, I’m with Soph and I’m very much a ladies’ man. As for Joshy—after all this time I couldn’t tell you for sure. He’s always been too tied up working or looking after his friends to have a relationship.” Sean paused. “It’s the only thing he’s been able to keep from me.”

George rubbed his temples. The headache hadn’t diminished any and was possibly getting worse. He concentrated on stroking the cat and tried to centre his thoughts. So far, what Sean had told him hadn’t been particularly informative, although the fact that he couldn’t see into Josh’s emotional side either was some consolation. After all, if he couldn’t, then what hope was there for anyone else?

“He’s a good little partner, aren’t you, Sphinxy? If they’d let me, I’d take him to the hospital with me. He’d do so much good.”

“Yeah,” George agreed. Without the cat on his knee, he’d have probably decided to wimp out by now, but Sphinx was making sure he wasn’t going anywhere, so he decided to grasp the opportunity. “I don’t know if you remember Eleanor. She’s a friend of Josh’s and mine. We were all at school together.”

“Sure, I know Eleanor. What an incredible young woman she is, or was. You know, before Josh left, and you’ll think I’m making this up, but he destroyed the house. He didn’t do it all in one go, like when someone loses their temper and smashes up the furniture. This was much more controlled. The first thing was his bed. It took a couple of weeks for me to discover he was sleeping on the sofa, and his bed was in pieces all over his room. We had a big table and dining chairs, it was daft really, but that’s what the landlord gave us, so we kept it. We spent many a night there, studying and drinking into the early hours. Well, that was the next casualty, and more in keeping with your smash it up with an axe kind of thing. He’d decided it was taking up too much space and we were going to get a new one, but of course, we never did. After he moved out I had to replace it or lose the deposit on the house. There were a few other things: the TV, most of the pans—my God he must’ve scrubbed the hell out of them, the state they were in—and then one day he left, without a word. I found out he’d gone up to Newcastle to stay with Eleanor, and I followed him, because I felt responsible.”

“Because of your PhD?”

“Because he gave me unconditional love and I threw it back in his face. I didn’t realise at the time that this is what I’d done. See, all through our time as undergrads, we were so close, because we were so alike. Getting our degrees mattered more than anything else and we worked so damned hard for them. Or he did. It was only in our third year we started to have some disagreements, well, huge arguments they were, in reality. Our professor was pushing us towards postgraduate study, and made it clear he expected us to toe the line, but Josh—he’s not so good at doing as he’s told, whereas I didn’t care, as long as it got me the first I needed. Even then, he beat me by a long shot, but he was never one to brag about it.

“So, we carried on sharing the house for a while after, both working on our Masters, but it wasn’t the same as it used to be and it was an unimaginable strain on our friendship. We were both looking for a way out, to get away from that professor, who was still trying to dictate where we went with our research, and to get away from each other. I got an offer to transfer to Bristol, straight onto the PhD programme, and I wanted to talk to him about it, get his opinion, but I didn’t get a chance. Never the right time, you know?”

Sean had been staring into the mid-distance throughout, but now he made eye contact with George: the same kind of look he gave them during lectures when seeking affirmation that they had understood. Apparently, on this occasion it was not forthcoming. Sean returned his gaze to its previous fixation point and continued.

“When I followed him to Newcastle, Eleanor left us alone in her little tiny room up at the university there, and told us to sort it out. I was all for it, but Josh, he wouldn’t say a word. Sure, we screamed and shouted till we were blue in the face, but he wasn’t really saying anything. I kept pushing, trying to get past the shield he’d put around himself, but I couldn’t do it anymore. He shut me out. Completely. He came home with me, but not long after, he left for good—sent me a letter to say he’d found somewhere else to live. Last Christmas, when we got drunk together, was the first time we’d spoken about it, and I missed him so much. We were like soul mates. I hurt him and he couldn’t tell me how, so I couldn’t make amends.”

The two men sat in silence for quite some time after Sean had finished speaking, pondering over the same problem. This all made a lot of sense to George, for it was to the letter the way Josh was acting now. Whether it helped to know this was difficult to tell, as he still had no idea what he’d done to hurt him and hitting him with a barrage of questions could only make matters infinitely worse. He needed a means of further narrowing down the possibilities.

“When Josh left, was there anything else going on? Were you seeing anyone, for instance?”

“No. I was too busy with the groundwork for my doctorate. Why? Where are you going with this?”

“Honestly, I have no idea. We’re missing something here.”

“Yes, we are. We’re missing Josh’s perspective. If you find a way of wheedling it out of him, let me know what it is,” Sean laughed, although there was much sorrow behind it.

“Thanks for being so open about this. I won’t mention a word of what you’ve told me,” George said, lifting the cat off his lap and placing him on the chair. Sphinx carried on purring and pulled in his tail.

