He shrugged. ‘Maybe it is.’
‘All due respect, like I said, we’ve hardly seen each other in ages.’
‘You’re right. But like I said, if you are usually like this, then that makes me even more worried.’
‘Don’t be. There’s nothing to worry about.’
‘The girls tell me things…’
‘Well they shouldn’t.’
A heavy silence. The two of them staring at each other across the dark room, just the creaks and groans of the tired old house around them. Jeremy cleared his throat. ‘I care about you, Michelle, so I’ll ask once more, then I’ll shut up. Are you sure you’re okay? Are the girls going to be all right here?’
‘Tell you what, Jeremy,’ Scott said, ‘why don’t you just save us all the trouble and shut up now? Seriously. I’ve put up with your bullshit all night, and I’ve had just about enough of your fucking noise.’
‘Scott, don’t…’ Michelle protested.
Jeremy held his head in his hands. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it, Scott. I just need to know. For the sake of my kids…’
‘Jeremy was just—’
‘Shut the fuck up, Michelle,’ Scott ordered. ‘Don’t you take his fucking side.’
‘I thought we were all on the same side,’ Jeremy said, quickly getting to his feet and positioning himself between Scott and Michelle, hands raised. Fuck, how he hated confrontation. He could smell the scotch on Scott’s breath from here. ‘Like I said this morning, just put yourself in my shoes. I’m worried about the girls.’
‘And like I said this morning, everything’s fine.
‘Maybe I still need convincing?’
Scott grabbed Jeremy’s collar and pushed him back against the wall. Michelle tried to force herself between them. Jeremy kept his hands raised in submission, refusing to fight back. ‘Then let me convince you, fucker,’ Scott hissed.
‘Scott, please,’ Michelle said, trying to separate them. ‘This isn’t helping anyone.’
He remained tense for a few seconds longer, then let go and walked away. Jeremy straightened himself out, adjusted his glasses and smoothed his hair, breathing hard but trying not to let his nervousness show. ‘I should leave.’
‘You don’t have to go,’ Michelle said.
‘I think he fucking does,’ Scott told her.
Jeremy didn’t hang around. He tried to tell Michelle it was okay and that he’d try and talk to her tomorrow, but Scott wasn’t having any of it. He handed Jeremy his coat and blocked his way to any other part of the house but the front door. Standing out on the step, Jeremy turned around to try and make one last situation-saving apology, but the door was slammed in his face.
He stood next to his car and could already hear Scott yelling at Michelle. But what could he do? Part of him wanted to go back inside, but would that just make things even worse? He’d come back and try again tomorrow. Michelle was a good mum. She’d always look out for the kids. He tried to hold onto that thought.
He looked up at the house and smiled and waved to Phoebe who was watching from her bedroom window. Don’t let her see, he told himself, don’t let her see…
22
It wasn’t even eleven, but it looked like the entire town had already gone to bed for the night. Christ, Jeremy thought as he drove, how could anyone stand living in a place as soulless as Thussock? He drove the short journey back to the Black Boy, hoping he’d come across somewhere more interesting to stop en route, because the idea of spending the rest of the evening alone in the cramped little box room above the pub lounge didn’t bear thinking about. He travelled constantly and he’d stayed in some pretty shitty places and lonely hotel rooms around the world, but this was grim by anyone’s standards. It reminded him of a week he’d once spent living on his nerves in Azerbaijan.
The room seemed stuck in the late eighties. There was no Internet, and it would probably be better to take your chances and shout from the window rather than risk the temperamental mobile coverage. The landline in the room was corded – Christ, when did I last use a phone that wasn’t cordless? – and he hadn’t been able to get a picture on the small portable TV when he’d tried earlier. He’d only wanted to catch up with the news headlines and it was only after a frustrating twenty minutes spent checking cables and fiddling with the aerial that he realised it was because the TV was an old analogue set, useless since the switchover to digital. And that, he decided, summed up Thussock perfectly: an analogue place stuck in a digital world.
With nothing else to do, the bar of the pub seemed the only option. He parked on the road outside the scruffy-looking building (damn place didn’t even have a bloody car park) and locked the car. He stood outside for a few moments, listening to the silence. Ah, maybe he was just in a bad mood after the ruckus back at the house. There was a lot to be said for the peace and quiet. There was no other traffic, hardly any other noise at all, in fact. The pub wasn’t far from the station and he remembered thinking the clattering of the railway would probably keep him awake all night. As it was, he couldn’t recall hearing even a single train since he’d arrived. Thussock was too quiet, if anything. He was almost relieved when he saw two helicopters crawling across the sky in the distance, taillights blinking, almost in unison. And far away he heard the low rumble of a truck, airbrakes hissing. Life goes on elsewhere…
There were only two other drinkers in the bar tonight, a couple of men in their late fifties, both reading newspapers, sitting right next to each other but barely speaking. They acknowledged him, but that was the extent of the interaction. The landlord kept himself busy, dividing his time between the bar and the TV Jeremy could hear blaring in one of the backrooms. The noise was muffled, but he could tell it was some kind of comedy programme. Every so often the volume would swell with the laughter track, the noise sounding out of place.
It was so bad he nipped upstairs and fetched himself a book to read as he drank his pint. It was that or paperwork, and no matter how bad it got, he decided, there was no way he was resorting to doing office work in a pub at this time of night. His dedication to the company, whilst strong enough to keep him travelling all these years and intense enough to have been the cause of many of the rifts between him and his ex-wife, still had limits.
At least the beer was good. Thussock’s own, no less, produced less than half a mile down the road. Ever the optimist, Jeremy was glad he’d found something positive to take with him from his time here. He’d try and pick up a crate or two before leaving. What happened at the house is getting you down, he told himself as he finished his first pint and got up for another. Things aren’t that bad. What other reason could there have been? Was it a local curse or something equally ridiculous? Was this one of those bizarre isolated communities you saw in horror movies? Abandon hope, all ye who enter Thussock…
The second pint went down even better than the first. The drink was going straight to his head, but that wasn’t a bad thing. He’d needed a drink all evening, all day if he was honest. He didn’t let them see, but he found being with Tammy and Phoebe almost as hard as being away from them. He hated leaving them more than anything. If I had my time again, he said to himself, sounding like an old man on his death bed, I’d never have let things get as bad as they did. He reminded himself that it hadn’t all been his fault. He and Michelle had grown apart naturally, their individual priorities and desires slowly changing the longer they were together. In the end their marriage had become a passion-free arrangement of convenience. He’d told her repeatedly that he’d done all the hours and all the travelling for her and the girls, of course, but he’d been blind to what they’d actually needed from him. The status quo at home had continued for longer than it should have. When it became clear that their close proximity but lack of interaction was having a negative effect on the girls, they’d separated then divorced soon after. No hard feelings. Regular and informal access. The best of a bad situation.