Until You Come Back To Me

By N R Leacock

A wonderfully moving story about the renewal of love and hope in the random events of life.Dealing with loss and trauma, recovery and growth, it is an evocative love story, set in London, Paris and the South of France.
David leaves London for Paris at a crucial time in his life, following traumatic events in England. The story behind the trauma emerges as he renews a connection he had thought lost and a new relationship is formed.
Delicately written, thoughtful and realistic, this is a story of life and death, of relationships and most of all about love and renewal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: N R Leacock
• Release date: Oct 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301541126

N R Leacock

I started writing because I wanted to write a book that takes the reader on a journey and makes them feel; that allows the reader to be a part of other people's lives and gain new experiences through fiction.My early career was spent in business which is a far cry from writing you might say- but it was still about people and how they relate to one another or customers. Writing a book is similar in that it is about how people relate to one another in different circumstances. I enjoy the creative process and if my work moves the reader then I feel that I have accomplished something worthwhile.My second book, 'The Murderer's Tale' was published in December 2013 and the third - a fast-paced detective thriller entitled 'In Seven Days' was published in March 2015.In the meantime I am working on completing a fourth novel- provisionally entitled 'Betrayed', a thriller, which will be out later this year.I have also written a play about identity, built a website helping single people to find vacations (singleplanet.co.uk) and in my spare time some work to help a major children's charity in the UK.I live in North London, England

Book preview

Until You Come Back To Me

By

Nigel Leacock

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Nigel Leacock

This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

N R Leacock has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

Text Copyright @2012 N. R. Leacock

All Rights Reserved

Chapter 1

February 2009

Eurostar Terminal St Pancras

Alone. Surrounded by many people yet alone. David stared unblinkingly ahead, immersed in noise. The plastic covered metal of the chair dug uncomfortably into his back as he sat on a stone coloured, wicker style chair in a café. A latte stood, untouched, upon the small circular table in front of him, the intense blue of the paper coffee cup in sharp contrast to the mid brown Formica top of the table. The wet hiss of a sharp release of steam from a distant coffee machine cut through the barely audible sound of a radio playing Aretha Franklin’s Until you come back to me.

A dozen similar tables were set out on a dark brown wooden floor, each with two stone-coloured wicker-style armchairs set diametrically opposite.

On his left another man sat, no more than 2 feet away, loudly crunching and crackling crisps that were too large to be eaten without breaking up as they entered his mouth. The bag rustled and crinkled as first his fingers and then the man’s whole hand dived in to grasp the remaining pieces at the bottom of the bag, in an increasingly frantic search for the last few crumbs.

To his right a businessman was talking on his mobile phone, to what must be a work colleague in anxious, urgent tones. The tenor of the man’s voice made it abundantly clear that he was not getting his own way, that he wanted to insist, to demand, and to raise his voice in an effort to force his will through the phone. The pressured urgency and intensity of his tone increased by the constraint of holding in his demands.

Slightly in front of David, was another chrome-ringed table where a woman was working on her computer, her luggage stacked roughly in a pile next to her. A purple woollen coat with a black velvet collar lay carelessly dropped over the black nylon computer bag that rested on top of a bright red wheelie case.

Directly in front of David sat an overweight man, wearing a mid-blue hoodie, the hood down exposing a closely shaved, yet balding head on a thick neck. Wire rimmed glasses framed a round face. In the pudgy fingers of his left hand he grasped a book- ‘Bone Dried’ proclaimed the title, in large gothic font set on a background of a detailed line drawing of a stained glass window. In front of the man, a spent coffee cup and a muffin wrapper sat- the muffin wrapper providing a source of sticky pieces of sponge which the hoodie man distractedly picked at with his right hand, noisily licking his fingers before he turned a page and then returned to reading and scavenging.

A disembodied, metallic female voice had been speaking …a wide range of travel essentials for your little break.’ The voice faded away and then returned ...unattended please contact a member of staff or British Transport Police."

More announcements. David heard the words ‘Paris train 9039’, and stood, taking hold of the handle of his carry on bag. He walked slowly, absently, to the long, upward travelator, where he stood behind a long line of people, all of whom stood still waiting for the machinery to deliver them up onto the platform of the newly restored St Pancras International station.

As the moving walkway rolled on, he saw himself reflected on the surface of the glass walls. He was tall compared to his fellow passengers at 6 feet 1 inch. He saw a man with a haunted look on his face, unshaven, several days beard growth covering gaunt cheeks. Visibly sunken eyes stared back at him from underneath an untidy mass of dark brown hair. A stranger was looking back at him. David averted his gaze, not wanting to see, not wanting to face himself.

