Half Plus Seven Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Half Plus Seven

  Dan Tyte

  For Rebecca

  Chapter 1

  When I woke up at the strange house in bed with the 39-year-old psychic, I didn’t yet know how Sister Gina would change my life. Sister Gina was a psychic too. But we’ll get to her later. I’d drunk a bunch of booze the night before and ended up in the arms of another. This kind of happens a lot. More than it should for a man of my experience. But to be greeted at first light by the ageing face of a fading earth mother 10 years my senior, well that’s kind of a new low. Or high. Half full. Half empty. Half crazy. Half happy. Let’s just call it a benchmark. It’s a new BENCHMARK. Let’s rewind to how… Christ I can’t even remember her name… at least once you’d think I’d be able to remember their name. Let’s call her The Mystic. This is how she found her way to my side. It was a Friday night and I’d been at a bar in the town.

  It’d been the usual sketch. I’d had a pint which turned into three at lunchtime and had zoned in and out of consciousness at my desk for the rest of the afternoon. My boss had asked me to file a report on the Henderson campaign by 3 p.m. but I’d crawled out of it by blaming the more culpable fuckwits I had the pleasure of spending five days a week with. Come 4 p.m. my body was craving another drink. I’d looked around the office and could only see Pete. The last PR man standing. I grabbed his attention with a snarl and before either of us knew it we were stood at the nearest bar discussing the merits of the latest batch of strawberry beer.

  ‘Well it might not put hairs on your chest, but it’s not half bad you know.’

  ‘Quiet, Pete. Get me another one.’

  And repeat.

  Pete came and went and other voices passed through my brain over the ensuing hours. The Hi Honey I’m Home hours. The Hi Honey Oh Fuck You Don’t Exist So I’m Going To Go And Get Plastered Hours. No checking little Dave’s long division, no asking Alice about ballet class. Just drinking. And thinking. And thinking about drinking.

  Before I knew it, I was asking the outline of a smallish man in a double-breasted jacket and a well-worn badge of honour what his purpose was, where he’d been and if his mother loved him. He looked at me like I was strange or the town drunk. Turns out I was neither, either or both depending on what day it was or who you asked. Before the clock struck ridiculous, the cognitive side of my brain battled with the booze to convince my body that a breather might be a good idea.

  Left followed right followed left followed right followed left to the door of the bar.

  The cold air hit me. My brain oxygenated. My senses sharpened. My hands reached into my pocket for a cigarette. I had remarkably soft hands. You’d have thought I swam in lakes of Fairy Liquid before breakfast every morning. My father’s hands were man’s hands. Bricklayer’s hands. Coarse, cut, knowing. My wear and tear was in the brain box. Mental. Metaphysical. A clusterfuck of failed relationships, shot down dreams, hypochondriac breakdowns, parental indifference and bullshit jobs had seen to that. And it wasn’t getting any rosier.

  The maze of city streets was dotted with people like Pacmen; shoppers, sinners, losers, winners. I already knew which I was.

  ‘Need a light?’

  ‘Erm… yes.’

  ‘Well, do you want one?’

  ‘Erm… yes.’

  An experienced hand reached out of the vacuum to light my smoke. A tattoo of an eye snaked past. The movement was hypnotic. Stay sharp.

  ‘I can sense your aura. You’re troubled. Why are you so troubled?’

  ‘I can sense your aura too. It says you’re a loony cat-hoarding tree hugger.’

  She shook. Or perhaps I wobbled.

  ‘Why are you so angry?’

  I took a deep breath. In through the nose. The air hit. The brain whirred. Out through the mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry. I really am. My dog died last week. Mauled by cats. Poor Timmy. It’s just you looked like a cat person is all. And it all came flooding back. The screech… the fur… the whimper. Let’s hope all good dogs do go to heaven.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Let me buy you a drink.’

  ‘Um…’

  I took a long drag on my cigarette and grabbed the eye-etched hand. Back into the sea of depression. Back indoors. But not alone.

