21. Time Passes Slowly

A static moment of peaceful reflection

Static time

She remembers being so drunk in here once, when she was about seventeen, she put three quid in the jukebox thinking it was the fag machine. She danced all night and cadged off the old guys at the bar instead.

The guys at the bar are watching her, half glances. Alden is more direct with his surveillance. Don’t know who put it on but The Cure comes on over the jukebox. She smiles back at the bar as “Pictures of You” drifts over the speakers, crunching ice between her teeth.

She sits there a while and watches the pub fill up. As far as she can tell, not another word is spoken at the bar about Aaron Bailey, and not even whispered by the lips she can read. She watches them. They pretend not to be keeping an eye on her.

Time passes slowly, but not unpleasantly. Samantha Waingard is thinking about being back in this town. The music on the jukebox hasn’t changed much, although at some point someone put Kings of Leon on, but mainly it was the old stuff, the Stone Roses and the Clash. Her mind flashes with an amalgam of Blakean visions of that past life of hers, her ungainly teenage figure, torn fishnet tights, thick goth make up, wanting to paint herself into the sweated wallpaper of the Labour Club, her and her friends cramming in to see whatever punk band was over touring from the States. Husker Dü were the best, but there were a thousand others that all merged into one sprig of sweat. A thousand gigs. The noise distorted and cacophonous, and she only ever saw snippets of the bands. Even with those boots on she spent a lot of time in those days with her nose in people’s armpits. She couldn’t see the bands. Snakebite and black staining the corners of her mouth. The face of Glenn, studded, porridge pasty, he was always nice to her but the night always ended with a grumpy fumble in a doorway on Market Street. Neon brash brightness of the kebab shop half-lighting them for the woos and wahays of pacing football lads from the Arcade. Legs crossed on the roundabout by the train station. Alone. Even when she was with friends she was alone. Getting out was about saving her own life, and she never thought that was melodrama, she thought of it as fact. She thinks about the nerves she felt, gone now, driving over the bridge from Bristol earlier that day; she couldn’t help but glance over the side of the bridge to the sharp glass of the vast grey abyss. Of course, she thinks this way to mock herself. The abyss. The sharp glass of the wave tips. The fear of falling is really the fear of jumping.