How Not to Die Alone

— CHAPTER 10 —

Despite Cameron insisting he could take off as much time as he needed, Andrew went back to work two days after the funeral. He’d barely slept, but it had been bad enough spending one day sitting around with nothing to distract him—he’d much rather have dealt with dead people he’d never met. He braced himself for the onslaught of sympathy. The head tilting. The sad-eyed smiles. People not even being able to imagine how hard it was for him. He’d have to nod and say thanks, and all the while he’d be hating them for saying such things and hating himself because he didn’t deserve their sympathy. It was to his considerable confusion, then, that Peggy had spent the majority of the first hour that morning talking to him about moorhens.

“Very underrated birds, if you ask me. I saw a one-legged one once at Slimbridge Wetland Centre. It was in quite a small pond and it just seemed to be swimming in circles around the perimeter in a sort of sad victory lap. My daughter Maisie wanted me to rescue it so she could ‘invent it a new leg.’ Ambitious, eh?”

“Mmm,” Andrew said, batting a fly out of his face. Bearing in mind this was only Peggy’s second property inspection, she seemed to have acclimatized remarkably well, especially given that Jim Mitchell’s house was in an even worse state than Eric White’s.

Jim had died in bed, on his own, at the age of sixty. The flat’s kitchen, bedroom, and living room were all in one, with a separate shower room choked with mildew, its floor boasting an impressive range of stains whose origins Andrew tried not to think about.

“This is the sort of room my estate agent would describe as a ‘compact, chic washroom,’” Peggy said, sweeping a moldy curtain aside. “What the hell,” she yelped, stepping back. Andrew rushed over. The whole bathroom window was covered in little red bugs, like blood spatter from a gunshot wound. It was only when one of them flapped its little wings that Andrew realized they were ladybugs. They were the most colorful thing in the entire flat. Andrew decided that they’d leave the window open in the hope it would encourage an exodus.

They were dressed in the full protective suits this time. Peggy had specifically requested this outside so that she could pretend to be a lab assistant in a James Bond film, having watched You Only Live Twice the previous evening. “My Steve used to have a bit of Pierce Brosnan about him when we were first going out. That was before he discovered pork pies and procrastination.” She sized Andrew up. “I reckon you might pass for—who’s the baddie in GoldenEye?”

“Sean Bean?” Andrew said, moving over to the kitchenette.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Reckon you’ve got a touch of the Sean about you.”

As Andrew caught sight of his reflection in the filthy oven door—the receding hairline, patchy stubble, bags under his eyes—he suspected that Sean Bean might have been doing a lot of things at that moment in time, but he almost certainly wasn’t scrambling around on the kitchen floor of a South London bedsit with a Mr. Chicken! takeaway menu stuck to his knee.

After twenty minutes of searching they went outside to take a breather. Andrew was so tired he felt almost weightless. A police helicopter went past overhead and they both craned their necks to watch it as it banked and flew back in the direction it had come from.

“Phew, they weren’t after me then,” Peggy said.

“Mmm,” Andrew murmured.

“You know, I’ve never had to talk to the police before. I feel like I’m missing out, somehow, you know? I just want to report a minor misdemeanor, or be called on to make a statement—that’s the dream. Have you ever had to do anything like that?”

Andrew had zoned out.

“Sorry, what?”

“Ever had any encounters with the old bill? The rozzers. The . . . peelers, is that one right?”

Andrew was transported back to the record shop in Soho. The sudden awareness that the song playing over the speakers was “Blue Moon.” The blood draining from his face. Rushing to the exit and wrenching the door open. The strangled cry of the shop owner. “Fuck! Stop him, he’s nicked something!” Running straight into the man outside and bouncing off him onto the floor, lying winded. The man looming over him. “I’m an off-duty police officer.” The furious face of the shop owner coming into view. Being hauled to his feet. Arms held. “What have you taken?” The owner’s breath smelling of nicotine gum.

“Nothing, nothing,” he’d said. “Honestly, you can search me.”

“Why the hell’d you run then?”

What could he have said? That hearing that song crippled him with pain? That even as he lay winded on the pavement, the fading bars lodged in his head made him want to curl into the fetal position?

“Bloody hell,” Peggy laughed, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

“Sorry,” Andrew said, but his voice cracked and only half the word came out.

“Don’t tell me—you got done for pinching chocolate from Woolworths?”

