girlfriend — no matter how badly she wanted to speak to him.
He knew that Brendan would have been told by now about the new arrangement he’d made with his boss at Nightjar Security Services, and he had the feeling he might have pushed things too far by taking control in such a way. Pushing, he was always pushing. It was like he was unable to resist forcing people’s hands.
“Hi Brendan. How’s tricks?”
There was a slight pause, and then Brendan’s voice filled the airspace. “Yeah, okay. Actually, no, I’m tired and pissed off.”
Simon blew air out of his mouth, making his lips flap. “Listen, I’m assuming you had a call from your boss last night.”
“Aye.” Brendan said nothing more.
“I know I should’ve spoken to you first, but I did it on the spur of the moment. I thought it might help us both out. I mean, you can hardly help me track down Marty while you’re working nights, can you? Also, it frees up your evenings to spend with your family. I thought it was a win-win situation… you know?” His reasons sounded feeble, but he wasn’t lying. He had not been completely selfish in organising the situation with the maudlin supervisor at Nightjar… only a little.
“Jesus, Simon. You always used to do this. Take control. I was fucking raging at you last night, but now that I’ve slept on it — well, for a couple of hours, anyway — I’ve calmed down. I’m still pissed off at you; I just don’t want to hit you right now.”
Simon smiled. “Thank Christ for that. I always suspected you might be able to take me in a fight and don’t really fancy finding out.”
“Fuck off,” said Brendan. “Listen; let me get this out of the way before we continue. Jane’s invited you over to dinner this evening. It was nothing to do with me — her idea. She thought it might be good for us to sit down over a civilised meal and talk.”
Simon wasn’t sure about this. It felt like somebody else was doing the pushing. “Oh… okay. Maybe that’s a good idea.”
“Maybe. And maybe not,” said Brendan. “But it’s done now. She’s expecting you over — come for around seven-thirty. Dress fucking casual.”
Simon found himself laughing again, softly, as if the years were falling away like layers of dead skin. “Don’t worry; I left my good tux at home. I’ll just throw on my Armani suit and be done with it.”
“And again, I say fuck you, matey.”
This brief exchange made Simon feel a lot better about interfering with Brendan’s job, and with his life. He wasn’t sure that he’d be so calm about the situation if the roles were reversed, but then he remembered that Brendan was having trouble sleeping. He was probably glad that he’d be able to rest his head on his own pillow at night, next to the woman he loved — a woman both of them had shared time with, at certain points in their lives.
Shit. Why did he keep thinking about that? He had a beautiful girlfriend, an emotional safety net in case everything else failed… so why did he keep thinking about a relationship that had ended before it had even had the time to begin? It was harmful, almost a form of self-abuse. Was he using the memory to punish himself, for leaving them all here to face the things he could not?
“Remember I told you about Marty’s grandmother? How she still lives here on the estate?”
He had no idea. He could remember no such conversation. “Yeah, of course.” He had to regain focus, to concentrate on the moment rather than all the moments he had lost, discarded like empty food wrappers. “What about her?”
“Well, I’ve had a strange morning, so I spoke to her about ten minutes ago, just before I called you. She’s willing to see us. She’s old, but her mind’s still more or less intact. She remembers who we were — when we were boys. She said she always liked us, and wondered what had happened to make us go away.”
Simon said nothing. He couldn’t work out if the comment was some kind of rebuke, or even if it was aimed at him. He kept thinking about Jane, and the time they’d spent together. Her soft lips, the curve of her thighs in her skin-tight jeans, the way she’d worn her hair — long and dyed white-blonde — and the sweet words she’d used to try and convince him to stay.
“Okay,” he said, shaking it off. “What time?”
“She said to go round for midday. She’s going to make a pot of tea.”
“God,” said Simon. “Old women around the country, they’re all the bloody same. Tea, biscuits, and a nice bit of gossip.”
“I’ll come for you at quarter to. Be ready.” Then Brendan hung up the phone.
Simon got back down on the floor and finished his push-up routine — it was helping to clear his hangover. Then he did some abdominal work — crunches, scissors, and a few minutes of trunk twists — before a feeling of nausea stopped him.
He always tried to keep himself in shape. Natasha didn’t like it when he got porky, and he had always put on weight easily, even as a child. He’d been carrying an extra few pounds that summer, when it happened… when they went into the Needle and gained access to another world.
“Like Narnia,” he said, staring at a patch of peeling wallpaper and studying the plaster beneath. “Through the back of the fucking wardrobe…”
He picked up his phone and re-read the last few text messages Natasha had sent him.
Jesus, sometimes she acted like a lovesick teenager. He couldn’t handle that kind of (badly spelled) emotional clinginess. It scared him and made him instinctively back away — that was why he was reluctant to call her, to speak to her. She was being needy and that was scaring him off, just like it always did.
He relented and replied to her last message:
He switched off the phone in case she responded by calling him back immediately. The kind of mood she seemed to be in, that was entirely possible, and then he’d be forced to talk to her. In his current state of mind, that would be a bad thing.
A very bad thing.
He took a shower, got dressed, and left the flat, stepping out into flat, bright sunlight. Looking up at the sky, the clouds seemed frighteningly distant, as if the lid was peeling off the top of the world. He did not want to see what lay beyond; the thought of eternity terrified him, even now, as an adult. He remembered lying in his bed at night as a small child, looking through the window and trying to imagine what was at the end of the universe. It used to hurt his head, and he would often cry himself to sleep after trying to calculate the dimensions of infinity.
Simon set off towards the Arcade, where there was a greasy spoon cafe called Grove Grub. He passed a group of teenagers at the corner of Grove Side and they all stopped mid-conversation to turn and stare at him, following him with their surly gazes.
It had been a long time since he’d experienced this kind of casual antipathy. Even in London it was rare to be examined by strangers in such a direct manner, certainly where he lived. Simon’s old senses began to bristle, returning to life after years of neglect. He clenched his fists and maintained eye contact. He knew that any sign of weakness would be leapt upon, used against him.
The group continued to stare. There were two boys and three girls, and they all wore similar cheap sports clothes — no-name running shoes, tracksuit bottoms, hooded sweatshirts, and baseball caps. One of the boys — the biggest one, who was wearing a cap with a motif of a cartoon dog smoking a joint — spat on the ground near Simon’s feet. He smiled. Simon kept up his pace, not speeding up or slowing down to avoid the spittle on the pavement, and gritted his teeth.
Once he’d turned the corner, he heard mocking laughter. They’d done nothing, said nothing, in his presence, but now that he was out of sight they were full of bravado. Nothing much had changed in the years since Simon had walked these streets. Nobody had any balls; they all waited until your back was turned, or your attention was elsewhere, before sticking in the knife.
A hundred yards along Grove Crescent was the Arcade. The row of shops had always been here, ever since
