Fossils, page 19
That’s true, Sherrie-Lee said. It’s okay to drop me anywhere here. I can just walk from here.
Yeah, over there. Or a bit further down, she added when a minute had gone by without him responding.
Sherrie-Lee, we need to think about that money a bit more. We don’t want to be letting no opportunity go without thinking it all through, do we? Let’s be reasonable about it. It’s our due. You can’t set up something like that, draw everyone in and then just walk away before you get your hands on the money.
After a few minutes he added, I mean fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He put his foot down on the accelerator and laughed a strange hiss through his teeth.
Sherrie-Lee’s will melted, it pooled on the seat, to the floor. Making it feel wet, as though she’d peed herself. The draught of air coming through the open windows made her feel cold suddenly. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He had pulled himself up closer to the steering wheel and was looking ahead, intently. His eyes were narrowed and his lips moved as though reacting to the contours of some internal conversation he was having with himself. All the while, through all the talking and the hissing, he still kept the little bit of cocktail stick in his mouth.
We got to think this all through, he repeated. He spat the stick out of the window.
They’ll be waiting for me at home, she said quietly. Her hands gripped each other on her lap and she dug her nails into the fingers of her other hand as they curled into each other more tightly.
But you’re still kind of missing?
Sherrie-Lee’s head tried to go in one direction. She swallowed hard as her throat narrowed and a fog swirled inside her skull. Stay cool. I was going home, she said quietly.
He looked at her to get the measure of her. She returned his look, directly in the eye to show it was the whole truth, but could not bring herself to say any more.
Fuck, he said again, banging the steering wheel with both palms.
They drove on in silence.
After a while of driving through country lanes, the van pulled up outside a small croft-like house, surrounded, on three sides, by fields. There were no other buildings around. The van started up again and drove onto the grass, bumping over the rough ground to the back of the building, so it was hidden away, even from the dirt road at the front.
We’re gonna hang out here for a few days, Sherrie-Lee. See how things lie. His eyes narrowed, wrinkling up, as he looked at her. The van’s automatic windows closed. There was a slight twitch in his upper lip. That’s what we’re gonna do, Sherrie-Lee. Wait here a few days. He looked straight into her eyes, but she showed no response. He had a lot of grey hair in his hairline above his forehead. He stayed staring at her as though waiting for her to say something.
Why? she said, not taking her eyes off him.
Robyn half-smiled, but didn’t say anything. Then, without warning, he laughed loud and quick. When he stopped, there was no trace of any amusement in his face. He looked worried and serious. His left eye flickered.
The van clicked. Locked. She watched his reflection in the passenger door mirror, as he walked round the side of the house. She tried the doors anyway, when he was out of view. She thought she knew what he was up to. He was going to be predictable in that sense. But then, and this is what worried her, there was also something a bit sinister about him. Something too loose cannon. Like he could flip over some trivial thing. Do something senseless. The way he hissed through his teeth. There was something animal about it. Something deranged. That weird smile. The cold, odd look in his eyes.
She turned round in the seat and lifted herself up so she could see the house through the back window of the van. She could make out a single window in the back of the house. A torn curtain hung across it. There was nothing else, just that window. The torn curtain. The low roof.
She sat back in the seat and looked out at the fields which dipped away dramatically ahead of her. She felt remote from herself, removed as though she were a character in a film. Sheep were dotted about. Frozen to stillness by the distance. How passive they were, out there munching grass, indifferent to their own futures. They could all be going to the slaughterhouse tomorrow. It would make no difference. They would just carry on as they always did.
