That Summer He Died Read Free Page A

of him knee-high in water, chucking up into the dusk-blooded sea, lager can in hand unrepentant.
    James quickly slid the photo to the bottom of the pack, looked instead at one of some girl Dan had been seeing at the time, posing like a catwalk model on the rock plateau outside Surfers’ Turf.
    James hadn’t seen her for years – he continued to flick through the deck of snapshots – hadn’t seen any of them for years, not since he’d caught that dawn train back to London nearly a decade ago.
    He flicked over another photo and froze. Suzie. There she was, sitting next to the fire, feet buried in sand, dark-haired, even more beautiful than he’d remembered. She hadn’t been looking at him, hadn’t known he’d existed. He felt as if a sponge was expanding inside his throat. The photograph fell to the floor.
    *
    The next morning, the first thing James noticed was that his mouth and tongue felt furry. He peeled his lips off the carpet and the rest of his body, muscles protesting at every inch, followed. He wiped some stray carpet fibres from his tongue and backed up to the bed, sat down on it and held his head in his hands.
    He looked round and couldn’t believe what a tip his room was. Rogue Rizlas, scratched and discarded iPods and broken cigarettes lay strewn across the floor, like debris from a rock-and-roll air crash.
    The other thing James couldn’t believe was that he actually felt better. Spiritually, that was. Physically, things couldn’t have been much worse. But spiritually things were definitely looking up.
    The ghost of Daniel Thompson, if not exorcised, had, at least for now, retreated back into the shadows. He was a memory again, nothing more. And with his departure, the ice had melted from James’s spine.
    He went to the bathroom and showered and shaved. He studied himself in the mirror as he brushed his teeth and pronounced himself fit to re-enter the human race, albeit as a rank outsider in the running.
    He dressed, then collected up the photographs from where they still lay scattered on his bedroom floor and shut them back in the suitcase, returned it to the wardrobe and locked the door. He walked through to the kitchen and fixed himself breakfast.
    He sat peering at the wall through the steam of his coffee, steeling himself for the rest of the day.
    Forget.
    Forget everything.
    Right?
    Because that’s what had worked for him right up until Norm had thrust the newspaper article about Dan’s murder into his hands. And that’s what would work for him now as well.
    If the past was a foreign country, then James was determined to remain an unwavering xenophobe: he’d wear his Union Jack boxer shorts with pride, turn up his nose at the first whiff of garlic, and administer a good kicking to anyone who spoke a different language.
    If that was what it took to remain an island, to reassert control over his memories, then that’s what he would do.
    *
    That was also what he’d told himself in the months following his departure from Grancombe, after he’d fled first back here to this flat in London, and then on to Edinburgh University, where he’d rented a flat in New Town and had registered for his fresher year in English Lit.
    And denial had proved good for him.
    It had let him move on.
    It had worked.
    Sure, not at first. For most of that first bitter Scottish winter his nightmares had persisted, half-drowning him in sweat-soaked sheets, trailing him to the bathroom in the middle of the night, lurking in the shadows in the morning for whole minutes after he’d awoken, leaving him gripped by the possibility that the past had the power to infiltrate the present, making him desperately question if he’d ever find peace.
    But, with time, the morning hallucinations had ceased and had melted away with the winter snows, trickling down the gutters out of sight.
    And then, as he’d increased his involvement in university and the here and now, his nightmares had started to lose their solidity in his mind