Coach 12 was close to the top of the ramp and David climbed up the steps and into the carriage, found his seat, one of four seats grouped around a table, halfway along the carriage. He placed his bag in the overhead rack, took off his coat, roughly folded it and placed it on the glass shelf running above the seats and then sidled into the seat nearest the window, facing the direction of travel.

The carriage began to fill up. People were milling around, placing bags on racks, checking seat numbers and struggling to lift heavier bags into the racks. A group of three women in their early sixties squeezed past a family trying to sort out who sat where, what got put where and what was needed for the journey. The three headed for David’s table and went through the same seat-checking ritual, speaking a language David didn’t recognize. Portuguese? Eastern European? Catalan? Impossible for him to tell notwithstanding his fluency in several European languages.

The older of the three, perhaps well into her 70s, prepared to sit down and imperiously placed her winter’s coat over the back of her seat, an act which caused the coat to be promptly returned by the young couple sitting in the seats immediately behind her. A heated exchange of views took place between the woman and the couple and order was only restored when she simply sat down on the chair, leaving the coat on and then shrugged it off her shoulders, letting it fall onto the backrest behind her.

David sat watching. The faint hum of electricity became audible as the noise levels of the women in front of him began to abate. He looked more closely. All three women were well fed, over-dressed in a Mediterranean way, with a lot of black and gold set against yellowed olive skin. All three picked out phones from their bags, an iPhone and two blackberries. IPhone lady began to peck at the phone; her long-nailed index finger angled like a claw, seeking and finding each letter at a time, a faint air of surprise emanating from her as each letter is found.

Blackberry woman one, as David had named her, began to take photos. Photos of her friends, of the window, of the seats, of the carriage; experimenting with focus, looking over the top of her gold-rimmed glasses as she tried to see what kind of photograph she was taking, trying to frame a photograph with her head down, her eyes up and the phone held at head level. The intensity of her focus on an image stirred an anguished nerve in David’s stomach. A flash of deep pain, covered, held back, locked away as soon as it was felt. He turned quickly and stared out of the window in the still stationary train.

The noise of the women talking brought him back to the present. The pecking woman was speaking loudly and making big, sweeping hand gestures. She held her arm out, palm and fingers upwards and put her fingertips together as if she were plucking something from the air. Then she turned her hands so the palms were face down and with a wiping motion she pushed her palms away to the side- as if she were ridding herself of whatever or whoever was the subject of the conversation. Next to him coat woman sat with her hands clasped on her lap, her fingers intertwining as she listened to her friends.

The faint hum of electricity gradually intruded more and more upon the drone of the voices and slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the train began to move. David looked out the window and saw a train moving away and for a moment he was uncertain if it was his train or another that was moving. He checked the other side to see that it was in fact his train that was moving and little by little the platform began to pass by. He was definitely leaving now, leaving it behind. If only that were possible.

Then the train emerged out into the brighter daylight and all David could see were the building works of East London. The grey wintry sky formed a depressing backdrop to the darker grey of the concrete open boxes that were being built into blocks of offices and apartments. A red crane sat unmoving in the foreground as men in high visibility jackets clustered round a large block of concrete. Farther away other stick like cranes were turning, lifting and lowering seemingly at random.

CCTV cameras on long grey poles lined the edge of the track, alongside the sharp metal picket fence that bordered the gravel of the railway. A bleak dystopian perspective of grey was blacked out completely as the train entered a tunnel and the inside of the carriage was reflected back in the windows. David had by now stopped listening to the women seated at his table. He could see across the aisle that all the individual seats were occupied by men sitting focused on their fold down tables in front of them, each in his own world and oblivious to the rest of the train.

Minutes later the train emerged briefly into the daylight of Stratford. Buildings loomed up on the right hand side as the train passed under concrete lintel after concrete lintel before the lintels were supplanted by the dark of another tunnel.

The noises of the train gradually increased as the train sped up. Small movements were transmitted through the seat and David began to wonder if these were the first signs of the train coming off the tracks. Should it move that much? Should the rumbling and grating he heard and felt be there? Was it the first sign of danger? He told himself that it was a normal level of movement. He reminded himself that trains will inevitably move, that wheels will create friction and that this was all normal. The fear didn’t quite leave him however. His heartbeat was still raised, his senses alert for a further deterioration. His hands gripped the armrest firmly as he held on to the solidity of the train to reassure himself. He looked at Peck woman whose hands were also on her armrest, yet the wrists were relaxed, palms facing upwards with her fingers free to move and gesture. He forced himself to relax, breathing in and letting the tension go from his hands and wrists. Yet he left his hands on the armrest, just in case. In case he needed to hold on more tightly.

