Thin Air (11 page)

‘Look,’ Jay said calmly, but the
woman would hear no more. She trundled aggressively towards Jay,
her eyes fierce. Her hands were bunched into fists.

‘I said fuck off and I mean fuck
off!’ An air of violence poured off her like steamy sweat.

‘OK,’ Jay said, raising her
hands. ‘I hear you. But just tell them I called, will you?’

‘Fuck off!’

Jay got back into her car and
moved off swiftly. Glancing into the rear view mirror, she saw the
protective neighbour standing on the pavement with her arms folded
across her chest and her chin stuck out defiantly. Before Jay could
speak to the family, she’d have to get past the guard dog.

Jay drove back into town and
went to a beach front cafe for a mug of tea. Here, in the humid
warmth, she reconsidered her tactics. Once she’d got her foot in
the Banner door, she anticipated no problem, but how could she do
that? Some reconnaissance was in order.

Jay returned to Shorefields and
drove around the estate. She found the local junior school and
parked up, then walked around for a while to get a feel for the
place. In a park area near the school, she sat on a bench, her
jacket collar up around her ears. It was not a warm day. Young
children yelled and ran about, playing on swings and slides. Young
women sat in huddles around the edge of the play area, all chatting
animatedly.

At lunch-time, Jay went to a pub
called The Albion and had a sandwich in the bar. When she asked the
bar-man if he knew the Banners, his response was guarded. ‘Yeah, I
do, and they’ve been through enough.’ He went immediately to serve
another customer. Jay couldn’t help feeling slightly amused by the
reactions she was provoking in Shorefields. Was it so obvious she
was a journalist, or did people think she was an obsessive fan?

She went to order another drink,
and tried again. ‘Look, I’m a friend of the Banner family. I really
have no sinister motive for coming here. Perhaps you could...’

‘If you’re that much of a
friend, why are you in here asking questions?’ snapped the
bar-man.

Jay drew in her breath.

‘What can I get you?’ said the
bar-man.

‘Another gin and tonic,’ Jay
said. He’d tell her nothing.

The pub closed at three o’clock.
Jay had sat there for several hours, being observed covertly by the
suspicious bar-man. She went out into the waning afternoon, looking
down towards the school. Mothers were gathering at the gates. Jay
moved a little closer. This was a long shot, but she had a hunch it
would pay off. After a few minutes, she saw the Banner’s statuesque
neighbour come strolling down the road. She was alone. Jay’s
shoulders slumped. She’d been convinced Julie Banner would have a
young child. Her instincts didn’t often let her down. However, this
did mean that the Banner house was unguarded. She could at least
try to gain entry again.

Jay hurried to her car, hoping
she wouldn’t be spotted by Julie’s neighbour. She drove the long
way round to Milton Close, so she didn’t have to pass the school,
and then took the precaution of parking a few doors down from the
Banner household. A young couple wearing Dex T-shirts were standing
on the pavement, and looked at Jay with interest as she approached.
Jay didn’t speak to them, although she was initially tempted to.
She wasn’t surprised that people still haunted the house of Dex’s
childhood. Some obsessions took a long time to wane. She heard the
two talking about her as she knocked on the door again. Perhaps
they even recognised her.

Jay could hear music inside the
house; it sounded like a radio station. Whoever lurked within could
not hide that someone was at home, but again they didn’t answer the
door. Jay sighed impatiently, uncomfortably aware of the curious
scrutiny of the fans behind her. She knocked again, repeatedly.
Nothing.

Jay took a deep breath, and
pushed her fingers against the letter box, which opened stiffly
with a squeal. ‘Julie!’ she called into the house. ‘Julie, if
you’re there, please answer the door. I have to speak to you.’ She
could see nothing but a narrow wedge of hall-way, although she had
a feeling someone stood just out of view, very close. A smell of
burning pizza wafted towards her. ‘Julie, I’m a friend of your
brother’s. I’m not here to make any trouble or bother you. I just
need to talk.’ Jay’s spine prickled. She was sure that at any
moment, another neighbour would intervene, or worse the Amazon from
next door would arrive. ‘Julie, he talked about you to me. Please
let me in.’

She could almost hear breathing
now, an oppressive sense of someone stooped just to the side of the
letter box. ‘Look, I know you’ve been hassled. You’ve had to deal
with fans and reporters and whatever else, but I’m almost family,
Julie.’ The fans were laughing now. Jay closed her eyes and leaned
her forehead against the door, speaking more softly. ‘Julie, I’ve
lived with Dex. I slept with him every night when he wasn’t on
tour. I’ve woken up with the smell of his sweat on my sheets.
Julie, I...’

