The Wrong Kind of Quiet

Alice answered the door before I knocked.

“You took ages.”

“It's twelve minutes from my house.”

“I meant giving it back.”

I handed her the notebook.

“You're right. I'm sorry.”

She checked the elastic band, turned it over and looked at the back as if I might have damaged a part she could identify by touch.

“Did you read it?”

“Not today.”

“That isn't no.”

“No,” I said. “It isn't.”

She considered me for a moment, then stood aside.

The kitchen smelled of toast. There were crumbs on the counter, two jars of jam open and a plate with one untouched slice beside Denise's chair. Clare had gone out to collect something. Denise was in the sitting room on the phone with Rowan's aunt. I could hear her saying the same facts again: the bag was his; the coach sighting wasn't confirmed; his phone was still off.

Alice led me to the little table by the window. She moved yesterday's envelope drawing to make room for the notebook.

“I thought it might have an address in it,” she said.

“It’s from last autumn.”

“People can go to places they've known about for a long time.”

“Yes. They can.”

She sat down and opened it.

I looked away automatically. She noticed.

“You've already seen it.”

“That doesn't mean I get to keep seeing it.”

She frowned, not at the idea exactly, but at me for arriving at it so late.

The first pages were drawings. Pigeons, mostly, though Rowan had also drawn a man sleeping on a bus and a dog that resembled Ms Delaney's disappointed one closely enough to suggest dogs spent a great deal of time judging us. There were shopping lists, phone numbers, a page of possible titles for a comic.

Alice turned slowly, stopping at a drawing of their kitchen.

“He made my nose too big,” she said.

“He made everybody's nose too big.”

“Yours was huge.”

“I remember.”

She smiled briefly. Then she turned the page.

I had forgotten how much of a person could fit in a notebook without explaining where they had gone. Rowan had written reminders to buy a new charger. He had started a list headed THINGS PEOPLE IN FILMS DO THAT NOBODY DOES, with answer unknown numbers and wear shoes on beds beneath it. Halfway down he had added accept an apology immediately because the music has changed.

I looked at that line for too long.

Alice followed my gaze.

“Is that about you?”

“Possibly.”

“He was really angry.”

“I know.”

“No. I mean at home. He didn't just stop talking to you. He walked round being angry for days.”

I folded my hands under the table.

“He said you'd made him look sad.”

“He was sad.”

“He said you made him look only sad.”

I had no answer for that.

The film had been eight minutes long. That was what I'd kept telling myself afterwards: eight minutes could not contain a whole person. You had to choose. You had to make it about something. But I had chosen his loneliness and called the choice understanding him.

At the screening, Rowan had sat three rows ahead of me. I remembered the back of his head, the collar of his jacket, the way he had gone still when the section about his father began. He hadn't walked out. That had allowed me, briefly, to think I had got away with it.

Afterwards the judge had said I had an instinct for emotional truth.

Rowan waited until the room was nearly empty before speaking to me.

“I asked you not to use it.”

“I thought you meant the bit at the end.”

“I meant the bit.”

“But it explains why—”

“Why what?”

I had looked down at the certificate in my hand. There was no prize money, just the certificate and a chance to submit work to a residential workshop. I had held it carefully anyway.

“Why you want to leave,” I said.

Rowan stared at me.

“I want to leave because I want to draw somewhere other than the back of my mum's stall. Because I'd like to get a bus after seven without planning my entire life around it. Because there are things outside this town, Bea. Not because I'm a sad boy waiting for someone to make a film about me.”

I had said sorry then. I had said it several times. The judge was packing up nearby, and I remember being ashamed partly because someone important might hear us. Even now, that small selfish detail remained attached to the rest.

“Take it down,” Rowan said.

“I will.”

“And don't put music under me when I'm talking.”

I had laughed nervously, thinking he was making a joke.

He wasn't.

At the kitchen table, Alice closed the notebook halfway through.

“There's nothing useful.”

“There might be things the police would want to check. Phone numbers.”

“They already asked Mum about his friends.”

“You could show her anyway.”

Alice ran a finger along the elastic band.

“I just wanted something I could find.”

I knew what she meant. I had spent two days trying to turn ordinary objects into doors that opened somewhere helpful.

“Do you want to tell me about the pigeon?” I asked.

She looked at the envelope beside the notebook.

“It's stupid.”

“It has a very impressive foot.”

“That isn't the point.”

“What is the point?”

She hesitated, then pulled the envelope between us.

“Rowan said if he ever did a comic about Alderwick, the pigeons would be in charge. Because they already sit on all the important buildings and look disappointed.”

“They'd be good at meetings.”

“They'd peck the people who talked too long.”

“That would improve several meetings I've been to.”

Alice smiled again, a little more fully this time.

“This one's meant to be taking over the council.”

“It looks qualified.”

“He said he'd help me draw the town. I can't get the roofs right.”

I looked at the uneven row of houses beneath the giant bird. One chimney leaned at an angle that would have required immediate professional attention.

“They look like houses to me.”

“That's because you can't draw either.”

“Accurate.”

She turned the envelope around and picked up her pencil. For a while I watched her work. She erased one roof, redrew it and erased it again. I wanted to tell her the first version had been fine, but I remembered being seventeen in an art room with people offering reassurance instead of looking properly.

“What if you make the pigeon bigger?” I said. “Then you need less roof.”

Alice considered this.

“That's cheating.”

“It's composition.”

She gave me a look so like Rowan's that my throat tightened.

Then she made the pigeon bigger.

Denise came into the kitchen carrying her phone. She looked from the notebook to Alice's drawing.

“Oh,” she said. “You found it.”

“Bea had it.”

“I remembered. I should have asked sooner.”

“You had other things to think about,” I said.

Denise sat down. Her toast had gone stiff at the edges. She picked it up, took one bite and put it down again.

“Your mum's coming after work,” she told me. “She said she'd bring something for dinner. I've told her we've enough food to feed the street.”

“She'll bring something anyway.”

“Yes. I know.”

We were quiet for a moment. Then Denise asked whether I had eaten. I said yes, because for once I had.

Alice showed her the page of things people did in films. Denise read it, smiled at the shoes on beds, then stopped at the line about apologies.

“He notices everything,” she said.

Present tense. I heard it because I had begun, without wanting to, to hear every tense people used.

“Would you like me to make tea?” I asked.

“Please.”

I knew where the mugs were. That seemed to matter. I could still do a small thing in this house without asking for instructions.

While the kettle boiled, Denise's phone lit up. Not a call, just another message. She read it and set it down, screen upwards, ready for the next one.

Alice leaned over the notebook again.

I took three mugs from the cupboard and put a fourth on the counter for Mum.