The Harder They Fall Page 5

  “We did, but as I said at the time, I never really liked the colour.”

  “Can’t say I remember you telling me that. I thought it looked all right.”

  “Well it’s gone now, whatever. Do you think the pattern’s a bit much?” Josh didn’t, but he really wanted George to approve.

  “No. I like it. Sean’s got the same paper in his lounge. Sophie had me on the same routine in the Easter break, and I must say—surprising as it may seem—she’s much harder to please than you are.”

  “Exactly the same?”

  “Same pattern, but in green,” George said, noting the usual agitation in Josh at the mention of Sean Tierney, his university housemate and long-time academic rival. “The red is definitely more tasteful,” he added helpfully. Josh was satisfied.

  “OK. Let’s get the rest of it up and then we can order a Chinese takeaway, or something.”

  “I like your thinking.” George re-armed himself with the spirit level, newly motivated by the offer of food. He hadn’t eaten all day, because that was just how he was feeling and he wasn’t alone. Everyone had been so fired up about the wedding, but the news of the plane crash, even with the knowledge that their friends in Kathmandu were safe, had been such a shock that it was proving difficult to get back on track. The other part of this was that Eleanor, who would usually have them running at her beck and call whenever there was a social function, had no requirement for them. She was far too calm for George’s liking; he preferred it when she was her normal feisty self, over-reacting to all the small things and phoning Josh every five minutes to unload her burdens. OK, so the phone calls made him jealous, but this was how it should be. Perhaps the sense of foreboding was all in his mind, for he’d been waiting for her to explode for months and rationalised that pregnancy and motherhood were the reason for her change of personality, which was so complete that she almost wasn’t the same person he had known for the past twenty-five years.

  This train of thought had terminated at its natural conclusion just as the final corner of the last length of wallpaper was smoothed into place. Josh shifted the ladder away from the wall and moved to the other side of the room to admire the fruits of his day’s work. He wasn’t any good at plumbing and would struggle to do anything more electrical than change a fuse, but he was an excellent painter and decorator, even if he did say so himself. Perhaps not to a professional standard, although if he fancied a career change, then this wouldn’t be entirely incongruent with his first choice of therapist. After all, didn’t both jobs entail dressing things up to make them seem prettier? He looked to George to see what he thought, but whatever he thought it had nothing to do with the transformation of the lounge with a few rolls of embossed vinyl. Josh was about to ask the question of what was on his mind at the same time as George answered it.

  “I was just thinking about Ellie.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know really. She seems different.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m not sure. Like the spark is gone.”

  “Hmm. I know what you mean, but I don’t agree. The spark’s still there. It just doesn’t suddenly and without provocation erupt into a scorching wall of flame anymore.”

  George laughed. “Do you think she’s happy?”

  “Yes, I do,” Josh nodded. “I think that for the first time in her life, she is actually, genuinely, completely happy. However, I am not.” On these words, he picked up the bucket containing the remainder of the paste and walked out of the room. George stayed where he was, unsure how to respond. A moment later Josh returned and gathered up the scraps of wallpaper.

  “What’s wrong?” George asked.

  “I mean I’m starving and want to get this cleared away so we can eat!” He’d been looking at the wall when he said it, so hadn’t seen how George had taken his remark, but it was apparent that he’d misinterpreted his flippancy. Now he took the paper out to the bin and returned a second time, putting his hands on George’s shoulders.

  “I am very happy,” he said sincerely, holding eye contact for a moment or so, then releasing him and leaving the room with the stepladder. It was several minutes more before he came back again, in a change of clothes and armed with a menu.

  “Give me a hand with the sofa,” he said, pushing one end back towards the wall. George managed to partially break free of the spell and did as instructed. He was so dumbstruck by what had passed that the most he could do was nod in agreement to Josh’s suggestions on what they should order and spent much of the evening in the same dazed state. Something wasn’t right. It had been this way for a while now, and he didn’t know what to do to make it right. But Josh was happy. Once upon a time that would have counted for everything.

