A Voice in the Distance

by Tabitha Suzuma

  'Maybe she just wanted a little space.' Harry holds up his hands. 'Hey. I'm not acting as go-between here. Jen's a mate – if you'd needed a bed for the night I'd have done the same for you. My guess is she's on her way home now. So go and sort it out. But for God's sake, calm down and stop shouting.'

  I finish my coffee in silence. Harry is looking at me with an expression similar to Professor Kaiser's. It irritates the hell out of me.

  I stop off at the supermarket on the way home. I figure one way of saying sorry might be by cooking dinner. I stagger down the narrow hallway under the weight of the bags and find Jennah curled up on the sofa.

  'Hello.'

  'Hi.' She glances at me fleetingly. She is watching TV, an unreadable expression on her face.

  I dump the bags in the kitchen, pull out the bunch of roses I picked up from the florist at the end of the road, and go back into the living room.

  'These are to say sorry.'

  She gives me a long look. Fights a smile. 'Oh, Flynn . . .'

  'I was a bastard.'

  'You really were,' she agrees, taking the flowers from me and laying them down on the coffee table. 'And that's not like you.' She kneels up and puts her arms round me. 'What's going on with you?'

  I give an embarrassed shrug. 'Nothing. I was just cranky.'

  'Cranky, huh?' She begins to laugh. 'That's the word for it. God, you were like a bear with a sore head! I don't know how we're ever going to persuade Harry to practise the trio with us again.'

  'We will.' I squint down at her. 'Am I allowed a kiss?'

  'I'm considering it . . .'

  'If I cook dinner?'

  She gives in with a smile.

  The thought of dinner only comes back to me sometime later as we lie on the sofa, our clothes strewn about the living-room floor.

  'Sex makes me hungry,' Jennah says.

  I bite her nose. 'Your wish is my command.'

  'Are you going to cook naked?'

  'No way! Valuable things might get burned!'

  At Jennah's insistence, we eat dinner by candlelight. She reaches across the table and holds my hand throughout the meal. We talk about unimportant stuff – the Purcell Room concert, plans for Christmas, Kate's new haircut . . . As she chats away, the candlelight is reflected in her pupils, making them shine like cats' eyes. When she smiles, her nose crinkles and dimples appear in her cheeks. I look at her, stare at her, and I think: I wish I could pick you up and put you in my pocket. I wish I could carry you with me all the time, safe and warm. I wish there was a way I could be with you all the time, every hour of every day. Each time you smile, it's like the first time all over again, and my heart flutters in my chest. I want to reach out and hold you – it's like a physical ache. I want to stroke your face and kiss your eyelashes and feel your skin and smell your hair. I love you. I love you so much. And it hurts. I don't know why.

  Jennah breaks off from a long story involving a fellow student and a sleazy university lecturer and props her chin up on her hand. 'What?'

  I meet her eyes, startled. 'Nothing.'

  'You're giving me that look . . .' She narrows her eyes at me in mock-suspicion.

  I shake my head in embarrassment. 'I'm just listening to you—'

  'No you're not.' She catches me out instantly. 'What are you thinking?'

  I shoot her a look. 'Stuff.'

  She smiles. 'Ah, stuff.' She nods knowingly, musingly. 'That's very interesting, very interesting indeed. I've always wanted to know more about stuff.'

  'Ha ha.'

  Her smile flickers. 'Why won't you tell me?'

  I look away, scraping the last bits of onion from my plate. 'It's not that. It's just not important. I'm not thinking about anything really—'

  'Flynn . . .' She cuts me off.

  I look at her. 'You really want to know?'

  She nods.

  I inhale sharply. 'OK. What I'm thinking is that all this – all this will one day be just a memory—'

  'A nice memory.' Jennah smiles.

  'No, a painful memory. A painful memory that I'm going to spend a lifetime trying to forget and – and failing.'

  Her smile dies. 'Flynn . . .'

  'No, listen. You wanted to know. All this is transient, everything is transient. Nothing lasts. Nothing is for ever. I can't hold onto you. I can only love you. And what's the point of loving you if it means someday I have to lose you? How am I supposed to enjoy my life while the whole time I'm waiting for that to happen?' My voice is rising.

