by Louise Voss
‘The Japanese believe that every summer their dead relatives come back to visit them. That’s why so many people leave Tokyo in August and go back to their hometowns. I always liked the idea of that – of the dead visiting their old homes. Which is why I like the idea of hanging around and meeting up with Kathy’s spirit when she comes calling.’
‘Were you..?’
‘An item? Lovers? Yes, we were. She was the love of my life.’
‘So why did you go away?’
She shrugged. ‘Things go wrong, don’t they?’
I could relate to that. Even if I couldn’t relate to the idea of waiting for your ex’s ghost to come creeping up on you. I took another big swig of beer, closed my eyes, focussed.
‘I want to show you what happened,’ I said, standing up.
‘Show me?’
‘Yes, out on the fire escape.’
She looked doubtful. But I said, ‘Look, Elaine, you need to trust me. I have to show you; it’s too complicated just to tell you. Otherwise I’m going to leave now and then you’ll have to wait for Kathy’s spirit to come and explain it instead.’
I saw her weigh up her options. She didn’t know anything about me. But there was something about her that made me confident that she would accept my invitation. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time – this vibe she was giving off – though I understand it now.
She put her drink on the carpet and stood up. ‘Alright. Let’s go.’
She opened the window that led to the fire escape and I said, ‘After you.’
She stepped out onto the metal structure and I followed her. It was still raining and the wind had really picked up, howling around the building, forcing me to raise my voice so Elaine could hear me.
‘We were both drunk,’ I said, ‘and Kathy said we should go up onto the roof where the view was better. I didn’t really want to go, but she was insistent. We came out here and then – well, let’s go a little higher and I’ll show you.’
She looked doubtful now, but I also knew she was so desperate to know the truth. She had clearly been obsessing over it ever since she’d got back from her travels. That was the power I had over her: only I could set her mind at rest. If only the truth was more plausible. Because I was convinced that, if I didn’t do something drastic, the following was going to happen:
After I told Elaine what had happened she would call the police and tell them what I’d said. Of course, the police would want to talk to me because I was a witness who hadn’t stepped forward before, which was suspicious in itself. Then they would start digging in my past and find out about Siobhan. Next, they would talk to Siobhan and decide that I was jealous of Kathy because I thought Kathy and Siobhan were about to embark on a lesbian affair. That gave me the motivation to murder Kathy.
Standing on the fire escape, the rain making the metal slippery, I knew that if I walked out of that flat with Elaine still alive, the police would have me in an interview room by the next morning.
‘This is where she fell from,’ I said. We were standing near the top of the fire escape, a few steps from the roof. I pointed towards the adjacent block of flats and said, ‘Look,’ so that Elaine turned away from me.
I began to reach out. All I had to do was push her and she would go over the edge, down to the same spot where Kathy had landed. Grief-stricken woman commits suicide. It would have perfect symmetry. Nobody knew I was here. There was nothing to connect me to this. Push her, and it would all be over.
I reached out further.
On my way home, I stopped at Camden Lock and sat down on a bench overlooking the water. Traffic rushed down Camden High Street. Teenagers queued outside a nearby music venue, their whole lives ahead of them. I lit a cigarette and enjoyed each drag. I could hear a couple screaming at each other in a nearby flat and I wondered if they thought they loved each other. Did they fight and scream and then collapse into bed, professing eternal love while the next row brewed inside them? Did they have a child who was listening now, cowering in the next room, desperate to grow up and get out? A child who heard his parents alternately fighting and fucking in the name of love.
Love.
It’s a bitch.
Elaine Meadows loved Kathy but something went wrong and she left the country. But she never stopped loving her. When she turned back to me on that fire escape, after I had realised that I couldn’t do it, that I could never kill anyone, that I would rather die in prison for a crime I didn’t commit, she had tears rolling down her face.
