Текст книги "The Jump"

Автор книги: Doug Johnstone

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

4

She had her arm around his waist as they walked, trying to help him put one foot in front of the other as if he was an injured passenger being led away from a car crash.

‘We’ll get you sorted,’ she said, rubbing his side.

He didn’t react, kept his head down, feet plodding on like he was in a trance.

She’d forgotten about the awkwardness of teenage boys.

The rumble and judder of traffic continued to swamp the pair of them, hundreds of people driving to their destinations regardless of Ellie and Sam’s little drama. It must’ve been the same when Logan jumped. Did anyone driving across the bridge that day even realise something had happened? Hundreds of cars must’ve passed Logan as he walked towards the middle of the bridge. Dozens more in the few moments he stood there. And yet more as he climbed over and stepped off.

But the drivers’ eyes would’ve been on the road ahead. People only realised something happened if the bridge got closed to traffic, and they never did that. One incident Ellie remembered from a long time ago was when someone, instead of jumping off the bridge, climbed the suspension cables and threatened to jump off. They had to close the bridge that day. In the end the guy never jumped, and he was charged with breach of the peace when he clambered down. Road users were furious. The same kind of people who tut on a train when someone jumps in front of it, because they’re going to be five minutes late for a meeting.

Twenty people kill themselves by jumping off the Forth Road Bridge every year. They were about to celebrate the bridge’s fiftieth anniversary soon. That added up to a thousand people. But it only rarely made the news, partly because it wasn’t deemed newsworthy, partly because journalists had guidelines about reporting suicide. If you made a big deal about it in the papers you got lots of copycat deaths. Imagine sitting at home reading about someone killing themselves and thinking, oh yeah, that’s what I want to do.

Ellie looked at Sam. Maybe that’s what he’d done. Maybe he knew Logan, or had heard about Logan jumping, and thought he would do the same. Or maybe there was another kid who’d jumped off more recently, a friend of Sam’s. She knew that in South Queensferry, in the shadow of the bridge, there was a higher suicide rate than elsewhere. Experts put it down to simple opportunity. People saw the bridge every day out their windows, on their way to work or school, and thought, why not?

They were at the end of the bridge now. Sam began crying again, staring at his hands as if he might find the answer to life there. Ellie wanted to tell him it wasn’t that easy, there were no answers.

‘I’ll take care of you,’ she said.

They stepped off the bridge and the vibration under their feet stopped, though the rumble of traffic noise was still everywhere.

Ellie ushered Sam round the corner on to the access road. As they headed downhill the noise reduced, leaving an oppressive murmur, the crows from earlier cawing and flapping in the tops of the trees.

‘I live down at the Binks,’ Ellie said.

It was awkward to keep walking with her arm round his waist as they headed downhill, so she removed it and took his hand in hers. He let her. It felt odd, the slope pushing them forwards, holding hands as if they were a couple, this half-boy, half-man towering over her, her hand engulfed in his like she was the child. But she felt a thrill, too, an electricity running from his touch through her hand and up her arm.

For a moment she considered what it would look like if they met anyone she knew. She was twice as old as him, and he was far too old to be holding hands with his mum. Not that she was his mother of course.

At the bottom of the hill she pointed right. ‘This way. It’s not far.’

He walked in the direction she indicated. She wondered what was going through his mind. What had driven him up there today? What was so awful in his life that he couldn’t see any alternative? She was used to the wondering. The lack of answers burned as much today as it did the first day, and it would burn just as ferociously on her deathbed. At least with Sam she had a chance of finding an answer.

‘You OK?’

He shook his head.

‘Let’s get you home,’ she said.

5

‘Try these on.’

She held up a pair of Logan’s jeans. Dark green, skinny fit. She remembered when he brought them home, one of the first things she’d let him buy for himself, on a trip into Edinburgh shopping with mates. Just one of a million little independences, all the ways in which children grow into their own lives, away from their parents.

Sam was a couple of inches taller than Logan, but they were both thin and bony, the jeans would still fit.

Sam sat on Logan’s bed, his hands over his lap to hide the wet stain on the front of his trousers. Ellie hadn’t mentioned it but the offer of trousers meant he knew that she knew. She was thrilled they shared a secret, only the two of them knew what just happened on the bridge, it connected them forever, no matter what came next.

