Poster Boy, page 8
Jimmy had worn a smart cream pullover with a subtle logo: Jingo, the major sports brand. The striped J with the crossed ivy leaves beneath it is visible in the picture, just above his chest. It gives the subtle impression that Jimmy was athletic. He wasn’t. Not that he was unfit, he could run damn fast when he wanted to, but he never did anything so contrived, so ostentatiously wholesome and conformist, as play sport. We were sent hundreds of pounds of vouchers for Jingo, and a rugby ball signed by their CEO. Jimmy didn’t own a single other item of clothing by them, and that one had been bought by Mum specifically for the event. He never wore it again.
He’d also shaved, something he did only under duress, and his slightly zig-zagged dimples were highlighted by the angle. The grin on his lips caused faint creases round his eyes. They would have deepened over time, to form wrinkles that his loved ones would affectionately call laughter lines. Had he lived. The sparkle in his eyes was for Mum. She had taken the picture on her Shades, after shoving a napkin at him and demanding he wipe the ketchup from his lips. In the original photo you can still see a slight pink tinge under his bottom lip from the offending condiment. But not in the image that appeared on Greyson’s screen. They must have cleaned it up.
How thoughtful.
The officers in our lounge continued to be just as thoughtful. Mills sat sipping lukewarm tea from a dainty china mug. His fingers were too big for the ornate handle and he cradled the accompanying saucer in the palm of his hand. He made me think of an adult trying to play along with a toddler’s tea party. He listened, and nodded enthusiastically, at Mum’s cathartic outpouring of Jimmy anecdotes. She didn’t know, or perhaps didn’t care, that he was humouring her.
She smiled for the first time since the news as she regaled him with exaggerated tales of Jimmy’s bravery and intellect. How loving he was, how extraordinarily sweet a child he had been. Only a mother can brush over the act of breaking a window in one breathless sentence, then languish over his ensuing regret; shifting the focus of the tale to her son’s heartfelt contrition and handwritten apology, so that he comes out smelling of roses.
Dad excused himself, said he was going to take a shower. I think it was just all too much. I tried to leave as well, intending to go shut myself in my room, but Greyson called me over to his screen.
“Rosa?” He looked up and smiled. He was younger than Mills, and had an air of ease about him that instantly soothed. “Do you want me to run through this with you?”
It was the first time anyone official had spoken to me directly, other than to prevent me following my father into the garden the day before. Greyson was the only one who seemed to acknowledge me in all this. I couldn’t say no. I was desperate for the attention, though I didn’t realise it at the time.
“Have you got your Shades?” he asked as I sat beside him at the large coffee table. I nodded, and pulled them out of my pocket.
“Okay, good,” he said. “So, this is his profile as the public see it.” I looked at the screen. As well as the newly uploaded avatar several other changes had been made. Instead of Jimmy L his screen name was now RIP Jimmy Lincoln, and his bio read Hero of London. All his photos were gone, replaced by the images Mum had struggled to choose between. Each one was vivid, flawless. Not a spot or a scratch. Even in the picture of him on his skateboard (in which I knew for a fact he’d had a slight black eye from a previous fight), he looked clean cut and unblemished. And they’d removed the cigarette from his hand.
“But log on from your Shades,” he said. “The password is HX34-lZ.”
I obeyed and accessed Jimmy’s profile. The avatar was still the same, of course, and the new pictures had been added. But all his old ones were there too, along with all his updates and messages from his friends.
“I know this is strange, Rosa,” he said, “but it’s not gone. You’ve got the password now. You can look at his real profiles anytime you want.”
I nodded, moving my pupils rapidly, scanning through his camera roll. I stopped when I came to one of the two of us on a roof terrace in Malaga, taken a couple of years ago on a family holiday. He had his arm round me, grinning. I was wearing a green dress and a pink flower in my hair. That was the night he and I had gone out for dinner by ourselves. He’d bought me a blue cocktail that tasted like coconut, and asked the waiter to take our picture. The caption read, Me and my beautiful sis.
