22nd November 2019
Afternoon
Between deciding to go back to the village and actually beginning the journey, there was just less than twenty-four hours, but to me it felt like a week. I tidied my flat, removing Oliver’s pictures and putting them in a box in the bottom of the wardrobe. It was tough, definitive, but I needed to do it. After, the living room felt empty, sterile. And then it was time to leave, and a sick feeling rose in my stomach. There was nothing to suggest Jamie had actually come to harm, but I couldn’t shake the feeling something terrible had happened in the village, again.
I could have booked a train to go home, but instead decided to hire a car – the idea of not being able to leave the village when I wanted made me uncomfortable. As I left the flat to go collect it, I felt a growing trepidation build.
I had no idea how my return would go down. I hoped enough time had passed for me to slip in unnoticed, or if people did recognise me, they would realise I was a different person. I was no longer the scared, sad and abandoned 16-year-old girl; I hoped enough time had passed for them to understand why I left, a frightened child grieving for her best friend. But I wasn’t convinced people would see it like that. The village was small, the people clung on to the past, more so than in any other place I’d been to since leaving. Perhaps it was the miner’s mentality. I knew from the infrequent times I saw Dad, he still defined himself through the mine. People in the village didn’t forget things – they hadn’t moved on, I guess, because they didn’t have anything to move on to. They were born not into the village, but into the mouth of the mine. Then, after it closed, and Chloe went missing, the village was torn apart by grief, and frozen in that moment.
I often pondered what I would be like if I’d stayed, and if my old friends would still be my friends. Would I have stayed with Jamie and now be a scared or grieving wife? I stopped myself. It was pointless wondering about a life that hadn’t existed.
I took the Overground to Southall and walked half a mile to pick up the Vauxhall Corsa that would be mine for a week just before the car hire place closed for the evening. I paid the hefty deposit on my credit card and they handed over the keys. In my mind, I would stay only a few days at most.
As I drove out of West London towards the M40, I tried not to imagine those first few moments when I would step back into the village. Instead, I listened intently to what the DJ was saying on Radio 1, and the songs that she played. I soon realised I didn’t know any of them, and so put on my classics playlist and settled as Savage Garden’s Darren Hayes serenaded me with ‘Truly Madly Deeply’. It took me back to a memory of Chloe, of us the year before we sat our exams. She loved that song and would sing it at the top of her voice, often out of tune. Once, Baz caught her doing so, and she blushed to the scarlet of our school jumpers. Thinking about that made me smile. It had been a long time since I’d smiled about Chloe. After Savage Garden, Madonna came on, followed by Texas. And I felt myself slip into a comfortable nostalgia where I remained until I saw the headstocks of the mine, the sight of them rekindling the same fear as it had when I was young, and I couldn’t stop myself from shivering.
I hoped, as it had been so long, they would be smaller than I remembered. If anything, they were larger, more imposing. The dark towers loomed ahead, the headstocks’ wheels like eyes, guarding the dead that resided down the mine against ever leaving. It also watched the people living above ground, spying their mistakes, learning their secrets. From up there, the villagers must look like ants, scurrying around the aged, dying colony. I turned the music off, almost as if I didn’t want the mine to know I was coming. In my rear-view mirror, I saw a car approaching quickly behind me. I assumed they would see the road was clear, and then overtake, but they didn’t. I sped up a little, realising I was doing about forty-five in a sixty zone, but the car behind didn’t slow, it drew closer and closer until it was so close, I couldn’t see it in my side mirrors.
The road we were on was narrow, and I couldn’t find anywhere to pull over to let whoever was behind me pass. Focusing on the road ahead, of which I could only see a hundred yards at a time, I started to panic. My foot went down and the speedometer crept up until I was doing just shy of 80 mph. The car behind stayed on my tail, and I was sure it was going to shunt me. Then, white marks reappeared as the road widened and the car swerved round me and carried on recklessly, careering up ahead. I took my foot off the accelerator, and the car started to slow. I was swearing under my breath, sweating under my jumper. It was obviously just some kids, doing what all kids do when they feel invincible, but for a moment, I thought they were trying to get me. To hurt me. I felt stupid for even thinking it. Paranoid and stupid. Chloe disappeared a long time ago, and life had moved on. I shouldn’t assume people would still be angry with me for leaving. Why would they be? There are more pressing things at hand, like the reason I was coming back now. Jamie.
Despite this realisation, I still felt like I was going to be sick, so I pulled over and got out of the car. It was cold and the wind strong. To my right, the mine watched me curiously. I almost said something to it but stopped myself. Instead, I got back into the car and drove slowly into the village. Maybe subconsciously I thought if I moved quietly, I wouldn’t be noticed. I drove past the old social club, remembering how business took a nosedive just months after the mine closed. Now, its windows were boarded up and the sign outside was paint-stripped and weather-beaten. Thick weeds grew through cracks in the tarmac of the car park. It was the first thing you saw inside the village, I guess, it summed the place up well. It looked like no one had been around for decades. I hoped the same wouldn’t be said for The Miners’ Arms. I needed a drink before seeing Dad. Without slowing, I continued towards the centre. It was time to let someone know I was back.