Although Ron understood the three officers had simply been doing their job in the best way they knew how, he was now in the middle of nowhere, face down in a ditch, caked in mud and blood, and bemoaning, not for the first time, that his testicles were not quite so damage-proof as his skull. He had a date that evening, and, while a fresh scar would be useful, the state of his testicles would not.
Had he wept with pain? Ron thinks so. Could he breathe with three broken ribs? Well, yes, but not without feeling like he’d been knifed. Was the pain so excruciating that he’d begun to think that not breathing at all might be the lesser of two evils? He remembers that it was.
He doesn’t think about that ditch often. About the physical pain a human being can endure. But he’s thinking about it now, eyes tightly closed, curled up on his bathroom floor, with Ibrahim holding a cold flannel to the back of his neck. He is trying to gauge whether his hangover means he is currently in more pain now than he was in that ditch.
‘It was a lovely wedding,’ Ron mumbles.
‘Do you think perhaps you drank too much?’ asks Ibrahim. ‘In retrospect?’
‘Got to toast the happy couple,’ says Ron. Could he open his eyes? Should he? ‘Rude not to. How did we get home?’
‘Mark drove us,’ says Ibrahim. ‘And I was helping Pauline put you to bed, but you insisted on sleeping on the bathroom floor.’
‘Bed of kings, the bathroom floor,’ says Ron. He decides he will open his eyes, but it is a mistake. The world tips over a cliff and keeps rolling. He closes his eyes, and vows to never open them again. ‘Is Pauline still here?’
‘Making breakfast,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I’m assuming you won’t be joining us.’
‘Just a couple of eggs,’ says Ron into the floor. Will he die? If so, please, God, make it quick. ‘With Worcester sauce. And a bit of bacon, and there are sausages in the freezer. And mushrooms if we’ve got them. And beans. You have a nice time at the wedding?’
‘A lovely time,’ says Ibrahim.
‘Why aren’t you on the bathroom floor, then?’
‘Mainly because when Paul’s uncle suggested doing Jägerbombs at three a.m. I politely declined.’
‘Clever,’ says Ron. ‘That’s why you and Pauline are okay.’
‘Oh, Pauline had the Jägerbombs too,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Some people can just take their drink, can’t they?’
There is a ring on Ron’s doorbell. Pauline calls from the kitchen, ‘I’ll get it. Is he still alive?’
‘He is,’ says Ibrahim. ‘So I lose the bet.’
Ron hears Pauline talk into the entry phone and buzz someone up. The last thing Ron needs is company. Who is it? Joyce? Ron’s memory clears enough to remember Joyce drinking Jägerbombs too. So it won’t be her.
‘Jason to see you,’ Pauline calls. Okay, that’s not too bad. Jason’s seen worse.
‘Shall we tidy you up?’ Ibrahim suggests.
‘Jason won’t mind,’ says Ron.
‘I might just pull your trousers up though,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Sorry to be so formal.’
Ron gives a mute nod and feels his trousers being hoisted. Probably for the best.
Ron knows that he’s not going to be able to move any time soon, or even open his eyes. How is he going to have breakfast? Cross that bridge when you come to it, Ronnie, old son. At this precise moment Ron is very aware that he is a lucky man to have Pauline and Ibrahim at his side. Comatose on a bathroom floor is not the sort of trick you can pull too often. Collapse on a bathroom floor after a wedding and that can be quirky and charming; collapse on a bathroom floor every Friday night, and you’d soon find there’s no one around to cook you breakfast and pull up your trousers.
So they’ll indulge him for this one day, and he’ll make it up to them.
At some point Jason and Pauline can help him up and plonk him on the sofa, where he can eat bacon and eggs and watch daytime TV with the curtains drawn. Someone, probably Ibrahim, can cover him with a duvet and let him take a six- or seven-hour nap. Then they can all forget today ever happened.
As Ron lies there on the floor, he feels beached and harpooned, hopelessly waiting to be rolled back into the sea. But he has lived a life, and has been through worse.
Ron hears the front door to his flat open and waits for Jason to come in and mock him. What should Ron say? ‘Should’ve seen the other guy?’ Yep, that’ll do.
But instead he hears a squeal of surprised delight from Pauline, and then small footsteps racing towards the open bathroom door.
A small hand pushes the door fully open.
‘Grandad!’ says Kendrick. ‘It’s me. What shall we do?’
Kendrick. The single greatest human being on the planet, sure. But a human being that requires a huge amount of energy at all times.
‘Why are you on the floor? What are you looking for?’
There will be no duvet for Ron today. No gentle nursing back to health. Sometimes you simply have no choice but to drag yourself out of a muddy ditch and walk four miles on battered legs.
Ron summons every ounce of every pound of every stone of spirit in his body, sits up and smiles at his grandson.
‘I told Ibrahim that if you put your ear on the bathroom floor you could hear trains. He didn’t believe me.’
‘And could you?’
‘Yeah,’ says Ron. ‘Uncle Ibrahim was wrong.’
Kendrick looks at Ibrahim.
‘Unlucky, Uncle Ibrahim. Okay, if you’re finished in here, we should probably play Lego.’
Ron gets to his feet. An act that takes so much force of will he doesn’t even stop to wonder why on earth Jason and Kendrick might be visiting his flat on a Friday morning.
10
‘I’m afraid I’m buying a flapjack,’ says Joyce to Elizabeth. ‘And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.’
It’s funny how relationships change, Joyce thinks, as she walks into Anything with a Pulse, now Fairhaven’s fifth largest vegan café. Once she would have been full of questions. ‘What are we going to ask him, Elizabeth?’ ‘Why do you have a gun in your bag, Elizabeth?’ ‘Would you like a fruit pastille, Elizabeth?’ But today she’d stayed quiet, knowing there was no use rushing her friend. It was something to do with Nick Silver, and Joyce would be told precisely what at the point when she needed to be told and not a moment before. And, to be honest, the silence suited her this morning: she was quite surprised at the ferocity of her hangover. You shouldn’t still be allowed to get hangovers at eighty years old, there should be some sort of law. She wishes she had Ron’s constitution; Joyce bets he’s not suffering like she is this morning.
Once Joyce would also not have simply announced that she was buying a flapjack. Wouldn’t have dreamed of it. She would have floated it as an idea, looking for Elizabeth’s permission. When Elizabeth has a job to do, she doesn’t like being distracted. There’s a schedule in her head that you are not privy to, but that she won’t allow you to tamper with. Elizabeth will not have factored a flapjack break into today’s mission, Joyce is sure of it, but, nonetheless, a flapjack break is happening.
Joyce has come to realize that, just occasionally, you need to let Elizabeth know who’s boss.
‘An almond and date, and a cherry Bakewell,’ she says to the boy behind the counter. The almond and date is hers; the cherry Bakewell is for Elizabeth. Elizabeth hasn’t asked for it: she would baulk at the idea that she might get hungry later in the morning. Indeed, she would say something like ‘Do you think I got hungry walking dissidents across the Czechoslovakian border for nine hours in 1968, Joyce?’ but Joyce now has the courage of her conviction that Elizabeth is not always right.
Joyce glances over her shoulder and sees Elizabeth in the shop doorway, looking at her watch. The annoyance on her face makes Joyce happy, because it’s exactly the look of annoyance that Elizabeth would have given before Stephen died. Her friend is still there.