‘I haven’t told anyone this. Not even Dean, my best mate.’
The yellow room smelt of crumpets, crypts and carpet.
‘At the Goose Fair last November, I found Wilcox’s wallet. With loads of money in it. I mean, loads. I knew it was his ’cause it had his photo. You’ve got to understand that Wilcox was picking on me, all last year. A lot of it was…pretty evil stuff. Sadistic. So I kept it.’
‘So it goes,’ Mrs Gretton murmured, ‘so it goes…’
‘Wilcox was frantic. But the money was his dad’s and his dad’s a total psycho. ’Cause he was so scared about that, Wilcox had a bust-up with his girlfriend. ’Cause of that, his girlfriend got off with Grant Burch. ’Cause of that, Ross Wilcox nicked Grant Burch’s motorbike. Well, his brother’s. Tore off on it, skidded at the crossroads. Lost’ – this could only be whispered – ‘half his leg. His leg. You see? It’s my fault. If I’d just…given him back his wallet, he’d be walking. Hobbling up to your old house over there on a sprained ankle last year was bad enough. But Ross Wilcox…his leg stops at this…stump.’
‘Time for bed,’ Mrs Gretton murmured, ‘time for bed…’
The window had a view of the yard and the house where Joe the builder lives with his family. A crocodilish dog waddled by, holding a giant red bra in its grinny mouth.
‘Ziggy! Ziggy!’ A puffing, angry giantess ran after. ‘Get back ’ere!’
‘Ziggy! Ziggy!’ Two little kids ran after the giantess. ‘Get back ’ere!’
Was there a sharp Mrs Gretton inside the senile Mrs Gretton, listening to me, judging me?
‘I sometimes want to stick a javelin through my temples, just so I can stop thinking about how guilty I am. But then I think, well, if Wilcox hadn’t been such a git, I would’ve handed it over. If it was anyone else’s, ’cept Neal Brose maybe, it’d’ve been like, “Hey, you idiot, you dropped this.” Like a shot. So…it’s Wilcox’s fault too, isn’t it? And if consequences of consequences of consequences of what you do’re your fault too, you’d never leave your house, right? So Ross Wilcox losing his leg isn’t my fault. But it is. But it isn’t. But it is.’
‘Full up to here,’ Mrs Gretton murmured, ‘full up to here…’
The giantess’d got one end of her bra. Ziggy’d got the other.
The two little kids shrieked with bliss.
I hadn’t stammered once, the whole time I’d been talking to Mrs Gretton. S’pose it isn’t Hangman who causes it? S’pose it’s the other person? The other person’s expectations. S’pose that’s why I can read aloud in an empty room, perfectly, or to a horse, or a dog, or myself? (Or Mrs Gretton, who might’ve been listening to a voice but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t mine.) S’pose there’s a time fuse lit when it’s a human listening, like a stick of Tom and Jerry dynamite? S’pose if you don’t get the word out before this fuse is burnt away, a couple of seconds, say, the dynamite goes off? S’pose what triggers the stammer’s the stress of hearing that fuse going ssssssss? S’pose you could make that fuse infinitely long, so that the dynamite’d never go off? How?
By honestly not caring how long the other person’ll have to wait for me. Two seconds? Two minutes? No, two years. Sitting in Mrs Gretton’s yellow room it seemed so obvious. If I can reach this state of not caring, Hangman’ll remove his finger from my lips.
A thermostat clicked off and a heater stopped humming.
‘Took for ever,’ Mrs Gretton murmured, ‘took for ever.’
Joe the builder knocked at the door frame. ‘Getting on okay?’
A black-and-white photo of a submarine in an icy port hung by my coat. The crew all stood on deck, saluting. Old photographs always go with old people. I zipped up my black parka. ‘That’s her brother, Lou,’ said Joe. ‘Front row, far right.’ Joe placed his chipped fingernail by a face. ‘That’s him.’ Lou was little more than a shadow cast by a nose.
‘A brother?’ That was familiar. ‘Mrs Gretton talked about how I mustn’t wake her brother.’
‘What, just now?’
‘No, last January.’
‘Not much hope of waking Lou. German destroyer sank his sub in 1941, off the