Untouchable Things (42 page)

The door to his flat bangs suddenly, three times, and his heart hammers a response. Father Christmas come to claim him. He sticks his head under the duvet. He’s not here, why should he be here, it’s a Friday morning. The door bangs again, repeatedly. Then a female voice calling, nasal and no-nonsense.

“José. Open the door, for feck’s sake. I know you’re in there.”

He shrinks from the sound of her. The things she said to him.

“José. We need to talk. I have your feckin’ key, you know.”

Fine. Let her use it then. He turns his face to the wall like a sulking child.

She rattles around and finally gets the door open. “José?” It’s a one-bedroom flat and it doesn’t take her long. He feels her standing over him, hands on hips. “It’s ten o’clock, man. Are you ill?” He stays put, looks at the wall. A touch to his shoulder over the duvet. He shrugs it off.

“You need to get up, get some air into here.” He knows she’s taking it all in, the scattered clothes, unwashed cups. “Look, I need to tell you something. Why don’t I wet the tea while you put some clothes on? Come through when you’re ready.”

He doesn’t expect to move but her restlessness has permeated him. He puts on his dressing gown and finds her ransacking his kitchen. “I’ll do it.”

She turns and grins. “Knew that would get you up.” But her grin fades as she takes him in. He knows he looks rough, hasn’t shaved since Monday. He tells her to sit down while he makes the tea. He takes a tray to the coffee table and they both perch on the sofa like nervous guests.

“What’s wrong with you, then?” Always so direct, so insensitive. He shakes his head, looks out of the window. She can try a bit harder than that. She jumps up. “Got any sugar?”

“Sure, on the worktop.” It’s his cue to tease her about her latest, evidently abandoned, resolution, giving up sugar in hot drinks. But he doesn’t take it. She brings the sugar over and puts it on the coffee table, but stays on her feet, twisting her hands.

“I bumped into Jake yesterday. Literally.”

He looks up at her but says nothing.

“I don’t think it was an accident.” Her voice wavers a bit. He sees now that she doesn’t look too good either. Like she hasn’t slept. And he realises she’s not in work herself.

“He threatened me. The stupid bastard threatened me.”

He feels himself softening so he grabs something hard, the edge of the table. “What happened?”

There’s an appeal in her voice as she tells him. She needs him now, needs some reassurance. She’s frightened. Like he was on Monday when he needed her. The things she said to him.

She sits next to him. “I’m sorry.” He knows what it costs her to say sorry. The next second her face melts into a gush of tears. “Those terrible things – I don’t know why I said them. I just felt like I didn’t know you anymore. It was the last straw, to lose you. I couldn’t bear it.”

He wants to cry too, surrender to the wave pushing up from his chest, but it scares him. Instead he dams it with his lips and puts a hand on her knee. “I should have told you.”

She looks up at him with her child’s face. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I didn’t…” and he feels the wave now, rising to the surface as he shudders, “Because I hate myself for that bit of my life and I didn’t want you to hate me too.” The words spew out along with the sob, detritus washed ashore in a storm. He reaches out his arms and she’s there, clinging to him.

“I could never hate you, José. You’re my best friend. I love you.”

He loses it then, making noises he doesn’t recognise as his. “What am I going to do, Anna? What am I going to do?”

She holds him until the wave passes. Then she lifts his head and scrapes the tears away with her palms. “Listen. All you’ve received is this note. There’s nothing really in it, no specific threat. It’s just to scare you.”

He gazes at her, desperate for her words to be true.

“No prizes for guessing who sent it, of course.” She sees his face. “No. Seth would never do that. Remember how he helped you?”

He nods, runs a tongue over his lips, wanting to believe.

“It’s Jake. Look at the way he threatened me yesterday. He’s dug around a bit and found out. He’s rattled by you and Charles breaking in. He’s just warning you off, nothing more.”

José nods again. He can’t even think. Anna sounds so sure he agrees with her like he always does.

“You can’t let him take you apart like this. He’s playing with you. You have to hold it together and tough it out.” She sighs and he catches a look he isn’t meant to see. “God knows what else we can do.”

