by Guy Johnson
‘Well, you take care. Forget about Seth, and what he’s done. You want to pick yourself up, have some fun, in spite of it all. Pour yourself…’ Margot faltered, lost for words for the first time during their exchange. ‘You just… do what you need to and take care.’
There followed another awkward pause, one that Isla was supposed to fill with a joke, letting Margot off her hook. Yet, Isla kept her pegged-up, and Margot excused herself, giving her love in her final line.
At odd moments, Margot’s advice came back to haunt her: pick yourself up, have some fun.
‘Pour yourself a drink.’
She recalled the invitation to dinner with the Hourigans.
‘Maybe.’
There was hardly any food in; the potatoes and salmon she had intended for that evening remained at the supermarket’s customer service desk, getting warm around someone’s feet. She hadn’t been able to face going back and paying with cash. And she really didn’t fancy a takeaway, not for one.
The invite was more Seth’s than hers, but so what? Isla felt she had little to lose, and the restaurant was bound to accept a cheque without a card. Perhaps she really should go, get out from under Seth’s absence, and the cold.
‘Brrrr!’ she muttered, rubbing her arms to increase blood circulation, making a mental note to get someone in to have a look at the heating.
During the taxi ride to Harvey’s, she wondered whether leaving a message with the Hourigans would have been a better idea than just turning up. Isla had rung several times to both accept and decline the invitation, but each time had cut the line before Emma or Stephen could answer. What if they asked for Seth, she wondered, as the cab left the residential streets of West Lindel and headed for the centre. What would she say? There were always excuses, and this wouldn’t be the first time she had turned-out by herself. Seth could be held back somewhere, promising to catch them up, and when he didn’t show, well, it was bad manners on his part, but Isla wouldn’t lose face. Not entirely, she thought, opening her purse, as the taxi pulled up outside her destination.
‘Three-twenty, love.’
Upon entering Harvey’s, Isla discovered that she and Seth were not the only invitees: ten to twelve others were spread-out around two large glass tables, central to which were ice-filled buckets cooling champagne.
Isla paused, taken back by the suddenness of it all. She was on her own, without Seth, in here of all places: Harvey’s Wine Bar.
‘No Seth?’ Emma Hourigan asked, stepping towards her, as Isla stepped back from the past. Her otherwise flat voice was flavoured with sour pips of disappointment.
‘Not yet,’ Isla lied, accepting a mineral water in place of the alcohol.
Chairs shifted to accommodate a space for Isla at one of the tables and she sat down. Yet, her chair remained stuck-out from the group. ‘Will he be very late?’ Emma inquired, once or twice in varying forms and people turned to look at Isla, half-smiling, but soon resumed their talk.
Excusing herself, Isla disappeared to the toilets, shut herself in a cubical, and wondered what on Earth had made her come. She had known these weren’t her friends; without Seth she had no connection here, no reason to come. What was she proving by sitting-out the lonely discomfort of their company? She was mad.
‘Utterly mad, Isla,’ she told herself. ‘You should go home. Excuse yourself, develop a headache, anything. They won’t care, or even notice,’ she concluded.
Hearing someone else enter the washroom, she pulled the flush, and returned to the group, ready with excuses.
Yet, Isla wasn’t obliged to say a thing. They had already gone. Someone had scribbled on a napkin; ‘Sorry, table booked for eight-thirty, couldn’t stall any longer. See you at the usual.’
The usual. Isla wasn’t sure if she’d been cleverly abandoned, or whether the term was used to express familiarity. Either way, she had no idea where they had gone.
Had she really been that long in the toilets? She had a sense of losing time and couldn’t help but feel their fleeing her echoed Seth’s. Still, there was part of her that felt liberated now the discomfort of their company had ceased.
The imbalance of humiliation and relief leaving her empty, she made her way to the bar.
‘Can you call me a cab,’ she asked of the bartender and, in her voice, heard echoes of the past and wondered if comfort could be sought here after all.
As a taxi took her home, Isla felt nothing. Not sadness, relief, desperation. Nothing. The last few days whizzed by like the blurred roadside view. Seth had left before; sometimes for a few days, occasionally for a few weeks. Yet, he had never taken everything before; there had always been something left to return for. She wondered where he was. How far he had got? And how long she would hold-back without him? For over six years he had been at her side. He had stood by her, lending her his strength, giving her comfort, when others had left, unable to cope with her self-pity and self-destruction. They had even been lovers on occasion. With Seth’s help, she had come back to life. By leaving, had he taken it all back? Doubts and anxieties frightened Isla. What if only his presence had given her sobriety? With the bottle of gin as his callous goodbye, was he handing Isla back her old self, as if the new one belonged with him? Isla wasn’t sure. She hadn’t drunk the Hourigans’ champagne, hadn’t ordered anything at the bar, but still the gin remained in her bag. Unopened, but present.
