Jacob remained still, his eyes staring directly ahead.
‘Oi, Jacob?’ Kushal waved a hand in front of his face. ‘Are you there?’
‘Yeah …’ He spoke without paying attention to the words coming out. ‘Yeah, I’m here. I just …’ He leant forward in his seat. ‘I just need a bit longer.’
‘Man, you said you were done!’ The boy looked from the computer to Jacob and back again. ‘Is everything all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Jacob inched the mouse forward and clicked, ever socautiously, on the new message that had appeared so innocently and inconspicuously at the top of his mailbox.
From:[email protected]
Subject:Response requiredASAP
‘Something like that, yeah,’ he murmured, trying to focus on the words on the screen.
Jacob, I’ll get straight to the point. It’s been three months since your mother received a phone call from you, and quite frankly it’s not good enough. I don’t need her harassing me for an update because you are too irresponsible to bother to call. I got over my disappointment in you years ago, but apparently your mother is still clinging on to some hope you’re not the utterly selfish and careless human being that I know you to be. Get in touch and make both our lives easier.
It took five painstaking read-throughs for the words to land fully, each one like a tiny grenade thrown at his soul.
‘Jacob, what’s happened?’
‘Let’s go out,’ he announced suddenly, exiting the browser and standing up so fast he practically knocked Kushal off his chair.
‘What?’
‘Come on, let’s go somewhere and get a drink,’ he insisted, the urgency in his voice verging on anger.
‘I can’t!’
‘Why not? All you’re planning to do is play your dumb video game!’ Jacob slammed his hand down hard on the desk. ‘Let’s do something fun for once, hey?’
‘I know, but technically I’m working.’ Kushal lookeddistressed, like a puppy whose owner had suddenly turned on him. ‘I can’t leave here. My dad would kill me.’
Jacob bit down hard on the side of his cheek, the rage burning wildly inside him.
‘Yeah, well’ – he pushed past his empty chair and made his way towards the exit – ‘dads can go fuck themselves, if you ask me.’
*
It had been a long time since he’d visited a place like this. A place where the lights were so low you could barely see a foot in front of you. Where the drinks were always 70 per cent water, and a thick layer of dirt carpeted the surfaces. It was a place where the lost and lonely came to drown their sorrows, and Jacob was already three beers in.
‘I’ll have another, please.’ He nodded at the barman, pushing his empty glass away.
Already his head felt a little woozy. When was the last time he’d had an alcoholic drink? He tried to cast his mind back, his brain struggling to sift through the years of discarded and disjointed memories. Fragments of a past he never revisited. A jumble of places and faces that swirled around without rhyme or reason.
Maybe he was drunker than he thought.
‘Here you go.’ The barman switched his empty for a full glass, and Jacob downed half of it straight away. The tepid fizz tickled his nose, and the warm, sweet taste of hops coated the back of his throat.
‘Jesus, that’s disgusting.’ He winced, slamming the glass down and staring around the room. For a relatively crap bar, it was full. A mixture of locals and tourists milled about on the makeshift dance floor, whilst groups of tired old mengathered in the corners and along the bar. It wouldn’t have been his top choice of venue, but it was the first one he’d stumbled upon after storming from the hostel.
Two girls shrieked ecstatically as their accompanying group of young men made their way through a tray of suspicious-looking shots, each one trying to outdrink and outshine the next.
Oh, to be young.
Jacob took another swig of his drink, catching his reflection in the dusty mirror that hung in front of him. To the untrained eye, all that stared back was a youthful, sun-bleached, run-of-the-mill traveller. But Jacob could see the signs: the weariness in his eyes and the weight growing heavy on his shoulders. Back in the day, he too would have been grabbing the shots and laughing wildly in the centre of the group, trying to be one of the guys. One of the gang. A collection of lone wolves, huddling together to try and belong to a pack for a night. Making friends within seconds, promising to stay in touch for more than the twenty-four hours you got wasted with them. It was fun for a bit and, at least for a while, it had helped him to pretend that he wasn’t totally by himself in this world.
But you can’t run from the truth for ever. And over time it had become too hard to lie any more. To find excuses not to meet up with people again, to sit with the guilt he felt at ignoring them, to have to leave people behind over and over again. It was easier, in the end, not to try in the first place.
