Kiss My Name (26 page)

NICKY – December 2010

Simon was pale, really pale. In fact, Simon looked so ill, so out of sorts, that I had volunteered to drive home. I wasn’t the most confident driver, especially in the midst of a Siberian winter, with black ice hiding on every untreated road, but Simon had drifted away, deep into himself and I knew we were at greater risk if he took the wheel than if I did.

We were sat in the car park, opposite the Little Theatre, breathing out cold air like seasoned smokers, waiting for the heating system to kick in and the windscreen wipers to cut through the blanket Jack Frost had carefully placed over each car in the car park whilst Doris Meadows had enthralled her audience, with the exception of Simon, who she had just confused. My cold hand gripped his.

“Are you alright, hun?”

Simon just stared at me, blankly.

“How did she do that? I don’t get it?”

“She’s a spiritualist, Simon. It’s a gift.”

Simon shook his head.

“No, she isn’t. It’s all a load of bollocks. There’s no such thing! It’s just folklore!”

“Explain it then.”

“Nicky, I can’t!”

Simon reminded me of the lost little boy he had been all those years ago, he was searching his mind for an explanation and then thought he had found one,

“Did you tell her?”

“Tell her what, Simon?”

“About Colin. Did you write and tell her about everything that happened to our Colin?”

“No!”

“Honestly?”

“Simon, honestly I didn’t. She just somehow seemed to know.”

“And you really think he was in that room? Talking to me in Chorley Little Theatre, through Doris Meadows, twenty five years after he died?”

“Well, what other explanation is there?”

That blank, confused look remained.

“Nicky, I told you, I don’t know. How could I possibly know?”

“She knew how Colin died, Simon.”

“I know.”

“And although she didn’t say it, she might even know who killed him.”

Simon ran his hand through what remains of his hair and sighed.

“Like I don’t know that already.”

SIMON – December 2010

For over fifteen years, Joey Neill and I had drifted apart. We had never really had cross words or any sort of issue with each other, we were just utilising our spare time in different ways. My spare time during those fifteen years had been spent with my family. Will had tried his hand at various sports, as well as various musical instruments, so this involved ferrying him to football training and matches in the winter, cricket nets and matches in the summer and music lessons, particularly guitar lessons, throughout the year. Chloe also did ballet and modern dance. Nicky and I tended to work things so I would take Will and Nicky would take Chloe. Once Will reached an age that he didn’t require parental chaperoning, both Nicky and I went to watch Chloe. There was an eight year age gap between the pair of them, so we never had to contend with sibling rivalries, like many parents do. Chloe always looked up to her big brother and Will always doted on Chloe. We had little time to ourselves but we loved our time with the children, they will have flown the nest soon enough.

Joey Neill was not a family man, not in the conventional sense anyway. When I spoke to Nicky about Joey, I used to refer to him as, ‘The Cuckoo’, as he liked to climb into other peoples beds. If you have ever heard that song by The Doors, ‘Back Door Man’, that could have been written about Joey Neill. I am not sure if all the rumours were true, as often I only heard them second or third hand through picking up tittle tattle on my window cleaning round, but even if ten percent of them were true, it appeared Joey enjoyed nothing more than a dalliance with a married woman. I trust Nicky implicitly, but I would still feel uncomfortable if I knew Joey was around at our house if I wasn’t there. I wouldn’t want Nicky put in an uncomfortable position. If I’m honest, Joey’s reputation was probably another reason that I had distanced myself from him. Once I did distance myself though, Joey had made no real effort to keep in contact, which illustrated that it had always been me that had kept the bond going. I was happy to add him as a friend on Facebook, as maintaining contact via a computer screen was preferable to keeping in touch face to face.

The Doris Meadows incident freaked me out. It was back in the eighties that Colin had died and I am sure if it had happened to a child nowadays, his brother would have been counselled by a child psychologist, but back then, I was left to find my own coping mechanism. I did cope, but I do think there are some deep rooted emotional scars that lay within me. When the Doris Meadows incident reared its head, I sought solace with someone who had known Colin. I didn’t want to continually discuss the experience with Nicky, as she totally bought into spiritualism, whilst I remained sceptical. Dad and particularly Mum were out, as they would have been horrified by the thought of Nicky and me visiting a medium in the first place. Mum’s Christian faith had been her coping mechanism after Colin’s death and Christianity and spirituality go hand in hand like creationism and scientific knowledge, so Joey Neill was my only real option. Despite having kept him at a distance for some time, this was one discussion that I felt needed to be made face to face.

