'Book'

Book

Leicester was fervently tapping the small, black notebook against his thigh, as if hoping the tattoo of the drumming would inspire some form of divine intervention. Alas, the clouds did not part; a light did not illuminate the ground at his feet; a saviour did not come for him.

***

I had always considered myself a fairly normal boy; someone who did the best he could with what he had. I had a father who hated me, and a mother who drank a beautiful concoction of gin and benzos every evening so that she could be fast asleep (and impossible to wake) when father returned home from his evening shifts. Life pretty much consisted of coming home from school, enjoying a sparse meal my mother had prepared for me, and then retiring to my bedroom to try and fall asleep before father got home from work. When I was unlucky enough to cross paths with my father, his own displeasure at his lot in life lead to violent outbursts, with complimentary cutting and damning remarks about my mere existence that, like any aspect of your character that your father remarks upon, tends to stick with you for life.

It was a Saturday evening when father came home earlier than normal. He usually chose to spend his entire day off from work at the tracks before retiring to the local working men’s club, and he never arrived home until after midnight. The look of fear that had passed between me and my mother at the sound of the front door opening very quickly morphed into a mixture of confusion and suspicion, as my father walked into the room with an unsettling smile, painted very large and stretching almost from ear to ear. He was clutching a small parcel, covered in brown paper and tied with a black ribbon. “Why home so soon, Arthur?” my mother had asked. A common undertone of nervous anxiety always ran under my mother’s words, as it took so little to accidentally set off this moored mine that was anchored to any interaction one had with my father. “Well, my dearest Eileen, you’re looking at a man who put good money on a good horse and brought home a fucking good winning”. I winced at the curse word that left his mouth, as usually that word was followed with an outburst, aimed at either me or my mother: or sometimes both. “How much?” my mother asked, eyes widening and lips beginning to tremble at the same time. “Twenty… fucking… thousand”, and my father began laughing a raucous laugh that was indicative of exactly how much he’d been drinking. “That’s… that’s a lot of money” my mother whispered, her eyes darting from my father, to the package clutched in his hand. “Yup”, my father quipped, and he stumbled slightly as he turned and headed into the corridor, fumbling his way upstairs to the bedroom that hovered above our living area. I looked at my mother, and she looked back at me with the same mixture of astonishment and realization that that money, most likely all of that money, was never going to leave my father’s own pockets.

Weeks passed, and each day on my way home from school, I began to see little improvements occurring to the garage at the side of our house, courtesy of my father’s track winnings. The roof had been repainted, the windows that ran along the upper half of the doors had been boarded; and on one occasion, when a door had been left slightly ajar, I noticed the corner of a workbench that had been placed in the middle of the garage itself. I had never seen the inside of the garage, my father forbade it, but these changes were piquing my curiosity.

A few month’s later, my father had told us that he was going out of town for the weekend to visit his brother, who lived somewhere north of where we lived. At the news of his departure, my mother told me that she was going to take this opportunity to visit her mother a few towns over, and whom my father had forbidden my mother from ever seeing. She asked me if I would be okay on my own for the weekend, to which I replied yes (she was kind enough to stock the kitchen with all manner of delicious treats that I would never be allowed if father was home) and she told me that if anything were to happen, any kind of emergency, phone my grandmother’s house straight away and she’ll come right back. I said of course, and within an hour she had finished packing her bag and was out the door. I stood alone in the hallway, watching my mother walk away through the oval pane of glass set in the door, and an unusual mixture of emotion began to stir inside of me: I was relieved to be fully alone in this house for the first time in my life; I was excited about the snacks I was going to get to eat whilst watching absolutely anything I wanted on the tv; and I was also petrified of the immediate beast of curiosity that had reared its head in my stomach the moment my mother had shut that door. I walked back into the living room and sat on the edge of the armchair closest to me, staring at the black mirror of the tv screen. And just like that, I decided to do it.

I walked towards the door in the kitchen that led to the garage, and gave the doorknob the sharpest twist I could. To no great surprise, it didn’t budge. Then like a candle unexpectedly bursting into flame, it hit me that there is a rear window to the garage, and there’s a slim chance it wouldn’t be all the way shut; it was summer, and many of our house’s windows were left ajar throughout the warmer months. I sprinted into the garden and saw that small sliver of a window propped slightly open. With some pulling and tugging, and a gratitude for my slender frame, I managed to slide in through the garage window.

