Chapter 9
NINE
Four months later . . .
Aidan
I’m twenty-six years old and my summer has been reduced to sitting on a bench in my tiny garden, wishing there was a bus that ran from my shitty bedsit to the pub .
. . or at least the return journey. Apparently, I forget my leg doesn’t work right when I’ve had a skin-full, and I have new scars on my face to prove it.
Loser.
Hardly news. I was a basket case before the accident.
Sighing, I tilt my face to the sun and wish its warmth would seep into my aching bones.
I’ve been cold for months, and even the steamiest day of the year so far isn’t enough to ease the chill I brought home from the hospital.
I shiver and knock my head against the brick wall behind me, but all that does is remind me of the many times I watched Ludo do the same thing on his bed rail, and a new wave of melancholy hits me.
Because that’s the other thing: it doesn’t seem to matter how much I drink or how many pills I pop, Ludo’s imprint on me is permanent. There’s not a single word, touch, or exchanged glance I can’t remember with perfect clarity, and it’s killing me.
The nurse won’t leave. She’s bustling around my bed, piling up the books, magazines, and junk food that have materialised while I’ve been in a morphine coma. She says I look better already, that I’ll be up on my feet in no time.
I want to punch her—metaphorically, of course.
At the very least, I want her to fuck off so I can figure out what the hell is going on. If it weren’t for the throbbing pain in my leg, I’d have thought I was dreaming, but even through the morphine haze, I remember the world I closed my eyes to.
The world where Ludo was here.
With me.
He touched my hand and talked to me.
For hours.
And in this moment, all that matters to me is that he’s not here now.
The nurse leaves, and I raise my bed to a sitting position, pressing my fist into my mouth to muffle my groan.
There are a dozen magazines piled up on the bedside cabinet and even more chocolate bars.
I flick through the magazines with a deepening frown until I come to Gardeners’ Weekly.
Something clicks, and a chuckle bursts out of me as I read the cover teaser about diseased oaks.
It’s all from Ludo; it has to be. He’s probably the only person who’s ever listened to me rant about trees without rolling his eyes or heard me confess my addiction to Snickers bars.
Footsteps approach my bed. My heart leaps, but I glance up to meet the gaze of the same nurse who’s just left.
“Mr Drummond?”
“What?”
The nurse doesn’t flinch. With a knowing smile that feels so fucking smug, she hands over my hoodie and a scrap of paper folded into a tiny triangle.
A note, from Ludo, and all the confirmation I need that he’s gone.
I return to the present with a sharp gasp, and my hand moves of its own accord to rub my chest, as if it can plug the inexplicable hole there.
After that day, I didn’t take a single hit of morphine the entire time I was in hospital, and I fought sleep like it was my worst enemy in case Ludo came back and I missed him.
But the self-inflicted exhaustion did me no good. Physiotherapy took longer and hurt more than it should’ve done, and Ludo didn’t come back.
That hurt more than it should’ve done too.
Still hurts. And I don’t know why. I learnt that damn-fucking note by heart, and every day I have to convince myself that the impersonal goodbye he left me doesn’t mean anything.
That my attachment to him is a symptom of some fucked up cabin fever.
But every day, I fail. Either Ludo is a morphine-induced hallucination or the current between us was real—is real, even though he left me without any means to track him down.
No number, no address, no full name to stalk him on social media.
And trust me, I’ve tried, though recently I’ve made a resolution to drink more instead.
With another sigh, I haul myself inside and limp to the fridge.
The beer bottle feels warm to my cold hands, but I open it and drink it in one swallow anyway.
Regret courses through me before I set the bottle down, but I shrug it off and shuffle to the sofa where I’ve left the cheap whisky.
I want to sleep, but the fear of waking up keeps me conscious.
Before the accident, I slept hard, deep, and all night long, waking only to the second alarm I set on my phone.
Now I sleep for a couple of hours, and the slightest noise—imagined or real—disturbs me, and every fucking time, I come awake certain that I’m falling all over again.
Whisky helps. Sometimes.
Doesn’t help today. I drink enough to put me into a coma, and yet somehow I’m still bolt upright on my couch, suffocating in my crappy bedsit.
The whisky courses through my veins, but instead of slumber, it stokes a fire I can’t ignore.
Even the empty bottle makes my heart beat too fast. Because .
. . Ludo. Because every-fucking-thing reminds me of him, no matter how tenuous a connection my ridiculous brain dreams up.
With the whisky, it’s simple. I buy it with the money Bernard has deposited in my bank account every week since the accident.
The money Ludo suggested he’d feel guilty enough to pay me.
It’s enough that I don’t even need to call the number Ludo left in my drawer, but I keep the note anyway, along with the bland goodbye.
I keep both tucked into my wallet, and I can’t see how I’ll ever throw them away.
Yeah. That’s right. I’m clinging to scraps of paper to validate my obsession with a dude who was likely nice to me because he was bored.
Loser.
I close my eyes and repeat the insult over and over, but while acceptance of who I’ve become sometimes grants me respite, today, as the afternoon sun fades to a gold-hued evening, a terminal restlessness steals over me. However much it hurts to move, I can’t sit still.
Fuck this.
I abandon the whisky bottle and make for the door. The pub calls my name, but I turn in the opposite direction and just fucking walk, pain dulled by booze and apathy until I can’t feel a thing in my mashed-up leg. It’s odd like that. As if the nerves have given up on me as much as everyone else.
Not Michael, though. But I push all thoughts of my earnest cousin away. I can’t think about him without a shed-load of guilt, and I’m enjoying my moment of nothingness.
Eventually, my aimless wander takes me to the edge of town.
In the distance I can see the railway bridge and the hills.
In front of me are the woods I ran riot through as a teenager—drinking, banging powder, and smoking weed.
I miss those days, but the tiny part of me who’s a responsible adult cringes at the damage I might’ve caused the trees.
The woods are vast and populated by ash and sweet chestnut, but there’s a broad oak close to the heathland that used to be the biggest tree I’d ever seen.
I need to find her.
And so I push on, treading carefully over uneven ground.
The woods are popular with dog walkers and children, but I see no one.
Hear nothing but birds and rustling leaves.
It’s heaven and the closest to climbing I can be right now, so I keep walking and walking until I reach the gargantuan tree from my childhood.
It’s not that tall, but it’s wide—ten metres in girth. There are many bigger trees in the world, but in my little corner, this old girl is fucking mystical. I make a loop around her huge trunk, fingers trailing rough bark, and for the first time in weeks, I feel something of myself return to me.
Perhaps it’s not Ludo I’ve been missing all this time. Perhaps it’s myself.
Of course it’s myself.
And yet still…
I miss him too.