Chapter 19
Jack
Over the past week, I’ve replayed our conversation over and over.
My memory is becoming… not clear as such, but…
it’s like when I’ve read a thriller, been blindsided by the twist, and realised that the answers were staring me in the face the whole time.
It’s as though my brain is starting to work again, to connect in ways that it hasn’t over the past year.
And maybe, if I keep piecing things together, I can do this… Launch this shop. Run it, even.
I don’t blame Maggie. Not even a little bit. She wasn’t the one who got pissed. And she wasn’t the one who knocked into me. I can see she feels responsible though, and I hate that.
My eyes scan the stack of unopened letters in my hand, and that glimmer of possibility, that I could make a success of the new shop evaporates, like the words on the envelopes.
I try to pinpoint the exact time I realised that I would never read again, as I riffle through the pile of letters.
When I first woke up in the hospital, I had put it down to the pain meds, the headache that made even the small crack through the hospital blinds feel like someone was piercing my retina with a red-hot needle.
When they explained the real reason, I thought that there must be a mistake.
I had grown up surrounded by literature, by books and stories; of course I would read again.
The other option was too hard to contemplate.
My memories of that time come in pieces, tiny splinters.
Vicky visiting me and unpacking a bag with pyjamas, energy drinks, grapes and a book.
She wasn’t being unkind, or insensitive.
I always had a book with me, or a Kindle…
She had joked that there was no point buying me jewellery; books were always my accessory.
She had kissed me, arranged my hair to cover the bandage. ‘You’ll be OK. Nobody loves books more than you. You’ll find a way.’
And honestly? I believed her. After she’d gone, despite the pounding headache, I had reached for the hardback.
It felt heavier in my hands than usual, and the picture on the cover swam before my eyes.
Words that should have been familiar sneered back at me.
I couldn’t read the chapter heading, couldn’t decode anything on the page.
It was as if it needed a cipher. Nausea came over me like a wave, the kind of seasickness that takes over your body and leaves you gripping the sides of the hospital bed like a life raft.
I’d reached for the bedpan and thrown up.
I remember the police coming, asking me questions, but I couldn’t remember anything back then other than leaving the pub and a vague impression of Luke’s face, but I couldn’t confirm that he’d attacked me.
All I knew was that he was there. I told them I was drunk, my blood alcohol level confirming this.
There were no unknown substances in my test results, no other injuries, and my wallet was still in my pocket.
I was told to call them if I remembered anything else but it was assumed that the injury was caused by some drunken misdemeanour.
The weeks that followed are a tightly knit line of failures, and frustration, but I do remember reaching for a microwave meal and spending ten minutes trying to read the instructions. I’d cried with it in my hands. The doors shut. The curtains drawn. Alone.
That was the moment when I knew.
Knew that my life would never be the same as it once was.
The door is stuck and Maggie comes into the shop with an ‘Oof.’ Her hair is wild, cheeks flushed, Henry Hoover trailing behind her.
Only Maggie could make walking through the door with a vacuum cleaner look charming. We had agreed to make a start on clearing the shop, so that if I decided to sublet the lease, the place would look more like a shop and less like a half-finished project. A bit like me, I guess.
‘Hey!’ She blows her hair out of her eyes.
‘I came prepared!’ She lands her hands on her hips and looks around.
The sunlight is tracking a path through the grimy windows, lighting her up as though she has her own spotlight.
Maggie always has this typhoon of energy swirling around her.
I shouldn’t find it appealing, I should be running away from the chaos, but instead, I find my body calming, the ache of anxiety in my chest releasing.
I know this is too soon for anything more than friendship; I’m still healing in more ways than one, and she said ‘just friends’ and I agreed.
What else could I do? This is all I’m capable of right now.
I’ll just try to ignore the way the room expands and brightens when she’s in it.
Maggie is determined to speak with Luke, to see if she can find out more about what happened.
So far though, he’s ignoring her messages.
I’m trying not to get swept up in the hope that finding more answers about that night might help me on the road to recovery.
She’s convinced that he’s not the violent type…
The vague memories I do have and that my stroke was caused by a blow to the head seem to contradict that. Even so, I trust her judgement.