Andrew’s eyelid was twitching uncontrollably. He was desperately trying to stop the tune from coming into his head.

“Or some naughty parking ticket action?”

Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone.

“Oh, dear—it was littering, wasn’t it?”

She nudged him on the arm and Andrew felt the voice coming up from somewhere deep inside him, sharp and unstoppable. “Leave it, okay?” he snapped.

Peggy’s face fell as she realized he wasn’t joking.

Andrew felt a miserable wave of shame hit him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to snap like that. It’s just been a strange couple of weeks.”

They stood in silence for a long time, both of them clearly too embarrassed to speak first. Andrew could practically hear Peggy attempting to regroup, the cogs whirring as she decided to change the subject. This time he was going to be ready and attentive.

“My daughter’s invented this game, right?”

“A game?”

“Yeah. And I’m not sure if I should be worried about her or not, but it’s called the Apocalypse Game.”

“Right,” Andrew said.

“So, the scenario is this: a massive bomb has gone off and everyone’s been wiped off the face of the earth. It appears that you are the only person in the country to have survived. What do you do?”

“Not sure I understand,” Andrew said.

“Well, where do you go? What do you do? Do you find a car and go blasting up the M1 trying to look for people? Or do you just head straight to your local and drink the bar dry? How long before you try and make your way across the channel, or go to America, even? If nobody’s there could you break into the White House?”

“And that’s the game . . . ?” Andrew said.

“Pretty much,” Peggy said. Then, after a pause: “I tell you what I’d do to kick us off. I’d go to Silverstone and do a lap of the track in the Fiesta. Then, I’d either hit golf balls off the top of the Houses of Parliament or cook myself a fry-up in the Savoy. At some point I’d probably go across to Europe and see what’s what—though I slightly worry I’d end up having to be part of some sort of ‘resistance,’ smuggling people across the border and that sort of thing. And I’m not sure I’m a good enough person to get involved in that if there’s nobody left at home to see my Facebook status about it.”

“Understandable,” Andrew said. He tried to concentrate but his mind was blank.

“I don’t quite know what I’d do,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Ah well. It’s not for everyone,” Peggy said. “By the way, if you fancy heading off early I’m sure I can crack on by myself.”

“No, I’m all right,” Andrew said. “Quicker with two of us anyway.”

“Right you are. Oh, I nearly forgot to say, I brought a flask of coffee today. Let me know if you want a mug. And I attempted brownies too.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Andrew said.

“Well, let me know if you change your mind,” Peggy said, heading back into the house. Andrew followed her, a waft of fetid air hitting him before he’d even crossed the threshold. Luckily, before long, Peggy found something.

“It’s one of those Christmas ‘round robin’ things,” she said, her voice strained because of having to breathe through her mouth. She passed what she’d found to Andrew. The paper felt brittle, as if it had been crumpled up and straightened out countless times. In among the pages detailing uneventful holidays and unremarkable school sports days there was a photo of the family, their faces looking pixelated from where the paper had been scrunched up.

“I wonder how many times he nearly threw this out but couldn’t quite bring himself to,” Peggy said. “Hang on, look, there’s a phone number there on the back.”

“Well spotted. Right, I’ll give them a call,” Andrew said, reaching for his phone and turning it on.

“Are you sure you’re all right to?” Peggy asked, her tone deliberately casual.

“I’m fine, but thank you,” he said. He dialed the number and waited for it to connect. “I’m sorry again, about snapping,” he said.

“Don’t be silly,” Peggy said. “I’m just going to head outside for a second.”

“Sure,” Andrew said. “See you in a minute.”

Someone picked up on the first ring.

“Sorry, Brian, lost you there,” the person on the line said. “So like I said, this is just something we’ll chalk up to experience.”

“Sorry,” Andrew said, “this is actually—”

“No, no, Brian, time for apologies is over. Let’s clean-slate this one, okay?”

“I’m not—”

“‘I’m not,’ ‘I’m not’—Brian, you’re better than this, yeah? I’m putting the phone down now. I’ll see you in the office tomorrow. I don’t want to hear any more about it, okay? Right, good. See you later.”

