The Story of Us

by Dani Atkins

  I gave a wan smile. Richard doing lovely things was a concept I’d been struggling with recently, but it wouldn’t do to tell her that. ‘I guess it is.’

  ‘Oh absolutely. And you just know how much it means to her.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’

  ‘It always bring a little lump to my throat though, you know.’

  Okay, that was enough, I just wasn’t going to figure it out without asking. ‘I’m sorry, Janice, just what exactly is Richard doing here with Mum?’

  ‘Taking her round the art exhibition, of course. As usual. Isn’t that why you’ve come too, to join them?’

  ‘The art exhibition,’ I said, on a long sigh of comprehension. It was something Mum herself had instigated, and she’d worked long and hard to raise private sponsorship for a small exhibition gallery to be built on the side of the art rooms, where each year the students’ work was displayed.

  ‘You said, “as usual”; do you mean Richard has done this before?’

  Janice frowned, clearly confused that I appeared to know so little about what was going on. Welcome to my world, Janice. ‘Oh yes, he’s brought her for the last three years now. But they always come late in the evening, when school is closed and everyone’s gone home. I don’t even come out of my office any more until they’ve gone. Your mum gets upset when people greet her and she doesn’t remember them. And I don’t want to cause her any more distress, especially when I know how much she loves looking at the work the kids have done.’

  I stood in the corridor feeling smaller than any child who went to school there. Richard had done a really nice thing, secretly bringing Mum here over the years. And the fact that he’d never told me about it, or looked for thanks, just made me feel even more of a heel, if that was possible.

  ‘Didn’t he tell you anything about it?’ I shook my head dumbly and saw Janice’s gentle answering smile. ‘That’s so very Richard, isn’t it? He’s such a nice thoughtful young man. He’s a real keeper, isn’t he?’

  I truly didn’t know what to say, especially as I had thrown my ‘keeper’ back almost as cavalierly as I’d thrown away his ring.

  ‘Go and join them,’ urged Janice, giving me a gentle shove in the direction of the exhibition area. ‘I’ll just go back into the office – don’t want your mum seeing me.’

  I waited until she had disappeared and shut the door behind her before proceeding down the corridor. From the doorway I stood watching Richard and my mother in the room beyond, through the glass doors. The walls were covered with paintings and charcoal sketches and there was a large display area with pottery exhibits. Richard was following Mum as she walked slowly around the exhibition, carefully studying each piece in turn. He appeared to be listening intently as she pointed out details that caught her eye. I had no idea if what she was saying was sensible, if she was in one of her lucid moments, or if it was all a meaningless jumble. It was impossible to tell from Richard’s face, because he was listening and smiling, patiently standing beside her, asking her questions I could only guess at, but which seemed to evoke an animated response, lighting her up with an enthusiasm I hadn’t seen on her face in a very long time. I took one last lingering look at the two of them together before turning and silently walking away.

  CHAPTER 14

  I’d been putting it off for quite some time, the way you put off making a dental appointment, despite a nagging toothache, because you just know that despite the dentist’s best assurances, it is going to hurt. But I had finally run out of excuses. It was time to clear the last vestiges of my presence from Richard’s flat.

  Monique clearly applauded this decision, providing me with an extended lunch break and an enormous cardboard box to transport my belongings out of Richard’s life. ‘It is time you close the door on this chapter of your life, Emma,’ she advised with charmingly mixed metaphors.

  ‘I know. But every time I try, Richard just keeps jamming it open with his foot.’

  ‘Then you must stamp on it,’ she suggested, tempering the words with a disingenuous smile, ‘then it will close.’

