‘It makes no sense not to come,’ he said carefully. ‘I know everything now. Things will be better.’
‘No, they won’t,’ said Sarah. ‘And how can I live with what I’ve done? To your father, and to you?’
‘But Dad’s dead,’ he said. ‘And I don’t care.’
Sarah turned and stared at him in surprise, and then she laughed. She actually laughed.
‘What?’ said Patrick. ‘What’s funny?’
But she couldn’t stop, even though they were on a wind-whipped ridge where they would both probably die quite soon.
‘You don’t care?’ she said, wiping her eyes.
He shrugged. ‘Not enough to die for.’
Sarah looked up at him, then back down into the void. As she did, one of her sandals tipped off her foot and was quickly gulped down by the hungry dark.
‘Shit!’ she said. ‘My shoe.’
She started to cry.
She couldn’t stop.
‘My shoe,’ she sobbed. ‘My shoe.’
Patrick watched her and thought of his father and of Persian Punch and of that feeling of connection.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she wept. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He had heard it a million times, but this time he believed it.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Take my hand.’
His mother looked up in surprise.
She glanced back into the darkness one more time, then wearily pushed her hair away from her face, and put her hand in his.
They staggered and fell, and sometimes they crawled down Penyfan. Three times they lost the path, and held on to each other’s clothes while they tested the grass with tentative hands and feet until they felt the safety of stones again and went on their way. Twice Sarah begged Patrick to leave her, and he had to drag her over the sharp flint until she was hurt enough to get up and go on, every step making her weep with pain and cold and exhaustion.
Halfway down, Patrick saw lights coming up to meet them. It was a mountain-rescue team, armed with blankets, soup and heat pads for their armpits.
They put Sarah on a stretcher and Patrick walked beside it on legs he could barely feel.
In the deep valley they met Weird Nick, who had walked as far as his slippers had lasted to come to meet them.
He hadn’t taken his mother’s car home; he had called the police instead.
‘Thank you,’ said Patrick.
57
TWO DAYS AFTER they got home from the hospital – while Sarah was still in bed – Patrick burned down the shed.
It took a little while to get going, but once it took hold it was unstoppable.
Weird Nick was woken by the sound of crackling, spitting flames on wood and rushed outside for the hosepipe, only to find that someone had stolen it.
Instead he went next door and stood beside Patrick while the shed consumed the car and the car consumed itself, helped by whatever fumes were left in its tank.
Sarah emerged in her nightdress and wellingtons and stood on the step with Ollie winding his way around her rubber legs.
‘How did that happen?’ she said.
‘It’s not difficult,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ll show you if you want.’
She raised her eyebrows at him and just for a second he met her gaze, before looking away with a little smile.
‘Hey,’ said Weird Nick, pointing towards the old greenhouse. ‘What’s our hosepipe doing over there?’
‘You’re on a meter,’ said Patrick.
Patrick got a job washing up in the Rorke’s Drift. He loved feeding the dirty glasses and dishes into one end of the big dishwasher and retrieving them at the other end, steaming with cleanliness and too hot to touch. He instituted a system that meant they never ran out of teaspoons, which had been a long-standing headache, and he worked so hard and fast that he quickly became a favourite with the staff, who got fewer complaints and gave quicker service, and who voted to share their tips with him – an exercise unheard of in the pub’s history. At the end of the first week the landlord told him he was putting his money up.
Patrick would have done it for nothing. He was allowed to have Coke in an hourglass bottle, and once a shift he got a free meal – the chef would cook him anything he wanted from the menu. Anything. Often Patrick chose a toasted tuna sandwich, because he’d come home from the hospital still wanting his half-sandwich, only to find the cat had licked off all the tuna and left only the soggy toast behind.
His mother gave him an advance on his wages and he bought a new bicycle – a mountain bike this time, although still blue, obviously. He no longer had to catch the bus to work, and spent his weekends cycling across the Beacons, where he was happiest. Sometimes he found a dead sheep or a fallen crow, and often slowed to stare at it, but never picked it up.
He always took Meg’s phone with him, just in case, and sometimes he called her, because she seemed to like that, and he didn’t mind it either – even though the sheep scattered when he started to shout.
58
THREE MONTHS AFTER the events that marked the end of Patrick’s brief spell at university, he came home from a lunchtime shift at the pub to find Professor Madoc and Mick Jarvis having tea with his mother.
They all said hello, and his mother kept smiling, so he knew there was something afoot.
‘What’s going on?’ he said.
‘Nothing bad,’ said Sarah.
‘No,’ said Professor Madoc, ‘it’s very, very good! We’re expanding the department, Patrick, and we’d like to offer you a job.’
‘What job?’ he said suspiciously.
‘Trainee lab technician,’ said Professor Madoc. ‘You’d be Mr Jarvis’s assistant. He would train you to do all aspects of his work – embalming, dissecting-room preparation, hygiene, all the paperwork for the acceptance and dispersal of donated bodies, the whole shebang.’
‘What’s a shebang?’
‘Nothing,’ said Sarah. ‘It just means everything. It’s just a figure of speech.’
‘Oh,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ve never heard it. Shebang.’ He rolled it round his mouth quietly. ‘Shuuuuurbang.’
‘It’s not important right now, Patrick,’ said his mother.
‘I’d be very happy to have you, Patrick,’ said Mick. ‘I know you’d do a very thorough and professional job.’
‘Yes, I would,’ agreed Patrick.
‘Apart from all the shoe-throwing, of course.’
Mick winked, but Patrick only said, ‘It didn’t hit you.’
‘Mr Jarvis is only joking,’ said the professor hurriedly. ‘That’s all in the past now. We’re talking about your future here. So, what do you think, Patrick?’
What did he think?
They were all looking at him, and Patrick had to stop himself wriggling under their combined gaze.
He thought he was much better at that these days. He thought he was much better at a lot of things. Like being touched; he didn’t enjoy it, but he could stand still while it happened. He answered his mother sometimes, even when her statements were pointless, and that made her happy.
He thought he was happier, too. He understood more, and worried less. He had friends at the pub and a friend on the phone, and a new bicycle.
Best of all, he knew what had happened to his father, and that comforted him like an alphabet plate.
He thought that knowledge was the sweeter for having been lost along the way.
Patrick realized that they were still watching him, and waiting for him to tell them what he thought about the job in the dissecting room. He understood that they were offering him a gift, and that he needed to be grateful.