The Carrier (9 page)

‘There’s sod all here I can eat,’ Lauren says, looking around miserably.

I pull open the fridge door and take out the only two remaining sandwiches. There is nothing potentially hot on offer, and no microwave. ‘Ham or tuna mayo?’ I say. ‘I’m happy with either.’

‘I don’t eat sandwiches,’ says Lauren.

‘On principle?’

‘What?’

‘Why don’t you eat sandwiches? A ham sandwich, on white bread: about as English a snack as you could hope to find. What’s the problem?’

She wrinkles her nose. ‘Don’t know who’s had their dirty fingers all over it. I’m all right. I’ll just get some Pringles.’

‘You need more than Pringles,’ I say, spotting my mistake as soon as the words are out of my mouth.
Remember: you don’t care about this woman. You don’t care if she eats weeds from the petrol station forecourt, or drinks five litres of diesel.

I will not slip up again.

‘I’ll get the big size,’ she says. ‘It’s massive. No way I’ll be able to eat all them Pringles.’

‘I’m going to get the tuna sandwich, because it’s the most nutritious and filling thing here,’ I say in my capacity as positive role model. ‘And some Häagen-Dazs as a treat.’ I open the freezer and pull out a tub of Cookies & Cream flavour.

‘What’s Haggendass?’ Lauren asks, unable to make the connection between the word and the thing in my hand that isn’t a sandwich.

‘Posh ice-cream,’ I tell her.

‘Ooh-ooh!’ she says sneerily, loud enough to turn the heads of the beer collectors. ‘How la-di-fucking-da are you?’

‘Better la-di-fucking-da than mardy-fucking-brat, that’s what I always say. Actually, I don’t say it, ever. Normally, I say things like, “So, what are the optimal kinematics for the end-effectors?” Except tonight there’s no point saying any of the things I might normally say, because the only person listening to me is a thick parochial bigot.’

‘You mean me, don’t you?’ Lauren says with a triumphant glint in her eye, as if she’s caught me out.

One of the football shirts elbows another and says, ‘Sounds like it’s about to kick off over there. With those two lasses, over there.’

No, actually, it sounds as if the brief kick-off has already fizzled out. And your friends shouldn’t need directions, being neither blind nor deaf. If they can’t work out which argument you’re referring to, what makes you think pointing will make a difference?

Am I the odd one out – not only in this petrol station but in the world? Are most people more like Lauren than like me? It’s a scary thought.

‘Go and get your Pringles. I assume I’m paying for them?’ She hasn’t brought her bag or a wallet with her.

‘Got no euros left,’ she says. ‘I need a drink too. Can I have a Diet Coke?’

‘No. You can have a normal Coke. If I’m paying, I’m choosing.’

‘You what?’ She laughs at my outrageousness. ‘You’re a cheeky cow, you are.’

‘You’re pin-thin, and you haven’t eaten for more than twenty-four hours. You could do with the calories. Plus, Diet Coke’s full of aspartame, which is bad for you. Side effects include acting like a dick at Dusseldorf airport.’

Worry shrivels the smile on her face. ‘I drink Diet Coke all the time. It’s all I drink.’

‘Forget it. I was kidding.’

‘You what?’

‘I was making a joke. Don’t you know anyone who does that? You don’t have a sense of humour, but Jason does – that sort of thing?’

‘You don’t know Jason,’ she says suspiciously, as if she fears that I might.

‘I know. Forget it. Really. I’ll stop . . . verbally sparring with you and just accept that there’s no way to make tonight fun.’

‘So can I have a Diet Coke?’

‘No. I was serious about that. In fact, forget Coke as well. Get a bottle of freshly squeezed orange juice. And grab two toothbrushes and some toothpaste from over there.’ I point.

She picks up a can of Diet Coke and holds it defiantly.

‘It’s orange juice or nothing,’ I say firmly. ‘In twenty years’ time, when you’re on your deathbed, you’ll be able to tell your great-grandchildren that you once tried vitamin C, one rainy night in Cologne.’

