Before We Fall

by Grace Lowrie

  ‘So what’s the problem? I’m not stopping you.’ I looked away down the street, unsure how to explain without sounding like a complete loser, but he leaned around me, obstinately re-establishing eye contact. ‘What are you afraid of?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Just say it, Cally.’

  His words made me flush with heated flashbacks and I hoped it was too dark for him to see. I took a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to do it all on my own – I hoped you might come with me.’

  The silver barbell in his eyebrow lifted in surprise. ‘I am not agoraphobic for fuck’s sake! Look – I’m outside!’ he said, spreading his arms wide in exasperation.

  I laughed. ‘I know, I believe you, that’s not why I’m asking, I promise. It’s just boring visiting all these places on my own and I don’t have anyone else I can ask…’

  ‘Right… so… if I do lame touristy shit with you, you’ll sit for me in return?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bay sighed. ‘You’re a fruit loop, you know that, right?’

  ‘Charming, thanks.’ I looked down at the pavement to hide my big grin. ‘Oh my god, your feet are bare!’ I said, looking back up into his face. ‘Aren’t you cold?’

  ‘Yeah, and wet,’ he said suppressing a shiver.

  Shaking my head I laughed.

  ‘I’m glad I amuse you,’ he said dryly, failing to hide the smile in his eyes.

  ‘Tell me honestly, do you actually own any shoes?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Then why aren’t you wearing them?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just stubborn I guess. Come on,’ he said, entering the code to unlock the door and steering me towards the lift.

  By the time we’d reached Bay’s flat my laughter had subsided into the occasional chuckle. I fetched a dry towel for him from the bathroom while he made coffee, but he waved it away.

  ‘I’m fine, stop fussing.’

  ‘You’ll get pneumonia.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘It’s the middle of June, get a grip.’ I set the towel down on the end of his messy bed in the hope he would at least dry his feet. ‘Go get this special list of yours,’ he said over his shoulder.

  ‘I’ve got it here in my bag, actually.’ Sitting down I rummaged about until I found it.

  ‘Read it out, then.’

  I cleared my throat, feeling self-conscious. ‘Well, I’ve already been to the Royal Ballet, so you’ll be glad to be spared that…’ Bay’s face remained impassive as he brought our coffees over to the bed and settled opposite me. I clocked the ugly bruising on the knuckles of his right hand but refrained from mentioning it. ‘…And I’ve already been on the London Eye – it was a bit cloudy but the views were still amazing, have you been?’

  ‘Skip to the things you haven’t done yet.’

  Sighing, I returned to my tatty scrap of paper, scanning for the item most likely to appeal. ‘Tate Modern…?’

  ‘Go on.’

  My cheeks burning I rushed through the rest of the list: ‘A boat trip on the Thames; shopping in Harrods; a film at the Imax 3D cinema; Madame Tussauds; Afternoon Tea in Claridges; The British Library; Borough Market; Highgate Cemetery, and the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London, although I’m not sure about that last one – I’ve heard there’s a really long waiting list.’

  ‘What was the one before that?’

  ‘Highgate Cemetery?’ I rolled my eyes. ‘I should have known you’d go for that one.’

  ‘Will it be open later this afternoon?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘OK, let’s start with that.’

  I grinned at him over my mug of coffee and he shook his head with a grudging, but no-less breathtaking, smile.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I woke at 3 p.m. to the sound of Cally hammering on my door; I’d slept more deeply than I had for days and slumbered straight through my alarm. I refused to accept that my insomnia was in any way related to my loopy neighbour – the idea was fucking ridiculous – but within hours of apologising to her, I’d slept like the dead.

  As I staggered over to the door I lit up a fag before letting her in. She scowled at me in irritation as she checked me out – I swear I could actually feel her Prussian blue gaze tingling on my skin as it roved over my bare chest, snagged on the morning wood barely concealed in my boxers and then darted back to my face. A rosy pink glow of awareness bloomed in her cheeks and I tried not to smirk too much.

  ‘I know, I know, I overslept – I’ll be two minutes,’ I said, heading for the bedroom in search of clothes. Of course I could really do with a wank and a shower, or even a wank in the shower, but if we didn’t make it to the Cemetery before closing there was a good chance Cally would refuse to sit for me. And I needed to paint – it was all I had.

