Intention: a compelling psychological thriller

by C. S. Barnes

  Getting ready for Dad’s funeral – feeling sad 

  Had to help mum get dressed again today - awkward much?!

  Nevertheless, I did have one social media account attached to my name, for the sake of maintaining an acceptable public persona. And so, for an average of five minutes per week, I devoted some concentrated time to the maintenance of a digital profile that I strongly resented having.

  Three days after my mother left, the day after I had met Paul the dog walker, I typed my sign-in details into the log-in window and waited for a flood of information to arrive on my laptop screen. I already knew that I would be interested in little to none of it. Of everything that you could find online now, rifling through old friend’s unmentionables seemed like a thorough waste of a broadband connection. However, that day, when my information loaded, there was a message I couldn’t recall seeing before hovering at the top of the page.

  One new request for friendship: Daniel Lodge

  (You have no mutual friends in common. If you do not know Daniel, please click here.)

  He had tricked me, I now saw. I didn’t know this man as Daniel Lodge, although he was undeniably the Daniel, but despite his frequent pleas for my last name during dinner, he had neglected to provide me with his own – and now I understood why. It was tempting to lie then; to say that no, I didn’t know Daniel Lodge, and to let the Internet cleanly sweep this character out of my life. The compact picture in the window alongside his name was undoubtedly him; from the small slip of his shoulders visible in the bottom corners of the image, I thought he may have even been wearing the same jacket. His mouth was contorted into the same lopsided smile and I wondered then whose benefit this was for: the camera maybe, or perhaps the person behind it. Despite my initial irritation, I felt compelled to click on this smaller window to enlarge the picture, and it quickly hijacked the majority of my laptop screen.

  His expression was familiar now. I might have been looking in on a friend who I had known for some time, rather than a stranger. I clicked the screen in the appropriate area to scroll across to another photograph and there he was again, sporting the exact same smile as if it were a default setting. In this picture there was a friend either side of him, and a slightly smaller sag of skin beneath his chin than there had been in the previous photograph. This second picture was three years older and I developed a sudden need, on seeing this time stamp, to know what had happened between then and now, aside from a small amount of weight gain.

  I clicked my way out of the album and back towards the request. I still felt a measured amount of apprehension but it felt miniscule in comparison to my curiosity about precisely what could happen next. And so, I clicked ACCEPT.

  Gillian Thompson is now friends with Daniel Lodge.

  To view Daniel’s profile, please click here.

  I now felt contractually obliged, by the Gods of social media, to suffer any and all consequences associated with my decision. And then the first consequence arrived.

  You have one new chat window open.

  Daniel Lodge:

  Do you come here often?

  Haha

  Seriously though GT, you know how to keep a man waiting

  It’s been three whole days

  I thought I might have just imagined you

  He was a multiple-messager. One of the worst types of messager you could encounter. The weight of my decision to accept his request felt heavier now, which was irrational, really, given that I could escape the conversation whenever I needed to by clicking the cross in the corner.

  However, in amongst these feelings, there was also a small flutter of what I thought was probably excitement at the prospect of replying, matched only by the flutter of nerves at not quite knowing what to say.

  ‘I don’t come here a lot, no,’ I said aloud in time with my typing the message. The response felt bland, curt, two sides that I didn’t particularly want to display so soon. I backspaced, returned to Daniel’s stream of messages for a second read-through, and tried my very best to land somewhere in the region of charming:

  Gillian Thompson:

  How do you know that you didn’t imagine me?

  I felt that I had drafted a perfectly acceptable response but when the reply floated up on the screen I realised it had sounded much better in my mind than in practice. I should have read it aloud, I thought.

  Daniel Lodge:

  Then how am I talking to you now?

  Unless this is all an elaborate hallucination

  Are there no depths that I won’t sink to – just to talk to a pretty girl?

  I couldn’t recall a time before this when I had been referred to as pretty. Pretty peculiar, pretty unusual, pretty fucking weird by my father during one of his drunken displays, but no one had ever thought of me as just pretty. Before I could muster an appropriate response I started to suffer a disconcerting physiological one somewhere in my lower abdomen.

  Daniel Lodge:

  And yes. I think you’re pretty. Is that okay?

  Gillian Thompson:

  I’m not sure.

  Daniel Lodge:

  Oh

  Well

  It was kind of a rhetorical question anyway

  Gillian Thompson:

  I’m sorry. I’m usually quite good at spotting those.

  We maintained a virtual exchange for some twenty-eight minutes after this but despite my well-drafted responses I still felt nervous. While the distance created by the computer screen lent me more thinking time, it also took away the facial expressions and intonations of Daniel’s responses, which made him impossible to read. There were no narrowed eyes, no dipped smiles, no half-laughs, and in their absence I felt unprepared to hold a conversation at all.

  Daniel didn’t ask any more rhetorical questions – I don’t think – but he did pursue the usual topics, asking how I was (fine, thank you) and what I had been doing with myself since our encounter (nothing exciting, I’m afraid). This avenue of conversation was a safer area, and a relatively familiar one. I knew that it was proper to enquire how he was now, and perhaps even how life had been treating him.

