Lesley took her sip of her milky coffee. “Maybe it’s not your story. I mean, the story you’re supposed to tell.”
“Maybe.” Was there a story for me to tell at all? I’d always thought so, but I was beginning to wonder if that was the case, or if I was just deluded. If my saying ‘one day I’ll be a writer’ was the equivalent of a five-year-old girl declaring, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a ballerina.’
I sighed. “Anyway. Better go get ready . . .”
“Do you have time for a curry?” Lesley asked me.
“A takeaway curry or a Lesley curry?” I enquired hopefully. Lesley’s family was Jamaican, and her curries were out of this world . . . while I barely managed spag bol. Lesley had renamed my signature dish spag bog, which I suppose says it all.
“A Lesley one, my dear!”
I was sorely tempted, but I didn’t want to be late for Alex. “Can you leave some for me? For when I come home?”
“Maybe . . .”
“Oh, go on!”
“All right. But you must eat something. To line your stomach.”
“Yes, Mum!” I laughed.
I went back into my room and saved the Cassandra file, though I was tempted to just delete all I had written that afternoon and start again later.
I slipped on a pair of jeans and a jumper – I wasn’t going to dress up. It was Alex, after all, not a date. But then casual didn’t feel right, and I decided on a black dress and a pair of bright-purple tights. I tried my best to brush my hair into submission – there was so much of it – and then looked at my reflection in the mirror. It’s the weirdest thing, when you don’t really recognise the person looking back at you. A girl who looks like you – the same mass of wavy hair and Scottish snowy skin – and still, who is she?
I sighed and started hunting for my handbag among the mounds of discarded clothes. I had no idea how it happened or why, but pretty much everything in my life seemed to have become difficult all of a sudden, and a strange, subtle restlessness had crept into my days and nights. It was like I had lost something very important, something I was desperate to recover. Something I used to have, someone I used to be . . . someone who went by the name of Inary, and who wasn’t the girl sorting out other people’s books and writing about werewolves. Who wasn’t the girl I just saw in the mirror.
I looked around me, at my little London room – messy, tiny, but mine: the wardrobe I’d painted light blue and silver, rows of dresses peeking from its doors, one haphazardly hanging from its left handle; the pile of books on my bedside table; the corkboard covered in tickets from gigs and plays; the desk overflowing with paper and magazines and books . . . The debris of my life, a happy life – a life I’d built from nothing after everything I had, everything I knew, crumpled.
So why the restlessness?
Maybe because everything looked and felt so mundane. I used to be able to see beyond all this, beyond the little things of everyday life, beyond our reality. I used to be someone with six senses, and not five. But not any more. And still, the thought that my life was somehow meant to be different was rising inside me and would not let me be.
I spotted my handbag’s strap hanging from underneath a pile of manuscripts on my desk. I walked through the room to retrieve it, and my eyes fell on the Glen Avich picture once more. There it was again, the chill running down my spine. I slipped the bag around my neck and rested my hand on the framed photograph of my sister sitting just beside the computer. Even when my room was at its messiest, Emily’s photograph was never hidden, its silver frame shiny and polished.
I was due to visit in a few weeks, and I was conflicted about it, as always – I couldn’t wait to see Emily, but I dreaded seeing Logan, and I dreaded his silences and recriminations . . . As I was thinking of them, the silver frame of Emily’s picture grew icy under my touch – I shivered and took my hand away. I looked at my watch – was there enough time to give her a call? But I was already late. I’d call her from the pub, I thought, and ran out with a quick goodbye to Lesley.
The London night was full of noise and people, as it always was, its sky lit with orange – so different from the still, black nights back home.
Why did I keep thinking of home? I often did, but not as much as tonight. I tried to focus on the here and now and stepped into the pub, dribbling clusters of men and women clutching their drinks and chatting loudly over the music.
