Asylum Road

by Olivia Sudjic

  Inside, it looked like the building had been gutted by fire. Bombed during the blitz, as the noticeboard told me, it was now a wedding venue. Everything had been destroyed internally (except a few stone monuments) but not one of the stained-glass windows had shattered. I felt even colder inside, and desolate, as if I’d entered the depths of an aquarium.

  I turned right then left, running until I reached the butchers and beauty salons of Peckham Rye, only stopping when I reached the park, then walking a bit further as my heart rate settled. The sun broke out from behind the clouds and I sat down on a bench. As I sat there, feeling newly calm, my breath rising up in clouds, another person joined me, and just as his presence and the silence was starting to make me feel I should continue, he turned his face to mine.

  Hey, he blurted, almost aggressive. What’s your story?

  He was American, I couldn’t tell where from exactly, but he sounded like he’d been practising with a pick-up artist. I tried to convey that I was not in the mood for talking, smiling then taking from my bag the book Mira had given me.

  What’s your book then?

  I showed him the cover. He looked at the title, in Serbian, and appeared to ponder it. I held my breath.

  You like reading?

  I shrugged, keeping my eyes on the page.

  What’s it about?

  Genocide.

  OK. Any good?

  Depends what you’re into I guess.

  Does it have a good plot?

  It’s non-fiction.

  He laughed as if he’d finally got the measure of me. What’s your name, if you don’t mind?

  I made a face like I did, but he continued looking at me with his light eyes.

  Anya.

  His eyes reminded me of my dentist’s as they bore down on me from above the surgical mask. Whenever he had me in the chair and had begun to suffocate me by placing some kind of clay in my mouth, or probing me with his latex fingers while I lay choking on my spit, he would start asking me personal questions like so when are you getting married?

  I reopened the book determinedly, deciding this was the right time to put my new, Mira-inspired personality into action. I had to save myself. My neighbour was not deterred, stroking his cheek as if to indicate that he was still turning my name over.

  Well listen Anya, I actually came over to talk to you for a reason. You look a little lost, if I may say. He was getting smoother, more relaxed with me. Evidently he thought his strategy was succeeding.

  I shrugged again.

  Are you from here?

  I hesitated. No. Not here exactly.

  Where’s home?

  I could not yet bring myself to walk away.

  Where are you from? I said, turning the question.

  Nashville. He smiled like I was finally playing along. Now you.

  Glasgow.

  OK and where’s that?

  About as far as you can get from Nashville, spiritually.

  Well, Anya, it’s funny you should mention that –

  I clenched my jaw. He was not a pick-up artist then, but a stealth-mode Jehovah’s Witness. He reached into his jacket pocket and passed me a piece of paper.

  GAME CHANGER, I read.

  I’m just starting out as a life coach. And if you go to my website you will see I’m also a gardener. Do you know what life coaching involves?

  I tipped my head to one side, not sure which answer would be rewarded with the shorter conversation.

  The stories we tell ourselves, he continued, in a monotone as if reading from a script, are what make us who we are. They tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  I gave him my old number so that I could leave, then forced myself into a phone shop where I got out my credit card again, bought the cheapest they had, and had at least some of my life restored to me.

  It got dark quickly. With my new phone in a shopping bag, I found myself at the BMX track in Burgess Park. The helmets shone in the floodlights, swooping over the pale hills like starlings in formation. I stood observing them, alone. The lights made the sky feel very close. I sat down again on a bench under their brightness, took the phone out of its packaging and stared at it before doubling over and throwing up onto the frozen ground.

  12

  I bought another pregnancy test. The cheapest one that came as a single rather than a pair. The woman at the clinic had advised doing one again four weeks later and that, even if it was negative, I still had to be vigilant in case I needed an ERPC. When I asked what that was she told me it stood for Evacuation of Retained Products of Conception.

  I swallowed several glasses of water and went to the bathroom. Almost instantaneously this time, I had another positive result.

  As the shock subsided, I wondered what the tablet might have done. Whether, failing to abort, I’d only made it angry. Pulling myself up, I decided to go and buy another, more expensive test.

  I called Christopher as I walked back to Tesco. He was on his way to a work Christmas party.

  How’re you doing? he said. You got your phone back?

  The warmth in his voice had such a visceral effect I looked around me on the traffic island as though he might appear there.

  Did you see my email about the reunion?

  Suddenly the sky lit up as if by a silent detonation.

  Are you actually going?

  I can’t but a part of me wants to. I think you should go.

  Why would I want to do that?

  Morbid curiosity? You’re extremely morbid.

  Ha.

  I want you to tell me about it. I’m sure you know Eddie will be there.

  As I reached the petrol station, I saw that the detonation had come from a rotation of advertisements on a huge LED screen. I was disoriented and had walked the wrong way down the road.

  I’d rather die.

  My phone buzzed against my head. I checked the screen – an unknown number was calling – and wondered if it was my new life coach.

  Isn’t it too late anyway? I thought you had to sign up.

  They sent round an email yesterday saying there were still places.

  I haven’t been reading emails.

