Chapter 36
‘Where the hell have you been?’
Jake eyed Marcus as he walked up the drive towards Lark Lodge and veered into the front garden. Marcus had been sitting in the garden, reading a newspaper. He closed it and folded it in two as Jake approached. Jake slumped next to him on the wooden swing for two that was positioned on the lawn under the study window.
Jake leaned his head back on the high-backed cushion and closed his eyes.
He felt the swing gently begin to rock back and forward.
‘Are you alright?’ Marcus’s hand brushed his shoulder.
Jake opened his eyes and stared at the ocean-blue sky. ‘Is your suitcase packed?’ Jake turned to look at Marcus. ‘I really need to get out of this place.’
The swing became still. Marcus looked at Jake with a questioning expression.
Jake didn’t feel like offering an explanation. Instead, he rolled his head back to look at the sky. A solitary grey cloud drifted into his frame of vision, which he thought seemed quite apt. In fact, a massive great black cloud with thunderstorms, lightning and torrential rain would just about suit his mood – not this blue sky, that pitiful cloud.
Marcus spoke. ‘What are you going to do about the envelopes?’
‘Huh?’ Jake willed the cloud to grow to immense proportions.
‘These.’ Marcus thrust his hand in front of Jake’s face, obscuring his view of the cloud.
Jake slowly focused on the two crumpled envelopes Marcus was holding up in front of his face. He sat up abruptly and checked his coat pockets – empty. ‘Where did you find them?’ said Jake, reaching for them.
‘On the floor in the bedroom – where else?’ He sounded defensive, as though Jake was accusing him of rifling through his pockets.
Jake sighed. The two letters he’d inadvertently walked out of Cedar Grove with the previous night, after he’d visited Martha, must have fallen out of his pocket when he’d pulled out the plastic bag for Marcus. Maybe he should take them back to Arnold straight away, before he really lost them. Jake turned to Marcus as he stuffed them back in his pocket. ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’
‘What’s going on?’ Marcus said flatly.
Jake got up. ‘I don’t know. You read the letters. Why don’t you tell me, Sherlock?’ Jake turned to go but Marcus caught his arm, pulling it hard.
‘Tell me.’
‘What is with you?’ Jake tried to shake his grip free, but he couldn’t. He stood still and held his arm up with Marcus’s hand still attached to his sleeve. ‘Is this going to be another episode like last night? Because I’m running out of bandages,’ he said sarcastically.
Marcus’s grip slackened. He let go.
‘Thank you.’ Jake lowered his voice. ‘Now suppose you tell me exactly what drugs you’re on.’ Marcus’s behaviour appeared to be getting more erratic and paranoid. Jake knew methadone was a treatment for heroin dependence. Even so, he wanted Marcus to just admit it. Jake was thinking of the saying: you have to admit it, to quit it . If only Marcus would just acknowledge he had a serious drug problem.
Marcus’s face hardened. ‘Suppose you tell me about those.’ Marcus indicated the letters in Jake’s pocket.
‘Ok.’ Jake shrugged, realising Marcus wasn’t ready to tell him about his drug habit just yet. ‘Have it your way.’ Jake headed across the lawn to the front door. He heard Marcus’s quick footsteps on the gravel drive behind him as he approached the door too. Reaching for the doorknob, Marcus’s hand closed around it first. He did not open the door.
‘Well, aren’t you going to open it?’ Jake said impatiently. He turned to Marcus in exasperation. ‘What?’
‘I’ll tell you about the drugs.’ He held Jake’s gaze. ‘But first you have to tell me about the envelopes.’
‘All right,’ Jake interrupted, not sure why Marcus was making a big deal about the letters; they had nothing to do with him. ‘Now can we go in?’
Marcus twisted the doorknob and flung the door wide, letting Jake enter first.
As they approached the bedroom door, he glanced at Marcus and thought, your suitcase had better be packed, because I’ve just about had it with you. Jake kept that thought to himself as he walked into the room. He noted Marcus; suitcase on the floor by the door, jacket hanging from the handle. The wardrobe door was wide open and empty. There were no clothes strewn about the bed. He was packed and ready to go.
Good.
Jake zipped up his own bag, which he’d barely unpacked. He glanced at Marcus, who was moving towards the sofa.
Marcus sat.
Not good.
Jake lifted his bag off the bed.
‘The contents of those envelopes first,’ Marcus said coolly, leaning forward and tossing a cushion behind his back, making himself comfortable.
‘We’ll discuss it on the way,’ Jake said firmly, walking to the door. He felt his anger brewing like a pressure cooker about to blow. The letters had nothing to do with Marcus. He shouldn’t even be there. The time had come to leave, but Marcus was going to do his best to ruin his day.
Jake dropped his bag and retrieved the envelopes from his coat pocket. ‘These damn letters,’ he waved them at Marcus. ‘If it wasn’t for these …’ Jake crossed the room. ‘Do you think I’d come here for a holiday?’ He stared down at Marcus.
‘Have you even looked inside the envelopes?’
Jake’s temper exploded and he didn’t care if Gayle and her mother, along with the whole bloody neighbourhood heard. ‘I’m not reading the damn letters!’ He threw them on the bed; he missed, and they dropped to the floor.
