Read by Stephen Butterton (1st story in podcast, at XXmin, here)
When he got off at St Paul's, the station was deserted apart from a few discarded copies of the Evening Standard that skittered along the platform as the train pulled away. Earlier that night, it would have been packed, suits standing three deep, waiting to squeeze into trains already jammed with bodies. Now the only signs of life were the tiny brown packages that raced from the wall to the edge of the platform then disappeared over the side.
This is what Charlie wanted, for the whole City to be deserted so that he could go about his business undisturbed. It had taken months of planning, and he'd had to wait until exactly the right night, which happened to be a Friday in mid-December, bitterly cold but with almost no wind, which was the most important thing.
He’d been dreaming of this night for months. He always did before he jumped, but this was different, as it was going to be the last time. It had been seeing Tony in the hospital that did it. He’d been jumping off the Pembroke cliffs and it had all gone wrong. Someone had caught the accident on video and posted it on YouTube so Charlie had seen the whole thing only a few hours after it had happened. He’d got in the car and driven up to see Tony the next day.
He remembered sitting in the hospital car park listening to the engine tick as it cooled, not knowing what he was going to find when he went in. When he finally went inside, a nurse escorted him down the corridors to a ward of eight beds, only one of which was occupied, and he was relieved to see that Rachel wasn't there. Tony was propped up on pillows, the left side of his face already a deep, blotchy purple, swelling closing his eye. His neck was in a brace, his left arm encased with pins and his right leg thick with plaster. Charlie sat down on the chair next to the bed.
'Nice ward, Tony,' he said, glancing round. It had parquet flooring and the windows, which stretched from floor to ceiling, looked out onto an ornamental garden with a maze of low hedges.
'Not bad, is it?' Tony said, his voice coming out slurred. 'Do you remember the one in the Lake District with no windows. Couldn't wait to get out of there.'
'What's the damage?'
'Concussion, two ribs, fractured fibula, arm's the worst, but the break’s clean.’
‘Got away with it then.’
‘Pretty much. I don't know what happened, Charlie. I’m sure I packed it right. I’m certain I did.’
‘Sometimes things go wrong, no matter how careful you are. You know that.’
Tony nodded, and they sat in silence. Then Tony turned to look at him.
'I know what you're going to say,' Charlie said.
Tony looked down at the bed and rubbed the plaster on his leg. 'Everyone's luck runs out. The trick is to spot it just before it does. That's what we always said, wasn't it?'
'That’s what we always said.'
‘I just can’t do it any more. I can’t do it to Rachel.’
‘I get it, mate.’
Tony looked up at him. ‘I’ve lost it. I can’t do it any more.’
‘I understand,’ Charlie said, putting a hand on Tony’s arm.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tony said, turning to look out at the ornamental garden bathed in sunlight.
*
As he’d left the ward, Charlie met Rachel coming down the corridor with two cups of coffee, heels clicking loudly on the polished wooden floor.
'Well if it isn't the great Charlie Hedges,' she said when she saw him.
'How are you Rachel?' he said, kissing her on the cheek.
'Better than Tony, but you already know that.'
'He's not looking great ...’
'Don't say it, don't even think it.'
'But it's true, it could be worse.'
Rachel shook her head. 'Can't help yourself, can you?'
Charlie shrugged. 'You must be pleased, though,' he said. ‘Him giving it up.’
'Your loss is my gain,' she said, smiling but not smiling.
'Well, nice to see you, Rachel,' he said finally, turning to go.
He was almost at the end of the corridor when Rachel called out after him. 'You know what we call ourselves?'
He turned to look at her. 'Who?'
'The WAGs, the wives and girlfriends.'
'What?'
'The Future Widows Club. Guess I'll have to resign now. Love to Yasmin.'
It rattled round his head on the drive home: ‘the Future Widows Club’. He stopped at a service station to get some coffee and sat drinking it in one of the booths in Starbucks. In the booth opposite was a family, a dad with hair greying at the temples and wire-rimmed glasses, his wife in a navy shirt dress, two girls, both with brown corduroy dresses, blonde hair in bunches. Yasmin was dark-haired and dark-eyed; Mia had her mother’s hair but his blue eyes. When she was born, he’d said he would stop jumping; Yasmin hadn’t asked him to and he hadn’t promised he would.
He watched the two girls with bunches slurping their milkshakes and giggling at the noise. It was time, he realised.
