Over the next few days I begin to feel better. Hey – it’s a New Year and it’s starting with no psychologist. There’s another week before school starts back and I’ll need to start making decisions. My bag is still hidden away in The Mansion so I can still leave if I want to, but for the first time in ages I begin to think about other things.
The house is quiet. Mum is finishing her shop clearout and I help for a bit, moving parts of other people’s lives: crystal, glass, dark furniture. It seems wrong somehow, that these objects are still here while their owners are gone. After a while, I tell Mum I’m meeting Joe and head off for the sea with a bag of bits left over from Christmas. If Banks isn’t there I’ll give them to the gulls.
It’s a still, cold day and if I was a kid, I’d run. All the way along the road, down the slope by the house, through all the shoppers and the noise, across the roads without looking and onto the promenade where the cold wind makes me cough. The air is sharp as a knife blade. I can feel it all the way down to my lungs like I’ve swallowed the sky, and the sea is tipping up white horses, stretched out to a distant haze.
Down on the shore, gulls ride low over the waves and dive to tussle over whatever the tide has thrown up: bits of crab, dead fish, an empty chip box. There’s hardly anyone about apart from a couple of dog walkers. It’s only as I get away from the busy part, towards the end of the railway, that I see something that makes me hurry. There is a figure standing up on the promenade with its arms wrapped round its body, unmoving. It’s the old woman, which means the swimming man is back – on this cold, cold day. I spot him as I come crashing down the beach and he, seeing me, stops in the middle of taking off a sock as if he fears I’m going to speak to him. I just nod and sit down a little way off, my back to the wind. There’s a small half pyramid of stones just ahead of me and I start lobbing pebbles at it. The chill is already spreading upwards from my contact with the ground. I can’t believe he’s really going in.
The old man peels his blue joggers downwards, revealing thin legs that remind me of turkey bones. To be honest, he doesn’t look at all enthusiastic. When he gets up he seems wobbly on his feet, and his skin flinches in the cold air. I really wonder why he does it if he hates it so much. He casts a quick glance at me as he sets off towards the water, as if trying to explain, or perhaps he’s hoping I’ll do something to stop him. All I can do is smile and raise my eyebrows and he keeps going. Just as he reaches the water, someone speaks behind me.
‘He came back, then.’
I twist round to look but my face becomes buried in my hood. Banks sits down next to me and nods at the carrier bag.
‘I hope that’s a sossie roll for me.’
I’m glad he’s getting the food instead of the gulls, and my heart starts to hammer and my fingers tangle in the top of the bag.
‘It’s better than that,’ I say. ‘It’s Christmas stuff – bit mashed together, but really nice.’
I’m babbling and Banks is hungry, so I shut up, unroll the top of the bag and give it to him. He sniffs and starts right in, looking down the beach to where our old man still stands before the sea, uncertain. I’m warmer now with Banks blocking out the cold.
‘How’s things?’ I say. ‘How’s your old man?’
Banks laughs then covers his mouth, choking on pastry crumbs.
‘You don’ have to be polite,’ he says. ‘I know what you think of him.’
I go red and Banks looks at me sideways. ‘It’s okay. God knows what any of us look like. It’s not often we get to a beauty parlour.’
‘You like them,’ I say. ‘They’re your…’
‘Mates,’ Banks finishes. ‘Yeah, they are. When you go home, they don’t. That old man saved my life – showed me how to survive.’
‘What about that nutcase?’ I say. ‘What about him?’
Banks pauses and looks around, but the beach is empty. ‘He might be nuts,’ he says, ‘but he’s got a name. Alec should be somewhere he can be looked after, but no one bothers.’
‘They’ll have to when he kills someone,’ I say, then wish I hadn’t.
Banks looks at me and shrugs. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Yeah, I guess they will.’ He goes quiet and I sneak a look sideways.
‘He hits you, doesn’t he?’ I say in a sudden flash of understanding. ‘All those bruises, they’re not all from you being drunk – some are from Alec. I’m right, aren’t I?’
