After The Fall

by Sarah Goodwin

  I thought of the messages that I had sent to Coop from the internet café. Nate didn’t own a computer, and my face burned with humiliation as I thought of him, waving me off, then legging it to the library to talk to me through Coop. To ease my doubts until I was completely...

  It hurt to even think it – but it was true. I was, had been, completely in love with him.

  And now I was homeless, friendless, and pretty much in the same situation I’d been in when I’d first woken up in hospital.

  I went up to the security guard manning the appointment book and waited for him to finish dealing with a woman in pink jogging bottoms who was clutching a screaming toddler. When she left, I stepped forwards and explained that I didn’t have an appointment, but that I’d lost my flat, and didn’t have anywhere to go.

  The security guard’s expression didn’t change, but he pointed over my shoulder.

  “You want the one-stop, over the road, up the street, by the public toilets.”

  Hardly encouraging, but I followed his directions and ended up at a building that looked almost entirely like the job centre, only a little older, and slightly less busy.

  Inside a signpost directed the few people towards any number of services, and I followed the arrow towards ‘Housing Services’, which turned out to be a semi-circular desk with three people sitting behind it, none of whom were doing anything. I took a number from a wall mounted dispenser, the kind you see at the delicatessen counter in supermarkets, and sat on a hard, grey chair.

  “439?”

  “439?”

  Whoever it was had clearly given up and gone home, I could understand why. My number was 506.

  “439?”

  I crumpled my number slip into a ball and went up.

  “How can I help?” asked the bloke on the other side of the desk. He had an ear tunnel and was wearing a black shirt with powdery dandruff on the shoulders.

  My throat was on fire by this time, and I croaked a false start before saying. “I’ve just been kicked out by my flatmate, and I haven’t got anywhere else to go.”

  He sighed without energy and pulled a sheet of paper out of a drawer.

  “Parents?”

  “Dead.”

  “Family?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you have any friends you could stay with on a short term basis?”

  None that wouldn’t tell Nate where I was. I shook my head again.

  “Why did you leave your accommodation?”

  “The man I was living with took advantage of me, because I have amnesia.” I had no choice but to tell the truth, it was my only hope of getting help.

  The man looked at me, and I could tell he didn’t believe me. I fished the tattered doctor’s letter out of my bag, along with my job seekers booklet, which had my special circumstances printed on it. He read through both sceptically, but with growing interest. I could see that he was no longer bored shitless.

  “I suppose that could count as disability. Then you can’t stay homeless because you’re at risk. I’ll need to check with someone.”

  “And if it doesn’t count?”

  He shrugged. “Council will only house you if you’ve got kids, disability or if your old house burnt down or something. So, if you’re not in the disability bracket, you’ll have to go into a hostel, or off to a housing association property, which is on a waiting list.”

  He tramped off to find a manager, leaving me to wonder where the hell I was going to end up.

  I was sat there so long that I thought he’d forgotten about me. There wasn’t a clock in sight, and time stretched on and on while I fidgeted on the hard chair and felt a headache start to come on in the stuffy, overly warm room.

  Eventually, someone else came and sat down in front of me. A grey haired, florid man whose almost nonexistent neck bulged from the collar of his off-white shirt. He plunked down into the chair opposite me and started to talk as if we had some kind of pre-existing conversation going.

  “So we’ve reviewed you, and, given this unique situation, we’re going to get you into a home as soon as possible. Firstly a Bed and Breakfast, and then on to a council property as soon as something becomes available.”

  I did not like the sound of a shelter, but I was glad that I wouldn’t be turfed out onto the street.

  “I’ll print off the details for you, and call ahead,” he said, and clicked a few things on the computer.

  “Connor, what the fuck are you doing?”

  I hadn’t realised that there was someone standing over me. I twisted in my seat and Nate filled my field of vision, his parka hanging open and revealing the clothes he’d been wearing when I’d last seen him. His hair was in chaos, like it had been pulled in many directions by fierce fingers.

