The Butterfly Effect
Read The Butterfly Effect Online
Authors: Julie McLaren
The Butterfly Effect
by
Julie McLaren
Copyright © Julie McLaren 2015
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photocopying or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the copyright owner of this book
With thanks to all the members of my family who have read this novel in various stages of its development and have offered support, ideas and encouragement; also to my sister, Ginny Constable, for the cover design. I’m grateful to Kath Middleton for Beta Reading and other members of the KUF authors’ forum for many different forms of advice.
It’s not a bad room. If you paid fifty quid for something like this, somewhere not that smart or maybe out of season, you wouldn’t feel cheated. It’s clean, the bed is soft enough and the sheets smell fresh. There’s a little desk or dressing table and a chair, and there’s carpet on the floor. In one corner there’s a door that leads to the smallest en suite you ever saw, but the toilet flushes and the water in the basin is warm. Nothing to complain about, but that’s where the similarity to a budget room in a small, slightly run-down hotel ends, and now, to keep myself calm, I’m going to list the things that are wrong. The things that struck me after I’d been awake for a few minutes. The things that made my heart beat hard. Harder. Like a ‘spot the difference’ competition in a children’s comic, I will mentally circle them in turn.
Firstly, the windows are locked and frosted, both in here and in the bathroom. There’s a tiny area where the handle used to be, where the frosting is a little worn, and if you put your face right up close you can see the vague outlines of rooftops like an unfamiliar city on a foggy day, but this room could be anywhere. Then there is the huge fridge-freezer in the corner, a monstrous piece of ancient kitchen technology that shudders intermittently and makes a strange roaring sound, like an approaching train at an underground station. Both the fridge and freezer are packed with food, mostly ready meals and frozen produce, but there are a few salad things in the crisper. There’s a microwave on the bedside table beside it, with crockery and some packets in the cupboard below, except it’s not crockery, it’s all plastic, as is the cutlery.
Then there is the wardrobe. It has shelves and drawers on one side and a hanging space on the other, with spare bedding and pillows in the long shelf that runs along the top. Nothing strange about that, but it is full of clothes and, unless I’m going completely mad or have amnesia, they are not mine and I didn’t put them there. They are my size, and they are uncannily similar to clothes that I possess, but they are all brand new, I can tell. And I would never have organised my things this way; the bras are in with the pants, which is just wrong, and the jumpers are on hangers. It is all nearly familiar but not quite right.
There’s one more thing. It’s obviously the most important, and I left it until the end in the forlorn hope that it might turn out not to be true, but of course it is. I just went and checked again, to be sure. The door is locked and there is no key. It’s not one of those hotel-type locks, not even a Yale. It’s just an ordinary mortice lock, but it’s strong enough to keep this door firmly closed, and no amount of shaking or kicking makes any difference. I’ve tried that. Oh yes. And hammering on the wood until my hands ache, and shouting, and yelling, and crying and calling for help, cheek against the door, wet with tears. None of it makes any difference. I don’t think there is anyone else in the building; nobody to hear, nobody to help.
That was all some time ago – I don’t know how long as my watch has gone – but you can only be like that for so long. Even if nothing has changed, which it hasn’t, you can’t go on at that pitch for ever. It feels as if your batteries are running out, and then you get an empty feeling and an overwhelming weakness and you can’t even cry properly. That’s probably why I’m so calm now, why I can conduct this mental inventory in such a dispassionate way, but I’ve no idea how long it will last. Will I be back on my feet in an hour or so, prowling around like a caged tiger, searching for something that could get me out even though I know there will be nothing? If he’s clever enough to have done this, after all this time and all the measures we put in place to stop him – well, he won’t have left a key lying around, will he?
