Afterwife (9781101618868)

by Williams, Polly

  Curling onto her side in a fetal position, she wiped the tears and snot away with the back of her hand and shoved the letter under her pillow. She must hide it, she realized. Ollie must not see it. Clearly he had never read it, of that she was sure. He would have pulped Sam if he had; all hell would have broken loose. No, Ollie had been in the dark. Just like her. And now he couldn’t know. Not after everything he’d been through.

  A bang from downstairs. The front door? She flicked off the sidelight quickly, as the sound of something heavy dropped to the ground. A bag? Coughing. She knew that cough! Ollie was home. She tensed, coiled, a buzz of excitement overtaking her misery. Do not say anything about the letter, she told herself firmly. Say nothing. Scared she wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut, she decided feigning sleep was the best policy.

  Eyes squeezed tight, she listened to the soft scuff of his feet on the stairs, the wooden floorboards, the creak of Freddie’s door opening. There was silence for a few moments, then footsteps again, the creaky closing of Freddie’s door, the heartstopping opening of hers. Through the filigree of her wet lashes, she could see his floppy-haired figure silhouetted in the doorway. The mattress depressed as he sat down on the edge of the bed. She wished she’d not decided to pretend to be asleep now. She wanted to sit up and lick his face like a puppy. He was a survivor like her. He was…he was everything, the only light in the grayness.

  “Jenny,” he whispered, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. She caught the dry air smell of airplane on clothes. “Are you awake?”

  She lay there rigid.

  “Jenny?”

  Her eyes pinged open. The sight of him sitting there was still a shock. She’d been anticipating him in her head all night and here he was. Warm, human, smelling of airplane air and chewing gum. “Ollie.”

  “Sorry, did I wake you?” In the gloom she could just see his eyes were amused like he knew she’d been faking sleep. A strand of dark hair curled over one of his eyes and she longed to nudge it gently aside with her fingers so she could drink in the whole of his face at once. In his presence the terrors of the night—the past, the betrayal—began to fade and take on a surreal, blurred edge like something that had happened long, long ago. There was no one else she wanted sitting on her bed, she realized. Not even Sophie.

  “You are a star, Jen. Thank you so much for coming over.” Ollie’s breathing was a soft, animate thing in the darkness.

  “No problem.”

  “Have you got a cold?”

  “Yeah.” She sniffed.

  The bedsheets crumpled in the darkness as he moved closer, the curve of his back sinking into the curl of her stomach. They fitted together perfectly. Like he’d been ergonomically designed. They lay like this in the darkness for a moment, their breathing synchronizing slowly. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jen.”

  “I’d do anything.” The words twanged in the darkness. She wished they sounded less sexual. She was very grateful for the dark. “To help, you know.”

  “I know.” He had a smile in his voice now. “Cecille okay?”

  Cecille. Her name spoken out loud spiked the intimacy.

  “Yeah, she’s been sweet.”

  “Good, good.”

  “But she’s in love with you.” It just shot out before she could help herself.

  He paused for an eternity. “I know.”

  “She’s too young, Ollie.”

  “She’s twenty.”

  She bit hard on her lower lip. There was nowhere else in the universe she’d rather not be now. Anyone else other than Ollie she’d want sitting on the side of her bed.

  “You’re angry.”

  “Imagine how you’d feel if you sent your daughter to a foreign country to work for a family…” She turned onto her side away from him and stared at the black wall, convincing no one. “Oh, what do I know? Do what you bloody well want.”

  He surprised her by tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear.

  “Nothing happened, Jen.” His breath was warm on her bare shoulder. “But, tell me, how long am I meant to live like a monk?”

  “I don’t know.” All she knew was that her life was plummeting downward. And she was going to smash into the ground. Everyone in the world was in love with Sophie. Even her own fiancé. Sophie had eclipsed her, even in death.

  “I played by the rules. But when did life ever play by the rules?”

  “So I guess that’s why you fucked Tash then. What about Lydia? Are you going to do her too?” She was still talking to the wall and hated the way she sounded so stiff and bitter.