*
It didn’t take him long to reach the foot of the Monastery. He headed for the back entrance where he could use the key card that he’d managed to get from one of his contacts. He’d worked on building sites like this for a few years after dropping out of university, and he still had some friends he could call on for a favour. He found the door and tried the card and his heart jumped when it beeped but it didn’t work. But he knew these doors could be temperamental, so waited a few minutes, rubbing his hands and stamping his feet. He looked up and saw that it was starting to snow, the flakes falling like a swarm of lazy bees. He looked back down at the door and tried the card again, and this time the lock clicked open.
Inside he found the stairs and started to climb. There were 46 floors, so it would take about fifteen minutes to reach the top.
It had always been tall things, height. Even as a child with LEGO, he’d been obsessed with building towers, and the more his dad had told him not to build them so high, the more determined he was to make them as tall as he could.
He was a strange one, his old man. Charlie had gone to see him at the home the previous weekend, or what was left of him. It was funny sitting with him, without any of the old tension there. They had fought constantly, and Charlie had done his best to do everything his dad had said he shouldn’t or couldn’t do. Especially everything he said he couldn’t do.
One time when his parents were called into school for the umpteenth time, his dad had bawled him out and told him he’d never amount to anything, never go to university; that was when he decided to make sure he did. He ended up studying civil engineering at Sheffield, much to the amazement of his dad and his teachers. Even stupid things his dad said, things Charlie knew shouldn’t matter, wound him up. Like the time his dad told him he was hooked on cigarettes, so he spent the next five years smoking for one year and then not smoking for the next.
There was none of that left now. When Charlie went to visit him, his dad hardly recognised him, and on the rare occasions he did, he told him how pleased he was to see him. That more than anything told him that that the man he used to know was gone. He’d taken Mia to see him once, and he’d had to tell his dad three or four times during the visit who the ‘little girl’ was. He didn’t take her again.
When he reached the 46th floor, he made his way to the access point that led up to the roof. He had a key card for that too – thankfully it worked first time – and he went up the final staircase and was out onto the roof of the building. It was divided into different sections by walls made up of bamboo and silver birches, all of which had a dusting of snow. Round the perimeter was a glass barrier that came up to chest height. As he stepped away from the door a gust of wind hit him but then it was still again.
He walked over to the edge and leant against the glass, looking down into the small square below. He knew he would have to hold off pulling the cord as long as possible to avoid hitting the side of a building. He looked to the left, tracing the railway tracks that ran parallel to the dark line of the Thames. He turned around and looked south, and could see the mast at Crystal Palace winking from the top of a hill. Another gust of wind blew across the roof.
He climbed over the glass barrier, his heart starting to thump, and stood at the edge, holding the glass behind with either hand. He waited for one more gust, feeling the air in his nose and throat. Then he tipped forward, keeping his head up, and sprang outwards as he started to fall to give himself as much distance from the tower as possible.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
*
When he got home, he found that Yasmin and Mia had put the tree up and decorated it, and the flat smelt faintly of something sweet. As was their ritual, the tree lights had been left for him to turn off. He walked to the bedroom, where Mia had crawled in with Yasmin. Yasmin stirred as he was standing in the doorway.
‘When did you get back?’ she said.
‘Just now.’
‘We did the tree and the angel biscuits.’
‘Angel biscuits?’
‘Lights. Angel lights. Come to bed,’ Yasmin said, rolling onto her side.
‘Soon,’ he said.
He got a bottle of beer from the fridge and went back into the living room, and sat down on the sofa opposite the tree, his pack next to him. After a while he heard the sound of footsteps padding along the corridor and Mia appeared by the door.
'You should be asleep,' he told her, as she came over and climbed into his lap.
'Fly me,' she said.
'It's too late.'
'Fly me.'
He sighed. “You have to be quiet, mummy’s sleeping.’
He lifted her above his head and she spread her arms as wide as they would go and craned her neck forward like a bird, whispering, 'I'm flying, I'm flying,’ so quietly, even Charlie could hardly hear it.
(c) Matt Barnard, 2023
Matt Barnard is a short story writer & poet: his first full collection, Anatomy of a Whale, was published by The Onslaught Press. This is his second story to be read at Liars’ League, so he gets to cross it off his bucket list twice. mattbarnardwriter.com
Stephen Butterton trained at the London Centre for Theatre Studies, finishing his training with a run in The Accrington Pals at Jermyn Street Theatre. He then spent time in Fringe Theatre & student films before leaving London in 2007. He now lives in Hastings, drowning in his day job as a vet. With very little time left over for acting & the written world, he’s delighted to be taking the stage once more for Liars’ League!
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