Three Steps Behind You (26 page)

Parties are so difficult though. I have not had one for over twenty years. Mum and Dad tried, when they were both still alive, when I was eleven. They put in a lot of effort. Even though Mum was already ill, she did hand-made invitations (a bit shaky), sent them round the class list I drew up for her, and I took them in to give them to my class mates. Everyone was so pleased to see them – they grinned and whispered to each other in delight
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The day of the party, Dad blew up balloons and tied them to chairs. Mum baked a cake. I made a ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ game. Then we sat there, in a line, facing the door. At 3.30, Mum said it was early yet. At 4 p.m., Dad said that people often take a relaxed view of timings, and they were probably still wrapping up my presents. At 5 p.m., Dad leant across from his chair and ruffled my hair. ‘We love you, son,’ he said, as if that was ever in question. Then at 5.30, he had to leave the chair to hug Mum who was crying. Dad didn’t cry. Or rather, the moistness in his eyes didn’t escape. It only started escaping after Mum died. Then it never stopped escaping, until he did. Later on, after there would definitely be no party, I found the cake in the bin. Wasted, when it was still fresh. Tucking me into bed that night, Mum told me as she did every night, after a story about the disciples, that it was important to remember that God loved me, and that God is love. The fact she protested so much should have been my first clue that belief in that particular deity was misguided
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If I had a book launch, I worry it would go the way of that party. Me sitting on a chair facing the door, waiting. Like Feltham all over again. And this time, unlike the last party, Mum and Dad wouldn’t be there either. Just me and piles and piles of books and a cake
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But, no, this is stupid. I’m forgetting the main thing. Actually, no – TWO main things. First, my books when they are published, when they find their proper audience, will form a profound and moving account of a brilliant man (Adam), drawn by an honest and skilful narrator (me). They will change the world and my world will change to include Adam’s reverence. Second, the party wasn’t
really
a disaster. Not when you remember the reason behind it. Adam had organised his own party on the same day. He’d just somehow forgotten to invite me. It was to be a surprise party. He was really embarrassed about it, I know, because he couldn’t tell me himself. I heard from someone else, afterwards. They asked how my party was, then began laughing. When I said it was fine, they laughed even harder. Then Adam came along and they all shouted, ‘Adam, Adam, tell him about YOUR party.’ He smiled slightly and said, ‘Yeah, sorry, mate.’ Then they all went away, still laughing. All the way through English they were still laughing, the rest of them. They laughed as they handed me notes that said, ‘Loser.’ They laughed as I got sent out of class for disrupting my fellow pupils. So nobody ever told me about the surprise party bit. I worked that out for myself, as I stood outside in the corridor, alone
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5 March 2007

Too busy at work, what with Jimmy leaving, and DC Pearce always there. Pearce has left a video camera, I know it, to spy on us. I just can’t see it – he’s too clever for that. Or at least he thinks he’s clever. He thinks that the cigar smoke he surrounds himself with is like a fog of wisdom, giving him strength, that the spare tyre of doughnuts round his waist keeps him afloat, when really it just makes him piggly ignorant
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But outside work, there is living to be done. I went to mine and Adam’s local. Or rather, the pub I know he likes, in Hampstead – the Garden Gate. I had a feeling he would be there. He wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. I had a pint with him anyway
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7 March 2007

Tonight I went to the pub with physical Adam. You know, bar stools are great. Because you can sit so close up together, and your legs touch, but it’s okay, because you’re at the bar. Stayed at the bar ages and ages and Adam said such deep things. He told me that when you love someone, the world ends when they die. He said that when you love someone with your whole heart, there is nothing left of you to give. He said it’s like being in the grave with them, when they die. I’ve heard people say all those things before, like they’ve all learnt to say them, but with Adam you could tell they all came from the heart. Even more than it did with Dad
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I gave Adam my advice
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It’s possible that I shouldn’t have done. But, you know, what with the bar stools, and the shandy, I felt liberated
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So I told him this: love your friends as you have loved your wife. See them not as friends but as you life’s true companions. Hold them dear to your heart and soon that heart will mend, with them ingrained
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He said I should be a poet
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I needed him to know it wasn’t just lyrical fancy. So I did that thing with my little finger, where you crook it and get the other person to crook their little finger in your crook, like a friendly version of a lobster fight. I tried it once on him when we were kids, because my mother used to do it with me, but he wouldn’t then. And he wouldn’t now. At least not at first. I kept my finger crooked for him, all evening, though, in case he wanted it. Just when I thought he was rejecting it, was about to lower my finger, he raised his little finger and crooked it within mine. Very briefly, but long enough for me to understand
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‘We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we, mate?’ he said
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So much
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‘After, you know, the break-in, and after Helen, I need a mate like you. In my grief, over Helen, you know. We always need to protect each other, don’t we? Be there for each other?’

And I thought: This is it. This is where he says he wants me to protect him for always, and I should move in with him so we can be permanently together
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But he didn’t
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So I did
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And he laughed. Said he didn’t want us cramping each other’s style with the ladies, once he has got over his grief, if he ever feels that way again. And the conversation moved on, to work, to cars, to movies. And Adam spotted a table that had become free, so we surrendered our lovely bar stools and moved
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I’m beginning to wonder if he has read book two at all
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8 March 2007

The thing with Adam is that one minute you can be the centre of his universe, and the next you are not even in his solar system. He spins far, far away and doesn’t return your texts or calls
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Maybe he is coming to terms with having turned down my offer to loive with him
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Maybe he is rereading book two
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I need to confront him about that
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10 March 2007

Texted Adam to see if he wanted a drink. He didn’t reply so I went over to his house anyway. He wasn’t in. I considered letting myself in, to wait for him, but it’s too soon after my last visit. His brain might connect the dots. So instead, I just sat outside
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He didn’t come home all night
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I had to go straight into work from there this morning
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He still hadn’t replied to my text by this evening. And he still wasn’t home tonight
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I came home to sleep in my bed. Otherwise, when I do see him again, I will look abysmal. But I am worried. Where is my shepherd?

