That Summer He Died Read Online Free Page B

the short stories he’d got into the habit of writing at school.
    But he hadn’t. He’d done nothing. Instead he’d got drunk. He’d gone out. He’d got into fights. Or he’d stayed home. He’d got high. He’d lain in bed and smoked. He’d tried to write down stories again, things that had nothing to do with his life. But something had been missing. They’d not transported him the way they’d done at school. They’d gone nowhere. They’d made no sense. And when he’d read them through in the morning, it had felt like it hadn’t been him who’d written them at all.
    In the drunken, stoned hazes he’d more and more frequently found himself drifting into, he’d begun repeatedly picturing his mother and father, with blood running down their faces and shards of metal sticking into their skin.
    He’d taken to fantasising about being there with them, imagining how they must have looked and how he would have looked if he’d been there on that day, instead of being safe at school.
    He’d pictured himself in the back of that crumpled car, with his limbs twisted and snapped just like theirs, with his eyes wide open and blank and dead.
    And this was the real reason he’d called Uncle Alan. Because he knew he was trapped here and he was going in circles, like a crab with a missing leg and the tide coming in.
    This last week or two, an alarm had started screeching inside him during those dry-mouthed, gluey-eyed stabbings of self-hatred he suffered waking drunk again in the middle of the night, when he’d wish himself sober and wished himself dead.
    He knew he couldn’t go on like this. Because if he did, he would soon cease to go on at all.
    *
    A glance down the corridor of the train carriage told James it was just about clear; the last passenger was filing through the door. He downed the remains of his Coke and crumpled the can up, first squeezing its centre in his fist, then resting it on the fold-down table on the back of the seat in front of him and pushing down on its top with his palm, crushing it flat.
    He remembered how he’d watched someone do that when he’d been a little kid and had then attempted to copy the action himself. He hadn’t been able to. Too weak.
    But that was then. He’d grown stronger since, had muscled up. Mostly these last two years since his parents had died. Before he’d hit this current rut, before he’d started smoking so much, back at school, he’d taken to working out like it had been an end in itself. Instead of dope, he’d junked out on the endorphins exercise had released in his body. And the grief counsellor had been right: it had helped occupy his mind, had given him something to focus on, had stopped him imagining the crash.
    And that was one of the things he was going to do down here: get fit. Swimming, running, everything he’d stopped doing, he was going at least to try all that again. Because wasn’t that what he’d come here for? A change? A fresh start?
    The front of the station remained busy for about twenty minutes. James watched as, one by one, the other people who’d travelled down to the coast from London set off into Grancombe town on foot, or climbed, laughing and chattering, into the backs of minibuses with campsite names stencilled on their sides.
    The string of taxis at the rank steadily reduced until only a solitary vehicle remained. A driver hunched over his newspaper – basking in the glow of the car light like someone topping up their tan on a sun bed – was sipping from a polystyrene cup, occasionally glancing in his wing mirror at James with a vulture’s knowing eyes.
    James was now the only passenger left and was leaning against the wall at the front of the station, checking his phone to look busy whilst in reality still just waiting for Uncle Alan to arrive. He’d already tried Alan’s home phone: no answer. He didn’t even know if his uncle had a mobile.
    The taxi driver’s glances were only worsening his paranoia over whether he’d