  “I just want to be free,” he said, so softly she could barely hear him. “Free.”

  “You are flipping free!”

  He was silent for a long time. “I am not.”

  She was the person strapping him to his past. She was the ballast who must be shed. She must get up tomorrow morning and walk away and not come back and let him get on with his life. He must be free of the past. Of Sophie. Of her. And she must be free of the whole damn lot of Sophie-in-her-red-dress worshippers. She needed her own church.

  “Jen.” He slipped one hand on her waist, making her take a sharp intake of breath, pulled her over so she could face him. His eyes were luminous. “I couldn’t bear it if you despised me, you of all people.”

  She sniffed tearfully then, unable to hold back the tears.

  “Hey, baby, what’s the matter?” His voice was full of such tenderness it made her cry harder. And he’d called her baby. She hated it when Sam called her baby. She loved it that Ollie had just called her baby. “What’s the matter?”

  “I…I…I don’t know. I guess I’ve been getting too close to you, to Freddie, to everything up here.” She wiped away the tears crossly on the back of her hand, arching her body away from his confusing touch. There was an intimacy in the darkness and blear of the hour that filled the room with too much possibility. Even the letter under the pillow. Despite the horrors it contained it was oddly liberating. There was nothing that life could throw at her now. “I was Sophie’s best friend. Not yours. Sometimes I forget that.”

  He stared at her intently. “But things have changed, haven’t they?”

  She heard her heart pounding in her ears and slowly became aware of something in the room, something thrilling and unutterable.

  “I didn’t know you before, not how I know you now. You and I, we’re not who we were, Jenny.”

  The city rumbled distantly outside the window, yet it felt as though she and Ollie were the only still point, at the very center of the city, the most vital bit of it, and everything rippled out from them.

  “You and Sophie were an impenetrable little world when you were together.” His voice broke now. “I would not have been surprised had you backed off after she died. Lots of her friends have, you know—sunk away like I never knew them. They look at me like I’m a bad omen.”

  “People just don’t know how to react.”

  “No, it’s not that. It was Sophie who drew them into our orbit, her dazzle, her drama…” He stopped and frowned. “But you, you,” he said more urgently. “Since she’s gone you have got bigger and bigger, brighter and brighter. It’s like you’ve come into focus. Sorry, I can’t explain it.” He sank his head down, resting his forehead on her shoulder. “I’m not making any fucking sense.”

  But he was making perfect sense. And the darkness of the bedroom was suddenly buzzing and alive like the darkness around a bonfire on a summer night.

  “I feel like I’ve gotten to know you for the first time. I feel”—he hesitated, his voice lumpen—“that if you weren’t in my life, in Freddie’s life, it would be a terrible, terrible thing. That’s all.”

  She sobbed unprettily. He hugged her tighter. Instinctively, she reached for his head, threading her fingers through his forest of black hair, losing them there, realizing as she did how she’d longed to do this. He took her other hand and kissed the tips of her fingers, one, then the other, another, and with ea
ch kiss she felt a liquid tug toward him.

  “I know what I want to do and I know I shouldn’t.”

  “Don’t,” croaked Jenny hoarsely, wishing he would.

  He ran his fingers along her jawline. “You are so beautiful.”

  Beautiful! Beautiful? His words fluttered around her head like butterflies. And at that moment, for the first time in many months—years—she actually felt beautiful. A long, soft sigh came from deep within her as if she were exhaling a breath she was unaware she’d been holding.

  “I’ve come to see you as mine, just a little bit. I so rarely see you with Sam, it’s quite easy for me to delude myself. I can’t get my head around the fact that you’re about to get married.”

  Married. That no longer made sense.

  He wiped a tear off her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “In another life we could…”

  “Please don’t, Ollie.” Sophie had been dead not quite eight months. Eight!

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He closed his eyes and a tear glistened in the corner of his eye. “I’m lost, Jen. I’m a fucking mess.”

  His mouth was inevitable then. He tasted like cigarettes and old coffee and tears. His beard rasped deliciously against her cheek. His lush soft lips moved down her face, buried into her neck, and the scent and feel of him filled her world completely.