Sam’s eyes darted round the room as he took the jeans and held them like ancient relics.

Ellie looked round the room too. It wasn’t a shrine, she wasn’t insane, thinking Logan would come back one day and slot back into his old life, she just couldn’t bring herself to clear his things out. His plain blue bedspread, nondescript after a childhood of cartoon characters on there. His music posters, Frightened Rabbit, Chvrches, Haim, Lorde. She was glad about that, strong female figures among them, talented, independent women, no R&B idiots in bikinis. His PS3 and Xbox and iPod and laptop sat in a corner, his neatly ordered bookshelf full of zombie stories and graphic novels.

And this new boy sitting amongst it all.

She realised he was waiting for her to leave so he could get changed.

‘Oh sorry,’ she said, turning her back. ‘I won’t look.’

She felt him hesitate then heard him begin to untie his trainers. She looked at the television on the dresser. She could see his shape reflected in the black glass as he peeled his damp jeans off. She realised something and opened the drawer in front of her, pulled out a pair of Logan’s underwear. He preferred trunks, tighter than boxers but not as skimpy as briefs. Without turning, she held them out behind her back.

‘Here, you’ll need these.’

She felt him take the trunks, and caught a little of his deodorant smell. Not exactly the same as Logan’s, but in the same ballpark, and too much of it, like all teenage boys. Probably Lynx, that’s what they all wore because of the ads with the half-naked girls all over the guys who used it.

She looked back at the television. Saw Sam slip off his shorts, his back to her, pale buttocks in the glass of the screen. He wiped at his crotch and legs with his scrunched up shorts, then pulled on Logan’s underwear, stumbling to get his foot in the first hole, yanking them up, pulling the jeans over them. Ellie squinted as she watched him in the glass, imagining Logan.

She turned round. ‘Sorted?’

He nodded, looked at his clothes on the floor. Ellie picked them up without a fuss and rolled them up in a ball in her hands. ‘I’ll get these in the wash.’

Sam shook his head. ‘You don’t have to.’

‘It’s no problem.’ She moved to the door. She wanted to ask him so much, but didn’t want to scare him away. ‘Come on, I’ll put the kettle on.’

She went downstairs, heard his footfall behind her as she turned into the kitchen. She threw the jeans and shorts into the washing machine, poured some liquid in and switched it on. The machine shuddered as she took the kettle to the sink and filled it. When she turned back he was standing in the doorway. She pulled a chair out from the kitchen table, nodded at it.

‘Sit down, love.’

He took the seat and picked at his fingernails.

She switched on the kettle, came over and sat next to him.

‘Want to tell me what that was about, on the bridge?’

‘No.’

He began crying again. Ellie was starting to see a pattern, periods of near catatonia, followed by tears. He was getting himself het up now, his breath catching, like a panic attack. His shoulders shook with it. She got up and put her hands on his neck muscles, felt the tension and knots beneath her fingers.

‘Hey, it’s all right,’ she said, almost a whisper. ‘Whatever’s the matter is outside that front door, OK? Nothing can hurt you in here, you’re safe now.’

It was a litany, under her breath, the tone reassuring more than the words. She meant it, though, she would take care of this boy, never let any harm come to him.

He began to calm down. She made green tea for them both, and got a couple of pills out a drawer. A sleeping pill and a mood stabiliser. She couldn’t remember the brand names. She brought the tea and the pills over to the table.

‘Take these,’ she said. ‘They’ll make you feel better.’

He frowned.

‘They work, trust me,’ she said.

He picked them up and took them, sipping at his tea to wash them down. She sipped from her own mug as she sat.

‘What’s your surname, Sam?’

He hesitated, looked out the kitchen window. They were at the back of the house, the view of the bridges, the massive lines of them framing the whole world, pointing their eyes towards North Queensferry on the opposite bank.

‘Look at me,’ Ellie said. ‘I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.’

‘McKenna,’ he said.

‘Do you go to the High School?’

‘Just finished.’

‘Sixth year?’

He nodded.

‘So you’re seventeen, eighteen?’

‘Seventeen.’

Two years ahead of Logan, then.

‘Did you know my son, Logan?’

Sam shook his head.

‘But you know what he did?’

