Junction X by Erastes (best autobiographies to read .TXT) 📕

flip. I hardly remember the rest of the phone conversation; Alex looked so different I could hardly bear to look at him. That bubbling joy he’d often showed when we made love seemed to be pouring out of him. I think I loved him more in that small moment, in those precious seconds before I crushed his heart under my feet, than I had ever loved him before.

He lost that smile straightaway, for he’d been worried about me—about me! He demanded to know what was wrong. Funny that when Val asked me that I couldn’t answer her, but I told him all of it—my doubts, my fear, the future. And all the while his eyes never left mine, and the colour drained from his face.

He told me I was stupid. He told me that he had no intention of finding anyone in College. He told me he wanted me to come up and visit as soon as I could—he had a list of excuses I could use.

And all the time, I kept saying no. No. No, Alex.We can’t. The more excited and frustrated he got, the more I shrank away. Finally I had no fight left in me.

He threatened me with Val at one point. I looked at him and said, “You won’t do that, Alex, you know you won’t.” And then—unbearably—he cried. I wanted to hold him, but I’d gone too far by then.

I thought I was being kind. I didn’t watch him go. I couldn’t bear to see him go. He’d get over it. He was young. It would be better, I told myself. Next time I saw him.

Chapter 23

And then I was wrong, wasn’t I?

I never saw it coming. I thought that he was young enough to weather it. Resilient. Strong. Hadn’t he always been the strong one? I thought that he’d go back to university, complain of my cowardice, and heal. Young people heal.

It was only a love affair, Alex. Only a stupid love affair.

And thick, stupid, criminal Edward got it wrong. Again.

+ + +

The siren woke us, and we lay in bed waiting for it to go past. But it didn’t. The sirens stilled but the blue light flashed through the chink in the curtains. I got out of bed. Something seemed to be muffling my head, my ears. Val was talking but I couldn’t hear her, couldn’t work out what she was saying. I looked directly at her and I remember wondering why I was doing so.

Alex’s house was lit up top to bottom, the small attic light shining bright and clear. The children woke and Val went to them. When or how I dressed, I don’t know. How I put one foot in front of the other, I don’t know.

Then I was in the Charles’ kitchen and Sheila was standing by the cooker. Her eyes were nearly all red. At first she couldn’t speak. Her expression spoke of the primal fear I’d been hiding from. Then, “Alf’s up there with him,” she said, and I started up the stairs, sick with terror—knowing what she meant, and not realising that I shouldn’t have known, and shouldn’t be terrified.

Halfway up an ambulance man tried to hold me back. He called me sir. Sheila started to shriek, her cries echoing up the stairwell and the man dropped my arm and went to her. I ran—fled—up those stairs. No. I remember that’s all I could think—NO—but I was somewhere else. Somewhere detached. I never came back from there.

The layout was smashed. A cricket bat lay on the floor, the culprit of the destruction. I picked it up, felt the whip-cord against my palms. Another ambulance man was standing on the table, taking a rope from a beam. There was a policeman, too, his face ashen, all the colour in his eyes. He took the bat from me, gently. Then asked me for my name.

And Alex, barefoot in his favourite jeans and an old T-shirt, lay on the wreck of the layout, his eyes open, his face pale, looking grey in the light, his kiss unnatural. Purple. The policeman was trying to talk to Alf, crouched by the far wall but Alf was broken, a puppet with his strings cut. All I could do was watch as the ambulance man closed Alex’s eyes.

It wasn’t until the constable spoke to me again that I realised that I was superfluous. He led me away as the ambulance man shut the door behind us. I don’t know how I kept from being sick, but everything still seemed far away.

“Best thing you can do, sir,” he said as he led me back down, “is just to be there for the parents. The shock could affect them in funny ways. Terrible business, but it’s not uncommon for boys his age. Sad, it is.”

We walked through to their dining room and he motioned me to sit down. I held myself in check, letting the world happen around me.

“I’d be grateful if you could give me some details. Can’t expect his parents to be coherent right now.” I just stared at him. “A shock for you too, I imagine. Did you know the deceased?”

And there it was. Just a name in a report to be written up at the station. Just words. But he was asking the wrong questions. I wanted him to say: Did you know Alexander Charles? Did you ever see him smile with just the corner of his mouth? Did you ever feel his breath on your skin? What did his mouth taste like? Did you love him? Did you, sir?

I wanted to tell someone. I wanted to keep Alex in someone’s memory other than mine.

Instead it was clinical—talking of a life once known. Already a memory. Already history and nothing more.

I stammered through the details, somehow. Shock camouflaged the truth—that, and the fact I was a neighbour with children. “Won’t be easy for them, either, I’d imagine,” the policeman said. His name was Constable Johns. Funny how a