‘What’s happening?’ he hissed angrily to her.
She giggled and rolled her eyes at me.
‘Is there anything to eat?’ Richard asked her.
‘Why don’t you go and have a look?’
‘We’re going,’ I said to Richard. ‘Sorry. We should have left before now. It didn’t go very well.’
‘It wasn’t so bad,’ said Amos, a bit aggressively, I thought.
‘It wasn’t so good,’ said Hayden, as Richard left the room and started banging pots and pans in the kitchen. He was sitting on the floor with his knees up and had hardly touched his guitar all evening. He looked tired, maybe a bit downcast.
‘At least some of us make an effort.’
‘You should try and keep to the rhythm,’ said Hayden, in a kindly tone. ‘Joakim’s got the right idea. See if you can copy him a bit more.’
Amos’s entire body tensed. Sonia stepped forward and laid a hand on his arm. ‘I thought you did fine,’ she said softly.
‘It was OK for a first attempt,’ said Neal. He was standing at my side. My fingers brushed his.
Hayden shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, you’re not really in the band to make music, are you? We’re not all blind.’
‘Hayden,’ said Sally, from the sofa, ‘shut up and have another drink.’
‘Sometimes drink doesn’t make you drunk,’ he said. ‘I think I should go.’
There was a small silence after he’d left. Amos looked at me. ‘Are you going to tell him, or shall I?’
‘Tell him what?’
‘That he’s out of the band.’
‘Come on, Amos. He’s the best player we’ve got!’
‘And he knows it,’ said Sonia. ‘Maybe he’s too good for us.’
‘How can you be too good?’ Sally sat up rather unsteadily on the sofa. Her hair was mussed.
I couldn’t quite believe that she was getting involved in a discussion of who did and didn’t belong in our band. I wanted to tell her to shut up but that wouldn’t have been right in her house. ‘We’re lucky to have him,’ I said. ‘The group feels different when he’s in it.’
‘He’s great.’ Joakim’s voice was impassioned and slightly slurred from the Pimm’s. ‘He can really play. If he leaves so do we—right, Dad?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Guy.
I could see that an argument was about to start. I held up my hands. ‘I’ll go round and talk to him. I don’t think he quite knows the effect he has on people.’
‘He knows,’ said Amos. ‘He’s got it in for me. It makes me play badly as well. My fingers turn to thumbs when I feel him staring at me. And he does it deliberately.’
‘Bonnie’s right,’ said Neal. ‘He just says whatever comes into his mind.’
‘Like a child,’ said Sonia, a bit contemptuously.
I pulled on my jacket and picked up my banjo. I’d had enough of this. ‘I’ll explain things to him. Maybe he’ll just solve the problem by leaving.’
I cast a glance back at them all as I went: Neal looking rueful, Amos smouldering and Sonia having her usual calming effect on him, Joakim red with angry excitement, Guy austere and Sally very definitely drunk. It was a relief to get out of there.
After
It was nearly seven in the morning. The sky was a pale turquoise, with just a few thin streaks of cloud on the horizon. It was Saturday, 22 August. In a few hours I was supposed to be at a rehearsal. I stood in the kitchen and closed my eyes. Don’t think, don’t feel, don’t remember. I drank a glass of cold water, then another. The pain in my ribs and the pain in my neck seemed to be connected and my whole body throbbed. The keys to the car and the flat lay on the kitchen slab and I stared at them for a moment. What should I do with them? With thick fingers, I separated them, put the flat key on my own ring and held the car key in my fingers, twiddling it. I opened the lid of the swing bin, then changed my mind. In one of the mugs? No, anyone might find it there. In the bread bin, the teapot, the empty biscuit tin, the porcelain jug I used for flowers, the drawer stuffed full of old brochures? In the end, I pushed it deep into the sugar jar. I went into the bathroom, where the tiles I’d prised off lay in a heap by the bath, and peeled off my clothes. I would have peeled off my skin as well, if I could have. I had a shower that started off scalding but gradually ran tepid, and scrubbed myself all over, though I avoided my neck. I washed my hair twice. When I rubbed the fogged-up mirror I saw that my bruise was spreading, like a stain.
I realized I was hollow with hunger, but the thought of anything to eat made me want to gag, so I climbed onto my bed, still wrapped in my towel. The strips of wallpaper that were hanging off the wall looked like skin. I pulled the duvet over my head so I wouldn’t have to see them. Images flickered past me and I couldn’t stop them. His eyes, his mouth, his hand reaching out towards me, his body splayed in the boat like a beached fish, his dead, unblinking eyes and his body sinking under the surface of the water. The phone rang and I heard a voice leaving a message. Sally. I had to ring her as soon as possible. Then my mother. Then Sonia. My mobile buzzed. I heard the ping of texts arriving. Hours passed. Perhaps I slept. Perhaps I dreamed that none of it had happened, but then I woke and knew all over again that it was true.
Before
He just held open the door. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see me. I stepped over a pile of unopened letters and into a small hot kitchen-cum-living room that was strewn with clothes, books, sheet music, empty bottles,
