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Gary stomped along the tracks, his boots crunching in the gravel, glaring at the others through his eyebrows. It had been Andy’s idea to go to Bournemouth, Sam’s idea to follow the railway and Steven’s idea to walk continuously with almost no breaks, except to sleep in a couple of train stations, so that they’d get there fast. Gary had not agreed to any of these decisions but he hadn’t had the energy to make enough of a fuss about it, and they probably wouldn’t have listened to him anyway.
The air was still full of dusty grey smoke and half the railway signs had collapsed, but despite Gary’s best efforts the group managed not to get lost. He groaned as they approached Bournemouth train station. No-one else took any notice. He groaned again, more dramatically, as they walked through it, and started dragging his feet for good measure. He didn’t really have to put it on; he was tired and all the walking had probably given him blisters.
Once they were through the station Andy finally turned to ask him, “Where does your mum live?”
Gary shrugged. He knew where she lived, but his mum was the second to last person he wanted to see. The last being his dad. Although seeing his dad would be simpler. All he had to say was ‘fuck you’, or maybe he wouldn’t have to say anything and he could just walk away. But as far as he knew, his dad didn’t live in Bournemouth, so it was unlikely he’d get the chance to say or not say anything to him.
His mum, however, was the reason they’d gone to Bournemouth in the first place, and Gary had no idea what he was going to say to her.
“Gary.” There was an edge to Andy’s voice.
Gary shoved his hands into his pockets and kicked the rail with a series of dull clangs, avoiding everyone’s gaze.
“If you don’t tell us, we’ll have to walk all around Bournemouth to find her,” said Andy.
“Hmmm.” Go straight to his mum or walk until the soles of his feet looked like bubble wrap? After a long deliberation, Gary gave in. “Windham Road. Number … ninety-one, I think?” He scrunched up his face. “Or maybe ninety-three …”
Andy nodded, giving him a brief flash of a smile. “Okay. Is that close?”
Gary scrunched up his face even more. “Possibly.” He tried to remember the last time he’d been there. “Oh, yeah, I know where it is. It’s near a pub called The Cricketers.”
Steven exchanged a very judgemental look with Sam.
“Right,” said Andy, visibly suppressing a disapproving sigh. “Lead the way, then.”
Gary slowed down as they passed The Cricketers but Andy strategically walked between him and the pub, so there was no hope of getting in. Not that he wanted to.
Absolutely not.
His mum’s house was still standing, though part of the roof looked like it had burnt off. Gary stared at it from the middle of the road, chewing his lip. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him but he didn’t move. He still didn’t know what he was going to say to his mum. He probably should have come up with something earlier, but his mind was too fuzzy. And he hadn’t expected to actually find the right place.
“Do you want us to go in with you?” Andy asked.
“Um … nah,” said Gary. He finally managed to take a step forward, then another, all the way to the door. He squared his shoulders and knocked.
The knock was met with silence. He tried again, harder, and still no response. He rattled the doorknob for a good ten seconds, then went back to the middle of the road. “Door’s locked. Sam, have you got a hair grip?”
“Are you going to pick the lock?” said Sam, not sounding at all surprised as she dug around in her hair.
“Thought I’d try that before I resort to breaking a window.”
Sam rolled her eyes and handed Gary a hair grip.
“Cheers.” Gary ran back to the door. The others followed him a little hesitantly and watched over his shoulders in a very off-putting way as he picked the lock.
“Since when do you know how to do that?” said Steven, trying not to sound impressed.
“Since I locked myself out of my flat by accident.”
“Do you think your mum will mind?” said Andy.
“Probably.” Gary got the door open and stood up. “But she’s already pissed off with me, so who cares.”
The house was full of dust and the charred remains of electrical appliances. The whole kitchen looked like it had exploded. There was no sign of his mum, so Gary went upstairs, frantically trying to invent an explanation for why he hadn’t seen her for so long. He would tell her he’d just lost his phone if Andy hadn’t answered it for him in The Cross Hands.
Of course, he could just tell her the truth. But that would be even more complicated.
“Mum?” he called tentatively, pushing her bedroom door open. The room was dark with only a small shaft of dim light coming in between the curtains, casting a single stripe across the person-shaped lump in the bed.
“Weird time to be sleeping,” said Gary, striding confidently through the room in an effort to ignore the feeling of dread that had suddenly gripped him. “C’mon, wake up!”
His attempt at a cheerful voice sounded more panicked. He took a deep breath, flung the curtains open and turned back to the bed.
Some of the body was lying still under the covers. The rest of it was burnt and splattered over the pillows in a blackened, bloody mess. Gary guessed the culprit was what remained of the bedside lamp.