  I did the familiar drive to Richard’s flat on autopilot, wondering as I turned into the residents’ car park if this was the last time I would ever visit this place. Probably. I pulled into Richard’s empty parking bay and hefted the cardboard box out from the back seat. Working on muscle memory my fingers automatically punched in the code on the keypad at the entrance. The block was quiet; the residents were mainly young professionals who were most likely at work at this time of day. That was good; I didn’t really want to bump into any of Richard’s neighbours while I was severing these final ties. My footsteps echoed hollowly on the linoleum-covered stairs as I climbed up to the third floor. I slid the door key into the lock, reminding myself that I must remember to remove it from my keyring before I left, and leave it behind.

  There was a vague musty smell in the air as I opened the front door and stepped into the flat’s small hall. I sniffed and my nose wrinkled at the combined odours of leftover takeaways and a room which hadn’t seen an open window in quite a while. I glanced into the kitchen and grimaced at the dirty plates stacked on the worktop, despite the fact that there was a perfectly good dishwasher just below them. Richard hadn’t entirely reverted to student living, but he wasn’t far off. Not my problem. Not any more. I resolutely turned away from the dirty crockery. I positioned the cardboard box more securely on my hip and headed for the bedroom. I had only taken a few steps when I heard it. I froze like a startled fawn and turned my head slowly in the direction of the sound, as though if I moved too fast even the bones in my neck might give my presence away. A second later I heard it again, and this time I could tell precisely where the noise was coming from. Richard’s bedroom. There was someone here in the flat with me, someone who had even less business being there than I did. Too late I remembered the fliers that the local police had circulated some months before, warning residents about the spate of daytime burglaries in the area.

  I felt my heart begin to race and my mouth went instantly dry in panic. Any moment now the bedroom door could burst open and whoever it was who had broken in would find me. I heard a scraping sound of something moving across the wooden floor in Richard’s bedroom. Were they coming? Did I have time to reach for my phone and call the police? No, of course I didn’t. I had to get out of there. Run, my brain told my unresponsive legs, which were frozen in fear where I stood. No, they’d hear me too easily and would be upon me before I got halfway to the front door. I had to creep out silently and hope the noise of the opening door wouldn’t be heard. I took one slow tentative step backwards and knocked into a framed poster Richard had hung in the hall. It fell from its flimsy nail and crashed to the floor in a cacophony of breaking glass.

  Shit! Run! I told myself, just as a voice cried out from behind the bedroom door.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  My heart was still pounding crazily when Richard threw open the door, wildly brandishing a tennis racquet.

  ‘Christ, Emma, I thought you were a bloody burglar.’

  ‘Likewise,’ I replied, my voice still shaky, even though the threat of danger was gone. ‘And what were you planning on doing with that?’ I asked. ‘Challenge them to a match?’

  He looked down at the racquet in his hand and shook his head, before throwing the inadequate weapon into the lounge. It landed with a small thump on the patterned rug, right beside Richard’s jacket and bag which appeared to have been carelessly discarded on the floor.

  ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ I challenged, not pausing to recognise that I was the person who didn’t belong there, not him. Amazingly, it was only then that I noticed something that should have been glaringly obvious. Richard was wearing just a faded old T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, and the room he’d just emerged from was in total darkness, with the heavy blinds drawn shut to keep out the spring sunshine.

  I reached out and flicked on the hall light, stepping closer towards him as I noted the unhealthy p
allor of his face and the thin layer of perspiration on his brow. He squinted in the light and I immediately snapped it off. ‘Sorry. Have you got another migraine?’ I asked. He nodded dully, as he reached out to hold on to the door frame for support. ‘You should be in bed,’ I advised solemnly.

  ‘I was in bloody bed, until I was woken up by someone trying to ransack the place,’ he said. His eye fell to the large cardboard box which I had dropped on to the hall floor. ‘But I see you weren’t here to take my possessions, just yours.’ His voice sounded pained, which could have just been the headache, or maybe not.

  ‘Look, I’ll just go,’ I said, bending to retrieve my box. ‘I only came during the day because I thought this would be easier – for both of us – when you weren’t home.’ A thought suddenly occurred to me. ‘Where’s your car anyway? I wouldn’t have come in if I’d seen it outside.’