The door opened a crack, secured
by a safety chain.

‘Please,’ said Jay.
‘Please.’

She heard the chain rattle and
then the door opened swiftly. The fans uttered excited sounds and
were already halfway up the short path. An arm shot out from the
hallway and dragged Jay into the house, before slamming the door
behind her.

Dazed, Jay leaned back against
the door. She felt drained, bleeding. A woman stood opposite her,
staring. She was a council-estate archetype; bleached hair lividly
dark at the roots; a tired, papery face old before its time; deep
lines between the badly-mascaraed eyes; a thin mouth rimmed by a
trace of lipstick, which had insinuated itself into the fine cracks
that laced her skin. She held one hand against her face, gripping a
damp-looking cigarette. Her nails were bitten to the quick,
panthered by the remains of silvery-blue varnish. This could not be
Cora: too young. Perhaps the mother was lurking somewhere deep
inside; a worn out woman in black, still mourning the loss of her
son. This must be Julie. A girl child hugged the woman’s knees,
while in the background, came the peevish cry of an infant.

Jay held out her hand. ‘I’m Jay
Samuels.’

The woman stared at Jay’s
extended hand, until it felt burned and she had to hide it against
her jacket. Jay fixed what she hoped was a pleasant smile on her
face. ‘Thanks for seeing me. I would have phoned but...’

‘We haven’t got a phone anymore.
What do you want?’

‘I want to speak to you about
Dex, about Chris. I used to... I was his girlfriend.’ The term
sounded alien on her tongue, but it was a language she felt this
other woman would understand. ‘Partner’ would sound too urbane
here.

The woman drew herself up
straight, folded her arms and wriggled her shoulders in a hostile
manner. ‘He’s gone.’

‘I know,’ Jay said again. ‘Are
you Julie?’

She nodded. ‘You lived with him,
you say?’

‘Yes, for seven years.’

‘That’s a bloody long time.’

‘It was too short,’ Jay said.
She paused. ‘I feel I should have come here before now.’

Julie shrugged. She pointed to
an open doorway. ‘Go on into the front room. I’ll make some
tea.’

Jay did as she was directed and
placed herself gingerly on the fragile sofa - which felt as if it
might tip up from her weight. The matte black TV and video were
large, and clearly quite new - probably rented. A satellite or
cable TV box was perched on the table beside the imposing set.
Other than that, the furniture seemed temporary and disposable;
veneered and flimsy. Beneath her feet the carpet was a hideous riot
of colour from two decades before, although it seemed scrupulously
clean. The house reminded Jay of all the bedsits she’d occupied in
her youth. Her upbringing had been comfortably middle-class, but
her student days and later band following had been based in rooms
like this. Dex had grown up here. Atoms of him must still pervade
its walls, its air. Jay’s legs tingled. She shuddered. Was there a
sense of him here?

Julie came in from kitchen,
carrying a Formica tray. Her young child was still attached to her
legs and stared at Jay with the open curiosity of a calf or a lamb.
The invisible baby was no longer whining. ‘Get off!’ Julie said to
her daughter, adding, ‘she’s been off school with a cold. Back
tomorrow, though. Kylie, get off!’ Julie laughed, shaking her leg,
and the girl slunk away to perch herself on an armchair. ‘She’s a
bit nervous of strangers,’ said Julie.

Jay smiled tolerantly. ‘I’m glad
I found you. All I had to go on was the address in an old phone
directory. Lucky the hotel still had it.’

Julie sat down on the carpet and
placed the tray on a coffee table. She did not look up from her
tea-pouring duties. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I lost the phone a couple of
years ago when Mum left. Couldn’t afford it.’

Jay nodded sympathetically. ‘You
must think it’s strange I’ve come here after so long.’

‘A lot of people came before,’
Julie said.

‘I would have done too, but Dex
didn’t talk to me about his family much.’

Julie expelled a dismissive
snort. ‘I’ll bet. ‘He just wanted to forget about this lot.’ Her
eyes swept around the room. ‘Bet your place is a bit different,
eh?’

‘Well...’ Jay didn’t know what
to say.

‘I hope so,’ Julie said
wistfully. ‘He deserved it.’

Jay fought a sudden compulsion
to invite Julie down to see the flat. It would be so easy to
suggest it, but she knew this was a move entirely inappropriate and
to be regretted at a later date. Julie might accept. ‘I’ve come
here because,’ Jay began, ‘well, because I’d like to know what
happened to Dex.’