A violent jolt and a sudden screech of tyres bolted Isla from her thoughts.
‘Shit! Christ! You fucking idiot! You trying to kill us all?’ The cab driver was out of his seat, out of his car, ranting into the night, his warm breath like smoke on the cool air. ‘You fucking see that? Run straight in front of me, he did! Bloody nutter!’
Isla, a little shaken, but otherwise unhurt, stepped out of the taxi and began to walk.
‘Oi, love, you alright? Thought you wanted a lift?’ the driver cried out, a hint of concern in his tone. ‘Bit of a shock, I know, but no harm done,’ he continued, squinting to negotiate her figure through the dark.
‘It’s alright,’ Isla cried back, her pace quickening. ‘I’ll walk the rest.’
‘What about the fucking fare?’ she heard more distantly, but Isla didn’t care about his takings, or the near-accident, or anything. She just wanted to keep walking, to clear her head, to be away from it all. She wondered if the driver would get nasty and follow her. If he tried anything, she would definitely remember him: she hadn’t noted his name, but she knew the taxi firm and could identify him by a small tattoo just above his left wrist. It was of the letters MS, entwined. Yet, she needn’t have worried: his ranting faded and he drove off in another direction.
It took her a while to locate herself. The terraced area in which she lived appeared uniform at night: row after row of three-tiered houses fronted by a never-ending train of parked cars. The echo of her footsteps set her on edge, too, and several times she stopped to check she wasn’t being followed, suspicious that the worst was yet to occur. With her mental compass finally in check, Isla calculated just two streets to go and her paranoia lessened.
‘Here,’ she uttered, turning into Archer’s Avenue. Here, a word that sufficiently replaced the one she’d have used before: home.
Inside number three, the cold cut at her once again, as if arctic winds had stung the walls with their icy breath. Yet, she was relieved to be there, however cold and unwelcoming the place seemed to be.
Leaving her shoes in the hallway, her stockinged feet padded the stairs, taking her to the first landing. Seconds later, Isla was running a bath. The water would rinse away some of the evening, swirl it into the sewer beneath the house. Once it was ready, Isla removed her clothes and rippled the surface with a big brave toe: the heat was immense.
As she ran a rush of cold into the hot pool, the mirror above the sink caught her eyes. A message appeared to have been finger marked onto its glass, and the dense steam from the bath water had brought the scrawl from obscurity, like invisible ink. She hadn’t noticed
it before. It read: ‘In the attic.’
Isla shuddered: was this Seth’s final insult? ‘In the attic,’ she uttered, feeling colder again, in spite of the screen of steam before her.
So, he had known of her secret hiding place after all.
‘Did you think I’d just return there, Seth?’ she cried into the empty house, as if Seth could hear her, as if his vanishing had been literal and he had merely melted into the walls and was watching her from behind the paper. ‘Did you hope I’d just fall apart, give up in your absence? Is that what you thought? Let you get away with whatever you’ve done, no questions asked? Well it’s not going to be like that, not for me. You see, Seth, you hadn’t banked on something: I’m not that weak. Not anymore. Not my mother’s daughter after all!’
She was crying now: tears artexed her smooth skin, leaving it puffed and blotchy, memories she’d suppressed shaking her. In her mind she saw ten years into the past: her mother, beneath the blue surface of the swimming pool, her poppy-red bathing gown ballooning out like a canopy above the waterlogged body. When the ambulance had arrived, she was already dead. The autopsy report concluded suicide: her stomach heaving with pills and alcohol. She had died just a month after Carlos.
Isla was at the top of the stairs, naked. She abandoned the bath; the mirror message had distracted her, leaving her frustrated, imbalanced. For the last nine days, she’d felt mainly numb, walking around, waiting for someone to wake her up. And now they had.
‘And here I am,’ she uttered, looking up at the attic stairs, adding up its dozen treads in her head. ‘Is this really what you wanted, Seth?’ she murmured, much weaker.
The final image she had of Seth invaded her mind, demanding her sympathy, confusing her further. He was sat on his bed, an open suitcase to his right; his body battered and bruised, his savaged face bleeding. ‘I’ll explain when you get back,’ he had said, before sending her out for takeaway.
Below, the answer-phone tape began running: ‘Hi, this is Seth, I’m sorry myself and Isla can’t come to the phone right now. But if you’d like to leave a message, we’ll call you as soon as we can.’
There followed a pause, a doubt, and then a voice broke the quiet.
‘Isla, it’s Henry here. If you’re there, pick up the phone. If not, call me back as soon as you can. It’s urgent. It’s about Seth.’
In the attic, the still spirit of a sixteen year-old suicide began to stir: it’s transparent lips cracked apart, an icy breath exhumed from long buried lungs.
The house grew a little colder.
And Isla remained on the landing, looking up, counting the twelve steps.