  I know. But I think you should go. His tone was mischievous.

  The last time I spoke to Eddie he was lost at sea. Literally. Somewhere off Corsica in a sailing boat. He had a fever and I think he thought he was going to drown out there.

  At the time I’d thought this meant something, but then I doubted I was the first person he’d called.

  You’d be a very comforting person to speak to in that situation.

  Oh?

  Definitely. I feel like you’d say whatever someone wanted to hear.

  The flat reeked of smoke.

  Look at all the ladybirds! Mira called as I closed the door.

  I came over to the window where she was standing with an ashtray. There were dozens fluttering against the glass.

  Must be attracted to the light. Or maybe the glass is warm.

  My skin crawled. I pointed to a figure, dimly visible below, and gave her an apprehensive look.

  I don’t know, she said laughing, one of the tenants? What a nuisance. Shall we call the police to our communal property? Gentrifiers here, we’d like to report a neighbour in the garden. Actually I’ve just been listening to some depressing thing on the radio about how they’re going to review security around all public spaces because of the terrorism threat now. To stop cars running people down and make us safer, ostensibly.

  I felt edgy and went round shutting blinds.

  I’d choose safety over terrorism to be honest.

  I know you would.

  Across the street, a man came to the window just as I did. He looked down at the road, listening to a phone in one hand and holding the other to his chest.

  I’m being paranoid. Forget it.

  Because people are after me?

  Just the feeling something’s about to happen, you know that feeling.

  OK, she said, now
serious.

  Mira’s family had a dog, but a sniper shot it when it transpired dogs could anticipate a shelling.

  Now her phone rang. I went to the bathroom to do the third pregnancy test but could still hear her as she answered.

  Daria! Yes, of course I can speak, comrade.

  I was transported. I tried to pee very quietly, waiting for her to talk, but Mira was silent for a long time. Then as her questions came – when, where, how? – I realised something was wrong. I put my head around the door, watched her face turn to me with the phone still pressed against it. Her gaze full of pity for me. I knew already what had happened and went back in again. The positive pregnancy line had appeared and my mother had died that morning.

  I held the sink for balance. I thought of the photograph of us in the bath, her shoulder, and then, for a split second I thought of calling her to be comforted, before it hit me – my mother no longer existed. I couldn’t call to tell her this. It was total now rather than just symbolic. We were in two separate worlds.

  That night I started dreaming again for the first time since Luke broke up with me. In one I was sat at a potter’s wheel, shaping with my hands a belly getting bigger and bigger until it was bigger than I could control and caved in on itself. In another, my mother was in the commune, helping me assemble mysterious items of flat-pack furniture. We gave up trying to make sense of the diagrams and made them how we thought they should look. There was one box left. She was slow dancing with it – a very tall heavy oblong. The object inside the cardboard thudded against the side as she tilted and turned, dancing toward another wall where she leant it and took it back again on the same tender journey.

  In another, from which I woke finally with a jolt, a man was in bed with me, not Mira. He was bearing down and I could taste salt on his lips, feel his chest under a loose cotton shirt. At first, I thought it was Luke but then, when I found his face, I saw the man was Eddie.

  In the morning I found the emails about the reunion and replied that I would be attending.

  After endless fields, she recognised the cycle track now running alongside the train, the science park, sixth form college, rugby pitches and tenpin bowling, the large industrial sheds. It felt like coming up on a strong pill, the connection to these nondescript places – places she hadn’t noticed when she lived there. The train window slowed alongside the station sign.

  CAMBRIDGE

  HOME OF ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY

  Stepping onto the platform she regretted the shoes instantly. The pair pulled from a chaos of bin bags in the half dark that morning were heeled ankle boots. She’d forgotten they were painful. Worse, it would look like she was trying to impress people.

  The area around the station was completely different a decade on from her graduation. There were new buildings everywhere – mostly tech companies and luxury apartments. Still, a wave of nostalgia hit her as she went through the barriers.

  As a student there she’d never felt at home, but the sensation in that moment was that this was somewhere she had used to belong and now did not. Estranged, as if she’d been shaped by it, like an espaliered tree trained to grow up walls, in ways that were only sensible now she was back here.

  It was always colder than London. More like Glasgow. The winds swept over from Siberia in winter, someone had told her once. Too cold to walk for twenty-five minutes in these boots. As she waited for a bus, her phone buzzed with another unknown number.

  The bus was taking forever so she climbed into a taxi.

  She wanted to drive around but the driver refused to drive unless it was to one specific destination. Because of the system, he said, passengers had to travel directly.

  It didn’t matter. Here, Luke did not exist. Nothing was tainted by association. Here, she did not quite exist either, a former life that had now been overwritten.

  Collecting the key to her room for the night she smiled, not recognising the man behind the desk who signed her in.

  Nice to be back?

  Strange.

  Did he know her, or did he just know what she had come for?

  Well, he grinned as if he said this a lot, the past’s a foreign country.

  She was out of practice making conversation with strangers.

  At dinner she sat next to a civil servant who looked vaguely familiar.

