The front door banging shut announced the arrival of one of my parents back from work. After a day of analysing my powers and saying 'I don't know' a lot it was somewhat of a relief to speak to someone else.
Fiona and I walked downstairs to find my father halfway through a beer.
"One of those days, Dad?"
"Just a bit," he sighed. He undid his tie, took off his jacket and slumped into an armchair in the front room. Fiona and I settled down opposite him on the sofa.
"Work has been pretty stressful. The stock market has been so volatile recently it's really tough to know whether the company is going to continue to get venture capital funding. I hope so, or the job I was hired to do is not going to exist."
"You really think that's a possibility Dad?"
"I hope not son, but I'm trying to be realistic. I really want to make a go of this role but I may have to start looking around for something outside the.com sector."
"That would be such a shame! I know how much you were looking forward to growing the sales team at your new place."
"Yup. And the product is really good too. Everyone needs email management with the explosion of emails flooding into businesses but a good product might not save us if we can't get the next round of funding secured. Bloody stock market."
He took another long pull from the beer bottle, slowly relaxing again.
"How about you two? What have you been up to today or don't I want to know?"
Fiona blushed slightly and I scrambled for an answer.
"We've been going over ideas for how to use the information that Joe told us about yesterday. To be honest we haven't really got anywhere."
"Well, why don't I put my job to one side, you put the rumours to one side and we can all go out to the pub tonight."
"Sounds great Dad!"
"Thanks Mr Conw...I mean Mark," said Fiona.
"OK. I'll cook up my famous spag bol and then we can all head out and forget about everything for a while."
The kitchen was soon blasting with the sounds of Supertramp and chopping onions. Fiona and I showered quickly and got changed into some different clothes for the pub. Dad was calling us to eat just as the front door slammed and Mum came in.
She looked thoroughly depressed and only perked up slightly at the smell of dinner.
"You're late Mum. Is everything OK?"
I took her bag and gave her a hug.
"Not too great Jake, if I'm honest. But I'm home now and it smells like your father has been working his magic in the kitchen. Let's eat first and then talk about it."
We settled around the table as Dad served up one of my favourites. He was a frustrated chef at heart and when he did cook it was always good. His spag bol was wonderful - a mix of pork and beef mince with onions, chopped tomatoes, olives, herbs and probably other stuff that I didn't know about. Whatever it was I could eat it by the bucketload and always had to hold myself back.
We told Mum about the pub idea and she was equally enthusiastic.
It wasn't long after 7pm that we were walking up the hill to an old coaching house called the Four Horseshoes. It was a slightly rundown place but a new manager had taken it over about a year ago and he was slowly turning it around into being more of a food pub. The manager was a guy called Simon that my Dad vaguely knew through football so if he was going out for a pint it was always to the Four Horseshoes.
"Mark! Great to see you. Not often we see you on a Monday."
"Nice to see you too Simon. You remember Anne?"
"Of course, welcome."
"And this is my son Jake and his girlfriend Fiona."
"Good to see you both. Now what can I get you all?"
We were quickly settled at a table. In no time we had two pints of Summer Lightning, a glass of chardonnay and a gin and tonic sitting in front of us. Both my parents looked like they really needed this and I smiled to see them relaxing.
Over the next hour or so the pub filled up a little bit and we chatted about work, university and everything other than the rumours. We couldn't escape those for long though. Mum had been forced to deal with every shitty job that they could find for her at work. It was crushing as she had been there for well over five years. All because of the rumours about me. I felt like shit.
Dad wanted to go to the Citizen's Advice Bureau to get their help to file a grievance, but with limited job opportunities out there Mum didn't want to do it. With the divorce she was more aware than ever that she couldn't afford to lose her job, however crappy it was.
Mum and Dad headed home after one drink. I knew they must want some time and space to themselves in the house so we stayed for a while longer, playing pool and loading up the jukebox.
We were part way through our second game when the door opened and a group of guys in sports gear came in, probably from the five a side pitch down the road.
"It's Jake isn't it?"
I turned round reluctantly expecting yet another arsehole from school. But it was Dave and Phil, the two guys from the bus accident. They were part of the football group that had just arrived. I broke into a smile when I realised who it was.
