The pharmacist starts to smile when I go up to the counter, but then she looks me up and down and her face falls. She asks for my name, then hurries into the partitioned section where they dish out the pills.
I wait by the window, looking out over the main street.
Cosmo is busy with lunchtime office workers. I close my eyes and picture the two of us there, sitting at our favorite table at the back, where we can hold hands and kiss without anyone noticing. I picture us clinking glasses as we talk about the wedding. You want a big one—you are proud of me, you want to show me off—I want to keep it small. Just one or two special people, because really, I can only think of inviting Tabby and her daughter and maybe the lady from the thrift shop.
I am smiling when I open my eyes.
The smile freezes.
You are there.
You are inside Cosmo.
Standing in the shadows at the back, the customers and staff milling around you heedlessly. If I didn’t know you by your build, by your clothes and hair, I would know from the intensity of your gaze. I’m pinned to the spot, unable to breathe.
“Miss Currie?” says the pharmacist. “Are you OK?” I tear my eyes away from you. She’s holding out a paper bag. Hurrying to the counter, I snatch it from her and go out.
The road is as busy as usual, and I’m stuck on the sidewalk, dancing from foot to foot as I wait for a break in the traffic.
Eventually, I dive out between a bus and a minicab, ignoring the angry beeping.
The window of Cosmo is a flat reflection of the street scene in front of it. To see inside, I have to go right up to the glass, ignoring the strange looks of the customers on the other side as I peer in.
You’ve gone.
If I’d just mistaken you for someone else and that person had left the restaurant, I would have seen them walking up the main street, but no one has left, I’m sure of it. Ours is the only empty table in the whole place.
I know what Tabby would say—that I imagined seeing you because you’re on my mind so much.
Perhaps she’s right.
I try to put it out of my head as I turn for home.
I wake up in the middle of the night.
This is wrong. The pills are supposed to help with insomnia. But I realize that something specific has woken me when I hear it again. A woman’s cry, like a wail of grief.
It’s coming from close by. One of the other flats on this floor, surely.
I sit up in bed, staring into the darkness.
Is it Mira? Has she come back from Albania? Has her husband found her?
But it’s not a cry of distress. It’s a woman singing the blues. Now I can hear the words.
I get up and go into the living room. Light from the street spills through the window to form orange puddles on my bare feet. I breathe shallowly, listening to the words I know so well.
It’s one of your favorites. You would play it late at night, when you came back drunk. I’d watch you through the spyhole weaving unsteadily to your door, blundering your key against the lock. And then you’d go inside, and the music would come on, lullabying me to sleep when the pills couldn’t.
And now it’s playing again. How?
I creep down the hall and, as quietly as possible, turn the latch and step out onto the landing. The woman’s voice streams out of your flat, echoing down the stairwell.
I grip the banister rail and look over the edge. Unless another listener is standing down there in the darkness, I’m alone. Can no one else hear this? Is it all in my mind?
The linoleum is cold beneath my feet. My breathing is quick and shallow with fear, and something else. Excitement? Then it catches in my throat.
I can smell your aftershave.
The black spyhole on your door glitters as I pad across the landing.
I press my ear to the wood and listen.
But the music is too loud to hear if there is any movement inside.
Then it hits me. All the flats come with two sets of keys, but I only found one of yours: the one I gave to your sister, that she must have sent back to the housing association.
Who has the other?
Are they in there now? Playing your music? Wearing your aftershave?
“Hello?” I say clearly and loudly.
The music shuts off, and the darkness throbs with the sudden silence.
For a moment, I’m paralyzed with fear. Was it all a trick? Is some stranger going to wrench open the door and drag me inside?
Is it him?
Somehow, I get my feet moving. I run back to the flat, slamming the door behind me and curling up into a ball on the floor. I stay there until the sun begins to come up, but your flat remains utterly silent. Finally, I creep back to bed.
Nothing’s working anymore.
My vision is blurry.
I keep tripping over and dropping things. I scalded myself with a cup of tea, and a large blister, tight and red and fragile, has come up on my right thigh, making me too scared to wear jeans in case it pops.
My stomach churns, and I have to dash to the bathroom three or four times a day.
I go into a room and forget why I went there.
My hair is falling out.
I went to the thrift shop to buy some books to try to distract myself, but when the woman behind the counter tried to talk to me, I felt the first stirrings of a panic attack and had to run out.
I know that some of these are side effects of the pills, but I’m scared that something else is happening to my brain.
I’m seeing things.
Ghosts.
Your ghost.
I try to tell myself that it’s all in my mind, keep my head down, stay indoors, don’t talk to anyone, don’t look out any windows. But sometimes I have to leave the flat for groceries, and it’s then that you come.
Checking the instruction leaflet in the pills, I see that in the side effects section under Rare: fewer than one person per ten thousand, it says hallucinations.
But the thing is, unless I’m imagining this part as well, other people can see you too. I watch them adjust their course to let you by. I see them standing on a full bus when you are seated in front of them. I see them serving you in cafés—but when I go in, you’re gone.
