The word hit him like a ton of bricks. Bereavement. That’s exactly what it was. A death. The death of his first, and possibly only, child. A birth and a death at once. A death without a birth. The death of a child he didn’t know he had. A child he didn’t have. Whichever way he looked at it, it was one huge mindfuck.
He followed the nurse through the corridor to the room at the end. As she pushed open the door gently, he could see Lisa lying in the bed, propped up with pillows under her back, her head leaning away from the doorway, looking out of the window into the blackness beyond.
‘Lisa,’ Dan said. The nurse stood respectfully at the door, not wanting to intrude. ‘Lisa, it’s me.’
Dan walked slowly over to the bed, hearing the door click closed behind him as the nurse made her way back down the corridor. Lisa kept looking out of the window, not even seeming to acknowledge his presence.
He sat down on the orange plastic chair next to the bed. It reminded him of the chairs they used to have in the classrooms at school. He placed a hand on top of hers and squeezed.
Slowly, Lisa turned her head to face him. The look on her face was one he’d never seen before. It was a look of pure emptiness. Her eyes said everything and nothing at the same time.
She spoke just one word. ‘Why?’
It was a question Dan had asked himself a thousand times since he received the phone call, but to which he still didn’t have an answer. He knew he would never have an answer.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, choking back the tears. ‘I should have been there.’
‘You were working,’ Lisa whispered, as if it were a world-known fact.
‘I know.’ How could he tell her that while his wife was having a miscarriage, while she was losing the baby she didn’t even know she was carrying, he was in bed with a redhead he’d met at the wrap party earlier that evening? He doubted if that was something he’d ever be able to tell her, ever be able to come to terms with himself. In that instant, he knew simultaneously that not only would he never forgive himself, but that his almost destructive hatred for himself meant he couldn’t guarantee he’d never do it again, either. As far as he was concerned, this reinforced something he already knew: he was a serial fucker-upper.
50
I really don’t want to know too much. They say knowledge is power, but I’ve got a funny feeling that the less I know about Andrej and Marek, the safer I’m going to be.
Fortunately for me, they seem to believe my story. I told them everything about what happened in the hotel in Herne Bay. I told them about finding Lisa’s body in the bathtub, about leaving with Jess and going to France and Switzerland. I told them about Claude and his farmhouse. I couldn’t tell them anything much more than that, though. I never knew Claude’s surname and I couldn’t locate the farmhouse or the Swiss campsite right now if my life depended on it. Not from a map, anyway. The whole of Europe between East Grinstead and Bratislava is just one huge blur in my mind.
What shocks and surprises me is how casually they accept what I’m telling them. I think they can see that I’m telling them the truth, but surely any sane person in their right mind would at least raise their eyebrows if I told them what I’d been through over the past few days. Not Andrej and Marek, though. To me, that says far more about them and their lives than anything else.
They say they can help me. I don’t know how, but I reckon they will. All I know is that they are potentially dangerous people. People who are wrapped up in what I can only presume is some sort of drug-dealing or smuggling operation. After I told them my story, Andrej asked me if there was anything I wanted to know about him. I shook my head and said there wasn’t. Of course there was. There were a hundred and one things I wanted to ask him, but I daren’t. Sometimes I think you’re better off not knowing.
The fact of the matter is that, whoever these people are, they’ve probably got a far better chance of finding out who did this than I have. My only other two options are to go to the police and explain everything, which isn’t an option as I have absolutely no confidence in the police, or try to take on the investigation myself, which is completely laughable considering my fugitive state.
They wanted to know absolutely everything about me. Things I’ve never told anyone. Even when I told Jess my life story I left some fairly important details out. I’m not sure why. A big part of me didn’t want to rake over old ground, but I was also torn between my certainty that no-one from that far back would come back to haunt me, and that if they did I didn’t want to know about it. I didn’t want to face the facts and deal with what was going on. Story of my life.
I never even told Lisa absolutely everything about my childhood. A lot of stuff at the boys’ home even I’ve probably forgotten or blocked out, but most of it was completely irrelevant. She didn’t need to know about Mr Duggan, for example. No-one needed to know about that piece of shit. But I knew I had to tell Andrej and Marek everything. Every last detail. As great as Lisa was, she wouldn’t have been able to do anything to help me. Jess could’ve, but I left it too late. Now these two Slovakian strangers are my only hope.
I try to forget about the whole blackmail thing, because I know they’re right. They still haven’t told me much about themselves and their set-up, but from the questions they’re asking and the detail they want to know, I can only assume their influence stretches much further than Bratislava. For all I know, they could be part of some bigger network. I’m not sure whether that would be a good thing or not. It would certainly give me a much better chance of finding out what happened and who’s after me, but it also scares me to think that I could potentially be involved with people like this.
This doesn’t happen to normal, ordinary people. None of this does. But my life has never been normal and ordinary, and it definitely hasn’t since I came back up to my hotel room in Herne Bay. Everything changed from that point on, and I know it won’t ever go back to normal.
It makes me wonder what the point is. The easiest option – some might say the sensible option – would be to forget the whole thing, give up and end it. When I climbed up onto the roof of the hostel, burning the bag was only one of my intentions. As I stood on the edge of the building and looked out across Bratislava, I was acutely aware that I could take one step – just one step – and all of this would be over. But I didn’t.