Only an idiot would think that this counted as an apology.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
Brendan Remnant’s trembling hand pushed up at the sash window. He might not have been altogether certain how he had got this far, but he had done his research. Mostly via movies on YouTube, none of which had featured driving rain or insecure drainpipes. Nonetheless, he wasn’t far off the action hero look he’d had in mind at the start of the evening. If said action hero had let himself go a bit in the girth department. And if he was very, very afraid of heights.
“Move, damn you.”
Parcel clamped hard under his armpit, its contents almost certainly compromised by the heat and the sweat and the rain, Brendan again failed to avoid looking at the ground. Below him was a swaying expanse of broken-up concrete filled with bins, bikes and abandoned shopping trolleys. He wondered which of these would cause the most damage when he landed, as he most assuredly would, any moment soon.
He had fallen before, though, Brendan told himself. Maybe it hadn’t been quite as bad as the literal fall he was going to suffer if he couldn’t get the window open, but…
Who the hell was he kidding?
Come on, Brendan, forget the height, he told himself. You’ve had worse.
You’ve been threatened with worse, too.
If I catch the bloody idiot responsible for this, I’ll skin him alive.
Like those words, for example. The therapists had told him, when he had let them tell him anything at all, to stop thinking about Bev. They’d told him that he was hurting himself twice over by fixating on her words when he’d sent the flowers and the card. They’d told him about the “second arrow”; and how, by replaying her comments, he was effectively firing it straight at himself. But, then, they’d mistaken him for someone who didn’t understand what they were saying, as opposed to someone who no longer cared.
No, Brendan thought, as his gloved hands slid once again from the paintwork. He did care. He cared enough to know that, whatever happened here, he deserved it. He’d take their second arrow, alright. And a third, fourth, or fifth if it did something to quell the pseudo-intellectualising about his many failings. If it just made everything stop.
Brendan shoved again at the window. For a moment, he seemed certain to lose his balance, certain to fall to the concrete below, certain to find himself looking up at the blue lights approaching. Because they were never very far away.
The parcel slid from its already uncomfortable position. If he lost it, he would have to climb the drainpipe all over again. Only an idiot would try this the once, he knew that. Twice and he was going to have to add a new label to the collection of insults he’d been awarded over the years.
The window really ought to have moved by now. He could see that the catch at the top of the frame wasn’t across. All he had to do was get some purchase – any purchase – and he would be well away. Or, at least, well onto part two of tonight’s shouldn’t-even-be-doing-this-anyway enterprise.
A third shove. A proper shove. Out and up. Reaching further than before, and why not? If anyone round these parts knew about overreaching, it was Brendan Remnant.
Only an idiot would think that this counted as an apology. That’s what she’d said. When he’d last tried.
Well, let’s see about that, Brendan thought. Let’s see how much of an idiot he was if he got through this.
“Oooof.”
14 out-of-condition stone of not exactly muscle collided heavily with the brickwork. One hand was now wedged into a growing gap between window and frame. The other grasped the drainpipe tighter still as he shifted his weight further towards the window. Towards the sill that needed to accommodate him and his bulk if he could just get his knees that bit higher. If he could just force himself through the fear.
“Please, just give me this much, God, and I promise I’ll never trouble you again.”
And up the window went. Brendan was now flat now against the wall, legs hanging free, cheap over-size shoes as ever threatening to slip straight off, and – for a moment – he was as worried about losing them as he was about falling. But then he found that his right hand was as firm as it would ever be on the perilously wet sill, and then his left stopped its frantic flailing and finally came across to join its partner in actual crime. There was a chance here. He might make it.
The parcel slipped again. A good few inches this time. Any further and it would drop. Brendan thought that his jacket, done up tighter than his former bail conditions, might well hold it if it escaped his armpit entirely, but he didn’t want to bet on it. His luck didn’t work that way.
He knew that now, and maybe part of him was banking on it failing him once again. The part of him that, even now, wondered how it would be to just let himself Fall.
Still, the quicker he was in, the better. In, across the bedroom, down the stairs, into the front room, and away. It all sounded so easy put that way. In bullet points, perhaps. On a PowerPoint. The kind of environment that used to suit him, and that he knew he could never return to. Not after what he had done and what had brought him here, clutching his precious box of Milk Tray.
The cheap apology to a woman he had never met. On behalf of the man in the pub who couldn’t say sorry to her.
And trusted the man who would forever be sorry, but could never apologise for what he had done.
Because Bev had never told him.
And he had never been brave enough to ask.
Mike Hickman (@MikeHicWriter) is a writer from York, England. He has written for Off the Rock Productions (stage and audio), including 2018’s “Not So Funny Now” about Groucho Marx and Erin Fleming. He has recently been published in EllipsisZine, Dwelling Literary, Bandit Fiction, Nymphs, Flash Fiction Magazine, Brown Bag, and Safe and Sound Press. His co-written, completed six-part BBC radio sit com remains unproduced but available to interested producers!
The Cabinet of Heed 