  It was warm outside, the sun irradiating through a hazy sky and rinsing the streets in an unforgiving light. I kept my hood up as we made our way to the nearest tube station. The truth was I hadn’t been out in daytime for months. Even at night I’d only ventured as far as the local bars. Anyone worth speaking to could be contacted by phone or email, and I’d seen enough of the outside world to know it didn’t need a shitbag like me in it. And yet, here I was. The bright daylight made me squint, despite my shades, my scruffy black trainers rubbed on my feet and my general appearance drew suspicious looks. Feeling disorientated and exposed I buried my urge to hide behind a grim expression and my usual swagger.

  Strangely, as we descended into the underground on a steep metal escalator, swept along by a tide of jabbering foreign students, I began to relax. Cally stood on the step below smiling up at me. With her there, the stuffy, artificially-lit tunnels didn’t seem so claustrophobic. I still had to fight the instinct to step in front of the train as it approached, but I managed it by keeping my eyes on her.

  ‘Thank you so much for doing this,’ Cally gushed, settling into a seat next to me. She was dressed casually in a fitted pair of cropped trousers, a cherry-red halter-neck and a matching pair of converse. She smelled of peaches and summer sunshine. Her rich, dark hair was tied up in a high ponytail leaving her pale, perfectly sculpted shoulders bare for all the world to feast their eyes on. I wanted to sink my teeth into them.

  ‘Don’t thank me yet, there’s still time for you to regret it,’ I said, shoving my sleeves up above my elbows. The woman sat on the other side of me shifted uncomfortably at the sight of my tats, and Cally smiled.

  ‘I’m enjoying myself already,’ she mused.

  We surfaced at Archway where I paused to drag my sweatshirt off over my head and light up. Cally laughed, reaching a hand up to tame my scruffy hair with her fingers while I stared at the soft swell of her lips from behind my shades. Her touch felt amazing and gave me goosebumps, but going by the frustrated expression on her face, her efforts to impose some order on me were futile.

  At the top of Highgate Hill we turned into Waterlow Park – all green lawns, mature trees, duck ponds and sky. I queued at the cafe to buy coffee while Cally wandered around the parterred gardens; perusing the sensory borders, smiling at kids as they chased around the benches, and idly trailing her fingers through the fountain. She looked so at ease here – so happy. It still surprised me how much I enjoyed watching her; how much her mere presence calmed me and made me feel less… lost.

  Re–fuelled with caffeine and nicotine, I accompanied Cally to the far side of the park, grateful that the sky had clouded over and softened the harsh glare of the sun.

  ‘It’s four pounds each to get in.’

  ‘Does that include that part over there?’ I said, indicating the imposing, Gothic gatehouse across Swain’s Lane.

  ‘No. You can’t get into the West Cemetery during the week unless you’re booked on a tour.’

  ‘That’ll be where all the interesting bits are, then.’

  She pulled a face at me. ‘What do you want me to say? Tickets book up weeks in advance and I didn’t know we were coming until this morning… let’s jus
t go into the East Cemetery.’

  ‘Or… we could sneak into the West,’ I said, lowering my voice.

  Her eyes widened comically as she glanced nervously across the road. ‘You are joking? There’s no way… it’s like a fortress, Bay – fifteen foot walls and spikes on the gates…’

  I shrugged, amused by the horrified tone of her voice. ‘We could walk further round, see if there’s another way in…’

  She stared at me, incredulous, so I turned and started to walk up the road and she hesitantly followed. The one-way street was narrow with cars parked along one side as it wound its way up hill, but the cemetery boundary wall was stepped to follow the incline and therefore lower in places.

  ‘What about here? You could get up there if I gave you a boost…’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Her words hissed through her teeth.

  ‘Oh come on, it’s not like we’re gonna trash the place, I just wanna have a look around. What are you afraid of?’

  ‘Getting caught, being arrested, or falling and breaking something; possibly my own neck.’

  ‘You’ll be fine if you’re careful – there’s a tree right on the other side to shimmy down, and we’re less likely to get caught if we stop hanging around arguing and just get on with it.’

