Holiday Snaps

by Stuart Airey

Last night of our boy’s weekend to Greece. Sozzled and singing our way back to the hotel, the rental just managing to stay on the road. I think I was driving. A single headlight and a thud. We shouldn’t have stopped but we did, feeling too young to bow to catastrophe. He didn’t have a mark on him, I swear. Just his neck an impossible angle. The Vespa dented and the wheel still spinning. Just the breeze in the tops of the cypress and our guilty silence. He was well hidden from the road. Dark-haired and athletic. Even lifeless he looked a young Hermes. Our boat left the next morning. The rental was hardly marked. We didn’t even discuss it. We just left.

A few weeks later we are in our local. A night of it pretending to forget or something like it. No news online and credit cards paid. Mike is on behind the counter so we get him to take our photo, poses on, bellies in. He tosses us the phone and we all lean in across the table to gawk.

There he is smiling with the five of us. His arms around Dan and Joel, his thumbs raised. Hair black and straight, open-necked floral shirt. One of the lads. That shut us up fast. Mike was busy so couldn’t say for sure he’d noticed him and couldn’t we count or something?

We talked on the street in a huddle, hearts racing. Decide we should delete the photo and go home. Tell our partners nothing. Stay in touch and keep our heads down. I spend the hours that night scrolling everything I could think of. Again and again. Fall asleep on the couch with the laptop on me.

Next day, we don’t hear from Dan or Joel. They were supposed to check in by evening. In the small hours the calls come in. Lots of sobbing. Dan is found in the docklands hanging from a port crane. His trouser belt round his neck and his pockets full with wallet, keys and cell. He is so high up above the water no one can figure how he got there. Joel’s blond curly head is found on the passenger seat of his Porsche the next morning. As if he’s trying to see over the dash. The headless remainder of him is sat in the driver’s seat, hands still gripping the wheel. The doors are locked and the keys are dangling on a winged key ring from the inside mirror.

We have nothing useful to tell CID. I can’t help my mind drifting. All through the interviews I imagine walking along endless white corridors to some basement room where art forgeries are kept. Except when you put on gloves and pull out the racks they hold bodies and not paintings. Some with faces askew and eyes done wrong. Yet one of them immaculate.

The three of us descend together, alone in the elevator. Pete leans crumpled against the side panels. He’s both incoherent and remorseful. Aren’t we all allowed one major mistake in our lives? Gus does his best to prop him up.

A cold drizzle has settled in and the streets are slick. We are driving Pete to his parent’s house. I watch him intermittently in the rearview mirror. He is pale and silent, staring out the window. I am wondering about the sharpness of my kitchen knives. I check again on Pete. Sitting next to him is a tanned and smiling figure with his hand resting casually on Pete’s knee. He is not there when I turn and the car slews. Gus looks worriedly at me. I say nothing and twist the mirror.

I finally get to the apartment after midnight. I leave the cell phone on the table and go out on the balcony. I light a cigarette and stare at the city lights. I’ve decided to be alone. I’m imagining a photo album in my head. A young boy on the beach in a hot Greek summer. Smiling confidently, surfing, playing with a dog. Holding up a curled seashell proudly. A mother on a deck chair wearing a cotton print dress. Maybe there is an older brother wrapping his arms around him with the surf washing in. A few hours pass. I am expecting a hand on my shoulder.

The phone vibrates twice on the table as I thought it would. I look deliberately at the reflections of my apartment windows but see only the night. On the third vibration, I slowly flick the phone on. It’s a Google memory. I scroll and background music starts.

We are both riding the Vespa. I have one hand round his waist as he steers and the other outstretched in front of us to hold the phone and take the shot. Our hair is wild. We are laughing. It feels so real. I carefully place the phone back on the table and slowly look up.