I never even knew he’d uploaded it.
My eyes filled with tears and I took off my Shades. I dug my fingernails into my hands, trying not to lose it in company. But when Greyson put his arm around me I sobbed into his shoulder. Mum was onto Jimmy’s chivalry (ha!) and she didn’t even notice.
“I’m so sorry, kiddo.” Greyson stroked my back gently.
“It’s not him,” I said, trying to compose myself as I pointed at his new profile. “It’s not Jimmy.”
Greyson sighed. “I know,” he said softly, “but what’s coming… I think you’ll be glad we did this. And you can still see him how he really was. No one can take away your memories.”
“It says he was a hero,” I whispered, “but it was just an accident. He didn’t do it on purpose.”
“I know that too. But it’s still true that people would have died if it wasn’t for him. Even if it was an accident. Maybe it was fate?”
“I don’t believe in fate,” I said, wrenching a tissue from my pocket.
“Fair enough. Me neither, as it goes. But people, most people, they don’t do well with chaos.”
“What do you mean?”
He glanced at Mum and Mills. “Maybe we should make some more tea?” he said, with a deliberate stare. I nodded and followed him into the kitchen.
“Rosa,” he said when the kettle began to make noise, “you’re a clever girl. I can see that. Can I be honest with you?”
I nodded.
“We missed this. Totally missed it. If it wasn’t for what happened to your brother yesterday… well. Can you imagine, Rosa, how scared people would be? If this had gone ahead and the best and brightest minds in anti-terror had no idea? It would be meltdown. People are always looking for an easy answer, they don’t see things like you and I do. We know it’s not black and white, but that terrifies them. So, if we have villains then we need heroes. It gives a kind of balance.”
“No one’s going to believe Jimmy did it deliberately!”
“Of course not. I’m not suggesting that. But they will want someone to thank, just as they want someone to blame. And it seems wrong that the police should take the credit. At the end of the day, it was Jimmy who prevented it. And doesn’t it help, just a little bit, that he didn’t die for nothing? That some good came from a tragedy? I think, even if it doesn’t help you, it will certainly help your mother.”
It sickens me now how naïve I was, how easily played. It was the oldest trick in the book, appeal to my intellect. Make me think I was a cut above. I was being let into the inner circle, trusted with more information. It was just a deeper level of deception, I see that now. But I was young and stupid, and buoyed by thoughts of being special. My mother had been won over by the shameless praise of her son, and the opportunity to rave about him uninterrupted. I had been manipulated for my altruism and delusions of intelligence.
I played right into their hands.
15
Alicia returns to her seat, to the soundtrack of rapturous applause. Her ice-gaze flicks my way briefly and the edges of her mouth twitch. She doesn’t know whether she ought to smile or not, doesn’t understand the etiquette. Doesn’t know how to behave in unscripted interaction. I smile, but not at her. I smile at that one little tell there is, underneath the manufactured frosting, still some part of Alicia that resembles the woman I first saw on the screen the day after Jimmy died.
She’d only been in the post a few months back then, and hadn’t yet had cause to make a public statement. She had a lot of personal reasons to thank Jimmy. Her head would have been on a plate if it weren’t for him. I suppose the nervousness in her address came not just from stage fright, but also from knowing how close she’d come to fucking up her career.
No wonder they’d moved fast to get Jimmy’s profiles doctored. It was less than two hours after Mills and Greyson had arrived when the broadcast interrupted all UK channels. We gathered on the sofas, not realising that what was about to happen would send our lives into even more chaos than our loss already had.
She hasn’t changed much aesthetically, I guess. But her demeanour was different when she took those steps from the door of the station toward the cameras and fluffy grey mics. She looked panicked, harassed. The press had been told a statement would be made, but nobody except us and the police knew what it would be about.
“Ms Browne! What’s happening?”
“Alicia! Over here, is this a matter of public safety?”