  Daniel Lodge:

  Ah, fit as a fiddle on the outside

  To be honest though

  I’ve got quite a lot going at the moment

  Some stuff on my mind

  That was as much information as he offered. I wasn’t sure whether the natural pause that followed was something I should fill with questions, or pleas for further details. Or even whether there was an expectation that I should want further details. Speaking out loud, I tried on various options:

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Tell me all about it.’

  ‘What is it that’s on your mind then?’

  I couldn’t make any of them fit comfortably, and for the first time during our exchange I felt grateful that it was being constructed through a computer screen. When three small dancing dots appeared in the corner of the window to indicate Daniel was typing, I felt even further gratitude.

  Daniel Lodge:

  My aunt went into hospital this morning

  Gillian Thompson:

  I’m really sorry to hear that!

  I added the exclamation mark to highlight how sorry I really was.

  Without further information it felt tricky to react beyond what I had already said. Daniel had led me to believe that his aunt was quite ill, and that her cancer showed no signs of shrinking. I assumed that this meant she was a frequent visitor to the hospital, which would surely make this latest visit an unremarkable thing. But it seemed to bother Daniel more than an unremarkable thing should.

  Daniel Lodge:

  They found this thing on her last scan

  Something that wasn’t there before

  And so they think things might be getting worse

  Terminal, I thought. They think it might be terminal. But Daniel didn’t want to say that. Recent months had taught me that people had quite an aversion to acknowledging mortality.

&
nbsp; Daniel Lodge:

  They’ve decided the best option is to open her up

  Have a look around

  See if they can find out more that way

  I didn’t need facial expressions or vocal intonations to confirm that Daniel was upset by this development. And, strangely, I found Daniel’s upset to be quite upsetting myself. Another virtual silence appeared and, after so much effort on Daniel’s part, I assumed that this time I would have to fuel the conversation. I relied on my limited experience and on borrowed sentimentality:

  Gillian Thompson:

  Is there anything that I can do to better the situation?

  As I said the sentence aloud to myself, I couldn’t help but wince. The sentiment was right but the expression was rigid. I was grateful again for the computer screen. Although I had typed and sent the words, they just didn’t sound right coming out in my own voice.

  Daniel Lodge:

  There is one thing

  If you don’t mind

  And if that was a sincere offer

  Because you can never tell over these things

  Haha

  There was something admirable about his honesty and I felt moved to match it when it came to my reply. I quickly typed a response – ‘I’m sorry, no, that wasn’t actually said with sincerity; I was just trying to be polite’ – but I knew that it wasn’t right. As I read and reread the message, I began to develop a sense of uncertainty – that no, I should not be doing this. The tip of my right index finger hovered about in the small space between the backspace button and the enter key. I eventually settled on the former and tapped at it repeatedly, deleting one callous character at a time. I typed what felt like a more socially acceptable message and hit enter without even proofreading it, for fear that I might delete this one, too:

  Gillian Thompson:

  Of course. I wouldn’t have extended the offer otherwise.

  The response was a little clinical, again, but it was certainly more approachable than the previous attempt. And while I read and reread this message, waiting for a reply – or at least the dancing dots that would indicate a reply was on its way – a thought occurred to me that I found unsettling: did everyone have to try this hard? Of course, it wasn’t exactly the first time that this thought had made an appearance. Throughout years of self-editing and linguistic censorship in even the most simple of conversations, I had thought this before. But now, observing the awkward tone of my own messages sat alongside the perfect ease of Daniel’s, I couldn’t help but pull myself back to the question. I wondered then whether this was more difficult because it was with Daniel. I couldn’t see what was so different about him, but there must have been something. Throughout my entire teenage years people had failed to hold my attention for particularly long stretches of time, but Daniel?

  And before that thought progressed further, a message interrupted me:

  Daniel Lodge:

  Are you free this afternoon?

  I know that it’s short notice

  But something about being here at the house

  While she’s in there

  I just need to get out for a while I think

  But I understand if you’re busy

  Or even if you just don’t want to haha

  Despite Daniel’s virtual laugh, I couldn’t envisage him laughing in person. The only image that I could scramble together was one of Daniel sitting in an empty house, waiting for the dancing dots to appear on his screen.

  The clock that was tucked into the bottom left of my laptop screen reminded me I was busy – ‘Peaches and I are in the park the same time most days’ – and I did have somewhere to be, fairly soon. But something else seemed determined to convince me again that that wasn’t a proper response and so I endeavoured to strike a balance between easing Daniel’s apparent emotional discomfort, and inflicting any type of discomfort on myself.

  Gillian Thompson:

  Do you know The Runner’s Route park?

  Daniel Lodge:

  On the way to town?

  Where the dog walkers go?

  Gillian Thomson:

  Yes. That’s the one. It’s a nice place to spend an afternoon.

  I asked Daniel if he could meet me at the park in thirty minutes. Paul and Peaches were less likely to bump into us then, but we’d still be in good time to see them both.