  ‘I’ve made you a cup of chai.’

  A questioning noise spluttered out of my mouth. I generally couldn’t talk until I’d sunk two cups of tea in the morning and found it even harder to enunciate when being offered a cup of God-knows-what by God-knows-who.

  ‘What the fuck is that…? And where the fuck am I…? And who the fuck are you…?’

  Flashback.

  Falling up the messy stairs of a house to a bolted door. Darkness. Candles. Strong smelling candles. Cheap nasty liquor. Bullshit talk about who we used to be 2 months ago, 200 years ago. Changing the subject. Lecturing, aggressively, dismissively. Fumbling. Spilt drinks. Pulled hair. An ageing body fading from the light. The eye-etched hand blinking, sagging, giving. Sweat.

  Nothingness.

  ‘Well if you don’t want it I’ll just give it to the plants. Probably too much goodness in there for you anyway.’

  ‘Do you have normal tea?’

  ‘What is “normal”? You’re certainly not “normal”.’

  ‘Well your voodoo has got something right.’

  ‘You shouldn’t mock the spirits you know.’

  The room was dank and decaying but decorated with garish symbols of mysticism. Much like its inhabitant. Purple velvet birth charts pinned to damp-risen Artexed walls. Discoloured portraits of Indian spirit guides. A latent smell of cat’s piss.

  ‘You were mean last night. And this morning. I can sense you’re not a well person. But there’s something about you that I like. And the sex… it was like you’d been possessed by some higher power. You were almost in a trance.’

  I sat up and rested my back on the headboard. This was not how I dreamed my Saturday mornings would be. I had to get the hell out of here. Where was the door? My blurry eyes scanned the room. The garish decor did not mix well with my hangover. There it was, bookended by joss sticks.

  ‘Thanks, really, thanks. I think it’s time I left and went back to the real world. You must have a tea leaf reading or a seance to get to.’

  Her smudged-grey eyes looked at me. Not with anger or disappointment. With pity. I got out of the bed, grabbed my jeans from the trinket-strewn floor, pushed out of the door and almost tripped down the stairs trying to put my shoes on.

  By the time I’d stumbled my way through the streets back home, it had dawned on me that I hadn’t eaten for about 24 hours. Not a morsel. Not unless you counted drink, fags, chai and some bits of a hippy that I’d be best off forgetting about.

  My body needed something. Craved something good.
Something healthy. Something regenerative. Something to purge it of its sins. The house was empty. The cupboards weren’t far off. The sum total wouldn’t have looked out of place at a Harvest Festival in an inner-city comprehensive: a few own brand tins, half a pack of basmati rice and Chow Mein flavour Super Noodles. At Mother Hubbard’s the cheap Chinese nutritional nothingness was an oasis in the desert. A shitty puddle of one but an oasis all the same.

  But it wasn’t just hunger that was eating me. Just as a carpenter laughs in the face of splinters or a lifeguard to getting his flip-flops wet, a drinker should become immune to hangovers. Migraines, dizzy spells, nausea; nothing more than an occupational hazard. A mild distraction that lasted all of two drinks until the next day’s. But not for me. They fucking killed me and were getting worse with age.

  It started with the headaches. A dull thump that constantly lived in my head like a mental stutter. But like a gimp with a limp, constant pain could be lived with, worked around, understood, dealt with. The dry mouth was a bitch. It wasn’t pleasant to spend the day with a kisser that tasted like the population of Bombay had discarded their cigarette butts in it the night before. But it was bearable. You could brush your teeth. Use mouthwash. Chew gum. Or smoke more.

  Wild weekends always brought me closer to God. This isn’t the Road to Damascus. A Catholic education had ripped up that map. Rather the night before made the morning after a collection of what felt like final heartbeats. And it was these palpitations that slayed me. They were the unknown, the joker in the pack, the fly in the ointment. Headaches weren’t going to kill me. A dry mouth wasn’t going to kill me. But my heart stopping? That’d sure as the sun setting be my untimely end.

