Chapter 31
A breeze funnelled through the clearing, hushing through the pines and rustling the leaves of the saplings behind.
“At least you’re not stuck in the truck with me,” he said, giving me a small half-smile.
Yes, but I am now out in the middle of nowhere with you and you have a spade, I thought.
“But how did you end up in prison?” I brushed crumbs of pastry from my mouth. “You are, like, the nicest person I’ve ever met.”
He bit back a laugh. “There’re plenty of nice people in prison, believe me. Nice people do stupid things all the time.”
I pulled the spade laid on the grass closer to me, gripping it for support.
Maybe he was wrongly convicted? Maybe it wasn’t that bad?
“Was it for the driving thing?”
He shook his head.
“Is it something…” I leant back.
“No, nothing like that. Sorry, I should have led with that.” He scratched the back of his head as if the discomfort of the situation was making him itch. “I mean, it wasn’t great. I went to prison for it. But I…”
He wiped a hand down his face and exhaled.
“From the start?”
I nodded.
“Okay, from the start.” He leant back onto his palms in the grass.
“I am the youngest of three. My elder brother, my elder sister and then me—the surprise.” He put out his hands in a ta-da motion.
“By the time I came along, my parents were a bit more hands off with us kids. My sister was ‘The Girl’, so my elder brother was never allowed to play rough with her. It was always, ‘play nice with your sister’ or ‘we don’t hit girls’.
Me, on the other hand… well, I can only assume they thought it was good for me, or it was natural for boys to fight.
My brother used to poke or pinch me, not hard, but just enough to get me to lash out at him.
Once I’d done that, he’d put me into headlocks or sit on me or what have you.
It used to make me so angry, but the angrier I got the more it encouraged him.
He’d just pin me down and laugh. The more I fought, the harder he’d laugh.
My parents, too. They thought it was funny.
I’d scream and rage until tears were streaming down my face, and they’d all just laugh like it was the funniest thing. ”
He looked out to the view, took a breath.
“But I wasn’t little for long. By the time I was sixteen I had a good foot on my brother.
The last time he tried to pin me down, I threw him over my shoulder like it was nothing.
God, I remember the look of surprise on his face.
He looked to my parents, but they just said it served him right.
They only ever stood up for me after I’d already stood up for myself. ”
“That must have felt good,” I said, envy bristling my skin.
“It felt amazing,” he said, a sad smile briefly lighting his face. “But it didn’t fix all the years when I’d been helpless. It just taught me my anger was always righteous—my anger was the only way to keep me safe from being that helpless kid again. So, I leant into it.”
“Hence the road rage incident,” I said.
“Hence the road rage incident.” He nodded.
“After I lost my license, it just sort of got worse. The anger. It felt as if the whole world was laughing at me. Little things set me off. Getting a sleeve caught on a door handle or not being able to open a packet of something on the first try. I went off crisps for, like, a full year. I’d just rip the thing apart.
God, I couldn’t even hold a conversation with my friends without losing it over something that annoyed me.
I used to recognise the point I’d gone too far because their faces would…
” He waved a hand around his mouth. “You know? But that didn’t shake me up either.
Didn’t make me stop and think, maybe this is a bit much now, maybe I should sort myself out.
It just made it worse somehow, like I couldn’t talk to them, like I was some kind of—”
“Monster,” I said.
He nodded and smiled. “Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I was a mess.
They were right to feel uncomfortable around me.
I would have felt uncomfortable around me.
” He stopped. “I did feel uncomfortable around me. There was this one time, I was over at a friend’s place for dinner.
Y’know, couples and wine glasses. That kind of thing.
I don’t really come from dinner party people, so I was already on the back foot.
Then, as I was opening a bottle of wine, the corkscrew I was using broke in my hand.
The”—he twiddled a finger—“screw bit snapped right off, still stuck in the cork.”
I stifled a laugh at the image.