  Jennah stares at me long and hard, her smile gone. 'Why?' she says softly. 'Why do you have to do this?'

  'Do what? What am I doing?'

  'Spoiling it. Thinking these miserable thoughts. Seeing only the negative—'

  'Because it's the truth!' I exclaim loudly.

  Jennah gets up. 'Flynn, if you're going to start shouting—'

  'I'm not – I'm not!' I sidestep her, blocking her exit, putting my hand on her arm. 'You're the one who asked me. I'm just trying to explain.'

  She looks at me almost pityingly. 'What do you want, Flynn? For me to say, Yes, you're right, there's no point to anything, we may as well all shoot ourselves now?'

  'Yes . . . No! I just want to make you see . . .'

  'See what? That it's all useless?'

  I stop, dropping my arms down by my sides. 'Yes.'

  There is a long silence. I am still standing in the doorway, the heat in my cheeks, breathing too fast. 'You see, you know it too,' I say.

  Jennah says nothing and starts clearing the plates.

  'What? You think I'm crazy, don't you?'

  She stops, looking up at me from beneath a curtain of hair. 'I think you're depressed, Flynn.'

  I swallow. 'Maybe. But that doesn't mean I'm not right.'

  She drops the plates into the sink and turns round. 'It's not about right or wrong, it's about perspective.'

  'OK. But mixed up in all the different perspectives is some kind of universal truth.'

  Jennah closes her eyes and lets out an exaggerated groan. 'Please, Flynn, it's nearly midnight, it's too late to be talking about universal truths—'

  'OK – OK.' I hold up my hands, leaning against the door, defeated.

  Jennah dries her hands on the tea towel, comes over to me and puts her arms round my neck. 'Good things don't always have to end. People do find ways of staying together all their lives. It has been done before.' She gives me a teasing smile, her eyes begging me to respond.

  'Yeah, I know, I know,' I reply, pulling her close. 'I'm being daft. All I'm really trying to say is I don't want to lose you.'

  We do the dishes together, flicking foam at each other, back to the earlier chit-chat and playful teasing. Later we brush our teeth and get undressed and argue over the alarm clock setting and collapse into bed. Nothing really matters – Jennah is smiling again, everything is fine. There is no need to tell her about the wall of darkness inside my mind.

  Chapter Seven

  JENNAH

  Rami rings one evening while Flynn is out at a piano lesson. The baby is yelling lustily in the background. Raising his voice over the sound of his daughter's wails, Rami asks me what our plans are for Christmas.

  'Haven't really had a chance to discuss it,' I confess. 'Mum's staying in Manchester for Christmas with her partner Alan and his two sons, so I guess I'll be playing happy step-families with all of them. Flynn, I imagine, will be going to Sussex with you and Sophie.'

  'Well, I spoke to my parents this morning,' Rami says, 'and they would really love it if you would come and spend Christmas with us.'

  'Really?' I am touched, even though my heart lurches slightly at the thought of spending my first Christmas away from Mum. 'Then I could go home on Boxing Day instead and miss the mayhem. Are you sure that wouldn't be an imposition?'

  'Absolutely not. They'd love to have you. We all would.'

  * * *

  When Flynn comes in, looking drained as usual from his lesson with Kaiser, I relay the conve
rsation to him. He stares at me in disbelief. 'You're kidding me.'

  I look at him, stung by his reaction. 'No, I'm not. But if the idea fills you with horror, we can easily change it.'

  He pulls himself together sharply. 'No, no, of course not. That's great.'

  'You're such a bad liar,' I retort. 'It's fine, I'll just tell Rami my mother wants me home for Christmas.'

  'No, Jennah, come on. I was surprised, that's all, surprised that Rami had organized it without . . . Anyway, let's do it. It'll be fun.' He says the word 'fun' as if it were synonymous with 'agony'. 'I just – I'm just not a big fan of Christmas, that's all.'

  I relent, pouting. 'Humbug. Do you even know what you're going to get me yet?'

  He flushes suddenly. 'Yep.'

  'Really?' I crow. 'What? Oh, give me one tiny clue. Please, please! Have you bought it already?'

  He averts his eyes. 'Maybe.'

  'Tell me!'