  But even worse than the tremors? The sense of guilt at last night’s crimes. Where had I been? Just what had I done? Nagging doubts are a fucker when you spent a fair proportion of your life in a state of non-remembrance. I caught my reflection in the stainless steel oven’s splashback. The bluntness of the mirror blurred my features but I knew them by now. My face was symmetrical enough, barring a small scar above my left eyebrow, earned by answering my dad back in between brushing my teeth as an 8-year-old, his push in my back causing me to headbutt the chrome tap, the spat-out toothpaste turning pink with blood. Green eyes sat on dark bags above cheekbones they used to say you could hang your coat off. You’d just better not weigh down the pockets these days. A five o’clock shadow set all day over a square jaw, a dimple in my chin being cute or corny depending on your tastes. Once blonde hair was pushed off my forehead, still going strong at twenty-nine, its colouring doing me a favour in keeping grey at bay. I knew I still looked good. Goodish. I knew I had looked better. I knew another 5 years of this lifestyle and I could forget it.

  Dear Mr McDare,

  Thank you for taking the time to visit us recently.

  At the MediHealth Wellness Centre we identify health risks that may affect you in the future, so you can do something about it now. Following your consultation with our healthcare experts, we would offer the following advice:

  Giving up smoking altogether

  Cutting back on number of units of alcohol drunk each week to 5 units

  Exercising for at least 30 minutes a day

  Visiting your GP and explaining your concerns regarding your ear and your genitals

  As the country’s pioneers of preventative health, our health-check is intended to keep you in the best of health. Following the recommendations contained within this letter can help you achieve this and live a healthy and happy life.

  Sincerely,

  Dr L. Taylor

  Chapter 2

  I worked in a medium-sized office, which is to say there were about fifty other lemonheads doing the same shit I did to varying degrees of authority, success and interest. The shit was writing bullshit for bullshitters to sell bullshit. Or PR to you. Public Relations. Relations with the Public. It’s fair to say that if you wanted a job which showed you the world only cared about money, and the odd pat on the slimy back – which in its wicked way led to, you guessed it, money – then this was it. I duped people for a living. Which, as you’re beginning to discover, was quite a sad one. Heck, a lot of the time I even duped myself. Which is what made the moments of realisation that smacked you bang on the bridge of the nose at ten to four on a Tuesday afternoon all the more poignant. Chocolate bar brands sponsoring never-seen-their-dick fatsos to eat balanced diets, reality TV stars trying to reposition themselves as relevant, selling the ‘social benefits’ of a multi-million pound housing estate and its subsequent new fume-spewing road to dumb-fuck mothers with Ventolin-sucking kids. If your shit needed shining, then my chamois was at your service. And damn the consequences. They just didn’t make for a nice story. Every PR man since Goebbels knew it.

  Having spent the bulk of my working life selling in stories on behalf of everyone from greedy blue-chips to not greedy enough wafer-thin F-listers, it was inevitable my imagination would sometimes daydream headlines where I was the protagonist. ‘Bill in Thai drugs bust: I’m innocent’, ‘Railroad death of drunk spin doctor’, shit like that. The hacks at The McDare Mercury were canny copywriters on the topics of doom, gloom and disaster. The poor readers needed a good war to cheer them up. I put these thoughts not down to narcissism but a normal by-product of the job. When you picked up the news rock to see the squirming ants underneath, you realised anyone – repeat ANYONE – with a good enough jawline/tits (delete as applicable), the right wind and the wrong PR behind them could become ‘famous’ almost overnight. So why not me, if only in my own head?

  It was a Monday. A day which I un-stereotypically liked. Full of hope, aspiration and purpose. This is the week your shit life changes. You straighten up. You make a difference to yourself. To society. All of these hopes evaporated like steam off piss in the desert by 11 a.m. when you realised you weren’t going to make a difference, to yourself or society, and the only purpose you had was to get the story out of the door and follow closely behind it.

