Part One Hundred And Ninety Nine
On the Friday evening, Karen was sitting out on her balcony, the mid September sun providing a warmth she did not feel inside. She was sitting in one of the two comfortably cushioned, wicker chairs, that stayed in the garage downstairs in the winter and which she always brought up here for the summer. There was an ashtray on the wall that ran round the edge of the balcony, with her cigarettes and faithful Zippo beside it. On the floor next to her chair, was a bottle of scotch, an ice bucket and a half-filled glass. Those two weeks doing nothing but sleep and sunbathe at Yvonne's villa in Spain, had done her the world of good, or so she'd thought. All she had done was sleep. Sleep, swim in the pool and soak up the sun. That's what she'd done with her days until George had arrived. At first, they'd simply taken advantage of the weather and the time they had, to do nothing but enjoy each other's company again, something they'd not really done since Ross had died. Karen found herself making the most of the two days she had with George, because she knew that sooner or later, they must talk. She'd known George was drifting away from her, possibly even before Ross's death, but she became certain of it afterwards. It wasn't all George's fault, because she, Karen, had been pushing George away ever since that most horrific night of all her nightmares. She'd pushed everyone away after that, or at least she'd subconsciously tried to. But too many of her friends, John, Jo, Yvonne, Nikki, and the rest, none of them had let her. She'd put on one of Ross's CD's, one of the few possessions he hadn't sold to supply his habit. Some of it was a little too heavy for her liking, but some of it was soft and haunting, making her wonder if it might have been what he was listening to when he died. It struck her as odd that both Ross and Ritchie had liked some of the same music. Not much, but the occasional CD being owned by both of them. But then, Ritchie had only been eight years older than Ross. God, what a whore she must have been, to sleep with someone almost as young as her son. As she lit another cigarette, there came a most unwelcome intrusion by the ringing of the doorbell. Karen really wasn't in the mood for seeing anyone tonight. She needed to spend some time with her memories of Ross, whether they be good or bad, and she didn't want anyone else around while she did that. So, she simply ignored it, leaving whoever it was on her doorstep to go away and leave her alone. But she had reckoned without John's determination to gain entrance.
Ever since George had returned from Spain, John had wondered how Karen was doing. Was she coping, or wasn't she? Was she as sorted out about the break up with George, as George seemed to think she was, or was she doing a very good job of hiding her true feelings, he couldn't be sure. But what he did know and know with absolute clarity, was that even before this, Karen hadn't needed any more emotional hurts on her shoulders. Until she had been forcibly persuaded to take a holiday, Karen had been steadily disintegrating. She had been doing her best to maintain her outer professional persona, but they had all seen the persistent crumbling of her exterior, the cracking of her spirit, that might have taken her away from them for good, if she'd been allowed to go on as she was. Quite how she would have taken this latest mental slug to the jaw, he needed to find out. He didn't really blame George for what had happened between her and Karen, because nobody can help the feelings they have, or so he was always telling her, and himself. But he wished she could have chosen a better time for it. After giving Karen the whole of her first week back at work to become reacquainted with her daily life, he had made his mind up to impose his company on Karen, if only to provide a preventative measure against her following in her son's footsteps.
John hadn't been all that surprised when Karen didn't answer the door. He knew by now that her way of dealing with things was to hide away while she fell apart, and to come back to the land of the living when she thought it was all over. But this was one time in her life when she was going to let him witness her undoing. He couldn't let her go through this alone. He knew that most of it wouldn't be about George, because Karen's grief for her son hadn't yet made much of an appearance. But the break up with George would almost certainly have been the last straw. Still getting no reply, and knowing she was definitely in by the presence of her car in the drive, he walked round to the back of the building where her flat was situated. It was as he'd thought, Karen was sitting out on her balcony. The mid evening sun was casting a soft glow on her blonde hair, and glinting off the silver Zippo on the balcony wall. Karen had heard the approach of footsteps along the street that her balcony looked out on to, and had immediately recognised them as John's. This presented her with something of a dilemma. Any of her other friends would have been far harder to stomach this evening, but John would be the most determined about staying. When he called up to her, she smiled slightly at his tenacity. "Are you going to let me in?" He asked, as he stood in the quiet back street. "No," She replied unperturbed. "Well, I'm not leaving till you do," He said, unwilling to be deterred. Knowing she wasn't going to win, Karen reached round and removed her bunch of keys from the lock in the sliding door. "If you're so determined, you can let yourself in," She said, throwing the keys down to him. "Because I'm not moving for anyone."
