Page 80
“Oh, Ben. I can’t even imagine…”
“Slough was more expensive than Edinburgh. Mum couldn’t afford a babysitter after school, but there was a widowed OAP—”
“OAP?”
Ben’s fingers broke up the pretzel into bite-sized pieces. “Sorry—old age pensioner, a senior citizen.”
“Ah, okay.”
“Mr. Chamberlain—he lived in the flat next door. His wife died three years before we moved in and he didn’t have family. He must’ve been lonely. Mum arranged for me to stay with him until she got home from work. We’d watch TV and Mr. C would peel apples for me to snack on. Mum’s cable was always on the blink and we’d usually end up watching her old VHS tapes, so telly at Mr. C’s was a treat. He liked game shows and we’d sit and watch old American series like Diff’rent Strokes, The A-Team—”
“Mr. T!” Riley chuckled. “I pity the fool!” They both laughed.
“Retro TV shows, gotta love ’em! Everything worked out well by the closing credits.”
“Everyone’s happy, everyone’s loved. Imagine if real life were like that?” said Riley.
“Yeah…” Ben sighed. “But my fave program was from the nineties, a cheaply-made British sci-fi show called Equinox Ten. Did you get that over here?”
Riley shook her head.
“Really low budget. It had spaceships made of tinfoil and cardboard, but I loved it! I would mimic their accents over and over again, copying the way they talked, and it kinda stuck. I sounded English, eventually.”
“That’s so sad.” She pushed her sunglasses on top of her head. “I bet your kiddie Scottish accent was adorable.”
You’re adorable. Ben wistfully smiled at her. “If only I had known you then. One friend would’ve made all the difference.” He dropped his eyes to his salty street treat and cleared his throat. “Actually, Mr. C was a good friend. Not like we’d ride bikes or play console games or anything, but he was super messy, which I thought was really cool. No one made him clean up his room! Looking back, he may have been a borderline hoarder, actually. He had piles of clothes, bags of empty takeaway containers, and stacks of dusty books. I’d flip through atlases, old books about space and stars, dreaming of big adventures…” He laughed. “Some things never change.”
“He sounds like a really cool grandfather.”
“Yeah, he was. I never knew my real granddad. Mum was adopted—”
“Really?”
“Yeah, so Mr. C was the next best thing. I had a great time there. He always remembered my birthday. Every year he gave me something: a Slinky, a Rubik’s Cube, that old Operation game with the tweezers—all stuff he found buried in his flat then wrapped up.”
Riley raised her eyebrows. “No kids…but he had children’s toys?”
“Oh, he wasn’t some dodgy Child Catcher bloke! Him and his wife had been foster parents twenty years earlier and they never tossed anything. When I turned ten, he gave me an old telescope. I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.”
“Are you still in touch with him?”
He exhaled heavily. “He died a few months after that birthday.”
“Aw, I’m sorry.”
“I came home from school and he didn’t answer the door. It was weird because he was always there waiting for me. I sat outside, thinking he must’ve gone to the shops, but an hour later the cops came ’round, carrying his shopping bag full of apples and sweets. They were looking for next of kin. Mr. C had popped his clogs in the cleaning supplies aisle at Tesco—a heart attack.”
“Oh no.” Riley’s shoulders drooped.
Shit, you’ve made her sad again. Fix it, Fagan. “I mean, what was he doing there? In the four years we knew him, I never saw him dust or use a Hoover. His flat was choked with stuff. So, was it the thought of cleaning up all that crap that finished him off? We’ll never know.”
Riley pushed him, stifling a laugh. “Ben!”
“It’s true, though! I tell ya to this day, I can’t see a dustpan without getting the willies.”
Riley couldn’t hold back and burst out laughing.
Job done. “If you can’t laugh, right?” Ben winked and popped a piece of pretzel between his lips.
