he knew the best. All he wanted was to close himself off from the
world around him, to subsist instead of exist.
This episode had followed the pattern of the others before it.
However, unlike before, he had lost his old method of self- medication: the thing that would not so much dull the edges, but remove them
entirely. For Tom, anxiety and depression meant alcohol. But he was
sober, and had been for years.
At first, the bottle had only been an option – a way out, should
he choose to take it. But, vulnerable and alone, the unscrewing of
the lid seemed almost inevitable. He remembered how it happened
now. How he had sat there with it open for a good half hour, testing
his own resolve.
Are you strong enough to resist, Tom Murray?
Of course, the answer was no. The answer was always no. A
hard-maintained iron will was the only reason he ever stayed on
track. But he was rarely able to seek help when he felt anxiety coming on in the face of oblivion.
The first taste was hideous: noxious and chemical. Just as he
remembered it. The second sip was no better. But within a few
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minutes of sitting on his bed, drinking from the bottle, he became accustomed to it again.
It didn’t take Tom long to feel drunk. The last thing he remem-
bered was hazily walking into the bathroom, where he found the box
of paracetamol pills. One deck half used. The other three complete.
Then, nothing.
‘How many did I take?’ he asked Annabel.
‘Enough,’ she said, smiling at his incompetence, sad that she had
to smile. ‘Apparently your lack of tolerance for alcohol meant you
blacked out before you could get very far. Lightweight.’
He looked away, ashamed.
‘Funny that it was booze that saved you.’
‘As in funny ha ha?’
They fell into silence again. Tom had a hundred questions, and
a hundred apologies. But he could think of no place to start that
felt right.
‘How did . . .’ he began. Before he could finish his sentence,
Annabel took out her phone and held it in front of his face. On the
screen was a text message from Tom:
HellP
‘Got that at half seven. I was on a date, by the way. Nice restaur-
ant in Soho. She was very nice, but now thinks I’d pre-arranged for
someone to text me so I could escape early. So that was nice,’ she
said.
‘Sorry.’
‘Oh, you will be, Murray,’ Annabel said. She was trying to joke
with him, but immediately her face fell and she sobbed, turning
away.
‘I am sorry,’ he said.
Annabel turned back, her face a little red now. She was angry,
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Tom could tell. He had known her since they were both eleven and had never seen her like this. Despite everything they had been
through and experienced together, he had managed to bring out this
new side of Annabel.
‘Do you know what it’s like to find you like that?’ she said
through gritted teeth. ‘On the fucking floor, lying in your own sick.’
Tom tried to look away but couldn’t turn his head.
‘I thought you were fucking dead, Tom. Dead. I thought, this
time he’s done it. And it’s me that’s found him.’
‘I’m sor—’
‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘Now you’re awake and can barely talk, I
want you to listen.’
Tom nodded.
‘I am not doing that again, okay? Never. You try it once more
and you’re on your own. Fuck, I’ve basically lost my parents. I am
not losing my best friend as well. You are the closest thing I have to family, Tom. Don’t fucking do this to me. Not again.’
Now Tom was crying too.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his throat painfully dry again. He flinched as
he spoke and Annabel handed him the water again. She sat down
next to him in the chair she’d been sleeping in. Her anger had dis-
had the ability to do this to people.
She took his hand.
‘I know there’s no cure for this. But you have to remember that
there are other ways out.’
‘I know.’
‘There are always reasons to live, Tom. Sometimes you just have
to remind yourself of what they are.’
Tom smiled. ‘Very profound,’ he said. ‘How long had you been
preparing that one?’
‘Fuck off. Again.’
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The moment lifted both of them, and tipped the tears over into smiles and bleak, genuine laughter. As they chuckled and wiped tears
from their eyes, early light began to poke through the roller blinds.
The room was growing warmer.
‘My parents?’ Tom said.
‘At a hotel round the corner. They came down last night and left
at midnight when the doctor told them you’d be okay.’
Tom winced. The thought of his mother standing over his bed.
The second time in her life she’d seen this. Her own son.
‘What did they do?’ he said. ‘The doctors.’
‘Not much. Pumped your stomach, gave you a charcoal treatment
drink thing.’
Annabel and Tom sat in silence for a few minutes longer. The
memory of all of their shared experiences seemed to hang over them.