The funny thing is, this is actually all my fault. If only I’d listened to Nat, I would still be safely tucked away where nobody could get to me, but what sort of life is that? I said it to Nat, one evening when he came round to check up on me, that maybe it was time to reduce some of the more extreme measures, take a few more risks, see what would happen, but he was so adamant, so sure that the danger was still there, that I let it drop. I didn’t want to worry him any more than was necessary, but the germ of the idea was there and it wouldn’t go away. There had to be an alternative to this. There had to be a chance that, one day, I would be able to lead a normal life, to wake up in the morning and go to work and do the things I used to do before this all started. And if that did happen, then it would all be down to Nat, of course it would, but maybe he was just a bit too cautious.
Oh, Nat! That’s made me cry all over again! Whatever will he be thinking? He’ll blame himself, I know he will. Even though nobody could have done more than he did to keep me safe, he will still feel that he’s failed; but it’s not his fault that I put myself at risk. I have shed some tears for the other people who may be worrying about me – especially Mum and Dad – but it’s Nat I really worry about. The best friend anyone could ever have, and there’s nothing I can do to make it any better for him, to let him know that I’m still alive, at the moment, anyway.
That has also made me realise how my life has shrunk since this all started. If this had happened, if I had suddenly disappeared two years ago, there would have been dozens of people wondering what had happened to me, texting each other, posting things on Facebook, starting some kind of campaign to find me. Olga and the others in the band, all the people at school, most of my uni friends, they have all been whittled away as my means of communication have been reduced and I have spent less and less time out of the house. Now they will only find out when they see it on the television. Victim of stalking abducted. At least they will know that we were right though, that we weren’t being paranoid. At least there is that.
Two years ago. It’s hard to believe that so much can happen in such a relatively short time and that my life could be changed quite so radically. I’d have laughed if you’d told me then, as I rushed home from work to prepare for the gig, butterflies of excitement and fear in my stomach, that the road I was taking would lead me here, to this room. I might have laughed, but would I have taken it seriously enough to have changed out of my sparkly top and phoned Olga? Sorry, Olga, but I don’t think I want to sing in a band after all. She would have been a bit cross, we may even have fallen out, but I wouldn’t be here now.
But then, maybe Richie and I would never have got together. Maybe we wouldn’t have had that blissful time together. I may never have known what it is to find someone who totally gets you, understands what you’re thinking before you’ve even registered the thought. Someone who loves you exactly as you are. Even though I lost him, I don’t think I could choose a path that didn’t include him, so if Richie and this, this weird life that is mine, are coterminous, then so be it, I don’t think I’d change it after all, whatever comes next. It would be a betrayal, as if I were the person who had plunged a knife into his heart when he was only seconds away from home and left him there, on the pavement, his life seeping out of him and nobody around to hold his hand, to tell him it would all be OK, to hang on in there. He was dead by the time someone did come along and I never got to say goodbye.
***
I’d only spoken to him a couple of times, once in school, in the staffroom, and once at somebody’s leaving party, but there was something about Richie, even though I hardly knew him, that made it impossible to lie to him. So, when he caught me as I was putting on my coat and asked what I was doing on Friday, I didn’t say I was meeting a girlfriend or that I had a prior engagement. Both of these were at least partially true and I may, in other circumstances, have employed them as part of my defence mechanism against further relationship disaster, but I didn’t.
“I’ve been asked to sing a couple of tracks with my friend’s band. They are playing in The White Horse,” I said, looking at his expression for clues. What would he think about that? Would it seem hopelessly lame, singing with a covers band in a pub? But, no, clearly it didn’t, as his face lit up.
“Wow! That’s amazing! Can I come and see you? I promise to clap very loudly, and I can do a wicked whistle.”
So saying, he put two fingers in his mouth and emitted an ear-piercing sound that caused several people to stop and turn to look at us.
“Sorry,” he said, seeing my face. “I won’t do it again if you say I can come.”
So of course I said yes, it would be fine, but it didn’t feel like a proper date as he winked and said he’d see me there and that was that. So, even though he didn’t turn up, and for a while I thought it would never happen, that’s where it became a possibility. From that moment, I couldn’t be in a room with Richie without registering it. Even when I was angry with him and trying to ignore him, he was on my radar.
