Kiss My Name Page 4

  “Yes,” my Mum replied, “and there are fresh towels in the airing cupboard.”

  At that point, it was just another typical, relatively mundane early evening. The reason I remember every word, every action, so clearly though, was because it was anything but. It turned out to be the start of a dramatic, traumatic, horrific, life changing forty eight hours. I wish I had dragged Colin to Top Gun or even gone to play cricket for twenty minutes before it lashed down. I wished and wished for so many things after those forty eight hours, but nothing changed. My brother had gone and I would mourn his loss forever.

  SIMON-August 1986

  The evening that followed my trip to Top Gun became increasingly tense as my Mum and Dad’s concern about Colin’s failure to return home grew. My Mum was the first to panic. By seven o’clock she was asking my Dad whether he thought that they should be phoning around his friends to establish his whereabouts. My Dad played it all down at that stage, telling my Mum to relax, but by eight o’clock, he agreed that it was time to start phoning around.

  Mum phoned John Berry’s house and then Adrian Holmes’, but neither set of parents had seen Colin. They checked with John and Adrian and a similar story came back. Colin, Holmy and Bez had had started a game of cricket on Parklands school field, but as the rain became heavier, Holmy and Bez became increasingly fed up. Only Colin, who was batting at the time, wanted to continue playing. The other two boys both told Colin that they had had enough, but he was insistent that they played on, telling them it was only a shower. It wasn’t just a shower though and once the rain became practically monsoonal, they told Colin they were going to head home. Colin called them both ‘wimps’, hid his cricket set behind one of the trees and said he was going to find some tougher kids to play with. They both said that this was around about half past two and both headed straight home from there to dry off.

  Mum came into my room at about half past eight. I was sitting on my bed reading a copy of Record Mirror. I preferred Record Mirror to any other music magazine solely because it contained the Gallup Top 75 singles and album charts in it. I was a bit obsessive about the album chart in particular and can clearly remember Paul Simon’s Graceland and Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet featuring in that edition. I used an A4 pad to collate the album chart information in and keep track of the performance of established artists and rising stars.

  I knew Mum was coming in to my room to ask me something about Colin. Our bedroom was directly above the dining room, where the phone was and I’d already heard part of the conversations that she was having with other Mums.

  “Simon,” Mum said in a serious tone, “Colin isn’t back and your father and I are starting to get worried. I’ve phoned Adrian Holmes’ and John Berry’s and he hasn’t been with either of them since half past two, their Mums have said he was off to call for other kids, do you have any idea who else he may have gone to see?”

  “Other than Adrian Holmes and John Berry, he sometimes hangs around with Luke Booth, Phil Moss and Chris Gregory,” I told her.

  “Does he? I’ve never even heard of these boys. They’ve never been to any of his parties,” Mum said sadly, as though she was annoyed with herself for not knowing her son better.

  “They’re older than him, Mum. They’re all at Parklands with me. He hasn’t been hanging around with them much recently, because he’s been with me, but I know he used to.”

  Mum looked understandably confused. Mum thought he had always been with me and my friends, so I don’t think she could quite comprehend when he had befriended these older boys. She was becoming too anxious to try to resolve that particular puzzle though. She just wanted to know where he was.

  “Do you know their phone numbers, Simon?”

  “No, but I can tell you where they live, so you should be able to find their numbers in the phone book.”

  Mum ended up ringing them all, but all their parents said that none of the boys had seen Colin. By half past nine, it was beginning to go pretty dark, so Mum sent Dad out in the car to look for him. Forty five minutes later, Dad returned home, without Colin. From my bed, I could detect the frustration and anxiety in Mum’s voice as she said to Dad,

  “Where the hell can he be?”

  As it was now completely dark, they rang the police. Until Mum made that phone call, I thought they had been worrying unnecessarily. I knew Colin better than them, knew what a little terror he could be and had been convinced he would nonchalantly walk through the door, wondering what all the fuss was about. That phone call to the police underlined the gravity of the situation. I started to blame myself. I should have stayed with him. I had promised Colin that I would. What if something awful had happened? If it did, it would all be my fault.