The line went dead. Andrew sighed. This was going to be a tricky one. He hit redial and walked over to the living room window. At first he thought Peggy was doing some sort of exercise—she was squatting down and rocking on her heels slightly, as if she were about to bounce up into a star jump. But then he saw her face. She’d gone very pale. There were tears pooling in her eyes and she was taking in deep lungfuls of air. It was then that Andrew realized that of course she hadn’t acclimatized at all to being inside a house in this state. And then there were the coffee and the brownies and the games and the talking—all designed to cheer him up, without even a hint of patronizing him or doing the sad head tilt. All that time she’d been feeling awful but pretending not to, and he hadn’t even realized. Peggy’s kindness, her selflessness, was so overwhelming that Andrew felt a lump forming in his throat.

The man who’d answered the phone was letting it ring out this time—presumably letting poor Brian stew in his own juice. Andrew watched Peggy stand up and take one final breath before going toward the front door. He hung up the phone and cleared his throat, trying to get rid of the lump.

“Not good?” Peggy said, eyeing the phone in his hand.

“He thought I was someone who he worked with calling him back and he wouldn’t let me speak.”

“Oh.”

“And he used the term ‘clean slate’ as a verb.”

“What a cock.”

“My thoughts exactly. I’ll try him again later, I think.”

They stood still for a moment, looking around at the mess. Andrew scratched at the back of his head.

“I, um, just wanted to say thank you,” he said, “for, being here and chatting and the brownies and everything. I really do appreciate it.”

Some color returned to Peggy’s cheeks, and she smiled.

“No bother, pal,” she said. “So, back to the office?”

“You should go back,” Andrew said, not wanting Peggy to be there a second longer than she needed to. He pulled a roll of trash bags out of his rucksack.

“Is there not more to do then?” Peggy said, looking at the trash bags.

“No, it’s just . . . When it’s as bad as this I like to clear up the worst of the rubbish. Just doesn’t seem right to leave the place like this. Like I said, you can go back.”

Andrew wasn’t quite sure what the look Peggy was giving him meant, but he felt like he might have said something embarrassing.

“I think I’d rather stay,” Peggy said, arm outstretched. “Chuck us a bag.”

As they cleared up, Andrew willed his imagination into action until, eventually, he had something.

“I’d go to Edinburgh, by the way,” he said.

“Edinburgh?” Peggy said, looking confused.

“During the apocalypse. I’d see if I could drive a train up there. Then try and break into the castle. Or climb Arthur’s seat.”

“Aha, not a bad shout at all,” Peggy said, tapping her chin contemplatively. “I have to say, though, I still think I win with my Savoy fry-up or Parliament golf plan. Just saying.”

“I didn’t realize there was a winner,” Andrew said, folding up a pizza box that had chunks of greasy mozzarella stuck to it.

“I’m afraid there has to be. And given that I lose to my kids every single time, do you mind if I have this one, you know, to regain a bit of pride?”

“Fair enough,” Andrew said. “I’d shake your hand to congratulate you, but there seems to be quite a lot of moldy cheese on mine.”

There was a moment where Peggy looked at his hand in horror, where Andrew thought he might have said something far too weird, but then Peggy let out a huge belly laugh and said, “Jesus, what is this job?” and Andrew felt awake for the first time that day.

—

They’d worked their way through the majority of the rubbish when Peggy said, “I wanted to say I’m sorry, you know, about your sister. I just didn’t know when was the right time.”

“That’s okay,” Andrew said. “I’m . . . It’s . . . I don’t know, really . . .” He trailed off, caught halfway between saying how he felt and saying what he thought he was supposed to say.

“I lost my dad nine years ago,” Peggy said.

Andrew felt like someone had stuck him on pause. “I’m sorry,” he managed to say, after what felt like an age.

“Thanks, pet,” Peggy said. “It’s a while ago now, I know, but . . . I still remember afterward, there were days—especially at work—where all I wanted was to hide away, but there were others when it was all I wanted to talk about. And that’s when I noticed people avoiding me, deliberately not catching my eye. Of course I realize now they were just embarrassed about not knowing what to say to me, but at the time it felt like I had something to be ashamed about, that I’d done something wrong and was inconveniencing everybody somehow. What made it harder was that my feelings were all over the place.” Peggy gave Andrew a look as if wondering whether she should continue.

“How do you mean?” he said.

