Beware the Boy

FRIDAY

CHAPTER ONE

MELISSA WANTED TO go home. She hadn’t been back to America in over two years and, until had felt little desire to return. She wasn’t sure whether it was the unseasonal rain softly hitting the windows of the high-rise London flat, the autumnal mornings they were experiencing even though it was only mid-June, or the loud, rhythmic snoring of the man who had shared her bed for the last month, or a combination of all three. As the dim green digits mocked her from the face of the small alarm clock, it was suddenly all she could think about. She hadn’t, for a long time, even considered the small town of Talbot in New Hampshire to be her home anymore. It didn’t really compare to the chaotic bustle of Central London. The fact that she had, in a fit of pique, sworn never to return to Talbot made it all the more difficult to see herself going to the trouble of crossing the city to Heathrow, taking a seven-hour flight to Boston, and then driving the three-plus hours north into New Hampshire. The only real draw was that her mother still lived there, in the house Melissa had grown up in, but time and distance had scarred their relationship so deeply that they only spoke every few weeks – and then just for a few minutes at a time - and neither of them had felt compelled to do anything to improve this.

But, for some reason, all of that escaped her now. The things she usually told herself about her hometown, and how much better a life she was living away from there, simply melted from her mind, and now she felt like the scared twelve-year-old who had sobbed in her mother’s arms at the kitchen table as, once again, events beyond her control had invaded her life and threatened to overcome her.

Slowly, she eased herself out of the bed and crossed the room, creeping to avoid waking the snoring Andrew. The last thing she wanted was for him to wake up before she left - saying goodbye was not something that she had ever been good at, and would almost certainly result in arguments, hurt feelings and tainted memories. Gathering up her clothes, phone, and bag she made for the bedroom door, opening it gently to prevent it from creaking. As she stepped through it and into the hallway, she turned to look at Andrew one last time. After all, she hadn’t always resented him, and the thought of those first few wild, passionate weeks still brought a smile to her face. But discovering that he was married and had children who were older than her had cooled her ardour, and in the month since he had left them to move into her flat, she had quickly found that she was not in love with him - certainly not in the way that he was with her. The production of an engagement ring last night, she thought, was too much. She lifted her left hand and gently twisted the engagement ring from her finger and laid it gently on the nightstand, looked wistfully around the room that had gone from being hers, with its soft throw pillows on the bed and books on the nightstand - to theirs, with her books replaced by his glasses, gadgets and enough wires to power a space expedition - and stepped out into the hallway, silently closing the door behind her.

Just eight minutes later, Melissa stepped out into the rain and climbed into a waiting car. The rain had fallen more heavily in the time it had taken her to grab her things and descend the building from the sixth floor than it had in the hour or more she’d spent listening to it from the warmth of her bed, and she was regretting not taking the time to grab an umbrella as she left. All she carried was a small backpack containing her passport, wallet, phone, a hair brush and a copy of her favourite book - a dog-eared copy of Human Nature by Ian James. She had read it more times than any other book that she owned - she knew each crack and crease of the spine, the folds of each page, each one a reminder of the hours she had spent absorbing it, breathing in the air those characters breathed, and speaking and hearing their words. The author had been, at the time of writing the novel, not far from the age that she was now, and with each reading she felt certain that her connection to him grew stronger, as though she knew his thoughts as he had when writing the words to begin with. Once, while at university, she had argued with a professor who had claimed that it was impossible to know an author’s intent due to the unpredictability of subtlety and nuance, ideology, rhetoric, and whim, which she had taken as an affront at the time but, more recently, she had come to recognise as being the point of textual analysis, and the importance of personal bias when it came to interpretation.

The car pulled away from the kerb; the sound of water splashing beneath the tyres ringing in her ears. She sat quietly, as the driver attempted to make conversation.

Where you 'eaded, then?

Heathrow.

The driver chuckled and shook his head as she looked at him in the rear-view mirror.

Yeah, I know tha’ - tha’s where I’m takin' ya. I jus’ meant, where you going to from there?

Melissa didn’t want to talk. She hated making small talk - the feeling of forcing people into sharing banalities with strangers, just to avoid what most perceived to be those uncomfortable silences that she lived for. She turned her head to rest it heavily against the window, watching the droplets of rain racing across the pane and disappearing from view, London’s busy skyline in the distance. She wasn’t sure when she’d see it again, and that saddened her more than she wanted to admit.

Home.