Joey lived on Wigan Road in Euxton, in one of those big detached houses set back off the road, on the same side as ‘The Bay Horse’. I had been catching up with him on Facebook fairly regularly over the previous few months anyway, so just sent him a message the day after the Doris Meadows evening, explaining that I wanted to meet up. Joey, who doesn’t work these days, replied almost immediately, suggesting I come around that evening, about eight, which would give him chance to nip up to the gym first. He was a bit of a gym freak and had the body to show for it.

I was there at eight o’clock on the dot. Back home, Chloe had been kicking off about having a bath. I had always thought it was boys that were reluctant to keep
clean, but Will always enjoyed a long soak in the bath whilst Chloe had a cat like attitude to water. I was happy to escape, leaving Nicky to deal with the tantrums. I very rarely ventured out without the family in tow or at the very least, Nicky by my side and although that was through personal choice, I still felt excited about having a rare night out. Not that staying at Joey’s house for a few beers constituted an adventure to challenge those of Michael Palin or Ben Fogle, but all the same, it was a breach of normality for me.

Joey answered the door still in his gym clothes, looking and smelling of endurance. He invited me in, pointed me in the direction of his beer fridge, in his double garage, then told me to take a seat in the TV room whilst he showered. I hadn’t even made it past the hallway in previous visits, so initially I thought it was a little weird that he was referring to the lounge or dining room as a ‘TV room’, but it turned out there was a lounge and dining room too. Our family of four lived in a house less than half the size of the house he lived alone in.

The whole house had a distinct ‘bachelor pad’ flavour with walls adorned with signed photos of Ronaldinho, Lionel Messi, the 1966 England World Cup winning team and that cheeky female tennis player scratching her naked bum rather than the prints of umbrellas on beaches and kissing couples that were plastered all over our walls. Nicky collected Jack Vettriano prints like I used to collect Matchbox cars. There was a pool table in one room, table tennis table in another, flat screen TVs everywhere , the fridge had food from Marks&Spencer not Morrisons and large whisky bottles were full of pound coins not pennies. I’m not the jealous type, but there did seem a certain injustice that I was a hard working family man who treated every penny he had like a prisoner he didn’t want to escape, whilst Joey was a lazy, unemployed, serial shagger, who was living it up in the lap of luxury. What was the point of having a bloody table tennis table if you lived alone?

Once Joey returned from his shower we continued the reminiscing that we had begun on Facebook. When two people have very little in common, like us, you seek common ground and in our case, our common ground was our childhood. This led, inevitably, on to conversations about both Nicky and Colin, then ultimately it led to discussions about Nicky and me visiting Chorley Little Theatre and our evening with Doris Meadows.

“You mentioned you were going to see her on Facebook,” Joey said, “was it as weird as you thought it was going to be?”

I took a gulp from my bottle of beer and then allowed my tongue to rotate around its circular rim.

“Weirder.”

“How come?”

“Who do you think was Doris Meadows star turn?”

Joey had helped himself to a can of beer and a glass, he pulled the ring back and carefully began to pour.

“Bloody hell not Nicky!”

“Nope.”

“Who then?”

“You’re looking at him!”

Joey gave out a confused laugh.

“Eh? I didn’t think you believed all that spooky nonsense! When you mentioned it on Facebook, you said it was Nicky’s thing and you were just tagging along.”

“I know. I don’t believe in it. Well, I didn’t. I don’t know what to believe now. It’s messed with my head, to be honest.”

“What happened?”

“She specifically asked for me to go up on to the stage, saying someone wanted to speak to me and, to cut a long story short, it turned out to be Colin.”

I could tell by the look on Joey’s face that he thought that this was some sort of crazy wind up.

“Get lost!”

“Honestly.”

“Did he speak to you then? Did the medium start shaking and then do all that possession stuff and then start speaking in a ten year old boy’s voice, like you see in those freaky horror films?”

“No, I didn’t hear him at all, he supposedly spoke to Doris Meadows and she told me what he said.”

“Any you believed her? It’s all bollocks, Simon!”

“Well, I thought that too, but she told me stuff that there was no way in the world she would know. Stuff only Colin and I would know.”

“Hang on! Hang on! Stop right there. Who paid for the tickets? You or Nicky?”