His deep breath was still in his chest, and when he remembered to exhale it came out as a tremulous whimper. He must have got the wrong house. This couldn’t be his mum. He knew it was number ninety-three. Why did he think it was number ninety-one? What kind of idiot didn’t know his mum’s address? Some other poor bastard was in for a shock, but it wasn’t meant for Gary. He was going to go next door and find his mum, alive, and he would forget he ever saw anything inside this house.
He stumbled slightly on his way back to the door. As he straightened himself up, a photo on one of the shelves caught his eye. A school photo, of a little boy who didn’t look very happy to be having his picture taken. Probably because of his stupid haircut. His mum had tried to make him look smart, but the only other time she’d ever cut anyone’s hair was in a fight with her sister when they were teenagers.
Behind the photo was a collection of CDs. At least four of them were by The Cure, but Gary couldn’t see any of their gothic stuff. He’d always found it ridiculous that his mum loved The Cure but didn’t like goth music.
He pressed his hands over his mouth and shut his eyes tight. He stood still while his head spun, until the smell of burnt flesh became overwhelming and he had to get out. He tripped on his way down the stairs and almost went flying, instead crashing into the bannister and knocking all the air out of his lungs. That barely slowed him down. He composed himself in seconds and left the house as calmly as he could. The others stared at him, puzzled.
Gary swallowed. “Mum’s dead,” he announced, marching straight past them, trying not to look at their confused faces.
“What?” said Sam.
“Again?” said Andy. Gary winced. He heard the door squeak, and looked round to see Andy going inside.
“Don’t, mate, you don’t want to see it,” he called after him. Andy didn’t stop. He went upstairs and came running out barely a minute later, eyes wide.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
“Told you,” said Gary, turning to leave.
“Where are you going?” said Steven.
Gary shrugged. “Dunno. Back to London, I guess. We should go check on you guys’ families, see if they’ve been blown up as well.”
“Seriously?” said Andy, coming closer. “You’re going to leave, just like that?”
“Well, there’s no point staying here, is there? We can’t exactly have a funeral in the middle of the road.”
Andy was still coming towards him, slow but determined. Gary found himself retreating backwards.
“Gary,” said Andy, adopting his ‘put the pint down’ voice, “are you okay?”
Gary laughed flatly. “Yeah. ‘Course I’m okay.”
Andy’s face hardened slightly. He looked into Gary’s eyes and Gary recoiled as if he was looking right into his head and reading his thoughts.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah! I’m fine! Now can we go?”
Andy shook his head, though seemingly not as an answer to Gary’s question. “Do you not …” He stopped walking and screwed his eyes up, pressing his fingers into his temples.
Gary kept going backwards. “Look, if you lot want to stay here then feel free, but I’m going.”
Andy’s arms dropped to his sides and he stared at him. A look of outrage crossed his face, only to be swiftly replaced with a quieter resentment. “Do you even care that your mum is dead?” he asked.
Gary was silent. His mouth had gone dry. When was the last time he drank something?
“You don’t … you don’t give a shit. Of course you don’t.” Andy turned away like he couldn’t bear to look at him.
Gary opened his mouth to say something stupid and sarcastic but nothing came out. He looked down the road, just about able to see The Cricketers on the corner. He licked his lips.
“I do care, actually. If you must know,” he said as casually as he could.
He barely got two steps in the direction of the pub before he heard Andy make a string of bewildered noises. “Then why —”
“Can we just leave it?” Gary interrupted, his voice rising. “I don’t know why you’re all in such a state about this, ‘cause it’s got fuck all to do with you! She’s my mum, this is my problem, and I will deal with it however I fucking want!”
He clamped his mouth shut, trapping a sob in the back of his throat, and stormed off, his coat flaring around him in a wonderfully dramatic fashion.
Steven and Sam watched, speechless. Andy took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh my God, he’s an idiot,” he muttered, mostly to himself.
“Where’s he going?” said Sam.
Andy sighed. “I think I can guess.” He put his glasses back on and watched Gary disappear round the corner. “Shit. Come on.”
The three of them ran to The Cricketers and peered in through a window clouded with dirt. They could just make out Gary behind the bar, messing about with a bottle. Andy groaned and leaned his forehead on the windowsill.
“Oh crumbs, he’s relapsing.” Sam nudged Andy. “We need to stop him.”
Andy lifted his head and nodded. “Yeah. You guys wait out here, I’ll go in and talk to him.”
“Why just you?” said Steven, sounding like there were a lot of things he’d like to say to Gary. Mostly swear words.
“You know what he’s like, he’ll get defensive if he has to talk to all of us. He’s a bit more … open when it’s just one-on-one.” Andy braced himself at the door. “I’ll give you a shout if I need you.”