  Chapter 11

  Daniel and I spent the afternoon walking. In terms of actual time it was no longer than an hour and thirty-two minutes, but Daniel’s tendency to fill every silence gave me the impression that our walk had lasted longer – despite my multiple attempts to further amuse myself with several rounds of ‘spot the dog walker’. When the trail came to an end I hoped that this would provide an opportunity for our conversation to conclude as well.

  ‘Ah, course, Gillian must have a whole clan of Thompsons waiting for her at home.’

  ‘I just live with my mother.’

  ‘Ah.’

  The silence lasted a beat too long; I had to fill it.

  ‘She’s actually away at the moment, but all that means is that the task of keeping the house clean falls on me. So that’s my occupation for the rest of the day.’

  It was a flimsy excuse but I hoped that it would be believable enough to explain why I couldn’t commit any more time to Daniel. And sure enough, it worked. But Daniel was right when he said that I wouldn’t need to clean the house every day. And yes, I suppose everyone did need to eat at some point. And yes, there really is something special about a home-cooked meal, isn’t there? And, of course, I had a number that he could reach me on. And before I really knew what was happening I was typing my home telephone number into the keypad of Daniel’s mobile. He said that he would call me the following morning to see what time he should arrive and whether he could do anything to assist.

  Bring whatever you expect to eat, I wanted to say. But instead I told him that I looked forward to hearing from him – and the words actually felt right.

  At 9:32 the following morning I was preoccupied with the mammoth task of filling the silence in the house by making a noisy breakfast. The kettle wobbled as it approached boiling point, its whistle becoming more pronounced, and then the unfamiliar tone of our house phone leaked in from the hallway. It took longer than it should have done for me to register the sound.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Gillian?’

  ‘Yes, it’s Gillian. Daniel?’

  I hadn’t been expecting a phone call from anyone else, but there was something attractive about pretending that I was. People like to know that they are hankering after something popular.

  ‘Yes! I thought I might have missed you; the phone seemed to be ringing forever. I’m glad I that I have caught you, because I’ve been thinking about our plans.’

  I felt the return of an unsettling knot inside my stomach that somehow seemed to encapsulate my general feelings towards Daniel. I was already becoming quite accustomed to the push (I wonder if he’s calling to cancel the whole dreadful thing) and the pull (wouldn’t that be disappointing?).

  ‘It’s pretty unfair of me to invite myself over like that and then expect you to do all the cooking. And I am after all a fairly modern, respectable, metro sort of man, I think.’

  He deliberately paused, waiting for some kind of denial or confirmation of what he had just said. I wasn’t sure which to give.

  ‘Okay, or not – ah, so my suggestion. Maybe I could come over to yours and I can be in charge of cooking? You’ll just need to point me in the direction of the kitchen when I get there, and relax. And maybe sort out something for dessert, if you can manage it.’ He laughed.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Oh, just to be nice, Gillian. You know, to be nice to you.’

  I didn’t quite understand but I gave him the address anyway.

  I was halfway to the supermarket’s in-store bakery later that day when I saw him – Paul, that is, not
Daniel – with an empty basket hung over his arm. Strategically placing myself at the end of the snack aisle, I watched him head towards what turned out to be the pet section. I hovered, pretending to peruse the discounted savoury items that had been conveniently displayed at the end of every other aisle, giving me ample opportunity to linger. Barely ten seconds had passed when I eyed Paul again, and saw that he was torn between a soft plastic pig and a packet of tennis balls. He dropped the latter into his basket before his fingers pulsed around the pig, forcing out three sharp squeaks. There must have been something pleasing about the noise because he dropped that in too. We very nearly bumped into each other during our respective food shops; not that Paul noticed. Fresh vegetables and fruit, followed by meat, and then the unavoidable frozen items – because even the most health-conscious shopper sometimes buys for convenience. He made a last-minute dash to the bakery section, reminding me of why I’d come to the supermarket in the first instance; had the circumstances been different, I would have thanked him for this. I still hadn’t chosen a dessert. Paul picked up a large tiger loaf and balanced it on top of the weeks’ worth of shopping crammed into the basket. He left me struggling between pecan plaits and cinnamon swirls. Tuesday seemed an odd day for a weekly food shop.

  The rest of the day proved uneventful, that is until Daniel arrived at 6:28pm (earlier than he had told me he would be there, but it seemed petty to mention it). After I opened the door, I made two conclusions about Daniel’s character: his lopsided facial expression definitely was a default setting, and that hideous corduroy jacket was his favourite article of clothing. In two hands he held a total of three plastic carrier bags, all of which looked strained with the weight of Daniel’s food purchases. His smile was now framed by inflated cheeks, puffed out in exasperation. He took hesitant steps forward, struggling with the weight of his purchases. Each movement was accompanied by the rustle of plastic – a threat that the bags may not make it to the kitchen. Unsure of my responsibilities, I stepped to the side of the front door to allow him access and directed him towards the kitchen.