by Zaza, Agatha
Holly had been part of a renewed sense of normality. She hadn’t saved him — he’d found her as he was swimming upwards from the depths into which he’d plunged when Ovidia had left him. For a long time, he hadn’t been able to pretend. Then he’d been finally able to keep a job, to socialise — to put on a performance to the outside world that he was an ordinary man, even if at times his head felt it would explode with the effort of maintaining the façade. At first, he’d been cautious, almost fearful. But a certain folly propelled him forward. He dared himself to trust Holly, but was vigilant, replaying events and conversations in his mind and analysing them for warning signs of impending aggression.
On workdays, they kissed passionately before she left; when apart, they sent each other texts reminding the other of the need for milk and cheese and asked if they really wanted to see the show if Moe was able to get tickets. The show would still be irrelevant. He’d watch and clap at the right times, but he was with Holly, which was what was important.
If he left this house right now, he could go back to that life.
But he couldn’t leave. He was rooted to the chair watching Edmund and Ovidia, taking in every movement, the way they vacillated between comfortable and confident to uncertain and jumpy. Perhaps his presence was affecting them — guilt, regret, maybe.
Holly had updated her status to ‘Engaged’ at some point in the morning, and felicitations were saturating her Facebook page. The likes and comments had entered the hundreds. Jasper had been fighting the urge to check Facebook all morning, though usually he could go for weeks without even glancing at it. He’d tap his phone and get as far as typing in her name, ‘Ovidia’, then his nerve would give way. He wanted to go to the bathroom now, but he didn’t relish the thought of learning more about Edmund and Ovidia’s home.
Holly had tagged him, and he was now receiving a constant assault of notifications cheering on his engagement — the reason he was here.
‘What a beautiful couple.’
That morning Holly had put up a picture of her and Jasper that his father had taken the previous night.
‘Show us the ring then!!’
‘What! You got there before me!’
‘Luv u both. Mwah Mwah!’
Happy faces, hearts, emojis, memes, and gifs were pouring in, and Jasper knew that later Holly would go through every single one adding a like and occasionally a thoughtful response.
Jasper’s account was usually all but inactive. It had become a virtual viewing platform from where he watched the rest of the world go about their online lives. Holly kept encouraging him, never understanding his aversion towards it. She never desisted from posting pictures of herself, tagging him, sharing articles on his page. He responded once every two or three months. It all seemed silly, though he didn’t tell Holly what he thought. He’d accepted almost every friend request he’d received, regardless of who sent it, and his profile looked healthy, with references to new restaurants, trips, and events that made them seem like sophisticates living in London, with jobs with impressive titles.
Now, he finally typed in Ovidia Attigah. Her name came up right away, as it always did.
‘There is only one me!’ Ovidia used to sing. She’d told Jasper she’d never come across anyone with the same name as she had. As he’d searched for her over the years, he’d found it was true, and wherever her name appeared online it referred to his Ovidia.
Jasper’s heart fluttered when he saw her profile. He hadn’t looked at it for years. He’d googled Ovidia constantly, once upon a time. He’d tried to keep up with her, to know where she was, and find out what she was doing. At some point, she’d removed him from her list of friends — he’d cried that night.
After all that, here he was looking at her profile and realising how little it told him about her.
Ovidia’s profile belonged to someone who didn’t bother with security settings, because she posted nothing that required privacy. It was generally impersonal with sporadic bursts of conversation and the very occasional picture.
Of the few posts on it, most were about running: articles, profiles, advice, ultramarathon pages. Ovidia had also shared a few articles on engineering and finance, perhaps two over the past year. She’d taken a trip to Iceland and posted a picture of Icelandic horses. Someone tagged her in ‘Gloria’s Wedding!’ — where she posed beside her sister and a group of smiling black women. In that picture, Ovidia looked as he’d once known her, her hair longer, straightened to her shoulders, parted in the middle and curled into a bob. Her face was fuller, and Jasper could see her legs, slender yet soft, demurely crossed. He stopped at it for a moment, taking in her face.