Scene 17

Michael notices his sweaty palms again with his Year Nines. What is this strange awkwardness that has infiltrated his teaching? It seeps through his clothes and into his conversations with colleagues. He struggles to make eye contact, fluffs his standard classroom jokes. The boys sense it too and give him pitying looks. He has a sense of being stranded on a precipice, leaning out and looking down, drawn to the glinting rocks below.

He feels dizzy and his eyes hurt. He rubs at his glasses with a hanky; maybe he needs a new prescription in his lenses. It’s 4.30 and he should be at home but he has to supervise detention. Scott Mullen bends his blonde head over the question paper, the only one in today. He’s usually a good boy but he’s started hanging out with the wrong crowd, trying to be popular. Michael looks at the thin shoulders and feels a tingle of pity. He sees himself there, fourteen and friendless. With any luck Mullen has more of a family life than he did.

He rises and paces the room, looking at the wall displays. A project on rural development in South America, cartoons from Year Seven depicting the founding of Rome. He treads the old parquet floor until he finds himself directly behind Scott Mullen. He can see the speckles of black fluff on the back of his shirt that need batting off, the wiggling of muscles as he writes. A thought rises up from his feet. He could find out once and for all what it meant. The thought enters his lungs, stops his breath. He may never have this opportunity again.

Like a mime artist Michael stretches out his right hand until it is splayed in front of him. He expects the boy to look round but for once the detention exercise is absorbing. He watches his hand, as though it belongs to someone else. What would happen if he placed it on the boy’s back, just beneath the shoulder blades, making a greasy handprint on the grey polyester?

Little by little he extends his right arm. He sees his fingers tremble like an alcoholic’s. Strands of sandy hair graze the edge of the boy’s collar, just beyond his reach. If the boy turns round now he will be caught with a face as frightened as Mr Fleming’s.

The boy shifts his weight and looks up, sees the teacher’s empty desk in front of him. As his head turns, Michael’s hand is safe in his pocket and he is looking at a wall display of geometric drawings. He meets the boy’s glance and nods at him to carry on with his work.

Scene 18

Jake pops another piece of gum in his mouth and looks at his watch. He likes to look at it as often as possible. He presses the tiny light switch with his huge finger pad: 1.30am. No sign of her. It’s getting pretty uncomfortable hanging out by this tree. About the only tree in sight of her flat. It’ll probably flourish with all the pisses he’s taken on it.

At last, the faint clip of heels from a side street. He sticks his head out but sees at once it’s not Rebecca: short legs, flared hips. Nice for a change, though. A few yards away she spots him and immediately crosses the road, starts to run. Her arse bustles fetchingly from side to side. Now and then she throws a worried face back at him. He shakes his head and smiles, leaning back on his tree, and pulls out the silver cigarette case. He lights up and is just about to take a drag when he hears more footsteps, uneven and stumbling. He stubs out the ciggie and peers out. This time it’s her. She looks drunk, vulnerable. Easy pickings. She takes a good minute to open her front door. He lights another cigarette and smokes it slowly. She’s getting more and more reckless and it’s not good. Luckily he’s decided to take matters into his own hands.

ACT 5
Part 1 - Scene 1

Rebecca blew a kiss to her flatmate when she saw the pot of fresh coffee on the worktop. It was a relief to have Shazia around again, especially now
No Exit
was finished. She’d forgotten what it was like to hear someone else’s voice first thing in the morning, someone who wasn’t Chris Tarrant. Shaz took a little of the emptiness away just by being there.

She sat down at the table with coffee and a bowl of Special K, batting the crumbs from last night’s pizza to one side. Her ripped-out reviews were still stacked unwisely next to the ketchup.
Extraordinary power. An Estelle whose cruelty comes from inner desolation.
Seems it was her best thing to date, even better than
Hamlet
. And at the Orange Tree again, in the round. What better demonstration of the catch phrase of the play:
L’enfer, c’est les autres
. Hell is other people.