11 March 2007

Perhaps I should call the police?

Perhaps he is with the police?

Perhaps I should call the lawyer
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Apparently the lawyer is out of the office on business. That is not very helpful
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I tried calling Adam’s office too. Apparently he is on compassionate leave. They uncompassionately said that it was none of their concern if he was not at home – he wasn’t due back until the next day. He’d just buried his wife, they told me, like I was a stranger to him. Still, they are not to understand our closeness
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12 March 2007

Adam has resurfaced
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A taxi deposited him at his house, tonight, with another person. A she person. Probably a colleague, having a quick drink after working late. She went into the house too, then the taxi lurched away
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They did not see me
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I rang the doorbell
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They did not hear me
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I did not wait around. I just wanted to know that he was safe
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13 March 2007

But is he safe? Adam should be worried about gold diggers. He is a rich man, now. The house on Narcissus Road is worth a lot of money. When I first moved to London, I looked at the estate agents’ windows round there to see what I could afford to move into, with the money still left from my parents. There was nothing less than half a million pounds. So I came to the North Circular. Closer than I could be, still too far away. Particularly when he is ignoring me. I texted him again about book two. He still hasn’t replied
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14 March 2007

‘Do not abandon your flock, my Lord!’

I bet he never got a text like that before. Let’s see what he says
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15 March 2007

Five-star review! From Adam!

He has definitely read book two, because he said in his text: ‘Yeah, sorry never said – was really brilliant. You should definitely get it published. Five stars from me! See you later. A.’

So he rates it! He has read book two, and he rates it. True, no detailed analysis, but it doesn’t need that. The love and the passion and the longing and the need for togetherness – he has read it and he rates it. Which means he rates me, and he wants me. For all those years with Helen, and he’d read book two and he wants me. All this stuff about the grief after the funeral, and the ‘break-in’, that was just his guilt, his feeling of duty to Helen, and his distress that the first man to enter him was not me but an anonymous rapist. But I will tell him that it was, and then he will be so pleased, and I will be so pleased, and we will be pleased together, for always
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And the ‘see you later’ – that is definitely an invitation to come over. I will take champagne and caviar and little smoked salmon and lobster things from somewhere posh, like Tesco, and we will celebrate
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Hallelujah!

10 p.m.

Judas! Judas, Judas, Judas
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16 March 2007, 2 a.m.

You can’t do that to people, Lord Adam. You cannot! They do not deserve it; they don’t deserve the cruelty and the destroyed hope. They put faith in you and you desert them. They follow you, your bloody rod and staff, and they come like little sheep calling when you ask them to, when you say ‘See you later’. But then you turn round to them and you say – no, no, the gates are still shut to you, get out of my garden, I have another visitor and she – SHE – is the one I have chosen to be with me here this evening but you can come round another night, okay, and we’ll watch a film?

You just can’t say that to people. They don’t want films and wine, even if it’s made of your bloody holy sperm itself. They just want to believe, that when they believe, you will deliver
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I started this evening thinking that my life was our life and that now I had arrived into bliss but when I saw that kiss that you planted upon the lips of that HER of that SHE, then I knew that all was lies, that book two sat unread, that you know nothing nothing of me and with the third nothing of the cock crowing I will be without you always here forever alone
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17 March 2007

Nothing
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18 March 2007

Nothing
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19 March 2007

Nothing. But you won’t even give me nothing because my flesh is too weak for the blade to be strong on my wrist and instead I have everything. I have breathing and sight and smell and hearing and touch and all of these I would have used for you. But instead all I can see is red red red red of that beret, of that bloody pixie-whore, jezebel, witch Nicole
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20 March 2007

Work keep calling. They say if I don’t go in, or report sick, I will be fired
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I considered calling back to say I am in the fires of hell, as all without Adam is hell, but they would not understand
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So instead I told them I am sick
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Am I sick? Is this a sickness? The fever of without-Adamness, of being in the shadows with no sun upon me, no light of hope?

Am I in a wilderness now, blind and searching for some other love?

Is this a test of faith?

Have I let him down, my Adam? Or has he let me down? Are we together down and out and relegated to eternal nothingness?

21 March 2007

A double-date! A double-date! Adam asked me to go on a double-date with him and the pixie-cunt. Why does he pretend like this? Why does he not acknowledge our relationship? Why would there be a girl, or anyone, with whom I would sit and flirt in front of Adam? It’s just unthinkable. Who does he think it would be? Some online dating pick-up, some biological-clock-ticking desperado, cleavage low, hemline high, sucking suggestively on the straw of a too-pink cocktail? She would sit, pressing her voluptuous thigh against me under the table, laughing overloud at my non-jokes, leaning her elbow on the table and tilting her head in such a way as Adam and the pixie were excluded from sight. And I can just imagine, Adam in his cruel attempts to be kind, to make sure I am fixed up with the same pretend girlfriend that he has, winking at me over the table. Saying ‘Get a room’ when we are not even kissing. But I would not tolerate it. I would take the cocktail and I would smash the glass over her head and I would turn the chair and I would shove the straw up into her too-pink vagina. And I’d say to Adam: That’s what you like, is it? That’s what you claim you like? Go on then, be my guest, just drink away. And then I would leave, I would leave our treacherous, filthy double-date and I would refuse, I would refuse to see Adam ever again. I would just live in darkness in this room and even if he came to find me and he knocked on all the windows and all the doors and I wouldn’t let him in. However much I wanted to
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