by Heidi James
As she spoke, her whole body lending itself to her words, she was spellbinding, and behind me I could feel the whole room was caught up too.
‘We construct our reality, a concoction spun from words and our feeble human perception and then we fight and kill and destroy to defend it. Language, it is sometimes said, is what separates us from, elevates us even, above other animal species. I wonder if that is wrong. Perhaps, in our acquisition of speech and the multitude of signifiers we use to distinguish ourselves from the world around us, we have diminished ourselves in demanding meaning and certainty where there is none.’ She paused, ‘Any questions?’
And a young man stood and garbled something about the impossibility of communication without words. We watched him redden and puff his chest, the rising inflection of his voice pitched to defend. She nodded, listening, considered his question and answered slowly, carefully, affording him a deep respect as if he’d made a major contribution to the world of human knowledge. Then she smiled as if she and he were in on a private and deeply serious joke, and said, ‘Of course, and there is our problem.’
And by the way he beamed at her and agreed, we knew she’d won him over. It was that slow, gentle way she had of watching and letting nothing get to her that she’d always had. You couldn’t touch her. No one could touch her. As approachable as she looked, glossy and fine-boned and smiling, she was impervious, unknowable. And yet it was a kindness, a generosity, because if you couldn’t hurt her, you couldn’t hurt yourself. He sat down, still smiling, unable to help himself, and recovered in the cocoon of her attention.
I left with the others, hidden in the push for the door and the last of the summer sunlight. I wondered if she’d call my name: she didn’t. I knew she wouldn’t. It was enough that she was alive. Melanie is alive and Charlie had protected her all along.
I went back to my room and packed up my things. There was no need for anything else. No need for questions, or the answers. No need to tell her that finally, I understood why she vanished, I understood why she couldn’t tell me what happened. I wouldn’t destroy the life she’d built. Maybe she was Melanie, but she was Elena too. I know which one I’d choose to be.
So you see, she was a figment of my imagination. Flesh and blood – but a story, a myth, a series of actions and consequences folded into my own history. That was my fault. Isn’t that love? Making someone into a story of wonder, no matter what, and turning yourself into the perfect character to fit alongside them? To be them? It would be foolish to imagine one’s life as separate from all others, as singular and clearly defined, stupid not to see how connected we are, our lives bouncing and colliding, merging and dissolving into one another. I am her and she is me. So I left, I boarded the plane. I left Elena where she belonged and took Melanie home with me.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Ford Dagenham, Lindsay Parnell, Eadaoin Agnew, Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone and Luke Seomore for reading endless drafts and offering patient, incisive and invaluable advice and sometimes puzzled questions about what I was doing!
Thanks to Julia May for invaluable insider journalism info and advice.
Thanks to Gary Powell for guidance on police procedure.
Special thanks of course to Hetha and Lin, you guys are the dream team.
And brilliant Kevin.
But most of all, thanks to Joe, Raif, Boo, Indi, Rose and Jay. I love you all.
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