The Other People: A Novel(15)

He jumped, looked up. The blonde waitress with the kind eyes stood by his table holding a coffee.

“Oh, yes, thanks.”

He noticed that she wore a hoodie over her uniform.

“On your way home?”

“Just heading off.”

She put the coffee down and nodded at the notebook. “Looking for a message in invisible ink?”

He glanced at her more sharply. “What?”

“Sorry. You were just staring really hard at a blank page and…just a joke.” She started to turn away.

“Wait!”

Something sparked suddenly in his brain. Pages torn out. There must have been something written on them. Maybe something someone didn’t want anyone else to see. “Have you got a pencil?”

“Err, yeah.” She fumbled in her pocket and produced a stub.

He took it and started tracing it over the paper. He wasn’t sure it would work. He had only ever seen people do this on TV. But as he watched, words appeared faintly through the lead, an imprint from the previous page.

Gabe held the notebook up and stared at it. He frowned. “Don’t suppose that means anything to you?”

The waitress shrugged. “Sorry.”

He nodded, deflated. “Here’s your pencil.”

“You keep it.”

She walked away. Gabe stared back down at the notebook. Several fragments of words and letters had overlapped. But three stood out. A ghostly imprint of a dead man’s hand.

THE OTHER PEOPLE.





Tentative streaks of silver were just starting to lighten the sky when Katie emerged from the services. Despite feeling tired to the marrow of her bone, every limb aching with exhaustion, she liked this time of day. There was a calmness to the first hours of dawn. The day just waking, nothing to spoil it. A new beginning. A fresh start.

All rubbish, of course. There were no fresh starts. Not really. We’re all too entrenched in our own personal ruts, unable to summon up the energy to dig ourselves out. Life, as we know it. Or as she knew it, anyway.

This morning, like most mornings, she would drive to her younger sister Lou’s house to pick up her children and make breakfast. Then she would see Sam and Gracie off to school and finally get home to bed for some sleep. At 3:10 p.m. she would pick the children up, make dinner, drop them at her sister’s again and, after they were in bed, head back up the motorway to work. Like bloody Groundhog Day. Although, at least, she reminded herself, she had a couple of days off before the routine started again.

She walked across the car park and climbed into her battered Polo. She turned on the engine and selected a CD. Yep, her car was so old it still had a CD player and she was so old she still had CDs.

Tom Petty seeped out of the speakers as she drove, singing about a good girl who loves her mama. Lucky her. Maybe “Mama” wasn’t a bitter drunk (mental note—better call Mum tomorrow). She turned the song up. “Free fallin.” Just what she felt like doing sometimes. Forgetting everything, putting her foot to the metal, driving past the turn-off that would take her home: to the dirty dishes, toys scattered across the floor like a Lego and Barbie obstacle course, the bills on the doormat, the sheer drudgery of everyday life. Driving as far as she could, to places she had never been.

Of course, it would never happen. She would tear her own heart out before she ever left her children. And don’t get her wrong—life wasn’t bad. She was luckier than most. She had a job, a house, her health. But she still couldn’t help wishing there was something more. Problem was, she didn’t know what. Perhaps it didn’t even exist. You could spend a lifetime running from one life and chasing another. Gold at the end of the rainbow. Greener grass across the meadow. But, in most cases, the gold would be fake and the green grass would be AstroTurf.

When she got married, she had dreamed of a perfect family. A lovely home with a big garden. Maybe a dog. Holidays in a pretty cottage in Cornwall. She and Craig would watch their children grow up and grow old together.

Hah! Some dream that was. When Sam was five and Gracie barely one, Craig had left her for a sales rep called Amanda. The family home was swapped for a modern apartment (all tiled floors and white bloody sofas) and couple’s holidays in Dubai.

“I just think we rushed into things,” Craig had told her with his earnest, brown-eyed stare. The same one he had used on her when he told her he wanted to settle down and start a family.

“I need to have my life back again.”

Never mind about her life. Or their children’s. Never mind that when you committed to bringing new lives into the world, yours went on hold. You didn’t get to just pick it back up again, like a discarded coat, slip it on and head off out of the door.

But then, Craig had always been selfish. She should have seen it before but, as always, she had fallen into the role of pacifier, making allowances so as not to let her marriage fall apart. More fool her. It had happened anyway.

Now, Sam was ten and Gracie was five, and the best they got from their dad was an occasional trip to the park and age-inappropriate birthday and Christmas presents. Still, at least he paid maintenance. That was one thing. Without it, her meager salary wouldn’t cover the basics, let alone the extras children needed. Like clothes and shoes.

No such thing as a happy family, she thought. We’re all sold a lie. Adverts and sitcoms—even bloody Peppa Pig. Families were just strangers, bonded to each other by accidents of birth and misplaced duty.