Girl A(28)

All of our favourite people were there, and ‘Thriller’ was playing on the jukebox. Olivia’s new boyfriend had cycled over with a college friend whom I knew from the university running club and liked well enough. The early darkness still surprised us, as though the evening was going too fast. Soon we would be in spring term and close to examinations, and there would be no more nights like this one. We left the bar later and drunker than we had intended, still holding our plastic glasses, and started to walk along the courtyard towards the college gates. The fog lingered over the grass; through it, I could see the distorted lights of the buildings across the quad, but not if anybody was watching from the windows.

Halfway to the gate, I heard the sound of footsteps just before us – about to meet us – and from the mist came a collection of grotesques. There was Ian Brady, with his suit and his hair just so, and a drag Myra at his side. There was O.J. Simpson, his face a mask on a slight, white boy’s body, and the black glove dangling – ill-fitting – from his hand. There was Shipman, with a fake beard and a real medic’s coat. And then, towards the back, were Mother and Father.

They had captured Mother’s white, white hair, the wig askew on the boy’s head, and the odd, grey dress she was wearing when she was arrested. In the mugshot, it fell from her shoulder, and you could see the slash of shadow cast by her collarbone; they hadn’t got that. Father was even less accurate. The tallest boy in the group has assumed his role, but he wasn’t tall enough. The haircut was too good, and the eyes were too mild. That, I thought, wasn’t really the imposter’s fault.

‘Tasteful, kids,’ Olivia said, as they passed.

The plastic glass fell from my hand. The mist was thickening; now I couldn’t see Olivia or Christopher, or my own hands. ‘Liv,’ I called, with the idea that I could do so quietly, before anybody else noticed, although I was already on my knees, and the grass was soft and wet between my fingers.

Ted Bundy, whom I recognized from the law society, helped Olivia to carry me to my room. She had dismissed her boyfriend. She ran two glasses of water and lay down beside me on top of the night sky.

‘It was some kind of sporting dinner,’ she said. ‘“Fuck-ups and Felons”. Creepy as hell, though.’

She rolled over to face me, but I stayed on my back, following the cracks on the ceiling, trying to travel along them from one wall of the room to another.

‘So,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe the drinks.’

She snorted. ‘Come off it, Lex. You? It was the start of the night.’

‘Then – I don’t know.’

‘Lex,’ she said. ‘I never asked – there were lots of things that I didn’t want to ask. I guess I thought that you’d say them when you were ready. Maybe you never will – I don’t know. And I don’t really care. But you have to tell me if you’re OK.’

I could feel the words sputtering up my throat, as they had done when we first met.

‘If I tell you,’ I said, ‘can you promise me – that whatever questions you might have – and whatever you might think – we never have to talk about it again?’

‘Oh, Lex,’ Olivia said. ‘Of course I can.’

‘Do you remember,’ I said, ‘the House of Horrors – you would have been about thirteen …’

When we left the Romilly Townhouse, the evening escalated quickly. Olivia was a member of a whisky society with a bar nearby, and Christopher could meet us there. His new boyfriend was trying his hand at stand-up comedy, and Christopher couldn’t bear to watch him; this was a good excuse to miss an evening show. ‘It’s not that he’s bad,’ Christopher said. ‘It’s that I’m on edge. I keep waiting for somebody to heckle. And if they do, I’ll have to tackle them to the fucking floor.’

‘Can you look into retorts?’ I asked. ‘That might be a safer bet.’

‘We’re working on it,’ he said. He sighed. ‘I preferred it when he was the funniest accountant I knew.’

‘He wasn’t that funny,’ Olivia said.

‘Olivia’s in a dreadful mood,’ I said. ‘Ask her about the air conditioning.’

‘My mood’s improving. I just can’t see him on stage.’

‘You two are about forty drinks ahead of me,’ Christopher said, and ordered another round. ‘I had no idea that you liked whisky, Liv.’

‘I’m not wild about it. But I like having somewhere to take people. You should always have somewhere to take people.’

‘And somewhere with so much atmosphere,’ I said. There was only one other person in the bar, an old man in a houndstooth suit: ‘Is he dead?’ Olivia had asked, when we arrived.

‘Well, you should always have somewhere where you know that you’ll get a seat.’

‘Tell us about New York, Lex.’

‘I moved house,’ I said, ‘to this loft. It’s huge. Near the water, in Brooklyn. But it’s shared.’

‘I couldn’t share,’ Olivia said.

‘It’s me and this old woman. The old woman who owns the loft. There’s a partition in between our spaces, but sometimes the partition falls down, and there she’ll be, in bed, or watching a documentary. She’s called Edna.’