  It was 11 a. m. Time for a cup of tea. Like most things in my life, tea drinking was taken to excess. Even an innocent pleasure such as this could be turned into a crutch when seen through the eyes of a dedicated addict. I think it was the ritual of it which drew me in. Ritual loomed heavy for lapsed Catholics. Boil the kettle, warm the pot, scatter the leaves, pour the water, let it steep, splash the milk, strain the leaves, pour the tea, stir. Hit. After three or four cups, your body reached a caffeine plateau and subsequent cups made you strung out and scratchy. Bad for you. Bad bad bad. Everything was bad for you these days.

  Pete was in the kitchen. The office kitchen looked like it had been moved pine door by pine door from a mid-1990s show home. Yes, this was the height of homeware for the Mondeo man and his Asda Price wife hoping to social climb onto some soul-destroying development called something like Sovereign Chase or Cunts’ Horizon. And now it lived in our grey little office, looking as out of place as a sunbather at a wake. But it had tea and biscuits and often this was all that mattered.

  Pete had his back to me but it was evident he was resplendent in the office wear of the damned. A cheap shapeless suit hung from his podgy late-30s frame, looking as comfortable as a Jihad Warrior hanging from a crucifix. Plasticy slip-on loafers finished the look. From behind, his hair seemed like a good solid cut. One you could set your watch to. But as he turned around to greet me it was clear that an identity crisis occurred in the mirror every morning at around 8.30 a.m. as he worked wet look gel from the root up, not quite sure whether to play it edgy or safe and ending up with a compromise which ticked neither box and that a grandmother would find hard to ruffle without losing the family silver in.

  ‘Ah, hello there, young man. How was the rest of your weekend then?’

  Pete was stood next to the boiling kettle. His hearing was selective at best, irrevocably damaged at worst.

  ‘I drank, wandered town, met some people, went to an all night drugs party, was sick on myself, was sick on a girl, got
up, got lost, had a fight with a man taking his kids to football practice…’

  Pete was straining to hear me over the water.

  ‘Sorry, buddy, I didn’t quite catch all of that. Sounded like a nice weekend though. You seemed to be talking to a rather lovely lady when I snuck out of the side door of the pub. You know three is my limit on a Friday. Foolish to ruin the next day, especially when the garden centre’s got a sale on.’

  The kettle had boiled and Pete poured the water into his cup. It said ‘My Other Mug is The Holy Grail’ in an italicised font on the side. It never failed to make him titter. Some of his drink spilled onto the mock marble counter.

  ‘Oh Christ. Oh no, I blasphemed then. Now I’m not religious but I do have my own little beliefs. Every time I take the Lord’s name in vain, I feel like I’m one step further away from heaven and one step closer to eternal damnation.’

  I got out of the kitchen as quick as I could. Fuck the tea.

  The annoyance thresholds of those who spent the majority of their waking lives marking time close to each other could be broken by the most nominal of noises. Sometimes it was the chime of a text message tone or the way they laughed sharply, just once, when reading a forwarded email about misspelt road signs from someone in accounts. These little things punctuated the nine to five not as a common comma but as a rarely seen semi-colon; eyebrow-raising, abnormal, unwanted; chipping away day-by-day until the listener snapped.

  ‘Will you just shut the fuck up with that sneeze of yours? It’s driving me slowly INSANE.’

  With me, it was a cough. An irregular but virulent cough. It came, it produced, it went, it bothered. Usually-sympathetic colleagues turned and shot scornful stares. People talked in the kitchen. Emails were sent. I had to be told. Concentration was being broken. Trains of thought derailed. Germs being spread. It was Carol who came to talk to me.

  ‘Have you got two minutes? There’s something sensitive I’d like to talk to you about.’

  Intrigued, I spun around on my chair and gave all 5 foot 2 inches of her my complete attention.