  “No. We can’t, Ollie,” she finally managed, gasping for breath.

  His lips reluctantly moved away from hers. “You’re right. We can’t.” He fell back on the pillow, stared up at the ceiling, breathing heavily. She didn’t speak. He didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say. The rightness and the wrongness were irresolvable. Slowly his lids began to close and his breath found the long, drawn-out rhythm of the jetlagged. She lay there, awake, heart slamming—the letter beneath her, Ollie beside her—fevered with longing and self-disgust. Soon, there was a pink glow at the crack in the curtains. Dawn was breaking. And with it, a terrifying new day.

  Forty-three

  What the hell’s been going on? I take a minibreak and everything goes tits up at number thirty-three! Obviously I had no idea that poor little Freddie had chicken pox or I wouldn’t have gone on my weekender. I feel horribly negligent. I only went because after my recent solitary in Ollie’s trainer I was yearning for fresh air. I caught a keen southeasterly from the street’s highest chimney—number fifteen’s wonky one—and hung on to it as it picked up speed, bouncing over rooftops and electricity pylons, until I clipped the canopy of Highgate Woods. What can I say? Joyous. I was more air than anything else, a shape only, a balloon without its rubber skin. I could freefall with no fear, spin round and round the uppermost branches of the trees, elastic as a teenage Russian gymnast, then rest for a while in a blackbirds’ nest alongside twigs, feathers and a scrap of Snickers wrapper. I need to rest more and more now. Getting old.

  It’s not just London’s air pollution levels—soaring now in this sticky summer—I am definitely getting fainter, a fading footprint on the beach. In the heady early days of my afterlife I was able to slice through the days like a hot knife through butter. But now it feels as if the air is thick and viscous. I seem to get stuck in it like one of those crumbs that are impossible to remove from the Golden Syrup tin.

  Anyway, I’m back from my treetop weekender now. And something has clearly happened in my absence. Freddie is spotty, obviously, but over the worst. It’s Ollie I’m worried about. He is subdued and has been staring out the window for hours. The house itself feels altered too, in some way that I can’t put my finger on, like it might have subsided a millimeter or two into the ground or is leaning a teeny bit sideways. I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel like it did. Not like the number thirty-three of old.

  I check in on Jenny too, and discover she is in an even worse state. There’s a dissonance in that horrible sterile Camden apartment, crackling, hissing, like a melting nuclear reactor. The atmosphere is so poisonous I have to limit my exposure. It’s just as well Sam has stropped off to the country with his parents. Imagine he’d be freaked to see Jenny like this too, crying like a baby in the bath. Worried about her, really worried about her now, I stay close, dangling from a leather tassel on her bag, wondering where we are marching to and with such demented purpose. Which is how I find myself here, in Starbucks, Great Portland Street, stuck to the air vent above the coffee machine like a bit of chewing gum.

  Not crying now, Jenny has got a face as long as Lyle Lovett’s. Her eyes are still pink. Her hands are shaking. She’s checking her watch. Nibbling a finger. Checking that watch again. Has she been stood up? She takes the last swig of her coffee. She picks up her handbag off the floor.

  She’s been stood up.

  Then the glass doors swish open. A rash crawls up Jenny’s collarbone.

  A woman walks in—the woman I once saw Sam secretly meet? Yes, I think so. She looks around. She sees Jenny and starts. The woman’s hair is pulled back into a ponytail, like I wore mine on bad hair days. She is dressed in a nude jersey dress, bright yellow ballet flats. “Jenny?”

  “Dominique?”

  Oh, my God. Dominique. I’m settling into my front-row seat here.

  “I’m sorry I’m so late.” Dominique smiles nervously, scrapes the chair across the floor.

  “I hope you didn’t mind me emailing. Tash said…” Jenny falters, as if unsure whether she’s allowed to declare her source. She can’t take her eyes off Dominique’s face. “Can I get you a coffee?”

