Flip (19 page)

“You said she was the girl you left behind,” Alex said, trying to keep his voice steady. “In New Zealand, I thought you meant.”

“I did leave her behind. That night in Manchester, in the back of an ambulance, while I was bleeding to death. She’s holding my hand, my blood all over her. Sobbing her heart out. The paramedic is doing his best but there must be something in his body language that tells her the score.
Hang on, Chris
, she’s saying.
I love you so much. Please hang on.
” Rob closed the wallet, put it back into his pocket. “But I didn’t hang on, did I?”

Rob let himself out, walked round to the rear of the combi. Alex felt the vehicle shift on its suspension as he climbed aboard. In a moment, Rob was back in the driver’s seat with an orange folder on his lap. He took out a sheaf of newspaper cuttings.

“Here,” he said, handing them to Alex.

There was the word, in the headlines: “Stalker.” There was a photograph of Rob. Other pictures: of the girl, Lisa; of Bill and Jane.

Alex read the articles.

“I’m in breach of the restraining order just by being here,” Rob said when Alex had finished. “If they saw me”—he indicated the house they’d been watching—“and called the police, I’d be locked away for sure this time.”

Alex handed the cuttings back to Rob, who filed them away again. “Why did you bring me here, Rob?” He nodded at the folder. “Why did you show me those?”

“You still don’t get it?”

“I’m not
dead
, Rob. ‘Alex’ is still alive. My mum and dad haven’t moved on with their lives. I
am
hanging on.” Then, hesitating to say it: “I’m not like you.”

There were tears in Rob’s eyes. “I’m making a mess of my life, Alex. I died and I was given the gift—the precious
gift
—of a new life, and I’m throwing it away.” He was crying properly now, wet streaking his cheeks. “I tried, I really tried to make a go of it as Rob, down in En Zed. Three and a half years.” He shook his head. “And now
this
. I can’t … stop myself. Mum and Dad. Lisa. My sisters. My old mates. Like a moth bashing against a flame until it burns itself alive.”

Just when Alex thought Rob had nothing left to say, Rob went on, rubbing at his face with his hand, as though to erase all trace of his tears. “Even if you could find a way of going back, Alex, what would you be going back to? Eh? A persistent vegetative state. And then, probably, you’d stay like that for a few more months until they gave up on you and let you die.”

“You don’t know—”

“Alex, you can do that, if you want. No one’s stopping you. You can try to go back, you can put all your energy into being ‘Alex’ again … make it your
obsession
. Cos that’s what it’ll become: an obsession. All you ever think about, every minute of every day, for months and years until it eats you away from the inside. And this new body, this new life you’ve been given, will turn to crap.” He held Alex’s gaze. “That’s why I brought you here today. That’s what I wanted to show you … 
me
. What I’ve become. Because you look at me, Alex, and this is what you can do to yourself.”

Back in school the next day, Alex found himself in the dining hall at lunchtime, sharing a table with Jack and two more of Flip’s mates from basketball. Luke and Olly. They (that is, the other three) were discussing the lighting of farts. Posture, ignition method, projection. Whether it was gay to light someone else’s for them. That sort of thing.

“Hey, Flip,” Jack said, food rotating in his mouth like cement in a mixer, “what about that time you lit one in Olly’s bedroom?”

They fell about laughing, Alex not joining in.
Oh, how I wish I’d been there
, he wanted to say. Olly gave him a shove. “Those curtains, man. My mum went ballistic.”

And so on. Alex tried to focus on his pizza. The more quickly he ate, the sooner he could make an excuse to leave the table. He looked at Jack and struggled to comprehend how they’d managed to have such a good time together just over a week ago, on that Scarborough trip.

His mobile buzzed. It was a text from Rob, apologizing for the previous day. Alex was about to close it without reply but changed his mind. Then, after a moment’s uncertainty, he typed,
No need to be sorry
.

U okay?

I’m fine
. He clicked “send” and shut the phone off.

“Who was that?” Jack said.

“Rob.”

Jack’s face broke into a grin. He explained to Luke and Olly who Rob was. “I tell you, that guy has to be
the
coolest cousin anyone could have.”

Jack was on a roll then, recounting—embellishing, exaggerating—the tale of their day out at the seaside. Alex zoned out, went back to his pizza. Was he fine? Was there no need for Rob to apologize? He didn’t know. They’d parted awkwardly after the drive back from Manchester. Knowing that Rob had stalked his parents and girlfriend—Chris’s parents, Chris’s girlfriend—Alex had good reason to want nothing more to do with him. The way the newspapers reported it, the guy was a psycho. He’d made those people’s lives a misery these past months. Spying on them, following them, hassling them … claiming to be their dead son, her dead boyfriend. How crazy was that? But of course to Rob, he
was
their son, he
was
Lisa’s boyfriend. If Alex had read the stories without knowing anything about it, he’d have had Rob down as a psycho, too. But he did know. And he could all too easily imagine doing the same. He had already. His circumstances might be a bit different, and that trip to Crokeham Hill wasn’t on the scale of Rob’s long vigil in Manchester, but it all came from the same place: the desperate frustration of being cut off from who they were.