  For a moment, the sight of him had me speechless. That was the chance Nate needed.

  “I came home and you were gone, you left DVDs on the floor. I know what you saw, OK? And you don’t have to do this,” he gestured at the man behind the desk. “You don’t have to go into some shitty shelter, you could have asked me, not just-”

  “Just what? Walked out?” I said, cutting him off. “Like I did to Emma? Like you told me to?”

  “I never said-”

  “You made me think it!” I stood up, chair shrieking back. “You talked to me, and you twisted everything around. You convinced me that it was the right thing to do, didn’t you? And just to make sure, you faked up those emails, those messages, and you fed me all the same bullshit all over again.”

  Nate’s face was ashy. “Con-”

  “Save it,” I snatched the piece of paper that came spitting out of the printer next to the advisors desk. “I don’t want to hear any more crap from you, and I especially don’t want to see you.”

  I stalked past him, past the few spectators who had popped up like meerkats from their cubicles. I smacked the glass door open with the flat of my hand, stepped onto the street. I couldn’t feel the pavement under my feet. My gut roared with acid anger, and my knees ached with misery, turning weak.

  Nate burst onto the street behind me, rushing to catch up.

  “Connor!”

  I ignored him, but he caught my arm, making me turn around and drop my bag.

  “Connor, please just listen,” his breathing was heavy, smoker’s grot stirring in his lungs. “I never lied to you. I didn’t, everything I said. I meant. But those DVDs...I couldn’t explain them, even after I found them in that box, they didn’t feel real.”

  “They looked real,” I spat, “very real. You lying, sneaky son of-”

  “But I don’t know those men, either of them,” Nate said, “I know you, and me, and we are not whoever we were back then. Whatever they did...it’s not important, it’s not about us.”

  I looked at him, and he didn’t look like a liar, like he was trying to catch me out with some trick. To be honest, the shock of the DVDs had started to wear off. It was a massive coincidence that they’d wound up where either of us could see them. And Nate was right, they had come from before, from who we were. Did they have any bearing on this? On us, now?

  But the world had spun on since then, had sent me spinning too.

  “Coop,” I said, and Nate’s eyes widened.

  “Explain that,” I challenged him.

  He shook his head, “It’s not that easy.”

  “You lied to me, easy enough.” I clenched my hands into fists, fighting a rush of anger and despair. “I thought I could trust you over Emma, and you lied to me all along.”

  “I didn’t set out to-”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  He looked at me for a long moment. “Connor, please don’t go to that place, I know what it’s like there, it’s where they put me when I came out of hospital, and it is horrible. You don’t know what it was like, how it felt to be all alone in that dump, knowing no one cared about me. I don’t want that for you – just come back to the flat with me, let me explain.”

  “I don’t wan
t to come back with you,” I told him, “I wish I’d never met you. You’re the reason I’m stuck in this mess.”

  He bristled.

  “And you’re so perfect, are you?” He said, “I mean, you lied to your wife, shagged me. And how many other blokes? Before? You made those DVDs when you were still married. You can’t lecture me over one stupid mistake.”

  I stood my ground. “I’m not that person anymore. I’m trying to be honest, to do the right thing. I thought that’s what I was doing when I left Emma, but you’d twisted everything. You made me into a liar.”

  “Please, you wanted out of her house so badly you were ready to believe anything. You listened to a total stranger from the internet,” he scoffed, “you wanted out.”

  I shook my head. “Not like this, because of some made up version of things.”

  “I didn’t make anything up!” he shouted, “we were strangers, I met you, you wanted to fuck me. You’re gay. I’m gay, and I liked you. I didn’t know we were going to end up living together.”

  “But you knew we knew each other, before, and you didn’t tell me.You hid it from me.” I waved my arm helplessly between us. “And how do you even know this is real? That we don’t just remember this stuff from before we lost our memories?”