They were as far from the two awkward kids – spending their school
lunch hours in the music rehearsal rooms listening to Nirvana – as
it was possible to be. But there was still something of those children about them. A unit of sorts, albeit nervous, awkward, ill-fitting. Tom was glad she’d stayed. As awful as the situation was, there was no
one he’d rather have had with him.
As dawn crept up on them and the off-centre wall clock ticked
towards six, it was Tom who broke the silence.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I know I said sorry. But I should also say
that.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘I—’ he began, but needed more water to continue. ‘I owe you.’
‘That, I am aware of. I’ve actually already decided what you can
do to start making it up to me.’
‘What?’
‘Ali Matthews is having a fancy-dress party in June,’ she said.
‘Superheroes. You’ll be coming with me.’
‘No.’
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‘No choice, I’m afraid. Anyway, it’ll be good for you. New faces and all that. I don’t want you locking yourself away.’
‘I don’t want new faces.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Can’t you just join Guardian Soulmates?’
‘I’m already on Guardian Soulmates. The last date I had was
with a woman who was using it to meet a lesbian who’d be up for
a threesome with her boyfriend. The one before that suggested we
skip dessert to go to a sex party in Rotherhithe.’
Tom went to laugh, but his throat had gone dry again.
‘Fine,’ he said, with some resignation.
&nb
sp; ‘Good,’ Annabel said, standing up. ‘Anyway. I’ve got to be in
work for seven. Thanks to you I have some things to catch up on.’
She put her coat on and checked her phone.
‘Get some sleep. Your parents will be here soon.’
Tom raised a thumb.
‘Tom.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And sorry. Again.’
Annabel smiled at him. She kissed two fingers and pressed them
against Tom’s forehead. Then she left him alone again, with nothing
but the distant noises of the early-morning hospital workers, and the
gargled cooing of the pigeons that briefly settled on his windowsill.
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PART 3
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
6 – 7 am
FINDING YOUR OLD
PHOTO ALBUMS
December 2013 – Knighton, Leicester
Doing his best not to disturb Esme, Tom let one leg fall out of the
bed, immediately feeling the icy air crawl up his thin pyjama trouser.
He cursed Tamas for permanently being too hot, and so keeping
windows open and the heating off – even during the winter. He
thought that things might’ve changed after he got sick, but no.
Carefully, Tom crept out from beneath the duvet and two blankets
that enveloped the two of them and found his slippers and hoodie
among their half-unpacked overnight bags. Using his phone light as
a torch, Tom negotiated his way through the bedroom to the door
and slunk out onto the hallway.
It was early on Christmas morning, a few hours before he and
Esme would start on their drive east to Lowestoft, and he’d been
awake for a while, simultaneously thirsty and desperate for the toilet: a consequence of both the salty, rich food of the day before, and the
gallons of grape juice he’d consumed. Every Christmas, Lena’s mum
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left out while the rest of them glugged several of the dusty bottles of claret Tamas only brought out from the garage for special occasions.
Still guided by the light of his phone, Tom stepped gently down
the hallway, avoiding the floorboard creaks as best he could. On
the staircase, gold-plated, wooden and plain black picture frames
interrupted the magnolia-painted Anaglypta – almost all of them
photographs of Esme, each depicting a significant life event or a
cheesy, staged photoshoot her parents forced on her in early child-
hood (he remembered her telling him about the strange, creepy
man who ran the little studio in Knighton, and his showroom that
detailed both his work with children and in the glamour-model
industry).
It had taken Tom five years to get onto that wal , and there he
was smiling awkwardly in a family shot taken on London’s South
Bank, in between graduation photos from both of Esme’s ceremonies.
The timeline continued as he descended. A few steps down he
arrived at her teenage years: Esme wearing a white shirt graffitied
with well-wishing messages in pink and blue highlighter pen on her
last day of school, her smile full of train-track braces; taking a bow at the front of a stage, after a performance of what Tom guessed might
be Oliver! Then a small gap in time (which Tom supposed signified the unspoken-of two years when Tamas absented himself from the
family home for his new, ill-fated relationship with Noelle) before
the chronology recommenced with an image of Esme and three
unknown friends dressed as Sporty, Ginger and Baby Spice.
He had seen all of these photos a hundred times, but that morn-
ing it was as if he was seeing them for the first time. As he went,
Tom imagined what Esme was like between these photographs: the
theatrical, showman Esme, born in her mid-teens, carried to univers-
ity and then abandoned soon after her one stint on the Edinburgh
Fringe; the forthright, political y charged Esme who arrived at her
graduation ceremony, aged twenty-one; the versions of her told by
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Laura, Jamilla and Philly, friends who knew the woman she had become and the things that made her her.