Jasper scrolled through her history, occasionally looking up to assess the conversation that continued around him. He found a link for an accolade in a newspaper — ‘Forty Black Britons Under Forty Making Waves in Science’ — explaining that she had taken up marathon running and had been on a team that engineered some new construction technology that would cut the cost of constructing public housing.
Jasper scrolled back even further.
There posted on her page, by an Edmund Edward, just over four years previously, a video — ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’. Twenty likes.
‘From the vaults,’ Gloria commented. One like.
‘Didn’t take you for a Flaming Lips fan?’ Ovidia commented. One like.
‘Not quite your type of music,’ Josh said, whose profile picture was of Noel Gallagher in profile. Two likes.
‘What kind of nonsense is this?’ her sister Doris commented. Five likes.
‘I’m not,’ Edmund Edward replied to Ovidia’s question.
‘I used to think this was soooo cool! <3,’ Leandra said. Four likes.
‘Am I the only person who thinks this is crap?’ Jeanette said. Eight likes.
‘I didn’t say you were pink, did I?’ Ovidia said.
‘You don’t remember?’ Edmund Edward replied.
‘My best friend at uni had a tattoo of a pink robot. She’s been trying to get rid of it for years,’ Jade said.
‘Friends?’ Edmund Edward said. One like from Ovidia.
‘There’s this group ‘The Banging’ sounds just like Flaming L. Wanna go this weekend?’ Josh asked.
‘No,’ Ovidia said. Eleven likes.
‘Have I missed the punchline?’ Gloria said. Eight likes.
The conversation ended. Perhaps the other participants realised they too had missed the punchline.
It was the only conversation between them.
Looking up briefly, Jasper smiled at Holly. ‘You’ve got 139 likes,’ he said, trying to be discreet as he tapped Edmund Edward’s profile picture and was directed to his profile.
Had it not been for the conversation with Ovidia, there would have been no reason to think it was his Edmund’s page. Not one of the hundreds of photos gave a clue as to their taker. Not one of the names were familiar; his friends, the books he read, the personalities he quoted.
Some of the posts referred to another person. ‘SHE’s taking photos of bricks again,’ he said in Hong Kong, and ‘Left carrying the bags at yet another race.’ Nowhere was Ovidia tagged or anything shared with her. Abuja, Shanghai, New York. There were photographs of a village in the South of France — a place Edmund may have mentioned — and other destinations such as Cape Town and Moscow.
The pages Edmund liked belonged to tailors and designers — showing male models impeccably dressed. Jasper recognised some of the brands Edmund wore, exclusive, bespoke tailors that were listed in top magazines.
None of these were strange for a financier, Jasper thought — pausing and muttering a few sentences in reply to a question from John — but for a man who’d never considered himself cool or trendy or had shown any aspiration to be so, this was unlike Edmund. However, if this Edmund Edward was Edmund, then Edmund had been lying to him not just about Ovidia, but about his life.
The last woman he’d met his brother with had been at least a deca
de ago. She’d been slender with brown hair that cascaded past her shoulders and wore pale linen pants and a sleeveless white top and delicate, discreet jewellery. Edmund had said that she always dressed like that. That was the kind of woman he associated with Edmund.
Jasper looked up. But this too was Edmund, talking to his guests in a dirty dressing gown and slippers beside a woman with a partly shaven head, bouffant slippers, and a top with a shade of orange that could be used as a safety beacon.
The dressing gown Edmund wore, when Jasper looked carefully, bore a quality-brand name discreetly etched into the lapel. Scrutinising his brother harder, he realised that there was nothing innately outmoded about the gown, and the pyjamas, if worn by a chiselled featured model in a magazine, would appeal to many young and fashionable men.
Jasper stuffed his phone back in his pocket and looked at the woman beside Edmund, the one that kept him here, rooted to this garden sofa unable to leave. He wanted to seize Holly by the hand, stand, and declare that the charade was over, that Edmund’s joke had gone too far and leave. But he couldn’t.
