Another Life

by Jodie Chapman

  ‘I’ve never thought about it like that.’

  We didn’t speak much for the next hour. She worked at the canvas, dabbing and scraping and looking at me, and I put on a baseball hat of hers to shield my head from the sun. It was navy with a New York Yankees logo embroidered on the front. It made me think of Sal.

  Finally, she put down her palette and brush. ‘Relax.’

  ‘Finished?’ I stretched my arms towards the sky.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she said, laughing. ‘You have no idea.’

  I pulled on my top and walked round to the front of the canvas. I saw what she meant. There was a pencil sketch of me standing against the door, a line of shadow cutting my body in two. My upper half she’d painted pink, but with added sinews and lines that were red and thin, as if my skin was translucent. She’d drawn the walled yard, the Japanese branches extending upwards, and the walls of surrounding houses jutting in around the top. The only sky was a jagged-shaped star formed from the gaps between the buildings. It loomed over the scene. I glanced up from the canvas and saw that from this angle, that was exactly how it looked. Except she’d painted it red, the sky. Blood red.

  ‘I have to build it up in layers,’ she said, gesturing. ‘Oil has deeper pigment than acrylic. See how rich the colour is? It lasts much longer and that’s why it’s expensive, but you have to wait for it to dry before you add more colours. It takes time.’

  I didn’t reply. My eyes took in every inch of the canvas, finding clues, piecing them together, searching for meaning in every stroke. She had drawn my skin as if she could see right through it, but looking at the picture she’d created, it was Anna being revealed.

  I saw her as if for the first time.

  ‘Say something,’ she said, chewing a nail. ‘Tell me you hate it. Tell me you love it. But give me something.’

  ‘Hate it?’ I turned to her. ‘Look at this. I’ve never met anyone like you.’

  Anna smiled, relieved. She’d been winding a long strand of hair around her fingers, and she let go as I finished my sentence.

  ‘It’ll probably take a month to finish,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t need me to pose any more?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I can do it from memory.’

  I wiped my clammy palms against my T-shirt and was again aware of my nakedness. ‘Do you sometimes wish you could run away from everything?’ I said. ‘Just for a moment.’

  She gave a half-smile and I saw a faint blush appear on her cheek. It was the same shade of pink as my skin on her canvas.

  ‘We never did do Venice,’ she said.

  From: ANNA

  To: NICK

  Subject:

  You asked about my family.

  When I decided to leave, I packed a suitcase and left Joe with a friend while I went to see my parents. I tried to make them see. How I couldn’t lie in a bed I’d made when I was twelve, when they let me promise myself to an organisation. This is my life, I said to them. For all I know, I’ll never get another. You have made a vow, said my father, and you must keep that vow. Does the vow count if I don’t believe it? I replied. And do I honour a marriage vow to a man who no longer exists as he did? To God, he said. You owe your vows to God.

  I wish I could believe. It would all be so simple if I could only just believe.

  Does God want me to lie? Does he want me to worship with my lips while dying inside? Would they prefer me to be dishonest, just so long as I don’t bring embarrassment to their faces?

  I left them there. My father at the window with his hands behind his back, my mother crying on the landing as I shut the door.

  The punishment for what I’ve done is total cutting off. They are told not even to say hello to me on the street.

  I tried to run from this before and he couldn’t take it. I’m not sure if you could either.

  And so I begin again.

  We spent the weekend together, holed up in her little house. I didn’t leave once, except for Sunday morning, when I rose early from her bed and went to the corner shop to buy the paper and a fresh loaf. I took a key to let myself back in, and when she came sleepily downstairs mid-morning, I handed her a cup of fresh coffee and began on the bacon. I found my way around the kitchen just fine. It was like I’d always been there.

  When it was ready, I handed her the bacon sandwich and watched her take a bite. Ketchup dropped on to the plate. ‘Don’t hate me,’ she said, and leant forward to whisper, ‘but I prefer brown sauce.’ I slapped her gently with a tea towel.