There was a light switch directly to my right, and I flicked it on to brighten the almost pitch black interior of the space. The walls were lined with different tools: some in boxes, many of them harsh-looking, and many with serrated blades. Half the tools looked new, but stained, whilst some were still in pristine boxes or on spotless wall hangings that gave the indication that these must’ve been somewhat recently purchased. None of them looked inexpensive. The long table I had once glimpsed was in the centre of the room, covered in a sheet of transparent tarp, and to the left of that was a chest of drawers. I was somewhat let down by the contents of the space; I expected to see a glorious secret, but alas it was just tools and a covered workbench. I headed to the chest of drawers in the hopes of maybe finding something that would warrant the curiosity I had, and despite my best efforts, many of the drawers seemed either jammed or locked. Except the last one I tried.

The drawer had the folded edge of a brown piece of wrapping protruding from it, and I can only imagine that this had prevented the drawer from properly clicking shut. I slid it open, and there lay a small, black notebook, still partially wrapped in the brown paper and black ribbon that I had seen that evening my father had come walking into the living room to boast of his winnings. I lifted the book from the drawer and carefully opened the cover:

Maxine Dartfried

Lorraine Kinschter

Emily Halling

Deborah Basington

Sarah V

Jessica

Jean Costance

Valerie Arden

Melanie Huckle

It was simply a list of names, some of them having been crossed out, others not. Random names it seemed; I didn’t recognize any of them. Except perhaps the second name, ‘Lorraine’. I felt like I remembered that name being said outside by someone who lives on our street. I couldn’t be sure though, and I definitely didn’t know the other names listed. Maybe my father was having an affair, I thought, and although that was some kind of secret, I suppose, it wasn’t something that surprised me. I put the book back in the drawer, pushed the drawer all the way shut so it clicked, and made my way back out the garage’s rear window.

Months passed, and nothing of importance occurred really. A girl I had asked out in school had rejected me in front of the whole school cafeteria, but that was the extent of my excitement. Then one night, I ventured down from my bedroom, quietly as I could, to try and sneak a cookie from the kitchen. The route to the kitchen passes the door to the living room, and I saw the outline of my father through the door’s frosted glass, reclining in ‘his’ chair. The news was on, and as I tiptoed past the door, I heard the reporter discussing the still unsolved disappearances of two women in the area: Maxine Dartfried and Lorraine Kinschter. I froze. I remembered Lorraine’s name. I now remembered exactly what had been said by that couple I’d passed on our street, all those month’s before: ‘That Lorraine hasn’t been seen in weeks’. And I remembered seeing her name written in my father’s small, black book, with a line through it. I ran up to my room as quietly as I could, ignoring my rumbling belly, and praying that I would fall asleep faster than I ever have before.

I eventually left home when I was 18, and tried to move as far away from my parents as possible. I married my university sweetheart and had a son of my own; life was all that I could’ve hoped it to be. However, true happiness and contentment was something that would never come to my front door. I had said nothing to anyone after hearing that name on the news that night. I had said nothing after hearing many of the other names I saw in that book on news reports in the months and years after. The guilt; the soul crushing guilt of saying nothing had tainted every moment of my life since. Even the birth of my son was immediately met with thoughts of how those women would never get to have children of their own. I was just a kid back then, I tried to tell myself; I didn’t know what to do.

When my father passed, I helped my mother clear his belongings and pick out what to keep and throw away. I found that notebook in that same drawer. More names had been added; more had been crossed out. The true weight of all the guilt and culpability I deserved found me in that moment.

***

Leicester ceased the drumming of the book against his thigh. With one last glance at the worn edges of the black cover, he slipped the book into the stamped, padded envelope, along with a letter that would hopefully bring closure to every person who was still without answers. He rose from the bench he was sat on and stepped to the letterbox beside him, sliding the package in. As the brown paper left his fingers, he awaited some small sense of atonement to pass ever so gently over him; alas, as he had expected, it did not. He turned, and took a final glance at the bustle of the city around him: the friends outside cafés, enjoying their afternoon lunches; the office workers enjoying a quick cigarette outside before their breaks were over; and the intense rush hour traffic, hurtling across the road, feet from where Leicester stood. He closed his eyes, clenched his fists and stepped forward off the curb.