  'Yeah, right. If I tell you, it will be like that scene in Friends where Rachel and Phoebe run around turning the flat upside down, trying to find Monica's hidden presents.'

  'So you have bought it!'

  'I didn't say that.'

  I put my arms round his neck. 'But you insinuated it!'

  He gives me a lopsided smile. 'Enough silliness,' he says firmly. 'I might change my mind and take it back. Now what we should really be discussing is what you're going to get me.'

  There is so much going on in the run-up to the end of term that it feels as if Flynn and I hardly see each other. What with rehearsals for the Purcell Room concert, rehearsals for the Christmas recital, coursework deadlines, end-of-term drinks and the usual diet of lectures and classes, there is barely time to come up for breath. We laugh when we meet in corridors at the Royal College and greet each other with 'Hello, stranger' and 'Do I know you?', only occasionally having time to stop for lunch with Harry and Kate. Flynn seems OK, back to his normal self; the new dose appears to be working. I feel like I'm constantly running, continually late for something, invariably meant to be somewhere else five minutes ago. I sing Laudate Dominum in the Purcell Room without any major hitches. I manage to survive a horribly difficult orchestra piece with the Royal College Symphonia. I try and persuade my two Saturday morning pupils that the flute can actually sound quite nice if you take the trouble to practise between lessons. I turn in half a dozen coursework assignments and finally find myself washed up on the holiday shore, essay-weary and socially depleted.

  On Christmas Eve, Rami and Sophie swing by to pick us up in their Ford Focus, baby Aurora asleep in the back. As Flynn loads our rucksacks into the boot, I squeeze up against the car seat and kiss Aurora's sweetsmelling, downy cheek. Flynn climbs into the back beside me and we are off, heading down through the city, leaving an already darkening central London behind us.

  'So how are the two musicians?' Rami asks jovially from behind the wheel.

  'Very relieved to be leaving our instruments behind,' I reply.

  'I bet it's been a mad term,' Sophie says. 'Remember, Rami, how at medical school they always piled on the work just before Christmas?'

  'I do,' Rami says. 'God, imagine having to write an essay now. I wouldn't know where to start.'

  'I can't believe how big Aurora is!' I exclaim.

  'That's because she never stops eating. I swear she's going to become the first obese one-year-old Watford has ever seen and they'll make a programme about her on the Discovery Channel,' Sophie says.

  'She's not fat!' I protest. 'Just chubby. Like all babies should be. And all those blonde curls! She's just so gorgeous.'

  'Yes, she is at her best when she's asleep,' Rami observes drily.

  I laugh.

  'How are you, Flynn?' Sophie enquires.

  'OK.'

  'I'm sorry I couldn't make it to your last recital,' Sophie says. 'But Rami told me you kicked up a standing ovation.'

  'Yeah, it was OK.'

  'More than OK from what I heard.'

  We drift into comfortable silence. I like Sophie a lot. She is warm and motherly and has this knack of making you feel important. She feels like an older sister. I look across at Flynn. He is resting his elbow on the ledge below the window, chewing his nails, staring out. The passing cars create a pattern of moving lights across his face.

  Aurora sleeps like an angel for the whole journey and only wakes when the engine is switched off and the car doors open. Flynn's parents, Matias and Maria, come out to the car to greet us in their woolly jumpers and slippers, hugging themselves against the freezing night air. Maria gives me a hug and Matias his usual firm handshake, and then everyone is fighting over who gets to carry the bags, and Rami is saying, 'For heaven's sake, Mum, put it down,' and to my delight I am given the baby. Mayhem continues as we all traipse into the narrow hallway of the cottage, and there are overnight bags underfoot and Aurora's travel cot blocking the stairs. Eventually we all get our belongings up to our respective bedrooms – Flynn and I are sharing a fold-out bed in Matias's study – and we regroup in the living room, where Sophie is breast-feeding and Matias is pouring coffee.

  Although it is the first time I have been to their home, I know Matias and Maria quite well from all the concerts and competitions we have attended together. Matias is an older version of Rami but stockier and with a shock of white hair. Maria is an elegant woman with long grey hair tied up in a bun and arresting blue eyes. They both speak English with an accent from their native Finland and sometimes switch into Finnish for no apparent reason, the sound of which never ceases to impress me. I tried to get Flynn to teach me some Finnish when we first started going out, but it didn't take me long to realize why it's considered one of the world's most difficult languages.