  The next morning, George was first up and made a quick getaway, not wanting to face his housemate, in light of the previous night’s engagement. Before he left, he moved the remaining suitcases from the shed up to his room, stuffed them in his wardrobe and locked the door, taking the keys to both this and the larger suitcase with him to the library. He didn’t really have much work to do—that had been true of every day he’d spent there since the start of the summer break—but it beat staying at home with only his thoughts, or worse still, Josh for company. There was so much that needed to be said, issues he had with their living arrangements that were, it seemed, only an issue for him, and he was so angry with himself. Wasn’t this what he’d always wanted? He and Josh were as good as living together. So what was he hoping to achieve? He set down his bag in an isolated carrel at the back of the library and sent a text message to Sophie to see if she was free to meet up. She’d been placed with a child psychologist, who had recommended she volunteer at an educational farm, taking children with phobias to meet the animals; the experience confirmed this was the area of counselling she wanted to specialise in.

  They were about to embark on the second half of their two year diploma course and had decided to continue after this on the Masters degree programme that Sean and Josh were in the process of putting together—remarkable how they’d gone from being on only the most basic of speaking terms to working so amicably, if that was the word for it. The MA was drawn up and had been approved by the university, so now they were waiting on accreditation from The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. To cap it all, they were also writing a paper together about ethics and confidentiality, which was causing some disagreement on a ridiculously childish point of contention about whose name should appear first on the article. Sean insisted he was lead researcher; Josh said it should be alphabetical, therefore his name should appear first. If they ever made it past this, it would undoubtedly be an excellent and provocative piece, because it was a topic on which they were both obsessively expert.

  Sophie’s reply confirmed that she was at the farm, but that George was welcome to join her later in the morning for coffee. He sent a message back to say that’s what he’d do and settled down to some reading. His own specialised placement was working alongside a prison psychologist and mostly consisted of group anger management sessions with young offenders. It was both stressful and somewhat more tedious than he’d anticipated, as they were trialling a new programme, with two groups receiving the therapy and two groups ‘on the waiting list’. So far, the anger management training was having little effect, but the psychologist had assured him this was usually the case. The real impact came at the end of the course, timed to coincide with release, when the intention was for him to shadow a probation officer as part of the follow-up.

  The (marginally) more interesting part was working one-to-one with offenders declared sane by the criminal justice system, but who were clearly mentally unwell. Often this was down to depression as a consequence of their incarceration, although a few arrived in that state, including Eleanor’s ex-husband. When George had informed the psychologist that he knew Kevin Callaghan, he was taken aback by her response, or lack of one, in that she didn’t see any reason why he couldn’t work with K
evin. It was only because George insisted that she agreed to take him off this case and gave him a different one instead—a fifty year old gay man who was on his sixth term for cottaging. The poor guy came from an age when intimacy was impossible by any public means and was still governed by that kind of non-sensibility. He was a lovely person and was once a successful businessman, but with a criminal record, he was relying on old friends to look after him in between prison sentences. Whilst the offence went by a different name these days, the problem remained the same and George didn’t feel that his own sexuality was sufficient qualification for the task. The psychologist had set a programme of cognitive behavioural therapy in motion, so all that was needed really was to keep following the steps outlined in the case notes. However, he should only have been sitting in and observing, not delivering the treatment himself, and the only advice Sean Tierney had to offer was to tell the psychologist to stop off-loading the cases she didn’t want to deal with. George hadn’t asked Josh what he thought because he felt it would be inappropriate—truth be told, he was struggling to talk to him about anything at all—but imagined his advice would have been along the same lines.

