Chapter 16
And so – finally – here is the truth. The actual truth. It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it?
‘My humps! It’s my humps! You should come and see my humps!’ I sing, completely out of tune, and only getting some of the lyrics right. This is very silly song, but it’s a hard one not to sing along to.
It will soon become the stuff of my nightmares, but right now, it’s just a silly pop song, with some very silly lyrics that I’m getting only about half of right.
‘My humps! It’s my humps! Get a load of my humps!’
Ring ring.
I look down at my phone.
It’s Maurice from the bowling alley. He must be calling about Teddy’s birthday party.
Damn.
I know I shouldn’t answer the phone while I’m driving, but I do need to speak to him, and I’m not sure when I’ll get another chance.
I look down at my phone . . . and then press the button on the steering wheel to answer it.
‘Hello?’ I say, turning the radio down as I do.
‘Hello? Is that Charlie?’ Maurice’s voice booms around the cabin of my car.
Because of course I answered the call using the Bluetooth hands-free connection.
That’s the kind of thing Charlie King does. He’s sensible . . . with a good moral centre.
Sadly, the kind of thing Charlie King also does is construct a web of subconscious lies around himself, for no reason whatsoever, other than his inability to accept that the world does not always function in the way he wants it to.
You cannot stop a car veering across the road in front of you because the old man driving it is having a heart attack.
You cannot stop feeling helpless and useless in the face of events you have no control over.
You cannot pretend that everything is totally fine, when it is most definitely not.
And you cannot get through it on your own.
No matter how much you think you can.
Everything explodes.
It has been exploding for several months now.
When the cars come to rest, I see the teenage boy with the cut on his forehead, and I see the old Datsun Cherry Anthony Silver is driving.
I see him gasping for his last breath, when I try to walk over.
I see the other people – including the teenage boy – trying to help him as I sit on the side of the road, gripped by an extreme level of shock and panic I have no capacity to deal with. It will be the shame of this complete inaction that will force my brain to punish me with all the lies it tells.
I watch as the paramedics try and fail to save Anthony’s life. Try and fail to control the situation. Try and fail.
And in those dreadful cold, lifeless moments, when the world spirals so out of control that I feel like I might just die here on the side of the road along with Anthony, I make up another world.
A better world.
One where things are just a little more . . . perfect.
One where I am not sat on the sidelines, unable to cope. One where I am the Charlie King I think I should be. One where I haven’t seen horror and death.
One where I am tota—
. . . oh, you know by now.
It’s time I stopped saying it so much.