But was there ever a sullen, teenage Esme? Angry at her family
for reasons that were understandable, and the world for reasons that
were not. Or was she polite, conscientious and hard working? The
kind of teenager every parent wants but few seem to get.
Finally, Tom arrived at the bottom of the stairs, and Esme as a
baby – the photos he’d laughed at the first time he came over, after
an embarrassed Esme had said, ‘Oh ignore those!’. Even as a baby
her eyes, in particular, were distinctly hers. A noticeable thread that ran from her earliest years, whether she’d been snapped sat on the
lap of a grandparent, or standing in her old bedroom beneath an
Idlewild poster.
‘Which is your favourite?’
Lena startled him. Holding the bannister, she began to walk down
from the landing, wrapped in her pink fleece dressing gown, her hair
tied up messily.
‘I don’t know. It’s hard to choose. I suppose it’s just interesting
to see her through the years.’
Lena picked a photograph off the wall.
‘I love this one,’ she said. It was Esme at maybe five or six years
old. She was wearing a pink, flowery dress and standing in front
of a rose bush. ‘I took this at her cousin Peter’s wedding. She was
five. It was the most brilliant time. She started school that year, was reading, had friends. She had become a proper little girl. It was the
first time that I felt like we had done a good job as parents. I stopped worrying for maybe an hour.’
Tom smiled. He had never given much thought to what that
might feel like. That sense of achievement. Of life’s most significant job having been done well (or well enough for it not to be socially
awkward). Perhaps it was because the parents he knew, even his own,
were far less outwardly proud of their offspring than Esme’s parents.
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Gordon and Anne Murray rarely made public declarations of his brilliance or their happiness to have played a role in it, preferring
to keep their pride private, reserved for special occasions like the
Christmas china. Tamas and Lena were the opposite.
‘Are you up now?’ Lena said to Tom, rehanging the picture on
the wall.
‘I am. Couldn’t sleep.’
‘Good. Go into the kitchen. I’ll show you some more. Merry
Christmas, by the way.’
‘You too,’ Tom said.
Lena came into the kitchen carrying a stack of red leather photo
albums, each two inches thick and the size of an LP. They reminded
Tom of the books given out by Michael Aspel at the end of This is
Your Life, though with beaten edges and chipped, burnished gold embossing around
the edges. She dropped them down heavily onto
the table in front of him and went to put the kettle on.
‘Tea?’
‘Please,’ Tom said, and picked the album on the top.
‘That one is when she was a baby. I think it ends around her first
birthday. I worry that the photos are fading. Tamas always says he’s
going to scan them into his computer. But he never will.’
Tom opened the cover. In the top left-hand corner was Lena in a
hospital bed, her hair dark and thick with corkscrew curls she could
only have got away with in the eighties. In her arms was a puce little thing, its face pressed hard against its mother’s chest.
Lena put Tom’s far too milky tea down in front of him and sat
down at the table. Pulling the album towards her, she folded over
six of the polythene-coated cards that housed the photos at once.
‘These are my favourites,’ she said.
It was a double-page spread of photos taken in and around a
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cottage by a lake. In the corner, someone’s hand (Tom presumed Lena’s) had written Lake District 1981. Three generations!
‘This was the only time my grandmother came to England. Our
flat in London was too small for my parents, Yanya and the three
of us. So we found a cottage in the Lake District. We’d never been
before, but someone Tamas worked with told him it was nice. We
were there for a week and it rained for five days. This, I think, was
the Thursday. The only sunny day. Tamas took his camera out and
started taking photographs. Three generations of my family together
for the first time,’ Lena said, stopping for a second, possibly to think back on that time together. ‘Yanya only met Esme three times. The
other two were in Hungary and she was so old by then that she could
hardly remember my name, let alone Esme’s.’
‘Is that why her middle name is Anya, then?’
‘Sort of. Yanya is the Hungarian name for grandmother. Short
for Nagyanya. We thought it was a nice touch.’
Tom blanched a little, embarrassed not to know these things
about Esme. Parts of her history he should perhaps have asked about,
or seemed interested enough to be told about, long before now.
Better late than never, he thought.
‘What was she like as a baby, then? One of the quiet ones, or
really noisy?’ he said, thinking of his sister Sarah’s newborn, who by all accounts was the latter.