  A couple of hours spent reading previous research on anger management only served to make him more miserable, and he was glad when it was time to leave for the farm. Sophie was one of those people who was a perpetual ray of sunshine, able to quickly assess any given situation and draw out the positives from it. That’s exactly what he needed right now, when he was feeling so dissatisfied with his life, albeit due to a set of situations of his own making. He dropped his stuff back at home (no-one was in) and caught the next bus out of town, passing through the village where Sean lived and onwards a couple of miles further to the end of the lane up to Farmer Jake’s. It was a real pleasure to walk through the countryside on a warm, bright summer day, although not so much on a drizzly September day like today, so he kept his head down and marched on, only looking up whenever he heard a car coming towards him. On the third occasion of this, it was a 4x4 that was a little too wide for the road and he had to step up into shrubbery to get out of the way.

  “Ouch!” He looked down at his knee to find a wasp hanging onto his jeans by its rear end and quickly brushed it off, rubbing at his leg and cursing under his breath, while it zigzagged its way across the field and out of view. He hobbled on up the lane, the next car slowing while its female driver stared hard at him. It was only when he met up with Sophie and she picked all the barbs off his jacket that he realised why the woman had given him such a funny look. He was covered in flowers and seeds and all sorts.

  “I’ve finished for the day,” Sophie informed him as she removed the last of the sticky seeds from his back. “Let’s go get some lunch somewhere and you can tell me all about it.” George gave her a grateful smile and climbed into the passenger seat of her tatty old car. Sean had bought it for her, although not out of kindness. It was so she could travel from home to the farm, rather than staying with him. He wasn’t ready to share his space with anyone other than his cat, which suited Sophie just fine, but she didn’t tell Sean that. She still lived at home with her parents, who were in their early sixties and very active with the local ramblers’ association, so spent most of their weekends off on some trek or other through hills, along canal banks or across muddy fields—basically anywhere that was well served by public houses. At thirty-four, she could come and go as she pleased, and they had given over the top floor of the three-bedroomed house to her, in return for which she contributed a little towards the bills and looked after the place at weekends.

  George couldn’t come up with any useful suggestions for where they should go for lunch, so Sophie decided on a little tea shop on the road between the town and the village. It was kitted out in the traditional style, for tourism purposes, with gingham table cloths set diagonally on the small, square tables and cakes under a netted dome on top of the counter. The two older women who owned it took turns to staff it from ten in the morning, closing at four in the afternoon, and served a very quaint range of traditional sandwiches. George shrugged indecisively at the menu, so again Sophie chose on his behalf and steered him to a table near the window, where he sat in silence, rolling the salt mill between his palms and staring out across the road. After a few minutes, Sophie extracted the salt and put it down firmly on the table.

  “I assume this is still to do with the plane crash?” she speculated.

  “Some of it, yeah, but it’ll pass.”

  “OK. And the rest of it?”

  He stopped staring out of the window and picked up the sugar dispenser. It was of the old glass type, with a chrome-valved lid, which was supposed to deliver a singular teaspoon of sugar when tipped, but usually managed about half that amount.

  “Is it anything to do with Josh?”

  The way he was gripping the sugar dispenser confirmed she had guessed correctly.

  “What’s he done this time?”

  “Nothing. He’s fine. Very happy, in fact. Or so he tells me.”

  “And you don’t believe him?”

  “Honestly? I can’t tell whether he’s happy or not. He’s so…” George couldn’t find a word for it.

  “Emotionally distant?” Sophie offered. George shrugged. True: Josh could be very cold, but then he could also be overly emotional. Sean could fire him up like nobody else, and whenever Eleanor was down he would come out in sympathy, almost to extremes. But with George, he was exactly that: emotionally distant.

  A tray appeared on the table between them, laid out with a pot of tea, cups and saucers, a small jug of milk and two plates of sandwiches. Sophie waited for the woman to unload all of these onto the table, thanked her and then poured the tea. George sat with his arms folded, staring into space.

  “I know I’ve asked you this before,” Sophie began cautiously, “and I’ve seen how tetchy the pair of you get whenever somebody brings it up.” She paused to gauge his reaction before deciding it was safe to continue. He knew where this was going, but permitted her to ask. “Are you two actually together now? Romantically, I mean.”