  I studied SPS, he said, but they don’t call it that now. I can’t remember what they call it.

  He was working on a Balkans summit, timed for when the UK left the EU.

  It’s all in limbo at the moment, obviously. But it’s really a hole on the map. They feel abandoned by Europe, so it’s Russia they’re turning to. It’s how people behave when they feel excluded, they don’t necessarily act rationally, as we know.

  Anya nodded, taking small, dry bites of potato fondant, wondering whether he was telling her all this so arrogantly, in great detail, because he knew who she was, and blushed when he said that of course he knew.

  History?

  English, she said. For undergrad anyway. Didn’t you roll a disco ball back from a party – he laughed – only to discover it wouldn’t fit through the door? It was bike-locked outside for the rest of term as I remember.

  (Was she flirting?)

  That’s right.

  Do you have a cigarette?

  Sorry, I don’t.

  She got up, dispirited, and walked between the long tables toward the door. The hall that had once been so intimidating now seemed tiny. The people in it too seemed small, though in that previous life they had caused Anya to feel acute self-consciousness. Such shame and resentment toward her own family.

  The man’s name was Kieran, she remembered. Kieran what? Oh who cared, she was not there for him.

  She was becoming warm and a little woozy from the wine. She could feel her cheeks flushing, a light sheen of sweat. If Christopher had been there, they would be outside smoking together, by now doing brutal caricatures of everyone in the hall. No one was in the smoking area to give her a cigarette. Someone from the kitchen staff was vaping. They smiled at each other politely. Then Anya was suddenly ashamed. She cringed, pretending to shiver so the young man would not be offended as she turned and left. She came back inside and sat down at the end of a table. Mimed a search for something on her phone. Scrolled through a property website. Aware all the time that he might at any moment catch sight of her and she would not want to look like she was waiting.

  The woman opposite had brought her own food. Some kind of pale pink spread for slices of dark bread that she took out of Tupperware one by one as she ate them. The spread was applied with precise strokes. Anya now remembered the woman from her corridor. The first year. A Nat Sci? Christian society, that part she knew, a gaze she’d tried to avoid. Now she caught her eye and smiled awkwardly. The woman smiled back. Maybe she didn’t recognise her. Clearly she didn’t care what Anya thought of her as she sat there eating her plain, self-sufficient meal.

  She finished her last slice and said hello, adding, as if she was well-rehearsed in how to have these conversations, that she’d studied Chemistry. Chosen due to her wish to be an art restorer, but she had failed at that. Now she was working as a French translator, for which she discovered she had a gift while living in Paris. She was just thinking she had misjudged the woman – refusing to eat hall food was really a mark of sophistication – when she trailed off. A presence had arrived at Anya’s shoulder. Without turning to look at him, she knew.

  Anya never called him Eddie until after he broke up with her, but Eddie was what everyone else in their college had called him. She’d expected to feel something when she saw him and had prepared for it. Hoped for it. Something very much in existence, set under permafrost, but when reviewed afterward, back on the outside of this, safely irrelevant.

  He made amusing small talk with the translator, during which he described himself as ostensibly single. And what about you, he said, turning to Anya.

  Only after he broke up with her had she found out he’
d cheated. With their mutual friend. She’d lost both of them and the wider group she’d tangentially been a part of. He had tried to blame it on his parents – a divorce from years before which he’d once boasted hadn’t affected him. That was a story he liked to tell. Instead of selling up and making him – sole child from that marriage – trek back and forth between two smaller homes that might end up being very far apart, his parents took out a second mortgage and built an extension, carrying on, essentially, in the same house. That way, as Eddie would explain it, no one’s life had to be disrupted unnecessarily.

  He was used to being the central fact of people’s lives in this way, or he found a way to put himself there if he was not already. Every story revolved around his part in it, no matter how peripheral, so Anya knew, for example, that he’d been in Paris when the Bataclan attacks had taken place. She knew because he’d marked himself as safe. That was, she now remembered, the last time she’d spoken to him – online at least – and not when he’d been lost off Corsica. The status updates he had composed, apparently while lying for hours on the floor of a bar, managed to include a summary of his recent professional success. He was in Paris for the Airbnb conference, the company for whom he worked. Later he was posting again, offering strangers a bed using the hashtag #opendoors.

  Soon the failed restorer had moved to another table. Anya silenced another unknown number and put her phone face down. At some point during their conversation, she found herself leaning in out of habit, resting her head on his shoulder. She realised quite how drunk she was when she kissed him lightly on the cheek. She kept her head there and he’d turned toward her, but as soon as her lips touched his she recoiled. It was Luke’s skin she’d been expecting. Still, she wanted to forget about death. She wanted to stop feeling, just for a moment, that she had lost everything.

  Eddie had requested, and paid extra for, his same room from first year. For old times’ sake, he said. Anya went back with him to see. Luke did not want her so this was what he’d have to accept as the logical consequence. He was driving her to do this – the most self-destructive thing she could. The idea gave her a kind of nihilistic shiver. It was better to be complicit in the destruction.