He nodded. It was the talk of the school for weeks, maybe months. They had a memorial for him, some words at assembly from the head teacher. Ellie was invited but hadn’t gone, couldn’t stand having all that youthfulness and vitality in her face.

‘It’s not the answer, Sam.’

She took his hand but he pulled it away.

‘You don’t know,’ he said.

Ellie sighed. ‘You think I don’t? What I’ve been through with Logan?’

He fiddled with the zip on his hoodie, head down. He jumped like he’d got a fright, then pulled the zip up to the top, hands shaking, eyes wide.

Ellie thought she’d seen something.

She reached out to his hand on the zip. ‘What’s that?’

He brushed her hand away, but she put it back a second time and he didn’t resist. His eyes looked around for something to distract himself.

She peeled his fingers away and pulled the zip down, pushed the material aside. His blue T-shirt underneath had marks spattered across it. Dark stains.

‘Is that blood?’

His breathing was erratic again, his body shaking.

She tried to unzip the hoodie the whole way. ‘What is it, Sam? Are you hurt?’

He knocked her hand away, hard this time, and pulled the zip up.

‘I’m fine,’ he said, through stuttering breaths.

‘Then . . .’

She heard a noise. A car pulling into the driveway.

Ben was home. Ellie looked at Sam. She didn’t want to share him, not yet. It was their little secret, Sam and Ellie. And there was the bloodstain to think about.

She heard the car engine switch off.

‘Come on.’ She took Sam’s hand and yanked him out of his seat.

She pulled him up the stairs and into Logan’s room as she heard the front door open.

‘Hi, honey.’ Ben in the hallway.

She pushed Sam on to Logan’s bed. ‘Stay in here and keep quiet.’

She heard footsteps coming upstairs. She backed out of the room, closed the door and turned.

Ben was halfway up.

‘Hi,’ she said, keeping her voice level.

‘Hey.’ Ben looked at her, then beyond at Logan’s bedroom door. ‘What were you doing in there?’

‘Nothing.’ She walked downstairs past him. ‘Just putting something away.’

He followed her into the kitchen.

‘Are you all right?’ he said.

‘Fine.’

‘Who’s that for?’

She turned. ‘What?’

He was pointing at the two mugs of green tea on the table.

‘You,’ she said. ‘The kettle boiled just as I heard you pull up.’

He frowned at her for a moment. She examined him. He hadn’t shaved in a week, the stubble greyer than it used to be, a white patch on the side of his chin that was never there before. He needed a haircut, messy at the sides, too long at the back. He looked tired, dark pouches under his eyes, hollow cheeks, and he seemed to be squinting into the light all the time. His checked shirt and jeans needed washed. She caught a little of his scent, the smell of nervous sweat. He always seemed to be nervous now, nervous about what shit life would deliver next. She knew that feeling well enough.

‘I can’t really stop,’ he said. He picked up Sam’s mug and took a sip. ‘I don’t know why you try to get me to drink this stuff, you know I can’t stand it.’

‘It’s supposed to relax you. Clean the system.’

‘I know what it’s supposed to do.’

She looked at him for a moment. ‘What are you up to?’

He patted at the satchel over his shoulder. ‘More flyering.’ He pulled a leaflet out, handed it to her.

This was how Ben filled the void since Logan. While Ellie had resorted to physical routine to blot out the blackness, Ben had jumped straight down the conspiracy-theory rabbit hole. It wasn’t Logan’s fault according to Ben, it couldn’t be, he was under some kind of external influence, something made him do it, no son of mine could ever think about taking his own life. Denial, obviously. He wasn’t stupid, though, deep down he must realise it was ridiculous, just as her swimming and running and walking to the bridge was a coping mechanism, nothing else.

So he buried himself deep into suicide conspiracies. He became an expert on cluster points, where you got a spate of suicides in one place, very often teenagers who all knew each other. There was a small town in Wales where dozens had done it within months of each other, and Ben knew all the stats for that place, comparing them to the numbers for South Queensferry. He spent countless hours on websites and online chatrooms, dabbling in stuff that even David Icke might baulk at. Satanic cults, mind-altering drugs, school vaccinations, food additives, computer games, side effects of prescription medication, washing powder, the signal from mobile-telephone masts causing depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

She looked at the leaflet in her hand. This was his latest crusade, the Queensferry Crossing, as it had been named. The new road bridge across the Forth was being built just to the west of the current one, hitting land right next to the marina where Ben had worked until recently. He’d stumbled across the idea on some crackpot website that either something in their internal communication network was sending signals into the ether that changed the wiring of kids’ brains, or there was something in the building materials giving off a gas that poisoned everyone’s minds. It was ridiculous, of course, and she’d told him so umpteen times, but he never heard. She understood, it was hard to hear the truth, that Logan just killed himself and there was no answer, no resolution. No comfort. Easier to believe that the government or building contractors or phone companies were to blame.