  The second night I stayed, we lay and kissed in the darkness. An unspoken line was drawn that we didn’t cross. We held hands and talked of how our future might be. We used words like might and maybe, never shall or will, but we were sketching an idea all the same. Was it serious? Are the words we whisper at night truer than the rest? We’d come close and retreated so often that the rules of engagement were lost to us. Perhaps this was just a stolen weekend, like one summer’s afternoon by a lake.

  I was in the garden when her son came home on the Sunday. I didn’t hear the knock.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, as he appeared in the doorway, and bent down to gather up the scattered newspaper. We’d sat in the sunshine and read the supplements, not speaking much except for the reading aloud of random sentences. Now, seeing him there, I felt compelled to clear up the mess I had made in his yard.

  Anna appeared behind him and casually draped her arms around his neck. ‘Joe,’ she said, smiling. ‘This is Nick. He’s a friend of mine.’

  Joe frowned at me with a sideways glance. He looked up at his mum and back at me, chewing his lip just like her. ‘Hi,’ he said quietly.

  ‘How was your weekend?’ I said, putting my hands in my pockets. It had been a long time since I’d spoken to a child.

  At this, his bottom lip began to tremble and he spun round and buried himself in his mum’s dress. She looked surprised and kneeled down to hold him, waving at me not to worry.

  ‘Joe? What’s wrong, sweetheart?’

  His shoulders shook as he hugged her. ‘I lost Goldie,’ he sobbed.

  ‘No! How? Your dad didn’t mention it.’

  He let her go and rubbed his fists against his wet cheeks. ‘At the cinema. Dad told me to leave him in the car but I put him on the chair next to me so he could watch it too. And then when it finished …’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘I forgot he was there.’

  ‘Didn’t you go back?’

  Joe shook his head and hugged his arms against himself. ‘I didn’t remember until we got home. Dad said it was too far away. He said I should have left him in the car like he said. He rang the cinema but they couldn’t find him.’

  Anna threw her arms around him as he began to howl and let him shake against her. ‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Let it out. Let it all out.’

  When his crying had stopped, she pulled back and smoothed his hair. ‘Go ride your bike in the sunshine and I’ll get you a cake, okay?’

  He nodded and went over to the little red bike and climbed on, giving shy glances in my direction. I smiled and turned away, not wanting to embarrass him by noticing his tears. I sat on one of the garden chairs as Anna came back with a teacake that she unwrapped from its foil and gave him. He perched on his bike and bit into the sweetness of marshmallow.

  ‘Who’s Goldie?’ I said as Anna sat down.

  She rested her chin on her hand and stared at Joe. ‘A teddy he’s had forever,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll have a heck of a time getting him to sleep tonight.’

  I watched her watching her boy. ‘You’re a good mum,’ I said.

  She smiled and her cheeks flushed pink. ‘I could be better.’

  ‘We could all be better.’

  ‘I think it’s so important to let boys cry,’ Anna said. ‘To let them feel the bad as well as the good. His dad says I’m making him too soft, but thank God. We can’t expect them to feel for others when we tell them not to feel for themselves. Why do we think
strength means silence?’

  Then she looked straight at me.

  The Next Day

  I left early before her son awoke, slipping down the stairs like a stranger and putting on my coat at the door. Anna stood still, wrapped in her robe, waiting.

  ‘I had a lovely weekend,’ she said.

  I zipped up my padded coat. ‘Me too.’

  Her eyes glanced from my face to my hands as I fumbled fingers into gloves. We loaded the silence like a gun. I knew she wanted me to speak.

  ‘Thanks for having me,’ I said, leaning in and patting her back.

  ‘Thanks for having you?’ she said, laughing and pulling away. ‘What on earth is that?’