She threw frantic, wide-eyed glances sideways. She was drowning in it. It fell to a large officer with a voice like a foghorn to pull her out of the quicksand.
“Hush down, ladies and gents! Questions after.”
The vultures fell silent. The camera zoomed in on her, shuffling papers in her hands. Her pinky was shaking; she gripped the pages tighter. The whole of England stopped what they were doing and listened to the news of how close we came to disaster. At first, she spoke only of the uncovered plot. The spectators gasped as she detailed the planned bombings, and potential death tolls. I wondered for a moment if they’d decided to cut Jimmy out of the picture altogether.
But then, from among her pile of papers, she pulled out a photograph. Mum gasped, recognising her son’s image held in the sweaty, trembling fingers of the rookie head of anti-terror.
“This information came to light because of the tragic death of a young man who has been officially named as James Lincoln.” She held the photo, that photo, aloft. The camera zoomed in even further until our screen, everyone’s screen, was filled with my twin’s grinning ketchup-free face. “Yesterday, at 2:14pm, James fell to his death from a bridge over the A406. Amongst the drivers involved in the ensuing collision was a Mr Knight, who we now believe to be the leader of the notorious criminal gang, Gridless. In his vehicle, the officers on the scene found evidence of the planned terrorist attack. James, known to his friends and family as Jimmy, has, with his death, saved the lives of countless English citizens. Because of his actions, we were able to find and detain the terrorists in our midst before they could carry out their horrific plans.”
We sat in silence. Processing. Mills and Greyson studied us, not knowing whether to speak. From the table my Shades broke the stillness with frantic beeping. I realised I was still logged into Jimmy’s account.
The notifications went berserk. The hit counter stuttered through the numbers.
110 visitors.
546.
2,678.
The messages flooded in faster than the eye could read, causing the page to be in constant motion.
R.I.P.
You’re a hero.
Always in our hearts.
Cheers, dude, you saved my life.
England thanks you, brave soldier.
Mum watched the deluge with an exaggerated squint before grabbing Greyson’s laptop and scrolling to the bottom. She wanted to read every word, every tribute. The smile was back on her lips, even as tears fell from her eyes. He’d been right; it was helping her. It gave her something to hold onto, took her attention away from the fact that he was gone.
Dad said nothing. He stared at the TV without really seeing it. I used to think Dad’s silences came from a sage-like wisdom. I thought he was observing and collating information, mulling things over. He was strong and capable. He let the lesser mortals react and gabble, but saved his words and actions until he knew the answers. But after years of looking to him, waiting for guidance that never came, I realised he was adrift in the world just like the rest of us. He spoke no words, not because he was deep in contemplation, but simply because he had nothing to say.
A police car pulled up outside and Greyson excused himself to go and greet them.
“What’s happening now?” I asked Mills.
“That’ll be the afternoon shift,” he said. “They’ll be stationed there until 8pm, then hand over to the graveyard shift. But don’t worry, they’ll not disturb you. If you felt like making them a cuppa now and again I’m sure they wouldn’t object though.”
I went into the kitchen and watched through the window. Two uniformed policemen positioned themselves at the gate to our front garden. Greyson clapped them on their shoulders and came back inside.
“Right,” he said, “we’ll be leaving you in peace now, you’ll be well looked after.”
They were heading to the front door when two vans pulled up.
“There we are. That didn’t take ’em long,” Mills said gesturing outside. “I was hoping to get away before they arrived. Never mind.”
“Who is it?” Mum asked.
“Journalists,” Mills said. He strode to the kitchen window and pulled down the shutters. “They’ll be wanting to talk to you, but I’d advise against it for the time being. My officers won’t let them bother you. I’ll drop by tomorrow, see how you’re doing and talk about the next step.”
“Next step?” Dad broke his silence.