It was dark inside the pub, and empty except for Gary, who was trying to get the cap off the bottle without a bottle opener.
“What are you doing?” said Andy.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Gary snapped.
“Well, the way you’re holding that bottle kind of makes it look like you’re wanking.”
He thought the joke might ease the tension but Gary barely reacted and just kept pulling at the cap, undeterred by the red welts it scratched into his hands. He didn’t even notice Andy approaching him until he was right by his side.
“Stop that, you’re hurting yourself.” Andy took the bottle off him with surprising ease.
Gary grabbed at it with shaking hands. “Give it back!”
“You can’t even open it,” said Andy, holding it out of his reach. “And you were doing well! Do you really — get your elbow out my fucking face — do you really want this past week of sobriety to be for nothing?”
“Yes, because I’ve hated it!” Gary yelled. There was so much pain in his eyes that for a second Andy wondered if he should give in; a tiny spark of a thought that disappeared instantly.
“I’m sorry to hear that, but —” Andy threw the bottle into a corner of the pub, where it smashed against the wall — “I’m not going to let you relapse.”
Glowering, Gary turned back to the bar. Andy grabbed his sleeve.
“It won’t make you feel better,” he said, his voice tinged with desperation, almost pleading. “I know you’re upset, Gary, but there are better ways to deal with it.”
“God, you’re worse than the doctors!” Gary tried to pull away but Andy held his sleeve tight.
“I’m just worried about you, mate.”
“Well don’t be!” Gary cried with nowhere near as much ferocity as he wanted. His voice was cracked and rough — the voice of a tired man in his forties trying and failing to throw a teenage tantrum.
“I won’t be able to stop worrying about you until you stop doing stupid shit,” said Andy. He looked pointedly at the edges of the bandages, just visible under his sleeves. Gary scowled and wrenched his hand away, folding his arms across his chest like a shield.
“You’re wasting your time. You’ve never been able to stop me from doing anything.”
“I could have,” said Andy, his voice suddenly softer. “If I’d worried about you a bit more and realised what was going on sooner.”
Gary laughed scornfully. “No you couldn’t.”
Andy seemed almost guilty, and though Gary wanted to agree, to unload all the blame onto him if only to get it off himself, his guts twisted uncomfortably at the idea.
“Not even my mum could stop me from doing stupid shit, and she worried about me more than anyone,” he said, the anger seeping out of his voice. He was mortified to feel a sting in his eyes, and he avoided looking at Andy. His gaze drifted over to the mess of shattered glass and spilled booze in the corner. The smell momentarily took him back to the withdrawal, back to drowning in the stench of alcohol, and he felt sick.
“Did she know what was going on?” Andy asked, moving to Gary’s side.
“I dunno, I never really told her anything. I really didn’t want her to worry about me.”
“Oh yeah, is that why you’ve been acting like a nutcase?” Andy nudged him. “If that doesn’t reassure her, nothing will.”
Gary shrugged. “I thought it’d be easier if she was just angry with me.”
Last time he’d seen her, she’d asked him over and over again if he was okay, and every time Gary insisted he was fine, he was great actually and she really didn’t need to panic because he was fine. He didn’t know who he thought he was kidding, considering he’d just been kicked out of his old flat because the landlord didn’t take too kindly to his tenants doing drugs (something that wouldn’t have concerned him at all if he’d learned to mind his own fucking business).
His mum had been angry, but more than that she’d been scared. And that scared Gary. So he left and refused to see her again until it was too late.
“To be fair,” said Andy, “I didn’t want her to worry about you either.”
Gary frowned. “What?”
“You remember when she tried to call you in The Cross Hands and I answered the phone?”
“Yeah.”
“She asked me if you were okay, and I said you were. I told her you were with your friends, on a night out. Having a good time.” Andy sighed. “I don’t know how much she believed me.”
“You didn’t … you didn’t tell her that I lied about her being dead?” said Gary.
“No, of course I didn’t tell her that,” Andy said in gentle exasperation.
Gary nodded, his eyes filling with tears. It took him several attempts to get any words out, and when he finally did, his voice was small and broken. “I didn’t want her to die.”
And yet he’d killed her, in a sense. He’d sent the Network away, and it had taken all the electricity with it and blown up his mum’s lamp, along with half of her body. But even before that, he’d made his friends think she was dead. He’d come up with that lie on the spot, a last desperate attempt to convince Andy to come with him. He’d killed her in an instant.
The tears started to fall as he buckled under the weight of the grief and the guilt. His body shook and slowly curled in on itself, his arms folded tightly against his chest, elbows digging into his ribs and hands clawing at his face. His vision blurred, giving him nothing to focus on except the cage of his fingers — nothing to stop images of his mum, both alive and dead, from flashing through his mind. He shut his eyes helplessly and sobbed, his teeth scraping against his palms.