With a popping of his ears, David felt the train emerge from the tunnel. He looked out at the long lines of cars parked on vast tracts of asphalted land and a green-grey cement hinterland, punctuated by coloured warehouse buildings of purple, yellow, lime green and orange. He could just see trucks lined up at the warehouses before the scorched winter grass of the embankment filled the window and the train entered the tunnel under the Thames.

David stared at the reflections in the window, not wanting to turn in and interact with the other passengers on the train. Not wishing to be seen or to engage. Outside, lights flashed past as the train sped through the tunnel. He closed his eyes, blocking out the present, only for the past to take over. The fluorescent lighting of the corridor, the lights flashing past as he was wheeled along a corridor, a tunnel between rooms. The rattle of a metallic trolley, voices, urgent voices, nausea, his chest hurting and his head throbbing with pain.

On the train Peck woman watched him as he started to sweat, hands gripping the armrest more tightly. The train exited the tunnel and with the sudden change in light, David’s eyes opened sharply, wide and unfocussed at first and then he focused on her face. She glanced away, looking hurriedly out of the window.

The inside of a train. That’s where I really am, thought David. He noticed the slightly musty air, the feel of the fabric of the chair arms under his tightly gripped hands, the steady light interrupted by the flicker of poles and wires as they passed the train. Slowly the calm and settled atmosphere of the carriage permeated his fear and he began to breathe more deeply, relaxing his hands and lowering his shoulders as he exhaled. The intensity of the anxiety faded as the present intruded and his fear receded, moving back to the edges of his mind where it stayed, for now.

He turned to his right and saw the snow speckled fields and grasses of Kent, with the bare, brown-coloured trees contrasting sharply with the white of the snow. The snow was too old and too thin to create a blanket across the countryside. It was patchy, exposing the cold earth and the green-brown grasses in the freezing temperatures of the February late afternoon. Trees formed lines between the fields, the stick branches serving only to emphasise the bleak cold of the day. David shivered involuntarily as the cold outside amplified the cold he felt inside.

Chapter 2

May 2012

Hackney

On the 20th floor of a tower block in Hackney, Dean watched the smoke rising from the toaster as he poured steaming water from a kettle into his ‘World’s Best Dad’ mug. Groaning loudly he put down the kettle and looked at the blackened pieces of bread in his toaster and waited for the shrill beeping of the fire alarm to start. He pushed the kitchen window open to the maximum 4 inches just as the alarm burst into life penetrating even the thick fug of his hung-over brain.

He reached for a crumpled packet of cigarettes resting on the dirty Formica worktop, throwing it back on the kitchen side as soon as he realized it was empty. Scowling he rummaged through a drawer to the left of the sink and with a barely suppressed "Ahhh,’ he found a cigarette and turning to the gas hob, clicked a ring alight and leant down, cigarette in mouth to light up, drawing in deeply as he inhaled his first drag of the day. He knew it would make him feel worse yet at least it would calm him down a little. He stood up, exhaled and watched as a stream of smoke poured from both nostrils and mixed with the pall from the burnt toast. And began to experience the effects of 4000 chemical compounds and 600 additives hitting his body. Most noticeably the nicotine hit his brain and kick-started his heart rate, increasing it by 15 beats per minute and causing his blood pressure to rise slightly. Unaware of the chemistry involved, Dean could feel the changes in his body and after another drag of the cigarette the withdrawal symptoms began to fade.

He felt tired now and lethargically picked out the teabag from his mug with his fingers, threw that too in the sink and opened the fridge. He took out an opened carton of milk and upended the last few drops of milk into his mug.

He already knew this was going to be rubbish day. His ninth day of work in a row, another 12 hour shift looming, another 12 hours of grinding aggravation. Aggravation he could only seem to alleviate with six pints of lager in the Golden Lion.

Crossing to the toaster, he took out the two pieces of charred toast and threw them into the kitchen sink, where they landed on top of a pile of dirty plates and mugs. It had been six days since the sink was clean. Six days since his daughter Janey had left, taking her shiny black holdall and what remained of their relationship with her. He knew this wasn’t the usual storming out and coming back. She had made that perfectly clear. It wasn’t the only thing he could remember of that night. He hadn’t forgotten the six pints, the words, the anger, the noise. He could remember her going, the door slamming behind her as he shouted to her. He wished the words had been: Come back