‘She was drunk,’ I told her, ‘and she came up the steps too fast. And she slipped – it was simple as that. I reached out to try to grab her but she was beyond my reach.’ I was crying myself now. ‘And I ran, all the way home, and I didn’t tell anyone that I’d been here, because I was convinced that everyone would think I pushed her. I was so scared and so fucking stupid. And I’m so sorry.’
‘Let’s go inside,’ she said. She sounded… resigned.
We went back into the living room and Elaine fetched a couple of towels so we could dry off.
‘Are you going to call the police now?’ I said.
‘No.’
I looked at her.
‘I believe you, Alex.’ She touched my shoulder. ‘All I wanted was to know the truth – that’s what I told you, wasn’t it? I’m not going to talk to the police.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Between you and me, I think they’re a bunch of arseholes and they think I’m a stupid, obsessive woman who can’t accept the simple fact that her dyke friend got drunk and fell off the fire escape.’ She paused. ‘To tell the truth, I was going to tell them about you acting strangely when I phoned you, but every time I’d tried to make them listen to me before, they never took me seriously.’
‘I wouldn’t blame you if you called them now. I… I feel responsible. And, the thing is, I did think about hurting her. I thought she was going to come between me and the woman I was in love with. I had a motive – that’s why I thought everyone would think I killed her.’
Elaine let my confession sink in, and for a moment I was convinced she was going to change her mind, walk over to the phone and dial 999. But she said, ‘Who was this woman?’
‘This woman?’
‘The one you said you loved. The one you thought about killing for. Are you with her now?’
I shook my head. ‘No I’m not. I blew it with her. She hates me.’
Elaine frowned. ‘So it was all a waste. You thought about killing for this woman – loved her that much – and then it ended. Just like that? Did you fight to keep her?’
‘Yes, I…’ I trailed off. Had I fought? Did I do everything I could to make Siobhan love me? Jesus, I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have done, but when it came right down to it, I gave up, didn’t I? I moped around, felt sorry for myself, and then Emily came along to take my mind off it. And I’d convinced myself I loved Emily, that she was my saviour. But what if she was just a plaster on my wound – the wound on my heart that never actually healed?
I sat on the bench listening to the rowing couple for a little while longer, then headed home, thinking about Elaine Meadows and her desire to know the truth. The last thing I had seen her do was shake her head at me then turn back towards the window. I saw her move her finger towards the condensation on the window, drawing something there.
I had closed the door, leaving her in peace. There was something I had to tell Emily.
But when I got back to the flat she had already found out.
I opened the door to the flat and headed towards my bedroom, realising as I passed the living room that Emily was sitting in there, on the floor, her back against the sofa. I stood in the doorway.
‘What are you doing?’
She looked up at me, her face pale, her eyes pink. She had a big pile of A4 pages on her lap and my first thought was that it must be a manuscript that she’d brought with her from the office. Then Emily started reading from it:
‘”Siobhan was very lucky to have this place. N
ow all she needed was someone to share it with. Somebody like me… I love you so much, she’d say. And then she’d get that naughty glint in her eye and say, Why don’t you fuck me?”
‘That was just before you hid in her wardrobe, and just after you’d sat on her toilet seat like some kind of perverted freak.’
‘Emily.’
‘And how about this bit?’ She flicked back through my journal, which she had printed out in its entirety. ‘This is the bit where you push the woman off the fire escape.’
‘Emily, I didn’t. Give me that.’ I tried to grab the journal but she screamed.
‘Get away from me, you fucking pervert. You…murderer.’
‘Emily,’ I said again, trying to remain calm. ‘Did you read all of it?’
‘I read enough. Not all of it, but enough.’ Her voice was twice as loud as I’ve ever heard it before. Her nose was running where she had been crying. ‘I flicked through to the end, to the bit in Amsterdam. All those lies, Alex. All those fucking lies. And that bit where you wrote about how weak I am and how you’d hate to be fucking saddled with me for the rest your life. Weak, am I? You’ll see. You’ll fucking see.’