John caught the keys before they landed at his feet, and walked back round to the front door. When he let himself in, he immediately took in the small pile of CD's on the table, and the fact that Karen was listening to the kind of music Charlie often did. "There's a bottle of wine in the fridge if you want some," Karen called, having heard his entrance. When he joined her on the balcony, carrying the offered glass of wine, he took in the bottle of scotch at her side, and the dark eyes with hidden depths, that were struggling to hide her pain. "Are you planning to drink all that?" He asked quietly, gesturing to the whisky bottle. "I don't know," Karen replied, slightly belligerently. "Why, would it matter?" "I'd really rather you didn't," John said, immediately seeing that this was the wrong thing to have said. "John, I didn't ask you to come here and insist to be let in, and in truth I really don't want the company of anyone. So, if you don't like what I'm doing, you know where the door is." Suitably mollified, John tried to change the subject. "What are you listening to? It sounds like what Charlie was listening too last time I saw her." "I'm steadily working my way through the few CD's Ross either didn't consider worth selling, or that he just couldn't part with. There's far too much I obviously didn't know about my son, and though it's clearly too late for me to start finding out about him now, it's something I need to do." "Charlie seems to be into something different every time I see her," John said ruefully. "Some of it's not bad, but I can't help detesting the majority of it." "All except Black Sabbath," Karen said with a slight smile, having once seen the CD in John's car. "It seemed to appeal to the rebel in me." "Do you know what's really odd about all this? It seems Ritchie and Ross liked some of the same music." "And why does that strike you as odd?" "I don't know. It shouldn't really, because Ritchie was only eight years older than Ross. Jesus," She said in disgust. "That sounds terrible, doesn't it." "It's no different from my once sleeping with a waitress friend of Charlie's." "It's just a little too surreal, that's all." "Apart from the obvious, why did you sleep with Ritchie?" "Now you're asking," Karen replied with a mirthless laugh. She refilled her glass and lit another cigarette. "How much have I told you about Mark?" "Only that you were involved with him." "After Fenner," She stopped, changing what she'd been going to say. "After that night, I didn't want to be anywhere near Mark, never mind sleep with him." "That's understandable," Said John, also having some sympathy for Mark, who most likely wouldn't have known the first thing about how to act with Karen. He certainly wouldn't have done if he'd been in Mark's position. "The poor sod didn't know how to deal with it," She continued. "Half of him couldn't decide whether or not it was my fault, and the rest of him felt guilty for not initially believing me." "He didn't believe you?" John asked in momentary outrage. "No," Karen said bitterly. "He looked at me as though I was the most aptly named slag he'd ever met." John winced. "Do you have to talk like one of your inmates?" "I'm at the end of a working week, having spent a considerable amount of time with my inmates, as you put it. The vocabulary rubs off after a while." "So I noticed," John said dryly. "Mark assumed that I'd got drunk, though he didn't put it so politely, got randy, and regretted it in the morning. He said that I couldn't ask him to believe it, when I didn't believe it myself. So, once I'd reported it to the police, and then retracted my statement, there wasn't much left of our relationship. We were supposed to be going on holiday together, and before we went, I thought I'd better sleep with him just to see if I still could. But, I loathed every minute of it, and unfortunately he knew I had. I thought that the only way was to make a clean break. It wouldn't have worked, no matter how hard either of us may have tried, and I think at the time I really couldn't be bothered." "It sounds as though you had enough to deal with in your own head, never mind anyone else's." "Probably. But then Ritchie turned up at visiting time to see Yvonne, and I was ripe for the picking where he was concerned," She said bitterly. "Suddenly, this man, who had to be at least ten years younger than me, was giving me some of the old lines I hadn't heard since leaving nursing. Some of the registrars I knew in those days were just as good at talking women into bed. I needed to know if it was just Mark, or if men were going to be out of the picture for me for good. I needed to sleep