If Rob’s intention in taking him to Manchester had been to try to scare Alex in the hope that it would save him from the same fate, then, surely, that wasn’t something to apologize for.

Strange, but when Rob had first appeared on the scene, Alex had been delighted to have a friend who knew who he was, someone in whom he could confide and with whom he could be his true self. When he was down and had nowhere else to turn, Rob lifted him up. He was the wise old hand, the strong and sorted one (or so it had seemed) who’d come into Alex’s life just when he was most needed. But thinking about it now, Alex saw that their friendship cut both ways.
You look so bloody lonely in there
, Rob had said. Well, after Manchester, Alex understood that Rob was every bit as lonely as he was.

“Are you even
listening
to me?”

Alex looked up from his plate. “What?”

Jack, with that gurning expression of his. He’d tilted his chair onto its back legs, one hand braced against the table, and was rocking back and forth. He nodded at something behind Alex. “I
said
, ‘Look out, here comes trouble.’ ”

Alex turned to see Donna approaching, the mother of all scowls on her face. She’d been in a strop with him first thing, at registration, after he’d blanked her all weekend, but this looked like something altogether more serious.

“Can we talk?” she said. Somewhere else, she meant. Somewhere private.

The others went quiet. A different girl, they’d have made fun of her—
I don’t know, can we talk, Olly? … You can, Jack, you just did.… Can you talk, Luke?
and so on—but Donna was too fit for that treatment. Instead, they became self-conscious, concentrating on their lunch and trying not to be caught sneaking a peek at her tits.

Alex had nothing to say to Donna and didn’t much care what she had to say to him. “I’m eating,” he said.

She stood beside his chair, looking furious and upset all at once, as though debating whether to say her piece in front of the other three or simply turn and walk away. “Are you trying to humiliate me?” she said.

He went on eating. “I’m not trying to do anything to you.”

It was harsh, and it was hurting her, and Alex hated himself for being like this, but when he thought about Rob’s situation, and his own, the relationship squabbles of two schoolkids were too trivial for words.

“You were seen,” Donna said.

“
Seen
. What d’you mean ‘seen’?” With Rob, in Manchester, he thought she meant. But she couldn’t have known about that. “Seen where?”

“By the river,” she said. “On Saturday. With Cherry Jones.”

Luke and Olly were sitting there with their mouths open, as though hypnotized. As for Jack, he was still rocking back and forth on his chair, trying not to smirk.

As though the mention of her name had magicked her appearance, Cherry chose that moment to weave her way across the dining hall, taking sips from a bottle of mineral water. She was two or three tables away and heading for the door, seemingly oblivious to what was going on at Alex’s table, or anywhere else. That bubble of privacy she occupied drew Alex to her just as it kept everyone else at bay.

Donna spotted her. “Hey, Cherry,” she called out. “You
do
know there are
calories
in water, don’t you?” Then, as Cherry looked her way, she added, “Shall I hold that bottle for you while you go off to the toilets to make yourself puke?”

If Cherry was bothered by the remark, you’d never have known. She simply held Donna’s gaze for a moment—unwaveringly, unreadably—before turning away and continuing out of the dining hall. She hardly broke her stride.

“You’re seeing
Jones the Bones
?” Jack said, barely able to contain himself.

Donna glared at Alex. Without a word, he got up from his seat, took his tray to the racks, scraped the leftovers into the compost bin and stowed his dirty plate and cutlery with the rest. Walking back past the table, he saw that Donna had already gone. The three lads were laughing.

“What is it, Flip?” Jack said. “A charity stunt? Shag an Anorexic Day? See who can pull the ugliest girl in Year Nine?”

He’d never hit anyone in his life as Alex. Didn’t really know how to throw a punch. In terms of technical merit, the swing he took at Jack wasn’t much good. But Flip had muscles and a big knuckly fist, and fueled by Alex’s sudden temper, that flailing arc connected smack in the center of Jack’s face, dumping him onto the floor in a tangle of arms and legs and upturned chair.

Alex didn’t stop to see the damage he’d done. He just walked out of the dining hall.

For the second Monday in a row, Alex was sent home from school. This time he went back to an empty house, delaying the moment when he would have to explain himself to the Garamonds. He poured a glass of milk and took it up to his room.

Sitting at his desk, waiting for the PC to fire up, he examined his hand. Nothing broken, far as he could tell, but the middle two knuckles were discolored and swollen and the wrist he’d sprained at the ice-skating felt sore again.

Punching a bony face with a bony fist was a really
bad
idea, he decided.

He’d felt like hitting people plenty of times as Alex, but hadn’t had—what?—the
physicality
to do it. Now that he
could
hit someone, he
did
. Pathetic. It would be easy to blame Flip—Flip’s physique, muscles, fist—but the signal to swing that arm had come from the mind … and the mind belonged to Alex. Same with the mug he’d sent flying across Rob’s camper van. What had that been all about?