Jake walked to the window and looked out. He calmed down. ‘I guess it serves me right.’ He wished he’d never taken that call from Arnold Wright.
’Why do you keep calling them letters?’
‘What do you mean?’ Jake snarled as he turned from the window and slunk to the end of the bed.
Marcus knitted his brow. ‘Give them to me and I’ll show you …’
‘No!’ Jake flopped down on the end of the bed. ‘I need to return them to Arnold.’ He bent down and picked the envelopes off the floor.
‘Who’s Arnold?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Jake got up from the bed in frustration and paced the floor as he recounted the whole business, from the phone call back in London from a stranger about Martha and the letters she had for William.. He explained that he’d been prompted to make the trip because he’d suddenly had time on his hands and had felt sorry for an old man and for an old lady who was at death’s door. ‘There, are you satisfied? I’m an idiot. I wish I’d never agreed to come.’ Jake stood in front of Marcus. ‘Can we go now?’
‘I think you need to look at the contents of those envelopes.’ The sound of Marcus’s calm voice was irritating beyond belief.
‘And I think you need to shut up!’ Jake stuffed the letters in his pocket again, and walked to the door. ‘I’m going to give them back.’ He lunged at his bag and missed, banging his hand on the doorframe.
‘Ouch,’ said Marcus. ‘I bet that hurt.’
Jake glared at Marcus as he grabbed the bag and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Jake leaned back against the closed door. His hand was throbbing. He stood like that for several seconds, breathing deeply and trying to get a grip. It was working – sort of. Marcus had always had the capacity to wind him up. Since he had lost Eleanor, there had been times he had seriously wanted Marcus to disappear out of his life permanently, but he was afraid of what might happen if he just walked out on Marcus. Just then was a case in point. Would he spiral again, and go on a bender? Jake did not want another phone call from Faye about Marcus, even though if Marcus landed himself in jail again, it would not be Jake’s fault.
Jake sighed and opened the bedroom door; he swung it wide and stood in the open doorway, eyeing Marcus. He was still seated on the sofa. ‘Are you coming or not?’
‘I don’t know – you tell me,’ Marcus quipped. ‘You seem to be doing your best to ditch me.’
‘And why do you suppose that is?’ Jake watched the smirk disappear from Marcus’s face.
Marcus got up and walked towards the door.
Jake moved into the room, holding the door in readiness to close it behind them.
Marcus collected his jacket and suitcase from by the door. He paused in front of Jake, and leaned in close, whispering, ‘Why don’t you say it to my face? Say it out loud, then see how bloody fantastical, how bloody absurd it sounds.’ Marcus stood his ground, staring at Jake intently.
Jake stared back, taking in those dark eyes and the faint two-inch scar just above the eyebrow – one of the battle-scars of childhood that people all seemed to collect.
‘Yeah, just as I thought,’ Marcus brushed past Jake. ‘You can’t say it to my face, so you write it down for posterity – cruel, Jake.’
‘What are you talking about now?’ Jake was confused. He shut the bedroom door and followed Marcus down the stairs.
‘That’s why I can’t visit the memorial garden, and see that stone.’
Jake caught up with him at the front door.
‘You know what?’ Marcus scoffed. ‘You’re the one with problem, not me. Don’t you see?’
Of course Jake did. He was the problem because he had made the mistake of telling a truth which Marcus could not and would not accept. If it had been the other way round, on that mountain on Christmas Day, could Jake have done the same as Marcus – made that choice, leaving Eleanor to her fate? More to the point, could he live with himself afterwards?
He didn’t know the answer to that question but what he did know was how he loathed Marcus for just carrying on as though nothing had happened, for thinking everything could stay the same.
Jake searched his face; was it possible that Marcus had convinced himself of the lie? Convinced himself that what he had said happened at Christmas was true? It was understandable; it could be a way out, a way for Marcus to live with what he had done.
‘I can’t visit the garden without your little inscription staring back at me, accusing me.’ Marcus’s words cut into Jake’s thoughts.
‘My what?’
‘Perhaps you shouldn’t keep it to yourself. Why not tell the family?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You can’t tell them, can you? Who would believe your absurd little concoction?’
Jake sighed. How could he tell the family? Didn’t they have enough to cope with, with the loss of Eleanor, without knowing what had really happened on that mountain when the three of them had got caught in that avalanche? It wouldn’t change anything; it wouldn’t bring her back. This disagreement over the facts; it was just between the two of them. And Jake wondered if it was ever going to end.
He had suggested counselling in the past. He could suggest hypnosis. Wasn’t that all the rage, to find and face up to all those repressed memories? What good would that do? This was so obviously Marcus’s coping mechanism, to believe the lie, to believe he wasn’t the one who had chosen to dig Jake out of the snow first instead of his sister.
‘So, you have your little lie engraved, so it makes you feel good, and me feel bad,’ continued Marcus started shaking his head. ‘Was it worth it?’
Jake opened his mouth to speak.
‘Was it worth our friendship?’ Marcus turned abruptly, opened the front door and walked out.
Jake stared after him, trying to piece together what had just happened. One comment, just one comment, would set off the whole damn argument again. Jake realised in that moment, watching Marcus walk down the front steps, that this was never going to go away. This heartache and their friendship was never going to mend.