Alex was there already. I wish I could say my heart didn’t jump at the sight of him, but it did – another of the things that have been unsettling me recently. I was beginning to look forward to seeing Alex a bit too much; I was starting to notice how solid his hands looked, and how good it felt when they somehow ended up on me – on my shoulder, casually, or grabbing my fingers as he led me through a busy club . . . I spotted the top of his head – a mop of black hair – and there it was again, that little oh I felt inside whenever I saw him.
Not good.
“Hey!” He was waving at me, his fingers stained with ink from a Pantone marker, as they always were. Alex has had Pantone-stained hands since he was old enough to hold a pen. He was a graphic designer, and fanatical about his job. It was his livelihood and his passion, and he certainly was a lot more successful at it than I was at my writing.
“Hiya, how’s things?” I said, sitting beside him. It was a miracle we got a table the place was so crowded.
“Aye, good. Busy. You?” Alex had lived in London for years, but he still used aye instead of yes. It always made me smile. I suspected that keeping his Scottishness was a point of principle for him.
“All right, I suppose.”
“What’s wrong? Wait, I’ll get you a drink, then you’ll tell me. The usual?”
I nodded, and I watched as he glided through the crowd – he was a lot taller than most people there, and far from making him awkward, it seemed to command attention wherever he went. Female attention, especially, I thought as I spotted some pretty girl eyeing him approvingly. I rolled my eyes. I didn’t want to admit to myself that it annoyed me. The good thing was that Alex never seemed to notice, or to act on the attention anyway. How someone like him could be single, I had no idea. He’d broken up with his long-term girlfriend three years before, and there had been no one else since.
“So. Tell me all,” he said on his return, sliding my drink towards me.
“Well . . . Oh, nothing.” How could I put into words how strange I’d been feeling recently? How my skin felt tight on me, how nothing felt quite right?
“Come on, tell me. I’m listening.”
“It’s my writing,” I blurted out. Well, that was part of the problem, at least. “It’s not really working out.” I took a sip of my drink. “Lesley says that maybe what I’m writing now is not my story to tell . . .”
“The Cassandra one? I just can’t believe you won’t allow me or Lesley to read anything of yours. I’m sure it’s great . . .”
I felt myself blushing and shook my head. “No it isn’t. Believe me.”
“You’d say that. I find everything I do complete rubbish, as a rule. When things fall into place at the end of a project I’m always kind of surprised.”
I laughed. Anything Alex did seemed quite wonderful to me, but I knew what he meant. I worked with writers and I knew how they were usually full of every kind of insecurity. But there was more to my dismay than insecurity. My work just didn’t feel right any more.
“You seem to be doing pretty well, for someone whose work is regularly rubbish . . .” I said.
He laughed. “Well, maybe it isn’t, but often it feels that way. That’s what I’m trying to say. You feel down on your work, but everyone else thinks it’s good. It happens a lot. Thing is, you won’t know if you don’t let anyone read it . . . Hint, hint.”
“I will give you something of mine to read, I promise! Just not yet.”
“Has anyone ever read your stuff?”
“Only my sister. Nobody else.”
“Emily? How is she?”
<
br /> “She’s been doing okay . . .” As I mentioned my sister, my mind wandered to Glen Avich again. A sudden longing nearly made me gasp – I needed to hear her voice. I needed to hear her voice so badly it hurt.
I shook myself. Alex was still talking. “. . . maybe it’s just a dry spell. You know, no inspiration, feel depleted . . . that kind of thing. It happens.”
“Oh . . . yes. Yes. I hope so,” I replied, and took a sip of my vodka orange. “Sorry Alex, I just need to make a quick call . . .”
“Sure. Is everything okay?” he asked. I probably looked worried. I certainly felt it.
“Yeah, all fine,” I said, and jumped up without bothering with my jacket. I negotiated my way out of the pub, squeezing myself between warm bodies. I stepped outside between two wings of smokers freezing and puffing, and the cold air took my breath away. No reply on my siblings’ home phone. I tried Emily’s mobile, and then Logan’s – they were both switched off. They were probably out somewhere, maybe at the cinema in Aberdeen. I made my way back inside, elbowing through the Saturday night crowd.