  She was right. The way to end this weekend was not with politeness, but it felt like a strange mood had settled between us and I didn’t know how to break it apart. Outside, it had turned cold again so I put up my hood.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, stepping forward and taking my hand. ‘Don’t be a stranger.’

  Even in gloves, the feel of her hand in mine sent waves of blood through my body. We looked at each other and saw our futures. She smiled. I kissed the back of her hand.

  I didn’t contact Anna once in the weeks that followed.

  I saw online she’d won a major award for a theatre set she’d designed, but I couldn’t bring my finger to like the post. Instead, I read the article again and again until I knew it by heart.

  If I saw she was online, I’d quickly come off and ignore it a while. I turned off my Last seen so I left no trace. These games we play.

  Why did I do this? Why draw so close to her and then recoil like a spring? Why make out I didn’t care when I knew in my heart I would break up with my girlfriend?

  You tell me.

  Please.

  I had imaginary conversations with myself on the loo and in the bathroom mirror, and they always ended with everyone happy, like we’d all sat round a table and been rational and had felt exactly the same way. Those conversations are my favourite. If only they happened.

  There were a couple of weeks left until Laura returned, and some twisted reasoning in my brain said I should be loyal until then. I didn’t trust myself around Anna, and now that I knew my intentions, there was no stopping the force of my feeling. At night, it consumed me.

  I focused on other things, as if time would pass more quickly through distraction. I cleaned behind the fridge, cooked meals from fancy recipe books, spent longer at the office, until my boss gave me a back-slap and a raise.

  One weekend, I met Daz for a drink. He’d recently split from Gemma, his longest relationship, and his wounds needed tending.

  ‘I know why it didn’t work,’ he said during the third pint. ‘She was out of my league.’

  I sat at the picnic table across from him. It was March and chilly, but Daz was a smoker too. We wore beanie hats pulled down over our shaved heads. Daz was working nights laying tarmac on the motorway and he was dressed in his orange overalls, about to head off on shift. The hi-vis stripes down his sleeves shone in the lamplight.

  I took a sip of my beer and said, ‘More likely it was the women you kept shagging behind her back.’

  He shook his head. ‘She never knew. I know how to keep birds apart.’

  ‘So you thought she was out of your league, but that didn’t stop you screwing around?’

  Daz blew a long line of smoke into the air and raised his hands in protest. ‘When am I supposed to find the time to change?’

  Laura couldn’t understand why I was still mates with Daz. ‘But he’s so, so …’ Working class? I wanted to say, but she’d wrinkle her nose and go, ‘He doesn’t seem to care about doing anything with his life.’ I’d make some half-arsed defence on his behalf. I didn’t admit that I often thought this too, that our continuing friendship was born partly from an ease of familiarity, but also from a shameful desire to be reminded that someone was a bigger fuck-up than myself. I was a bride who deliberately picked an ugly bridesmaid. I was a shit.

  ‘Looks are overrated,’ I said, tapping the ashtray.

  ‘It’s not just looks. Mate, she was a TV producer. She’d done stuff. Lived abroad, had investments, didn’t have to google what something was on a menu. She was legit.’

  ‘Unlike you?’ I said, trying to keep the tone light.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said Daz. ‘She was one of those girls. Like that Anna you used to mess about with.’ He jammed the cigarette into the plastic ashtray. ‘I always screw it up.’

  Anna messaged a few days before Laura came home:

  What gives? We spend an entire weekend together then you disappear off the face of the earth. Friends don’t treat friends that way.

  I waited an hour to read it then another hour to reply. I’m sorry, I typed. I’ve been really busy. Nothing to do with you, honest. I regretted the honest as soon as I’d sent it.

  Half an hour later, she replied: After all that stuff we said. I thought we were finally getting somewhere. But once again, you hit the reset button without telling me and we go all the way back to the start.

  There is something in me that enjoys other people making the effort, to show that I am wanted. I guess this is what they call ghosting. It’s cruel and unkind, but it comes from a good place.