with a total stranger, so that if it became necessary to fake it, they wouldn't know." "And was it?" John asked gently, seeing how uncomfortable she felt. "No," Karen replied which surprised him. "I felt like I was a different person, as though the real me was in some way detached from what I was doing. It gave me such a high to know that even if I didn't enjoy it, he did, and because he didn't know about Fenner, he wasn't remotely cautious with me. That was the problem with Mark. He was so worried about me not wanting whatever he did, that I was constantly reminded of why he was being so cautious. Once Ritchie realised I was deadly serious about wanting him to be rough with me, it was the best I'd had in a long time. He might have used me for his own ends, but in a way, I did exactly the same to him. I wanted to prove to myself that I could still enjoy being with a man. But then he went and screwed it up." Her face suddenly became darker. "It feels like all the men in my life are jinxed. My son and my one time lover killed themselves, and Fenner ended up at the wrong end of a pistol. I'm surprised you even want to talk to me." "I'm not going anywhere," John said firmly but quietly. "Did you know that you were the first man I'd slept with since Ritchie Atkins?" "I did wonder," He replied with a soft smile as he remembered that night. "What on earth do I do to them?" Karen asked in a slightly strangled voice. "That bloody prosecutor at Lauren's trial got it absolutely right. What is it about me that makes someone supposedly love me and then hurt me as much as possible? You seem to be about the only odd one in the pack. But then you've never loved me so maybe that's why. Though if keeping quiet about my son being in drugs rehab isn't a pretty sure-fire way of hurting me, then I don't know what is. Why did you have to do that, John? Why?" "You know why," He said regretfully. "Helen came to me, because she needed some advice on her legal position. She couldn't tell you that your son was in her care, because he was over the age of eighteen and therefore a legal adult. If I'd simply told you, it would have been just as catastrophic as if she'd told you herself." Karen could feel her anger steadily rising, coming inexorably closer to boiling point. "You just don't get it, do you," She said, the volcano finally becoming active. "If I'd known he was in drugs rehab, I might have been able to help him." "Karen," John said slowly, trying to calm her down. "There wasn't anything you could have done. Ross got himself into that situation, and even if you'd been there for him every step of the way, that's no guarantee that you could have prevented him from doing what he did." "And if this was Charlie we were talking about, would you still be saying all this?" "My daughter is far too intelligent to become involved with hard drugs," John said without thinking, his immediate reaction being to defend Charlie's reputation. "Oh, really," Karen said icily. "Well, you know something? That's exactly what I used to think about Ross. I was so proud of him when he went off to university, because I thought that in spite of everything, in spite of his not having anyone around who resembled a father, in spite of my having to work all the hours God sent when he was a child, he had become the son I'd always wanted him to be. Don't assume, that just because you couldn't have been a better father to Charlie, that she will automatically behave in the way you'd like her too." "I didn't mean it like that," He said placatingly. "I just meant that..." He stopped, not entirely sure how to say what he wanted to say, and also debating whether or not he should say it. "Oh, I know," Karen said, not giving him chance to finish. "You like to assume that Charlie will follow in your footsteps, because you think that you couldn't possibly have done any more for her than you have. You're not perfect, John, neither as a father, nor as a man. So don't presume that Charlie will be too. I did that to a point, I trusted that Ross knew better than to start injecting himself with whatever he could lay his hands on, but I was wrong. I couldn't have been more wrong about what I expected from Ross. If he'd just once told me what he was getting into. But he was so bloody stubborn, and so much like his stupid, reckless mother, that he just had to prove he could do it all by himself." "Even if you had been aware of what was happening, you don't know how much you could have helped him," John insisted, feeling scorched by her anger, but knowing that she had to get it all out somehow. "And thanks to you and Helen between you, I won't ever know that now, will I."
