The Two Lives of Lydia Bird - Josie Silver Page 0,58
fine, I saw them at the pub just now. God, I’m sorry. What a thoughtless twat banging your door like that, tonight of all nights.’
He cuts a defeated figure on my doorstep, and now my heart rate has steadied again I’m able to speak without gasping.
‘What are you doing here, Jonah?’
He turns his back against the wall and looks at the sky.
‘I’ve got no fucking idea,’ he says, and a single tear slides down his cheek.
‘Come inside,’ I say, but he shakes his head and stays rooted to the spot.
‘Can’t,’ he says, his screwed-up face a study of torment. ‘There’s too much Freddie in there for me tonight. I came here because of him, and now I’m too much of a pissing coward to come inside because he’s everywhere in there.’ He circles the bottle towards the door.
‘Jonah, you’ve been here enough times over the months since the accident.’ I keep my voice low and steady because I can see how distressed he is. ‘It’s okay. Come in, let me make you some coffee.’
‘But it’s New Year’s Eve.’ One side of his mouth lifts in the saddest of smiles. ‘You can’t drink coffee on New Year’s Eve, Lydia, it’s against the rules.’ He’s slurring a little, drunk enough to not be able to keep the words in, but not so drunk as to not know what he’s saying. ‘I can’t sit in his house, on his sofa, with his girlfriend. Not tonight. Not me.’
I may have opted to see New Year’s Eve as just another day, but Jonah clearly hasn’t allowed himself that kindness.
He stares at me, and then, finally, he says what he’s really come here to say.
‘I’m … I’m so fucking sorry for what I did,’ he whispers, gaunt. ‘It should have been me.’ He covers his face with his spread fingers and slides down the wall until he’s on his backside. ‘I wish it had been me.’
I sigh deeply. He’s clearly not coming inside the house, so I put the door on the latch and take a seat beside him on the cold step. Across the road noise spills from a brightly lit house.
‘Don’t say that.’ I take one of his icy hands between both of mine. ‘Don’t you ever say that again.’
‘You think it,’ he blurts.
I stare at him, stricken. ‘Jonah, I don’t, I honestly don’t. There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t wish Freddie was still here, but I swear to God I’ve never even once wished it had been you instead.’
I’m not lying. I’ve wished a hundred times that Freddie hadn’t detoured to pick Jonah up, but that isn’t the same thing.
He drinks from the bottle then traces a shaky finger over the scar above his eyebrow. ‘Just this. I got this, and his beautiful fucking heart stopped beating.’
I take the bottle when he holds it out to me and swallow a good slug, feeling the liquid burn its way down my throat. The heat is welcome; it’s frost-cold out here tonight. I don’t know what I can say to make Jonah feel any less wretched. Then I know.
‘Mum and Elle gave me a memory box today. Things in it that remind them of Freddie.’
‘Like any of us could forget him.’ Jonah rests his elbows on his spread knees.
‘There was a photograph from school,’ I say. ‘You, me and Freddie. We were fourteen or so. We look like babies.’
He looks at the floor and laughs softly. ‘Fourteen. Shit. I teach kids that age now.’
‘We all grew up.’
‘And we’re all getting older – except Freddie,’ Jonah says. ‘I can’t imagine him as an old man.’
I shake my head.
‘Me neither.’ I drink a little more Jack Daniels. It’s strong stuff; I can feel it mingling with the wine already in my system, loosening my tongue and blurring my cold, brittle edges.
‘You still look the same as you used to,’ I say. ‘Except you had mad hair.’
He looks at me and I make big hair gestures around my head with my hands. He huffs under his breath.
‘Yeah, well. There was never spare money around to get it cut and man buns hadn’t been invented yet.’
I was never overly aware of Jonah’s lack of funds as a kid, he always hid it from me. But then he hid lots of things back then; it’s only in recent years that I learned from Freddie how far Jonah’s childhood was from fairy tale.
‘You were his greatest friend.’ I want to find things to say to make Jonah feel