You’re always moving away from me. On a bus or walking just too fast and too far for me to catch up.
Tabby phones. She says the pharmacist has been in touch with my doctor, saying they’re worried about my state of mind. Am I all right?
“I’m fine.”
A pause.
“You must miss him a great deal.”
I cannot stop my breathing from thickening.
“Just remember that though they’re gone from our sight, the dead are always with us, Jody,” she says gently. “In our hearts and our memories.”
How can that ever be enough?
“I think you should start going back to the group and stick with the pills—they’ll take a couple of weeks to work after a break. I think that will help any negative thinking or…delusions.”
I want to tell her that you aren’t a delusion. If it was all in my head, would people be moving aside to let you pass them? My whole life, I’ve been told that what I’m feeling or thinking isn’t real, that I can’t trust myself. Tabby was the only one who ever believed me, and now she’s doubting me too.
I get her off the phone, saying I’ve got an upset stomach. It’s not a lie. Though I don’t want to have to see the woman who’s been reporting me to my social worker, I need to go back to the drugstore for something to settle it. I walk quickly, head bent so low, all I can see are people’s feet, and even then, my heart lurches every time a pair of sneakers or brogues steps into my line of vision.
The pharmacist doesn’t try to talk to me this time or slip any more leaflets into the bag
when she hands me the medicine. I’m trying so hard not to look in Cosmo that I open the door without looking and almost walk straight into a young woman. At her gasp, I turn and apologize, and it’s then that I see you. Standing on the corner of Gordon Terrace. From this far away, it’s hard to see properly, but I think you’re looking back at me. Waiting.
I’ve spent such a long time trying to convince myself that these visions are wrong, something to be ashamed of, something to fear, that for a moment, I don’t move.
Then a wave of love and happiness so powerful washes over me that I think I might collapse. A woman looks you up and down as she passes, and then I know for sure. I’m not imagining you, Abe. You’re here. You’ve come back to show me that, whatever anyone else says, our love was real.
I run.
But by the time I’ve crossed the road, you’re nowhere to be seen. I stand on the corner, panting, waiting for the dizziness to pass, my eyes pricking with tears.
As I trudge back to St. Jerome’s, the youths peel out from the shadows, but do you know? I’m not scared at all anymore. The worst thing has happened to me—I’ve lost you—and now I don’t care about anything else.
They ask me the time, but I keep walking. One of them steps out in front of me and says that his friend asked me a question so I should have enough respect to reply.
I stare at him, dull-eyed. Do what you want.
He looks me up and down and wrinkles his nose in disgust. Then he lunges for my bag. There’s nothing in it of value—the few pounds change from my shopping, my keys, a couple of tampons—but I cling to it like it’s bursting with fifties. I squeeze my eyes shut. I know why you’ve come back, Abe—to tell me that you’re waiting for me. Well, I’m ready.
“Give me the bag.”
I hold on tight.
“Let. Go. Of. The. Bag. Bitch.”
I hear the rasp of a knife being taken from a pocket and see the flash of light, reddened by my eyelids.
It’s time. I’m ready.
“Hey!”
I open my eyes. A middle-aged man with a Staffordshire terrier stands at the corner of the main street, his legs spread as wide as his dog’s. He might have been muscly once, but it has all turned to fat. Under the football shirt, his stomach is broad and squarish, like the shell of a tortoise.
The youths smirk as they look him up and down, but when he sets off at a fast stride toward us, the dog loping along by his side, they disperse, catcalling and gesticulating as they go. The man stops at the edge of the grass, panting, perhaps with the adrenaline rush of a narrow escape, or maybe just because he’s fat.
I set off across the waste ground to the church.
“Don’t fucking thank me, then!” he calls after me.
I turn, suddenly angry. Thank you for what? I was ready! But he’s already stomping back to the main street.
I watch from the window of the flat as the light drains away and the remaining streetlights on Gordon Terrace buzz on. I’ve microwaved a plastic tub of lasagna but find I have no appetite. Instead of the usual aroma of cooked meat and cheese, the food smells sour, like bad breath. I guess that’s the pills again.
José, the building manager, arrives, lugging a new mattress, and disappears through the front door, so I guess someone new is going to move into the empty flat on the first floor.
A lonely night stretches ahead of me. At least I should sleep properly. I’ve forced myself to stay awake for the past three nights in case you play your music again, but all has been quiet.
After throwing away the lasagna and rinsing the fork under the tap, I get into bed and put the radio on. My bedroom window glows pink. The man on the radio says there’s been a sandstorm in the Sahara, and for the next few days, the sunsets will be beautiful.
I turn my face to the wall and try to sleep.
On Saturday morning, I go out looking for you. I try Cosmo and the baker’s and even the Food and Wine where you would sometimes get a newspaper, but it’s as if I was imagining you all along.
I wander up and down the main street until my hands are numb with cold and I can’t feel my feet.
