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He pulls back suddenly. “This is ridiculous. I have work to do.”
Then he turns and strides off to his study and Gollum, showing a worrying lack of taste for a creature I thought I could trust, runs right after him.
CHAPTER 8
Having a concussion is shit. Because, the thing is, I’m basically fine except I need to keep watching myself in case I suddenly get not-fine and it means I’m about to die. We’ve made it to Sunday afternoon, and I’ve managed to be all still-alive, and I’ve got a lot of hours of still-alive-being ahead of me before I can reasonably go to bed.
Jonathan’s in his study working and Gollum’s in the study with Jonathan. And that’s, well, I mean, I don’t really like weekends at the best of times, but at least I’ve got my cat. But now I’m concussed, and I’m bored and I’m alone and my fucking cat has dumped me for my fucking boss. Which really stings because he’s a wanker. Plus, I’m meant to be doing this whole thing where I get him to see me as a person so he won’t just fire me once I’m medically cleared, and it’ll be really hard to do that if I never speak to him. Which I can’t. Because he’s shut up in his study. With my fucking cat.
It’s coming up for three, and I’m about to queue up my fourth consecutive episode ofHomes Under the Hammer,when I realise I have to do literally anything else. So I get up, go into the study, give Gollum—who’s sitting on Jonathan’s lap as happy as can be—a look of absolute betrayal and tell Jonathan I’m going for a walk.
“Jonathan,” I say, “I’m going for a walk.”
He doesn’t even look up from his laptop. “You are not.”
“I think I am. My feet are going one in front of the other and everything.”
At last he deigns to swivel his chair around. With Gollum right there he looks like an actual supervillain. “What I mean,” he explains, “is that I’m too busy to come with you, and you can’t be walking around unaccompanied with an unhealed head injury.”
The worst thing is he’s not totally wrong. “So, I just have to sit in the front room watching telly until you’re done being a bath and bedding magnate?”
He nods. Just fucking nods. What a prick. “I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“I don’t think I agree with that. I’m going spare here. I’m going stir crazy.”
“And I’m sorry but—” Suddenly it’s like he’s got an idea, and I’m beginning to wish he hadn’t. “Give me your phone.”
“You what?”
“Give me your phone. I’ll set up location sharing and then I’ll know where you are.”
I’m not sure I want Jonathan Forest to always know where I am. But I’m not sure me-with-amnesia knows what a terrible idea it is. Also I really want to get out the house, so I pull out my phone, unlock it, and hand it over.
Jonathan does some stuff then gives it back to me. “There. Now I can track you and I’ve set up an alarm to remind you to text me every twenty minutes until you get back.”
“Jonathan”—I try to sound playful, but I probably come across as deadly earnest—“do you not think this makes you sound like a little bit of a psychopath?”
“I don’t care how I sound. I care that if you collapse, I’ll find out before you bleed to death inside your own skull.”
It’s hard to argue with that. Once somebody’s brung upskull-bleeding, it has a tendency to end the conversation. So, I leave him to his work and my cat, put my coat on, and head across the road into the woods.
The afternoon is crisp and wintery, so I’m glad of my coat. It’s one of them gentle, urban woods that’s all wide-spaced trees and heathland, and when you’ve been going a bit, you forget you’re in London until you get to the top of a hill and the trees clear away and you can see Croydon town centre squatting in one direction and Canary Wharf standing like a massive upright cock in the other. But even that’s nice in a way, because it makes you realise that the city—no matter how big it is, no matter how much you can’t get away from it—is still just buildings on a river and if you go to the right part of the right forest on the right day in December it can look small, and distant, and not important.
My alarm goes and I text Jonathan. Two words:not dead.Then I stroll back down the hill to keep up my rambling. I stop by one of those signs the council puts up. The ones with a cheery map of the woods on a green background and pictures of all the wildlife I might see if I keep an eye out. There’s woodpeckers here, apparently, and Dartford warblers. Not that I’d know a Dartford warbler if I fell over one while it was warbling its distinctive warble ofI’m from Dartford. Besides, it’s winter, they’ve probably migrated. If they do migrate. Though from the name you’d think they stayed close to Dartford most of the time.
It’s nice is what it is. The kind of place you’d want to bring your dog or your kids to, which is odd because Jonathan’s got neither. He’s got a cat now, of course,myfucking cat, but the RSPCA says walking your cat is a bad idea and even if it didn’t I can’t imagine Jonathan Forest walking anything. Or anywhere, really. Like obviously he can walk, I’ve seen him walk in an I’m-in-this-place-now-I-need-to-be-in-that-place way. And he can be a pacer. Good God can that man pace. When he’s not at his desk he barelysits down because he’s always doing something, or looking for something to do, or climbing the walls because he’s had nothing to do for six seconds and it’s messing with him.
But I can’t imagine him just, like,going for a walk. Like thinking to himself,I know, I shall go for a walk in the woods that are conveniently located right across the road from the very large, very expensive house I live in totally alone.
And just like that I catch myself feeling sorry for Jonathan fucking Forest. I do not want to feel sorry for Jonathan fucking Forest. Because he’s a knob. He’s a prick. He’s a cock. He’s a total dickhead. It’s just I’ve been as good as living with the feller for two days and I don’t know how he does it. I don’t know how just being him doesn’t completely grind him down to nothing with the emptiness of it all. Then again maybe it has, maybe that’s where the knobbishness and the prickishness and the cockishness and the dickheadishness all come from.
Or maybe that’s just me making excuses for him.
I text him mynot deadagain, take one last look around for a Dartford warbler and, when I don’t see any, I head back.
As soon as I push the front door open, I hear raised voices from inside and my first thought is that Jonathan’s listening toEastEndersreally loud. Except I’ve never seen him watch TV so it must actually be people.
“—is you’ve got all this space,” an older, extremely cockney woman is saying “and there’s going to be me, your dad, Nanny Barb, Granddad Del, Auntie Jack, Nana Pauline, Barbara Jane, Theo, Kayla, little Anthea and she ain’t so little no more—”
