Going Out

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘Is it this?’ She opens a small bottle and holds it under his nose.

  ‘No, not completely,’ he says.

  Helen puts several more bottles under his nose for him to smell. It turns out to be a combination of rose conditioner, mint shampoo, rosemary bath-oil, pine-fragranced bleach (‘I shouldn’t use bleach, because of the environment, but how else do you clean the toilet?’), toothpaste and three different kinds of soap: rose, orange blossom and heather.

  ‘These are from flowers, aren’t they?’ Luke says. He thinks of vague smells on the few girls who’ve been in his bedroom over the years. Occasionally there was a small whisper of something like this, but mostly the smells were faint and slightly poisonous. Luke’s never smelt a flower before, on a soap or on a girl or anywhere.

  ‘Yes,’ Helen says. ‘These are mainly made from essential oils.’

  ‘Do the real plants smell like this?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’ve got mint in the kitchen and a few roses left in my garden. I can show you, tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Well, when you wake up.’

  ‘Cool. Thanks, Helen.’

  ‘You’ve really missed out, haven’t you?’ she says sadly.

  Luke thinks about this. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how much more than this there is. I’ve no idea what there is out there. Whatever it is, I guess I’ve missed out on it.’

  His bedroom smells and looks different to anything he’s seen before. Often, on TV, bedrooms look very similar to one another. They don’t usually have every wall covered in books or slightly ragged folded-up towels lying on the dresser (‘They’re for you. Help yourself to the bath or shower.’). This room also has an old-looking mirror standing against a dusty fireplace, and lying at its foot, old copies of magazines Luke’s never seen before – City Limits, Spare Rib and Time Out. There are also lovely pieces of thick printed fabric thrown over the bed, which actually looks like a sofa.

  This room is dark, like his room at home. The only place he’s ever seen sunlight is on TV. Were he ever to see sunlight in real life, it would surely be as different as everything else he’s seen on this journey. Would it have a smell? What would it feel like? There’s a small wooden wardrobe in the corner of this room, by the dresser. Luke walks over and runs his hands over it. Wood comes from trees. Luke knows that. But he’s never felt wood before. This is wood, but it’s surely not real. Would a tree feel different? And, hang on, there’s something else here – something amazing – a piece of fabric hanging through one of the handles in the door. It’s the softest thing Luke’s ever felt in his life. It’s a square, a red square of this incredible fabric, with pictures of flowers on it.

  He touches it to his face. Chloe had some knickers that were made of fabric that felt a bit like this – he remembers that, and that he wasn’t allowed to touch them once she’d taken them off because she thought it was weird. Maybe that was one of the reasons she never got in touch again: Luke wanted to rub her knickers in his face. This material smells of a flower, maybe one from the bathroom. It’s so soft. He can’t stop touching it. He puts it down while he takes off his space-suit and most of his clothes underneath, but then, like an addiction, he can’t leave it alone. It’s better than fleece. He takes it to bed with him and rubs it on his legs.

  This is lovely, but he still wants to go home.

  Chapter 39

  Downstairs, Chantel’s totting up all the ways in which Julie looks like her mum.

  ‘It’s, like, different colour hair, but the same kind of hair.’

  ‘So not the same at all,’ David says, yawning.

  ‘Same eyes,’ Chantel says. ‘Well, the shape.’

  ‘So still not the same, then,’ David says.

  ‘You do look like her,’ Charlotte says to Julie. ‘You can tell you’re mother and daughter.’

  The cottage looks a bit like Julie’s house in Essex used to look before her mother moved out, but more so. Julie recognises the Indian rug on the sitting-room floor – it is their old rug from the house in Bristol years ago. She never saw it in Windy Close; her dad never liked that sort of thing. The two bookcases in this room are more familiar, though. Her mum took those from Windy Close when she left, and most of the books in the house – her text books from her days at the Poly, and books with titles that Julie remembers from being a child: Woman on the Edge of Time, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Fat is a Feminist Issue, Women Who Love Too Much; and novels by Ursula Le Guin, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. Julie remembers lying on the sitting-room floor, colouring, watching TV or eating jam sandwiches, and gazing up at the bookshelves that she thought would always be there. She must have read the titles hundreds of times but she never opened any of the books. Then they were gone.

  Helen comes in, asks if anyone wants another drink before bed, then goes into the kitchen to make them. She looks tired, but as if she’s still trying to get to grips with what’s going on here, and who all these people in her house actually are.

  ‘So . . .’ she says, when she comes back. ‘You’re all Julie’s friends?’

  ‘David and I used to work together,’ Julie explains, ‘and Chantel just moved into number 14 on our street. She’s Leanne’s cousin – you must remember Leanne. And Charlotte used to live there before. She moved in with Mark and his family a few years after you left.’