There was a stunned, awful pause after these words had been uttered. The colour drained from Karen's face as she realised what she'd said. "Oh, God, I'm sorry," She said quietly, the anger having dissipated, and tears rising to her eyes in its place. "I should never have said that." John made a move to rise from his chair and go to her, but she lifted a hand to stop him. Turning her face away from him, she fought to stop her tears from spilling over. How could she? How could she have said something so unforgivable to him? This was John sitting a few feet away from her, John. She had sat here, and without taking a moment to consider what she was saying, she'd accused him, no blamed him, for her not having been aware of her son's drug problem, and therefore for her not having been able to stop him from killing himself. "Karen, you need to cry," He said gently but firmly, hating it when she insisted on closing herself off like this, refusing to let him see the depth of her pain, and therefore making it impossible for him to help her. "Somehow, you need to let it out. Taking out your anger on me is absolutely fine, but it'll only help you so far." "Oh and you always let out your feelings in an adequate fashion, don't you," She said scornfully, finding it all too easy to be angry with him, instead of letting him see her cry. "We're not talking about me," He said mildly. "No, we never bloody are, are we. On the day that you feel perfectly happy with someone else witnessing your version of disintegration, by all means feel free to tell me what I should and shouldn't do. Until then, I will deal with this in my own way, and if that means struggling to keep it together and somehow not giving in to the pull of letting go completely, then that is exactly what I'll do."
To give them some breathing space, John went into the kitchen to refill his glass. "As you're here," Karen said when he returned. "I'm assuming you know about me and George, though I suppose now it would be more accurate to say Jo and George." "Yes," John replied, seeing that the couple of minutes down time had allowed her emotions to temporarily regroup. "I came because I thought it might have been the last straw." "Yes, it probably was what gave me the reason to get drunk and do a little reminiscing, but it was only an excuse. What I've done tonight has been creeping up on me for a while. How do you feel about it?" "I'm not sure," John admitted. "I discovered a while ago that Jo has a certain curiosity about being with a woman, something which I think was prodded out into the open by you and George." "So, it didn't surprise you to discover that Jo ended up feeling far more than a passing curiosity?" "One thing I've learnt over the last few months is that anything's possible." "I'd have thought that Jo and George feeling that way about each other would be your idea of heaven," Karen suggested, seeing that all was not well from John's perspective. "On the surface, yes, I suppose it may be," John replied. "But I think part of me wonders if, after any initial stage of awkwardness, they will in fact need me at all." "Oh, John, of course they will," Karen said without a moment's hesitation, at once seeing just how insecure this had made him feel. "If there's one thing I know for certain in all this, it's that both Jo and George love you. You might occasionally exasperate them to distraction, but that won't ever stop either of them from loving you the way they do. What happened with George and me, that was just waiting to happen. She might have been happy with what she had with me, but I think I knew from the beginning that it wouldn't be for long. George was spreading her wings with me, finding out about that side of her character. I don't blame her for that, it's only natural in some ways. With this three-way thing you've had going with her and Jo, it was almost a foregone conclusion that George would one day discover she felt more for Jo than perhaps she thought she should." "You really do love her, don't you," John said in sudden realisation. "I didn't intend to at the start," Karen replied. "Because she was dividing her time between both of us, and I didn't want anything heavy. But yes, I do. There's something about George that I just couldn't help loving," She said in wonderment. "No matter how fiercely we might have argued, which we really only did very occasionally, and no matter how much I might worry about her when she periodically stops eating, I suspect a part of me will always love George." "She does have that effect on people," John said fondly. "Their growing feelings for each other might not have been forced out into the open as soon as they were, but after Ross died, I began emotionally pushing everyone away, including George, and I think in one way, that made it easier for her. I didn't mean too, but I didn't want anyone to see what I was going through. It hurts like hell that I won't ever wake up with her in my arms again, but it had to happen some time."