“Yeah, in retrospect it did look pretty funny. So, everyone laughed. Only I didn’t think they were laughing at what it looked like.
I thought they were laughing at me. So, I threw the bottle at the wall.
Red wine and glass everywhere. The laughing stopped.
And so did any invites to my friend’s place.
I was out of control, and it was horrible.
It doesn’t feel great knowing people feel that way about you. And not really knowing how to stop it.”
He shook his head.
“Anyway, so after my ban, I was having to get the bus to work, like I was back in school again. I was so embarrassed about losing my license. I thought people could see I wasn’t a real adult, that I was still that kid struggling under his brother’s pin hold.
I kept reading every look as a judgement, as ridicule. ”
He stopped and picked at his fingernails. Then after a moment he continued.
“I was at a pub in Glasgow, visiting my sister. While we were chatting, I said to her that I would have to go catch the last train soon. I mean, I’d been drinking.
I would have had to catch the train home anyway.
But this guy in the booth next to us laughed.
Young guy. Shaved head. Track suit. And, I don’t know why, but I just got it in my head that he was laughing at me. And my whole mood changed like that.”
He snapped his fingers.
I knew exactly what he meant. Though I didn’t hear it just then, that high-pitched buzz in my ear never felt far away.
“My sister saw it. I think she tried to stop me, but I honestly couldn’t tell you what she said. I couldn’t hear it. But I remember what I did next. Like it was in slow motion.”
Rowan placed his hand out, gently slicing the air as he marked each of his actions, as if cutting up a reel of film.
“I got up. I picked up the beer bottle in front of me. I raised it up as if I was taking it back. I remember thinking I could make it look accidental, like you’d see in a movie or a TV show.
Y’know, where one of the main characters pisses off one of the other main characters and they”—he mimed a slap—“and they say ‘oops, didn’t see you there’.
And the other character rubs their head, and the audience laughs and applauds.
At least, I think. I don’t really know what I meant or what I wish I’d meant.
” He shook his head. “Anyway, I got up and picked up the beer bottle, like I said, and then I swung it at the back of this guy’s head. ”
A cricket sang in the grass close to us. Clouds rolled over the far hills. A fly landed on Rowan’s eyebrow. He sniffed and it flew away.
“I didn’t think I hit him that hard. I don’t think I’d meant to, but I’d been drinking so I probably wasn’t fully in control and…
well, the bottle smashed, and I remember being surprised by the sound, like so surprised all my anger just left like it was never there.
And everyone else in the bar stopped talking and turned to look.
And the guy just folded over. He collapsed as if I’d hit the off switch and whatever made him human left and now it was just a machine of blood and bone.
And his mates were staring at me. And my sister had her hands over her mouth.
And I realised my hand hurt. One of the guys tried to rouse his friend and the other was getting his phone out.
And one of the barmen was running over to me.
And someone was yelling at me. And all I could think was I’d cut my hand on the broken glass and I hoped there wasn’t any stuck under the skin.
Isn’t that stupid? I’d glassed a guy and all I could think about was glass stuck in my hand.
All the way from the police turning up to court to prison, I was obsessed that there were shards of glass in my hand. ”
He showed me his right hand. Running down from his smallest finger to his wrist was a pale white line.
“It’s because I couldn’t go near what I’d done.
I couldn’t think about what that made me, or how every time I felt angry afterwards this cold wave would come over me.
So instead, I thought about the glass in my hand.
I swear I could feel something in there all the time.
I’d lie awake imagining it floating around my body, a lost raft bumping about a river basin, with the potential at any moment to snag on some outcropping, maybe blocking up a vein in my lungs or my brain, or tearing a series of holes in my gut or my liver and like that, I’d be gone.
Done. Those first few months I barely slept, waiting for this glass shard to pop out somewhere and kill me.
I got the nurse inside to have a look once, but she couldn’t find anything. ” He shrugged.
I felt the imprint of the needle in my pocket.