Chapter 8 Ash
Ash
NOW
‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ Ash asks, pacing up and down the living room of his house, his mobile pressed to his ear.
It’s a bad idea. Carla must have known he wouldn’t be happy about this. He doesn’t know why she has rung to tell him.
‘Ash, for the past year, we’ve been pushing Iris to go out more – to go out, full stop. You can’t seriously want me to keep her in now she does have plans?’
Dandruff’s there. Ash can tell. Carla’s voice always sounds different over the phone when her partner is around – a harder edge and no affection. Ash suspects Dandruff doesn’t like Carla talking to her ex-husband. He’d probably prefer it if they didn’t get on.
‘But Josh hasn’t even been buried yet,’ Ash argues.
‘So?’
‘Well, it doesn’t look good, does it?’
‘Would she look less guilty if she stayed at home?’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Ash lies. Carla will see through him, even over the phone. But he’s pretty sure she’s not thrilled about this either. They’re usually on the same wavelength.
‘This is Millie’s eighteenth birthday party, Ash,’ Carla continues. ‘The girls have been planning this for weeks. Ian and Jo are staying in a hotel for the night so Millie can hold the party at home. There’s no reason Iris should stop having fun just because Josh has … died.’
Stop having fun? When was the last time Iris had actually had fun?
He doesn’t voice his thoughts. This is precisely the point Carla is making.
Iris finally wants to go out again. To socialize.
They’ve been encouraging her to do just this.
They can’t turn around and say no now. And Iris is so happy that everything’s all right between her and Millie again – she was really upset that Millie was avoiding her a few months ago.
This will be good for Iris. Carla’s right. As always.
‘It just makes Iris seem a little uncaring, that’s all,’ Ash says. ‘She’s going to be out there celebrating while Josh is lying in a mortuary somewhere.’
‘Uncaring? Why should she care, Ash? So, they went out together once upon a time? It’s been over for almost a year and that kid almost single-handedly wrecked her life.’
Ash wants to point out that that was never proved.
But what’s the use? He knows as well as Carla that Josh was behind what happened.
He doesn’t want to get into an argument, especially when they’re probably both thinking along the same lines.
Carla would get the last word, as ever. So he bites back his retort.
‘She’s not staying over,’ Carla says brightly.
Like that makes it look better. On the plus side, Iris won’t get too drunk if she has to face one of her parents later. ‘In that case, I’ll pick her up, if you like, when the party’s over,’ he offers, half-hoping Carla has already roped Dandruff into doing it.
‘Would you? That’s very good of you, Ash.’ He can hear the triumphant smile in her voice. So that’s why she rang to tell him about the party. ‘Daniel has just got home from his business trip. We appreciate it. I told her one o’clock at the latest.’
Great. It might be the weekend for some people, but he’ll have to get up the next morning. He works on Saturdays. ‘I’ll be there,’ he says, ‘1 a.m. on the dot.’ He waits until Carla has ended the call before adding sarcastically, ‘Could you not have given her a later curfew?’
*
Ash parks in the street where the Rowlands live shortly before midnight.
He’s careful to park a few metres away from the streetlamp, but in a space where he has a clear view of the house.
He slumps down in his seat, feeling like a burglar casing out a house.
He can hear the music from here, feel the vibrations of the bass. He doesn’t envy the neighbours.
This is a stupid idea. You’re being a bloody idiot.
You need to get a life, Ash! No one – not even Carla – has ever dared to talk to Ash the way he talks to himself.
What is he doing here? He had a bad feeling and couldn’t spend another second sprawled on the sofa, binge-watching some mind-numbing series on Netflix and twiddling his thumbs.
He contemplates driving home, but he’d check the time on his phone every other minute until it was late enough to come back and pick up Iris, so there’s no point.
He’ll just sit here for the next hour or so.
Last year, when Olly and Liv were about to turn seventeen, Olly had asked Ash if he could hold a joint birthday party at Ash’s place.