A couple of hours later, Karen had consumed a good deal more scotch, and John had finished the bottle of wine. "I'm assuming you're staying," Karen said, raising an eyebrow at the empty bottle. "Do you mind?" "No. Much as I was insane with irritation at your interruption of my fairly miserable evening, it's probably a good thing you came, even if your motive was utterly transparent." "You mean too much to me to simply allow you to go through this on your own, and if I'm honest, part of me didn't entirely trust you." "So I noticed," Karen said dryly. "I might be lower than I've been in a long time tonight, but I'm not about to follow in my son's footsteps." "I'm glad to hear it," He said firmly. "I'd have no-one to knock sense into me once in a while for a start."
A while later, they were lying in Karen's large bed. They had been friends long enough to know that sharing the same bed signified nothing more than sleep, even in spite of their unplanned kiss before Karen went on holiday. They had their arms round each other, because John could see in her face that tonight, she needed to be close to someone. All that prevented skin to skin contact was her cotton nightie and his boxer shorts. But after the evening's tortuous discussions, neither of them, not even John, would have had the energy for anything more than sleep. He could feel her tense, taut body nestling against his, the tension still singing along her nerves. He ran a hand gently up and down her back, occasionally running his fingers through her hair in an attempt to make her relax. "Does it make me seem feeble?" She asked in to his chest. "What?" He murmured into her hair. "Needing a cuddle." "Of course not," He said softly, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "Why do you think I used to sleep with so many women? Apart from the obvious," He added when she didn't immediately answer. "It was because just for an hour, or a night, I could be close to someone without having to make my need for it obvious. Feeling loved, or at least the momentary pretence of being loved that sleeping with someone can provide, is something we all need from time to time. Some more than most." They lay quiet for a time, with Karen still unable to relax. The burning force that had been building in her all week, from the catalyst of her break up with George, had partially gone by way of her earlier anger. But John had been right, damn him. He'd said that being angry wasn't enough, and that she must cry in order to let the rest of it out. But she didn't want too. She didn't want him to see how weak and vulnerable she was. But she wasn't sure how much longer she could hold it in. The constriction in her throat was becoming agonising. Whether because of the alcohol she'd consumed, or the conversation she'd had with John, she did want to cry, to cling to something or someone, and to let out the grief for Ross that was steadily eating away at her insides.
When he felt the first sensation of a tear on his skin, he held her if possible closer to him. John had waited for this, staying awake and holding her long enough for her to do it. He'd known that at some point she must. If not, she would internally combust. "I'm sorry," She said, feeling the last vestiges of control ebbing away from her. "I didn't want to do this." He just lay there, trying to soothe her. "I'm so sorry I said what I did to you," She said after a while. "I know," He said gently. "And I'm sorry too." "I don't know how I'm supposed to get through this," She said, the shuddering in her body only getting worse. "The only way you can get through it, is to let people in, and to let all of this out, just like you're doing now. I know it's not your preferred medium for emotional cleansing, but keep it all locked away inside, and you'll go slowly mad, and I am not letting you do that," He finished fervently. "I don't know what I'd do without you," She said between sobs. "Oh, you'd soon find someone else to tell home truths too," He said fondly. She clung to him as she wept, needing something to stop her from slipping beneath the tidal wave of her grief. Now she'd started, it felt like she couldn't stop. But he held her through all of it, not for a second letting her think she was alone. When she finally began to calm down, he helped her sit up, and reached over for the box of tissues on the bedside table. "I'm sorry," She said as she wiped her eyes and blew her nose. "Why, do you and George always apologise for crying?" He asked. "Because crying means showing someone how weak and vulnerable you feel." "You know," He said, changing the subject. "Jo did this once, got herself pretty drunk, took her anger and grief out on me, and ended up spending the night with me. She got caught leaving the digs, which led to her hearing with the Professional Conduct Committee." "Well, at least that isn't going to happen with me," Karen said as she lay back down. As he once again enclosed her in his arms, Karen knew that this was what she would miss most about her break up with George, the feeling of simply being close to someone, of having a pair of arms round her. As if hearing her thought, John said, "Don't ever be afraid to need someone, will you." She wasn't entirely sure what to make of his words, so saying nothing, she laid her head back on his chest, allowing the comfort of his arms and her emotional exhaustion to gradually pull her towards sleep.