If This Is Home Page 21

  She didn’t wait for a reply.

  ‘We went before the kids were born. Every road I walked down I thought I saw you. Every restaurant we ate in, all I could think was that you would be there. Mike just looked around saying that Bethany would have loved it here. He couldn’t help it. At the top of the Empire State he cried. At the foot of the Statue of Liberty he left her a flower. I had to watch him go through that. It burned me to see it.’

  ‘Dad said he blames me. For New York, for all of that.’

  ‘Mike doesn’t know who to blame.’

  She blew on her coffee and looked at my cigarettes. ‘Can I sneak a drag?’ she said. ‘It’s been years, but I still miss them.’

  I lit one and passed it to her. She took a long suck on the filter then passed it back. She had grown into a sophisticated-looking woman, well-heeled, well-spoken. She wore her make-up well and she carried none of the nervous energy she’d had as a teenager.

  ‘Did you know?’ she said. ‘About Mike and me?’

  I nodded. Bethany looked away, over towards the kids.

  ‘Bethany suspected. It was the way you clammed up when he was mentioned, or something.’

  She faltered: ‘Hold me, Mark. Please hold me.’

  She sobbed against me. ‘It’s all my fault,’ she said. ‘All my fault.’

  *

  Bethany and I sat at our usual bench beside the jukebox; Hannah was feeding ten-pence pieces into the slot. The Coach was empty, it was late and the regulars had gone. While she punched numbers into the keypad, I took out a guidebook I’d bought that morning and set it down on the table. We’d just reserved the airline tickets and all I wanted to do was plan.

  ‘I was thinking we should book somewhere for our first night,’ I said, flicking to the hotels section.

  ‘What you should do is get a cab straight to Manhattan,’ Hannah said, turning away from the umber glow of the jukebox. ‘Then stay at somewhere really opulent and glamorous. Y’know, pretend that you’re rich, uptown sophisticates, just breezing through to paint the town red.’

  She was sick of the talk, she’d made it quite clear, but that had just made it all the more fun. We had, at one point, invited her along; but she saw the hope in our eyes that she’d say no. No doubt, she also saw the possibilities.

  The jukebox clunked and Bethany lit a cigarette. ‘That’s such a cliché,’ she said.

  ‘I was just saying what I’d do,’ Hannah said as she came back. ‘You two do what you want.’

  ‘What I meant to say,’ Bethany said, by way of apology, ‘is that everyone just goes straight to Manhattan. And the first time they see the place, they’re all tired and jet-lagged.’

  ‘We should get ourselves a cheap place. You know, a proper motel,’ I said.

  ‘Like I said, knock yourselves out.’

  My idea of a proper motel was one plucked straight from the road-movies and television shows we loved. Roaches on the walls, odd stains on the carpeting, a coin meter on the side of the television, thin plasterboard walls that shivered under strong winds. The kind of place alcoholics go to die, or swindlers rendezvous to count their bounty. So the three of us pored over the budget brochures and tried to find the perfect place. Eventually I hit upon The Knight’s Inn, a mile from Newark Airport. Bethany read the description and looked at the photo.

  ‘It’s God’s own American motel,’ I said.

  ‘It looks weird,’ Bethany said. ‘And dangerous.’

  I sniffed and finished my drink. ‘Don’t be stupid. It’s perfect, isn’t it, Hannah?’

  ‘It looks really authentic,’ she said. The motel was a squared-off ‘C’ with fifteen rooms on each side. It was set on stilts – you parked your car under your room – and was exactly what I’d wanted. Bethany lit a cigarette and looked out of the window. It was raining again.

  ‘And you’ve got to say it looks cool, doesn’t it?’ I said.

  Hannah looked straight at me and then shook her head.

  ‘You poor deluded creature,’ she muttered. ‘It’s a shit house. You’ll be dead or have AIDS in minutes.’

  I went to get more drinks and Hannah joined me at the bar.

  ‘You need to live in the real world. You know that?’

  ‘It’s just a holiday, Han.’

  ‘You should try and remember that sometimes. Seriously.’