‘Sshh…’
‘Don’t fucking shush me, you bastard! You knew that this woman – this oh-so-perfect woman – set those blokes on you. God, I wish they’d broken your neck. And it was her, wasn’t it – it was her who sent me the rat and those magazines? And you knew all along but didn’t do anything? Why? Why?’
‘Please…’
‘No! I want to see this Siobhan. I want to see who my competition was; who I was trying to live up to – without even knowing it. I’m going round there now.’
‘Emily, don’t be stupid.’
‘Don’t call me stupid! And you can’t stop me – I know her address. It’s in here.’ She waved the journal at me. ‘I’m going go round there and tell that bitch she can have you.’ She stood up. That’s when I smelled the alcohol on her breath and saw the empty wine bottle beside her.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said. Maybe I could stop her en route, or at least slow her down. ‘Let me just get a jumper. It’s cold out.’
‘I need a piss,’ she said, marching unsteadily into the toilet, cradling the pages of the journal tightly against her big soft breasts; the breasts that I’d liked so much but which now made me feel stifled just looking at them. I didn’t know what to do. Should I phone Siobhan? No, I didn’t have time. I rushed into the bedroom and saw the journal onscreen. There was so much stuff in it – so much shameful stuff. I quit the program and immediately dragged it into the trashcan. I emptied the trash, without a flicker of regret. Now I just had to get the hard copy off Emily and destroy it.
Emily came out of the toilet and went straight down the stairs towards the front door. I forgot about the jumper and followed her. She had the journal tucked in tight under her arm.
I tried to be belligerent. ‘I can’t believe you read my private journal.’
‘Fuck off,’ she said. Then, after a few moments, she said, ‘I needed to find out what had been going on in Amsterdam, and I knew you kept a journal. It wasn’t hard to work out the password. At first I hoped it might be my name, but no. So I tried the name of the person you love most: Alex. Your own name. Although you don’t only love yourself, do you? You love her too. Siobhan.’
‘I used to,’ I said weakly, wishing I’d kept my password as Tara Lies Awake. Emily would never have guessed that one.
She glared at me. ‘No. I think you still do. Otherwise you would have told me about her. You wouldn’t have tried to protect her.’
We were walking so fast that it only took fifteen minutes to reach Siobhan’s house. There was a light on downstairs. I had been hoping that Siobhan might be out. I was so nervous about seeing her – and not just because of Emily and my fear that she might try to knock Siobhan out.
It was because Emily was right – I still loved Siobhan. I had been denying it for months, since I had thrown myself into my relationship with Emily, who had been so good to me, so good for me. My first chance to have a proper, healthy relationship. But that’s all it had been – me trying to be normal; like everyone else. I was so shocked that somebody without any bizarre abnormalities or mental illnesses liked me, and so grateful, that I had convinced myself that I was happy. I mean, I don’t want to rewrite history – I did like Emily, and I enjoyed playing the boyfriend role. But that’s all it was: acting; making myself into one of those people who was in love with the idea of being in love. I think that, maybe, if I’d met Emily at a different time, it might have been okay, even though she was boring and didn’t make my pulse race and my pupils dilate and my heart ache (I couldn’t even get it up the first time we went to bed; what kind of sign was that?). Maybe we could have had a lasting relationship. Because the main thing wrong with Emily was that she wasn’t Siobhan.
When Elaine said that Kathy was the love of her life, my first thought hadn’t been, ‘That’s how I feel about Emily’. It had been, ‘That’s how I felt about Siobhan.’ Except it wasn’t just past tense.
It isn’t past tense at all.
Emily rang the doorbell and, after a few moments in which my heart performed several somersaults that would have taken gold at the last Olympics, Siobhan opened the door.
She looked like she’d been out on the town, her lips stained with red wine. She was wearing the Prada clothes I’d bought her – but they had paint all over them. Seeing her made me catch my breath. She looked incredibly sexy – and also shocked. And very pissed off.
Just as Emily did.
‘It’s you!’ Emily said. ‘From the coffee shop. I don’t believe it.’
