The Stuff of Nightmares (29 page)

But I loved her and she left me.

‘Fitz, I’m not happy.’

‘Fitz, we need to go out more, just the two of us.’

‘Fitz, you’re not listening to me.’

All those comments were too subtle for me. Why
didn
’t Londie just come right out and say, ‘Tony, I’m going to leave you if things don’t change.’

I would have heard that. That would have got through.

She left me.

And even when I read her goodbye letter, I still didn’t believe it.

It was all just a mistake, a misunderstanding. At least, that’s what I told myself.

With each minute that passed, I expected to hear her key in the door, I expected to see her walk into our sitting room, her tail between her legs. And I had my greeting all prepared.

‘What did you think you were playing at, Londie? I knew you’d be back. Like you could even find your way to the end of the road without me.’

Only I never got the chance to practise my well-rehearsed few lines. The intended audience never put in an appearance. And still I clung to the hope that Londie would come home. I rehearsed new lines.

‘Londie, how could you put our son through this? D’you know what you’ve put
me
through? But I knew you’d be back. I never doubted it.’

She never heard those lines either. So after a few weeks they changed yet again. The hardest change of all.

‘Londie, love, I’m sorry – OK. What d’you want me to say? I’m really sorry. I’ll do better. I’ll try harder, I promise. I didn’t realize just how much I’d miss you. Please forgive me. Just give me one more chance, I promise you won’t regret it.’

That was my last speech. It played to an empty house.

Kyle’s birthday was the day when reality rose up and bit my heart clean out of my chest. Londie wasn’t coming home. If not for Kyle, then certainly not for me. The next day I went to work on autopilot. I don’t remember walking along the street to the station. The train journey was more vague than a blur. I blinked and I was at my desk. Another blink and an hour had passed and I was on the phone with no idea what I was saying or who I was talking to. By lunch time I’d had enough. I mumbled something to my boss about not feeling well and headed for the door before she had a chance to respond. I don’t remember getting home, I just remember being home. I stood in my lonely bedroom looking at myself in the dressing-table mirror,
her
dressing-table mirror. Seeing myself as she must’ve seen me all these years. I don’t remember what I thought then. Maybe because I don’t want to remember. The whole day is a series of snapshots, fragments of moments frozen in my memory.

And then Kyle came home. I saw him looking at something I was holding. I looked down, mildly surprised to see the glass of whisky in my hand.

‘What are you doing home so early, Dad?’ Kyle asked.

I slurred out something about not feeling well.

I didn’t get better.

I lost my job. I lost my confidence. I lost all hope.

Until one morning I’d had enough. It wasn’t something I’d planned, it wasn’t something I had to build up to. I just woke up one morning and wondered, What’s the point?

Kyle was old enough to do without me. Londie sure as hell didn’t need me any more. I’d lost everything. So what was the point? Funny how I remember that morning better than all the previous month of mornings combined. Kyle made me breakfast, but my head was ringing and my stomach churning and I just couldn’t face it.

‘Dad, you need to eat. Whisky isn’t food!’ Kyle shouted, his voice amplifying the rate at which my head was pounding.

I shook my head, wishing to God that he’d shut up.

‘Dad, please eat. It’s only porridge.’

‘Kyle, will you piss off!’ I pushed him away.

As I poured myself a glass of the sickness and the cure, Kyle said quietly from behind me, ‘You’re a selfish bastard, Dad. At least Mum went through the door to leave me. You couldn’t even be bothered to do that. You just stayed put and left.’

I swung round, but Kyle was already out the door.

Tosser! I thought as I tossed back the hair of the dog.

And throughout the day I grew more and more angry. Three words played over and over in my head like some kind of tune I just couldn’t get rid of –
What’s the point?

Kyle just didn’t appreciate what I was going
through
. Neither did Londie. Why didn’t they get that? I … cared for them both. I was brought up to be the man, to take care of my family, to be in charge. All those times I sat on the sofa or at the dinner table with my family and I just wanted to hold out my arms to them, to tell them how much … how much they meant to me.

But I couldn’t. It wasn’t what I was supposed to do. All my life I’ve done what I was supposed to do. Different thoughts stampeded through my head, corralled by the drink I couldn’t leave alone.