I choose a Coke for myself and pay for our food and drinks. It’s raining even harder as we run across the empty dual carriageway back to the hotel. In our room, I sit down on the rancid carpet and tell Lauren to do the same, so that we can dry off a bit before getting into bed. It would make sense for us to dry our clothes on the radiators overnight – one of the best features of this room is that it has radiators – and sleep in our underwear. What are the chances of my being able to suggest this and not be mistaken for a sexual predator whose sole aim is to supplant Jason in Lauren’s affections? If I have to sleep in a tiny bed with a cretin, I’d like not to have to do it in wet clothes.

Lauren spits a mouthful of orange juice back into the bottle. ‘I’m not drinking
that
,’ she says. ‘It’s disgusting. Got stuff floating in it.’

I’m glad she made us go out; I feel better now that I’m eating. The tuna sandwich is chilly and soggy, but it’s tackling my hunger, and I’m able to get through it knowing that there’s Häagen-Dazs at the end of it.

I ought to switch on my phone, see if Sean’s left the string of messages I switched it off to avoid. I don’t have to speak to him. I can send a quick text giving him the basic facts. He’ll have gone to sleep by now, anyway.

I look up and catch Lauren staring at me. ‘What?’

‘In twenty years’ time, I’ll be forty-three,’ she says. ‘Why would I die when I’m forty-three?’

I’m so shocked, I nearly inhale the tuna that’s in my mouth.
I manage to swallow it instead. She must have remembered what I said from the petrol station and worked it out. I want to say well done, but that would be patronising, and I don’t want to be – not at the moment. Though I’m sure I will again soon.

‘No forty-three-year-olds have great-grandkids,’ Lauren announces.

‘No. You’re right. See what happens when you switch on your brain? You can win arguments.’

‘So what were you on about?’ she asks, stuffing a handful of broken Pringles into her mouth.

‘I was joking.’

‘How’s that funny, saying something that’s not true?’

I balance what’s left of my sandwich on my wet trouser leg, unwilling to let it touch any part of the hotel room. ‘I was mocking you for being a working-class cliché, and being generally sarcastic and horrible. Me, I mean, not you. It’s a way of keeping my mind active. I could read my book instead, but you’d keep interrupting me.’

‘What d’you need to read a book for?’ Lauren asks.

‘Hanging around with you makes me feel as if my IQ’s dropping,’ I explain. ‘I’d like to give it a boost.’

‘Your IQ – listen to you!’ She grins suddenly. ‘I can’t wait to tell my Jason about what you’re like. Two things I’m going to say: she’s a snooty cow, I’ll say, but she’s all right really. Underneath.’

‘He’ll feel as if he’s known me all his life.’ I smile back. ‘Look, Lauren, you’re not going to die when you’re forty-three, but if you carry on smoking at the rate you do, and if you don’t eat healthy stuff, ever, you might well die younger than you otherwise would. And . . . you also might have children too young, and get trapped with
your
Jason. He doesn’t have to be yours, you know. He could be somebody else’s.’

‘What are you saying?’

Exactly what I was wondering myself.
‘You have choices. You don’t have to do what all your friends do.’

‘What do you mean, I’ll get trapped with Jason? He’s my husband. I want to be with him.’

I abandon the remains of my tuna sandwich and move on to the tub of Häagen-Dazs. For once, I think Lauren might have made an excellent point. ‘Sorry, I mistook you for me,’ I say. ‘I’m the one who should ditch her partner and definitely not have a baby with him.’ I can’t believe I said that out loud.

Only to Lauren. It doesn’t count.

Still. I’ve never even said it to myself before.

‘What’s your husband called?’

‘We’re not married. We just live together. Sean.’

‘Don’t you love him?’

‘I don’t know if I do any more. Even if I do, it’s not enough.’

Lauren laughs. ‘You say some freaky things, you. How can love be not enough? It’s, like, the most you can care about someone, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t find him impressive or admirable. I can’t convince myself that I don’t deserve better.’
A proper, self-sufficient grown-up. Someone capable of spending up to four evenings a week alone without complaining.
A sudden surge of anger makes me say, ‘If I weren’t so busy with work, I’d have got my act together and left him by now.’

Have I turned myself into a procrastinator for Sean’s sake? To spare his feelings, because I know I don’t want to be with him any more?

Thank God I’m not pregnant. Thank God my flight home was delayed. This is a chance.