  I don’t know what you mean, I replied. I told you my girlfriend was coming back within a month. It’s the end of the month.

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a pang of pleasure at typing those words; a light pulse of power. After all, she’d made me wait years. How hard could a few days be?

  The blue ticks that showed it was read lit up immediately and I put down my phone.

  I got in bed and thought about her for a while.

  Then I turned over and went to sleep.

  A Sensible Coat / by Anna

  I hate the winter for the darkness at four

  For the school run downpour

  For the cold shoulder I give a ‘mum’ coat

  Like I can resist what I am

  But I hate the winter mainly for the moment we go to embrace

  after buttoning up our coats

  and yours is a wall of blue

  keeping the warmth inside you

  Not like red October when you hugged me in a car park and as you let go I said

  Wait

  So you held me still and I leant my face against your normcore grey and felt the heat from your body and it was just like

  coming home

  We let go

  But you took my hand

  and said

  Be safe

  I once knew you in summer and it was the sweetest thing

  Holding hands in beer gardens and fireworks and travel brochures and passport renewals

  You weren’t conventional then

  I hate the winter because it covered you back up

  Like the ice I scrape from my windscreen

  Turned away from the sun

  You took the words you said at midnight and hid them under your hood

  I called you out for giving me lines and not following through with lips

  So you put on your gloves and keep touch to yourself

  Fending off my punches

  But you cannot deny that you gave me your tongue

  I read its softness like braille

  The flowers are dying

  and perhaps they will never come back

  God I hate the winter

  But there is hope

  I’ve never known you in the spring

  A Few Days Later

  I met Laura at the station. I’d bought a cheap bunch of red carnations from the supermarket and held them in front of me like a first date. I thought she’d find it funny.

  I saw her first. Her face looked pale and tired and comfortingly familiar. As she approached the barrier, she fished in her pocket for the ticket while hunched over from the weight of her hiking pack. When she came through the barrier, she saw me and stopped.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. �
��I thought I was getting a taxi.’

  ‘Why would you get a taxi?’

  She shifted the pack on her back. ‘I forgot I’d told you which train I was getting. That’s all.’

  ‘Well, here I am. Hi, by the way.’ I put my arms out and she leant in. She kept her hands by her sides and I found myself patting her back.

  ‘You look well,’ she said, pulling away. ‘How have you been?’ And then she stepped forward and hugged me again, as if she’d only just remembered the dead dad. This time she put her arms around me and gave a warm squeeze. ‘Sorry I wasn’t here.’

  I kissed the top of her head. ‘Let me take your bags.’

  I slung the pack over my shoulder and took the holdall she was carrying. There was something nervous and strange in the way she held herself and pulled at her hair, running her fingers over and over the ends.

  ‘Here.’ I passed her the cellophane-wrapped flowers. ‘I bought you these. As a joke.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, taking them with a confused expression. ‘Thanks.’

  She turned on the radio as soon as we got in the car, and I gave her a sideways glance as I reversed out of the space.

  ‘Good flight?’

  ‘It was fine,’ she said, looking out the window.

  I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as we waited at a red light. ‘Glad to be home?’

  She was looking at the buildings as if she’d never seen them before. ‘Strange how everything looks exactly the same,’ she said through the glass.

  ‘I guess not much has changed in three months.’

  Laura laughed, a strange, hollow sound. ‘I guess not.’ She looked through the windscreen at the line of traffic ahead. ‘Weird the things you miss, like British number plates.’

  And me, obviously, I considered saying.

  ‘I’m making a roast dinner,’ I said. ‘All the trimmings.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘What?’

  I changed gear. ‘You seem … distant. Just tired, or something on your mind?’

  She turned and blinked as if seeing me for the first time. ‘Oh, sorry. I got no sleep on the plane, thanks to a kid kicking my seat. My head’s just clouded, that’s all.’ She gave a warm smile and put her hand on my leg.