Ash hadn’t been keen. He’d heard all sorts of stories from his mates about disastrous parties – teenagers being sick all over the place, passing out from drinking too much alcohol, having sex in just about every free room in the house.
A couple he and Carla knew had been called home from the restaurant because some drunk kid at a party at their house had fallen down the stairs and their son had had to call the ambulance.
Against his better judgement, Ash had said yes. It was his son’s birthday, after all.
To say Carla wasn’t pleased would be putting it mildly.
She was as worried as Ash about all the things that could go wrong.
In the end, Olly’s girlfriend saved the day by suggesting a weekend trip to Disneyland Paris instead.
Her parents had come up with the idea and they’d offered to take them.
Olly was about to turn seventeen, but he wasn’t too old for Mickey Mouse, it seemed.
Ash and Carla had gladly shelled out the money for Olly’s train and Eurostar tickets, a two-day ticket to the theme park and a hotel room for two nights at the Disneyland hotel.
Movement on the other side of the road snaps Ash back to the present.
‘Shit!’ he whispers to himself, slouching further into his seat as two teenage boys pass by on the pavement opposite.
They pause, looking directly at his car, and he thinks he has been rumbled.
For a few seconds, he keeps still and low, but then he sneaks a peek.
No, they haven’t clocked him. They’re no longer looking this way, but he can see their faces, illuminated by the dim street light.
With a jolt, he realizes he knows them. His heart flounces about in his ribcage as he waits for them to cross the road and knock on his window or give him the finger or something.
Get a grip, he tells himself. He’ll say he has come to pick up Iris if they ask.
Not that it’s any of their business what he’s doing here.
What are they doing here? There’s no way Millie would have invited them to her eighteenth.
Or to her house at all, for that matter.
The two boys walk around the corner and sit on the low wall in front of the Rowlands’ house.
Both of them take something out of their pockets.
Small objects. He squints, but he can’t make out what they’re doing from here.
He wishes he’d brought a pair of binoculars and immediately feels ridiculous for having that thought.
It’s not like he’s a private investigator.
He has come here to make sure Iris is OK, not that it’s really possible to check up on her through a closed front door.
A flame from a lighter tells him what he wants to know.
They’re skinning up. He observes the kids as they roll their joint and smoke it.
The front door opens and a group of girls – four of them – come out.
Millie is among them. The boys whirl round.
Then they get up and walk toward the girls.
Ash cracks open the window, but can’t make out their conversation.
He’s ready to leap out of the car if there’s any trouble, although Iris will no doubt be mortified if he does that.
It looks as if the boys are offering the girls something.
Cigarettes? Weed? Millie shakes her head.
The girl to her right gives them the finger.
Both boys turn tail and walk away, down the driveway and through the gate.
The older of the two boys drops the roach on the pavement and stamps on it.
Then, finally, they piss off. Ash lets out a sigh of relief.
He waits while the girls smoke their cigarettes.
Do Jo and Roly know Millie smokes? He’d be surprised.
Jo has been on at Roly for years to stop.
She definitely wouldn’t be happy about her daughter starting.
Not that Ash would ever say anything to them.
He’s glad Iris and Olly don’t smoke. As far as he knows.
He suspects Olly smokes the odd joint, though.
He’s sneaked into the house – Ash’s place, not Carla’s – with bloodshot eyes, the giggles and the munchies after an evening out once or twice.
Ash can hardly tell him off. He did the same thing when he was his son’s age.
The girls finish their fags and stub them out.
Unlike the boys, who left the roach of their joint in the street, they take their cigarette butts back into the house.
The music blares out through the front door when Millie opens it, then suddenly becomes quieter and more muffled as the girls close it behind them.
Ash looks all around him. He’s not aware that he’s formed a plan until he catches himself executing it.
He takes a sterile, plastic glove out of the small first-aid kit under the passenger’s seat.
He looks all around him and checks his mirrors before getting out of the car and darting across the road.
He picks up the roach with his gloved hand, then races back to his car.
The whole thing takes him less than a minute.
Then he starts up the engine to drive home.