  “You mean, how do I know I love you?”

  That brought me up short.

  “You’re just going to have to trust me, because I can’t show you what it’s like in my head.” He said, voice low and serious, “what it’s been like since I came in and you weren’t there.”

  I swallowed.

  “I’ve been going out of my mind all night,” Nate told me. “I’ve been looking for you, all night.”

  “I don’t trust you.” I said, and Nate flinched, then turned away.

  I knew I had to say it, I couldn’t keep it from him.

  “The necklace, Nate. Your necklace, I bought it for you.”

  He froze, turned to look at me.

  “I bought it, and I had it delivered to you. To Cooper. That’s your last name. Your real name.”

  I watched him put it together. His name. His email address. Then his face shut down again.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Nate-”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it?” he shook his head, “Why would it?”

  As he walked away from me, I had to fight not to follow him. A big part of me wanted to go back to him, to the flat, but the rest knew that it wouldn’t solve anything. Nate had lied to me, and I couldn’t forget that. I didn’t know what he was to me anymore – someone I’d met and fallen for – or a quick, dirty affair that had managed to stick in my memory, making me recognise him on some level.

  Nate didn’t know who he was, and he didn’t care. But I couldn’t just let go of my past like that. I had to know, and if I’d found things out that I didn’t care to know, well, then that was just how it went. I told myself that as I checked into the B&B that night. You couldn’t live on in ignorance just because it was easy. I’d learnt that with Emma.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The bed and breakfast that the housing services advisor referred me to was a three story square building with facing on it like old porridge. If Nate was to be believed it was the same B&B that the hospital had booked for him when they discharged him. I didn’t like it any better for knowing that. The door let out directly onto the street, and the name The Old Crown Inn, was spelt out in gold letters with most of the gold worn off.

  I knew from the blurb on the print-out that it wasn’t a normal B&B, it was purpose run for people like me, the single and suddenly homeless. I was lucky to get in, if there hadn’t been space I would have landed in a shelter with the long-term homeless.

  My room was small, about the size of Nate’s kitchenette. A narrow single bed was pushed up under the window; pale green sheets warn very thin and washed to within an inch of their lives. There was a chest of drawers with a mirror on top and a chair that didn’t match, with a cushion tied to it on three corners and hanging loose on the other.

  The walls were paper thin, and I could hear a baby crying two rooms away, the communal TV blaring from the tiny kitchen/living room at the end of the hall. Someone talking on their phone, loudly, alternating English with a language I couldn’t identify.

  I was lucky that I could get the housing benefit to pay for the room, otherwise I’d have been screwed.

  That first day I checked in at around noon, and didn’t leave again. I was too afraid of seeing Nate again, and I felt to raw to deal with him. I put my bag on the floor by the bed and laid down on the unfamiliar sheets. The mattress was hard and full of golf ball sized lumps. It also smelt very strongly of cleaning fluid, but also of intense body odour.

  I took the duvet off of the bed and spread it on the floor, covering myself with my coat and pillowing my head on a rolled up jumper. I felt incredibly sick, my whole body was sweating and yet still I was cold. Alone and pathetic on the balding carpet, I cried, cried so hard that my eyes became sore and my throat was stripped bare, until I was hiccupping and sniffing like a child.

  I had lost everything, and all through my own stupidity. I couldn’t even find it in myself to be angry anymore. I was just tired, so very tired, and the idea of getting up off of the floor, of continuing my life, was so exhausting it made me curl up and sob bitterly.

  I was a mess, and I hated myself.

  That night I couldn’t sleep, neither could I shake off the heavy despondency that was stuck in my chest like a fist. I left the bed and breakfast once it was late enough that chances of running into Nate were slim, and walked to the twenty-four hour supermarket. I bought medicine, painkillers and cold tablets, and a white mug to mix up some Lemsip in.

