Forever

  ***

  He swam up out of sleep to find the pungent smell of petrol in the air. He could hear the low insistent purr of a motor engine from somewhere beyond the room.

  He sat up, disoriented at first, having forgotten falling asleep on the lounge sofa. He looked around, his heart racing at the sound of such a mundane noise coming to him from outside.

  Outside.

  Maybe everything had returned to normal . . .

  He twisted round and looked to the front bay window. The gulf of darkness still remained. He leaned forward, listening closely to the sound of the car engine. It appeared to be coming from beyond the garage annex door which didn’t make sense at all. They never used that door these days. The garage was used for storage; they parked the Mazda out in the street.

  He got up and walked across the lounge, glancing up to see that the master bedroom door was shut.

  He opened the door slowly, the noise of the engine growing loud in his ears, and found himself staring at the back end of a light blue E-type Jaguar. An E-type S1 Roadster to be precise.

  His dad’s pride and joy.

  He could see that the driver’s side window was open, a man’s elbow jutting out. David circled slowly round the rear of the vehicle, studying the sleek polished bumpers, the immaculate paintwork, running his fingers lightly over the raised black canvas top. He reached the passenger door and crouched down to the open window, afraid of who he might see.

  “Hello, son.”

  David sucked in his breath.

  His father looked exactly as he did in his prime, the way David preferred to remember him, before he got old and jaded and distant. He had a full head of wavy thick brown hair and that awful pencil moustache David never really liked; his father thought it made him look dashing. He was wearing his favourite sports sweater, the one with diamonds across the chest, and his leather driving gloves with little buttons up the sides.

  He turned his head robotically, a grin spreading across his face. God, it had been so long since he’d seen his father’s smile.

  “Come on, son,” he said, “come and sit with your old dad.”

  David unlocked the door and climbed in, slipping down into the bucket seat. He took a moment to breathe in the scent of the car: the wax, the upholstery, his father’s aftershave. Hai Karate.

  The smell of petrol overpowered the scent, and David felt a stab of warning deep in his head: something dark and awful that refused to surface completely.

  But something made him say, “Dad, it’s not healthy running the car like this in the garage. Can you switch off the engine?”

  His father stared at the steering column, a smile frozen on his face. He shook his head. “I like the way she purrs,” he said.

  David looked around and saw the sleek remote for the garage door sitting in the well between the seats. He picked it up.

  “Is it okay if I open the garage door?” he asked.

  He had been twelve when his dad looked this young and alive, and now he sounded like that timid twelve-year old again.

  His father nodded.

  David pointed the remote, pressed the OPEN button and the garage door hummed into life. It rolled upwards with a steady electric whine, revealing the blackness beyond.

  They sat in silence and stared at it for a while. His father sighed, a pained expression on his face.

  “Are you okay, Dad?” David asked. It was something he was not used to: asking his father how he felt. His father always tried to hide that stuff away.

  “I’m sad for you, son.”

  David blinked. It was not the response he had expected. “Sad for me? Why?”

  “Walking out on your marriage so soon?” He shook his head. “When your mother and I got married, it was for life.”

  “But . . .”

  David felt a pain in his head and touched his temple. His memories were coming back but in jagged staccato images.

  “But, Dad, you and Mum were miserable. Dad, you were so unhappy you . . . you . . .”

  The pain was intrusive now, obscuring his thoughts. This was all wrong. He shouldn’t be talking to his father, couldn’t be . . .

  “I know, son,” his father said. “I know what you’re trying to say. But do you know why I stayed with your mother all those years? For you, David. That’s right. I did it for you.”

  Tears sprang into David’s eyes, and emotion overwhelmed him. “Dad, that’s not fair,” he managed to say. “Dad, I love you. But I don’t want to end up like you.”

  His father’s pleasant expression faltered, and deep grooves of concern appeared on his forehead.

  “I saw how unhappy you were, Dad, and I didn’t want you to be unhappy. You never talked to me, you never spent time with me. You were so far away. So far away.” He paused, trying to gather himself, staunch the flow of tears. “I won’t end up trapped like you, Dad. I’m sorry, but I won’t.”

  “Son, I don’t want you to end up like me either.”

  His father pushed his head back into the plush headrest, looking out into the impenetrable darkness.

  “There’s only one way to end this, David,” he said.

  “End what?”

  “She’s controlling you, son. She created this whole thing to trap you, to keep you here until you come round. Are you going to just accept that? Do you want to end up like me?”

  He sat forward, eyes clenched shut, massaging his temples with the tips of his fingers.

  “Face it, David, there are only two solutions. You can sit here in this house forever and a day, being all indignant and refusing to kow-tow to her demands to love her . . . or you can take positive action.”

  “Positive action?”

  “If she’s the one controlling this situation, if this state of existence is being held in place by some hidden power within her . . . then getting rid of her will end it, won’t it?”

  “Getting rid of her? Dad, what does that mean?”

  “Jesus Christ, David. Do I have to spell it out for you?”

  “You’re saying I should kill my wife? That I should murder her?”

  “I’m saying you should go upstairs right now, go into the bedroom where she’s sleeping and smother the life out of her . . . before she does it to you.”

  “I can’t do that, Dad.”

  “Yes, you can. It’s not like you’re going to end up in prison for it. You’re stuck in an endless void, just you and her. No witnesses. No fear of justice. The best thing that will happen is that this will all end and you’ll snap back into reality.”

  Reality . . .

  Silence filled the garage. Even the sound of the engine faded to nothing.

  The pain had left him now and he stared at his father, realising with sudden clarity that of course this couldn’t happen. His father had taken his own life ten years earlier, had waited for his wife to leave the house before going out to the garage and gassing himself in his favourite old motor.

  His father was right. None of this was real. None of it.

  “Go on, son. Do it now. Don’t end up like your old man.”