Twelve Missed Calls

Darren Cole had never switched his phone off.

Not once. Not in years. Not at the dentist, not at a funeral, not on the one holiday he’d had since he was thirty. Everybody on the estate has Daz’s number, and everybody knows that if you call it, Daz picks up.

Boiler’s gone? Daz knows a bloke. Car won’t start? Daz has jump leads in the boot. Somebody needs a lift to the airport at four in the morning, somebody’s mum is locked out again, somebody’s telly’s making a noise — Daz. He’s thirty-six, Black-British, proud, loyal, and funnier than he has any right to be at the end of a fourteen-hour day. He’ll fix your problem, crack a joke about it, and be gone before you can put the kettle on.

“You alright, Daz?”

“Always, mate. Sorted.”

That’s his line. He’s said it so often it comes out on its own, like breathing.

What people don’t see is the other side of the door. The letters on the kitchen side he hasn’t opened because he knows roughly what they say. The van that needs a repair he keeps putting off. The nights he lies awake doing sums in his head that never quite come out right. The way his chest goes tight when the phone buzzes, even though he’s the one who always answers it.

He doesn’t talk about any of that. He makes jokes instead. Jokes are like a coat — you put one on before you go back outside.

It was a Thursday when it happened. Nothing special about it. He’d done a job in the morning, sorted a mate’s washing machine at lunch, driven someone’s nan to the hospital in the afternoon and waited two hours in the car park because she didn’t want to get the bus back. By the time he got home it was nearly nine. He sat on the edge of his bed with his work boots still on, and the phone buzzed, and he looked at the screen, and something in him just said: no.

He didn’t decide to switch it off. His thumb did it. Held down the button, slid the bar across, watched the screen go black.

Then he sat there in the quiet, feeling like he’d done something criminal.

He didn’t sleep well. He kept imagining what was happening out there without him. Someone flooded. Someone stranded. Someone saying, Where’s Daz? Daz always answers. He lay in the dark feeling guilty, and then — somewhere around two in the morning — something else crept in underneath the guilt. Something he didn’t recognise at first.

It was rest.

In the morning, he switched the phone back on. It took a second to find the signal, and then it started buzzing and didn’t stop.

Twelve missed calls. Seven messages.

His stomach dropped. He sat down on the stairs to read them, bracing himself for emergencies.

Daz you about? Need a hand with the fence Saturday, no rush.

Mate, you ok? You didn’t answer. Not like you.

Darren it’s Pat from 22, just checking you’re alright love, haven’t seen your van.

Bro. Call me.

Daz?? Everyone’s asking where you are lol. You good?

He read them twice. Then a third time, slower.

There was one emergency, sort of — a leaking tap that could wait. Everything else was people checking on him. People who’d noticed, in one evening, that the man who always answered hadn’t. Five different people had wondered if he was okay.

Daz sat on the stairs for a long time. He didn’t know what to do with the feeling. For years he’d believed that if he stopped holding everything up, even for a night, it would all come down. But nothing had come down. The estate had carried on without him for twelve hours. And somewhere in those twelve hours, people had turned round and looked for him.

That afternoon he walked past Samuel’s bench. He didn’t mean to stop. He never means to stop.

Samuel was there, like always. Dark wool coat, flat cap, hands folded, watching the court where a couple of lads were shooting hoops. He looked up as Daz slowed down.

“Heard you went missing last night,” Samuel said.

“Word travels.”

“It does round here.” Samuel moved his bag so there was space. Daz sat.

“I just switched it off,” Daz said. “Don’t know why. Felt terrible.”

Samuel nodded. Let the silence sit. Then, slowly: “What do you think would happen if you did it again?”

Daz laughed. Then he didn’t.

“Honestly? I think I’d sleep.” He rubbed his face. “I can’t keep doing everything, Samuel. I’m behind on stuff. Money stuff. The van. I’m knackered. I haven’t told anyone because I’m meant to be the one who sorts things.”

It was the most he’d said out loud in months. Maybe years. Samuel didn’t rush to fix it. He just said, “That sounds heavy to carry on your own.”

“It is.”

“Who else knows?”

Daz thought about it. “Nobody.”

Samuel let that land. Then: “What’s one thing you could hand to someone else this week?”

Daz thought about the fence job on Saturday. It was a two-man job and he’d been planning to do it alone because that’s what he always did. He took his phone out, scrolled to Marcus, and — before he could talk himself out of it — typed:

Got a fence job Saturday. Can’t do it on my own. Any chance you’re free?

Marcus replied in under a minute. Course. What time.

That was it. That’s all it was. But Daz sat on the bench looking at those two words, Course and What time, like they were a letter from somewhere far away.