  Her bright blues darted across my face, jittery with indecision. By removing my dark glasses I let the force of her gaze lock onto mine. ‘OK,’ she breathed.

  Without further delay I helped her up onto the wall and jumped and hauled myself up behind her. Together we eased ourselves down into the murky depths of the other side.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  It was dark and cool on the other side of the wall. A forest of trees had taken over the space, rising up and crowding out the light, effectively separating us from the outside world. And below the canopy was a churning sea of undergrowth; brambles, ivy and weeds surging up to our waists in places, in a slow scramble to bury all signs of the dead lying beneath our feet.

  My blood thrummed with the exhilaration of breaking the law – unchartered territory for a goody-two-shoes like me. We were both silent while our sight adjusted to the low light and our other senses acclimatised to the sombre but intensely peaceful atmosphere.

  ‘This is incredible,’ I said at last, conscious of my voice in the waiting silence. Bay nodded his agreement, still speechless. ‘It’s far more overgrown than I expected – these trees are amazing. They remind me of the woods behind my grandmother’s house where I used to play as a child.’

  ‘Your parents let you play in the woods alone?’ he said, finding his voice at last.

  I nodded. ‘Wildham’s a very safe sort of place.’

  He frowned but didn’t comment.

  ‘What about you? You must like trees, too – the tattoo on your arm; the trees in your paintings…?’ I stepped closer to a weathered stone plinth, almost entirely concealed in ivy, with an ornate-looking draped urn poking out of the top, and touched it with my fingertips.

  ‘Be careful where you stand,’ Bay warned, ‘You could easily fall into a crypt in here.’ I shivered and looked back at Bay but he was avoiding both my eye and my question. ‘I think I can see some sort of path over there – let’s head towards it,’ he said.

  As I followed, a large bird, possibly a crow, pierced the silence by screaming high up in the branches above, and my foot snagged in a lasso of undergrowth. I almost lost my balance, but Bay was at my side, his hand at my elbow and his firm grip warming my skin as he steadied me. He relinquished his hold as soon as we reached the safety of the path, which was bordered by a concentration of ornate and varied statuary, and only just wide enough to admit a hearse. For a while we wandered uphill, marvelling at the striking Victorian monuments to the dead expressed in a bewildering array of sarcophagi, obelisks, crosses and angels. I stopped at a tomb guarded by a beautifully carved sculpture of a dog. He was lying with his head resting mournfully on his front paws, his body dappled with lichen.

  ‘Thomas Sayers,’ Bay said over my shoulder, reading the engraved name aloud. ‘I bet that’s the Tom Sayers.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘A famous bare-knuckle boxer.’

  ‘Are you into boxing?’

  Bay shrugged. ‘He was notoriously good.’

  ‘I think my favourite poet is buried here somewhere, but there’s no way I’m going to find her in all this,’ I mused.

  ‘Who’s that then?’

  ‘Christina Rossetti.’

  ‘Really?’ Bay turned his attention on me, bright with interest.

  ‘Yes, why?’ I said cautiously, bracing myself for a derogatory comment.

  ‘Maybe Lizzie Siddal’s buried here too then.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘She sat for Millais – you must have seen his painting of Ophelia in Tate Britain?’ Bay’s eyes glowed as he looked at me, making my skin tingle.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That’s her. She nearly died of pneumonia posing in a bath of cold water for that piece, but she mainly sat for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina’s brother. They married eventually, but he wasn’t very good to her; she gave birth to a stillborn baby and then died of a Laudanum overdose.’

  ‘How awful.’

  He nodded. ‘Rossetti had her buried in the family plot along with a journal full of his poems.’

  ‘That’s kind of romantic, in a sad way.’

  ‘Yeah, except that he had her coffin exhumed a few years later so that he could retrieve the poems and publish them.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Bay’s knowledge on the subject surprised me – though it shouldn’t – he was a painter himself, after all. But what really stunned me was his apparent emotion. He seemed genuinely angry at these Victorian artists and their maltreatment of a woman I’d barely heard of. I made a mental note to Google her.

