‘I haven’t heard anything since the text,’ I tell him.
I actually haven’t thought much about her this week, I realise. I’ve been thinking too much about Cal. About how he followed me around all the time when he was a kid, asking me questions, and then, when he was about 12, he turned into this super brain and the dynamic shifted. I miss him, and because he’s been away for so long, it feels a bit like a piece of the world has broken away.
‘Do you know anyone who’s died?’ I ask.
‘My grandmother,’ Martin says. ‘We were close. I miss her.’
We stop talking to order, and then I lean in and ask the question that’s been bugging me since Rachel told me the news. ‘Where do they go? I mean, they’re here and then they’re not. I can’t get my head around it.’
‘Did someone you know die?’ he asks, and I want to talk about it with him. I want to get some explanations from someone who’s as logical as Martin. But I promised Rachel, so I can’t.
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ I say, and ask him how things are going with George.
‘Things are better,’ he says, and I’m surprised. They don’t seem better. ‘Around this time last week she was telling you to fuck off.’
‘And I told her that I had decided not to fuck off.’
It’s an interesting tactic. ‘What did she say?’
‘She told me that if I didn’t fuck off, she would.’
‘I’m confused about how things are better.’
‘I was nice to her all week and this afternoon we had a breakthrough. I think we might be friends again.’
Before I can ask what that breakthrough was, exactly, Mai Li gets a break and takes it with us, and the subject shifts to her latest poetry performance and the university course that’s starting and whether or not fried wontons are better than steamed.
It’s easy hanging out with Martin, so when we leave the restaurant and he points to a poster advertising Pavement, a club not far from here, I agree to go with him for a little while. There’s time before I have to be at Laundry, plus Pavement isn’t the kind of place a guy like Martin should go to alone.
It’s walking distance from Shanghai Dumplings. It takes us about ten minutes. When we arrive there’s a line out the front filled with a lot of very angry-looking people. I saw Pavement once listed on the top of ‘The Most Violent Places in Gracetown’ in the local paper.
The line moves. It’s free to get in because no one would pay and we stick to the carpet as we walk through the club, all the way over to the far side of the room. There’s a live band that threaten to eat kittens on stage and everyone claps at the suggestion. ‘Put your back against the wall,’ I tell Martin, who’s looking around like he’s expecting to see a friend. He watches two guys walk past us; one of them is leading the other one by a chain. ‘It’s really best not to stare, Martin,’ I say.
He leans over and yells, ‘When will George be here?’
‘What?’ I yell back.
‘George. When will George be here?’
‘George wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this,’ I yell. ‘She was at Mum’s tonight but she’s probably back at the bookshop by now playing Scrabble and drinking warm cocoa.’
Martin nods and says, ‘Riggght,’ like something’s just become clear to him.
Something’s just become clear to me, too. ‘George told you she’d be here? That was the breakthrough this afternoon?’
‘I bought her coffees all week, and those doughnuts she likes. Is it unreasonable to think that if a person drinks the coffee and eats the food you buy them that you’re on the way to being friends?’
‘This is not unreasonable,’ I tell him.
‘So this afternoon I asked her if she wanted to maybe meet up somewhere and she said she might be at Pavement.’
It’d be one thing for George to have said she might be at Laundry and then not turn up. But to tell Martin to come here to wait for her is a shitty move.
I check my watch and see it’s only a little after seven. ‘Come to Laundry. I’ll buy you a beer while we wait for Rachel.’
He looks deflated after the news of George, so says he’ll just get a taxi and go home. I’m not leaving him alone around here, though, so I sling my arm around him and walk him to the door.
We leave Pavement and head towards Laundry. ‘How long do I have to pay?’ Martin asks. ‘I mean how hard does a guy have to work to be friends with your sister?’
I’m starting to wonder this myself. I know George has had some trouble at school that’s not her fault, but she’s throwing away the chance of having a friend by her side for her final year. I’d love to explain George to Martin but I can’t because I don’t understand her myself.
As I think this, I see Amy ahead. She’s leaning against a building, not far from the bookshop. My heart still goes crazy when I see her. All she has to do is turn up and I’m right back where I started.
‘I’m waiting for Greg,’ she tells me.
I think back to her text, and the first thing I want to ask her is, ‘What does at the moment mean?’ Because ‘at the moment’ sounds hopeful. But before I have time to ask, Greg arrives. He pulls up in a car, gets out, and stands between us.
‘Stop hassling Amy,’ he says.
I step to the side so I can see Amy, and ask my question. ‘What does “at the moment” mean exactly?’
‘Did you hear me?’ Greg asks, but I ignore him.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask Amy. ‘Are things okay?’
‘I think you should go,’ she says. ‘We can talk later.’
‘We’re talking now,’ I say.
‘Did you hear me?’ Greg says again, this time loudly in my ear.
‘Not very well. Because my ears are not tuned to the language of dickhead,’ I say, turning around to see four guys, all of whom I know from school, each one of them, a dickhead.
‘Maybe your ears should be tuned to the language of dickhead,’ Greg says, and Amy and I laugh, which makes him even angrier than he was a second ago.
He tells his friends to get us, and there isn’t much time to get away. There’s just enough to lunge at the guy who’s taken hold of Martin. ‘Run!’ I yell after the guy let’s go, but Martin stays where he is. It’s a brave move. Stupid, sure. But brave.
They haul him towards the car first, throwing him in the back and slamming the door. They grab me second, and shove me in the boot. Before they close it over, the last thing I see is Amy standing on the footpath, staring in my direction.
The car starts and I feel the rhythm of the road. It’s an understatement to say that the night is not turning out how I’d imagined. I wish I were the kind of guy who didn’t panic but I am not that guy. As it turns out, I’m the guy who panics quite a bit. They won’t kill us but they’ll do something bad, and at this point I think it’s best not to imagine what that bad might be.
All the while I’m lying here, I’m trying to work out what Amy sees in this guy. I’m trying to interpret her expression before they closed me in the boot. Anger at Greg? Fear? Pity for me?
Surely she can’t be even a little bit in love with Greg now. What is there to be a little bit in love with? Part of me is happy he’s done this because there’s no way she’ll be able to stay with him after tonight. Love’s insane but it’s not fucking insane.
I try to work out which way we might be going based on the speed of the car. First they move slowly, I’m guessing because High Street’s full of traffic on Friday night. The car picks up to about sixty for a while, so I think they might be going down Melton Street, which means they’re taking us through the city. Slow, fast, slow. I map it out but I’ve got no real idea. My instinct is they’re taking us across the other side to the harbour.