Peggy chewed her lip. “Let’s just say kindness wasn’t exactly in my dad’s DNA. The abiding memory of my childhood is sitting in the living room and holding my breath when I heard his footsteps on the drive. I could tell from how the sound varied what mood he was going to be in. He never hurt us, or anything, but he got in these moods where nothing me or my sister or my mam did was good enough, and he left us in doubt as to exactly how we’d let him down. Then one day he just up and left. Ran off with some lass from work, so my sister later found out. Mam never accepted that, though. That was the hardest part. She talked about him like he’d been God’s gift, as if he were a war hero who’d drifted out to sea on a raft never to be heard of again, despite the fact he was shacked up with this woman four streets away.”

“That must have been hard,” Andrew said.

Peggy shrugged. “It’s complicated. I still loved him, even though I barely saw him after he left. People think loss is the same for everyone, but it’s different in every case, you know?”

Andrew tied a trash bag closed. “That’s true,” he said. “I think when you’ve not been through that sort of loss you just imagine you’ll feel it in one big wave of sadness, that you’re immediately devastated and then it just goes away over time.” He looked up quickly at Peggy, worried that he was sounding callous, but her expression was neutral. Andrew continued. “With my sister, I sort of . . . well, it’s complicated, like you said about your dad. And the idea of people looking at me all sympathetic—I just can’t deal with that.”

“Yep, I hear you,” Peggy said, joining him to pick up the remaining rubbish with a litter picker. “I mean, their hearts are in the right place, but if you’ve not been through it, then it’s impossible to understand. It’s like we’re in ‘the club’ or something.”

“The club,” Andrew murmured. He felt a burst of adrenaline pass through him. Peggy looked at him and smiled. And Andrew, remembering his failed attempts at properly saying cheers in the pub, suddenly found himself raising his litter picker in the air, an empty bag of Doritos in its pincers, and saying, “To the club!” Peggy looked at him in surprise, and Andrew’s hand wavered, but then she reached her own picker aloft. “The club!” she said.

After a slightly awkward pause they lowered their pickers and carried on with their tidying.

“Now then, Andrew,” Peggy said after a while. “Back to more important matters.”

Andrew raised his eyebrows. “Is this going to be about the apocalypse, by any chance?”

—

An hour later they were nearly done, Andrew having had a surprisingly enjoyable time clearing away rubbish and playing end-of-the-world-themed games, when Peggy said, “If you want a slightly more structured mental test, it’s that pub quiz I mentioned tonight if you fancy it.”

Maybe, actually, Andrew did fancy it. It would be something else to take his mind off things after all, and this way he could make it up to Peggy properly for snapping at her, if not with his atrocious general knowledge then with pints of Guinness.

“Yes, why not,” he said, trying to sound like this was the sort of thing he was always doing.

“Top stuff,” Peggy said, and the smile she gave him was so warm and genuine that he actually had to look away. “And bring Diane! I want to meet her.”

Oh yes. That.

—

Maybe Diane would magically appear in the bathroom mirror and find him a better shirt than this orange monstrosity. He’d panic-bought it after work on the way home, suddenly very aware that the last time he’d specifically bought clothes for a night out people were still worried about the Millennium Bug. He had no real idea what was fashionable these days. Occasionally he thought about replacing some of his particularly old stuff, but then he’d see someone young and apparently trendy wearing a shirt that looked exactly like one he’d hung on to since the early nineties, so what was the point? It was just lucky that his stubbornness and loathing of clothes shopping were neatly complemented by the cyclical nature of fashion.

He moved his face closer to the mirror. Maybe he should buy some cream or other to sort out those dark circles under his eyes. But then again, he did feel an odd sort of attachment to them, perhaps because they were the closest thing to a distinguishing feature he had. Everything else about him was just so . . . normal. Part of him longed to have “a thing”—like those men who decide to compensate for being five foot five by spending hours in the gym, ending up incredibly muscly yet still having to walk a bit faster than their friends to keep up. Or maybe he’d choose a dominating nose, or jutting-out ears— the sort of feature that, if possessed by a celebrity, would lead to their being described as “unconventionally attractive” by the press. “Ordinary”-looking women were saddled with “Plain Jane.” There didn’t seem to be an equivalent for men. Maybe, Andrew thought, he would take on that mantle. “Standard Andrew”? “Standy Andy”? The benchmark for men with light brown hair and unremarkably straight teeth. It would be one way to leave a legacy.

He stepped back and smoothed out a crease on his shirtsleeve. “You know what you look like? A wilted carrot with a face drawn on it.” He puffed out his cheeks. What in god’s name had he been thinking to agree to this?

