Think Yourself Lucky (21 page)

His words aren't worth hearing—his range of language seems to be shrinking by the moment—but it amuses me to say "You'll be pleased to hear you've inspired me. Shall I tell you how?"

As I stoop to his computer he lurches at it, out of the chair. I wouldn't have counted on his being so predictable, but no doubt his kind are. I watch him grab the laptop to protect his tales, only to realise that it's still plugged in. I let him seize the plug and then close my hand around his, crushing the fingers and more than doubling his grip. "What are you—" he screams as the plastic splinters before shattering in his grasp. Now he's holding the metal prongs that he has tugged partly out of the socket, and even his resulting performance is trite—a mass of uncontrollable convulsive jerks that don't improve much on the ones I kept startling from him. I lean my face around his to watch him grimace and dribble and stretch his eyes wide as though he's straining to make out the contents of mine. "Nothing to see," I inform him, and soon there isn't in his, though not before I have to watch so many spasms they grow tedious. Once he slumps to the threadbare carpet and lies still, if not even sooner, I forget about him. He wasn't much more than a distraction. Someone else earned my attention before him.

A convulsion that seemed to shake not just his entire body but the house around him wakened David. It felt like sensing someone too close to him in the dark. He had to find Stephanie next to him across the chilly mattress and put his arm around her before he could blink his eyes open. Nobody was visible beyond her in the room, which grudgingly began to gather dimness on its outlines, but was anyone behind him? He raised his unsteady head and twisted it around, having let go of Stephanie so as not to rouse her. The rest of the room appeared to be deserted too. Perhaps he had been wakened by nothing but a dream, which had already retreated into the depths of his mind. It wasn't why he slipped out of bed and sneaked out of the room.

He'd lain awake for hours, battling a compulsion to check his phone, before he'd drifted into an uneasy sleep. The urge hadn't even been rational. The phone had been switched on and within reach, but it had already been too late to expect a message from either of his parents—at least, unless his mother's state had grown much worse. As he crept downstairs he consulted the phone, but it was devoid of messages. Nevertheless he felt the situation had changed, and he made for the computer.

The cramped glow between the curtains let him cross the front room without switching on the light. As he switched on the laptop he found himself putting a wish if not a prayer almost into words. When he went online he saw that the computer was listing the Newless blog as a favourite place. It was the opposite, but he called it up at once and saw that a new fragment had been added to the list of opening sentences:
I can see him
... He was hoping he knew who that meant as he brought the entry onscreen.

He'd read just a few sentences when he began to feel he needed to remember how to breathe. "You bastard," he muttered, and "You shit," as well, but he grew mute and dry-mouthed less than halfway through the entry on the blog. Once he'd finished reading he stared at the screen until the last words on it began to flicker and crawl. The sun had started to hint at its presence behind Mrs Robbins' house by the time he heard Stephanie's footsteps overhead.

As he fumbled to shut the computer down she came to the top of the stairs. "Where are you, David?"

"Making us coffee," he called and saw the Newless blog hide in the dark of the screen.

"You don't sound as if you're there."

"I'm saying I'll make it now," David said from the hall and willed her not to wonder why he'd been in the front room.

"Let me. I've got more time than you while I'm off work."

He thought he'd satisfied her curiosity until they met on the stairs, where she said "You weren't calling your mother so early, were you?"

"I might have been thinking of it, but you're right. Best to let her catch up on her sleep if she can."

In the bathroom his reflection eyed him like a conspirator, and he felt like one who'd been kept in ignorance of far too much of the plot, The thin jabs of water from the shower made his mind feel separated from his body; he could hardly even judge the temperature on his skin. As he towelled his face roughly, hoping to rub it more awake, he saw his face keep peering over the towel in the mirror. It reminded him of a childish game played by somebody unable to grow up, and it seemed to parody his secretiveness as well.

Downstairs Stephanie met him with a mug of coffee and a remark she had plainly been waiting to make. "You're still worried about her, then. I knew there was something in the night."

"I tried not to disturb you."

