Читать книгу Ordinary Joe - Jon Teckman - Страница 10

As soon as we were airborne, Bennett settled down to watch an unfunny American comedy and for the next two hours proceeded to laugh like the stand-up’s wife at a talent contest. I reclined my seat and tried to get some sleep, adjusting and readjusting my position for maximum comfort and turning up the music in my headset to smother the cackling of my neighbour. Feeling sick with a potent combination of tiredness, guilt, confusion and coffee, I closed my eyes and tried hard to embrace oblivion, but every time I was on the point of dropping off, those indelible images of my crime would reappear inside my head, screaming at me and dragging me back to the new reality I had so casually created.

Nothing made sense to me. How had I ended up in bed with one of the most beautiful women in the world? How could I have allowed it to happen? And how could she? I imagined the look on my friends’ faces if I turned up for the quiz night at the King’s Head next Thursday evening with Olivia Finch on my arm – specialist subject: ‘The Lives and Loves of the Rich and Famous’. The thought made me smile for a split second but then I remembered: this wasn’t a game. This wasn’t a movie or some crappy television sitcom. This was my life and Natasha’s life and the kids’ lives. And I’d just fucked them all up.

I ordered a beer from the stewardess, hoping that a drink or two might help me sleep. But, of course, it didn’t. All it did was send my mind hurtling off in a load of other directions, trying to make sense of all that had happened. Why was Olivia now texting Bennett of all people? Or had he hooked up with someone else and was just playing dumb? Perhaps it really was a wrong number and had nothing to do with me or what had happened last night. Coincidences do happen.

When his film finished, Bennett turned off the screen and fell instantly into a deep, apparently guilt-free slumber. After several more drinks I was finally able to close my eyes and drift off into a fitful sleep myself.

I am woken up by a rough hand grabbing my shoulder, almost pulling me from my chair – I must have undone my seat belt to go to the toilet whilst still half asleep. Wordlessly, the figure leads me to the back of the Business Class section which opens out into a large, splendidly furnished lounge with a bar and pretty stewardesses serving drinks for thirsty, drunken passengers. To my surprise, I spot myself sitting in one corner chatting to Olivia Finch. We are laughing and she is running one of her hands up and down one of my thighs as if it is a piano keyboard. We finish our drinks and stand up and she leads me by the hand past where I am still standing with my mysterious friend, although now I realise that he is no longer there and my hand has been taken by another spirit, who leads me back to my seat and forces me to sit down. The TV screen flickers into life and I see a woman and two children sitting down to tea around a kitchen table – fish fingers, sweet corn and chips. They all look happy. ‘One more sleep until Daddy gets home,’ my wife tells my children and they both cheer and Matthew throws a spoonful of sweet corn at his sister.

The screen goes blank and another hand, skeletal and sharp, digs into my shoulder, forcing me to rise again. I float above Bennett’s prostrate form and my face is forced up against the window, staring into the bright light of the late spring sky outside. Droplets of moisture appear on the window, then form themselves into recognisable shapes. It is the same scene as before – Natasha and the kids again but all a little older now. They seem sadder; they’ve lost their sparkle – not through age but because something bad has happened. Something has ripped the life they knew away from them and left them with a shell. From this single vignette, I can tell that I am no longer around. No longer there to hug them and kiss them goodnight and tell them how much I love them and how proud I am of them. Edited out of their lives. The Director’s unkindest cut.

‘But tell me kind spirit,’ I imagine myself saying as self-pitying tears start to run down my face, reflecting the water droplets on the window, ‘are these the things that will be or just the things that might come to pass?’

The spirit replies in my voice: ‘You’ll have to work that out for yourself, arsehole.’