“Ah, I don’t mind you sharing, if it will help my old friend. I don’t like to think of him being this way, which I assume is why you came.” George’s shrug was non-committal. Sean understood. “I love him like he is my own brother. Actually, that’s a terrible comparison. I hate my brother, but you get the idea.”

“Yeah,” George smiled. “Thanks again.” Sean saw him out and he walked to the bus stop, his mind working overtime, so much so that he would have missed the bus, were it not for the woman who came running up the road with her hand out so that it stopped anyway. He sat near the back and stared, unseeing, out of the window. He was determined to get to the bottom of this, for his own and Josh’s sake, because they couldn’t carry on indefinitely, living in the same house like a pair of overgrown ‘roomies’, an invisible, unbearable weight hanging over them that could drop at any second.

It wasn’t yet midday, so, safe in the knowledge that Josh would be at his surgery, George went back to the house (he was finding it very difficult to call it ‘home’) to shower and pick up some clothes. Much as he didn’t want to impose on anyone else, he was going to have to ask Kris and Shaunna if he could stay with them for a couple of nights, if possible until after the wedding, the plan being to confront Josh on neutral territory: the cabin they were sharing in Wales. As he made his way up the road towards the house, he sent Kris a text message asking him to give him a call in his lunchbreak, pausing to click ‘send’ before he fished out his keys.

“Oh Jesus!”

George pushed the door a little harder, the resistance against it increasing with every inch that it crept open. He let go and it sprung back.

“Right,” he said, using his body this time, until the gap was wide enough to squeeze through. Just the other side of the door, folded into a clumsy heap, were all of the carpets and he clambered over them, pausing at the summit to inspect the living room; no further damage to report there. Likewise, the kitchen looked to have survived this latest bout of what he could only describe as ‘uber’ spring-cleaning. George shook his head in despair and returned to the hallway, trying not to damage the foam underlay on the way up to his room, where he sat on the end of the bed, head in hands, trying to come to terms with what was happening. This was a side of Josh that he had never seen; he had watched him so intensely for so long that it was almost impossible to comprehend. It was the antithesis of hoarding, like he was purging his life of whatever it was that he saw as the root cause of his troubles, a material manifestation of the extreme emotional control. George wanted to help, but felt utterly powerless; not even Eleanor had any knowledge of this facet of Josh’s personality; Sean still didn’t understand what was wrong, so what chance was there for a trainee counsellor who couldn’t even see through his first major placement? Just as he was beginning to slide into a state of hopelessness, his phone rang and he answered it in relief.

Kris didn’t ask any questions about why he needed to stay; it was bound to be far too complex and personal for George to want to share, so he just said yes and reassured him that it was no problem at all. Shaunna wouldn’t mind either, he said, and they could sort out the sleeping arrangements when he got there. Kris would be home a little after six, a good hour before Josh finished on a Wednesday, so he would be able to avoid him completely. With that sorted, George gathered a few bits and pieces of laundry to make up a load and took them downstairs, tripped over the pile of carpets and sent the bundle of socks and underpants flying in all directions. He didn’t swear at this stage, and instead just scooped them up and took them through to the utility room, dropping them in front of the washing machine so he could remove his jacket. He wasn’t sure that a few stray cat hairs would be sufficient to set off Kris’s allergy, but it wasn’t worth the risk, so he shoved that in the machine, along with the rest of his clothes, added detergent and turned the dial, with no effect. A quick examination of the connections behind the machine revealed why: both hoses and the power cable were disconnected. Now he swore.

“Why, Joshua, why? Why the fuck can’t you just fucking sit down and talk about it, like normal fucking people do?” He reconnected the machine, pressed the ‘on’ switch and waited for the sound of water filling. All was well; back over the carpets and up the stairs, straight to the ottoman in Josh’s bedroom; only that and the bed had survived. Enough was enough.

Now he knew how the lock worked, he had the trunk busted open in seconds, and this time there was a new addition to the selection of trinkets inside: a large, blue photo album, with loose photos threatening to slip out of the sides. He carefully lifted it free and knelt back. The spine of the album was cracked and ready to break apart, and he shifted his position in order to both allay pins and needles (underlay is not a particularly soft surface for prolonged kneeling) and also so he could lie the fragile folder flat on the floor. This was it: the point of no return. Carefully, using both hands, he opened the front cover and began.

The first photo was a little strange, but didn’t surprise him, given the circumstances. Josh’s parents died when he was young, not that he’d shared this information with George, of course, but his grandma did the first time he went round for tea. She was Josh’s maternal grandmother, and her daughter had married a man twenty years her senior, then died from complications after surgery to remove an ovarian cyst. Josh was only a toddler at the time, and could only vaguely remember his mother; his father died a few years later, from a heart attack, so it was all very tragic but not particularly extraordinary. Thus, the 10x8 portrait photograph of two urns was a bit morbid, but George could fully appreciate why he had it.