CHAPTER TWO

IT HAD TAKEN three minutes of monosyllabic responses before the driver had stopped trying to talk to Melissa, at which point she had gratefully popped in her earbuds to discourage any further interaction. She fiddled with her phone for a few moments to give the impression that she was selecting something to listen to but couldn’t find anything to match her melancholy mood, so they sat in silence, the earbuds providing a shield for her to hide behind.

She watched as the usually stationary M25 whizzed by outside, raindrops still racing along the glass. The London skyline had long since been replaced by the vast nothingness between the dull orange hue of the intermittent roadside lamps, and the gnawing sensation in her stomach grew more persistent as the distance from her life seemed to become more real to her when her usual four o’clock alarm – set to wake her for the daily morning run she had skipped sixty-eight times in a row – sounded in her ears. She had forgotten to switch it off it, but over the course of the previous week she had been awake before it on four separate occasions - now five - her thoughts swirling, merging, and evolving into innumerable crises of her own making which kept her awake and dominated most of her quiet time.

She immediately thought back to Andrew, who would normally now be waking with the same alarm, and wondered if she should call him to make sure he was awake. He had - when he had been sneaking between her flat, his office and his family home - been fastidious in his routines which, he told her once, was so that he was always in the office with enough time to review overnight activities in the Asian market before trading began. Once his duplicity had been discovered and she - painted as the scarlet woman who had seduced him and tempted him from his marital bed - had not had the wit and wherewithal to block his moving in to her flat, it transpired that it was so he could claim to have spent the night at the office before returning home in time to take Jeremy - the Cocker Spaniel - for his morning walk through the streets around his Woolwich home, and to see his youngest daughter, Amelia - who at twenty-three was just over a year older than Melissa - onto the train heading east to Maidstone as he headed into the City. She hadn’t known that he was married, and felt all the more slighted when painted to be the Agent Provocateur by his family, friends, and colleagues, when it had in fact been Andrew that had approached her in the wine bar on Fleet Street as she waited for a tardy friend to arrive. It had been Andrew who had ordered the bottle that they made short work of, and Andrew who had also ordered the second. And it was Andrew, she knew for sure - having checked when he had first sat next to her, who had not been wearing a wedding ring. She had often chastised herself during the last month for not having seen what, in hindsight, were fairly obvious red flags. They never stayed at or in fact went anywhere near his house, despite it being far larger and more comfortable than her flat, and having the advantage of being closer to where both of them worked. He had always paid for everything in cash, and always went outside to answer the phone whenever they were out for drinks or dinner, presumably so he could lie to the person on the other end about which client or colleague had dragged him to a bar without having her hear his lie and challenge him. She had felt cheap and used when his wife had turned up on her doorstep on that Thursday night a month ago, dropping a bin liner down in front of her and slapping her firmly across the cheek before storming off without speaking a word. Occasionally, when she replayed that moment in her mind - which she had done many, many times - she could still feel the burning sensation that had spread so quickly across her face, and the welt which had still been visible on her cheek half an hour later when Andrew arrived and proclaimed that he had left his wife to be with her (rather than the uglier, less romantic truth, that Amelia had spotted them leaving a bar together, hand in hand as they got into a cab one evening). Not that he had been found out and pleaded with his wife not to throw him out. No, he had left the wife she had not even known existed to be with her…

No, she decided. She would not call.

The car pulled up to the kerb in the airport’s Drop Off Zone and Melissa quickly stepped out, offering a quiet Thank You to the driver as she stepped out into the warm morning air. The rain had subsided and left a thickness which implied that a storm was on its way. Usually that would have been good news for her - she loved to watch lightning streak across the sky and light up the underside of clouds in a way that was difficult to compare to anything else. It was as though some celestial power was using it to prove a point - that no matter how high the tallest buildings might stand or how many lights brighten streets and roads, there is always something more powerful in nature, more potent - and daring Prometheus to try again.

As the car pulled away from the kerb and into the traffic - which was starting to build as people checked in for the early flights to mainland Europe or long-hauls that would take them east - she walked briskly into the air-conditioned terminal and immediately felt the cool draught prickle her skin, raising small, fleshy goosebumps on her forearms. Once she had checked in, she thought, she would have to remember to pick up a sweater. The problem with impromptu flits in the middle of the night was not having time to pack, and the thin, yellow summer dress she had grabbed in the dark of her bedroom was not ideally suited for sitting in an air-conditioned tube.

