‘Don’t forget your drink,’ she says.
This time it’s almost a pleasure. The taste is a little better today, perhaps because the fruit is fresh; and there’s a different ingredient — blueberries, blackcurrant, perhaps — that gives it a tannic quality.
‘I changed the recipe,’ she says.
‘Mmmm. Nice,’ I tell her.
‘Feeling better this morning?’
‘Fine, Ma.’
Better than fine. I don’t even have a headache.
‘Good of them to give you time off.’
‘Well, Ma, it’s a hospital. Can’t be bringing germs to work.’
Ma conceded I had a point. For the past few days I’ve been sick with flu. Well, that’s the official story. In fact, I’ve been otherwise engaged, as I’m sure you can appreciate.
‘Sure you’re all right? You look a bit pale.’
‘Everyone’s pale in winter, Ma.’
6
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.
Posted at: 04.33 on Friday, February 22
Status: restricted
Mood: excited
Listening to: The Beatles: ‘Here Comes The Sun’
I bought the tickets on the Net. You get a discount for booking online. You can choose where to sit; order a meal; you can even print out your own boarding card. I chose a seat by the window, where I can watch the ground fall away. I’ve never been in an aeroplane. I’ve never even caught a train. The tickets were rather expensive, I thought; but Albertine’s credit can stand it. I snagged her details a year ago, when she bought some books from Amazon. Of course, at that time she had fewer funds; but now, with Dr Peacock’s legacy, she should be good for a few months, at least. By the time she finds out — if ever she does — I’ll be nicely untraceable.
I haven’t packed much. Just a satchel with my papers, some cash, my iPod, a change of clothes, a shirt. No, not a blue one this time, Ma. It’s orange and pink, with palm trees. Not much in the way of camouflage; but wait till I get there. I’ll blend right in.
I log on for the last time, just for luck, before I set off. Simply to read my messages; to see who hasn’t slept tonight; to check for any surprises; to find out who loves me and who wants me dead.
No surprises there, then.
‘What are you doing up there?’ she calls.
‘Hang on, Ma. I’ll be down in a sec.’
And now there’s time for one more mail — to albertine@yahoo.com — before I’m ready to go at last; by noon today I’ll be on that flight, watching TV and drinking champagne —
Champagne. Sham pain. As if sensation of any kind could ever be anything other than real. My guts are afizz with excitement. It almost hurts for me to breathe. I take a moment to relax and concentrate on the colour blue. Moon-blue, lagoon-blue, ocean, island, Hawaiian blue. Blue, the colour of innocence; blue, the colour of my dreams —
7
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy posting on:
Posted at: 04.45 on Friday, February 22
Status: public
Mood: anxious
Listening to: Queen: ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’
She must have taken off her shoes. He never even heard her. The first he heard was the door as it shut, and the sound of the key as she locked it.
Click.
‘Ma?’
No answer. He goes to the door. The keys were in his coat pocket. She must have taken them, thinks blueeyedboy, when he went back upstairs. The door is pitch pine; the lock, a Yale. He has always valued his privacy.
‘Ma? Please. Talk to me.’
Just that heavy silence, like something buried under snow. Then, the sound of her footsteps receding softly down the carpeted stairs.
Has she guessed? What does she know? A finger of ice slips down his back. A tremor creeps into his voice; the ghost of the stutter he thought was lost.
‘Please, Ma!’
In fiction, our hero would break down the door; or failing that, crash through the window to land unharmed on the ground below. In real life, the door is unbreakable — though, sadly, blueeyedboy is not, as a leap from the window would surely confirm, sprawling him in agony on to the icy concrete below.
No, he’s trapped. He knows that now. Whatever his Ma is planning, he thinks, he’s helpless to prevent it. He hears her downstairs; her steps in the hall; her shoes on the polished parquet floor. The rattle of keys. She’s going out.
‘Ma!’ There’s a desperate edge to his voice. ‘Ma! Don’t take the car! Please!’
She hardly ever takes the car. Still, today, he knows she will. The café’s only a few streets away, down at the corner of Mill Road and All Saints’; but Ma can be so impatient sometimes — and she knows that girl is expecting him, that Irish girl with all the tattoos, the one who has broken her little boy’s heart —
How did she know what he was planning? Perhaps it was his mobile phone, left on the hall table. How stupid of him to have left it there so invitingly. So easy to open his inbox; so easy to find the recent dialogue between her son and Albertine.
Albertine, she thinks with a sneer. A rose by any other name. And she knows that it’s that Irish girl, already to blame for the death of one son, now daring to threaten the other. A wasp in a jar may have killed him, but Gloria knows that Nigel’s death would never have happened but for Albertine. Stupid, jealous Nigel, who first fell for that Irish girl and then, when he found out his brother had been following her, taking photographs, had first threatened, and then used his fists on poor, helpless blueeyedboy, so that Ma had had to take action at last, putting Nigel down like a rabid dog lest history repeat itself —
Dear Bethan (if I may),
I suppose you must have heard the news by now. Dr Peacock passed away the other night at the Mansion. Fell out of his wheelchair down the steps, leaving the bulk of his estate — last valued at three million pounds — to you. Congratulations. I suppose the old man felt he owed you something for the Emily White affair.
I have to say I’m surprised, though. Brendan never told me a thing. All that time he was working for Dr Peacock, and never thought to tell me about this. But maybe he mentioned something to you? After all, you’re such good friends.
I know our respective families have had our differences over the years. But now that you’re seeing both my sons, perhaps we can bury the hatchet. This business comes as a shock to us all. Especially if what I’ve heard is true; that they’re treating the death as suspicious.
Still, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over that. These things blow over in time, as you know.
Yours sincerely,
Gloria.
Yes, Ma wrote the letter, of course. She has never flinched from her duty. Knowing that Nigel would open it; knowing that he would take the bait. And when Nigel came round that day, demanding to talk to blueeyedboy, she was the one who deflected him, who sent him away with a flea in his ear — or at least, with a wasp in a jar —