‘Don’t forget your essays onGreat Expectationsare due in at the end of next week!’ I call as the class files out in a clump of backpacks and pheromones.
I slump down behind my desk. Just what I need. Thirty-two essays telling me what I already get. That Pip should have just bloody got on with it and told Estella how he felt by the end of the first act. I know, I know… character, restraint… social class, but honestly.
I shuffle some papers, lean back in my chair, dragging my hands through my hair. I mean, it’s not like I’m in a position to knock Pip and his life choices. The bell rings, loud and jarring. She’ll be there now. Waiting for some old git who probably doesn’t even remember meeting a girl called Alice. It’s tragic.
I’mtragic. The woman who I’ve done everything for is right now mooning over some pensioner. I double click my pen. Maybe going there is the right thing. She’ll have her story. He might be all bloody Clooney and sweep her off her feet.
My phone buzzes, and I open the drawer. Heather’s name flashes up.
Heather.
She came back to ours after they’d got ice-cream. When they had turned up at the door, Georgia’s eyes bright, asking if Heather could stay for the takeaway pizza I’d promised, I wanted to say no. The word was right there. But the look on my daughter’s face…
It was surreal. The three of us laughing at the TV, pizza in hand. It was the reality check I needed after the way me and Al had left things.
I said things I shouldn’t have said.
My eyes go to the prom poster on the wall: a seemingly innocent ‘fantasy’ theme. Like I don’t know that half the year elevens are reading ‘fairy smut’. I’d innocently told Alice how pleased I was to see more and more hardbacks being pulled out during reading time. She’d laughed and told me exactly why there’s been a surge in this stuff.
Still. Reading is reading.
I let the call ring out. I can’t face speaking to her. Not right now. I drink the rest of my cold coffee with a grimace and flip open my laptop. A notification sits there from the FB forum I’d posted on, high on cold kebab and a wide hotel bed.
Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
I do it.
Because I’m a masochist.
I scan the words, a frown forming. It’s from Jenny262.
Hi! I hope you’re well. I don’t know if this is of any help, but I had a painter around that time. Talented. He painted a mural for my daughter. He went by Mike, but if memory serves, his first name was actually David. Hope that helps.
David.
Stop it. Not your business. I close the laptop.
Get up. Get up, you dick. You need a fresh coffee.
I flip the laptop back open. Fuck’s sake.
I click open Alice’s file on Mike that she’d sent me the link to. Going right back to the beginning. I scroll through the articles, her notes, my eyes landing on the piece she’d found about a band, Concrete Fingers. There listed beneath the photo is David M Jones. She didn’t know his surname when she found this. It’s been staring us in the face the whole time. His first name isn’t Michael. It’s David.
I open Google and type in David Michael Jones. Yorkshire. 1985.
Shit.
I grab my phone, push my laptop into my bag and bolt for the door.
32
ALICE
The air cools around my shoulders as the sun almost sets. My skin is tight, my eyes stinging against the lilacs and sherbet orange of the sky. A few groups of people remain. The summer solstice is a celebration; music is playing, and the opening hours extended. Picnic blankets are laid out, and eerie Celtic music echoes through speakers from the visitors’ centre.
He’s not coming. I know that now.
I turn to the sea, the reflection like a pathway. When I was a kid, we had scattered my gran’s ashes on a beach. Mum told me that the light reflected in the sunset is the path to heaven. That when you died, you could walk on water, and at the end there would be your loved ones waiting for you. I take a breath. I’ll wait until the sun sets. I’ve been here this long, so what’s another thirty minutes?