Some days that’s exactly what she thinks. Other people leave you when you need them. They keep secrets from you. They follow you at night. Several times in the last few weeks she’s had the feeling of being watched. Could it be Seth? Paranoia? God knows she doesn’t trust her own mind anymore. She’s feeling paranoid about the group as well, wondering if she’s only being told half a story. But she needs them. Just like the characters in
No Exit
, they torture and depend on each other in equal measure.

She still thinks about him first thing every morning. His voicemail is still full. Nothing has changed.

But then there’s the pot of fresh coffee and Shaz coming in, grinning at her in Minnie Mouse pyjamas, and small things like that might just keep her sane.

Shaz nods at the cafetiere and smiles. “I hope you’ve left me a bit of that.”

“A bit is probably the word. I’ll make some more in a tick.”

“Okay, I’m off to see if the shower fancies heating up this morning.” Shaz bangs the radio on and leaves the room.

Rebecca reads the back of the cereal packet, looking at lithe women in red swimsuits cartwheeling across the words. Then she stops, mid-mouthful, and stares at the radio.

“Shaz, come here!”

A distant response from the bathroom. Rebecca swallows her cereal and shouts louder. Her flatmate appears, tying a peach satin dressing gown round her waist.

“What…”

“Shhh!” Rebecca waves at the radio. “I think Princess Di’s dead.”

“What?”

Scene 2

It was ridiculous what was happening. Anna found herself unable to catch her normal district line train to work because it was packed with foreigners clutching bouquets. The whole world was suddenly in mourning. People kept saying
Can you believe it?
and
Where were you?
She wanted to say
Having a shit, as it happens
but the hushed reverence of these conversations inhibited her normal bluntness.

It was a distraction of sorts, she could give it that, a break from the mundane reality of wondering where Seth was and trying to get on with life without him. No more questions from the police, no more visits from Jake; the trail seemed to have gone cold. Even the
Evening Standard
had toned down the coverage. And now it had this, of course.

It was Saturday morning,
The Day of the Funeral
. God knows what she would do all day. She should have arranged to get out of London, although all exits had probably been sealed. It was pointless to go into town, nothing else was being shown on TV and apparently music was banned on some radio stations. Luckily she had a week’s supply of chocolate and liquid refreshment that should last her until the evening. If she was under siege, she was damn well going to find the silver lining. And with that she broke open her first Kit Kat.

At ten thirty she gave in and flicked on the television. Rows and rows of people and a constipated royal correspondent whispering as the hearse approached. She boiled the kettle again. Could she ring anyone? No, that’s all they would talk about. She wished Seth were here. He probably would have hosted an alcoholic parody of the occasion. At the very least she and he would have sat and laughed and wondered at the stupidity of it all.

José had some friend over from Spain who’d hopped on a plane to catch some of the atmosphere or something. Unbelievable. She gurned at the telly. Was that Westminster Abbey, lurking modestly behind ten thousand people? The camera panned in on the coffin being borne aloft towards the doors, and a single white envelope on top of it.
Mummy
.

Delete. Her index finger jabbed around for a second until the image disappeared and she stood up, started putting newspapers away until the room looked like an Ikea brochure again. How much longer till this farce was over? She broke open a Yorkie bar at the table. Raisin and biscuit – not bad. Surely it was reasonable to open a bottle of Chardonnay now.

The pop of the cork was the best sound she’d heard all day, puncturing the swelling silence of her flat. Music – of course, that was what she needed. Something subversively upbeat.
Graceland
would do it: lots of smiling African faces instead of miserable white ones. She whirled her glass of wine round as a dance partner, singing her own approximation of Paul Simon’s kooky lyrics.

She was half a glass down by the second song, the one about losing love. So much for upbeat. She’d never liked this track much so she flicked it forward. And forward again. Come to think of it she just wanted a quiet drink without Paul Simon babbling on in her face.

She found herself in front of the television again. The service had started. Prince Charles looked like he had a holly bush shoved up his arse. The princes –
her boys
as everyone referred to them – sat in suits and brave faces too old for them.

The sob started as a gagging cough at the back of her throat. She was too surprised to stop it, too slow to switch off the television. Tears rained over her vision but the boys’ faces loomed in front of her and tore up chunks from her gullet. She bawled through the whole service, even to the revolting Elton John song.