Len came through with the drugs on Monday night, but he didn’t bring the quantity of crack Shelley had requested. Apparently, it was a strategic move on his behalf taken to avoid her becoming psychotic. His strategising had worked. It also enabled her to leave the flat and visit William’s grave the following day.
The usual cemetery coldness that was always there to greet her wasn’t present. Tuesday brought a beautiful afternoon with a clear sky, and a bright sun that shone down on Shelley as she walked around her car in the car park, checking and checking and checking again that her car was locked.
Shelley pointed at her head. “I’m mad,” she shouted, staring back at the woman who was staring at her. “It’s called O-C-D.”
When the woman finally walked away, Shelley resumed her checking. After a few minutes, she turned to leave the car park.
Walking through to the graveyard, she noticed a sign she hadn’t seen before. She went closer and read the words: Lock all your windows and doors whilst visiting your grave. She smiled. Even she didn’t think her vigilant checking would be necessary in the afterlife, nor was she likely to have a car.
As she wandered through the sea of headstones, her body felt uncomfortably warm. Even though there was no one around, she kept on the long-sleeved, burgundy sweatshirt that she wore unzipped over a T-shirt. It would have been disrespectful to bare her war wounds in front of Will. And in the face of the other souls who no longer had life, it wouldn’t have been right to flaunt that she flirted with death.
On reaching William’s grave, she sat down next to him on the ground and laid the pink carnations by his headstone. She looked around to ensure there was no one present before speaking to him.
“I’m so sorry for what I’ve put you through,” she whispered. “I know you probably understand, but I’m still sorry you might’ve seen it...” Shelley heard footsteps behind her. She swung her head around brusquely.
“I want to talk to you,” said a man with a northern accent, walking towards her. Shelley raised her hand above her eyebrows and held it there for shade as she watched the man approach. A barren scalp shone in the sun. The long strands of dark hair swept across had failed to disguise its baldness. He was in a suit; perhaps he was there for a funeral.
“Do I know you?” she asked as she pushed herself off the ground and got to her feet.
“You can’t keep ignoring me, doll.” He stood next to her, leant towards her and stroked her cheek with his hand.
Shelly flinched. Her brain sent the message to her body to run, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. She was rooted in the soil, her feet frozen still. Her legs were shaking so uncontrollably she felt as though they were about to surrender to gravity.
“I really am sorry,” he said.
“I’ve got a knife and I’ll fucking use it,” she yelled in the man’s face. Was he the creep who usually wore a shell suit? Fear sent adrenalin pumping through her body and provided the catalyst to dislodge her entrenched feet.
As she sprinted on unsteady legs, in the direction of her car, she heard him panting behind her. She tried to pick up her pace, but she couldn’t run any faster.
“Fuck off,” she screamed in the hope that someone would hear. But it wasn’t likely. The graveyard was nearly always empty. Today was exceptional but unfortunately, the woman who’d been staring at her earlier had been on her way out, not in.
“Stop, Shelley. It’s all right. I’m not gonna hurt you,” the man called out.
She didn’t reply nor did she turn around. How did he know her name? Was he the Resident Cemetery Lurker? Was he stalking her and not the cemetery? Although her legs felt even more unstable, she continued to run.
“I’m on the wagon. I’m sober.”
Shelley kept running along the narrow path that weaved through the headstones, but she stopped dead when she heard him say, “Don’t you think you at least owe it to Will to hear me out?”
After he’d caught up with her, she stared at him, studying his face. He was the man she’d seen before, she was sure of it. And now that she looked at him closely, she could tell that he was William’s father. His face didn’t have the same look as William’s – kind and open – but the resemblance was there.
His face was chiselled like William’s, but it was hidden underneath skin that hung as loose as a housewife pillowcase stuffed with a bolster cushion. High cheekbones were concealed by eye-bags merging into sagging cheeks. What would have been a strong jawline was obscured by a number of dangly jowls, as well as a succession of chins in residence beneath the main one. The one that was there first. The one in which Shelley spotted the central dimple. William’s central dimple.
***
In the Bald Faced Stag on East Finchley High Road, Shelley sat waiting at a window table while William’s father, Jim, stood at the bar. The windows didn’t let much light through and although outside it was a glorious day, inside the run-down pub it was gloomy.
As Jim carried their drinks over from the bar, Shelley watched him closely. His swagger created a slight twist in his shoulders every time he took a step closer to the window table where Shelley was sitting. The way that he walked reminded her of Will; he’d had that same gait.
The square table wobbled as Jim set down her pint of snakebite and blackcurrant. When he slumped into the high-backed, wooden chair opposite, he reminded her of Will again. The way he sat with his shoulders rounded, and the way that every now and again he jutted out his chin and bottom lip – a nervous habit or twitch, Shelley had thought, but now she knew it was hereditary, though perhaps a hereditary habit or twitch nonetheless.
“How’s your mother keeping?” Jim asked.
“She manages.” Shelley looked at his hands – the shape of his fingers, and his fingernails, were identical to Will’s.
