My cheek had stuck to the pillow case. I must have been chewing the corner for hours. Nettles of dread, blossoming from the base of my spine, prickled my shoulders, and my forehead was slicked with a cold sweat. I got up without turning on the light, located my jeans, patted the floor for discarded socks and a t-shirt, and slipped out of the bedroom. I forced my feet into laced up trainers. There was some cash on the hall table. As quietly as I could I scraped the change into my palm and sank my wallet into my back pocket. I found I was smiling.
Time to disappear.
I twisted the handle gently leaving the keys dangling in the lock, went down the stairs and creaked open the big front door. The high, bright street lamps picked out every object in the street with a cold clarity the inverse of daylight. Every window frame, every crack in every brick, every latch on every gate, stood out as if traced with a highlight pen. Even the dust seemed particular.
Then I startle. Next door I hear a sort of shuffling noise. Jim, my neighbour, was halfway along his garden path just standing there, like a man who’s lost a dog that he knows will never come home. Then I notice the new guy over the road - we’d never so much as nodded acquaintance - facing me, his right arm twisted strangely behind him, as if he didn’t quite want to let go of the door handle.
Two doors up, concealed by a cluster of bins, there was Samuel, bent over fiddling with something on the floor. And further along the street other guys had emerged into the night. One of them had a flaccid rucksack slung over his shoulder. Another was carrying a small tv, still in its packaging.
Gradually we are realising we are not alone. We catch each others eyes, nod that Northern nod that’s barely negligible. Caught out; we can’t just back away, cough a minuscule cough, pretend we weren’t here, that it never happened. We have seen. We have been seen. We don’t know what to do next. Don’t know how to behave.
In that petrified moment we all, each of us singly and separately, were forced to face a stark realisation. We are seeing something in each other that we have dodged, denied and dismissed in every cheery passing minute we’ve dealt with each other, our routine “How’s things, mate?”
“Brilliant, ta.”
“Never been better”
“Great.”
“Fine.”
“Not so bad.”
“Can’t complain.”
“Yerself?”
“And you?”
How many times must we have exchanged empty verbal formulas on our doorsteps then gone indoors to fight, to weep, to hurt and be hurt? All smiles in the street but inside we are hateful, we are melancholy, we are tormented by our partners and frustrated at work, we are unpredictably spiteful, we are deliberately uncooperative. We are no good.
Now, how will we face each other in the morning and repeat the worn out words, “Great, mate!” “Wonderful,” “Mustn’t grumble”?
It is a terrifying, fascinating moment as we all stand, rivetted, gazing at each other in the sheer white glow of the street lamps, and I wonder if we will all gather in the middle of Barton View, tangle our arms around each others shoulders, and tramp the dirt down as we slowly circle the vacant heart of our individual dread, howling our woes like we had lost the power of language, and go back to our beds trembling with a relief that surpasses understanding.
But someone breaks the spell; “Fuck, you all heard that too?”
His question seems to linger in the silent night air before we all burst with a babble of speculation and expletives.
“Yeah, sounded like a bike backfiring.”
“Quad bike!”
“Shit.”
“What the fuck!”
“Gave me a right start.”
“Thought I saw a flash too.”
“It was the bang woke me up.”
“Yes, definitely a flash.”
“A Crash?”
“Christ! Fucking Beeston!”
We all shake our heads with inner city astonishment at the mysteries of the universe and the perversity of some people, wish each other goodnight, and turn back to our homes, so we can lay down once more, and wait for the morning.
Going nowhere. Doing nothing.