“Well, you’ll be wanting to leave your house sometime,” he said, “and they won’t quit until they’ve had an interview, or a statement. Trust me, I can tell you from experience there’s no point trying to avoid them, you can’t. The best you can do, and the best we can do for you, is to make it on your terms. When you’re ready, we can prep you, and you can give them what they want, but in your own way. You can give a scheduled statement to all of them at once, like Ms Browne did, or an exclusive to just one. We’ll go over your options tomorrow, there’s no hurry. But it might be best to get it out of the way before the funeral.”
None of us had even thought about a funeral yet. Greyson picked up on the shock on our faces.
“We can help with that too,” he said. “If you want it to be private, we can close the roads so the crowds don’t interrupt.”
Crowds. It seemed insane. There would be crowds at a funeral for a drugged-up teen? But just as we were all trying to get to grips with the idea, a bridge appeared on the TV. Its rails were covered in flowers, and ribbons, and people were lining up to leave their offerings.
“Oh my God!” Mum thumped back down in her chair, as if she’d been kicked. “Is that where it… where he…?”
Greyson looked solemn. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
She burst into tears again.
If there’s one thing the English are good at, it’s standing in line, waiting their turn. They queued in single file, all along the pavement and up the steps to the bridge. One at a time they stepped onto it, laid down their tribute and solemnly walked on. Some dabbed at their eyes with tissues, some simply stared at the ground. The reporter approached a young woman in the line who was holding a small bunch of carnations, and a hand-written card that said simply Thank You.
“May I ask why you’ve come here today?” the reporter quizzed.
“I feel I have to,” the young woman replied. “I have to say thank you. Jimmy saved my life.”
“By that you mean you could have potentially been involved in the blast?”
“Oh, definitely, there’s no question in my mind. I’m always on the Circle line at that time in the morning. If it wasn’t for Jimmy… well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.”
The camera panned out, and showed her ripe, enlarged stomach. Mum gasped.
“Can I have a show of hands?” the reporter called out to the crowd. “Who here would have lost their lives next week if it hadn’t been for Jimmy?”
Dozens of hands went up. Mum inhaled sharply.
“So there you have it, Hugh,” the reporter addressed the camera. “All these people, and hundreds more, are today feeling a huge debt of gratitude, as well as immense sorrow, for the sacrifice of this brave young man. We are getting reports that several major employers, who would have suffered the decimation of their staff, have announced that they will be closing, as a mark of respect, during his funeral, whenever that may be. And of course, we mustn’t forget that among the potential victims who are today counting their lucky stars, and giving thanks to Jimmy Lincoln, is the Prime Minister himself. Jeremy Cole was of course scheduled to be at Victoria at the time of the attack, leading police to suspect that he was in fact the main target. He is expected to release a statement. For now, though, London is united in shock, and gratitude. Jonathan Kingsley, BBC news, above the A406.”
“All those people,” Mum shook her head slowly. “Dear God. He saved all those people.”
Dad and I exchanged a look. I don’t think we ever really understand another person just from a knowing look. I think we just reaffirm what we ourselves are thinking. But I took it to mean that we both knew the heroic angle had more holes than ten square miles of putting greens, but for Mum’s sake we’d not voice our thoughts.
“That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you, ma’am,” Greyson said. “Your son was a hero.”
She nodded, smiling through the tears. “I always knew. I always knew he was special. I just wish he wasn’t gone. But… all those lives… It’s what he would have wanted.” She cleared her throat, wiped her eyes and stood up suddenly. “It shouldn’t be private,” she announced.
“Ma’am?”
“The funeral. Any of it. This is what he died for. And people want to thank him. We mustn’t be selfish. He wasn’t just our Jimmy, he means so much to everyone now. If they want to show their respect they ought to be allowed to.”
“Janey,” Dad stepped forward, tried to put his hand on her shoulder but she pushed it away, “I don’t think—”
“No, Dave. Don’t. I won’t let you change my mind on this. He was my boy, my baby. I know what he would have wanted. He gave his life. It’s only natural people will want to thank him. He deserves that.”