  ‘I left it at the school,’ he replied, and I saw the effort it was costing him to stand and talk to me. He really did look terrible. ‘One of the guys at work dropped me back, my vision was going weird and I didn’t think I should drive.’

  I knew Richard’s migraines; he’d suffered with them for years. They were largely manageable, as long as he took his medication at the first signs. Only rarely were they severe enough to disturb his eyesight and force him to take to his bed. This was clearly a bad one. The worse ones were usually brought on by stress. Perhaps it was hardly surprising that he had one now.

  ‘Go back to bed,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ll let myself out. I’ll come back another time.’

  He turned back gratefully in the direction of his darkened room. ‘You might as well get whatever it is you’ve come for,’ he said bitterly as he walked jerkily to the double bed, as though even the movement of his limbs caused pain in his pounding head.

  ‘You’re really bad, aren’t you?’ I questioned, scarcely noticing that I had followed him into the bedroom as he slowly lowered himself back down on to the mattress. There was something about the way he was sitting there on the side of the bed with his throbbing head in his hands that made it impossible for me to leave. ‘Did you take your pills?’ I questioned.

  He shook his head, and then winced as though he really regretted having done that. ‘No. I just wanted to get straight into a darkened room and see if I could sleep it off.’

  I gave an exasperated sigh, and sounded entirely like a girlfriend as I said, ‘Why on earth not? You know you can never shake these off without the pills.’ I turned on my heel and headed for the bathroom. ‘I’ll get them.’

  Nothing had changed or been moved in the bathroom since the last time I had been there. The shelf of my shampoo, conditioner, face cream and body lotion was exactly as I had left it. My spare dressing gown was hanging on the back of the door and a couple of my hairclips sat on the edge of his bathtub. I was everywhere. No wonder he was doing such a terrible job of letting me go.

  I pulled open the mirror-fronted medicine cabinet and reached automatically for the shelf where he kept his migraine medication. The box was there, but when I pulled out the foil blister sheet, all the holes in it had already been punctured and it was empty. With the box in hand I returned to the bedroom.

  ‘There are none left. Where’s your new packet? You did get your last prescription filled, didn’t you?’ It was surprising how easily I was managing to slip back into the role of nagging girlfriend.

  Richard had laid back on the crumpled pillows during my absence, his face pretty much the same shade as the white bed linen. ‘No. I kept meaning to, but I never got around to it.’

  ‘Richard,’ I said, my voice rising slightly in irritated exasperation.

  He flinched at the increase in decibels. ‘Yeah, well, I’ve had other things on my mind lately.’

  I may have hesitated for a second or two, but not for much longer. I didn’t really have an option here, did I? Without waiting for permission, I opened the top drawer of the bedside cabinet where I knew I’d find the prescription. I plucked the small green sheet from Richard’s belongings.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, his aching head clearly not firing on all cylinders.

  ‘Filling your bloody prescription for you,’ I replied, preparing to go. He turned his head slowly on the pillow to look at me, carefully, as though his neck was lying on a surface of broken glass.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said weakly.

  I didn’t know what to say or how I felt about seeing him like this, so sick and vulnerable. I think that’s what made my voice so unnaturally brusque. ‘Go back to sleep. I won’t be long.’

  There was an annoyingly long queue in the pharmacy, and by the time I let myself back into the flat I knew Richard’s headache was probably a roaring giant beating a club on the inside of his skull to get out. I managed to find a clean glass in the kitchen, no small achievement, and filled it with icy cold water before returning to his bedroom. To keep the light from bothering him, I had shut the bedroom door when I left, and I hesitated now on the threshold, not sure if I should knock and risk disturbing him, or walk right in. It was ridiculous, because despite our break-up, this place still felt very much like my second home. I curled my hand around the door handle and pushed it slowly down. Richard was asleep, but not in a peaceful, relaxed kind of way. In his restlessness he had thrown off the covers, and they were now twisted into a tangled origami knot beneath his legs. Even in the darkened room I could see a glistening sheen on his exposed torso, for he’d discarded the T-shirt which was now lying on the floor in a damp and unpleasant ball. I didn’t know what to do for the best: leave him sleeping or try to get him to swallow the pills? His head was moving restlessly from side to side and occasionally a spasm of pain crossed his face. Pills, I decided.

