‘I know, I know.’ He shook his head, amazed at himself. ‘It’s good speaking to you, Rob. It’s been a weird couple of days, you know, some strange little hippy guy arriving in the middle of the night, telling me that Will’s dead and that my house has bad vibes, a couple of episodes in my sleep, the whole thing. I haven’t been thinking particularly straight.’
‘You don’t say.’ He stared into Alex’s eyes for a second or two and smiled, a smile that was edged with regret. ‘We made a mistake ten years ago. A crazy woman ran in front of our car and we didn’t have the courage to come forward and say just that, make our case. If we had, we’d have lived different lives these last ten years, some of us better, some of us worse, and we wouldn’t have lost perspective the way we did. We did nothing wrong. Will died of an overdose. What else is there to say?’
‘You’re right. Nothing.’ Alex showed a renewed interest in the plate of pasta in front of him, changing the subject a minute later. ‘So tell me about the scar.’
Rob laughed and said, ‘Ask me when I’m pissed - the explanations get better with every drink. Sober, I’m inclined to tell the truth. I fell off a bike in Durban, drunk as, not even my bike.’
Alex encouraged him with questions, enjoying the chance to hear Rob telling yarns, most of them involving drink or narrow escapes from death, a few of them involving both, almost like a caricature of an overseas correspondent’s life.
They went back to the house afterwards and had coffee with Rebecca who wanted to know about their time at college, about Rob, the curiosity of someone who’d made a connection and was hungry to know everything about him. It didn’t make Alex sad this time, happy instead at seeing two people with fresh chemistry.
And it made him happy to be talking about college, not about that one night but about the rest of the three years, him and Rob laughing and joking like the intervening years had never happened, their own connection surprisingly intact. Maybe their friendship had been more durable than they’d given it credit for.
That in itself raised a question though, a question that Rebecca finally asked, focussing their attentions immediately back onto the elephant that was sitting in the middle of all those memories, something even Rob couldn’t deny.
She shook her head, still smiling from a story Rob had told, and said then, ‘The thing I don’t understand is why you haven’t seen each other in ten years. Okay, life gets in the way but guys, ten years! I mean, how come?’
Rob looked at Alex before turning to her as he said, ‘Sometimes you don’t realize what you’ve got until you let it slip through your fingers. You think you’ll make other friends and you do. I’ve made plenty of friends, but this,’ he gestured towards Alex, ‘this is like a family reunion to me. We keep in touch from now on, okay?’
‘Definitely,’ said Alex, though he was wondering how likely that would be, for all the best intentions.
When he was leaving, Rob walked out with him and even to the end of the street, pointing him in the right direction, and just before they parted Alex said, ‘So you don’t think there’s any need to let the others know about this?’
‘I’ll give Nat a call, tell her about Will. I’ll leave it at that though. Seriously Alex, if I thought there was even the slightest chance that the rest of us were in danger I’d tell her, but there isn’t.’ He laughed and added, ‘Well, except me of course, I’m always in danger.’
Alex said, ‘This Kosovo thing isn’t likely to be dangerous, is it? I mean, not like Bosnia.’
Rob laughed again.
‘More chance of being killed here than I have in Kosovo. Yeah, there’s always some danger.’ He stopped, like something had suddenly occurred to him. ‘Alex, I know we agreed to keep this secret, but it wouldn’t do any harm for you to speak to a shrink or someone. It’s fucking your life up - you need to talk it through with someone who can help.’
‘If it was that simple or straightforward I’d consider it. It isn’t though, trust me.’
Rob deferred with a shrug but said, ‘Well at the very least, you need a holiday. Chill out. Stop letting life get to you.’
Alex smiled, conscious that he’d sounded like someone who worried too much, someone always scouring the shadows. Maybe that was who he was. It made him realize too, how Rob had changed too, how he was calmer now, easier company.
‘Don’t get killed Rob, not even drunk on a stolen bike. I need you not to get killed.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ he said, smiling and putting a hand on Alex’s shoulder before turning and walking back up the street. Alex watched him for a short while, his figure blurring in the watery afternoon sun as he got further away, and he knew Rob was right, that he needed a holiday, to shed his paranoia, to put flesh back on the bones of who he was.
9