  “No, thanks, I’ve got to be somewhere pretty soon.” There is tension around Dominique’s mouth that purses, like it’s got a drawstring inside.

  “I needed to meet you properly,” says Jenny finally, twisting her fingers together in her lap angularly like crab claws. “There’s been a lot of stuff…” She blows out air, collects herself. “Between me and Sam. So many unanswered questions. I need to know what’s going on, that’s all. I’m not looking to blame anyone.”

  Dominique shifts on her chair. She’s already regretting coming. “Look, to be perfectly frank, Jenny, I always thought that one day Sam and I would get back together.”

  “Back together?”

  “I wondered if he was with anyone, what his situation was, so I tracked him down.” She looks down at the table. “I realize this all must sound a bit bunny boiler. I didn’t mean to freak you out. Sorry.”

  “You must have liked him a lot.”

  Dominique glances up from her hands. “I thought we’d marry actually.”

  Jenny closes her eyes, bracing herself. It’s bigger. It’s bigger than she thought. “When were you two together?”

  “Summer, two years ago,” Dominique says in the definite manner of a woman who’s been counting the hours ever since.

  “Two years ago?” Jenny repeats in a whisper, her hand crushed over her mouth, paling.

  Two years ago! Then we’re talking about around the time he made a pass at me too. The little turd.

  “We overlapped?” Dominique looks down guiltily as she speaks, like she may not have been entirely ignorant of the fact.

  “We did.” Jenny shakes her head in disbelief. “Jesus.”

  Yes, we all did.

  The two women stare at each other across the round dark wooden table, me from the air-conditioning vent. An irritated Starbucks person sweeps Jenny’s empty cup off the table.

  “I better go.” Dominique, clutching her large red tote, stands up to leave.

  “One more question.” The clatter in the café seems to quieten for Jenny’s inevitable question. “Why did you think I was called Sophie?”

  Dominique hesitates, wondering what the right thing is to say. The mouth purses again. She holds her handbag tighter.

  I wait. Jenny waits. Her left knee jumps up and down inside her trouser leg.

  “Did you know there was someone else?”

  “Look,” Dominique says, defensive now, “all I knew was that he’d got this…this thing, some stupid schoolboy crush, unreciprocated, on some w
oman. Sophie, her name was Sophie.”

  “Unreciprocated?” Jenny asks in a scared whisper. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, unreciprocated, definitely,” she answers firmly. “That was what was so totally frustrating about the whole situation.” Dominique speaks faster, harder, like aggrieved exes do. “He said I reminded him of her. That I was like her, but…but better.” She shakes her head and laughs hollowly. “I thought if I hung in there…I can’t believe how stupid this is making me sound. I’m not that woman, not the woman you must think I am, Jenny. He was just one of those men, you know, who turn you into someone you’re not. Do you know what I mean?”

  Jenny nods. She knows exactly what she means. And so do I.

  Dominique leaves quickly, with a worried backward glance, wondering what she’s done. I flatten against the ceiling, desperate to be human again and wrap my arms around Jenny and hug her and kiss her and tell her it is going to be alright and that he had a silly, stupid crush on me but she was always the woman he really loved, that it was just my vanity he flattered, that it never went anywhere because I would never do that. I didn’t act faultlessly. I’m a flirt, a tease, an erotic fantasist, but I’m not a traitorous friend. Instead I have to watch helplessly as my dear friend finally breaks, there and then, in the middle of Starbucks, oblivious to the people staring. She sobs noisily until a barista brings her a tissue then steers her firmly by the elbow out the door to the crowded street.

  Forty-four

  Have you lost your fucking mind?” Sam shouted, kicking his weekend bag along the floor. “I’ve just got back from a marquee meeting onsite. We can’t possibly cancel the wedding.”

  Jenny held on to a steel ridge of chair for support. If only she could think straight. But she’d been crying for so long her brain had gone smeary. She could not think. She could not breathe. All she knew was that if she put on that wedding dress she’d evaporate in a shower of green sparks like the Wicked Witch of the West. It would be the most dishonest thing she’d ever done. “I’m sorry, Sam.”