He peered into my face with eyes so clear. “But, Katherine, you don’t understand. Things aren’t bad. I mean it’s sad, really sad about us after all this time, and I do love you. But now? The thing is, it’s not bad, I’m doing great.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, that’s just how things have turned out.”
“So, is that it then? You’re just going to give up on us. On me?”
“I don’t think we’ve got anything left to give each other. We’re co-dependent.”
“Co-dependent? Well, I can see who’s got to you.”
“Stop that. It doesn’t suit you. Listen, are you going to be around this weekend? Because I do need to talk to you about stuff. About everything. The flats. About our money.”
Unbelievable. “The flats? Our money? Well, my flat is mine and so’s all our money. You haven’t brought in a paycheck for years.”
“The flat’s in both our names since the film, remember? And anyway, circumstances…Things have changed.”
“Changed how? I don’t care that you forced your way onto the deeds with your stupid, fucking dire piece of shit film that fucked my life forever, it is my fucking flat and I want you fucking out. Is she there now?” He dropped his head. “In my flat? Nice. Thanks for that. Do you know what you are? You’re a fucking disgrace of a cliché. I can’t believe I’ve poured my time and all my fucking money into keeping you. Trust me, mate, if you’ve got her in my house right now, you will not have a leg to stand on.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Passersby slowed up to listen to us. “I think it’s best if we just stop this now. This is getting seriously fucking ugly, and we don’t want that.”
“Well, we should have thought about that before we moved in that little fucking Snowflake. I’d love to know what, exactly, she’s told you about me and her. You know she’s only with you because of me? Do you know she was looking me right in the eye when she was fucking you? There! What do you make of that?”
“For God’s sake, what are you talking about, woman? Your paranoid fucking conspiracies!”
“Mark my words, what’s going on with her, it’s a farce. It’s all about me and you’ll find that out soon enough, of that I am sure.”
“Have you heard yourself? Look, just get on with your day, get some rest. I’ll be in touch, but please, don’t come to the flat and don’t blame her. And leave it with the batshit fucking theories, will you? You’ll get yourself ill again. I’ve got to go.” He broke into a run again before turning back. “And please, please steer clear of the flat for a while. I’m not there. I’m at Holloway for a wee spell. I’ll be in touch.” He turned around again and I watched his unrecognizably hardened form as it disappeared at speed across the park.
Not only had you taken my partner and my job off me, you’d somehow confiscated my flat and evicted both me and Iain. I almost had to admire all you’d achieved if your mission, as I was still sure, was to destroy my life. I burned inside. How I wanted to walk around to my home, let myself in, and hurt you. But that would leave me in serious shit and you sitting pretty in my home. I hated the world.
I dropped the meat and bread in the nearest garbage can and headed right back to The Rose and Crown.
I started drinking.
I drank all day and managed to score some cheap and nasty coke. I tried to talk to anyone who’d listen. No one wanted to be near me. In the end, I think I ended up talking to myself.
* * *
—
WHEN THE SUN FELL, I went for a walk. I found myself outside my own home. And there you were, dancing in front of a rectangle of yellow light from my living room.
You, dancing in my home. And in my clothes. You’d found one of my shirts and my old leather skater skirt. Your hips slid against the air; your long arms weaved toward my ceiling before you dropped them and ran your fingers down your face. You took periodic sips of water from your fuck-stupid filter bottle and held your stomach as if your dancing had left you dizzy and sick. You little fucking Snowflake. Were you all it took to take my life from me? Were you all it took to steal my home, my job, my fucking partner? Is that all you’ve got? I walked the backstreets until I found myself on the south end of Seven Sisters Road. I just kept walking.
I’d already been up for a while by the time you called on Saturday. What could you possibly want at this time in the morning, I wondered. I couldn’t face you yet. You’d hear the darkness in my throat. I’d taken three sleeping pills on the way back to the car the night before, but by the time I finally roused myself, I was still unrested and exhausted.
You rang again. And again. The selfie you took of us, where we both looked so vital, so close to each other, kept appearing on my screen, mocking me, my stupidity, my desperation to believe that somewhere in you, you wanted me to be your friend. How that hateful selfie ridiculed it all as it danced about my passenger seat while I ignored another call from you. I knew I’d have to speak to you eventually, but I let myself enjoy the modicum of control not picking up gave me. In that picture, you were in the thick of your plan to take total control of my life. As long as I refused your call, at least I had some power.
I listened to your voice messages.
“Hi, can you please call me back?”
“Katherine, it’s important you call me back urgently. Please.”
“It’s me again. I know why you don’t want to hear from me, I know why I’d be the last person you want to hear from, but you need to know something, something really urgent. Can you please call me back?”
I wondered, would you ever give me the satisfaction of telling me why you’d done all this to my life? The nirvana moment where you admit your motivations then tell me you’d do anything to put things right?
My phone rang again. I was trembling. It took a few swipes for me to finally stop the phone from ringing and let me hear your voice.
“Lily.”
“Where are you? I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
“Out and about. It’s early. Where are you?”