Ben’s leaflet had quotes from building trade ‘insiders’ confirming that dangerous, cheap non-EU chemicals were being used, and that there had been other clusters of suicides at major building projects using the same method in the Far East.

Ellie closed her eyes and tried to remember their wedding day. Tight-skinned and happy, the two of them waltzing in a small marquee, their lives ahead of them, Logan not even an idea then, let alone a dead one. All she could see was Sam standing on the bridge, his hands tight on the railing, his body swaying back and forth. Her eyes went to the ceiling. Logan’s room was directly above them, if Sam walked around they would likely hear him.

Ben took another sip of tea and made a face at the taste. ‘I really need to get going, deliver these.’

Ellie wondered what the neighbours thought of Ben’s steady stream of lunatic leaflets through their letterboxes. To begin with maybe there was some sympathy, he’d lost his son after all. But now, six months later, wasn’t it time to move on? But it was never time to move on, that’s what she’d come to realise.

‘Stay a minute.’ She went over to him and touched his arm. ‘Sit down. I feel like we haven’t talked in ages.’

‘If you’re going to go on about the leaflets, I don’t want to hear it.’

‘I won’t.’

He sat down, the same chair Sam had been in a few minutes before. Ellie listened for noise from upstairs, but there was nothing. The washing machine chugged away in the corner of the kitchen, throwing Sam’s trousers and pants around.

She knew she should tell Ben. Keeping it to herself could only push them apart. But she had to figure out what it all meant, had to understand the gift she’d been given first, before she could share it.

‘Remember when we saw that porpoise, when Logan was little,’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘I remember.’

‘He was three, I think?’

Ben nodded. ‘Three and a half.’

‘He kept saying “dolphink”, “dolphink”.’

‘Then you said, “No, it’s a porpoise”.’

Ellie laughed. ‘And then he wouldn’t stop saying “purpose”, “purpose”.’

They were both smiling now. Their little purpose. Ellie tried to think when she’d last seen Ben smile.

‘Our little porpoise,’ she said.

Ben sighed, the smile gone. ‘Yeah.’

Ellie looked up at the ceiling, then out at the Forth. ‘What if we got a second chance?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Imagine we got to live our lives over,’ Ellie said. ‘What would you do different?’

‘Don’t, Ellie.’

‘Go on.’

‘I can’t do this. I don’t want to hear you talk like this.’

‘But if we got a second chance?’

Ben stood up, knuckles on the table. ‘There are no second chances. You know that. Stop talking this way, please.’

She got up too, hands out, pleading. ‘What are we going to do, Ben? There’s no end to this, is there?’

He shrugged and headed for the door.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It never ends.’

She heard the front door open and close.

She breathed in and out a few times, trying to get the hang of it, then looked at the ceiling.

She went upstairs and opened the door to Logan’s room, careful not to make any sound.

Sam was sleeping on top of Logan’s bed, hands under his cheek, face slack. Ellie went to a drawer and took out a blanket, draped it over him. She pushed his fringe away from his face, tucked a stray strand of hair behind his ear. She let the backs of her fingers rest on his cheek for a while, feeling the movement of his breathing, watching his chest rise and fall, peaceful for now.

There are no second chances.

6

Inchcolm Terrace was a suburban cul-de-sac like any other. Fifties-built detached houses, pebbledash, steep roofs, garages. Family homes with trampolines and scooters in the small gardens.

Ellie walked along, checking the numbers. She stopped at number 23, Sam’s place, same as all the rest. It had taken ten minutes to walk here from her house at the shore, up The Loan then nipping in to the right, easy enough to find. She’d never been up this street before, but then you wouldn’t unless you knew someone who lived here, it wasn’t a road to anywhere.