Melissa had bought a ticket on her phone from the back of the car, exhausting her meagre savings in one go. She had planned on using the money to take Andrew on a surprise weekend break to New York in the run up to Christmas, but wouldn’t be needing it for that anymore. She tried to scan the QR code a handful of times without success before capitulating and approaching a petite, red-headed woman at the check-in desk, who told her that she wouldn’t be able to check in until 6am. Thanking the woman, she cursed herself for not booking the earlier flight and made a beeline for the nearest coffee vendor she could find, which she was happy to discover was just around the corner, opposite the toilets and a large bank of chairs. She purchased a large caramel latte with an extra espresso shot, picked an end-of-row seat, and took the dog-eared book from her bag. No sooner had she turned to page two, her phone rang. Hers was a conventional tone, native and distinct to the phone, but with so few people in the area she felt self-conscious, as though it was drawing unwanted attention to herself. She felt that it wasn’t obnoxious or ostentatious like the ones most people had - loud, popular songs which screamed personality when, she felt, they ought to be understated and professional. She had often cringed in the office when Who Let the Dogs Out? would blare out across the cubicles as Martin - the overweight Safety Officer - refused to switch it to silent and frequently left it on his desk while in meetings. In fact, she had noticed that the only time he ever took it anywhere with him was during his frequent bathroom breaks, where she had heard from Ben - the office gossip - that he would spend ten minutes playing online poker, and that a longer break usually meant a heavy loss and time spent chasing his initial stake.

Retrieving her phone from her bag and immediately silencing the ringer, she saw that, predictably, Andrew was calling. She declined the call, set the handset to Do Not Disturb mode, and deposited it back into her bag. She was definitely not ready to have that conversation yet.

At just before 6am, Melissa joined a short queue at the check-in desk. With no bags to weigh or boarding pass to print, given that she was using her phone for that, she had expected this to be a slick, quick process after which she could head through security and find somewhere to buy breakfast. Airports always brought out a craving for bacon which she attributed to her father, for whom she and her mother had made dozens of airport runs to drop him off or pick him up from one deployment or another. It had become something of a family tradition that each time they were at the airport together they would eat bacon and eggs - hers slathered in ketchup, his plain - before going home. Even though it had been a little more than a decade since he had been fatally wounded and not returned from Afghanistan, she found that she still could not set foot in a terminal without actively seeking out bacon. Unfortunately, the check-in process was anything but quick. It seemed as though travelling on a long-haul flight without luggage gave rise to suspicion, as did attempting to check in five hours early for a flight. She felt dozens of eyes on her as the relatively short queue of three or four people she had been the head of had grown I excess of twenty people, all impatiently looking at their watches, tapping their feet and muttering under their collective breaths about the stupid girl at the desk holding everyone up.

By the time Ian and Rebecca had taken the brief cab ride from their hotel and arrived at the airport terminal it was a little after six o’clock, and the check-in queue had mushroomed to almost twenty people despite having only just opened. He had checked in online but needed to deposit his bag. His usual carry-on bag had been lost during a trip to Berlin a year earlier, and he hadn’t felt the need to replace it. Since the accident, he could think of nothing less appealing than a stint of meet and greet events where he’d have to make banal small talk with fans and strangers. Rebecca had dug out one of their old suitcases from the dusty attic above their top-floor flat and packed it neatly for him, to the point where he had no idea what was inside. He’d have to remember not to mention that fact when he dropped it off - the last thing he needed was a security problem. At least, this early in the morning, he hadn’t had a drink and was less likely to say anything he’d regret.

He felt Rebecca gripping his hand as they waited, and he noticed that she squeezed it more tightly every so often, held on for a second or so, and then relaxed her grip. The fact that she was not talking, combined with the uncharacteristic absence of her ever-ready smile, told him that she was nervous.

It’s going to be alright, he told her, but she didn’t respond. Ian suspected that she was only there in body, that her mind and spirit were somewhere else trying to piece together the torn fragments of what had until recently been a perpetually happy existence. Yes, they had argued before - many times - but they had always worked through those arguments in the safe understanding that, no matter what else was going on, they loved one another and would stand by one another, no matter what. But that was then. Now - even though she professed to still loving him - Ian wasn’t sure that she even liked him anymore.

Looking around, Ian noticed that the delay at the desk seemed to be due to a short, thin young woman in a yellow summer dress which hung just below her knees, with sleek, chestnut hair draped casually over one shoulder. He wondered if it was the brightness of the dress which made him notice her, dazzling in comparison to the nondescript jeans and faded t-shirts which adorned the rest of the passengers, or whether it was something else. Her bare shoulders and legs were pale to the point of being pallid, and her shoes, he noticed, were not a pair. They were very similar, but the left one bore a small pink trim around the tongue which its right counterpart did not. He could not see her face, but her posture and the heaviness with which she leant on the check-in desk suggested to him that she was tired, her demeanour that of someone with the weight of a thousand bricks on her back, preparing for another load to be added.