  I’m not sure how to describe my subsequent meltdown, perhaps you would call it an anxiety attack or just fear taking hold, but it was like the polar opposite of waking up from a nightmare. When you wake from a nightmare, after a few seconds, you realise it was just a dream, it was not real life. This time it was real life, Colin had disappeared and for all we knew, he could have been run over, abducted or even murdered. I started shaking and crying.

  “Mum! Mum! Mum!” I shouted through my tears.

  I heard my Mum running up the stairs and then she came through into my room.

  “What’s the matter, Simon? Why aren’t you asleep?”

  “You know why I’m not asleep. Colin’s disappeared, Mum! Disappeared because of me. If he’s dead, it will all be my fault. I left him, Mum! I should never have left him.”

  My Mum, like the kind hearted, caring mother she was, and still is, put her own fears and concerns to one side to help me through mine.

  “Simon, calm down, love,” she hugged me tightly, “there’s probably a simple explanation for all this.”

  “Like what? It’s nearly eleven o’clock and Colin’s still not home.”

  “I know, love, but he’s probably just called around at a friend’s and forgotten to ring to say he’s stopping the night. You know what Colin’s like, Simon, he’d forget his head if it wasn’t screwed on!”

  I wanted to feel comforted. Mum was speaking in re-assuring tones, but it still didn’t seem right.

  “Why did you call the police, then?”

  “Because right now, love, we don’t know where he is. The police will help us find him. Let’s not start thinking something awful has happened yet, love. When the police get here, we’ll tell them everything that’s happened and let’s see if they can bring him home safe and sound.”

  “But what if they don’t?”

  “Simon, let’s not think like that. They will, love, I’m sure they will.”

  GEOFF-August 1986

  My panic attacks began after our narrow boat holiday in the summer of ’86. They are very difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced them, but mine manifest themselves in a way that I can only describe as a momentary physical and mental breakdown. I feel dizzy, shivery, I struggle to breath and the first time especially, I thought I was dying. In subsequent panic attacks, I haven’t felt that I am going to die, there is just an overwhelming feeling of dread. Generally, I have between one and a dozen a year. These days normally one or two a year, after the narrow boat trip, in the late eighties, it was a dozen a year, sometimes more.

  I wish we’d have gone to Westward Ho! Deidre, my wife, wanted to go to Devon, but we’d taken the girls down to the Cotswolds, Devon or Cornwall every year since they were four and two and I just fancied doing something different, something a little more adventurous. By 1986, our Sarah was twelve and our Joanne was ten, so I thought that if we did something special, they would look back on it fondly. As it turns out, I was wrong.

  Deidre and I had it down to a choice of two. Westward Ho! and Ibiza. The two of us had only ever been abroad together when we were courting. We went to Hersonissos in Crete, in 1971, which felt very exotic back then, subsequently though, money had become much tighter, with the kids arriving soon after, so we hadn’t ventu
red abroad again. Deidre thought it would be lovely to take the girls on an aeroplane to a sunny spot, but when we weighed up all the pros and cons, we decided against it. One of the negative factors, was that we are all pale skinned, so if we’d have gone in the kids summer holidays, we’d have all either fried like egg whites or hidden in the shade for most of the day. Westward Ho! was then the front runner, until I saw an advertisement in the Sunday Express for a narrow boat trip along the Leeds-Liverpool canal. I had no experience of boat trips, but it seemed like something we would always talk about. We have always talked about it too, but not for the reasons that I would have hoped.

  I sent off for a narrow boat brochure without telling Deidre of my intentions, just in case it didn’t appeal to her, but the brochure was always going to be intercepted by Deidre, as she’s the one that opens the post every day, as I am out and about. I can still clearly picture the day it arrived, I’d done three endowment mortgages and arrived home absolutely shattered. I didn’t mind being shattered though, it was a real buzz working for the Pearl and I always say to Deidre that the ten years I spent there, were the happiest I ever had and were also the best ten years work that I ever did. People like to slag off endowments these days, but don’t believe everything you read in the papers. A lot of my customers paid off their mortgages when their endowment policy matured and then had a nice chunky sum left over afterwards. Anyone ever made a chunky sum from a repayment mortgage? No, they bloody haven’t and they never bloody will! Anyway, my point is, Deidre had leafed through the narrow boat brochure long before I got home.