"Hi! Yes, that's right."
"Great to see you man. We were hoping you'd drop by at some point. We wanted to buy you a beer."
"Thanks Dave, but you really don't need to do that."
"That's no problem, give me a secon...oh, sorry, am I interrupting a date?"
I laughed at his sudden change of tack.
"No, that's fine. We're just getting out of the house for a while. This is my girlfriend Fiona."
"Wow! Nice to meet you. I hope that the hero here has told you all about what he did in that crash."
"A little," said Fiona, "but he's quite modest about it."
"Well he shouldn't be," said Paul chiming in for the first time. "He was already up and helping the injured when we were trying to figure out which way was up. And with all that blood a lot of people would have freaked. Not Jake. You've got a good one here."
"Thanks, I'm slowly coming to that conclusion myself."
"Guys please!" I was feeling embarrassed and pleased at the same time.
"At least let us buy you a beer and then you can carry on with your date without a pair of smelly footballers in the way."
"That's really kind, thank you."
"And next time you fancy a beer, pop up on a Saturday evening and we'll see how good you are at pool."
"That sounds great, I'll do that."
A beer and another gin and tonic appeared a few minutes later and with a cheerful wave the two left us to finish our game.
"They're really nice."
"Yeah, I thought so too. Good guys."
"And you just know them from the accident?"
"Yes. They were the only two that came forward when I asked for someone to help me with the two seriously injured people."
"Well, it looks like we should spend a bit more time up here on a Saturday evening if this is the sort of welcome that you're going to get."
"I guess so."
Seven years of being picked on, put down and generally treated like shit left me completely unnerved and unsure when faced with such a genuine offer of friendship. I literally didn't know how to take it. I mean how could they want to be around someone like me? Surely this was just a trap and I'd be the butt of a joke yet again. What was the catch?
Fiona could see it was genuine though and it was her that nudged me to go and say goodbye to the guys when we left and thank them again for the beer. That started some good natured banter about free beers and the trouble that we'd got the two of them into with their teammates. We were all smiles as we left the pub.
The walk back felt shorter than the walk there and I'm certain that there were noises off in my parents bedroom as we drifted off to sleep that night.
= = = = = = = = = =
"No, Jake!"
"But I have to! We've been talking this through for days and getting nowhere. What other options do we have?"
The argument had been going on for a while.
I'd been very wary of any kind of intimate contact when we got home after the pub as I still thought that alcohol and hormones together could potentially trigger the Pulse. So we'd slept deeply and as with most mornings I woke up feeling a bit too warm with Fiona wrapped around me and a bad case of morning wood. There aren't many better ways to wake up.
The morning ritual went ahead like any other work day and Mum and Dad both left the house looking much better than they had when they'd got home last night. Sometimes you just need to get for a bit and that seemed to have helped them both.
Sometimes when you wake up it takes all morning before you feel like you're ready for the world and other times you bounce out of bed ready for anything. I'd woken up with the firm conviction that spending yet more time talking things through wasn't going to get us any further. We didn't have enough information.
I needed to use the Pulse.
The thought of doing something like that again scared the shit out of me but I had to do something. I'd mulled it over throughout breakfast and had tried to figure out how to make things safer. Once Mum and Dad had left I'd told Fiona and the argument had gone on ever since.
"But Jake, you nearly died!"
"I know, I know. Don't think that I'm not scared."
"So why take the risk?"
"Because this is never going away otherwise. I have to get some proof."
"So go and see Youle the Tool and force him to confess using the...green one?"
"The blue. But while that would work don't you think that his sudden complete change of character would be noticed? I visit and suddenly he's owned up that it was him? I'm sure that the police would be assuming that I'd leaned on him somehow. That has to be an absolute last resort."
"What does the green one do again?"
I blushed thinking back to how I'd used it in the past.
"It allows me to create illusions and maybe more. I really haven't used it much so I'm not sure what I can do."
"Could you make a version of Jennifer for him to talk to? Get him to confess something to her?"
"I have no idea. It would be pretty draining and I'd have to make her real to the touch somehow. It's a good idea but it's pretty risky. And I've no idea how close they've got to each other. What if they've become an item and she's suddenly behaving totally differently..?"