‘Maybe you deserve better than Jason,’ I tell Lauren. ‘Is he kind to you? Does he treat you well?’
Or is he a bully, or violent? Is that why you mistake verbal abuse from a stranger for the comforting care of a new friend?

‘He’s just a bloke, isn’t he?’ Lauren looks away. ‘They’re all pretty much alike.’

I decide not to press her for more details. I don’t think I’d like them if I heard them.

‘I once knew a man who was nothing like anybody else I’ve ever known, male or female,’ I tell her, slipping free of my usual controls. ‘I’d have married him like a shot.’
And had his name tattooed on my upper arm, both my arms.
Sometimes I think that there is nothing I wouldn’t do, absolutely nothing, if I could have Tim.

‘What happened?’ Lauren asks.

‘I fucked it up, then blamed Sean.’

‘Blamed Sean? Why, what did he do?’

‘Nothing. But I’ve found a way round that: it’s called being unfair.’

‘So what about the other one?’ Why does she look and sound so avid? Having shown no interest in me up to this point, she’s suddenly staring at me wide-eyed, as if my theories about my love life actually matter to her. ‘Is that why you’ve not married Sean, because you’re still hoping to pull him?’

I laugh. The word ‘pull’ in connection with Tim is absurd.

Lauren shoves more crisps into her mouth: enough to reveal that she expects to be listening and not talking for the foreseeable future.

‘Tell me about your man first,’ I say. ‘Not Jason – the innocent one who’s going to prison for murder.’ Lauren isn’t a bad person. She seems to have a strong sense of fairness, even if she does wave it around irresponsibly in public places. And something else that’s just occurred to me: willing and enthusiastic participants in miscarriages of justice wouldn’t typically use that form of words: ‘let an innocent man go to jail for murder’. That’s the sort of thing you’d say if you were against, not in favour. And Lauren wouldn’t be in favour. Incredible as it sounds, I feel I know her well enough to be able to say that. I don’t believe she would stand by and let someone be framed for murder unless she felt she had no choice.

Unless she can’t go to the police with the truth, because she’s too scared of what the real killer might do to her.
Could that real killer be Jason, her husband?

Or am I leaping to crazy conclusions?

Lauren stands up. ‘You won’t let it go, will you?’ she says bitterly. She brushes Pringle crumbs off her fingers onto the carpet, picks up her bag and heads for the door with the missing corner. Before I have time to apologise – insincerely, since I don’t believe anyone would let it go, and nor should they – she’s locked herself in the bathroom.

Hasn’t it occurred to her that I could easily go to the police? I more than could, I decide: I will. I’m not scared of Jason Cookson; he has no hold over me. No one should do time for a crime they haven’t committed.

The lines from the poem I half remembered at Dusseldorf airport come back to me again:
Our time in the hands of others / And too brief for words.
How can I have forgotten the rest? I don’t like to think I’ve lost anything that came from Tim. They were someone else’s words originally, but when Tim read me the poem at the Proscenium, they became his.

I pull my BlackBerry out of my bag and switch it on. Ignoring the symbol telling me that I have voicemails, I hit the internet browser button and type the two lines I remember into the search box. The first result that comes up is the one I want. I click on it, and the poem appears on my screen like an old friend. ‘Unscheduled Stop’, it’s called, by Adam Johnson.

To my horror, I find that I am crying. I can see Tim at the top of the Proscenium’s ladder, can hear him telling me that the poet was dying when he wrote the poem. It’s his voice in my head, reading the words of each verse aloud.

I wipe my eyes briskly, hoping Lauren won’t emerge from the bathroom any time soon. The older I get, the longer it takes me to lose the crying look.

Who is The Carrier?

I have to stop this. Now.

I’m about to turn off my phone when I have an idea: would an internet search track down Lauren’s wrongly convicted man? Unlikely, since I don’t know his name.

Unless Lauren’s name would do the trick. Even more unlikely: ‘Lauren Cookson, wife and protector of the real murderer, Jason Cookson, stood by and did sod all to prevent police from arresting someone who had nothing to do with it.’

Still, I type Lauren’s name into the search box because it gives me something to think about that isn’t Tim. Quicker than the blue line of a pregnancy test, the result I’m looking for comes up: ‘Lauren Cookson, her 23-year-old care assistant . . .’