“All okay?”
“No reply. I was phoning my sister.”
“It’s Saturday night. They’re probably out painting the town red. Painting the village red, as it were.”
“Ha ha.”
“By the way, did I log that?” he asked, pointing at my purple tights.
“My legs?” I smirked, but I knew what he meant. Just like I collected owls, Alex collected colours – he took pictures of things, and logged his findings in a special database he was building, called Chromatica. It was some sort of colour bible or something that would change the graphic-designing world as we knew it, or so he said. Yes, that was Alex. At the moment, he was working on the endless shades of the colour purple.
“Not sure, did you?”
“Don’t think so. Wait,” he said, and slipped his phone out of his pocket. He took a picture of my knee under the bewildered gaze of our next-table neighbours. “Thank you. Oh, before I forget . . .”
A blast of loud music exploded from the speakers just above us, drowning out the last of his words. We went to that pub all the time, but recently they seemed to have upped the noise to an unbearable level.
“Has it always been this noisy?” I said, massaging my ear.
He laughed. “That, or maybe we’re just growing old! Do you want to go to mine?”
My stomach tightened a little. Now, after three years of spending evenings together on the sofa watching DVDs, and crashing in each other’s spare rooms, and dropping by uninvited at the weekend for an unscheduled lunch thrown together using anything we could find in the cupboards . . . after all this, an invitation to go to his house shouldn’t have disquieted me. Or thrilled me. Or disquieted and thrilled me all at the same time. But it did.
Nonsense. It was just nonsense. We were just friends. Weren’t we? Okay, sometimes things got a bit ambiguous between us. But we’d never crossed the line, and I was sure it’d stay that way. If I tried hard enough. I had my reasons not to get involved with Alex, or anyone else. I just wasn’t ready.
And still, recently I’d felt so confused . . . No point in agonising over it now, though. It was just another night between friends, like many before.
“Sure,” I said, and gathered up my handbag and my jacket.
We walked into the freezing February night, and twenty minutes later I was sitting on the rug in front of Alex’s fireplace, a whisky in my hand. A Talisker in my hand, to be precise. Not many places in London have a real fire, and for me, raised on peat fires, it was wonderful to have found one. I lost myself in the dancing flames.
“Inary Monteith, you’re the only woman I know who appreciates a good whisky. My sisters hate it.”
“Oh no, there are a lot of us. You just don’t know many women, Alex,” I teased.
“Yes, it’s probably that!” He smiled and sat down in front of me, crossing his long legs. The fire made his blue-grey eyes shine and played on his features – he looked so familiar, like I’d known him forever, and not just three years.
“So, I tried to tell you in the pub, but I happen to have something that will cheer you up,” he said, and slipped a little box out of his pocket. I could guess what it was, and I smiled in anticipation.
I opened the silver ribbon and lifted the lid – it was, like I’d guessed, an owl statuette – iridescent blue and no bigger than a marble. “It’s beautiful! Thank you . . .”
Years ago, my mum and dad went to a pilgrimage to Lourdes together, and they brought me back a terracotta owl – instead of the usual religious statuettes, I suppose. I loved it – for some reason, I always felt an affinity with owls – and that’s how my collection started. Once I mentioned my collection to Alex, and ever since he’d taken to bringing me owls from wherever he went. He was a graphic designer who worked on large campaigns for companies all over the world, and because of this he travelled a lot. He got me owls from Oslo, San Francisco, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur . . . and the best one, my favourite: a little one made of whalebone, from St Petersburg.
“You’re welcome. I got it in Madrid in this amazing covered market . . . I’ll take you there one day,” he said and looked away, into the fire.
“That would be nice,” I scrambled, trying to ignore the implications.
“But seriously, Inary . . . what’s up? You’ve been strange recently. I don’t know . . . not yourself. Is everything all right at home?” He started playing with the metal tongs, avoiding my gaze.
