Friday 8th December 2023
Alice
The lights are on inside the pub when Alice arrives, just as they were yesterday, but this time the door is unlocked. She finds Georgie in the bar area, gazing around like someone viewing a house in a property TV programme. She’s dressed in her usual country chic uniform – quilted Barbour jacket, skinny jeans, long caramel-coloured boots – and her hair is in a perfect plait. As Alice hangs back to watch, Georgie
narrows her eyes and stares across the room. There’s something intense about her expression, her lips moving very slightly. Perhaps she’s imagining the place back open, taking an Instagram picture in her mind.
Alice feels a twinge of guilt. Georgie really seems to care about making the pub a success. She approached Alice so eagerly about getting involved, just as the sale was going through; she had a whole speech prepared about her marketing background and the money she could put in. I know I only just moved here, but it’s the kind of project I could REALLY get passionate about. Alice couldn’t say no. Now she clears her throat and Georgie whirls around, colour flooding into her cheeks.
‘Oh, Alice!’ she says. ‘Didn’t hear you come in.’
‘You seemed in a bit of a trance, there.’
‘Yes …’ Georgie’s hands flutter. ‘I … was just thinking about the layout of the tables. Whether we could fit a few more in or whether it would be too cramped.’
The tables already look squashed. In the old days they were mismatched and higgledy-piggledy, but there were open spaces where people would stand and mingle, laugh and dance. The new IKEA tables are in tight rows, like an exam hall.
‘We should fit in as many as possible,’ Alice says.
Georgie looks at her for a steady moment. There is something else in her eyes, now, almost a glint of calculation. Does she suspect, in fact, that all Alice wants is to rip the soul of this pub right out?
Then she breaks into a politician-like smile. ‘Absolutely agree,’ she says. ‘The more customers we can seat, the better.’
There is another short silence. Alice isn’t here to talk about tables. ‘So … Leo …?’
Georgie’s smile drops. ‘Rumour has it he’s disappeared completely.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Ellen said a few people had noticed he hadn’t been seen. So she asked Jack to ask a guy he and Leo went to sixth form with – Tom, or Tim Something? – because apparently he stayed in touch with Leo, wrote to him in prison a couple of times … and he said Chrissy had called to ask if he’d heard from Leo. Said she was really worried because he hadn’t been there when she went to collect him.’
‘He just …’ Alice blinks away an image of the grey prison building ‘… wasn’t there?’
‘Apparently.’
‘But he was released?’
‘It seems so.’
Alice closes her eyes, her thoughts spinning. Leo’s Facebook picture blares in her mind: the frozen roar of his mouth around the mic.
‘Is he … missing missing?’ she asks, opening her eyes. ‘Are the police involved?’
Georgie pauses. ‘I’m not sure.’ She seems to scrutinise Alice’s face. ‘Is there something I should know?’
Alice shakes herself. ‘No. I’m just … trying to understand.’
But she wishes, now, that she had closed down his Facebook, not left it wide open on her laptop. Wishes she’d pressed Peter about his injuries from this morning, his dirty clothes.
She has nothing to hide, she reminds herself sharply, and neither does her brother. Maybe this is all part of the torture Leo seems determined to put them through.
‘You said …’ She turns back to Georgie. ‘You said there was something else?’
Now it’s Georgie’s turn to shift uneasily.
‘What?’ Alice says, her anxiety growing. ‘Is it something else to do with Leo?’
Georgie starts to walk across the room, beckoning for Alice to follow. They slip between the regimented rows of tables and chairs. The dark wooden bar is the same as before, for the moment. Faint white rings stain its top like the ghosts of long-drunk pints, and a whiff of beer clings on, the smell of hundreds of nights out gone stale.
Don’t look at the corner. Except Alice does. She can’t help it: she stares at the spot just beyond the bar and thinks, as always, that she can still see the spatter of blood beneath the fresher layers of paint.
But there is something on the spot, something new. And Georgie is pointing straight at it.
Alice edges forward, her heart trying to jump out of her chest. It must be a trick of the light. A trick of her vision.
‘I spotted it this morning when I popped in to measure up for the new blinds.’ Georgie looks anguished, touches Alice’s arm. ‘It wasn’t there before, was it?’
Alice is up close, now, and she can clearly see the markings.
Initials in dark grey pencil.
R.L.
L.D.
Her legs go soft. Georgie puts out a hand to steady her, but Alice swings away and runs for the bathroom, reaching it just in time to shut herself in a cubicle and vomit. Tears stream down her face and she retches again, her throat raw, her hands gripping the sides of the toilet.
Georgie is rapping on the cubicle door. ‘Alice? Are you okay? I’m so sorry. I don’t know who did this. If it’s a prank, it’s a despicable one. If it’s not …’ She exhales, seeming to run out of ideas.
Alice leans against the cold toilet seat and tries to breathe. Robbie’s initials. Leo’s. Is there any chance they could’ve been there all along? Perhaps Robbie and Leo scrawled them there, drunken graffiti artists tagging their favourite spot? But, no, she has never seen them before. And they’re on top of the latest coat of paint.
She feels sick again, turns her head to aim into the toilet bowl, but her insides are hollow.
‘Alice? Will you let me in?’
Alice hauls herself up, flushes the toilet, and opens the cubicle door. Georgie hovers, watching her, trying to put an arm around her, but Alice goes to splash water on her face.
‘Who could’ve got in here?’ she asks herself in the mirror.
‘Who has a key?’
Georgie’s reflection looms up behind her. ‘Only the committee, I think? And not even everybody, actually … We share four keys between the six of us, right?’
Alice nods. She always keeps one, and so does Jack, but the others change hands between Georgie, Peter, Rowena and Ellen, according to who needs access. ‘Did we change the locks when we first took over?’ Her memory of that time is foggy. The pub project was born out of that fog, that hazy madness.
‘Yes,’ says Georgie. ‘I’d only just joined then. But you were adamant – rightly so – that we should.’
Alice walks back into the bar, across the room, Georgie following. The letters are so close to where Robbie fell. If they had a heart around them, they would look like lovers’ initials carved into a tree. But Robbie and Leo weren’t lovers; they were best friends, like their mums, until they weren’t, until Leo destroyed it all.
She glances at the ceiling, towards the boarded-up flat she tries to pretend no longer exists, and Georgie looks the same way.
‘Is it secure?’ Georgie asks. ‘Up there?’
‘Yes,’ Alice says quickly.
‘Shouldn’t we—’
‘It’s all boarded up.’
Georgie raises her eyebrows, but falls silent. Alice covers her face, grappling with her thoughts. Is it possible Leo got into the pub, despite all their efforts to keep him out? Does he know this place too well: all its weaknesses, all the cracks where fears and secrets can slip in?
Perhaps he climbed in through the same window he smashed with a pool cue when he was fourteen. Angry, often, even then. The window Alice helped Chrissy patch up, not commenting on what had happened, not judging, just holding one end of the duct tape and telling a tearful Chrissy it made the pub look more rock ’n’ roll.
Now her eyes dart wildly between the corner of the bar and the door to the flat.
‘I have to go,’ she says, nauseous again. ‘I have to get out of here.’