Julie just stared at her,
nibbling a fingernail.

‘I know it must seem odd that
I’ve left it so long, but...’

‘He left you, didn’t he,’ Julie
interrupted. ‘Why should you come here? He left us too.’

‘It hit me very badly when he
disappeared,’ Jay said. ‘I didn’t think to get in touch with you.
I’d never met you. Perhaps I should have.’

Julie shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t have
made any difference. You’re part of his other life, the one he ran
to. He always wanted to run away. I doubt that changed.’ She handed
Jay a mug of dark tea. ‘There’s sugar on the tray.’

Jay shook her head. She felt
strangely emotional now.
Treat this as a job.
‘Can I
smoke?’

‘Yeah.’ Julie produced a glass
ash tray from the fireplace.

‘When did you last see Dex?’ She
noticed Julie’s face took on a furtive expression, perhaps the
precursor to a lie. Her eyes, however, did not leave Jay’s
face.

‘A long time ago.’

Jay offered her a cigarette,
which she accepted, making a sound half of appreciation, half of
amusement when she saw its designer label. ‘Posh fags,’ she
said.

Jay lit up. ‘When exactly?’

‘We was always close,’ Julie
said, taking a long, expert draw. ‘Our mum was never around much,
so I sort of looked after him. He was my baby doll. I was only two
when he was born. He was a quiet kid. I could dress him up.’

She had said all this before,
perhaps to a dozen or more journalists. ‘When did you last see
him?’

Julie sighed impatiently,
narrowed her eyes a little, the fingers of one hand pressed against
her face. ‘Were you really his girlfriend?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘You remind me of all those
reporters, that’s all. You don’t act like a girlfriend.’

‘I
am
a journalist,’ Jay
said, thinking honesty would work best. ‘But I’m not here on a job,
Julie. I really want to know about Dex.’

‘There was a documentary on
telly about him the other week,’ Julie said accusingly.

‘I know. In a way, that’s why
I’m here. It made me think. I don’t think he’s dead.’

Julie stared at her for a few
moments. ‘No, he’s not.’

Jay’s heart leapt. ‘Why do you
think that?’

‘Why do you?’

Jay grinned. ‘OK, it’s a
feeling, a hunch.’

Julie nodded. She got out the
photo albums.

As Jay pored reverently over the
pages of these artefacts, Julie willingly supplied gossip about the
family. Cora, their mother, had married their father, Ted, at
nineteen. She’d already been pregnant with Dex’s older brother,
Gary. There were pictures of the wedding that looked historical.
Cora didn’t look as if she was expecting. Her face, smiling widely
above a severe white dress, which clutched at her neck and pinched
her wrists, was that of a fighter, a woman who would claim she
always spoke her mind, no matter how much she offended people.
There was a certain harsh, brassy beauty to her. Her eyes were
slanted and accentuated by black wings of eye-liner. Her mouth was
firm, not smiling at all. She had been made for another life,
perhaps, but had ended up with children and a husband. There were
no pictures of Cora singing. In this record, her life began with
the imprisonment of marriage. The children began on page three.
Looking at the photos of the infant Gary held rigidly upon his
mother’s knee, her stiff hair framing a cruel smile, Jay could see
this was not a woman spilling over with motherly love. Her nails
were long and varnished against the baby’s tender arms.

Then came Julie, blurry pictures
of a gap-toothed girl with her hair gathered into lop-sided
bunches; at the seaside, with grandparents, regimented school
photos. Jay’s heart was tugged by the sight of the well-buttoned
cardigans, the little patent leather sandals. An innocent child
with all her life before her, a princess who could have been
whisked away to enchantment. It was the same for all children. How
sad photos were, how terrible.

Jay moved on to another album
and turned the pages. As time went on, Cora’s initial, brittle
beauty became harder. Her face lost its definition, although the
long nails and bright lipstick were still in evidence. Her hair was
an immovable construction of perm and lacquer. Ted, on the other
hand, always seemed out of focus, as if he’d never really existed.
He lurked on the perimeters of family groups, if he appeared at
all. Perhaps he had taken most of the pictures. Julie pointed out
uninteresting aunts, uncle and cousins. There were quite a few
weddings in the family, and at three of them Julie had been a
bridesmaid. ‘Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride,’ she said
with a laugh. Jay glanced at the child, who was still staring at
her, like some kind of eerie oracle. Perhaps she would say
something shattering at any moment.