“Yes. I don’t know . . . Just . . .” I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I took another sip of my whisky. I couldn’t explain the way I’d been feeling. I could never tell Alex the way I used to be, the things I used to see, and how it stopped when I was twelve. And how I just didn’t feel whole.
“Whatever it is . . . you know I’m always here for you, don’t you?” he said, and looked straight at me. At that moment a little Catherine wheel started spinning in my heart. It was a physical effort not to kiss him there and then – I was used to it, I was used to stopping my arms from wrapping themselves around him, stopping my mouth from looking for his. I could do that once more. But something betrayed me.
Maybe it was the warmth from the whisky, maybe it was the fire reflected on his face, or maybe the strange feelings I’d had recently – of not knowing who I was any more. Because another me, another Inary, reached over and kissed him. And then it was like gravity, the way we were pulled towards each other again. He put one hand on the nape of my neck, and entwined his other hand with mine. I was still for a moment, my face against his – I freed my hand and wrapped my arms around his neck, drawing him closer.
His lips tasted of whisky and honey and home and it felt right, like it should have happened a long time ago. But all too soon his mouth left mine and I felt suddenly dizzy at the loss of him.
His breath brushed close to my ear. “I’m not sure how to say this, but . . . I think I’ve fallen for you,” he whispered into my hair, and immediately a cold knot of fear twisted my insides, snapping me momentarily back to reality.
What was I doing? What were we doing?
I had sworn . . .
But it was too late. It was done. Those words were said; they couldn’t be unsaid. They hung between us and echoed in both our minds. “Inary,” he whispered, and he said it right. Like we say it at home. My heart was winning the silent battle with my head. It usually did.
He stood up and took my hand, and led me into the bedroom, into another world.
I remember every minute of that night. I remember the way he locked his eyes onto mine and the way he said you’re so precious to me. I remember how I could think of nothing, wanted nothing, needed nothing but him and me together, at that moment.
*
The morning came and I found myself in his bed, naked and defenceless, and I felt afraid as the reality of our previous night hit me.
Alex was sleeping, his long, black eyelashes casting soft shadows on his skin, one
arm around my waist. I didn’t know what beauty was, but I knew he looked perfect in my eyes. Like I’d known him forever, even when I was a little girl, as if the features of my soulmate were encoded in my blood, in my genes.
Still, I looked at him and I imagined the moment he’d wake up. I imagined the moment after, and the one after, and the one after that. Hundreds and thousands of moments that would add up into days and weeks and months where I loved him, and trusted him, and made him the centre of my life. Until that moment – when he opens his mouth to speak and I think it’s something harmless, something or other about our life, about our family or the weather or some new book he’s read, and instead he tells me we’re not going to be together any more.
I imagined all that and it was easy, because it had happened to me before.
And I couldn’t let it happen again.
I got up as quickly as I could, wrapping a sheet around me, and started gathering my clothes scattered all over the floor. I heard him call my name from the bed, his voice sleepy, full of warmth. Full of contentment.
“Inary . . .”
“It was a mistake,” I said without turning around, before he could say it, now or next week or in six months, because I knew that sooner or later he would. “I’m sorry, Alex,” I began, each word a drop of blood dripping on his plush cream carpet. I rummaged in my bag looking for new contact lenses – my eyes stung. “We shouldn’t have . . .”
“What do you mean?” He sat up, shock painted all over his face. I felt a spasm of guilt. Those words could never be taken back . . .
I emptied the contents of my purse onto the floor, looking for the lenses’ blister, when I caught a glimpse of my phone. Again, that sinking feeling from the day before, the same sensation I’d felt when I looked at the picture of Glen Avich, invaded me. There was a little red icon in the corner of the screen – I lifted it up to check what it was, and all my words died in my throat. Fourteen missed calls. All from Logan.
“Oh . . .”
Take Me Home Page 2