  George sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think we are, but you’d have to ask him.”

  “If you don’t think you are, then you’re not,” Sophie said bluntly. “Relationships are by consent and negotiation. Both partners have to feel they are benefitting equally and that’s clearly not the case here.”

  George was beginning to feel very uncomfortable and Sophie sensed this.

  “What did you get me?” He picked up half of his sandwich and peered in between the slices of bread.

  “Egg and cress,” she told him, even though he’d figured it out for himself. He glanced up at her and she smiled sympathetically. “I understand that you don’t want to talk about it, so I’ll just be here for you. If that changes, just say. The offer’s open.” She took his free hand and he nodded. Half of the filling fell out of his sandwich and landed on the table cloth with a plop. They both gasped and looked to the woman behind the counter, who was rearranging the cakes and didn’t notice.

  “Thanks,” George said appreciatively. “I will tell you about the other thing that’s bothering me though.”

  And so the conversation turned to his placement at the prison and how the psychologist was getting him to do all her work for her. Sophie didn’t advise or comment; she just listened, which was precisely what he needed. By the time they had eaten their sandwiches and a butterfly cake apiece, he felt a lot better. They paid the bill and went for a walk through the fields, sticking to the paths and avoiding any overgrowth. George stopped to stroke one of the horses that came over to investigate, amazed at how confident he was with large animals these days, so long as they weren’t of the bovine variety. His time on the ranch evidently wasn’t all a waste and Sophie asked him about it, from a professional perspective, keen to hear how he had overcome his fear of horses, although there was nothing methodical to it. He’d had no choice but to get on with it and the more ti
me he spent with them with nothing awful happening, the less his fear that it might. It was classic desensitisation, coupled with a serendipitous incident involving a stallion (although he didn’t see it that way at the time) that put paid to most of his phobias for good.

  When they were ready to go, Sophie dropped him back home and gave him a hug in reiteration of her earlier offer. He kissed her on the cheek and waved her off, then went inside, where the house was still empty, leaving him time to consider his options and deal with the contents of the suitcases. It was Thursday, so Josh would be working late and George would make dinner. Afterwards, if he was still feeling the same, well, he didn’t have a plan really, but one thing was for sure: he couldn’t stand another evening of watching Josh flit up and down the stairs with bathroom cleaner, or washing, or whatever else he decided needed to be done right at that very second, acting as if everything was just the same as always. In fact, he was sorely tempted to take the shredder up to his room and get rid of everything once and for all, because there really was no point in keeping it anymore, not that Josh would appreciate the significance even if he did tell him what was in those suitcases. What he didn’t realise, and never would have predicted, was that Josh had been snooping while he was out and already knew.

  CHAPTER SEVEN:

  INTO THE MOUNTAINS

  Dan was extremely uncomfortable, perched on the far edge of the pickup truck’s bench seat, his head out of the window, partly to avert the nausea, but also because the windscreen wipers weren’t coping well with the mix of heavy rain and mud splashing up from the road. Indeed, one of the wipers was completely dysfunctional and obstructing the view, although luckily not on the driver’s side. All the while, Bhagwan pointed out various features of the landscape that they would have been able to see in clear conditions, but for now Dan had to take his word for it that it was beautiful. They’d been on the road for five hours, which would, again in clear conditions, have put them well past the halfway point, but they had at least another five hours ahead of them, so would soon need to stop for a rest and something to eat. There was a village more or less midway to their destination where they could normally buy local food; however, today there was a wedding and all the villagers were celebrating. It seemed a little ironic that they couldn’t get any food when they were transporting catering equipment, although they were invited to share in the wedding feast. Andy refused; Bhagwan accepted. Dan hadn’t eaten since his meal on the plane from Istanbul, but took up their offer of tea and was very pleased with himself for keeping it down.