  At the Old Crown I made a hot drink in the shared kitchen, and stole two slices of bread from a bag in the cupboard, I spread them with jam from the fridge and carried the sandwich and my mug to my room. I drank the lemony medicine, but after a few bites I abandoned the food, it tasted like damp paper, and my teeth only mashed it into a paste that I couldn’t swallow.

  I wanted Nate, with a ferocity that made me loathe myself. How could I want someone who had done such an underhanded thing to me?

  I would have stayed in my room all the time were it not for the fact that I had to leave every morning because the rules of the house meant that staying in was not an option.

  The only thing was, there was a lot of time to think during the day. I had to stay out all the time, avoiding anywhere I might see Nate and trying to eke out my jobseekers money, which I was having to use to buy in my own food and pay to replace the things I’d left at Nate’s like underwear, deodorant and soap. If I’d had the extra money I would have used it to drink myself to sleep, so it was probably a blessing that my meagre budget couldn’t stretch to it.

  My interview was still a week away, and it was the only bright spot on my horizon. Even if the idea of finally having another job didn’t exactly light me on fire, it was the distraction that I craved. I knew I couldn’t carry on like that, with nothing to do and nowhere to be. It felt like I was trapped in that little room, or rootless and out walking. More than that, I was trapped in my own head. I didn’t have a life.

  I didn’t even know if I wanted one.

  That was the darkest time in my life, and I spent each minute of every day in pain. For days I didn’t sleep, only lay on the floor on my thin duvet and muffled my sobs with the folds of my coat. I felt worthless, almost subhuman, and my red eyes, pale face and dead expression warded off any allies I might have otherwise made.

  The worst part was knowing that I wanted to die, and being too much of a coward to end my life. I knew no one would care if I died.

  Nate had been right about the bed and breakfast, it was the worst place I could have chosen to stay. But, even at a five star hotel, I would still have had to carry my thoughts with me, and in that respect, any place would be the same to me.

  I saw Nate twice after our meeting at the hous
ing association. Once he passed the window of the newsagents I was buying cigarettes in. The other time, I opened my bedroom window, and saw him sitting on a bench outside. It was almost completely dark, but the tip of his cigarette lit up his face, and he looked right at me.

  Of course he knew where I was. There were only a certain number of places for me to have gone. A couple of times I thought I saw him hanging around, but I couldn’t be sure. Nevertheless, I was careful about going out. I didn’t want to see him, I couldn’t risk it.

  It surprised me that I still wanted him, that I wanted to be with him. Even knowing that he’d lied to me, I couldn’t help myself. Sometimes I woke up, confused about where I was, reaching for a side of the bed that didn’t exist, and a man who wasn’t there. Then a shoe would hit the connecting wall, or a baby would scream, and I’d remember where I was.

  Maybe that’s why it took me so long to become curious again. I was so caught up in my own hopelessness, my own misery, dreading my tepid take-away dinners, interminable sleepless nights and aimless days off walking by the canal or out along the railway. I had let go of my need to know myself, to understand the past that had blighted my present.

  It took me a while to start thinking, to get back on the cold trail of my past. Maybe it was the drugs kicking in, finally, or maybe it was because I had so much time to brood on it. Once I let the curiosity back in, it burnt in me like a hot coal. I wasn’t satisfied with half of the truth. I wanted it all, whatever it was. I wanted to know who I’d been, and who I’d been with.

  Who was Nate, really? And who was I? Why had my life turned so spectacularly to shit? Anyone else could have sat in their room and brooded on the wrong turnings and foolish decisions that had lead them to such a horrible place. I wanted to know what I had done to deserve the pain that I now felt.

  And after all, I had nothing but time on my hands, my life was empty of everything else.

  At the back of my mind, I suppose I thought of it as my last attempt to understand myself. I think that I intended to end it once I was done, that knowing just how badly I had acted against everyone in my life, including myself, would drive me to do what, up until then, I had not had the determination to do.