Girl A(82)

I had forgotten, but I remembered then. Emerson was a mouse. This was in the Binding Days. He appeared at odd intervals, scuttling across the Territory or beneath our bedroom door. We named him after the editor of our dictionary, Douglas Emerson, whom I always imagined bespectacled and hunched, in a study full of books. Whenever I’ve seen a mouse since – flashing past the threshold of my office, in the early hours of the morning – I’ve thrown a document in its direction. But we weren’t afraid of Emerson. Day after day, we hoped that he’d visit us.

‘I still gather the strays,’ she said.

A feral cat had appeared outside her apartment. A temporary place, in Valencia. Close to the beach. The cat was old, she thought, and skeletal. She could trace its ribcage, protruding through the fur. One of its back legs was contorted. She cornered it in the communal courtyard and took it to a veterinary surgery.

‘It was furious,’ she said. ‘Even the vet thought so.’

The animal underwent several hours of surgery to correct its leg, and required an overnight stay with the vet. Evie paid over five hundred euros for the treatment. Two weeks after the animal was discharged, it died peacefully, in Evie’s bed.

‘My friends think that I’m crazy,’ she said.

I looked down at my plate, saying nothing.

‘Lex?’

I started to laugh.

‘That cat,’ she said. ‘God.’

She reached for my tea and took a swig, laughing too.

But after breakfast she was tired. She spent half an hour in the bathroom, and emerged slumped and clammy, with her hands nursing her stomach.

‘This place,’ she said, smiling. ‘We should never have come.’

‘You should never have come. But I already told you that.’

‘I’m sorry, Lex.’

‘Let me do the meeting. You stay here. Rest up.’

‘But it’s why I came.’

‘It’ll be boring anyway. I’ll be fine.’

I had packed my most serious work suit. Slate jacket and cigarette trousers. From her bed, Evie watched me dress, her smile widening.

‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘Ready to take over the world.’

My documents were stored in a neat leather sleeve which I had taken from work. I checked them, then tucked them beneath my arm.

‘I’d say that your parents would be proud,’ she said. ‘But let’s be honest—’

I kissed her on the forehead.

‘I’m proud,’ she said. ‘Does that count?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s better.’

The ceiling in Moor Woods Road was white, too.

Beneath it, Evie and I spent our months. I had once monitored the dates in my journals, but over time I missed a Tuesday, then a weekend. My last entry didn’t help me: my recordings were so banal that the days were impossible to distinguish. Had these events taken place two days ago, or three?

Together, we sank into the sludge of time.

Our lessons were disarrayed. We’d start on Sodom and Gomorrah, with a focus on the sin of homosexuality and its increasing prevalence in the modern world. (‘The men of Sodom are at our gates,’ Father said, with a conviction that made me glance out of the kitchen window, expecting a mob.) Father had little to say about Lot offering his daughters to the crowds – ‘Protecting angelic guests,’ he said, ‘requires great sacrifice’ – and then we were onto the death of Lot’s wife, metamorphosed for turning back towards home.

‘Why would she turn back?’ Father asked.

I thought of Orpheus, turning back on the edge of the Underworld. ‘With concern?’ I asked.

‘With longing,’ Father said. Lately, longing for the past was one of the worst sins of all.

It seemed impossible that Cara and Annie still met for lunch beneath the gymnasium. Along the school corridors, behind closed classroom doors, knowledge continued to be imparted. The bell still rang. Beyond Moor Woods Road, I imagined acquaintances discovering sex; driving; exams. Love, even. Their world hurried on, while we were stunted at the kitchen table, children for ever. It was one of the few thoughts which still made me want to cry, and I didn’t want to be turned into a pillar of salt, so I tried not to think about it very much.

Exercise was curtailed. There were inherent risks in being outdoors, and besides, we needed to conserve our energy. The fact was, there had been an incident. One afternoon, Delilah had stopped running in the very centre of the garden and turned towards Father, watching us from the kitchen door. Her mouth moved, as if there was something she wanted to say. An empty speech bubble of breath suspended over her head. Her eyes flicked to white, and she fell back onto the ground with a thud. It was just like Delilah, to faint the way people fainted in fiction.

Father lay her on the kitchen table, like a feast. Gabriel took her hand. Mother dipped a soiled kitchen cloth beneath the tap and wiped her face. Somewhere above us, Daniel was crying. Delilah coughed and squirmed. Her eyes were still damp from the cold, and she wrung out a few tears, reaching for Father. ‘Daddy,’ she said. ‘I’m so hungry—’

Impatient, he stepped out of her reach. He opened his mouth to speak – to send us back to the garden – and stopped. Mother looked at him over their daughter, across the table, with an expression that had its own language. Father took Delilah’s hand. It seemed entirely possible that Mother’s face had moved his bones.