“Gary.”
The closeness of Andy’s voice cut right through his muffled cries. He looked up and the bleary shape of Andy opened his arms, offering comfort that Gary knew he didn’t deserve but couldn’t resist. He crashed into him with a force that would have knocked anyone else to the ground, but Andy stood firm and wrapped him in an almost painfully tight hug, like he was trying to hold all the broken pieces of him together and stop him from crumbling into nothing.
Andy thought that by now he should be used to seeing Gary cry, but it was still distressingly unfamiliar. He couldn’t imagine his young, grinning, self-satisfied friend even shedding a tear, let alone breaking down completely, cradled in Andy’s arms. He hoped it was a good thing that Gary was finally allowing himself to feel — perhaps even a sign that he could get better. Maybe.
Eventually Gary emerged from Andy’s cardigan, gasping for air as if he’d just been drowning. He dragged his sleeve across his face and sniffed with a sound like a welly boot being pulled out of mud. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I got snot on you.”
Andy looked down at his chest and grimaced. “Ugh. Delightful.”
“I said sorry!” Gary rubbed his eyes roughly, leaving them sticky and red. “Where are the others?”
“They’re just outside.”
He couldn’t see Steven or Sam through the cracked windows and suddenly felt like they were hiding somewhere and watching him. “D’you think they heard all of that?”
“It’s possible.”
“Oh, fuck,” Gary whined, folding his arms on the bar and dropping his head onto them.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Andy.
“That’s easy for you to say, you weren’t just crying like a fucking baby,” Gary said into his arms.
“Well, I think you needed that.” Andy put a hand on his shoulder and gently ran a fingertip along the edge of his coat collar. It was fraying slightly. The coat was ancient — Gary had got it second-hand, so it was probably older than he was — and although it looked like he’d kept it in pretty good condition, Andy had a feeling it was starting to unravel inside.
“Are you okay now?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Gary without missing a beat.
“Are you sure?”
Gary turned his head to look at him. His whole body sagged. “No.”
Andy nodded. “Fair enough. You will be, though. You have to get better.” His grip on Gary’s shoulder tightened a little. “I told your mum you were okay and I know that wasn’t true but it can be. You can make it true.”
Gary said nothing. Then Steven and Sam came into the pub and he straightened up, shaking Andy’s hand off as he pretended to adjust his collar.
“You’ve been in here for a while so we thought we’d come and check on you,” said Steven.
Andy watched Gary turn around and instantly slip back into his usual act.
“What have you two been up to, then? Snogging?” he said with a smirk.
“No,” said Steven, wiping his mouth with his thumb.
Gary raised his eyebrows suggestively, not realising that he was only making it more obvious to everyone else how bloodshot his eyes were. They all knew better than to point it out.
As they left the pub, Andy walked beside Gary and said quietly, “Think about what I said, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Gary, looking in the opposite direction.
“Gary.”
“I’m already thinking about it!”
Andy smiled hesitantly. “Good.”
They stopped rather awkwardly across the road from The Cricketers. Everyone knew what the next course of action was, but no-one wanted to say it out loud in case they sounded tactless. Finally, Sam carefully asked, “Are we ready to leave?”
Gary felt the others’ eyes on him. “Sure.” He paused and glanced back down the road. “I’ve just got to … check something first. I’ll be right back.”
“Hi Mum.”
Gary stood at the foot of her bed and tried not to look at her body. He looked at the CD shelf instead.
“Can I have one of those?” he asked unnecessarily. “That’s what you do, isn’t it, you keep your parents’ old stuff to remember them.”
He went over to the shelf and picked up The Cure’s Greatest Hits.
“Shame I can’t listen to CDs any more. Although actually —” he turned the case over and looked at the track list — “some of these are shit. ‘Greatest Hits’ my fucking arse. Even The Lovecats is on here.”
He shook his head and put the CD in his coat pocket.
“Anyway. Um. Tell you what, I’ll close the curtains. Then it’s like … like you’re just sleeping. Looks like you were sleeping when, y’know. When you died. That’s not too bad, then, right?”
His half-hearted attempt at a smile slid off his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a hollow whisper. “I … I don’t know what else to say. I’m just sorry. And you can’t even hear me, so what’s the fucking point?”
He stalked back to the door, then hovered with one foot in the bedroom and the other on the landing. He turned around to face his mum.
“I love you.”
Even if she couldn’t hear him, he couldn’t leave without saying it. He wished he could remember the last time he’d said it.
“Bye. I’ll try not to die too.”
Gary closed the door gently, careful not to make a noise as if there was still the possibility of waking her, and went downstairs.