The House Swap(61)

‘Yes,’ Sara says firmly. ‘And I have to tell you this isn’t the first complaint that’s come in about you in recent weeks. Not to mention all the cancellations. It’s a very difficult situation, as I’m sure you understand. We all care about your well-being, but you’re in a position of trust here. We need to be sure that you’re capable of upholding that position. There is support available, if you need it. You, of all people, should know that there’s no shame in …’

And that’s the point I switch off, because it’s obvious where this is going. Her mouth is still moving and the sounds are coming out. Sharp eyes, soft words. She’s wrong to think she can reason with me. Give me a loaded gun and I’ll pull the trigger.

‘Fuck this,’ I say, standing up. ‘I’m out.’ Push past her. Barely touched her, but her mouth is rounded in a shocked little ‘o’ of surprise and she’s clutching at her side like I’ve stabbed her in the ribs. It’s only her pride I’ve hurt, and people so easily hurt shouldn’t be allowed to live.

Out on the street, back on to the train, the walk down the road towards home. Noise is pounding in my head and my limbs are sore and tight. Bursts of colour lurching out of the air, people sliding past like they’re on ice. That’s that done with. No more putting on a mask, no more pretending I’m someone who can listen to your problems and pull you out a solution, or even that I’ve got the means to listen at all. Dust my hands off and on to the next thing. Whatever that is.

At home, I switch on the television and stick a pizza in the oven. I eat the whole thing in five minutes flat, oil clinging to my fingers and the cheap, artificial taste flooding my mouth. There’s a programme on about the Grand Canyon and, as I watch it, the sweeping panoramic views and the knowledge that there’s a whole world out there to which I don’t have access sends me hurtling down into my own canyon, a place I know so well now that it feels more like home than these four walls. I send Caroline a text: Remind me to tell you about the black canyon. A few months ago, this kind of cryptic non sequitur used to throw her into instant fearful meltdown. What’s up, Francis? Are you OK? Cutting her nights out short sometimes, to hurry back to my side. I kind of liked it. Showed me she cared. But this time the phone stays silent and it just sits there like a brick next to me, and there’s no one else to call.

I sit on the sofa for a few more hours and I run my fingernail up and down the new packet of pills, and pop them out and swallow them one by one, and when I think I should stop I take some more until the world blurs in front of my eyes and I lose my grip. But all that happens is I wake up fourteen hours later with a splitting headache, feeling like my bones are painfully sharpened points, digging into me like knives from the inside out. Because anything else would be too easy. And it seems that even now I can’t take the easy option.



I shouldn’t have sent the photograph. It was a snap decision. I suppose that, with the number of emails she was sending, something was bound to hit home and goad me eventually. A monkey rattling away on a keyboard might produce Macbeth after a few hours or a few million years, and in the grand scheme of things it didn’t take her long to find a weak spot. It was the challenge of inactivity that did it. The casual assumption that I was hanging around, impotent and passive, waiting for something to happen. And of course, like all the best insults, it hurt because I was afraid it might be true.

It took me a while to understand why the tone of her messages had changed – terse queries; veiled, confused threats – but when I looked again at the photograph I saw my tell-tale shadow in the corner of the shot. In the end, all it took to break her romantic fairy-tale was an intangible blur of reflected light. It’s rocked her equilibrium, shone an unpleasantly harsh spotlight on her own assumptions. While I was Carl, she could kid herself that the only reason anyone would infiltrate her life in this way was because they couldn’t bear to be without her. Now, she can’t. And she still doesn’t understand. This is how completely she’s overwritten the past. She still can’t accept that so much more was lost back then than the thing that she’s made everything.

Still, I can’t sit stewing over it now. I’ve got visitors to prepare for. I have to get the flat looking perfect, at least the parts they might see. I’ve polished the surfaces, tidied away the detritus. Taken down all the photographs in the hall that featured her, which, admittedly, doesn’t leave many, but I’m hoping they won’t notice. And now I’m doing the dishes, cleaning and scrubbing and all the while thinking about the instant when they step over the threshold and we’re here in the flat together. It’s become a perfect moment in my mind: a flawless little tableau, in a suspended bubble of time. I don’t know what to do with it yet. But the closer it gets, the more I think that the way will be shown to me; that some kind of divine inspiration will descend and I’ll understand how to make everything right and wipe out the past two years and start again.



Away


Caroline, May 2015


I’M IN THE last place I want to be. A neon-strip-lit madhouse buried in the bowels of a concrete shopping centre, with the air suffused by the smell of frying chips and the sound of thudding bass and children screaming. Francis has decided that we should take a trip down memory lane and visit the bowling alley we used to go to together occasionally years ago, when we were living in London, before Eddie. When he came into the bedroom to make the suggestion, I was still staring at the emailed photograph, trying to focus, blood rushing in my head. I was in no state to say no. For a crazy moment, I almost thought it might be good for me – to take a break, clear my thoughts and unpick this complex mixture of disappointment, relief, confusion and fear. But there’s no chance of that in this chaos, and every thump and screech jars on my nerves.