“You’ve thrown a sickie?”
“No,” he said. “It’s not that.”
“Right. Well, what’s going on then?”
“Um, well, I think I sort of nearly tried to kill myself.”
There was a pause.
“Say that again?”
—
They met at the pub, once Andrew had refused Peggy’s several demands to take him to the hospital. The post-work Friday evening drinkers would be descending soon, but for now the place was empty, save for a man sitting at the bar making conversation with the polite yet clearly bored bartender.
Andrew found a table and slowly lowered himself onto a chair, folding his arms around his chest. He felt incredibly fragile all of a sudden, like his bones were made of rotten wood. A few moments later Peggy shoulder-barged the door open, hurrying over to him and smothering him with a hug that he accepted but couldn’t reciprocate because he’d begun to shiver uncontrollably.
“Wait here, I know what’ll sort you out,” Peggy said.
She returned from the bar with what looked like a glass of milk. “They didn’t have honey so this’ll have to do. Not a proper hot toddy but ah well. My mam used to give them to me and Imogen when we had colds. At the time I thought it was a proper cure but looking back she clearly just wanted to knock us out so she could get some peace.”
“Thank you,” Andrew said, taking a warming sip and feeling the not unpleasant sting of the whisky. Peggy watched him drink. She looked anxious, fidgeting with her hands, twiddling her earrings—delicate blue studs that looked like teardrops. Andrew sat inert opposite her. He felt so detached.
“So,” Peggy said. “You, um, said on the phone about the whole, you know . . .”
“Killing myself?” Andrew said.
“That. Yes. Are you—I mean it’s a stupid question I suppose but—are you okay?”
Andrew thought about it. “Yes,” he said. “Well, I suppose I feel a bit sort of . . . like I might actually be dead.”
Peggy looked down at Andrew’s drink. “Okay, I really do think we need to get you to a hospital,” she said, reaching over and taking his hand.
“No,” he said firmly, Peggy’s touch bringing him out of his daze. “There’s really no need. I didn’t hurt myself. I’m feeling better now. This is helping.” He took a sip of whisky and coughed, clasping his hands together until his knuckles were white in an attempt to stop them from trembling.
“Okay,” Peggy said, looking skeptical. “Well, let’s see how you feel after this.”
Just then the door of the pub opened and four extremely loud sets of suits and ties containing men came in and arranged themselves at the bar. The old regular finished his pint, tucked his newspaper under his arm and left.
Peggy waited until Andrew had nearly finished his whisky before seeming to remember she had a beer to drink and taking two hearty gulps. She sat forward and spoke softly. “So what happened?”
Andrew shivered in response and Peggy reached over and cupped her hands around his. “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me details, I’m just trying to understand why you’d . . . want to do something like that. Where were Diane and the kids in all of this?”
Andrew’s synapses instantly fired as he searched for an explanation. But nothing came to him. Not this time. He smiled sadly as the realization hit him. This time, this time, he was going to tell the truth. He took a deep breath, trying to settle himself, to stamp down on the part of him desperately trying to stop him from going through with this.
“What? What’s happened?” Peggy said, looking even more worried. “Are they okay?”
Andrew started to speak, hesitantly, having to pause every few seconds: “Have . . . have you ever told a lie so big that you felt there was no way out of it . . . that you . . . that you had to just carry on pretending?”
Peggy looked at him evenly. “I once told my mother-in-law that I’d crisscrossed the bottoms of sprouts when I hadn’t. That made for a tense Christmas Day . . . but that’s not quite what you mean, is it?”
Andrew shook his head slowly, and this time the words came out before he could stop them.
“Diane, Steph and David don’t exist,” he said. “It came from a misunderstanding, but then I kept the lie going, and the longer I did the harder it was to tell the truth.”
Peggy looked like she was thinking and feeling a hundred different things at once.
“I don’t think I really understand,” she said.
Andrew chewed his lip. He had the strangest sensation that he was about to start laughing.
“I just wanted to feel normal,” he said. “It started off so small but then”—he let out a strangely high-pitched bark of a laugh—“it’s sort of got a bit out of hand.”
Peggy looked startled. She’d fiddled with one of her earrings so much that it came free in her hand and bounced onto the table like a little blue tear that had frozen as it fell.
Andrew stared at it, and then the tune came into his head. This time, though, he willed it on. Blue moon, you saw me standing alone. He started to hum the tune out loud. He could sense that Peggy was beginning to panic. Ask me. Please, he begged silently.
“So, just so I’m clear,” Peggy said. “Diane just . . . doesn’t exist? You invented her.”
Andrew grasped his glass and tipped the remaining liquid into his mouth.
“Well, not entirely,” he said.
Peggy rubbed her eyes with her palms, then reached into her bag for her phone.
“What are you—who are you calling?” Andrew said, starting to get to his feet, yelping at the pain, having forgotten about his bruised foot.
Peggy waved her hand at him, getting him to sit back down.
“Hi, Lucy,” she said into her phone. “I’m just calling to check you’re all right to look after the girls for another couple of hours. Thanks, pet.”
Andrew readied himself to speak but Peggy held up a hand. “I’m going to need an oil change before we go any further,” she said, downing the rest of her drink, snatching their empty glasses and marching to the bar. Andrew clasped his hands together tightly. They were still so cold he could barely feel them. When Peggy returned with their drinks she had a new resolve about her, a steely look in her eyes that said she was prepared to hear the worst and not appear shocked by it. It was, he realized, exactly the sort of look Diane used to give him.
— CHAPTER 29 —
Andrew had gone to Bristol Polytechnic the summer after his mother’s death. With Sally in Manchester with her new boyfriend, it had been less about a yearning for higher education and more about finding some people to talk to. Without any real research he settled on some digs in a part of the city called Easton. The house was just off a stretch of grass with the optimistically bucolic name of Fox Park, which in reality was a tiny patch of green separating the residential street from the M32 highway. As Andrew arrived outside the house, hauling his possessions in a bulky purple rucksack, he saw a man in the park dressed entirely in trash bags kicking a pigeon. A woman appeared from a bush and dragged the man away from the bird, but to Andrew’s horror this was only so she could continue the assault herself. He was still recovering from having witnessed this harrowing tag-team display as he was ushered into his lodgings by the landlady. Mrs. Briggs had a fierce blue rinse and a cough like distant thunder, and Andrew quickly realized she had a good heart underneath her stern exterior. She seemed to be constantly cooking, often by candlelight whenever the electricity meter ran out (which it regularly did). She also had an unnerving habit of slipping in criticism halfway through an unrelated sentence: “Don’t worry about that feller and the pigeon, my love, he’s bit of a funny one, that lad—gosh, you need a haircut, m’duck—I think he’s one sandwich short of a picnic, truth be told.” It was the conversational equivalent of burying bad news.