Siobhan looked from Emily to me. ‘What is going on, Alex?’
She said my name. Said it so naturally, like it was a name she used every day. I gulped.
‘What’s going on,’ said Emily, waving the journal, ‘is that I’ve just discovered all about you and Alex and other rats – ones that come in a sealed envelope. And I want…I want…’ Emily trailed off. I guess she hadn’t thought that far ahead.
‘You’d better come in,’ Siobhan said quietly, looking over our shoulders where her neighbours’ curtains twitched. And we went with her into her living room. I noticed immediately that there were birthday cards on the mantelpiece.
‘Is it your birthday today?’ I asked.
She nodded.
‘Happy birthday.’
Siobhan laughed. Not just a chuckle but a big, loud belly laugh.
Emily stood there with her mouth open. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘This is just so bizarre.’ She was a bit drunk as well, I realised now. ‘Here you both are, wishing me a happy birthday. And, Emily – Emily Norris-Bottom,’ she giggled, ‘it looks like you brought me a present.’
Siobhan reached out for the journal and Emily raised it to give it to her. But before Siobhan could take it, I grabbed it and took a couple of steps backward.
‘What is it?’ Siobhan asked, squinting at it. ‘Is it your book?’
I said, ‘Do you remember at the writing class you told us to keep a journal? This is it. I’ve kept it completely up to date.’
‘And you’re the star,’ Emily said to Siobhan.
I sighed. ‘That isn’t true. But what this journal represents,’ I said, holding it up, ‘is the past. And earlier tonight, I made a decision. A big decision. I decided that it’s time for a new beginning. I’ve done some idiotic things over the last few months. But now I’m going to move on. Alone.’ I gave Emily a meaningful look. Her mouth fell open again.
I took my cigarette lighter out of my pocket and sparked a flame, setting the edge of the journal alight. I threw the whole thing into the fireplace, where the remains of a fire still glowed red. A cloud of malevolent-looking ashes rose, then settled slowly back down again. Emily gasped and tried to get past me to retrieve the pages but I held her back, and, anyway, it was too late. The fire had taken hold, and the pages started to float up
the chimney, the smell of them filling the room. All those words; my life since the middle of last September. Up in smoke.
Emily was trembling, staring into the flames. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Burn the evidence. There’s still a copy on your computer, though.’
‘I deleted it. While you were in the toilet.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, tapping the side of her head. ‘It’s all in here.’ She turned to Siobhan. ‘Enjoy him while you can.’
She walked out of the room and out of the house, slamming the door behind her.
‘This is too much,’ said Siobhan. ‘I need to sit down.’
I could see her looking at the ash on the carpet, a frown line creasing her brow. She looked so adorable.
She sat on the sofa and I stood in front of her, not knowing what to do.
‘What did she mean, “Enjoy him while you can?”’
‘She meant…’ But instead of explaining, I said, ‘I’m still in love with you.’
Siobhan looked into my eyes. I held her gaze. There were butterflies the size of crows going mental in my stomach. Behind me, I sensed the fire going out. But in front of me, Siobhan touched the sofa beside her and said in a soft voice, ‘Sit down.’
I did what she said. The room was silent except for the hum of electricity and the rustle of fabric as Siobhan reached out for me.
‘This whole situation,’ Siobhan whispered, ‘is completely fucked up. Isn’t it?’
‘More than you know,’ I said.
‘What’s Emily going to do?’
‘I don’t care.’
She took hold of my hand. Her skin was warm. Then she smiled and said, ‘I don’t think we’ve been introduced.’
‘I . . ?’ Then I looked into her eyes, at the way she was looking at me, and I got it. The way people who are meant to be together understand each other. This was going to be our fresh start. Just for this moment, we had no history. I said, ‘My name’s Alex. Nice to meet you.’
‘Nice to meet you too, Alex. I’m Siobhan.’
She kissed me. She tasted of ash and wine.
‘Siobhan. That’s a beautiful name.’