It was approaching 11.30 on a sunny Saturday morning and Alex had just woken up from a dreadful night of rolling, pitching and only fitfully sleeping. He caught sight of his reflection in the room’s small mirror and stared at it. He looked so much thinner and less healthy than when he’d first left home a few years ago. He hadn’t washed for days. His eyes were lined with dark shadows. He looked like a boy, with his face that still refused to grow a beard, and his sad, confused eyes. A boy who’d somehow wandered away from home and ended up where he was never meant to be.
Suddenly his phone started ringing. Alex jumped up. Disaster!
He ran wildly around the room. His father was calling him on Skype, and if Alex answered the call with his room in the state it was in, he might give the old man a heart attack. He flung dirty clothes, discarded packaging, and empty bottles into one corner of the room. He then threw himself onto the bed and, after quickly trying to flatten down his hair, he answered the call.
His father appeared on the screen, surrounded by blindingly bright sunshine and luscious greenery. Was that really what the weather was like in Warwickshire today?
‘Hi, Dad,’ Alex began and his voice sounded rusty. This was the first time he’d used it in over twenty-four hours.
‘Hi, Alex, how are you doing? I thought you’d finally be up by now,’ said his father. The picture blurred, obscuring his dad’s face.
‘How are you? How’s the leg and everything?’ said Alex, already wondering what else he was going to talk about for the next ten or fifteen minutes and how he could make this conversation go away.
‘Well… some way to go on that front,’ his dad replied. ‘I’m hobbling about on crutches, enjoying life in the summerhouse and the Californian writer, the houseguest, seems to be settling in quite well. I’ve hardly seen her at all. I think she’s been sleeping off her jetlag. I know your mum’s arrived at the place in LA, but that’s all I’ve heard so far. She probably has jetlag too.’
Alex was aware that he also had a jetlag of sorts. The world around him was operating on a different time zone to his.
‘How’s work going?’ his dad asked.
‘Er, great,’ said Alex. Think of something to talk about, quickly… anything. He cast his mind about for some sort of corporate term, anything that he could mention.
‘We’ve been creating mission statements this week…’ he offered, ‘all about the big ideas, the operational goals.’
‘Oh, that sounds good,’ said his dad.
Yes… like everything in corp world, it sounded pretty impressive, but in fact it was absolute horse shit that would involve mind-numbing hours in meeting rooms, writing words on flipcharts that had no actual basis in reality.
‘And how’s the social life?’ his dad asked next. ‘Were you out last night?’
‘Yeah… a few drinks with people from work. Nothing too exciting.’
‘And still all quiet on the romantic front?’ his dad asked with a smile.
‘All quiet,’ Alex repeated.
His dad shook his head to signal his disbelief. Alex had heard the ‘you’re such a handsome guy with so much going on up top, I don’t get it’ chat many times and hoped it wasn’t coming again.
‘Dating in the age of anxiety,’ his dad said finally, ‘it can’t be easy.’
After further stilted conversation, when they plucked at conversational straws like the price of beer in London, what Camden was like in his dad’s day, and live music not being what it once was, Alex made an excuse about needing to get out to buy food and they both said goodbye.
Once the call was over, Alex slumped down on the bed, until he was enveloped in the soft, musty pillows that badly needed to be cleaned. Everything was strange between him and his father. He wondered when it had become like that. When did it turn from ‘Daddy, my hero’ into Dad, the stranger I can’t reveal one single truth to? It must have developed over years from one tiny misunderstanding and disappointment into another, repeated over and over again, until they didn’t know how to begin to understand what was going on with one another.
Alex had literally no idea how to begin a conversation with his father about what was happening in his life, or more realistically, in his head. Because that was where he lived his life now, in his head, inside this tiny room. No, there was no help to be had from his dad. His dad enjoyed life. His dad was straightforward and un-tortured, and his dad just really didn’t understand why everything was so difficult and stressful and sad for Alex. His dad remembered being young in London as one non-stop party and only wished that Alex was having as good a time as he did.
‘You’re only young once,’ his dad would tell him with a wink, ‘make the most of it!’
Alex couldn’t remember when he’d last had a really good conversation with his dad… but to be honest, he didn’t think now that there was any help to be had from anyone. He felt so alone, so lost and confused. His head ached with the pain and also with the embarrassment of his condition.
No help. No possibility of help from anywhere. What was he going to do?
He went out briefly for food and drink, then all afternoon he lay on his bed, the light coming in through the ugly brown blind became bright and hot, and then gradually faded, before turning red, and then a dark orange as the streetlights came on again.
As night fell, the noise of people talking, shouting and arguing in the street below came up to him. The giant crane loomed over the room, casting unnatural, triangular shadows on the walls, making Alex feel once again like he was trapped in a cage.
The hours of darkness were the worst, when he fretted himself into a state where it was impossible to sleep. His phone, with its stupid but cheerful little distractions from his misery, was the life raft that he clung to through those hours, until finally the sky began to light up with dawn and then, when everyone else was waking up, that was when he found he could sleep.
Hours later, he finally got up. According to the clock on the wall, it was four minutes after three in the afternoon and, according to his phone, an email had landed that had finally offered him a plan. First of all, he took his sturdy backpack out from under his bed, then he went round the room and packed into it an assortment of the things he considered important.
Then he sat down at the desk, took up the beautiful fountain pen he’d been given for his twenty-first birthday and wrote a few, short lines to his sister.
Dear Natalie,
I’m so sorry but I’m going to go away for a while. I don’t want you to worry about me. I’ll be totally fine and when I come back, I know I’ll be in a much better state.
Please tell Mum and Dad that I really do love them and I know how hard they’ve tried for me. But I just have to sort myself out.
I’ll give you my contact details as soon as I can.
I love you all very much.
Alexander
Then he realised a note was ridiculous. He couldn’t leave it here, because his family didn’t know where he lived. He couldn’t send it because he’d have to find an envelope and stamps… plus Natalie was in Spain and he didn’t even know her address. Instead, he’d have to email her with this note, which just wasn’t the same. So instead, he folded it up and tucked it into his pocket.
Then Alex shouldered his backpack, checked the room over and left, locking the door behind him. He’d been accepted to do voluntary work that came with accommodation on a farm in Devon. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to sign up for the work, but he’d decided to make the train journey to the remote, rural location to see if he liked it there.
One thing was certain – he had no intention of ever coming back here.