  I follow Maria into the kitchen and help her set the table for dinner. Something is crackling on the stove and the small room is filled with a warm fug and the smell of fried meat. As I take the glasses down from the cupboard, Maria looks at me and smiles. 'Your hair has grown since I last saw you. It suits you.'

  'Thanks.' I can feel myself blush.

  'You must be tired,' Maria says.

  'A bit. The end of term is always frantic.'

  Maria wipes her hands on a tea towel and stirs something on the stove. 'This term must have been particularly difficult . . . with Flynn not being well.'

  I look at her. 'You know about that?'

  'I guessed. He sounded very agitated on the phone. I finally got Rami to confess that he'd spent a couple of nights in hospital.' She looks suddenly drawn. 'I tried and tried to persuade Flynn to come home for a break, but he wouldn't. He doesn't listen to me any more, Jennah. Or to his father. He doesn't even listen to Rami. But he listens to you.'

  There is a pause. Setting out the plates, I search for something to say. It is difficult to express sympathy without being disloyal to Flynn. Maria hasn't moved from her position by the stove. She looks tired, defeated somehow.

  'We are so grateful to you,' she adds suddenly, so quietly I'm not sure if I've heard correctly. 'But your mother must be very worried . . .'

  I say nothing and finish setting the table. No, my mother isn't worried about me. My mother suffered an acrimonious divorce when I was a baby and is naturally suspicious of men, especially men who go out with her only child. My mother could not cope with the knowledge that her daughter's boyfriend was suffering from a serious mental illness.

  We eat something called vorschmack round the kitchen table. Aurora is perched on her mother's knee, slobbering over a piece of sausage. Matias asks me about uni, about my concert, about my teaching jobs. I notice for the first time that he has the same lopsided smile as Flynn. Maria coos over Aurora, between jumping up every few minutes to offer people more food, and talks to Sophie about stretch marks and sore nipples. Rami asks his dad for some advice on tax returns and I turn to Flynn, who for most of the meal has been completely mute.

  'This is so nice,' I say to him with a smile.

  He smiles back, a vacant look in his eyes.
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  After dinner Rami passes Aurora round the table for a goodnight kiss, then takes her upstairs to bed. Sophie and I join Maria and Matias in the living room for coffee, while Flynn stays behind in the kitchen to attack the washing up, almost aggressive in his refusal of help. When Rami comes back down and joins us, the conversation turns to baby-rearing, and I pick up my coffee and return to the kitchen. I put my hand on Flynn's back and look at his reflection in the darkened pane of the kitchen window. His head is down and I can't see his expression.

  'I don't need any help,' Flynn says.

  'I haven't come to help. I've come to talk to you,' I say.

  Silence. More scrubbing.

  'Is everything OK?' I ask.

  'Of course. You?'

  'Yes, your parents are so sweet. Your mum's gone to such trouble with all the Christmas decorations and everything, hasn't she?'

  He nods.

  'Are you tired?' I ask.

  'Bit.'

  'Me too. Do you want to go to bed after this?'

  'Yeah.'

  I stop talking. Gaze unseeingly at Flynn's reflection in the black window. Even though we are standing side by side, there is an abyss between us.

  * * *

  Christmas morning I wake early in the squeaky, unfamiliar bed as a cold dawn filters in between the curtains. Flynn's side of the bed is empty and his clothes are gone from the chair. I yawn and stretch and get up slowly, padding about on the threadbare carpet, the floorboards creaking beneath my feet. I draw the curtains and make the bed and then go to the bathroom to wake myself with a hot shower.

  In the kitchen downstairs only Sophie is up, along with Aurora, much to my delight. 'Merry Christmas, Sophie! Merry Christmas, baby boo!' I kiss the top of her warm head. Aurora is sitting on the side of the kitchen table, a tea towel tied around her neck. Sophie is spooning something white and runny into her mouth.

  'She's like clockwork, this one,' Sophie explains with a tired smile. 'She doesn't do weekends or holidays.' Aurora grins a toothless grin and flaps her arms in agreement.

  'Coffee?' I ask.

  'That would be lovely.'