Читать книгу In Real Life - Chris Killen - Страница 9

IAN

2014

Carol isn’t there to meet me at the platform, so I drag my things through the busy departures hall and down a not-working escalator. Outside it’s pissing down. I roll a fag beneath the glass lip of the entrance and watch the black cabs pulling in and out of the rank as I smoke it.

This is the first time I’ve come to visit since she moved here for university, over ten years ago. I’m sorry, Carol, I think. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long. I’m sorry for being such a selfish dickhead all the time. Now please let me come and live in your spare room for a while.

On the phone, we didn’t talk about how long I might be staying.

I’m hoping for a month or two.

Just as I’m stubbing my fag out, a faded red Corsa pulls into one of the slots in the short-stay car park, just a few metres away. The door yawns open and there she is: Carol, except with weird glasses and shorter hair.

‘Ian!’ she calls, waving at me even though I’ve already spotted her.

I wave back, feeling my mouth pull itself into a grin.

I begin carrying things over from the pile on the kerb, slinging them two at a time into the boot. First my rucksack and holdall. Then my guitar case and a bin bag. Then my taped-up cardboard box and another, smaller rucksack.

‘Is that everything?’ Carol asks.

Yep, I nod.

It’s everything I own in the world.

There’s no radio playing in the car so I listen instead to the sound of an empty Fanta Zero can rattling around in my footwell as we drive out of the city centre, past boarded-up shop fronts with bits of unimaginative graffiti sprayed on them. For some reason, I’d imagined things would look different here. I want to touch the buttons on the stereo, but I must be careful not to piss Carol off. I must remain on my best behaviour.

‘What’s with the beard?’ she says, not taking her eyes off the road. ‘Makes you look about fifty.’

‘I’ve just . . . not shaved,’ I say.

‘You need a haircut, too.’

‘I know,’ I say.

I hold myself back from saying how strange her new short hair looks.

‘Thanks for all this, by the way,’ I say, just as she flicks the indicator and we turn a sharp left.

‘Don’t mention it,’ she says.

So I don’t. I rest my forehead against the window and watch the wet black streets flick past as we drive in the direction of her flat, wherever it is, somewhere on the outskirts of Manchester.

‘It’s not the Hilton,’ she says outside the front door, up on the third floor of a converted redbrick house. The winding communal staircase smells of damp and take-away dinners, and the light above my head is fluttering like a moth. From somewhere down the hall comes the muffled hum of Sunday night telly.

‘I’m sure it’s great,’ I say, as she turns the key and then leads me down a grim once-white corridor with institutional carpet and no pictures on the walls. There’s an odd, sour smell coming from somewhere, too.

‘Have you got a cat?’ I ask.

‘No,’ she says. ‘How come?’

‘Never mind.’

She pushes open the door to a box room at the far end of the corridor.

‘Wow,’ I say. ‘It’s perfect.’

It looks like the kind of room you might decide to end your life in. Blank white walls, threadbare carpet, a tiny, steel-framed single bed. I drop my bags in the doorway and walk towards the single-glazed window on the wall opposite. A view of the car park and the recycling bins and, beyond that, another large redbrick house. From where I’m standing I can see all the way in: into its brightly lit, expensive-looking living room. I try to will my body out through the window and over the car park towards it.

‘Are you sure it’s okay?’ Carol asks from the hallway. ‘I’ve not really got round to doing it up yet.’

‘It’s great,’ I say.

The only other thing in the room is a large brown wardrobe, the gloss flaking off it in long translucent splinters. As I touch it with my finger, I feel something like a candle go out inside me.

A little later, we sit facing each other at the two-seater kitchen table. Carol watches me eat my beans on toast like I might try and spoon it out the window if she left me alone. It’s only just gone ten in the evening but my eyes have already started to buzz and sting at the edges.

The salt shaker in the middle of the table is in the shape of a little white ghost-person, its arms outstretched, but the pepper is just a thing from Morrisons.

‘What happened to his friend?’ I ask, pointing at the shaker person with my knife.

‘They must’ve had an argument,’ Carol says, ‘because one night she jumped off the table and committed suicide.’

‘Oh dear,’ I say.

I try to think of something else to say.

‘How’s Martin?’ I say.

Martin is Carol’s boyfriend. They’ve been together for years now, but he still refuses to move in with her. I only ever see Martin occasionally, at Christmases and family parties, but I really don’t like him. Martin makes me feel uncomfortable and useless and like I’ll never quite fully grow up; he’s physically bigger and makes lots of money and speaks, sometimes, in a fake Cockney accent.

‘He’s alright,’ Carol says, picking at a bobble of cotton on her cardigan. There are small creases around the edges of her mouth when she talks; little lines I’ve not seen before. ‘He’s on a lads’ holiday at the moment, actually.’

‘Nice,’ I say.

‘So what’s the plan, then?’

‘I don’t know. Find a job? I shouldn’t need to stay here too long.’

Please don’t make me pay rent, I think.

‘I could ask Martin if there’s anything going at the call centre,’ she says. ‘He gets back next week.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

(I can think of almost nothing worse than working at a call centre with Martin as my boss.)

‘Have you spoken to Mum yet?’ she says.

‘Yep,’ I say quietly.

‘Well, you haven’t, because I called her just before I came to collect you and she knew nothing about all this.’

‘I’ll give her a ring later on.’

‘You’re going to have to help with rent and bills, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘And if you want to smoke, you’ll have to do it outside.’

I can hear it in her voice, just how much she’s enjoying telling me what to do. I keep quiet and nod my head as she continues, listing all the rules of the flat: how I have to try to keep all the doors closed to save the heat, and how I can’t have baths, just showers, and how I mustn’t run the taps unnecessarily while cleaning my teeth.

She is only six and a half minutes older than me but she’s always been the one in charge.

‘Is there internet?’ I say.

‘No.’

This takes a few seconds to fully sink in.

Who doesn’t have the internet? I think.

‘Who doesn’t have the internet?’ I say out loud.

‘I don’t,’ Carol says. ‘It’s a waste of money,’ and the way she says it reminds me of Dad.

I’m about to tell her, then stop myself.

I get in under the blankets, still in all my clothes, and curl myself into a ball. I close my eyes but suddenly I’m not tired any more.

I’ve unpacked most of my things – my two pairs of jeans and my three jumpers and my one smart shirt and trousers – into the wardrobe, and I’m using the taped-up cardboard box as a makeshift bedside table. There’s nothing useful inside it, anyway. It’s just full of sentimental things that I can’t quite bring myself to throw away: an envelope of letters, a collection of worn-down plectrums, a printed-out photo of a person holding a birthday cake, about a thousand gig tickets.

I’ve stuffed my guitar case as far as I can beneath the bed and set the alarm on my shitty Nokia for half-seven in the morning, and my plan is to find somewhere in the city first thing to print out copies of my CV and then spend the rest of the day walking around, handing them out.

I stretch my legs, and my feet touch a cold patch of blanket.

I turn onto my back.

I feel an email-shaped ache appear inside me, somewhere around my stomach.

It begins flashing on and off, but I ignore it as best I can.

Please leave me alone, I tell it.

All you’ve ever done is make me unhappy.

Earlier on, when I first unpacked and opened my laptop, a dialogue box popped up in the corner of the screen, asking if I wanted to view available wireless networks.

So I clicked OK and scanned down the list, and they all appeared to be locked and I was about to give up when I noticed one right at the bottom, open to anyone, called ‘Rosemary’s Wireless’.

As I watched my cursor begin to float towards it, I made my decision:

No more internet for a while.

And then, very quickly, before I could change my mind, I closed my laptop and put it away, right up on top of the wardrobe.