  I looked at her then, expecting her to be laughing, shooting the breeze. But all I saw was the first of several goodbyes. She was the one who wanted to escape the most: she had something that was tenable, not couched in dreams and late-night what-ifs. At that moment, did she think that she’d end up with what she wanted? That Bethany would be out of the picture and all these childish things would be behind us? She was always more practical, more real, than either of us.

  ‘Frankly I’ll be glad when you’re both gone,’ she said eventually.

  *

  One of the kids had fallen over and was crying; the other was shouting, ‘Mummy!’ at the top of her voice. Hannah ran to them. Bethany and I stayed where we were. The girl had a scuffed knee and Hannah brought the two of them to join us at the table. Hannah hugged the injured child close to her and told her it was okay, that she was fine and she should probably go and apologize to the slide. Hannah’s child, Bethany’s sister, sat beside me. Bethany wandered off, kicking at the turf.

  ‘Who are you?’ the child said.

  ‘I’m a friend of your mummy,’ I said.

  ‘Like Aunty Beck?’

  ‘A bit, yes.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Joe.’ It was instant. I couldn’t take it back.

  ‘My name is Molly.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Molly.’

  ‘Do you know my daddy too?’

  ‘Yes, I know your daddy.’

  Bethany was nowhere to be found.

  ‘Do you know this song? “There’s a story in our town”,’ I sang.

  ‘“Of the prettiest girl around”,’ she sang back. ‘That’s what Daddy sings when we can’t sleep.’

  The other child quietened and Hannah looked over at Molly and me. ‘Molls, take Sara over to the swings, please.’

  ‘I want to stay with Joe.’

  ‘Well, Joe and I need to talk. So do as Mummy says, okay?’

  Hannah and I were alone again.

  ‘She’s gorgeous,’ I said.

  ‘None of your own, I take it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They change you,’ she said. ‘But not enough.’

  Bethany was back, suddenly. She wouldn’t look me in the eye.

  *

  Bethany had always said that she wanted kids one day. It was at odds with everything else she used to talk about. She said she wanted to feel the same way her mother had, the way her father used to talk to her as though she was the only person on earth.

  ‘When I fell pregnant the first time, I had the most incredible pains,’ Hannah said. ‘Even the midwives said that I had it worse than most. I used to think it was retribution. Karma or something’ – she waved her hand – ‘just bad luck, I suppose. When Ada arrived, I was beyond myself, but all I saw was Bethany. That was all. I looked down at my baby and I saw her face. Mike couldn’t see it, thankfully, but I could. Every time I fed her, every time I changed her, it was Beth looking back.’

  She finished her coffee and asked for a cigarette. I passed her the pack.

  ‘You really didn’t know, did you?’ she said as she was lighting the cigarette. ‘You really had no idea?’

  ‘I told you,’ I said. ‘We both knew.’

  ‘Not about that,’ she said. ‘About Beth.’

  Bethany had been standing by the kids but stopped and straightened up. She sat next to Hannah, cross-legged, and shaking her head. Hannah lit her cigarette and smiled. She knew what she was doing, and there was a sort of relish to it. Retribution. Bethany kept her eyes on her. I couldn’t work out whether she was asking her to stop, or giving her permission to continue. Bethany seemed to
have lost the ability to speak.

  ‘She wasn’t going to New York, Mark,’ she said. ‘You knew that really, didn’t you? You knew that she loved you, but you were unnerving her. You were there all the time, like you were trying to actually be her. To live her life for her. Mike had cancelled her ticket. He booked us tickets to go away, me and Beth, for a holiday.’

  I smiled, thin-lipped, there was a howling wind, there was Bethany Wilder, still avoiding my gaze.

  ‘Look, Hannah, whatever Mike has said to you—’

  ‘This isn’t about my husband, Mark, this is about Beth. Don’t you remember? You’d made everything so difficult. All that talk! All she wanted to do was go to university. Have a normal life. Kids. And all you wanted was for her to do what you wanted. Your stupid bloody dreams of leaving.’

  The kids were shrieking and Hannah looked around to check on them. Bethany was standing next to them. The pale pastel colours of their clothes made them look almost edible.

  ‘This was what you’re here for, right. The truth?’