"I know when something's wrong. I'll only wonder what it is if you try to hide it." As David parted his lips despite having no idea what he might say, Stephanie protested "Is that all you want for breakfast?"

He'd hardly even been aware of taking an apple from the bowl, but he began to chop it up in a dish. "I don't want to be late for work," he said, only to wonder how he might behave there.

"I'll make us a good dinner while I'm waiting to hear from someone."

Even this troubled his nerves. "Who?"

"Your boss or mine."

He doused the slivers of apple in yoghurt, from which they protruded like ribs. Surely only a writer would have found the resemblance significant, but it didn't help David to crunch the tart segments and swallow the flavourless fluid. As an excuse for leaving half of the concoction he said "I'd better go."

Stephanie waved at him from the front door as he climbed into his car. She shut the door when he reached the road, and at once, like a reflection that had grown unsynchronised, the front door opposite theirs swung open. Before David had time to accelerate, Mrs Robbins trotted to the pavement. "Mr Botham," she called.

He was tempted to floor the accelerator, but he halted by the kerb on her side of the road and watched her put on bulk in the mirror. As he lowered the passenger window he thought it best to say "I'm just off to work."

"Yes, I saw you being seen off, Mr Botham."

"Nobody's objecting, are they?"

"I'm sure nobody would dare."

For just an instant he wondered if she was afraid to antagonise him, since she was standing back some feet from the car. No doubt this let her look at him without having to stoop. "So what can I do for you?" David said.

"I thought you might have been to see me."

"I haven't." He was almost too unnerved to ask "What made you think I had?"

Her stare looked as if it was stressing the distance between them. "I said I thought you might."

"Why?" As he heard how offensive this sounded he grasped the answer to his own question. "Sorry, I meant—"

"If you visited Mr Dent as you said you would."

"I did go. He thanked you for asking after him."

"You talked to him, then. Someone who went yesterday said he didn't seem to know she was there."

"He certainly talked to me," David said without wanting to remember.

"He recognised you, did he? You must mean something special to him."

"I'm sure I don't," David said, which only made him feel more desperate. "Why would I?"

"I couldn't say, Mr Botham, but it sounds as if you must for him to know you. The lady who was there was told his brain is permanently damaged, and it's likely to get worse."

"I'm sorry. Sorry to hear it," David said at, he feared, unnecessary length.

"It's a great shame, but I suppose we'd have to say he did bring it on himself." As David tried not to think about that Mrs Robbins said "Do give him my best wishes when you see him."

"I don't think I will be." Her disappointed look drove him to add "Seeing him, I mean."

"You're the one he knows. He seems to count you as more of a friend than anybody else round here."

"Only because of his brain," David said and almost followed this with too much of the truth. "You ought to see if he remembers you. Now if you'll excuse me, I really need to be at work."

Soon enough she dwindled in the mirror and shrank around the corner that took him past Dent's house, but the guilt she'd bestowed on David travelled with him. "Brain damage," he heard himself muttering. "Happy with that? Think you've done enough?" That silenced him, but not for long. "Why don't you do what you're asked to?" he mumbled as he drove into the station car park. "You know who I mean. Payne's the name."

All of this felt too much like a denial, a ruse to avoid confronting what the Newless blog revealed about his workmates. Or was that as distorted a version of the truth as the account of his encounter with the evangelist and Norville had been, if not—as he surely hoped—more warped? On the station platform dead leaves like scraps of the past skittered around the feet of dozens of waiting commuters. A train was due in eight minutes, but as the digit on the matrix sign lost a number of segments he heard a tinny chant repeating the Frugogo slogan. When he pulled out the phone he saw that the call was from his mother.

At once he was nervous of being overheard. He hurried to the far end of the platform, which was deserted apart from a few sodden leaves that were struggling to crawl about beyond the station canopy. "I'm here," he said urgently. "Yes, it's me."

"I wasn't expecting anyone else." His mother sounded not far from amused, close enough to let him hope. "Well, you could have been one other person."