  “When are you thinking we go on this?” she asked, pointing to the brochure on the kitchen table, after she passed me my tea from the oven.

  “As soon as the kids break up for their summer holidays.”

  “No chance!”

  I thought Deidre was pooh-poohing the idea. I love Deidre, she is my world, but she is also a creature of habit and the previous summer she’d said if she could go to Devon for two weeks every summer for the rest of her life, she’d be more than happy. I agreed, but deep down, I fancied a change. Now I had spotted that potential change, Devon, for me, would have been disappointing. I love the place, but for just one year I wanted adventure not familiarity. I knew I would have to put forward a sound argument.

  “It looks great, Dee! Do you not think? The kids would love it. Have a proper look at the photos again in the brochure. The scenery is fantastic and the kids will have a ball going through all those locks! They can skipper the boat too if we keep an eye on them.”

  Deidre smiled at me as I reached across for the vinegar and ketchup to put on my burger and chips.

  “I know, you don’t have to persuade me, Geoff, it looks great, but I am not going during the first week of the summer hols.”

  “Why not?”

  “Fergie and Andrew are getting married that first weekend and I want to watch it. Julie and Anne are organising a street party too, if we were on a narrow boat we’d miss all that.”

  To me, it seemed like the perfect reason to book it. Our neighbours were a pain in the arse. I wasn’t fond of the Royal Family either.

  “I couldn’t give a bloody monkeys about some ginger, toffee nosed Royal!”

  “I know you couldn’t, Geoff, but the girls will want to see it and so do I.”

  “Seems a stupid reason to delay a holiday to me!”

  “Geoff, if I’d have suggested going on a narrow boat when the World Cup was on, you’d have moaned like hell about that!”

  “Deidre, I didn’t even watch the bloody final! I hate the Argies and the Germans anyway and Maradona only won that World Cup because he cheated his way through. I always say to the girls when we play Monopoly, better to lose than to win by cheating. That law doesn’t just apply to Monopoly, you know, it applies to life... and to World Cups too!”

  Deidre’s neck flushes red when she gets annoyed. I noticed it had gone pink.

  “Geoff, if I’d have said we were going on a boat with no tele when England were playing, you’d have done your nut in!”

  To be fair, she was right. I calmed down a bit. We’ve always had a fiery relationship and this could have been a springboard to a massive row, but Deidre seemed keen on going on the narrow boat so I was not going to upset her that night. She’s a fiery redhead, is Deidre, but that’s not a bad thing, I wouldn’t want to be married to a pushover. The fact that she was a strong, determined lady was what attracted me to her in the first place, that and the fact her arse looked good in jeans!

  “Fair enough, love. We could go a few weeks into the summer holidays this year, if that’s what you want. You like the idea of going away in a boat though? It’s going to be brilliant, love. A holiday the girls will always remember.”

  “There’s only one little thing that puts me off.”

  “What’s that, love?”

  “Is that not how Natalie Wood died?”

  Deidre was into Hart to Hart and when she was younger her favourite film had been West Side Story. I can still remember watching the news with her on BBC when they said Natalie Wood had died and it freaked her out a little. Natalie Wood was only a couple of years older than Deidre and me, so incidents like that hit you hard. They make you feel more aware of your own mortality.

  “Dee, she was in a dinghy in California, love, not on a narrow boat in Yorkshire.”

  “I know that Geoff, but I just mean, will it be safe for the kids?”

  I put my burger into the brown roll that Deidre had put on my plate. She always gave me brown rolls, I preferred white, but Deidre said brown ones were better for me. Burgers and chips from the deep fat fryer were no doubt doing my arteries the power of good too!

  “Dee, both the girls are good swimmers, we’ll keep an eye on them and we’ll make sure they wear life jackets whilst they are up on deck.”