  As we ventured further inside the cemetery we encountered a grand avenue of elaborately carved tombs flanked by an impressive Egyptian-style entrance, and beyond that, a circular arrangement of buildings built into the slope and topped with a grand old evergreen tree. I gazed around in wonder, quietly astonished that such a place existed. But the adrenalin that had got me up and over the cemetery wall was now waning, and anxiety was creeping back in. So far we hadn’t seen another living person, but how long would it be before our luck ran out?

  As the sun began to set behind the hill, Bay sat down on a weed-infested grave where a low shaft of sunlight penetrated the trees. He leaned back against the large headstone with a contented sigh.

  ‘Isn’t it disrespectful to sit on someone’s grave like that?’

  ‘These guys have been dead a long time – I doubt they’ll mind,’ he said. I glanced around awkwardly, warring internally with my innate sense of propriety in the face of Bay’s casual logic. ‘Sit down; have a rest,’ he said, patting the lush green foliage beside him.

  With forced confidence I did as he suggested, settling beside him as if we were two people sitting in bed, a gravestone for a headboard. I made sure to leave a gap between us, so that we were not touching. Bay took a tin of tobacco from his pocket and removed what looked suspiciously like a joint from inside. He put it to his lips and ignited the twisted end with his sturdy metal Zippo lighter.

  ‘What are you doing? You can’t light that here!’

  ‘Relax – I’m not carrying enough to get me arrested – it’s purely medicinal.’

  ‘Oh yes, and what is it that ails you?’

  ‘Agoraphobia,’ he said, deadpan. I snorted and looked away. ‘Want some?’ he said, proffering the spliff in his hand.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said reflexively.

  ‘Why not?’

  I scowled at him.

  ‘No pressure, I’m just curious,’ he said through a lungful of smoke. All the usual reasons crossed my mind: it was illegal, potentially addictive, and I’d never tried it before. But none of those excuses seemed good enough. They belonged to the old Cally – the one I’d left behind in Wildham.
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br />   ‘Give me that,’ I said, snatching it from his fingers before lifting it to my lips and cautiously taking a drag. The smoke burned as it hit my lungs, but I held back the urge to cough and released it slowly, lost in Bay’s dark eyes as he stared back, a small smile teasing his lips. Exhilarated by my own daring, I had a second toke. He didn’t comment and neither did I, but I sensed my whole body relaxing inside my clothes – as if I was sinking into the ground beneath me and the headstone at my back. In slow motion I passed the joint back to Bay and he tutted at the lipstick-stained tip, amusement still dancing on his face.

  ‘Why do you have the Grim Reaper on your back?’

  My question caught Bay off guard and his smile vanished. He took a thoughtful drag, holding the smoke deep in his lungs for what felt like an age. ‘He’s an old friend – he and I go way back,’ he said exhaling at a leisurely pace.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit risky? Like you’re tempting fate or something?’

  Bay shrugged. ‘He’ll come for me one day, but I’m ready for him.’

  ‘You’re not afraid?’

  ‘Life hurts way more than being dead ever could.’

  ‘You can’t know that for sure.’

  ‘No, but I believe it. And if there is a Hell, I’ll fit right in.’

  ‘Why do you say that?

  ‘Because I’m a bad guy, remember? Hence the trespassing; grave desecration, and corrupting young innocents with narcotics.’

  ‘I’m not an innocent!’ I said, heat rising to my face.

  ‘No? You act like one sometimes,’ he said, casually, glancing past me into the distance.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Shit,’ Bay mumbled, abruptly shoving me sideways to the ground.’

  ‘Hey! What do you—?’

  ‘Shh…’ he whispered, clamping a warm hand across my mouth, ‘…there’s someone over there.’ My stomach dropped and my eyes widened at the thought of being caught and arrested, but I was distracted by the physical weight and warmth of Bay’s body as he lay half across me, pinning me to the ground. As he followed the progress of a guardian of the cemetery with his gaze, I studied Bay’s face in minute detail – the neat silver barbell that transected the heavy curve of his eyebrow, the emerald irises ringing dilated black pupils, the violet bruise-like shadows beneath his eyes; the coarse stubble over his top lip and across his jaw, the soft pink curve of his mouth… his breathing deepened and I flicked my eyes back to his to find his dark gaze trained on me.