‘You wouldn’t believe the morning I’ve had.’ She shrugs off her backpack and her pink fur coat and dumps them on the floor, a cloud of dust flying up. ‘First I went to see a new potential employer, Ola, who is a hugger.’
I dramatically wince for her benefit.
‘Right? I had to take three steps back and fell on the sofa. I’d like to tell you I styled it out, but I looked more like I was gate-crashing a photo shoot for Furniture Land.
Needless to say, I didn’t get the gig.’ She bends over and starts taking out cleaning products, holds them to her chest, and looks around with a frown before making her way towards me, landing them on the overturned bookshelf.
‘Then, my car wouldn’t start again, which made me late for the next interview and the job had already gone.
Anyway I’m here now!’ She pauses, clasps her hands.
The sight of her hands without the protection of her gloves hits me.
She’s putting her trust in me as her friend.
I need to do the same. And this is good.
I need a friend right now. And that’s what friends do.
Help each other out, tell each other about their day, tell funny anecdotes.
Does that also turn every Friday into something I look forward to all week? I push the thought aside.
‘Where do you want me?’ Her eyes widen at what she’s said, embarrassment hot on her cheeks. ‘I meant…’
She has no idea how much light she brings into my day, how she makes me feel like I’m not failing at my own life. But what gets me is she doesn’t even know she’s doing it. She doesn’t realise how much my world has already started to open up because she’s in it.
‘Coffee?’ I ask holding out a cup towards her.
‘You, Jack Chadwick, are a bloody lifesaver.’ She reaches out and takes the cup. I don’t miss the concentration in her eyes as she takes it from me.
‘Any response to your messages?’
‘Nada. He will though; I’ve found one of his precious vinyls in the back of my wardrobe.’
‘Are you sure it’s safe to see him?’
‘Luke? Yeah. Honestly, Jack, he’s not a tough guy. That’s why what you remember doesn’t add up. Despite what I said’ – she looks away, pink blossoming on her cheeks – ‘to him. I’ve been thinking…’ she begins.
‘And?’
‘And there must have been CCTV?’
I shake my head. ‘The police checked. Nothing was picked up.’
‘Maybe we can get some more information, see if it jogs your memory? Have you asked your pals?’
‘Pals?’ I laugh.
‘Yeah, buddies, mates…’
‘Not really… We’ve kind of lost touch.’
I think of Steve and his unanswered messages.
The sound of him knocking my door and me reaching for the painkillers by the side of the bed that would take me away to oblivion.
Steve is on the sales team from one of my favourite publishing houses.
I should have got in touch before now, but my pride, and I guess my imposter syndrome, have kept me away from my old life.
My parents said the police spoke to him, but as far as I know, nothing he said shed any light on what happened.
‘I could ask Steve? He was out with me that night…’
‘Well there we go!’ She grins. ‘Let’s ask him if he saw anything, even a little clue might help?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Good. That’s settled then. We’ll go and ask him. I can be your partner in crime or, you know, the Daphne to your Freddie. Or Velma. I always thought she was the coolest one.’
She pops the lid off her coffee and blows over the top, eyes drawn to the window. ‘Shall we start there?’ She gestures to the grime covering the glass with her cup.
I take a deep breath. ‘It’s as good a place as any.’
* * *
The windows are clean, and while the plaster is still hanging off the walls, and the shelves remain in the plastic covering, and the boxes filled with the first stock I ordered remain hidden inside, the neglect and expectation of the room feels less suffocating.
Maggie is reaching up to the corners of the room with her feather duster, singing to ‘Private Dancer’ by Tina Turner.
The local radio station has been playing non-stop classics for the last two hours and Maggie has sung along to almost every song.
I follow her movements, watch the way she balances on the steps of the ladder, hands working.
I realise I’m smiling and wonder – not for the first time since I’ve met her – how being around her seems so…
easy, and question if my life could be as simple as this.
She stops singing, sneezing five times consecutively.
The ladder wobbling. I step forwards and hold it still, looking up.
‘You OK?’
‘Wha—’ She sneezes again, a tiny little ‘ssnnnyyup’ sound.
I steady the ladder as she climbs down. My eyes linger on the small part of her lower back between her jeans and the edge of her navy T-shirt as she descends, her skin smooth and porcelain.
Get a grip, you arsehole. She’s put her trust in you.