"Who?" Not quite in time to head off his disquiet David realised "Steph, you mean."

"I don't need to mean anyone but her, do I?"

"You know you don't." The exchange was working on David's nerves. "How are things?" he said, the most he seemed able to risk.

"They're fine so long as you both are."

"They are," David said, bracing himself for whatever he was about to hear. "So you—"

"I did say if you are. You shouldn't try to fool your mother, David."

"I'm not. There's nothing the matter with us."

"David," she said as she used to in his childhood. "You ought to have realised your father and I would find out what happened."

David was nervous of learning "What do you think has?"

"It was in the paper, David." Not much less like a reproof she said "I only wish we'd seen it sooner."

"Seen what?"

"Oh, David. Stephanie." As this brought him to the edge of panic his mother said "Finding her manager however she did."

"I didn't know she'd been in the paper. We didn't want to give you and dad any more to worry about, that's all."

"Can we stop yet?"

Even this bewildered David, not least by delaying the questions he needed to ask. "Can we stop what?"

"David." She sounded weary now. "Can your father and I stop wondering how Stephanie is," she said, "and her job."

His mother's voice had grown so flat he might almost have imagined she didn't want to know. "We're waiting to hear what will happen with the restaurant," David said. "But I've told you, we're both fine."

"If you say so, David. We've had enough death and damage."

"Why," he said and had to swallow, "who else?"

"Nobody. That's just what I'm saying. But I know you've been wishing there were."

For a moment David's mouth felt parched of words. "How do you know?"

"Because Alan said you felt the same as him. I understand why, but you mustn't. You don't know what it does."

"Maybe you don't and I do," David said, surely too low for his mother to hear. "We're talking about that client of yours," he needed to establish. "Luther Payne."

"Alan told you his name, did he? He shouldn't have, not even you."

"Nobody knows it from me." Of course this wasn't true, and could she tell? She'd fallen silent, and the only sound was a thin metallic whine that sounded as chill as the wind. It was creeping up on David—the reverberation of a train along the track—and he took an effortful breath. "What," he said, "what's happened to him?"

"Nothing has. Lord forgive me, I can hear how much you wish it had."

David felt worse than let down—hollow and deluded and inadequate. "Why forgive you?"

"Because I've got you and Alan worrying about me when it's my clients who matter."

"And you do. Dad told me how you've been losing your sleep."

"The doctor's given me something for that. But I won't blame Luther, and you mustn't either. Thinking you're wishing him ill doesn't help me at all."

"It sounds as if you're blaming me instead."

"Of course I'm not, you or your father. I just want you to realise how dreadful I'd feel if something bad happened to Luther and that was the way he stopped troubling me. Maybe you've forgotten I lost a client like that recently. Helping Luther take control of his life, that's how I want to finish with him."

The train was approaching with an elongated squeal of brakes. "Will you promise not to let it bother you any more?" David's mother said. "Otherwise I'll feel as if you don't think I'm professional enough to deal with him, and that's bound to keep me awake."

David had a sense of abandoning some responsibility as he said "If that's what you honestly want."

"I give you my word it is, David. I've lost quite enough in my life without feeling I've wished someone else away just for my own convenience."

David barely heard the last few words over the mouthless screech of brakes. All at once he had another question, but he couldn't ask it in the midst of the crowd that was piling into the nearest carriage. "I'll promise," he said as he found a seat, because he mustn't wish anything that might aggravate her condition. Even if he fell short of sharing her compassion, he could put Payne out of his mind. He had enough people to think of.

Who was the worst? Perhaps it was Andrea, who had waited until David was out of the way so as to encourage the others to decide they could do without him. Or perhaps in a sense they were even worse, and Emily most of all for pretending to sympathise with him. No, he mustn't give in to thinking like that; when had the blog ever told the truth? The trouble was that however exaggerated it might be, its ravings were versions of actual events. And how did that relate to Frank Cubbins, the man from All Write? He was certainly persistent, and if he had indeed kept on reading the blog... Surely it contained nothing he would associate with David.