We make our way toward Streatham Common in silence, like the strangers we’ve become, or maybe always were. Denz doesn’t look all that different from the version I’ve tried to bury in my head. He’s not as big as he once was, and there is a heaviness around his eyes, his mouth, that wasn’t there fifteen years ago. But he still has that same feel, the same foreboding air.
He stops at a bench, tries to make small talk while he rolls a spliff; a comment on the weather, another about a fat Labrador chasing something up a tree. I sit as far away from him as I can, stare straight ahead until he turns to look at me.
You’re not an easy girl to track down, you know.
I wasn’t hiding, I say.
He pulls a lighter from his pocket, sparks up. It’s taken time, man. These days you can find near enough anyone just by typin their name into a computer.
Wouldn’t even know how to turn one of them on.
Denz smiles as though I’ve made a joke but I keep my face blank. You angry? he says. That I’m here?
I count to ten silently in my head, wait for the feelings to go, but they are still there and so I go again, all the way to twenty, thirty, forty this time and then…No, I say. I don’t care.
There is a long pause and even though I don’t look at him, I know that he is watching me. I heard you’d left, he says eventually. Disappeared, that’s what they told me. It didn’t surprise me much. We’re all good at disappearin, aren’t we? You and me. Chrissy.
My eyes smart at the sound of my mam’s name and I cough, shove my hands deep in my pockets.
I haven’t been back there in years.
He doesn’t need to explain that he is talking about the little town I once called home, all pretty on the outside until you break it open and see the rot and the darkness underneath.
Lived all over since I left Leeds, he carries on. Few years in Manchester, few in Spain.
I yearn to ask him about Danny but pride or fear bite my tongue and I stay quiet, press the toes of my trainers into the dirt.
Ended up down here for work, stayin with me cousin. You’ll remember him. Lewis.
I shrug like I don’t, but I do. Of course I do.
Yeah. Well. He’s been here a while. Got family in London from his dad’s side. Sorted me out with a job. Security.
Something in his voice makes me look at him then, and I see the regret pulling at the corners of his mouth. You don’t like it? The job?
Denz blinks, rubs his chin with his palm. Been doin it years, it’s all I know, he says. Always told meself it were just temporary, that I’d get back to studyin at some point. I were gonna be an engineer, once upon a time. He shifts in his seat as if to reset his thoughts. But it’s good money, a decent gig. That’s what it comes down to. Pays the bills.
He offers me the spliff but I shake my head. The smell, that smell. I close my eyes, breathe in his smoke.
First time I saw you were here, he is saying. I were out, walkin, can’t even remember where I were goin. I like it, me—just goin for a mooch on a night. Space to think, innit? And I saw you, from right across the other side of the grass, runnin. I had to look twice, to be sure, and even then. You’re fast, man. Proper fast. It were like you were bein chased.
He pauses, takes a few slow draws.
You’d disappeared before I got anywhere near close enough for a proper look. I shouted after you, though, and I thought I saw you slow down, but it were only for a second and then you were gone.
A memory comes to me. A sound, a voice, catching in the wind. A name that doesn’t belong to me anymore.
I came back every day for near enough a week before I saw you again. That’s when I followed you back to t’caff. You’ve hardly changed. Looks-wise at least. But your eyes. Your spirit, man—
I cut him off. What do you want with me, Denz? Why were you looking for me?
He takes one last pull of the spliff before flicking the roach into the grass.
It weren’t you I were lookin for. Not exactly.
What?
I were…He pauses, rubbing at the joints of his jaw with his knuckles as if to relax the muscles. I were hopin you could tell me where Danny is, he says at last.
It takes me a moment to speak again, but when I do, my voice sounds strange. I don’t understand, I say.
Denz turns his face toward me, looks at me for a long time. I ain’t seen Danny in nearly two years. And I had this idea in me head, see. That mebbe he’d come lookin for you.
Well, he didn’t, did he?
You tell me.
I get to my feet, not wanting to be here anymore. I’ve worked so hard not to let my mind go there, to travel back to a time of Danny and Denz and Chrissy and all the other ghosts of before. They don’t exist, they never did. And yet here they all are, their names, their faces floating around in front of me, as though Denz has picked up the past and poured it out into the air.
I have to go, I mumble, but Denz puts out a hand to stop me and, when I look at him, I see the pleading in his eyes.
You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, Neef? If he’d been in touch?
A beat passes before I take a step back, another, another. And then I turn, walk, run as fast as I can away from him. Cold air cuts at my cheeks as I cross the common, past the hairdresser’s, the chemist, the supermarket on the corner. Past the kids in their gaggles, dawdling home from school, their ties hanging loose round their necks. I run toward the crowds, dodging and weaving and searching face after face after face. I run until it feels like my legs will give way, until the tiredness knocks me dead, takes me back to the caff, forces me down on my bed.
Danny is missing. Danny is lost.