“Are you sitting down?”
I looked about at my car as if you could see me. “Yes, I’m in a café. It’s quiet. Is there something you need to say to me?”
“Katherine. Iain’s dead.”
APRIL 14—SOME SPACE TO THINK
I tell Iain I’ll be fine, everything will be fine. But things have gone to a whole new level, so I need some time and space to get my head around it.
The truth is, I need some room to reset who I am. I could be so close to getting everything I’ve ever wanted. I played my hand so wrong in the past, I can’t afford to do it now. I called it badly with Ruth and it ended up costing me everything. I can’t risk doing that again. I have to get my head straight and I can’t have an audience for that. Things have got so real, I have to learn to stop pretending.
So, Iain leaves me in the flat. He’s confused too, but he seems to get it. I’ve told him if he lets me work this out he can have me forever.
I will work this out. I can totally work this out. If I do, I think I’ve got a chance of making things end even better than they could have ever been.
I’m positive I saw KR outside again tonight. I’d been trying to pass the time with some stretches, a bit of yoga. I’d put some music on, danced on my own. When I looked out the window, I’m sure I saw her stomping down toward Seven Sisters Road. I’d know her dark shape anywhere.
APRIL 16—THE DAY EVERYTHING CHANGES
I needed a bit of headspace, that’s all. That wasn’t so harsh, was it? I didn’t ask him for forever. I didn’t want forever on my own. I just needed to get used to things.
I felt a new kind of happiness creep into me. When I realized what was happening, the kind of future I’d organized for myself, I wanted to lock it down. I wanted to stop faking it and start living it.
I got on the bus to Holloway befor
e six, watching the sun rise over Finsbury Park. It had never looked so beautiful. It had never actually looked beautiful. It was time to tell Iain everything. Let him know who Katherine really is. Then, my new dawn, my own exciting new chapter. I’d already tuned out Gem and Mum. I could keep that going until they came around and started fighting over me again. I thought about how they’d really like Iain, once they got to know him. I thought about how much I really like Iain, or at least what he could represent. I thought about how it’s funny where life takes you, or in my case, where I take it.
The steps down to his basement flat are greasy and uneven. We’d have to spruce this place up and get it back on the rental market as soon as we could. He should just come back to the flat now. That’s what I’m thinking as I let myself in. I start mulling over how we should be beefing up security on the place as part of the refresh, then smiling to myself over how adult my thoughts have become in the last few days. I’m still smiling as I step quietly through the dingy little hallway.
That’s when the smell hits me. Vomit. I’m scared to push open the door to the living room, but I know I have to. I will have to forgive him for falling off the wagon. That’s what you do, when you’re in a proper adult relationship, because that’s what I think I’m starting to get to with Iain. But it’s impossible for me not to gag as I walk up to where he lies, out of it on a nasty two-seater pushed up against the back wall of the narrow little sitting room.
“Iain. Iain? It’s me, Lily.” I’m about to touch him, and that’s when time slows right down. My hand, reaching out for a still shoulder, noticing suddenly just how white he is. Sick, cold on his chin and down to his neck and the close-fitting T-shirt he’d just bought himself and seemed so proud of.
I want to cry, No! just like in the movies, but if I stay there another second I’m going to throw up too. So, I run out of the room and into the street above. I call the police. I can’t bear to look at his body.
The police arrive and begin to lead me away. As they do, I notice the spent bottles and a couple of those little drug bags. Empty. Traces of lines of cocaine visible on the table.
Oh, Iain, why?
I just needed some time. Not forever.
Now it’s too late for you.
But it’s not too late for me. I can still have a version of the future I’ve made come my way. Let’s not forget either, where I’m headed now, it’s a victory over KR I couldn’t have even imagined. I’ve outdone myself this time. I’ll never top this again. I won’t have to and I don’t want to.
The morning looks changed as the police drive me back to Manor House. Different, but still beautiful.
You told me you’d be with the police for a while, so I decided it was time to get back to my flat. I drove in a sleeping pill fug. It was hard for me to focus on the keyhole of the front door once I’d climbed the steps. How many times had he and I gone up these steps together over all our years? Coming in from nights out. Going out for a walk, then the pub. All but doing it, freezing our arses off on that doorstep the Christmas we first got together. I eventually got the key in, but it wouldn’t turn. I tried to force it to move, but it refused.
You’d made him change the locks.
And now he was gone. I was on the outside, you were on the inside, and Iain was in the mortuary. How could that possibly be?
I viewed my key, bent and jammed in the keyhole.
I stepped back and screamed with rage and grief, before running back to my car, leaving the busted key in the door for someone else to deal with.
It was hours before I heard from you again and in the meantime, I drafted a hundred bile-filled texts:
Happy now I have nothing? You fucking two-faced lying bitch?
Congratulations, you have successfully fucked me and killed every dream I ever had.
I don’t know how you can sink any lower, but I’m sure you’ll find a way, you cunt.
But I didn’t send them. I didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of your total victory.