  Bethany stood. She didn’t say anything.

  *

  The Brooklyn Bridge is cold and the wind chills. I look over to Manhattan, tourists streaming past me. I’m wearing a warm coat with a fur collar that I’ve borrowed from O’Neil. I have the baggie in my hand, the last remaining things of Bethany Wilder. Of us together. Horns honk, and the wind fingers my hair. I open the baggie and send the ashes down onto the East River. They float on the air. They disappear too quickly, catching on the breeze.

  *

  The two children came running back. They wanted Coca-Cola. I went inside to get them the drinks. Bethany was sitting on a bar stool.

  So you know.

  I ordered the Cokes and a whisky for myself. I drank the whisky.

  I always loved you, Bethany Wilder.

  And now that you know? Now that you’ve got the truth?

  I think the truth is whatever you make it.

  Bethany smiled. That’s what you always thought, not me.

  I took the Cokes outside, but the kids and Hannah were gone. I threw the still-full cans in the bin and sat down at the picnic table. I stayed there for a long time, but they did not come back. Bethany did not follow me out from the bar, and she was not in there when I ordered another drink.

  There was a wedding at the Coach; pale linen draping the steps, the fabric held in place by lumps of coal. I passed a man in a kilt and a couple of women wearing hats. They were drunk though it was no later than three. I went to my room and sat on the edge of my bed, picked the ripped notebook pages from the waste bin. They came out in a random order, like a puzzle. It took me hours to put them right, and then I read again what I had written. I read it three times, then put a call through to reception. They said that they were very busy.

  I went out into the town. There were a lot of school children in blazers. I saw myself and Hannah and Bethany, cigarettes burning in our hands and no idea of what was to come. I went into the newsagent’s and bought an ink pen and a new notebook. I imagined my father browsing the racks, Hannah telling her kids that they couldn’t have the magazines they were waving in her face.

  The hotel bar was too busy so I bought some wine from the off-licence up the road and carried it back to my room. I poured a glass and looked at the empty pages, the pen heavy in my hand. Bethany wasn’t by the window, she wasn’t in the bath. There was just the notebook, the pen and the bottle of wine.

  The page was white and lined and I hovered over it. Eventually, after a long time, I wrote something. ‘In moments of crisis, Bethany Wilder always thinks of America. Or more accurately, she thinks of New York City.’ I put down the pen and finished my glass of wine. I wrote for several hours straight.

  Just after seven there was a loud knock on the door. I looked through the spy hole and opened the door.

  ‘There was a message for me,’ Ferne said after I let her in. She looked around the room. ‘What’s up?’

  I looked down at the notebook. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all. I’m writing … Doing some work.’

  ‘So … ?’

  Her eyes lifted. I saw Post-it notes held by fridge magnets; her handwriting on them all.

  ‘Let’s go out tonight,’ I said. ‘I mean properly.’

  Ferne paused and looked at the desk.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Anywhere,’ I said, ‘anywhere at all.’

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you:

  Andrew Kidd for unwavering support. Kate Harvey for sensitive and inspired editing. Nicholas Blake for the copy edit. Sally Riley, Anna Stein, Imogen Pelham and all at Aitken Alexander; Sandra Taylor, Alison Menzies, Paul Baggaley and all at Picador.

  William Atkins, Simon Baker, Barbara Baker, Matthew Baker, Gavin Bower, Lee Brackstone, Rebecca Bream, Gareth Evers, Jen Field, Daniel Fordham, Niven Govinden, Guy Griffiths, Aidan Jackson, Helen Knowles, Jude Rogers, Lee Rourke, Victoria Seal, Nikesh Shukla, Oliver Shepherd, Hyun Sook Shin, David Stewart, Sarah Taylor-Wilcox.

  My parents – John and Joyce Evers – for love, inspiration and understanding.

  Lisa Baker – for green leaves and Light Years.

  Also by Stuart Evers

  Ten Stories About Smoking

  First published 2012 by Picador

  This electronic edition published 2012 by Picador

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-1141-9

  Copyright © Stuart Evers 2012

  The right of Stuart Evers to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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