Rebecca tightened her grip on his hand again, snapping his attention from the young woman and back to her. He looked at her, still vacant, and wondered how long he could expect her to endure his failures. Since the accident they had drifted apart. His shame had driven him to find solace in the comforting embrace of whiskey, and in her grief, he was sure that she blamed him for taking away the future they had been anticipating. He wouldn’t have blamed her had she left him, not stood by him - he still half-expected to rouse himself from one of his drunken stupors to find her rings on the nightstand, sitting on top of a goodbye note. Losing her, he feared, would be unbearable. But in keeping her, he was driving her away.

He didn’t notice the girl in the yellow summer dress and odd shoes moving on from the desk, but once she had and the queue started moving it took less than ten minutes to for him to get to the front, check his suitcase, and advance to the security gate. Rebecca offered to wait with him until he was called to make his way through, but he did not want her to stay. He knew that she would think that this was because he wanted to find a quiet corner in a bar beyond her reach, but it was in fact far more selfish than that. Ian knew that, were she to stay for another half-hour or so, the pair of them bumbling clumsily through small talk and awkward silences as they tried desperately to avoid the herd of elephants sat between them, then his resolve would diminish, and he would be unable to board the flight. Plus, being totally honest with himself, the idea of leaving her behind had brought him to the verge of tears, and that was a goodbye that he desperately wanted to avoid.

They said goodbye at the bottom of the long escalator that led into the depths of the airport that were reserved for passengers. Airside, he thought he’d heard it called. He watched as she left, holding back sobs that threatened to overwhelm him, and felt panic rising from deep within. Burning, it expanded from his stomach and felt as though his entire body was fit to burst. His clothes were too tight. His face was reddening. Even his hair was sweating. He was certain, watching her leave, that this was it for them.

Barging through the toilet door, Ian almost barrelled into an older man, narrowly avoiding a collision. He raised an apologetic hand before darting into an empty cubicle, where he proceeded to expel his sixteen-pound hotel breakfast so violently that he expected to see blood accompanying the partially digested toast and bile mixing with the water in the bowl. He continued to heave for a further three minutes, unable to muster any more.

The unnecessary delays with the check-in process - which Melissa thought had been overzealous, to say the least - had soured her mood even further, and had seen the airport become substantially busier. The rows of empty benches she would have had her pick of had she been able to check in when she had first arrived were now teeming with holiday-making families in shorts and sandals, professionals travelling on business with little patience for the increased numbers enjoying the school summer holidays, and large groups embarking on stag and hen parties, laughing raucously as they swigged beer from bottles and tried - and mostly failed - to avoid spilling anything on their obligatory matching t-shirts. She had been on plenty of those trips in the last few years as, one by one, her already-narrow social circle had gotten married and started families. At just twenty-two she was by far the youngest of her adopted group, which consisted of work colleagues, a dog walker she had met after tripping over an escaping terrier while out jogging, and - more recently - Andrew’s friends. Marriage and children had always been something that she had seen in her distant future, but when Andrew had proposed the previous evening (in the middle of a crowded restaurant) her first thought was to say no, however she hadn’t wanted to embarrass him so publicly, so she nodded and smiled - did all of the things she had seen faked on television - and promised herself that she would speak with him calmly at home. She could still picture the scene - Andrew, down on one knee to the side of the table holding out the ring box to her; the woman at the next table just feet away smiling and staring at her expectantly; the blonde girl sitting at the bar, not much younger than herself, filming a private moment - no doubt to put online later for likes; and she felt as though she was watching it from outside her body, like it was an awful film that she was watching which too-closely resembled her own life, wherein she had been recast and was now played by a far thinner and prettier actress while everyone else looked the same. But they hadn’t discussed her gut reaction when they got home. She had allowed him to speak excitedly about a beach wedding in the Caribbean, which would double as a honeymoon with their closest friends, and when he had finished - by which time they had consumed another bottle of red wine on top of the wine and champagne they had drunk at the restaurant - she hadn’t the heart to tell him that she didn’t want to marry him. Not yet, anyway. So, instead, they had retired to bed and had uninspired, passionless sex, which had lasted less than three minutes and resulted in Andrew climaxing, rolling off her, telling her unconvincingly that he loved her, and falling almost immediately to sleep, leaving her feeling like little more than a damp sock.

