Charlie rolled onto his back and
continued to lie there, staring at the ceiling, for half an hour. When that half hour came to an end, and he
had failed to wrap his head around what had just happened, he sat up, walked
into the kitchen and began to make himself some beans on toast.
“I’m going to have a word with Twig,” he
muttered to the beans as he stirred them in their pan. “God only knows what was in that stuff he
gave me.”
The clock on the kitchen wall informed
him it was approaching seven in the evening.
Charlie had left his new acquaintance Janelle’s home at around quarter
past ten. Which meant that he had spent the
entire day hallucinating. And had, at
some point, made it back here safely.
Charlie ate his beans straight from the
pan (there was no bread to make toast), then made a cup of excessively sweet
tea and retired to the sofa that he must have somehow fallen from earlier. It was the only explanation for the collision
with the floor that had ended up waking him.
As for the dream itself, Charlie wasn’t too sure he felt like dwelling
on it.
But dwell on it he did, as he lay in bed
that night, sleep evading him at every toss and turn. It was perfectly logical, he decided, as
midnight melted into one, then two, then three.
He had been thinking about Alicia that morning, and then he’d suffered
some ill effects courtesy of Twig, or Dr Clarke, or both. It was only natural that his subconscious
would throw up that night at Yoko’s to tease him; the last time he had ever seen
Alicia, and they had fought.
That had been three years ago. Three years in which Charlie did very little
except go to the pub with his mates from home, the ones who hadn’t gone to
uni. Until one by one they started
getting girlfriends, and jobs, even kids in some cases. Three years passed, and everybody was busy
living, except Charlie.
He’d thought about Alicia often, of
course. Constantly, in fact. First
bitterly, licking his wounds, then more tenderly as time went by. He wrote letters that he could never quite
bring himself to send, picked up the phone a million times but always succumbed
to his own cowardice. He’d called her a
cold bitch that last night in Yoko’s, before walking out and leaving her
there. That was what he relived every
time he considered making contact, and the shame always stayed his hand.
And then eventually, of course, it
didn’t matter if he wrote or not, because Alicia Solomon died. Killed in a car accident along with her new
rugby player boyfriend. In fucking
Australia, no less. Charlie couldn’t
help but think that Alicia would be pleased with that last part. When friends and family spoke of her years
from now, she would be remembered as the tragic, beautiful girl who died before
her time… in Australia.
That was why he had been taken back to
Yoko’s, Charlie decided as the night sky began to pale outside. To him, Alicia had never left the
nightclub. She’d stayed where he’d left
her. Simple psychology, really. As Charlie finally succumbed to sleep, he
resolved to steer clear of Twig, and refrain from taking Dr Clarke’s pills
again. He could do without the guilt.
It didn’t dawn
on him until his doorbell rang that evening, stirring him from his bed, that
today was Friday. Charlie didn’t have
much in the way of a routine, or any real notion of structure in his life at
all, but Fridays meant one thing and one thing only: Kat. A former colleague from one of the brief
periods where Charlie had held down a job, she was almost but not quite old
enough to be his mother, but that had never got in the way of them being
mates. And, ever since the day that Kat
had made it painfully clear to Charlie that he would never get into her knickers, very good friends was just what they
had been.
When Charlie had
first heard the news about Alicia, his mother and father had been sympathetic,
as had most of the friends from whom he had drifted apart. Everybody knew what she had meant to
him. But as the months slipped away and
Charlie refused to make even the slightest move in the healthy and expected
direction, people began to lose patience.
Mates returned to the vacuum from which they had appeared, and his
parents rang every so often to make sure he hadn’t hanged himself. But, for the
most part, Charlie was left to his own devices.
Except for Kat. It had mystified Charlie at first, why she
insisted on darkening his door every Friday with a takeaway and a bottle. Her intentions were far from romantic, and
Charlie had never done her such a kindness that it needed returning. In the midst of his greedy, all-consuming
grief, selflessness was something Charlie couldn’t conceive of. A few Fridays had passed before he started to
suspect that Kat might know a little something about what he was going through.
“Tell me about
Alicia,” she’d said to him that first Friday, after helping herself to his best
weed. And so Charlie had told her, not
realising until hours after, when he went to sleep, how much he had needed to talk about her, how saying her
name aloud had almost been enough to conjure her back to him, so that she was
part of his world again and not forever dying over and over in a car with a
rugby player on the other side of the world.
They
had never been what one might call an obvious match, by anyone's
standards. While Charlie would fret over whether the Gallagher
brothers were going to see past their differences long
enough for Oasis to produce another album, Alicia would be busy
extolling the virtues of her favourite Sugababes line-up. Nothing
that Charlie owned looked like it cost any more than the spare change which
solely occupied his wallet. Alicia, on
the other hand, was partial to expensive, close-fitting dresses.
It
wasn’t anything as clichéd as “opposites attract”, thank god. More an example of how being utterly,
spectacularly drunk can bring two people together in an unexpected and
serendipitous way. For a short and
blissful time, they were perfect for each other.
Kat
would say nothing as Charlie rambled on for hours about Alicia and Carrow
(because the two were forever intertwined), every film they had gone to see
together, every shit student party, every argument and every reconciliation, everything
but that last evening. She would just listen,
drinking wine and ever rolling another joint.
So yes, she must have known. Must
have lived her own version of Yoko’s at some point. One day, when Charlie was less of a
catastrophe, he intended to return the favour.
Tonight
she had treated them both to a fish supper.
Charlie began to roll a joint in preparation for after the meal, while Kat
hunted through his cupboards for ketchup.
“Have
you actually ventured inside a supermarket this year?” She called out from the depths of his fridge.
“They’re
overrated,” he shouted back. “Now get in
here and eat your chips before they get cold.
I have a story to tell you.”
They
sat cross-legged on the rug in the living room, eating straight from the masses
of crumpled newspaper in their laps.
Between steaming mouthfuls, Charlie told her all about his experience
the day before.
“You’ve
taken all sorts in your time,” he said, when he had recounted the entire
tale. “Has anything like that happened
to you?” It was the first time he’d
mentioned anything to Kat about that final night in Yoko’s, and he could see
her storing that away for further exploration later.
“Who’s
to say it didn’t happen for real?” She
asked, seemingly serious.
“Beg
pardon?”
“Well? Is it really so preposterous?”
“I’d
say so. Maybe we should give the bud a
miss tonight.”
“Think
about it. You loved Alicia more than
you’ve ever loved anyone. You still
do. The human mind is capable of some
pretty amazing things. Even more so the
human heart. Sure, there’s the rules of
physics and everything that keeps the sky up top instead of down below, but
what if you’ve found a way around all that?
What if, somehow, through sheer force of want, you’ve found a way
back to her?”
Charlie
stared at Kat, aghast, for a full minute before she cracked up. A few seconds later, he was laughing along
with her.
“On
the other hand,” she snorted, “what a load of bollocks that would be.”
“You
are awful,” he admonished.
“It
made you laugh, didn’t it? I was
seriously thinking I’d have to shag you in order to put a smile on that sullen face
of yours.”
“That
may still be necessary,” Charlie grabbed a handful of thigh and gave it a
playful squeeze. Kat responded with a
swift, painful jab to his left kidney.
“Fuck off,” she grinned, as he doubled over in pain. Then, rather more sweetly: “Would you happen
to have a lighter?”
~
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