More and more often, he caught himself thinking about stuff like this. Mind and body, spiritual and physical. Alex and Flip. Until now, apart from what he thought of as “slippage,” each had seemed distinct from the other—he had still been able to tell where one ended and the other began. Now he wasn’t so sure. Which set him wondering whether the longer a soul remained in the wrong body, the more integrated they became. And the harder it would be to separate them.

He would go online, to the psychic evacuation forum, to see if anyone had an opinion about it. They would, for sure. They had an opinion about everything else.

Alex was still in the bedroom much later, when the doorbell rang. Teri was home from school by then—he’d heard her come in—but clearly she wasn’t interested in seeing who was at the door. Still no sign of Mr. and Mrs. Garamond. When the bell rang again, Alex logged off and jogged downstairs. He’d intentionally left his mobile off all afternoon and thought it might be Donna outside, or Jack, or (nightmare) Jack’s parents. Or the police. Jack wouldn’t have reported it, Alex didn’t reckon, but his folks might’ve done.

He opened the door. It was Cherry. He couldn’t tell if she was concerned for him, or annoyed, or what. “I heard you got excluded,” she said.

“Not as such. They sent me home to ‘cool off,’ then I’m kabinned for the rest of the week.”

“You’re
what
?”

He’d used a Crokeham Hill term. “Oh, sorry … in isolation.”

Behind her, in the street, a car was parked with its engine idling. Mrs. Jones. She waved at him through the open window.

“I’m on my way to orchestra practice,” Cherry said. “I got Mum to take a detour so I could see if you were okay.”

“Um, right. Thanks. I … I thought you were cross with me or something.”

“I am. I mean, hitting someone—wow, what a hero.”

“D’you know
why
I hit him?”

“Yeah, of course I do, and it’s such a cliché. Defending a girl’s
honor
?” Cherry fixed him a look. “Philip, please, it’s the twenty-first century.”

Alex gestured at her standing there on the doorstep. “So … ?”

“So I’m pissed off with you and also worried about you. I know Flip doesn’t really
do
complicated but I was starting to think that Philip did.” Then, as though it was somehow connected, she asked, “Have you been drinking milk?”

“What? Er, yeah.”

She nodded. “I can smell it on your breath.”

Alex was conscious of Mrs. Jones waiting. Violin music drifted across the road from her car and he saw that she was reapplying her lipstick in the rearview mirror. He said, “D’you know how Jack is?”

“Stupid and infantile, most of the time. I think he has ADHD, actually.”

Alex smiled. “I meant his face.”

“They didn’t send him home, so it can’t be too serious.” Cherry shrugged. “So, anyway, I should probably—”

At that moment there was a yell from down below, in the basement, followed by frantic footsteps on the stairs. Teri appeared in the hallway, crying and out of breath and barely able to say what she had to say: that she’d just gone into the garden and found Beagle collapsed in the flower border.

Together, the three of them managed to carry Beagle to the car.

“Change of plan, Mum,” Cherry said. “We’re going to the vet’s.”

Teri and Alex sat in the back with Beagle slumped on the seat between them, barely breathing. At the surgery, he was taken to a treatment room while they all waited in reception. After what seemed an age, the vet returned. A tall, sleek woman who spoke with an east European accent and had a face like a shopwindow mannequin’s. She asked them to come in. Beagle lay on his side on an examination table, a little bewildered-looking. His tail flapped halfheartedly when he saw Cherry. Alex got the usual growl—feeble, but a growl even so. The room smelled of dog hair and antiseptic. Teri had a hand over her mouth and was trying hard not to cry.

A stroke, the vet said. On examining Beagle she had found something else as well: a probable tumor at the base of the throat. Judging by his breathing difficulties, the cancer had most likely spread to the lungs. “I’m afraid your dog is very old and very ill.”

“Is there anything you can do?” Alex asked.

The vet shook her head. “Pain relief, that’s all. I’m sorry, but I think it’s best to put him to sleep.”

Right here and now, she meant.

Alex went to the examination table and placed a palm on the dog’s flank, tentatively, as though Beagle was already dead and he wasn’t too sure about touching him. He felt the warmth, the shallow rise and fall of the rib cage. With his other hand, he stroked the back of Beagle’s neck, his ears. Alex heard Teri on her phone, relaying the news to her mother and telling her to come to the vet’s right away.

“It’s okay, Beags,” was all he managed to say.

The tears surprised him, made him realize that he had somehow grown fond of this dog that had never liked him. No more walks by the river, no more afternoons on the sofa watching tennis. No more nips. What also upset him was the thought that this was Philip’s dog, and Philip wasn’t there to say goodbye to him. Most of all, though, looking at the poor fat mutt lying helpless on that table, dying, Alex pictured his
own
body, stretched out on a hospital bed at the other end of the country.