Jim supped his pint of Guinness. Maybe that’s what turned him into a thin, fat man – fatness in his stomach and face. He had the red nose and cheeks of an alcoholic.
“Am I imagining it, or did you tell me five minutes ago you were sober?”
“I am, doll, have been for years now,” he replied.
“I don’t think so.” Shelley gestured to the pint glass cradled in his hands. “There’s only one kind of sober and you’re not it if you’re drinking that.”
“No, I still am. The Guinness doesn’t count.” He raised the glass to his mouth. “It’s for keeping in good health. You know, medicinal purposes and that malarkey.” He smiled at her, perhaps apologetically or in embarrassment, but his eyes didn’t smile. William’s eyes had always smiled. William’s eyes, so light a blue they were nearly transparent, were expressive. She knew where she stood with those eyes. Although the eyes of this man were an exact colour match, they were shifty, and the baggage they carried was obvious. The hoods were as heavy as the bags underneath.
Shelley took the packet of Benson and Hedges from her handbag and lit a cigarette. What she really wanted though was a fix. If only she could get to her car, but she couldn’t, not yet. She owed it to Will to have a conversation with the pathetically coiffured man across the table. Will never had the chance to have his questions answered by his father and Shelley was sure he was watching them now. Although she resented the man whose company she would have to endure, this was something that she could do for her brother.
“Why didn’t you come back and see him?” she asked.
“Times were hard for me in those days.” In one quick movement, his bottom lip and chin protruded. “It was complicated. There was a lot going on.”
“He needed you. He really needed you.” Shelley took a pull on her cigarette. “Do you even know what happened to us?”
Jim responded with a nod then began shaking his head vehemently. “That was a terrible thing... an absolutely God-awful thing. No kids should have to go through what...” He took a gulp from his glass. “I really am truly sorry for you, doll.”
“You should’ve come back. He might still be alive if you had.”
“Whoa, hold your horses right there. You can’t lay that at my door. That was your mother’s job. She should’ve protected him properly. And you. Both of you. She was the one with responsibility for your safety.”
The heat of Shelley’s rage imbued her face. “If we didn’t have useless, fucking fathers that cunt wouldn’t have picked my mother.”
“Shelley-Margaret, I might not have been around in William’s life but you cannot pin what that nonce did on to me. And I will not have you use that language in my presence.”
To calm herself, and hold down the urge to slap Resident Comb-Over, Shelley took several long draws on her cigarette. She lifted her black patent handbag onto her lap, took out her mobile phone and checked the time. How much longer could she bear his brazenness?
She turned her head away from the familiar stranger and instead stared at the pool table. The pool table on which she’d played her final game with William, and where now, under the light of the green, low-hanging lamp, a game was being played by two men dressed in white overalls.
“He wanted to know why you never came back.” Shelley returned her gaze to Jim. “Why you never called, sent a card on his birthday, at Christmas. You broke his heart. Do you know that? Have you got any idea how much pain you caused my brother?”
Jim stared into his pint glass. Did he think the answer was in there?
After a short silence, he spoke. “It was a difficult time, made harder by your mother. You’ve got to remember it was her that took him away. She should’ve told me where she moved to. I didn’t know where to find him.”
“You could’ve found him easily.” Her upper lip curled in contempt. “Mum had the same friends, she was in touch with the old neighbours – they’d have given you our address. There’s pictures of you taken in Aunt Elsie’s house, the same bloody house she still lives in. There’s no point lying to me. You abandoned your son. You could have found him anytime you wanted but you didn’t.”
“You kids have no idea what it was like back then. Thatcher was closing all the pits and—”
“For twenty-one years solid? I don’t think so. And when were you ever a miner?”
“My whole life, doll, apart from when I lived in the South. Look, I know you’re hurt, but—”
“Hurt?” Shelley stared at him incredulously. “I’ve been fucking destroyed. Will was destroyed, and where the fuck were you? Mining somewhere. Fucking mining. Well that explains everything. Now it all makes sense.”
“I’ve come back to make it up. I’m here now because I want to put it right.” A chin and lower lip jut interrupted Jim’s words. He smiled at her, unauthentically. It caused Shelley no surprise that as the sister of this man’s departed son that was the smile she was given; it was more of a smile than her brother had received in two decades.
“You wanna make it up? How’s that gonna work?” Shelley threw her handbag strap over her shoulder and got to her feet. She walked around the table to Jim’s chair. She lowered herself with her face up close to his. “You’re too fucking late. He’s dead. Your son is dead.”
She stormed towards the exit. As she reached the step that led to the door, she felt a hand on her back and turned around. “There’s nothing to say,” she told Jim.
“If you think of something...” From a pocket in his suit jacket, he pulled out a scrap of paper and pressed it into Shelley’s palm.
She pushed the silver bar, opening both the wide double doors and for a moment, the glorious day, the sunshine, the brightness of the sky, came pouring into the pub and washed away the bleakness, killing the darkness with light.
“You can call me any time.” He rested his hands on her shoulders. “I want to put things right if you’ll let me. I’m not too late, doll, not for you.”