The Other People(16)
You couldn’t choose your family. You couldn’t even choose whether to love them or not. You just sort of had to. Whatever they put you through.
She thought about Mum, eaten up by bitterness and alcohol, Lou with her string of failed relationships, and her older sister, who she hadn’t seen for nine years. Ever since the funeral. What had she found at the end of her rainbow?
Her foot pressed down a fraction on the accelerator. The sign for her junction drew into view: 14. Barton Marsh. She left it a few moments longer than normal, then flicked on the indicator to change lanes and pulled off on to the slip road.
Tom warbled that he was, “Gonna leave this world for a while.”
If only, she thought. But then, that could well be her mantra for life. If only she hadn’t gone back to the coffee shop today. If only she had gone straight home. If only she hadn’t served the thin man. If only she hadn’t seen the words emerge in the battered notebook, like a bad dream resurfacing from the depths of her subconscious.
THE OTHER PEOPLE.
You wanted something more, Katie, she thought bitterly. Well, there you go. Be careful what you wish for.
When he had asked if it meant anything to her, she managed to shake her head, even as her stomach twisted itself into a tight knot. Then she walked away, as quickly as she could, without breaking into a run.
He obviously didn’t know what the words meant. And hopefully, he wouldn’t find out. Besides, it was not her problem. She couldn’t help him. She didn’t even know him.
But she knew them.
Gabe lay on the narrow camper-van bed. His feet hung over the edge. His arms, even folded on his chest, poked off the sides. He closed his eyes, but his mind kept on whirring away. The Bible. The notebook.
The Other People.
He had tried googling it, but the only things his search had thrown up were an old Netflix show and an Indian rock band. He didn’t think that was what he was looking for. But then, he didn’t really know what he was looking for. He didn’t even know if the words had anything to do with Izzy or were just something random jotted down, like a scribble on the back of your hand to remind you to pick up milk.
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. There was no point in even pretending to sleep. That ship had sailed. He’d never been a good sleeper anyway. Never found respite in the darkness. Every whisper of wind or slight creak of the house would send his eyes shooting open. He would lie, for hours, tense as a board, staring into the shadows, senses alert. Waiting for the nightmares to begin.
Sometimes, when Izzy couldn’t get to sleep, he would curl up next to her and sing lullabies or read her stories until they both dozed off. He never admitted to Jenny that this was as much for his comfort as hers.
After Izzy vanished, the nightmares worsened, shredding his nights into sweat-soaked fragments of terror. Again and again their black claws tore him from the edge of oblivion and he’d be screaming so hard that, come the dawn, his throat would be raw and his eyes speckled with burst blood vessels.
Gabe didn’t really believe in karma. But there had been times in the last three years when he had wondered. Was this it? The world’s way of keeping balance? Taking away the most precious thing in his life to remind him that he didn’t deserve to be happy, not after what he had done. Except, Izzy wasn’t dead. Despite what everyone believed, he knew there had been a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake.
The Samaritan was right. He couldn’t go to the police. Not yet. First, he needed to speak to someone else. Someone he had avoided challenging, had tiptoed around, unwilling to inflict more pain. But this changed things.
He had to know for sure. He had to speak to Jenny’s father.
Gabe lifted his arm, checked his watch. Dawn was creeping around the camper van’s thin, pull-down blind. Six thirty a.m.
Still early. But he had a feeling that Harry didn’t sleep much either.
He sat up, swung his legs off the narrow bunk and pulled out his phone. After the funeral, Jenny’s mother, Evelyn, had changed the home phone number to stop him calling. But Harry had taken pity on him and given Gabe his mobile.
“If you ever need to talk.”
Surprisingly, Gabe had found he did. Although, on one occasion, he didn’t talk, he just wept.
He typed out a text: “Harry, it’s Gabe. Could we meet today?”
His phone almost instantly pinged with a reply.
“8am? Usual place.”
It wasn’t a question. With a heavy heart, Gabe typed, “Okay.”
* * *
—
FARNFIELD CEMETERY WAS an hour’s drive away, not far from the home he had once shared with Jenny and Izzy in Nottinghamshire. It was as pleasant a space as somewhere like this could be. The Garden of Remembrance had plenty of green, neatly mown grass. Smart wooden benches. Trees to provide shade and lots of flowering bushes and evergreens.
Gabe appreciated the sentiment, but he wasn’t sure if it was here that people really remembered their loved ones. Memories were entwined with the everyday minutiae of life. The scent of a certain perfume. Writing a shopping list and still including Marmite because your wife loved it. Finding a mug with “Best Mum in the World” on it in the cupboard. A song on the radio. The smell of food drifting from a restaurant where you once shared a ridiculously expensive bottle of wine that neither of you really liked. Those were the memories that seized you out of nowhere, grabbed you by the heart and squeezed until your chest felt like it would explode. Raw, visceral, uncensored.