Banks looks up and down, picks up the last pastry and stuffs it in his mouth. Then he rolls a ciggie. ‘It’s not all simple like you think,’ he says. ‘What else can I do? It’s lonely enough how I live. You don’t wanna be on your own. The old man and Alec… they’re all I have. We look after each other. I owe them. That’s how it is.’
‘I’m your friend,’ I say, and he smiles.
‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘you are. But you’re not there when I’m falling down, are you?’
‘I could be,’ I tell him. ‘I’d like to be.’
‘I used to have lots of decent friends,’ he says. ‘I went to dinner parties in my best suit; talked about politics and all that stuff. I tell you how smart I am? Well, now I’m not smart, so I have Alec, and if he sometimes bashes my face, well… he’s not right in the head, I told you.’
My heart begins to beat faster. I want to ask him about Alec and Sam. I think of the bruises on Banks’ face, and the bruises on my brother’s face that were mentioned on the autopsy report, but I can’t. I have a horrible feeling that if I did, something would change. Something terrible would happen that I’m not ready for.
So much talking has tired Banks out. He slumps forward with his arms resting on his knees. It’s so quiet I can hear the wind make its singing sound as it passes my ears, and even a gull – so distant that it’s no more than a white dot falling in the clouds. Then I hear a woman shrieking. Our old woman…
‘Jesus!’ says Banks, and suddenly he’s got up and the cold slams into me.
The carrier bag is whipped away down the beach, and as I go to grab it, I see the old woman barging down towards us.
Banks is shouting too now, and as I turn round I see to my surprise that his coat is lying on the stones with his shoes, and he’s pulling his jumper off and wading into the sea.
Out in the grey, the old man’s head bobs into view, and a long white arm comes up and goes down again. The old woman and I stand together on the edge of the land. She, normally so solid and silent, whines like a child: ‘Harold! Harold! OhGodHarold!’ with her headscarf flapping and her plastic shoes covered in water. My mouth is hanging open, so I shut it, take a step into the water and then back again. There’s nothing I can do.
Out on the sea, Banks swims with hefty splashes towards the small white head. We can barely see either of them in the bouncing grey waves. For a long moment there’s nothing but the sea, and every flash of white turns out to be foam on the top of the water. Then at last it’s a hand, and the old woman moans ‘Oh! Ohhh!’ and we see Banks’ dark head and the old man’s together, splashing like a pair of hooked fish. I realise I’m sucking my fingers like a baby, and then we lose sight of them again and I turn and start running. The stones give way like sand and I have to fight my way up to the concrete where I take out my phone and flip it up. There are other people now, pointing and shouting. I call the first person I can think of.
‘Dad? Call an ambulance. There’s a man drowning…’
When I look up I see Alec and the old tramp man. The old one cranes his neck seaward, concerned, while the mad one makes little rushes at the staring people, growling like a dog.
When I get back down to the water, our old man is laid out like a corpse. His wife rubs at his face with a towel, crying over him like a little girl. There’s snot on her cheek and her hands are huge and the colour of cut meat. Banks is on his hands and knees, jumperless and coughing up water and most of the pastries he’d enjoyed so much. I’m more worried about him than the old man. I put his coat round his shoulders and he sits down with his legs out in front, breathing hard and shuddering.
The next thing I know, Dad’s there along with an ambulance crew. They wrap the old man up in something like Bacofoil till he looks even more like a plucked turkey. One of the ambulance men asks Banks if he’s okay, and Banks just nods and says to look after the old man. But he looks awful. Not okay at all. I tell Dad how he’ll have to go back to the The Mansion soaked as he is, with nowhere to wash or warm up and dry his clothes. Dad hums and haws, and it’s not until Banks gets up and starts off towards the promenade that he does the amazing thing.
He steps up in front of Banks and I can see they’re talking. Banks drops his head and shakes it, but Dad won’t have it. He steers Banks over to his car, which is parked half on the pavement, half off. He opens a door and Banks gets in.