Hell! If Londie and Kyle needed proof of how much I loved them, then I’d give them proof. I glanced down at my watch: 3.50 p.m. Kyle would be home soon. Kyle … He wasn’t the only one hurting. I’d show him just what I was going through.

I went into the bathroom and found Londie’s bottle of sleeping pills in the cabinet. The bottle was three-quarters full. I took it and headed back downstairs. Sitting in Londie’s favourite armchair, my whisky glass in one hand, the uncapped bottle of pills in the other, I checked the time on my watch again: 3.57 p.m. Kyle would be home in what? Twenty minutes? Thirty max. I tilted back my head and poured the whole bottle of pills down my throat. They were dry and bitter on my tongue. I washed them down with the whisky but that sour taste still sat in my mouth. Leaning back, I closed my eyes. I waited until I began to feel sleepy, but I didn’t. I just felt hollow inside.

‘I love you, Londie,’ I whispered. ‘I love you, Kyle.’

I’d never said those words out loud before. They were slurred, almost incomprehensible, but I’d said them. And then it hit me. The words weren’t slurred with drink. They were slurred because my hold on life was slipping. What was I doing? I was being ridiculous, stupid.

What the hell was I doing?

Open your eyes, Tony. You need to be sick. Get this junk out of your system. Just open your eyes …

But I couldn’t. Gravity had changed. Every part of me was being dragged downwards. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. I was melting, merging into the chair.

For God’s sake, Tony, open your eyes …

I didn’t open my eyes again.

You see, Kyle didn’t come straight home. He went to his friend Steve’s house for a couple of hours. Why rush home to me? Why hurry home to clean up my alcohol-induced vomit and take off my dirty clothes and wash them and clean the house and do his homework and pretend to everyone outside that everything inside was just fine? Why run home to
lies
? So he stayed at his friend’s house. And I didn’t open my eyes again until it was too late … until it was over and I couldn’t come back.

And that’s when my nightmare truly began. Because hope was no longer something that was part of me. I’d relinquished that along with my life. It was only when it was too late to turn back that I realized what I’d done. I’d given up. I’d left my son Kyle behind.

How could I have forgotten about my son? The
blinkers
covering my eyes had been snatched away by Death and I saw my true self for the first time. And my reflection was jagged and misshapen, like looking in a broken mirror. Only it wasn’t the mirror that was broken, it was me. I could see it all now – the past and the present. The future was easy to see because I had none. Not any more.

If only I could turn back the hands of time, go back to yesterday, go back just a couple of hours to the moment when I opened the bathroom cabinet. If I could do it all again, I would close the cabinet door immediately, then go into my room and look at the photograph of Kyle, his mum and me in happier times. I’d cling to those happier times until they forced a smile from me. If I could only go back …

But life and death don’t work that way. My deepest regret was my son. I should never have left my son. I have to find a way, somehow, some way of letting him know how much he means to me. Please, God, let me find a way.

I can’t rest until I do.

I have one shot at this. One chance to get it right. I’ll have to pick my moment so carefully. A point in time when Kyle will be able to see me, to hear what I have to say. If I try to go to him now, he won’t hear me because he can’t hear anything. He’s too locked in his own grief to see anything outside himself. I wish I could show him that he’s not alone. But how?
How?

Kyle’s thoughts have opened my eyes. His thoughts, like mine, now run along the lines,
What’s the point?

I can’t let him think that. I won’t. I’m going to show him how wrong he is to think that. But how?
How?
And how do I make my way back from this place? This … Hell?

What have I done?

28

I LOOKED AT
the man before me. I could see his trainers, his faded blue jeans, his grubby blue T-shirt with a stain in the middle. He was just as I’d found him all those months ago. I took a step towards him, wondering if my senses were deceiving me yet again.

‘Dad?’

The man raised his head to look straight at me. ‘At last,’ I heard him whisper. ‘At last.’

‘Dad!’

We were now less than a metre apart.

‘Hello, Kyle.’ Dad smiled at me, a smile like I’d never seen from him before. A smile that said so many things. Maybe I really was imagining things, because first and foremost the look on Dad’s face seemed to say … No, I had to be dreaming.

