Okay, while Matt’s gone you’ve got less than a minute to dig into his backpack and see what’s there. Evidence, evidence – phone, laptop, what else has he got? Now put everything back before he reappears. Done it – did he notice anything? No, he looks out of it.
“It’s getting late, let’s get out of here.” Matt jammed his hat back on his head.
The cold air outside was a sobering shock. It was important to get Matt into the warmth of the station before he sharpened up. They tumbled down the steps into Liverpool Street tube and made their way to the District & Circle Line.
There were no empty seats, so they sat on the platform floor to wait for the train.
Matt tried to focus. “I’ve got to stop drinking Smith & Wessons, nobody knows how to mix them properly. They’re supposed to taste like a liquidised Cuban cigar.”
“Yes, you told me that before.”
Matt massaged his forehead. “My brain’s banging against the sides of my skull. If I still feel like this in the morning I’m going to cut my first lecture.”
“It’s your call, I suppose, but you seem to be missing an awful lot of them lately.”
The train arrived and they lurched to their feet. Inside, unable to sit, they stood jammed against the curving doors of the carriage. Racing through the uphill tunnels toward the King’s Cross interchange it was necessary to keep a surreptitious eye on Matt. The thought came unbidden. Why did you ever put up with him? The amazing thing was that everyone seemed to idolise the guy. He was a walking disaster, yet the scruffier he looked and the more chaotic his life became, the more they hung on his every word. Especially other girls, the ones from outside the group, they couldn’t get enough –
—A buzz emanated from Matt’s backpack.
“Damn, that’s my phone.” Matt swung the bag from his shoulder and started rooting about inside it.
“You’ve got a signal down here?”
“God, where have you been for the last two years? There’s phone reception everywhere west and south of here now. Hampstead and – ” a long pause while he tried to frame the thought “ – Old Street, still a problem because of the tunnel depth or something. I dunno. Where the hell – ” The contents of his bag were tumbling over people’s feet, a dirty ball of stained T-shirts, some books with loose pages, half a dozen plastic pens, his phone –
“Here, let me give you a hand.” Together they started shovelling everything back into the bag. Matt helplessly attempted to pick up the fluttering pages. Then the train was slowing and they were arriving at King’s Cross.
“Come on, we have to change here. Zip up your bag.” Matt followed, lurching from the carriage, out and along the platform.
The scabrous half-retiled tunnel led to stairs, but Matt baulked before climbing them. “Give me a minute,” he protested, holding back in an attempt to steady himself, like a sailor in a storm. His chest was wheezing. Three teenaged girls passed them, heading toward the exit. A few tourists were dragging cases, a smartly dressed young couple and a drunk middle-aged man passed; after a few more seconds, there was no-one else.
“Hang on, I have to tell Ruby – ”
“You don’t, you’re fine.”
“No, have to do it, always letting her down, promised to say when I was on my way.” He poked hopelessly in his bag but still managed to find the phone and fire off a text in record time. The effort of concentrating so hard nearly made him fall over.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you. Wait, wait.” It was time to produce the atomiser. “You left it in the bar. You should be more careful, Matt. You know how Ruby gets when you’ve been smoking and drinking.”
“Yeah, she can be a pain,” said Matt, compliantly opening his mouth and sticking out a furry tongue.
“Put your tongue in. Come on, Matt, you know how to do this.”
“Okay.” He was finally ready. “God, it tastes like – ”
“That’s because you’ve been hammering the cocktails tonight.” Anyone coming? No, the coast was clear. “Look, I have to get you home.”
“I’m meeting – ”
“I know, I heard. Don’t worry, I can fix that.”
“The train – ”
“Come on, concentrate on the stairs, you can do it.”
There was the depth-charge rumble of a train arriving, the last southbound Piccadilly Line trip of the night. A plug of warm air pulsed in the tunnel and lifted a newspaper. Pages drifted past as if brought to life.
Something was happening to Matthew Hillingdon. He felt himself rising, moving. Everyone likes me, thought Matt, it’s so great that everyone wants me to succeed, but they don’t know my secret. The secret is that I can’t help myself. Everything he ever did was because others told him to. Even when he could sense that their advice was hopelessly misguided, he followed it. He was like a stick in a drain, swirling around and heading for the gutter, but someone was always there to pull him out in time. She’s always there for me, he thought. Girls are great, they’ll give you, like, six or seven chances at least, if they really like you. Lately though, events had been shifting beyond his comprehension. You had to trust your friends, though, didn’t you? Otherwise you had nothing.
He was having trouble lifting his legs. Now his right arm was tingling. He’d drunk more than this before without losing control of his limbs. Weird.
The feeling got worse. Was this what dying felt like? My neurons are being deprived of oxygen, he decided. This will lead to the cessation of electrical activity in my brain – the modern definition of biological death. But it just feels like I’m falling very gently. Swirling around and around, toward the gutter.
I’m one of life’s naturally lucky guys, he told himself. What a charmed life I lead; there’s always someone there to catch me when I fall. I think I’m falling faster now. And there’s someone right here to catch me again. How perfect is that?
∨ Off the Rails ∧
21
Alpha Males
Wednesday’s dawn was fierce and raw, low crimson light splashing the glass offices in Canary Wharf. A turbulent sky of sharp blue cloud unfurled over the frothing reaches of the river, threatening rain. John May leaned at the railing of his steel balcony on the fourth floor of Shad Thames, and breathed in the brackish smell of the tide. As a child, he had played on the shore below these windows. I haven’t strayed very far from home in my life, he thought. How we love to tether ourselves.
Leaning over the rail, he looked down at the pebbles stained with patches of verdigris, wondering if the sand beneath held the memory of his footprints. His mother had once lost a bracelet while chasing him along the shore. Was it still buried in the mud, another layer of London’s history? Although the embankments had been transformed, the cranes and wharves giving way to boxy river-view apartments, the shoreline had hardly changed at all. It seemed strange that he and the other kids had once swum here. Surely the water was cleaner now, free of tires and shopping trolleys and iridescent lumps of tar? His sister Gwen had never joined them. Fastidious and superior, she had always sat on the river wall to wait, smoothing her patterned dress, ignoring their yells, biding her time.
He smiled sadly at the thought. Gwen, happily living in Brighton with her extended family, was the only one to have survived unscarred. A strong sense of self-preservation had protected her, but the rest had all suffered in some way. His wife, Jane, fragile and mentally lost, in Broadhampton clinic, his daughter, Elizabeth, dead, his grandchildren at war with their own devils, and now a new woman in his world, the beautiful, haunted Brigitte, who had called him a few hours ago, drunk again. If he had not been able to help his own family, how would he ever be able to help her?