The doorbell rang.
‘Is that the time? That must be the pizza,’ Ovidia said. Jasper watched her leave, going to answer the door, the sound of her slippers padding along still seemed ridiculous.
He’d had enough.
Jasper gave her a moment, then making sure to pre-empt anyone else, he said, ‘I’ll go help.’
He sped after her, looking back only briefly at Holly who remained sitting in the middle of the sofa, a space on either side. Holly looked perplexed but then slid to her left to fill the space nearest Edmund, the space that been empty since they arrived.
Jasper arrived in the kitchen as a stocky, acne-riddled delivery man unloaded six boxes of pizza onto the kitchen peninsula. Jasper waited silently as the man hitched up his trousers and left. He hesitated a little longer as Ovidia attended to the boxes, opening them and checking against their labels and frowning at their contents as if displeased.
Ovidia seemed unsteady, repeating her actions, rubbing her hands together, dropping things. Jasper had never seen her that uncertain or confused.
She was spending too long reading the labels and staring at the food. Jasper was sure she knew he was behind her, but she did not turn to him. Watching her, he finally allowed the memory of the last time he saw her replay itself in his head.
He shut his eyes as he saw that evening in brief and violent eruptions of memories. He heard a raised voice — hers. He recalled a jolt of fire striking his face again and again. His legs had crumpled beneath him and he’d dropped to the floor. He could see her face from where he had fallen, cowering on the carpet of the flat they’d shared, her fists landing on his face, her knee in his stomach. She’d hurled words at him, hissed and poisonous, their syllables stabbing like a knife. The beige carpet had softened his fall, but his head smacked against the oak shelves that held their books, music, TV, little trinkets collected on weekend trips, and pictures of them in each other’s arms. His head throbbed with the impact.
Daring to open his eyes and watch her five years later, he thought of the time when it felt as if he lived on the floor, dodging blows that seemed never-ending. Ovidia’s voice, when she was angry, was harsh — like a long-time drinker. At times, she’d raised her voice — but rarely, mostly her words came out in a cruel whisper, or in an abrupt change of tone.
That evening had been different — volatile. Then finally, Ovidia had screamed at Jasper, standing above him, before launching herself at him, hitting and slapping his face, something she’d never done before. How many mornings had he examined his belly, small round blue and black bruises formed on his skin, tiny lacerations formed where one of her rings slashed his skin?
She’d called him stupid. Whatever had upset her, he couldn’t recall. In fact, he was sure he’d never really known. He’d apologised repeatedly, though he couldn’t imagine what he’d done wrong — again. He was always so careful, so certain that he couldn’t have done anything to hurt her.
‘Ovidia, please, you’re hurting me.’ Crying, Jasper had raised his hands to protect his face, leaving the rest of him defenceless.
The blows had stopped, there and then. She’d sprung back and stood for a moment, looking down at him, the insanity in her eyes extinguished. She turned in a frenzy, bumping into their blue sofa as she escaped, seizing her bag from the table and running out into the night. The door slammed, and its locks clanged behind her.
‘Ovidia!’ he’d called, stumbling to the window when he realised that she was fleeing. Those moments he took to find his feet were enough for her to get away. He watched from the window of their flat as she ran and ran until his view of her was blocked by trees and lampposts.
Jasper didn’t chase her. He couldn’t. It wasn’t that his lip was cut and his face burned in pain. It wasn’t because someone would notice. Something stopped him. An unseen force. Perhaps an epiphany, a guardian angel that finally held him back just long enough to let her go.
Just long enough.
But once he realised she was gone, Jasper spiralled into a panic, terrified. She was going, leaving. He grabbed the door handle but had no idea what route she’d have taken. He couldn’t imagine where she’d go.
He rang her mobile number over and over. Hour after hour, he paced the little flat, her phone ringing unanswered. Finally, after midnight, a groggy female voice answered. It wasn’t her.
