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And thinking about it, even the phone’s optional.
I’ve stashed the van in a long-stay car park not far from the venue, though the stay is turning out to be a lot less long than I’d intended. And I’m so cut up from the Jonathan thing that I don’t even stop to get double-cut-up about theBecker and Sonsign. Which I suppose is one of those small blessings you’re meant to be thankful for.
I open the door, swing myself inside, and start driving.
The first thing I realise is how cold, damp, and miserable I am. The thing about being in the rain is you’re sort of at one with the elements, so even if it’s a bit nippy out it’s bearable. But the moment you’re not being pelted with sky-water and you get somewhere that’s less warm and cosy than it could be, you start toreally feel all the ways you’re shivering, and how your clothes are clinging places they shouldn’t cling and climbing up cracks they shouldn’t climb.
The second thing I realise is that I haven’t got a clue where I’m going.
I mean, I do. Obviously. Long-term I need to get back to Croydon to get my clothes and my cat—though maybe not on that last one, maybe I should just let Jonathan keep the little bastard—and once that’s done I need to fuck off back to Sheffield where I belong.
Where I just quit my job.
Where I wasn’t much cop at the job I quit anyway.
Where I never really belonged in the first place.
I’m driving in circles now, going around and around Finsbury Circus staring up at all those huge, intimidating, archetypally London houses looming five or six storeys high above me.
Well, Samwise Eoin Becker, you’ve made some terrible choices.
Hoping to feel at the very, very least like I’m going somewhere instead of nowhere, I start driving in a direction I think is south. Though it’s well past rush hour, London doesn’t care and the traffic’s still so backed-up that it takes well over an hour to get to Croydon. Then once I’m there it takes me another twenty minutes to build up the courage to go in the house. Confronting Jonathan was bad enough—confronting his whole fucking family is going to be carnage. I mean, what am I going to say to them? “Hi, Jonathan’s dumped me on account of how I don’t actually have amnesia and didn’t have the bollocks to talk to him like a sensible human being.”
I park the van and creep towards Jonathan’s front door, hoping I’ve dithered for long enough that everyone’ll be in bed. And it nearly works, except I find Wendy in the kitchen wearing a blue dressing gown printed with white roses and a pair of novelty slippers that turn up at the end into tiny leopard seals.
“Hello, love,” she greets me, much as I wish she wouldn’t. “I wasn’t expecting you back yet.”
“No,” I say.
Though I’ve not given her much to go on, Wendy is putting twos together into fours very quickly. “Where’s Jonathan?”
“Still at the party. I—we—look, there’s no easy way to say this but I’ve not got amnesia.”
“Oh.” She sticks her hands in the pockets of her dressing gown. “Do you want a cup of tea?”
“Did you not hear me?”
She’s already got the kettle on. “Well,” she says, “I won’t say I’m not confused, but the way I see it, what you remember’s up to you, and we’ve all got things we’d rather forget.” She drops two teabags into two mugs, pours hot water and milk over each and then plonks them both, teabags still in, onto the kitchen table. Then she grabs a side plate and a teaspoon so I can stop brewing when I’m ready.
I take the tea like it’s a reflex, like it doesn’t occur to me that I could, y’know, not. “Aye, but I really hurt Jonathan.”
“Well.” Thewellhangs there a while, then she adds, “That’s between you and him, isn’t it? He’s always been a sensitive sort.”
I’m about to say that I’m not sure we’re talking about the same Jonathan, but then I realise that we completely are. If he wasn’t sensitive, he wouldn’t be half so much of a prick and I wouldn’t have fucked this up half so badly. “I probably shouldn’t be here when he gets back.”
“You reckon?” This is a mam tactic. She means “you’re wrong”, but she knows saying it outright will just make me dig in.
“I reckon it’s what he’d want. I tried to say sorry but it didn’t take.”
She nods, sort of reassuring. “Doesn’t surprise me. Angry’s easier than sad, especially for blokes.”
“He wasn’t angry, though. Just sad.”
“See.” Wendy pokes me in the arm. “You’ve been good for him.”
“If I’d been good for him, he wouldn’t be angry or sad.”
She gives me a look that’s just a “you reckon” in visual form. “That’s not how it works, Sam. If you go through life expecting other people to feel the feelings you feel like they should be feeling, you’re going to make things very hard on yourself.”
