Page 6 of A Face in the Crowd
I blink at her, silenced for a second before I find my voice. ‘Really?’
It’s only a single word, but I still manage to falter in saying it.
Karen looks to me, picking up on the crack in my voice. She frowns: ‘You okay?’
‘Yes, I um…’
If she noticed my momentary stumble, then Karen moves on quickly. ‘I’m going to invite him to my birthday party,’ she says, before taking two steps across the hall and rapping her knuckles on the door.
We wait in silence as nothing happens. Karen tries knocking a second time but gets the same response, so she shrugs, crouches, and slips an envelope under the door. She turns back to me.
‘You’re coming, aren’t you?’
I shrink back into my apartment. ‘I don’t know. It’s on bonfire night and Billy gets scared by the fireworks.’
As I glance back into the flat, Billy’s ears prick up at the sound of his name. He’s finished his food and is sitting next to the cupboard underneath the kitchen sink. Sometimes, it feels like he’s the bouncing, excitable dog he once was; other times, it’s like he can barely muster the energy to move.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Karen replies. ‘The Rec Centre says dogs are okay. I asked especially. The party’s in the room at the back, so you probably won’t hear the fireworks in there. There’ll be music to drown it out anyway.’
Damn.
Parties are not my thing and haven’t been for a long, long time. It’s all true about Billy and bonfire night, but, as much as I like Karen, I was also hoping to use him as an excuse to get out of going to her party. I think, deep down, that’s how everybody feels about this sort of thing. The minute a wedding invite arrives, or there’s a mention of a birthday or anniversary party, those summoned start thinking of the best way to get out of it. Sickness is an obvious one, but we pray for an altered work rota or to be hit by a taxi. Sure, it might mean a shattered limb – but it will provide the sweet, sweet respite from an evening’s pretence of enjoying ourselves.
With Karen’s party, the Rec Centre is only a street away, so it’s not as if I can even claim to have no way of getting there.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I’ll be there then.’
Karen checks something on her phone and then takes a step towards her own flat at the end of the hallway.
‘You working tomorrow?’ she asks. ‘I was wondering if we might do another Parkrun. I could knock at eight…?’
It’s all a stream of words, touching on three different subjects in what is barely a sentence. It takes me a moment to de-spaghettify it all.
‘I am working,’ I say. ‘But I can do Parkrun before.’
She breaks into a smile. There’s nothing like struggling through a 5K run with company.
‘I’ve gotta get back,’ Karen says. ‘If I turn my back for two minutes, Quinn and Ty end up playing UFC with each other. They’re banned from watching it – but I think someone at school has it on their phone.’ She stops for breath and then adds: ‘Are you still okay to take the kids trick or treating on Sunday?’
‘You’ve sold them as such angels, how could I say no?’
The truth is, I’m not looking forward to it – but Karen and I do our best to help out one another. It’s not as if we have families on whom to rely. Not so long ago, I’d have been happy to go trick or treating. This time of year – Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night – used to be my favourite days of the year, even above Christmas. I’d love the sulphur in the air; the ever-increasing whizzes and bangs that would light up the sky leading up to the fifth of November itself. Now, I have too many bad memories of the week.
Karen smirks. ‘They’re not bad kids, really.’
‘I know.’ A pause. ‘Have you got some fella on the go…?’
I’m fishing, because Karen has been cagey about precisely what she’s doing on Sunday night. She does agency work but only during the day so that she’s home for Tyler and Quinn. This is the third Sunday in a row that I’ll have kept an eye on her boys. Not that I mind.
Karen glances away to the other end of the hall, suddenly unable to meet my eye. ‘Something like that,’ she squirms.
She doesn’t want to talk about it, so I leave it.
‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ she adds, before scurrying down the corridor to her flat. Boys’ screaming voices echo out momentarily as she opens the door and then there’s quiet.
I take a moment to eye the door across the hall. There’s a peephole in the centre and, for some reason, it feels as if there’s someone on the other side. I hug my arms across myself, feeling the stranger’s eyes scanning me. Billy takes that as a cue to poke his head into the hallway. He shifts his head in both directions and then turns to look up at me and he licks his chops.
‘Fat lot of good you are,’ I tell him as I usher him back inside.