She’d checked the phone book, only one McKenna in South Queensferry. She thought about phoning but didn’t, this felt like a conversation that needed to be face to face. She wasn’t even sure what she was going to tell them about Sam, if anything. Where do you start? But she wanted to see their faces, see the family he’d come from, the people who had created and shaped him. Were they worried about him? Had he shown any of the signs of mental-health problems? Where did they think he was right now?

She dragged a hand down her face, felt the slackness of her skin, then walked through the gate and up the path. She rang the doorbell and waited. Nothing. Rang again. Silence. She looked at the neighbouring houses, wondered about curtains twitching but didn’t see any movement. She rang a third time.

She tried the front door. It opened and she leaned in.

‘Hello?’

She stepped inside. Coats were piled on the end of the banister, shoes on a low shelf unit by the door. Looked like four people, including a girl. Perfect little family unit – mum, dad, son and daughter.

She closed the door behind her.

‘Hello?’

A bowl on the hall table with car keys, small change, golf balls, Post-its, a phone charger. The stuff of life. She couldn’t picture Sam as the golfer, it must be his dad. Sanded wooden floor, an IKEA runner rug on top, she recognised it from last year’s catalogue.

She looked up the stairs. Thought about going up there, wondered which room was Sam’s, if it looked anything like Logan’s. What about the sister, was she a chintzy pink princess or old enough to be a moody emo by now?

She heard a noise, maybe a voice, from the direction of the kitchen.

‘Hello, the door was open. Is someone there?’

She crept down the hall, listening. That noise again, a grunt. She got to the kitchen doorway.

‘Holy shit.’

Lying slumped against the fridge was a man with a kitchen knife in his gut. Stocky, receding hairline, in his forties. His eyes were closed and his forehead creased with deep furrows. Blood was soaked into his white shirt and black trousers, and had pooled around him on the tiled floor. He let out a pained breath.

Ellie took two steps forward. ‘Can you hear me?’

He didn’t move or speak. His chest rose and fell, small movements.

She took another step.

The fingers on his right hand twitched. His hand lifted off the bloody floor for a moment, as if he was trying to reach for the knife, then it dropped back down with a little splash of blood.

She looked around the kitchen. No sign of any other disturbance, nothing smashed or broken. Sliding glass doors led into the back garden. They were closed, no obvious sign of a break-in.

She looked at the man. He didn’t look like a burglar. She thought about the bloodstains on Sam’s T-shirt. Looked at the knife in the man’s belly. It had a serrated edge, wooden handle, she had one similar at home.

‘Mr McKenna?’

He gave out a breathy moan.

She stood absolutely still, trying to think.

The man’s fingers twitched again and one eye opened. He looked at her, but his gaze was unfocussed. She didn’t know how conscious he was, how aware. He grunted again then his eye closed and he gave a heavy sigh, as if the effort was all too much.

Ellie heard another noise. The scrape of a key in a lock, then the front door opening, a bag being dropped on the floor.

‘I’m home.’ A woman’s voice, shouting up the stairs. ‘You lazy gits up yet?’

The man on the floor wheezed.

Ellie stepped over him, careful not to stand in the blood, and ran to the patio doors. She slid the snib up then pushed the door open just enough to squeeze through, gliding it shut behind her.

She ran to the side of the house, out of view, then climbed over a low fence of wooden slats into the neighbours’ garden. At the bottom of the garden were a couple of cooking-apple trees. She sprinted down to them and launched herself at the stone wall behind, scrambling up and over. She dropped down without looking, desperate to get away. She hoped no one was in the neighbours’ kitchen or she was spotted for sure.

She glanced around as she got her breath back. She recognised where she was, Ferrymuir Gait. Over the embankment across the road was the A90, heading to the bridge. Further round the road she was standing on were the visitor centre and the offices for the new bridge. Back the other way was the cemetery where Logan would’ve been buried if they hadn’t decided to have him cremated and scattered in the Forth. Everything so close by, everyone in the Ferry living in each other’s pockets, the road and the railway and the bridges slicing through it all.

She waited and listened. After a few minutes she heard a siren, and imagined the ambulance arriving.

Now she had her bearings she knew there was a quicker way home, past the visitor centre and down the access road, the same road she’d walked with Sam earlier today. She headed in that direction.