I was puzzled.

“What difference does that make?”

“A lot. I’m guessing you.”

“Yeh. So?”

“And I’m guessing you paid by card.”

“So what, Joey? I paid by card. What’s the big deal, Columbo?”

“I reckon I know exactly how you’ve been stitched up. Doris Meadows gets five hundred people into the Little Theatre, so probably about two hundred and fifty will have paid on their cards. Two hundred and fifty names of gullible, local people who have a reason to go and see a medium. If Doris inputs all those names into the internet and does a bit of research, no doubt she can dig up some dirt on at least a few of them. You would be easy, when Colin died there were loads of things in the local papers about it, I remember some of them mentioning you. So, good old Doris Meadows mentions Colin to you and ‘Hey Presto!’ we’ve got ourselves a miracle! You’ve been had mate! Well and truly had.”

“No, she wouldn’t do that. She was an old dear.”

“A shrewd old dear! How much were the tickets?”

“Fifteen quid each.”

“Seven and a half grand for a little bit of research and a sympathetic message from inside her head. She probably gets about two grand of that. I’m sure that pays for plenty of head scarves and blue rinses.”

Joey seemed convinced that there was a simple explanation for Colin’s re-appearance, but I wasn’t prepared to brush off what happened quite that easily.

“It’s not that simple, Joey. Doris Meadows is eighty odd, she’s traipsing around the country seeing hundreds of people every night, she wouldn’t have the time to research everyone.”

“She might pay researchers to do it.”

I shook my head.

“No, there was stuff she couldn’t possibly get from articles in the paper.”

“Like what?”

“Like how Colin used to call Nicky ‘Miss La-de-da’ and the fact that Nicky’s Mum died too.”

Joey suddenly seemed to be getting very excited. He practically ran over to his computer, which was in the corner of the room and switched it on.

“Say that again,” Joey urged, as his computer screen ran through its start up routine.

“What?” I replied, confused.

“What did you say Doris Meadows knew about?”

“All sorts of stuff.”

“Yeh, but like what? What did you just say she knew?”

“That Nicky’s Mum died and that Colin used to call Nicky ‘Miss La-de-da’.”

“Right, come over here and feast your eyes on this!”

I didn’t have a clue what Joey was getting so worked up about, but I stood up and wandered over to his computer screen.

“What am I looking at?” I enquired.

“My Facebook wall.”

“Why? I’ll just need to skip back a couple of months to when you bought those tickets. It won’t take me long, I’m not on it that much....right, there it is. Do you not remember sending this?”

I stooped over the screen. I was a bit long sighted so couldn’t really focus on it, but once I squinted, I could see. My heart sank. It was a Facebook conversation from two months ago between Joey and myself. I had forgotten all about it, but now, reading back through it, everything seemed to make sense.

The part of our Facebook conversation that Joey was referring to, read as follows :-

Joey Neill

Getting the hang of Facebook now, Si?

Simon Strong

Slowly. Will’s showing me what to do! Anything planned this weekend, pal? Off into town?

Joey Neill

Yes, for a change! Will see if I can charm the socks (or the knickers) off some unsuspecting young lady!

Simon Strong

Since when have you liked them young?

Joey Neill

Never been fussy! Sixteen to sixty is fine with me. Used to be fussy about looks, but grateful for anything I can get my hands on these days!

Simon Strong

Charming!

Joey Neill

You out yourself, Si?

Simon Strong

No, stopping in. I’m skint. Just forked out to go and see a medium at the Little Theatre in December, so money’s a bit tight.

Joey Neill

A medium? What are you wanting to go and see a medium for?

Simon Strong

I’m not so keen on going, but Nicky is. She’s into all that paranormal stuff on the TV. She’s never actually come out and said it, but I think she is secretly hoping that if we go to enough of these things, one day she will connect with her Mum.

Joey Neill

Really? There’s no chance.

Simon Strong

I know. We’re not that lucky. Knowing our luck, mate, she’d probably end up speaking to our Colin instead.

Joey Neill

I don’t get you?????

Simon Strong

Do you not remember? Colin and Nicky didn’t really get on.

Joey Neill

I don’t remember that, mate.

Simon Strong

Don’t you? He used to call her Miss La-de-da.

I wasn’t exactly sure how, but at that moment, everything seemed clear. Doris Meadows had accessed my Facebook page. I’d been Granny hacked!