  ‘Richard, I’m back.’

  He made no reply, but his brow furrowed as though he’d heard my voice.

  ‘Richard, open your eyes. You need to take these.’ I pressed out two of the pills into my palm, but there was still no sign from the bed that he’d heard me.

  ‘Richard, it’s me. Can you hear me? Wake up and take your pills.’

  I know he recognised my voice then, because his expression changed and he mumbled something which may very well have been my name, if it had been spoken underwater, with a mouth full of cotton wool. I put both the pills and drinking glass on to the bedside table and crouched down beside the bed. If anyone had told me that I would be here, in Richard’s flat, looking after him like this, I’d have called them crazy. But what was I supposed to do? Just leave him suffering and walk out?

  I slid my hand beneath his neck and gently raised his head off the pillows. With my free hand I picked up the two small white tablets. His lips felt hot and dry as I gently parted them with my fingers and slipped both pills on to his tongue. I had touched those lips a thousand times, I’d felt them on practically every inch of my body, but the intimacy of this moment made me so uncomfortable I could actually feel my face begin to flush. This felt beyond inappropriate, especially given the way things were between us. I reached for the glass of water and held it to his mouth.

  ‘Swallow, Richard.’ Obediently, still more asleep than awake, he did as I asked. When I was sure the pills were gone, I tilted the glass once more to his parched lips. ‘Drink some more,’ I requested and obligingly he took several small mouthfuls of the refreshing liquid. Suddenly his hand came up and covered mine, so unexpectedly that I almost dropped the entire glass of icy water all over him. That would have been one sure way to wake him up, I guess. His fingers moved across the back of my hand in a slow caressing movement. He’s asleep. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, I told myself as I removed the glass before trying to slowly slide my hand out from under his.

  ‘Don’t go, Emma.’ His voice was thick and muzzy, spoken from the depths of a dream. I lowered our conjoined hands until they rested on the wall of his chest before I finally managed to inch my own away from his without waking him. I stood for a long moment with just my fingertips left resting
on his upper body before finally breaking our contact.

  ‘Shhhhh…’ I said, my voice sounding like I was soothing a toddler. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  He did.

  I cleared the flat, of me. I went systematically from room to room removing every last trace of everything I had unthinkingly left behind over the last twelve months. When I had collected everything except the clothes inside his closet, I cleaned the flat. I told myself I was just doing it to pass the time, not because I cared about how the place looked or how its occupant chose to live within it. By the time I was done, the kitchen surfaces were once more clear and the dishwasher was thrumming through its cycle. The late afternoon shadows had lengthened and I had no real reason to remain. Yet it felt wrong to just walk out and leave.

  When Richard still showed no signs of stirring, I eventually decided I would have to risk waking him by retrieving the final items left behind in his bedroom. I tiptoed into the darkened room, and eased open the wardrobe doors. I worked quickly in the semi darkness, using just the light coming from the hall, as I plucked my few items of clothing from their hangers and slid open the dresser to remove the small collection of underwear I had kept there.

  When the bedside light behind me was suddenly switched on, I almost dropped the well-laden cardboard box I was carrying from his room. I had no idea he was awake or how long he had been watching me. Richard levered himself up into a sitting position, resting against the pillows.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.

  He ran a hand through his hair, making it look even more dishevelled than all his tossing and turning had done.

  ‘Better,’ he said, then his eyes went from me to the large box that I was holding. ‘Worse.’ There was no point in pretending I didn’t know what he meant.