She found herself unconsciously rubbing gently around the finger where the engagement ring should have been, and quickly stopped herself. Andrew had called her seven times that morning - which was more than he usually did in a week - but she couldn’t bring herself to call him back. She knew that, were she to hear his voice demanding that she return to talk things through – which was code for letting him browbeat her into changing her mind - that she would do just that, and that she would stay with him and doom herself to years of resentment and regret until he passed her over for a younger model, all for the sake of not standing her ground. She knew that she didn’t want to marry him, and that was the only thing she needed to keep clear in her mind.

She wandered vacantly through Duty-Free shops, picking up a bottle of water and an oversized bar of triangular chocolate from the drugstore, staggered by the cost of each and trying not to dwell on the fact that the same two items in her local supermarket would have cost her six pounds less. She had spent more than half an hour browsing the handful of racks and rails at a small franchise of her favourite clothing store for something to keep her warm during the flight before settling on a quarter-length stonewash denim jacket that hung just below her bust, which was identical to one that she had bought a few weeks prior at a fraction of the cost, and she swore under her breath as she reluctantly handed over another eighty pounds for something that she already owned, but had forgotten to grab as she had left her flat.

Despite how busy the terminal had become, Melissa had managed to secure a small table overlooking the runway as she waited for her server - an elfin brunette from Kansas City who had introduced herself as Danielle - to deliver what she expected to be a cold bacon sandwich and warm orange juice. When Danielle had returned just a few minutes later with a plate of toast and a pot of coffee destined for a table at the far end of the bar, Melissa had considered just writing off the day and indulging in a few glasses of wine before the flight, but the idea of drinking while watching the breakfast news didn’t seem like a healthy one to her – especially on an empty stomach and with the previous evening’s consumptions still sloshing around in her stomach. And, fifteen minutes later, when Danielle emerged with a fresh bacon sandwich (which was still giving off steam as she put the plate down on the table in front of her with a clatter) and a tall glass of orange juice, the outside of which was lined with condensation, she felt as though she had made the right choice. Biting into it, as the heat seared the roof of her mouth and the smoky grease slid over her tongue, it transported her back to the small airport back home, her mother and father all smiles as they sipped piping hot coffee and held hands while they ate. She had tried not to think of him too often, as it usually darkened her mood so much that she felt the need to withdraw from her life and take to her bed, swatting away at the fog that enveloped her one minute but then was gone the next, but over time it had become easier to disentangle her happy memories of him and their time together from the desperate melancholy that had tinged each one with darkness. A doctor had prescribed her a mild anti-depressant for this after she had been referred to the student support team while at university, but she hadn’t taken them. The red and white box - adorned with small print and scientific words she had no hope of being able to pronounce - mocked her from the top shelf of the medicine cabinet in her bathroom. When he had moved in and overrun her supply cabinet with shaving foam, razor blades, hair products and an unexpected collection of skin-care products, Andrew had asked her what they were for and why the box remained unopened. She had told him that they were painkillers she had been given having sprained her ankle while running but hadn’t used, and a few days later she had thrown them away. It wasn’t something that she felt the need to share with people. As a teenager, after her father had died, her mother had spiralled quickly into states of despair which had sometimes lasted for weeks and seen her shut herself away in her bedroom while Melissa had been forced to become self-sufficient, which was why she rarely admitted that she needed help and refused it when it was offered. Somewhat ironically, she often thought, for all of the doctors and therapists she had worked with over the years, it had been a Disney film released once she had reached adulthood that had taught her how to address her feelings, although she had bawled like a baby when watching it for the first time.

Finishing the sandwich and taking a small sip of juice, she retrieved the battered book from her bag and attempted to escape into it, blocking out the rising cacophony that continued to swell around her. She had read the book countless times and knew it inside out, but she wasn’t able to concentrate on it that morning. Whether that was because of the noise in the terminal, her thoughts of Andrew and her father, or the dread that was slowly gripping her and twisting her insides at the prospect of returning to Talbot for the first time since she had left for college four years before, she couldn’t be sure. Each of them weighed on her mind, but as she tried to rationalise them, she found them whirling, haphazardly, through her mind, irrationally intermingling and bleeding into one another until she was unable to separate them - which made her even more anxious. Even the salty aftertaste of the bacon sandwich conflated things in her mind. She wanted to avoid a sudden dip in mood, knowing that this would see her dissect every aspect of her life - from her relationship to her job and lack of a life plan - pulling apart even the simplest of decisions until she mistrusted her own judgement so completely