I swam in my complete isolation. I needed Iain. I craved his scent, the feel of his arms around me. I heard his voice around me all the time. Saw his face, saw men who looked like him everywhere. I desperately wanted to talk to him. I even picked up my phone a couple of times. In the coming days, I found places to vomit in peace in the evenings, so I could experience that familiar rawness in my throat, something to take me back to my past recently gone, Iain’s meals, Iain’s care. The madness of my grief.
When you eventually called, you told me how he died in horrific detail, and still I asked for more. Did he give you any indication he was going to fall off the wagon? No. What had you fallen out over? You didn’t want to discuss that. Do you think he’d got off his face with any intention of hurting himself? You couldn’t honestly say. Why did the police keep you there for so long? They must have asked you a lot of questions. It seemed like they were trying to see if there was anything suspicious. And what did they say? At this stage, they were satisfied there was no foul play, but there would be an inquest to establish cause of death. Only after that would they release the body so you could arrange the funeral.
“You?”
“Yes, Katherine. Me.”
“I’m his partner.”
“No, you are not.”
“I think you’ll find twenty years together counts for something.”
“Some things, you’ll find, count for much more. I will be making arrangements.”
I do truly hate the vocabulary surrounding death and funerals. That black time around my mother. Old ladies I barely knew offering to help with the “arrangements.” Being asked to choose the color of the cloth that would line her coffin, like it fucking mattered. Iain and I had always joked about him going before me. “It’s always the blokes who pop their clogs first, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, babe, but I’m not exactly a health freak. Don’t bother with flowers or anything fancy. Just shove me out with the bins on Monday and go and have a slap-up meal on me.” He would go first, and I was going to be there for him, but not like this. Iain, what had you let her do to us?
“Fine, Lily, enjoy. Oh, and one more thing. I want you out of my flat. You know what you’re doing is illegal.”
“So why don’t you go on and tell the police?”
Silence for a beat, then before I could say anything, you hung up.
* * *
—
DAYS WENT BY and I was going spare. I had almost no money and nowhere to go and no one to turn to. You joined your aunt in the conspiracy of silence against me. And all the while, I couldn’t believe he’d gone. Eventually, I decided there was nothing else for me to do but wait outside my flat and face you, find out what the hell was going on.
Just after 8:30 A.M., the front door opened and it was my neighbor from the flat below. He stepped out backward, carrying your bike down the steps for you. You moved on quick, didn’t you? I saw you flash him the earnest and grateful version of your smile when he placed your bike gently on the pavement. I got out of my car and started walking toward you.
Getting closer, I could see you looked like hell. You’d lost weight. You were as thin as me. Your hair was flat, your skin gray, turning to white when you saw me. Right then, I could see older you, the shadow of middle-aged you falling on your smooth face. And I wished Iain could have seen you, looking that rough, all your novelty and vitality shod, because somehow I do believe his “love” for you would have faltered. But that didn’t matter now and you knew it.
“Katherine.”
“Looks cozy. Enjoying my place? And so much room with Iain gone.”
“Stop. Please.”
“What the fuck’s going on, Lily? I want you out of my house, I want our things, and I want to know when my partner’s funeral is.”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“It’s perfectly
fucking simple. You’re squatting in my flat!”
“Gem was going to contact you. The funeral’s next Wednesday.”
“Wednesday? OK. Where?”
“Dissenters Chapel, City of London Crematorium.” That’s where I’d have chosen. Did you actually get close to him? I wouldn’t let myself believe it. “And what did the coroner say? About the cause of—”
“Death by misadventure. Drugs and alcohol.”
“Of course.”
“What do you mean, of course? He was doing really well.”
“So, what was he doing in Holloway?”
“I’m not prepared to discuss that with you.”
“You need to get out of my house. I want my home back. My things.”
“It wasn’t just your home, Katherine. It was his too,” you said climbing onto your bike and pushing off the curb. You were not afraid of me.
I shouted down my road after you, “I want my fucking home back, you thief.”
That’s when you braked. You stopped and pedaled back to me, fast. You got closer and closer until I had to jump back so you didn’t mow me over. Your bike whined as you came to a halt at the last second, your front wheel between my legs, your face close to mine.
“If I catch you outside here at night one more time, I’m calling the police.”
“You?! You’ve stolen my home from me. They’ll have something to say about that. It’s illegal.”
“So is stalking. Stay away from here and stay away from me.”
You pedaled back, freeing me from your front wheel.
“I want to know why you’ve destroyed my life,” my words getting louder as you cycled self-righteously down my street and away from me.
* * *
—
THE NEXT TIME I saw you it was at my partner’s funeral where it was you, not me, who played the part of grieving widow. Even after Iain had gone, you were invading what was ours, what was real. You’d put yourself where I should be again. You were brazen, beyond shame. You would have pressed that black pantsuit you were wearing in my home, using my iron, looking in my mirror before you left. How was it you who prepared yourself for this scene in that way, not me? You looked more haggard than ever, but that might have all been part of the act.
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