She chastised herself for the second or third time. She had felt that something was not quite right, even before she got in the van. She should have followed her instincts and not got suckered in with all that stuff about beagles. Probably it wasn’t even true. He didn’t seem to know what she was talking about when she’d asked about the lab. She’d read in a science magazine in the library about the importance of following your instincts. It wasn’t just superstition. It was an inbuilt defence mechanism meant to alert you to danger. Instinct was part of our evolution. It was in our DNA, designed to protect us from predators. She had read all this stuff and knew it, but why hadn’t she acted on it? She thought of the welfare woman at school, how she would look at her with an expression of forced patience and say, Sherrie-Lee, to know and not to do is not to know. It sort of made sense, now. Now that she thought of it in this new context. She had never tried to make sense of it before because she always felt the woman was too patronising, like a lot of those types. She was sure they meant well, most of them, but somehow they just always seemed to pitch the whole thing in the wrong way. They never really listened to anything you said, even though that is what they were paid to do. There was something insincere about them too. That’s what got up her nose about them. The fakery. At least people were sincere where she came from.
28
She was woken up by a tap on the window. She looked up. It was Robyn smiling in an exaggerated way, close to the window. So close you could see spittle stretching between his teeth. His insane, wide smile. He was like the man from the fucking Shining. He held up two bags of crisps, one at either side of his head. He looked in, like he was expecting some kind of reaction, like a response to the crisps or something. He kept smiling and then he nodded towards her, the bags of crisps like oversized ears. He walked round the front of the van, opened the driver’s door and put the stuff on the seat. He pulled out a plastic flask from a side pocket of his trousers and put that on the seat with the crisps.
He kept looking at her, as though he wanted to say something, or he wanted her to say something, then he shook his head and whistled through his teeth. One long note.
Well, Sherrie-Lee, it looks like you’re still missing. They still got you on the news. He stayed standing in the door frame of the van, looking in on her. His eyes were wide and bright, glinting in the dark. He smiled again and nodded at her, and when he turned his head slightly as he changed his position in the door frame, he kept his eyes fixed on her. His chin jutting out slightly in a kind of challenge or like he was toying with the thought of saying something else.
Sherrie-Lee looked at him, but didn’t say anything. He looked odd in this half-light of the van’s open door. There were pale puffy patches under his eyes and at the sides of his mouth too.
He sighed and seemed to puff his chest out as he breathed, like she’d seen gorillas do in wildlife documentaries. She half-expected him to bang his chest with his fists and roar. He looked off, down towards the valley. There was no moon out, only a few scattered stars in the black sky. The meagre light escaping from the van showed up tufts of coarse, sere grasses in the field next to them. The darkness beyond was complete and silent. Even the sheep had quietened down.
Well, Sherrie-Lee. Goodnight, then. He stayed looking at her, grinning for a few exaggerated moments. He had this way of holding himself, his body seemed to hover before committing to a movement or as though he’d changed his mind at the last moment. He pulled away and closed the door of the van, without locking it.
Sherrie-Lee stayed absolutely still. Her breathing deepened. Her heart thudded so much she could hear it pounding in her ears. In the mirror, she watched as he retreated. Just before he disappeared from view, he turned round, holding his hand forward. Her hand went to the handle. Too late. He’d clicked it locked in the same instant. The van flashed in response and fell silent. From the corner of her eye she saw him through the mirror, standing at the end of the house, and although she couldn’t make out his face any more she imagined him looking at her, pleased with himself and smiling.
Wacko, she muttered under her breath.
After a minute or so, she picked up one of the bags of crisps. Chicken flavoured, she read the packet. Nice, she said aloud. Some wacko vegan he is. She opened the bag and inhaled the delicious smell.
All the worrying she did about stuff so that it wouldn’t happen. She hadn’t seen this coming. If you’re worried about specific things it stops them from happening. Things don’t usually happen when you’re worrying about them. She did all the worrying for Joshy because he couldn’t do it for himself. It was her worrying that kept him safe. That kept all the dangers away. If there was no one to keep their eye on the ball, to look out for him, there was no telling what might happen.