The Sentinel 4wDH was speeding around at a pleasing pace, hypnotic on the figure-eight track he’d set up. He’d deliberately chosen Ella’s “But Not for Me”—smooth and languid and beautiful—to try to calm him down, but it wasn’t helping much. This was why he didn’t socialize, because just the thought of it was making his stomach cramp up. The temptation to stay in and carry on his conversations on the forum was very much in danger of winning out. But in the end he forced himself to leave the house. Diane, he had decided, was having to pull a late one at work, but he’d managed to get a babysitter last minute.

He Googled the pub before he left and was concerned that it might be dangerously close to “cool,” judging by the ominous photos of chalkboards by the door with their aggressive slogans promising—with 50 percent accuracy—“beer and good times,” but when he got there he was relieved to see it looked fairly normal, from the outside at least. Nevertheless, he did three walk-bys, pretending to be on his phone so if Peggy or her friends saw him from the inside he could pretend he’d just been finishing a call before he came in. The timing of his arrival was crucial. If he got there too early he’d be forced into making conversation. Too late and he’d feel like an interloper. Ideally he’d join them in time to say a quick hello just before the quiz began—then the focus would be on the questions and nobody would feel like they had to make an effort to include him in conversation.

The next time he passed by he glanced through the window and spotted a group of people in the far corner. It was them. Peggy was sitting next to a man in a leather jacket who had long brown hair and a goatee. Steve, presumably. He seemed to be in the middle of an anecdote, his gestures getting more expansive as he built to what was obviously the punch line. He banged the table as the others laughed. Andrew saw a few people standing at the bar looking around to see the reason for the noise. Peggy, he noticed, was only half joining in with the laughter.

He braced his hand against the door, but then he froze.

This wasn’t him. This wasn’t what he did. What if he literally didn’t know one correct answer in this quiz, or was forced to take sides in a heated debate? What if they were on course to win and then he ruined it for everyone? And even then, it wasn’t as if the quiz was continuous—there’d be gaps where people could question him about his life. He knew how to deal with people at work when it came to talking about his family. He could predict what things they’d ask him and knew when to duck out of conversations when he felt uncomfortable about where they were going. But this was uncharted territory, and he’d be trapped.

A car pulled up behind him and he heard someone get out and offer a familiar “Have a good night”—a farewell that could mean only one thing. He turned and saw the cab’s yellow light, a welcoming beacon promising sanctuary. He rushed over and rattled off his address to the driver, yanking the door open and throwing himself inside. He sank down low into the seat, his heart racing as if he were in a getaway car leaving a bank robbery. A quarter of an hour later he was outside his building, his evening over, twenty pounds down and he hadn’t even bought a drink.

Inside his building’s hallway, in among the junk mail delivered that morning there was an envelope addressed to him in pen. He quickly stuffed it into his pocket and hurried up the stairs. Inside his flat, his urgency to get music on and a train moving around the track felt even greater than usual.

He pushed the needle down roughly on the record player and turned the volume up, then knelt down and tugged at the rail track, pulling the middle of the eight apart and pushing it out to create one loop instead of two. He set the train running and sat in the newly created circle, his knees folded to his chest. Here, he was calm. Here, he was in control. Trumpets howled and cymbals crashed, and the train fizzed around the track, encircling him, guarding him, keeping him safe.

After a while he remembered the envelope in his pocket. He took it out and opened it, pulling out the message inside. As he did so he was hit by a waft of rich aftershave.

Your disappearing act meant you weren’t around long enough to hear Sally’s will being read this morning. You little bastard. Did you know? Because I certainly didn’t. Twenty-five grand in her savings—you’d have thought she’d have mentioned that to me, wouldn’t you? After all, we were trying to grow the business—that was the dream. So you can imagine it came as something of a shock to find out about it, and that she had decided to leave the money not to me, but to you.

Maybe now you’ll begin to realize just how sick with guilt she was, all because you never forgave her, no matter how hard she tried to help you. You were like a brick tied around her ankles, weighing her down. Well, I hope you’re happy now, Andrew. It was all worth it, wasn’t it?

—

Andrew read Carl’s letter through several times, but it still didn’t make sense. Surely Sally giving him money was some sort of administrative mistake? Ticking a wrong box? Because the alternative explanation, that it was a last-gasp attempt to make things right, to rid herself of guilt that she had lived with and that he could, and should, have absolved her of, was too desperately sad for him to contemplate.