The pharmacist comes out and asks if I’m all right, so I have to stay on the other side of the road after that.
The sun starts going down, and I get scared because it’s Saturday. Match day. Buses are backing up along the main street, their windows reflecting the sky. I hurry back to Gordon Terrace and across the waste ground, pausing for a moment at the children’s playground to gaze at the church spire silhouetted against the sky.
The radio was right. It’s going to be the most amazing sunset. The sky is streaked with a million different shades of red. The clouds curl like petals. The wind has dropped. From up there, you could look out on the whole city, all pink and glowing like it’s fresh out of a hot bath.
I realize that this is the night I described to Mags. The night you and I spent together on the roof. And then, for a moment, I think I see a figure standing in one of the windows of the spire.
It resolves itself into a block of shadow, and I sigh and make my way to the door.
There’s no mail for me, as usual, and I’m relieved, having half expected a letter with an American postmark, threatening to sue me. Passing through the inner door, all the rich colors of the evening are dulled. The sunset is behind the building, so the stained glass is flat and gray.
I stand for a moment, gazing at the tranquil lake of concrete that shows no sign of what it did to you. I can remember the chill hardness of it under my knees as I crouched beside you, whispering that everything would be all right as your blood seeped into my jeans.
You were looking at something far away that I couldn’t see, but then you must have felt my presence, because your eyes moved, locking onto mine. We held each other’s gaze for a moment—a minute? an hour?—and then your eyelids fluttered closed, and I never saw them open again.
He must have come down behind me, have passed by while I was kneeling beside you, but I never heard his heavy footsteps or the crash of the door closing. He might have been just a bad dream.
Turning on the light, I start climbing the stairs. On the second floor, I pass the grumpy man’s flat, and Brenda’s husband’s, and the man who plays the silent organ. When I get to the third floor, I walk quickly. Here lives the junkie, who terrifies me because of what I might have been, and the man who is eating himself to death because his mother died. The light clicks off, and I’m left in darkness.
But not total darkness.
A red light spills down the stairs from above, as if from an emergency generator.
I listen. I can hear a whispering moan. Like the sound you made as you lay dying. But this time, it’s just the wind. I feel it on my face, lifting my hair, pushing my skirt between my thighs.
I grip the banister and continue climbing.
When I step out onto the fourth floor—our floor—my heart catches.
The door to the roof is open.
Blood-red sunset spills across the landing. I stand at the edge of the puddle of light, afraid of what will happen if I step inside. Am I finally going mad?
The air smells of your aftershave.
Movement by the door catches my eye. A strand of wool is caught on the latch and blows in the wind.
I have to force myself to cross the landing and unhitch the strand. I run it through my fingers. Cashmere. No one else in this place wears cashmere. Only you. This thread is from the diamond pattern on your cardigan with the big collar.
There’s a footprint in the dust at the bottom of the staircase. The Xs and diamonds of a Converse sole.
The dull-gray concrete steps turn shimmering gold as they rise up before me, like a stairway to heaven.
They were wrong. They were all wrong. You did love me, and now you’ve come for me. You’re waiting for me up there in the sunset.
I put my foot on the first step.
37.
Mags
I admit I enjoyed it.
From my table at the back of Cosmo, I could watch the street. So many times, she missed me as she hurried past with her head down, but I only needed one moment. It was busy that day. I’d just sat down at the one remaining table and was glancing over the menu I knew quite well by then when I saw her. A drab figure merging with the dullness of the street, I only noticed her as she moved across the brash window of the bookie’s on the other side of the road.
When she went into the pharmacy, I stood up, willing her to see me. And then she did. I held her gaze, wondering how good my disguise was, whether this close she would see that my hair was straighter, my shoulders narrower. But I guessed from her expression that she was taken in, and I experienced a shiver of delight as the color drained from her face.
When she turned to the woman behind the counter, I retreated to the bathroom at the back of the restaurant to wait until she’d gone. I knew she wouldn’t have the courage to come in.
I’d told Peter Selby that I had to stay on for a week or so to arrange the cremation. But when I explained that being around Abe’s stuff was proving too painful, the sentimental old queen readily agreed to my moving into the unoccupied flat.
José met me at the Moon and Sixpence at the far end of the main street to give me the key, and we got semidrunk. The new flat smelled of stale alcohol and urine. The former tenant’s mattress had been destroyed, so he went for a new one straightaway, hoping, I suspect, he would have the chance to christen it. I pretended to be busy when he came back, tapping away on my computer, ostentatiously oblivious to his shirt-stripping and sweat-from-brow-wiping as he maneuvered the mattress into position.
He was halfway out the door when I called him back. He returned, grinning.
“Can I borrow the roof key?”
His face fell. “Ah, is not safe up there. What you want it for?”
“There’s been a huge sandstorm in the Sahara, and apparently it’s going to be a beautiful sunset for the next few days. I thought there’d be a good view from up there.”
The Girlfriend Page 24