She thought about the green glass in the deserts of New Mexico. When the first atomic bomb was dropped there, the sand liquified in the heat from the blast as it was thrown into the air and became glass as it cooled and fell back to the desert floor. She’d had a piece of green glass in her collection. She’d found it whilst walking in the cemetery. One of the graves was covered with the stuff. But after she’d read about the green glass of New Mexico, she’d taken it back to the cemetery where it couldn’t do any harm, just in case it came from there and was full of radiation.
29
Lester looked up at the traffic of legs walking on the street outside. Heels tapping sharply against the pavement, black loafers slapping the surface. Boots pounding. The call centre where he worked was in the basement of an office block in the centre of town. Through the elongated, rectangular windows near the ceiling the lower reaches of the street outside was visible. It was five-thirty and the numbers of passers-by had thronged as people finished work and left offices and shops. His own shift finished at six. He looked along his row at the other people talking into their headsets, facing computer screens. His last five calls had run to answer machines. He had pressed the key to indicate a call back each time and waited for his next call to come up. The calls came up automatically. Somebody had been sacked the week before for responding to a fuck off on the line with his own Fuck off to you too, Sir. That was what Lester had heard. The guy must have been really fed up with the job, because everyone who worked there knew that that would get you fired on the spot.
Rarely did Lester take the bus back from work, preferring to walk and save money. Already a couple of the small bars he walked past were filled with the after-work crowd. He glanced in through the large glass windows. People sat at stools around high tables in their business clothes, talking and drinking from wine glasses. A desire to be a part of it flooded into him and he thought briefly about calling Gina to come and meet him. Imagined himself waiting for her at one of the tables, a vodka and coke already purchased for her and there at the table when she arrived.
He turned to walk through the main pedestrian area. A bunch of high school kids milled around Market Square, sitting on the steps of the museum, drinking from cans of energy drinks. A large group of homeless people congregated at the other side of the steps, their bags of possessions behind them, piled up in the corner under the covered part of the entrance. A sleeping bag was already laid out. Pigeons strutted on stunted feet, others cooed and gobbled from window ledges above. A waiter stacked chairs outside an outdoor cafe, then dragged a table through the doorway. A woman poured frothy water into a drain outside the pie shop; she held a long-handled sweeping brush against her shoulder while she tipped the bucket with both hands. It felt good to be walking through town. The busyness of the place infected him with a buzz of optimism.
As he turned into his own neighbourhood, he saw that the big man, who often looked out and watched people from the corner plot of his garden, was there. He moved his weight from foot to foot when he saw Lester approach but did not acknowledge him when Lester nodded and said hello, which Lester always did even though the man never responded to his greeting. Whenever Lester saw him, he was always standing in the same place, wringing at his hands which he held in front of his chest, his face expressionless and child-like despite the size of him. Sometimes another man, decades older and half the size of the big man, was in the yard too. His dad, Lester had thought on first seeing him. Poor bastards.
Gina’s suitcase was by the front door when Lester entered. Gina herself was in the living room, sitting neatly on the sofa.
What’s up, Gina? He stood in the doorway.
It’s still all over the news, Lester. She’s still missing is what they’re saying.
Lester rubbed at the sides of his mouth with his thumb and index finger.
I don’t know what to say, Gina. He came to sit next to her on the edge of the sofa.
So much for that letter she left you, Lester.
Why’s your bag out there?
Gina shrugged, I don’t want to be getting mixed up with all this business, Lester. Whatever it is that’s going on. I don’t want to be part of it.
C’mon, Gina. There’s nothing going on here. You’re okay. He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her towards him.
She resisted. Clearly something’s going on, Lester. She shuffled around so that she was facing him. How could you get mixed up in all this after all we’ve been through? It doesn’t make any sense.
Everything’s gonna be okay. None of it has anything to do with us.
How can you say that? She stood up and walked towards the window.
All that stuff she said. I don’t know if any of it’s true. It’s all such a mess.
Lester rubbed his face with both hands. He stood up and went to stand behind Gina.
I can’t stay here, Lester. I don’t know what to believe anymore.