  I don’t drink a lot these days, now I’m a pensioner. Just the odd shandy and the occasional glass of brandy, but back then I used to drink a fair bit. It was not unusual for me to get through six or seven cans on a week night. Up until this point this had obviously been an unspoken concern. Deidre face formed a frown.

  “I don’t want you drinking much, Geoff. I wouldn’t be comfortable on a boat if you’re knocking back the Carling Black Labels and the Oranjebooms, every five minutes.”

  I haven’t a clue where Deidre got the idea that I drank Oranjeboom from! Maybe it was just that advert that was on, (‘Oranjeboom, Oranjeboom, it’s a lager not a tune!) or maybe one of the fellas brought Oranjeboom around when they came to watch the Quarter Final when that four feet tall Argie was out jumping Shilts. Not drinking was a sacrifice that I was willing to make to go narrow boating though, I promised I would only drink a couple of cans a day.

  On Saturday 16th August, 1986, a bright, sunny, summer’s day, Deidre, Sarah, Joanne and I climbed aboard our narrow boat, “Monty’s Miracle”, in Silsden, West Yorkshire and began cruising west. We had been given over an hour’s induction regarding the facilities on board and how to operate the locks. I’m a pretty practical sort of guy and Deidre is more than capable with practical stuff too, so we were reasonably confident that we would cope and we did. The girls thought it was the greatest adventure known to man, which I felt particularly pleased about. They stood on deck for near enough the whole first day, waving and chatting to walkers on the canal’s edge. They were both desperate to take the wheel too, which Deidre and I allowed, supervised of course. The speed limit permitted was four miles an hour, so unless we were approaching a lock, it was a relaxed form of travel and even the locks are a breeze when you’ve been through a couple.

  All told, our trip was an eight day, seven night adventure. We planned to head as far as Wigan and then turn back. By the end of the first day we had reached Skipton. The second day was great fun as we went as far as Burnley, but had to pass through the Foulridge tunnel, which was a dark, semi-circular tunnel almost a mile long. Joanne was really scared we would break down in there, but once yo
u get a little way in, because it is straight, you can see the bright light of your exit point, which comforted her enough to avoid tears. The bloke who gave us our induction on operating the boat in Silsden told the girls a story that just before the First World War, a cow called Buttercup fell into the canal just by the Foulridge tunnel and rather than just clambering back out, she swam the whole way through it.

  Sarah kept saying, “Dad, do you not think it’s amazing that Buttercup swam through here? I didn’t even know cows could swim!”

  I’m not sure whether this was just a tale for the kids, but if the story was true, Sarah was right, Buttercup must have been a bloody good swimmer!

  Our third day was another pleasant run, through East Lancashire, from Burnley to Blackburn. That evening, Deidre and I were enjoying a glass of Hock on deck after the girls had gone to sleep. It was a wonderful, warm, cloudless evening and I must admit we started to become a little self-congratulatory about what a great idea this had been. Little did we know what fate would deliver the next day.

  We are both pensioners now and the girls are both married with their own children, but that holiday was all set to be the holiday of a lifetime. If only we had left a little later on that fourth morning. If only the girls had slept in and hadn’t been so eager to set off. It would still have been a tragedy, there’s no doubting that, but it wouldn’t have been our tragedy. Maybe it’s selfish to wish a tragedy on some other unsuspecting soul and I know I can’t turn back time, but if I could, we’d have set off from Blackburn to Wigan at lunchtime that day and just read about the tragedy in the local papers.

  GEOFF – August 1986

  Tuesday was the fourth day of our narrow boat trip. The intention was to go from Blackburn to Wigan, stay there overnight and then head back towards Silsden. The previous afternoon we had encountered our first wet weather on the trip, as it bucketed down for a while and then drizzled through until mid-evening, but on the Tuesday, it wasn’t just showery or briefly heavy, it was relentless rain all day, from the moment we woke up. Every time I hear Boomtown Rats ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’, I think to myself that I don’t like Tuesdays. This was the Tuesday that started that.