Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis

Chapter Thirty-One

When I arrive at Frank’s with a bag of food and hot drinks from Starbucks, he’s sitting on his armchair amongst boxes, like a fort. He smiles at me. The man fucking well smiles.

‘Morning, Frank,’ I say. ‘I bought you a tea. Just in case the kettle was packed.’

‘It wasn’t,’ he says. ‘But George over there packed the mugs.’

George, Ian’s squash partner, appears in the doorway from the kitchen, a barrel of a man. ‘Sorry,’ he says, a vape cigarette in his sausage hand. ‘My fault.’ He grins at me. ‘It’s lovely to meet you at last. What a job you’ve done here. Ian said you’d be a dream and he wasn’t wrong.’

‘Ah. Thank you.’

Frank says nothing, but he nods, and I like to think he agrees. George ducks out into the kitchen. ‘I’ll get back to disconnecting the washing machine,’ he says. ‘Bloody thing won’t budge.’

Frank’s moving day has come around quickly and you’d hardly know that the flat I found when I knocked on 178A that day, that day at the start of summer, the one Sam showed me around, awks as fuck, is the same one we sit in now. I feel proud of myself, really, for the job that I’ve done. But mostly I feel proud to be part of this. This is a new start for Frank – the moment he walks away from something he’s frightened to let go of. And I hope, in some way, I’ve helped him feel able to.

‘Sam’s going to be late back,’ he says gruffly. ‘Can’t make today. Said he’ll get in on Saturday instead, which is no bloody help to me, but George is here. And his daughter said she’d help. So.’

My heart stops. ‘So he is coming back?’

It was over a week ago, that Sam and Jenna were to meet. On their anniversary. I keep imagining it, taunting myself with it, a big stick over the head. Sam, windblown and handsome, some beautiful, grinning, long-haired beauty running up to him, throwing her arms around him, Sam spinning her around, the cameras panning out, sodding Bon Jovi ballads playing––

‘He’ll be back, as far as I know, love,’ he says, and we both sip at our teas slowly, a mirror image. ‘And I should thank you,’ says Frank, easily, as if the kind words have been there, waiting, all along. ‘For all your hard work.’

I soften, like ice cream in the sun. ‘Are you sure you mean that?’ I tease. ‘And you’re welcome.’

‘Sam said you were a blessing, but – well, I thought you were a bloody nuisance, to be honest. All that chatting.’

‘To myself thanks to you.’ I laugh. ‘Nuisance. That’s mild though. I was sure you wanted me dead at one point.’

Frank laughs huskily, then sits back in his chair and looks at me, knobbly hands wrapping around his takeaway cup. ‘He likes you, my Sam. I mean, Christ, I don’t know much. But I know that.’

My heart thrums in my ears. ‘Well, I like him too––’

‘No, I mean he really does. He changes, when you’re here. Sort of … ’ Frank opens a hand on his lap. ‘Opens up.’ He looks up at me. ‘Sticks around. Makes plans. He sort of just wanders about, otherwise, you know. Lost.’

‘Really? Sam doesn’t really seem lost to me.’

‘Mm,’ considers Frank, swallowing a mouthful of tea. ‘He never quite got over it. Losing Bradley. His cousin. You know.’

I nod.

‘He was only a kid but … things that happen when you’re young – I think it does something to you. Mucks with your blueprint. Keeps you stuck.’ He takes another long, shaky sip. ‘But then again, none of us have been the same since. I don’t even see my brother any more, Bradley’s dad. Did he tell you that?’

‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘No, he didn’t.’ There’s an ache in my chest as Frank speaks. I was stuck. I have been stuck. And it sounds like Frank has been too. He’s lonely. Without his nephew, his brother, and a lot of the time, Sam too. All of them separated by this one awful event. And when you’re lonely, I suppose it’s easy to be sad and jaded with the world.

‘What actually happened?’ I ask, pressing a stray piece of brown parcel tape down on a box beside me labelled ‘DVDs’.

‘He hasn’t told you,’ says Frank, but it isn’t a question. He seems unsurprised. ‘No, he doesn’t talk about it.’

I think of Daisy, and how I rarely say it all out loud either. For so many years, I worried that if I said it out loud, people would be judging me – thinking that I might’ve been able to stop it, that it could’ve been me, that they’d want the details – the gossip. People do love a tragedy. I’d also worry too, that somehow, if I said it aloud, that something out there would get wind that I was still here, still alive, come back and fix it.

Frank looks down at his tea, then at me. ‘I always sort of blame myself. He was wild, and my Sam was so sensible, so strong and kind. Still is. And – well, his cousin, he looked up to him. And when Sam’d come over, we’d get him to chaperone, keep an eye on him, and looking back that was such bloody pressure to put on him. He was a kid. Wise before his years but a teenager. And that’s when it happened. Sam left him alone – split second, really––’

‘God, that’s awful.’

‘Happened on his watch, I suppose you’d say. He’d just got out of hospital. We thought he’d be fine, once he got home, settled.’

I think back to the day I got home from hospital after I lost my way, and Mum, I think, had been shocked at how far from ‘normal’ and better I was. I felt unsafe at home, wobbly, too free. I think she expected me to get home, sleep in my own bed, and wake up, fighting fit, just like you do after the flu. Poor Sam. Poor Bradley. He went home too soon. ‘That’s so terrible. Sam must’ve––’

‘Yes,’ says Frank. ‘He had a terrible time, did Sam, for a while. Blamed himself.’

My heart aches in my chest. Sam must’ve carried such a heavy load around. And I know it so well. Because I slip so easily into blame. For Daisy. Because of the times I went over and over in my head what I could’ve done, to save her. And because of Mum. Did I cause the stroke, that time I lost myself? All that pressure I put on her, all that worry. I wish he was here. I wish I could tell him I understand. That he doesn’t need to run, just as much as I don’t need to hide.

‘Anyway.’ Frank breathes in deeply, puffing a breath out of his veiny cheeks. ‘I think he comes back … for you.’

‘For me?’

‘Yes. For you.’

Frank chuckles, a deep, throaty smoker’s chuckle. ‘It ain’t for me, darlin’,’ he laughs. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever be poster boys for father and son. I’ve made my mistakes, I know I have. But Sam – he comes back for you. I know that much.’

I look around Frank’s empty flat, the TV mumbling, the soulless woodchip, the lack of photos, of ornaments and collectables. I can almost feel the ghost of teenage Sam loping about this flat, never feeling like he quite fit in. And now it’s an almost clean slate for someone else.

‘What about Jenna?’ I ask.

‘Oh.’ Frank rubs a hand over his thin mouth. ‘Well, Jenna’s … Jenna’s a good girl. Nice. Sensible. She sort of scooped him up and nursed him back to life. But they shouldn’t be together, though. No, not now. But that’s the thing. I think they feel they’re tied – that they owe something to each other.’

I nod. ‘I know what that’s like,’ I say to Frank.

‘You and me both, darlin’.’

Frank and I drink in silence for a while, no sound except for the television and George on the balcony, chatting on the phone.

‘If you want my opinion,’ he says, ‘I think he’s scared.’

‘But Sam doesn’t strike me as someone who gets scared. He climbs mountains. Icy mountains. With lions.’

Frank shrugs. ‘Safer to climb a mountain than to risk getting your heart broken.’