How is it that time can be elastic? Sometimes years seem to go by while you’re looking the other way, and sometimes – when you most long for it to pass – lifetimes can stretch from a few hours.
I don’t hear anything from the homeless shelter, and in the end I don’t expect to. Slowly, I move into a new rhythm – no longer doing the things I used to, but waiting for something to put in their place. It’s as if someone took a sponge and wiped out the whole of the last six months. I’m dancing on an empty stage, whistling to no one. At home we’re three now, not four. Sam has become a ghost, but one I can live with. When I do remember him, it’s always the other Sam, the one from when we were small and waiting to become the people we are now. I prefer that Sam.
Mum and Dad seem better too. Sometimes I catch them hugging in a quiet corner, or hear their voices as a low hum at night. Other than that I don’t do much. It takes a while, I suppose, to forget old habits.
I can forget what happened altogether now, for the longest time. Forget the way I’m used to feeling. But then, in the middle of feeling happy, I just stop. In the middle of forgetting, I remember. Sometimes I try to put the old feelings back on like a coat, and just for a moment it fits; it even feels comfortable. Sometimes I walk down to the sea and try to remember all the time I spent there with Banks. I sit on the stones and try to imagine him next to me. I might even build a little pyramid and stay until I’ve knocked it down, but it’s not long before I feel cold and want to get up again.
I don’t see much of Joe, either. It seems like he’s disappeared. He haunts the school corridors like a ghost and never answers his phone, so I just tell myself he’s happy and try not to feel angry. I know how it is, now. When something is important to you, the rest of the world seems to fade away like tinny music in a shop, or the sound of other people breathing.
By late spring it’s warming up. The year is turning from a long damp spell into the blowy beginnings of something brighter. The streets are full of people in coats, with faces pinched like a lot of old balloons, but they’re glancing up and around more, to where the sky is showing cracks where the sun is showing through.
We hear from the police that Alec has been arrested a few miles down the coast. They’re going to charge him with the attack on Raven, and maybe other things too. I wonder about Sam and the bruises, but if Dad knows anything more, he’s not talking, and I don’t think I’ll ask. When they went to take him in, Alec went berserk. He tore into the police like a wild beast until they had to zap him with a taser and lash his arms behind his back. I run the picture through my mind, but instead of feeling glad, I only feel miserable. The policeman tells us he was alone, or at least no one came to his rescue.
I’ve almost forgotten about it by the time Raven turns sixteen in April. A gang of us are in town, on the way to celebrate. We’ve been shopping for presents and she now looks more like an extra from The Rocky Horror Picture Show than ever, which is mostly for the benefit of a lad called Jake, who wears a leather coat and black eyelashes. If he was the last person on earth I wouldn’t want him, but Raven likes him, and that’s all that matters.
‘It’s good to see you smiling,’ she says, and loops her arm in mine as we walk. The evening comes in softly as we push between groups of people with shopping bags, who tear themselves away from the glowing windows where the shutters are now coming down. Then, in the middle of a shopping concourse, one of the girls turns. ‘Hey Coo,’ she says. ‘You got an admirer!’
They stand pointing, pleased with the joke, but the object of their laughter is now in front of me, swaying on his feet. His hand comes out, shaking.
‘Banks,’ I say, and it is.
He’s wearing a suit jacket made of some hairy material, and his black coat hangs from his shoulders with its buttons gone. He sees me looking and makes an effort to tidy up, smoothing the jacket down with grimy fingers.
‘Where have you been?’ I ask him, but he just clears his throat and stares.
‘Here,’ he says. ‘Here and there.’
‘I looked for you,’ I say. ‘After. You know. I hurt my neck.’
‘I saved you,’ he says, and I stand mute for a moment, then nod.
‘Yes, you did. I know.’
Behind me, the girls get fed up and go on. Banks must see me looking because he steps forward. ‘Come for a walk,’ he says. ‘Find that stone.’
In my pocket, my hand closes like a reflex into a cold, empty fist; then I let go. ‘I can’t,’ I say.
His face is drawn, the stubble grown to a tatty beard, his eyes ringed with dirt. He’s looking at something behind me, over my shoulder, and when I look I see Raven on the corner of the street, signalling me to come. Banks laughs – a silly sound he doesn’t enjoy making. I raise a hand to Raven: Wait.
‘Do you want some money?’ I ask him. ‘It’s just… I have to be off…’
His eyes widen. He licks his lips. I hate myself.
‘I could go down there tomorrow,’ he says. ‘On the beach…?’
I’m fumbling in my purse now, looking for the money I meant for this evening, and because he won’t take it I have to go closer and stuff it in his pocket. He stands there with his hands in the air, turning to get away from me, so that coins hit the ground and roll in all directions.
‘Take it!’ I tell him. ‘Eat something.’
He’s already bending to pick up the money – this way and that – like a child chasing bubbles. It’s easy to walk away when he’s not looking.
We run full pelt after the others; Raven in her clump-heeled boots firing glances at me as we go, struggling to keep up. She moves ahead, and I let her go, leaning for a moment against the railings, holding the metal between my palms like a safety bar.
The promenade stretches right and left, and the sky upwards for ever in a black chilliness. A gull steers from the beach towards me, landing on the concrete a little way off, pecking at an abandoned box, hoping for a morsel of food. He’s almost completely white; only a few brown feathers are left, like the stains on old fruit. He looks at me slantwise, side-stepping on plastic-looking legs, his eye a lizard yellow.
‘Come on,’ Raven calls back, but I’m finding it difficult to breathe, and in the middle of my chest something large and painful and sad fights to be noticed.
‘C’mon!’ she repeats. ‘Let’s move…’
There’s a soft rain falling now, a lingering, soaking thing. I walk through it and away.