‘You’re the one who’s been calling me?’ I asked, astounded.

Dad nodded.

It
was
him. But how could it be? I didn’t understand.

‘Have you come to … take me with you?’ I whispered.

‘No, son.’ Dad shook his head, his eyes the root of the sadness on his face. ‘The last thing in the world I want is for you to end up in the same place as me. I needed to see you, to talk to you before it was too late.’

‘Too late for what?’ I asked.

Dad was standing in front of me. He was actually standing in front of me. I still couldn’t wrap my head around that. I needed to know who he was,
what
he was. ‘Are you … are you Death?’

‘No, I’m your dad.’ The twinkle in his eye was so recognizable, as was the slightly ironic smile. This was much more like the dad I remembered – before Mum left.

‘But you’re d-dead …’

Dad’s smile instantly fell away from his face. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about – and I don’t have much time.’

What on earth could be so urgent that it’d bring my dad back from the grave?

And then Dad said the very last thing I’d expected. ‘Kyle, you’ve got to stop blaming everyone except me for what I did.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Son, I died,’ Dad said gently. ‘It wasn’t your mum’s fault. It was my decision, Kyle. My stupid decision. I’m the one who literally threw my life away.’

‘I know that.’

‘Then when are you going to stop punishing your mother?’

‘I’m not. It’s just … it’s just that …’ Like fizzy drink from a shaken bottle, the words erupted. ‘Mum didn’t want either of us when you were alive … I mean, around. It shouldn’t have taken your death to bring her back, not if she really wanted to be with me. But it doesn’t matter ’cause I don’t care. I don’t need her or her guilty conscience.’

Dad sighed. ‘The moment your mum heard what’d happened she came straight back. No one had to go out and find her, she came home. Doesn’t that tell you something?’

I didn’t answer.

‘And Kyle, when are you going to stop blaming yourself?’

‘Blaming myself?’

‘For my death,’ said Dad.

‘I don’t—’

‘Kyle …’ Dad spoke softly, shaking his head.

The lie died on my lips. I could feel tears stinging at my eyes.

‘What happened to me wasn’t your fault either,’ Dad continued.

‘If I’d come straight home from school instead of going round to Steve’s …’ I began, putting my secret thoughts into words for the very first time.

‘Kyle, what happened was my misguided way of trying to get your mum back,’ Dad said sombrely. ‘Maybe it was a desperate cry for help. But it wasn’t
your
mum’s fault and it certainly wasn’t yours. If you’re going to blame anyone, blame me for getting lost in a sea of guilt and more than a little self-pity. You’ve got to stop blaming yourself – you’re breaking my heart. And much worse than that, you’re beginning to think that what I did was right.’

How did he even know that?

Dad regarded me, waiting for me to deny it. We both knew I couldn’t. I was beginning to wonder more and more often,
What’s the point?

How could he know that unless …?

‘Have you … have you been watching me all this time?’ I wasn’t too keen on that idea. ‘Have you been watching every little thing I’ve been doing?’

Dad did his best not to smile but failed miserably. ‘It’s not that I’ve been watching,’ he said, his lips still twitching. There was a pause as his smile slowly faded. ‘But I could sense you. I could sense how hurt you were inside – and how the feeling was beginning to swallow you up.’

‘Sense it – how?’

‘Kyle, when we die, we get to feel all the joy and all the pain we’ve brought to others. Except with you the feelings of pain didn’t stop, they just got worse,’ Dad said, his voice sorrowful. ‘Your pain became mine.’

‘So you did all this?’ I waved my hand at the destruction all around us.

‘Of course not, son. I don’t have the power to affect things in that way. Just being here is taking all my concentration.’

‘So no one caused this crash?’

‘The dead don’t have the power to affect events like this. It doesn’t work that way.’

‘So why appear here? Why now? Why not a month ago or six months ago?’

‘It took this crash and your friends’ nightmares and the very real presence of Death for you to accept me,’ said Dad.

‘Accept you?’

‘I needed your belief in the possibility of me before I could appear. Without that, I’d never have been strong enough to reach you. I couldn’t do it on my own.’