‘Hi, Jasper. Ovidia says not to call her.’
He couldn’t recognise the voice. ‘Where is she? I need to talk to her,’ he asked, restraining himself, wanting to scream at this stranger.
‘Look, she says she needs to get away from you, and that she’s getting a new number in the morning,’ the sleepy voice replied.
‘Please, I …’
‘Hey, you arsehole, God knows what you’ve been doing to her, but no more!’ She fired the accusation at him.
He choked back a response and ended the call. He looked at Ovidia’s number and the profile picture that lingered with a mounting sense of fear.
When he tried again in the morning, after a night spent tossing and turning, the number had gone offline. None of her friends would tell him where she was, and even their mutual friends seemed unwilling to help — most of them were as surprised at her disappearance as he.
Finally, he’d trudged to her family’s house, a head sock pulled low on his head and his collar raised high to hide his bruises. He’d stood outside their terraced house where, only a few weeks earlier, he’d met her family at Ovidia’s suggestion. He’d felt proud to finally be introduced.
Standing outside their house, where her mother had fed him a selection of cake and her father plied him with wine, he’d realised he could find Ovidia if he really tried. He could wait outside her office, hire a private detective, harangue her and her friends on social media. He could find her, and he’d beg at her feet, he’d make any and every promise he needed to convince her to return to him. But what if she did take him back?
Her parents’ front door opened, and he fled. He turned away and ran down the street.
‘Ovidia.’ He returned to the present.
She turned to him, still preoccupied.
‘What’s going on here?’ Jasper asked, quietly. ‘What is all this, you and Edmund, this place?’ He gestured at the house, the kitchen, looking up at the ceiling.
‘Do you want me to tell you that you’re dreaming?’ Ovidia shrugged and turned back to the peninsula and looked about, as if she’d been in the middle of something but was unable to remember what it had been. He watched her examine her hands for a moment, turning them over once and then tucking them in her pockets.
‘Well, I must be. Because there is no logical explanation for you being here,’ he replied.
‘What am I supposed to say?’ She leaned forward — away from him — and gripped the counter, emphasising her shoulders, hard and muscular, so unlike what he remembered.
‘You’re not
scared I’ll say something to Edmund?’ he asked. It was his only leverage, though he wouldn’t use it, of course.
What could he say to Edmund? Sometimes, Jasper’s time with her seemed as if it had been a nightmare from which he’d long ago woken, the details seeming nebulous, almost otherworldly. Other times he felt as if their relationship had been only yesterday, everything about it clear and tangible. In the middle of some nights, he’d wake in terror to see her sleeping peacefully beside him, only to realise a moment later that it was Holly.
Even if he told Edmund about the violence, what would he say? Would Edmund believe him? What proof could he offer Edmund of the nature of his and Ovidia’s relationship? What Ovidia had done to him? The scars had faded and bruises healed, he’d moved house and jobs, he’d repaired himself and found a new love and was about to marry.
‘About?’ Ovidia asked.
‘About?’ he repeated. About their love, he thought. About the two years of his life that he spent devoted to her.
She couldn’t tell him it had all been his imagination. When he let himself, he remembered everything beginning with the first night they met.
He’d been invited out by friends. Ovidia had arrived late, appearing first to be dressed entirely in black. After waving to their party, she’d sat down and unbuttoned her sweater to reveal a vintage 1970s polyester blouson in lurid pink and orange. Jasper had hiccoughed with laughter at the sight of it. In that single act — the sweater unbuttoned — he was hers. He’d become giddy; he’d felt himself grow warm as he stared at her. He’d watched her kiss their mutual friends on the cheek.
‘You’re late,’ Heath had said, tugging at her top. ‘Now this is bright, even for you.’
‘It’s crease proof. Pure polyester,’ she had replied, as if that was enough justification for her choice of colour.
Now a party of six, they had sat around a table made for four. It had been the only way they could get a table in the tiny but immensely popular new restaurant.