30
She woke to the throb of her ankle and the sound of sheep, which seemed to have moved closer in the night. They bleated from one direction and then another in a kind of mass ventriloquy. It had taken her a long time to get to sleep, and she was still tired. And stiff. And hungry. She turned round to check on the house. There was no sign of life there. She wondered what time it was. The clock on the van showed only zeros whenever the engine was turned on. It seemed early. Outside, a light rain fell soundlessly. Mist veiled the distant hills, like the grey of the sky had been pulled down onto them. She longed to step outside. To let the rain fall on her skin, wetting her hair and face and clothes.
She thought about what Robyn had said, about all the stuff still being on the news. Bob would see that and wonder what was going on. He would think that she’d been lying in her letter. That she was still up to something. It was the least of her problems now, but somehow it was the thought that made her the saddest as she sat in the van weighing it all up. She remembered how he had looked before he walked out that last time. That wounded look. The anger. She imagined, again, how he must have felt. That he had trusted her and she had gone and done that to him. Sending a ransom note and not even telling him about it. Some friend she had been. She tried to picture them at home, him and Gina. She imagined that Gina would have quite a few things to say about the whole thing. What was ya thinking, Lester? Harbouring a bank robber’s daughter? If she even was that and not just some weird kid. Why, Lester, do ya go and get yerself so mixed up with all the wrong things that are going on, all the helpless cases? She wondered if she had nagged the whole truth out of Bob, or worked it out. If Bob had let something slip, with all the commotion around the letter she left and the news story, and then with her still being missing and making it drag on for so much longer. He wasn’t good at telling lies. Then she thought about how down in the dumps he had been when he hadn’t been able to visit Gina that Sunday, and how sad he would be if all the goings on had made Gina up and leave him. Thinking of all this pushed her to the verge of crying. That Robyn was a piece of work. ASSHOLE, she said aloud, looking in the side mirrors to make sure he hadn’t made an appearance.
Robyn had said a lot of weird shit. She couldn’t take it all in, he rambled so much. He didn’t have any friends. He had said that people weren’t to be trusted, that only a fool trusted people. They were a delinquent species, wired for destruction. They were only ever in it for themselves. The ones that seemed to be on your side of things, they were the worst. You had to keep an eye on them even more than any of the others. That’s the way it worked. You had to work them for your own gain. It wasn’t true that humans were a social species, that was a political trick. A myth. They were a solitary species, anti-social at best. He had said something about how you only had to read Mack Velly to know that.
The funny thing was that she agreed with Robyn on most of the animal stuff, even though he was unhinged. People didn’t care, they were selfish, and more than that they were irrational, incapable of acting even in their own best interests… No bees, no people… They would never take notice. Every extinction brings you closer to your own extinction. She had read that somewhere and thought it pretty cool, that. She wished she’d thought of it. People didn’t want to listen. It always astonished her how little tolerance people had for the truth. Some people got it though. Some people knew it. Even a nut job like Robyn got it. It was a real concrete thing for some people. Look at the lament for the lost species she had gone to. Then she thought about how there had only been twelve people there. People were blind. They didn’t care. Or at least, enough people didn’t care. She had ideas of her own on the subject. She had even given it a name. She called it the Stupid Gene Theory. Everybody had this gene, but it was dormant until people hit their teens. Then somehow it got switched on around those years. She even had a theory that maybe this gene gets activated because of all those teenage hormones. It gets switched on and it never gets switched off again. And when this gene is activated people start to see things differently. All the things that are really important get sidelined and this gene tells them that stuff like caring for the animals and the world is not important. That it’s childish and trivial. Some people are resistant to it switching on, but these people are very rare. When the stupid gene does get activated, people stop caring and act as though the destruction of the entire planet wasn’t relevant to them. As though they could go and live on Mars or something, like they’re all Elon-fucking-Musk. The whole thing was fucked. She hoped it would never happen to her, that she’d be one of those people resistant to the switching on of the stupid gene.