We can’t be more than friends, right now.
Even after today, I don’t think I can fix this. It will fail. I will fail.
‘You sneeze like a kitten,’ I say.
‘Like a wh—? Ssnnnyyup!’
I laugh and shake my head as she climbs off the ladder, stepping back, her eyes searching the room, landing on the gloves.
Her bright yellow Marigolds, sitting untouched on the counter next to the remains of our lunch from next door.
I don’t know why it catches my attention now, but it does.
And I realise her hand brushed mine as she climbed down the ladder.
The air between us changes ever so slightly.
‘You OK?’
‘Yeah, it’s the dust…’
She heads towards the other side of the shop, humming now, not belting out ‘Private Dancer’ the way she was minutes ago.
My stomach tightens. Her hands reach for the gloves, but she puts them back down, looking around the room, as though she can see its potential.
‘I, um, I hope you don’t mind, but… I checked out Dr Levin. ’
Her words quickly hammer me back down to earth. If this was anyone else, I would be angry. But right now, do I mind? Strangely… no. Maggie didn’t know me before, and unlike with my family, or with Vicky, she doesn’t want to fix me, she wants to help. Those are two very different things.
‘You did?’ I pull at a thread at the edge of my cuff.
‘Yep.’ The softness in her voice pulls my attention back to her. ‘He’s… well, I get the impression that his methods are a bit out of the box, but—’ I want things to go back to how they were a few moments ago, where everything felt easy.
I deflect quickly, ‘What, like he’s going to hypnotise me and make me think I’m a squid trapped in a fish tank in a restaurant?’
She snorts, the tension in her face falling away. ‘I don’t know, I mean, maybe? It could be fun to watch. I can see how much this means to you, Jack, and I can help, or maybe this doctor could?’
She looks away, before meeting my eyes. ‘Sorry, I’m overstepping; forget I said anything.’
The question Riz had asked as we’d sat in the waiting room at the out-of-hours doctors’ surgery comes into my mind unbidden. I’d found it so easy to open up to her about the stroke before I’d mentioned it to Maggie.
‘Is there anything that can be done? I’m a bit out of touch these days, but you always hear of these groundbreaking treatments…’
‘No. Not really.’
‘And what is the “not really” treatment?’
‘I will never be… for want of a better word “fixed” but I can retrain my brain a little. Sounding out the words, copying the letters and repeating the sound. Sand trays and all that…’
‘Nonsense?’
‘It’s… not for me.’
‘Why? Why isn’t it for you? You’re a young man. I learnt how to speak some Mandarin using that wonderful app and I’m eighty-four. What’s stopping you?’
‘Reading isn’t part of my life any more. I’ve come to accept it.’
‘Forgive me, at my age I have little time for beating around the bush, but that is utter poppycock. You’re too proud to try.’
I look back to Maggie, at her hopeful expression. ‘You’re not overstepping.’ There is a catch in my voice, and I clear my throat. ‘Thank you.’
‘For suggesting you see a therapist who could turn you into a giant squid?’
‘No.’ I scratch the back of my head. ‘For this. For, you know, helping.’
‘Help is my middle name; actually it’s Gertrude but we don’t talk about that.’
I laugh, the sound lightening Maggie’s expression, and filling the corners of the empty shop.
‘Gertrude?’
‘Mmmhmmm.’ She winces playfully. Her cheeks are flushed. Maybe it’s from the warmth of the sun streaming through the clear windows, but part of me wonders – or hopes? – that it might also be because of me.
‘Promise you won’t tell anyone.’
‘I shall take it to the grave.’
Her phone pings and she swipes the screen, eyes scanning the message easily. She looks up, eyes bright.
‘He’s replied. He wants to see me in half an hour.’ She glances up at the recently hung clock and smiles. ‘Look, it’s happy time!’
I frown. ‘It needs new batteries. That’s not the right time. It’s half four.’
She dismisses my comment with a wave of her hand. ‘Doesn’t matter, it still says ten past ten, like a smiley face…’ she explains. ‘Maybe it’s a good omen?’
I love these things about her, the way she finds joy in the smallest things.
‘And if it was twenty past eight?’
‘Bad. Baaad juju.’ She pitches her head towards the door. ‘I don’t suppose you have your fancy car here, do you?’