I have to be honest, though. Most of the butterflies were due to the fact that I was about to sing with Olga’s band in what was now a scarily short time. What on earth was I doing? How had it got to this point of apparently no return? I loved Olga, she was a really good friend and we had known each other since we both started the same postgraduate teaching course, but she did have this capacity to sweep people along with her own bright enthusiasm for life and suddenly you would find yourself involved in an activity way out of your comfort zone. If it hadn’t been for Olga, I never would have seen Tibet and Nepal, never would have trekked through the most breathtaking landscapes, never would have slept on a beach in Bali and certainly never would have found myself working in the craziest kitchens and bars so we could raise enough money to make our way back to catch the flight home. I probably would have spent the summer writing lesson plans.
This little escapade had started when we missed the last train back from Birmingham one Friday after a night out, and we figured that it would probably be cheaper to find a budget room than pay for a taxi. That may or may not have been true, as we’d both had quite a lot to drink and our logic was almost certainly impaired, but we managed to find a place only a short walk from the station and resigned ourselves to managing without even a toothbrush. The room was very basic – not like this one is, but in a student accommodation kind of way – but there were two beds and an en suite and it was fine. We’d both drunk enough to sleep well wherever we were.
The next morning, I grabbed the shower first. I didn’t feel too bad, considering, and I was happy. I remember that, being happy in a carefree way, although it is a long time now since I have felt anything remotely like it. It wasn’t anything in particular, it was just life being positive. I was young, I was healthy, I had just started a job that I loved, even though it was hard going at times, and I was here, with my friend, having a laugh. My biggest problems then were having no deodorant and no clean pants. That’s probably why I was singing in the shower. It was something I did from time to time and I didn’t think anything of it, but Olga did.
“Amy Barker, you have a seriously good singing voice,” she said as I emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in the obligatory white hotel towel. I don’t remember what I said, something deprecatory no doubt, as I never was much good at taking compliments, but she continued.
“No, seriously, I’m not bullshitting. You can really sing. Have you ever, you know, done anything with it? Been in a choir? School concerts …?”
Clearly I hadn’t. I knew I could sing in tune, as I could feel my voice matching the notes of the music from a very early age, but nobody had ever suggested it was anything more than that. I felt myself blushing, which was ridiculous at my age, and told Olga not to be silly and to get on with her shower or we wouldn’t be out of the room by 10.30am.
But, although she complied then, she mentioned it again later and it became something of a theme over the next couple of weeks so eventually I began to believe it might be true. Was it possible that I actually had a talent? I had always been such an all-rounder, good or good enough at almost everything, that I had never really expected to be especially good at anything, but maybe I was. Maybe this was something I could shine at. I found myself singing more and more when I was alone, and I memorised the words of some of my favourite songs.
So that’s how it started, and one thing led to another, what with Olga’s tenacity and irresistible energy and my embryonic self-belief, and it was only a matter of weeks before I was persuaded to come along to a band practice. This was on a Sunday, and I would normally have spent the afternoon preparing for the week ahead, so I had to get up early and get my planning completed in the morning. I was nowhere near being confident enough to walk into a lesson without knowing exactly what I was going to do - to the extent of rehearsing the words I would use with some classes - and I would never have risked falling prey to the incipient unrest of the Year 9 middle set, however exciting the notion of band practice seemed.
When I arrived at the venue – it was the back room of The White Horse, soon to be the scene of my debut although I wasn’t even considering that possibility at the time – the others were all there and I was introduced. I recognised a couple of them from nights out with Olga’s crowd, but I doubt we had even spoken until that point. There were five of them, including Olga: Tim, lead guitarist and singer; Becky, who played keyboards and a number of other odd instruments; Ali, the drummer; and Anton, whose prize possession was an enormous double bass, taller than he was.
They were a friendly bunch and greeted me with smiles and nods, but I could see they were keen to get on so I found a chair near the back and settled down to listen. The called themselves The Butterfly Effect, and I had seen them play before - of course, how could I not, with Olga the lead singer. - but I was interested to see how they arrived at the fairly polished performance I had witnessed.