Lucas nodded at him and held up a bottle of beer.
Right! Damien thought, relieved, without knowing exactly what he had to be relieved about. He’s just letting me know that the beer has thawed out.
Despite relaxing a little, the butterflies in Damien’s stomach were still acting up. In fact they were multiplying.
###
Harry watched while Damien took a lightly-frosted beer from Lucas and wondered if he saw nervousness in the lad’s eyes. The lad had started to seem less sure of himself as the night had gone on, as though some well-kept veneer of toughness had slowly started to show cracks. Harry took a swig of his own beer and cringed as the icy liquid passed over his teeth, making them ache a little. Think I would actually prefer a steaming mug of coffee about now.
Lucas exited a conversation he’d been having with Steph and then headed off towards the toilets. Suddenly alone, Steph took up a seat beside Harry on the sofa. He could feel the warmth of her thigh against his as she settled into the cushions.
“You got anywhere you’re supposed to be tonight, Harry?” she asked him.
He laughed. “You know me! When do I ever have any place to be other than here?”
“True,” she said. “But I don’t know why it is that you come here every night. It can’t just be the alcohol? You could drink at home and pass out on your own floor if you wanted to.”
Harry laughed again. “Yeah, but you wouldn’t be there to pick me up afterwards.”
Steph shook her head at him as though she didn’t accept his answer. “I’m serious! Why do you come here?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s because misery loves company. I think I come here to be among the living dead.”
Steph raised one of her neatly-kept eyebrow. “I don’t follow.”
“How can I explain it? On the weekends you get the kids in having fun, but during the weekdays you have guys like Nigel who sit at the end of the bar without saying a word all night, or guys like Old Graham who live in the past because they don’t know where they fit in during the present. They come to be around others that have ceased living in the here and now, people who instead live inside their own heads and exist on memories alone.” Harry took a swig of his beer and then looked Steph in the eyes. They looked to him like glistening pearls and, for a few seconds, he stopped speaking, just staring into them. Frightened that the pause might become awkward, Harry carried on with what he was saying. “I come here because it reminds me that there are other people that have nothing left in their lives except regret. If I stayed at home I’d lose sight of the fact that I’m not alone in misery – that I’m not the world’s unluckiest man. Sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps me going. Doesn’t matter how much I hate my life, I’m not unique and my pain isn’t special. I’m never alone because I’m part of a club. The Living Dead Club.”
Steph rubbed a hand against her forehead. The various rings on her fingers glinted in the fire’s glow. “God, you’re depressing. Were you always like this?”
“No.” Harry didn’t say anything else. Once he’d been a positive, upbeat person, but now he wasn’t – and that was that. The death of his wife, Julie, and his son, Toby, had left a charred, sucking wound where his heart had once been. He missed them and there was nothing else. It was as much as he was willing to think about it. If he thought about it any further than that, he would end up thinking about what he did one year ago. And about how he got the star-shaped scar.
Steph must have understood the feelings that her question provoked in him and changed the subject. She knew Harry had lost loved ones, but possessed none of the details of when or how it happened. Harry did not share that with anybody. It was locked up inside of him and the key was broken, and lost.
“Hey, Graham?” Steph shouted suddenly.
The old man was sat on the floor by the fire and flinched. “What?”
“Can you go upstairs to your flat and get some blankets and stuff.”
The old man nodded. “Good idea.”
Whilst Old Graham tottered over towards the bar on his way to the stairs behind, Nigel shifted along the floor and filled his place nearer the fire. The man’s greasy face turned in Steph and Harry’s direction and spoke. “Is it ok for me to bed down here tonight, Steph? I’m parked round the back, but I don’t fancy a night in the lorry.”
Steph shrugged. “Can’t exactly see you out on the street now can I?”
Nigel’s face lit up. “Thanks Steph.”
Damien piped up from the opposite side of the fire. “So you live in a lorry then?”
Nigel nodded. “Sometimes, I do. Travel Europe most the time so what’s the point in paying rent? I book a hotel when I fancy a soft bed and a warm bath, but most nights the driver’s cabin suits me fine enough. Never did much like being tied down to one place.”
Harry wondered what that must be like. Such freedom to be able to lay your hat anyway in Europe and call it home for the night. Part of him yearned to disappear like that, to become a wandering nomad: a man with no emotional ties. Yet, for some reason, it just felt unnatural. A man without a home, without a family, wasn’t really a man, was he? It didn’t seem right not to yearn for those things. He wondered what had led Nigel to live such an isolated life.
Damien sniggered. “So, you’re basically one step up from a homeless person, huh, Nigel?”
Nigel shrugged. “Aside from the fact that I have a well-paid job and get to see most of the continent in any given year.”
“Where have you been recently?” Steph asked.
“Well, I was in France last, but that was on my way back from Amsterdam, and Copenhagen before that.”