  ‘Oh, yes. How is Leanne, and how’s Mark?’

  ‘Um . . . Leanne’s gone to become a witch and Mark’s . . .’

  ‘Dead,’ finishes Charlotte. ‘He died.’

  Helen looks shocked. ‘He died?’ she repeats. ‘That’s awful. How . . . ?’

  ‘A brain haemorrhage,’ Julie says, glancing at Charlotte.

  ‘And you were his girlfriend?’ Helen asks Charlotte.

  Charlotte nods. ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you feel about that? About him dying?’

  ‘Feel? Oh. I don’t know. At the time I was a mess, but you know . . .’

  Helen speaks in a slow, gentle voice. ‘Time makes it better?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know. A bit. It’s more the coming to terms with loss, and the guilt and all the questions you ask yourself about whether you did the right thing, or thought the right thoughts or behaved the right way.’

  Helen’s nodding. ‘Hmm, hmm,’ she says. ‘Absolutely.’

  Julie feels uncomfortable. Although she hasn’t seen or spoken to her mother for more than seven years, in essence she doesn’t seem to have changed very much. Her idea of getting to know someone has always been to zero in on the most life-changing, horrible thing that’s ever happened to them and make them talk about it in excruciating detail, and quiz them on exactly how it makes them feel. Charlotte doesn’t seem to mind, particularly. Then Julie realises maybe that’s because Charlotte does the same thing. In fact, now Julie thinks about it, Charlotte’s probably got more in common with Helen than Julie has.

  David yawns, which makes Julie yawn. The light in the sitting room seems brighter, even though it’s almost totally blocked out by the bin-bags and the curtains. The clock on the wall says it’s almost eight in the morning. Helen makes some more Hmm, hmm noises in Charlotte’s direction before she gets up, stretches and suggests that everyone might like to go to bed.

  ‘You can sort yourselves out however you’d like,’ she says, providing them with a stack of blankets, pillows and sleeping bags. ‘One or two of you might want to go in Luke’s room with him – you’ll need sleeping bags if you do. Now. That –’ she points to one of the sofas – ‘is a futon. I’ve never actually pulled it out before but I’m sure it’s very simple. That other sofa’s big enough for whoever’s smallest, probably Julie, or you, Charlotte, and whoever’s left over will probably have to go on the floor in here, or in Luke’s room, or wherever.’ She laughs. ‘I’ve never had five guests before.’

  ‘I think I’ll go upstairs, then,’ David says, when Helen’s gone.

  ‘I’ll come with you, then,’
says Chantel.

  They gather various bits of bedding and go.

  ‘That leaves us, then, babe,’ says Charlotte to Julie. She gets up and seems to be assessing the bedding options. ‘Shall we pull out this futon?’ She drags off the large throw and pulls at the futon from a couple of directions. ‘How the fuck do you get this out?’

  Julie examines it. It’s pretty simple. ‘There,’ she says when she’s done it.

  ‘It’s cold now,’ says Charlotte. ‘We may as well both sleep on here.’

  ‘It is big,’ Julie says. ‘OK, whatever.’

  What else can she say? No I don’t want to sleep with you because I once had a crush on you? Yeah, right. Girls sleep together all the time, though, don’t they? It’s one of those girly things. It’ll seem stupid if she says she doesn’t want to.

  They arrange blankets on it, and a couple of pillows.

  ‘Do you think I can smoke in here?’ Charlotte asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Julie says. ‘I don’t know if Mum would mind or not. Open a window or something if you can; I’m sure it’ll be fine. Use the fire as an ashtray. I’m going to smoke too, so . . . If she says anything we just won’t do it tomorrow.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I’m hungry. I might go and see what there is in the kitchen.’

  ‘OK, cool.’ Charlotte starts rolling a cigarette. ‘If you find anything good, bring some for me.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You must be starving,’ Charlotte says, as Julie goes through the sitting-room door into the kitchen. ‘You never ate those sandwiches, did you?’

  The kitchen is small and has two window boxes filled with herbs. The window itself has a bin-bag taped over it, so Julie opens the back door for some air and some light. Outside there’s Helen’s small garden, crowded with shrubs, autumn leaves, more herbs and a little path that doesn’t seem to go anywhere, except to a tiny shed. Just outside the door, in a covered alcove, is a bucket, a trowel and some gardening gloves. It’s raining. Julie’s had enough of rain. She shuts the door.

  She wants chocolate but there’s none in the kitchen. The small fridge contains hoummus, bean sprouts, organic cow’s milk, sheep’s cheese, carrot juice, organic vegetable cocktail and a small loaf of brown bread. There’s also some Safeway organic eggs, some Safeway yoghurts, a Safeway cucumber, several jars of Safeway olives and two bottles of white wine. Nothing edible there, although Julie remembers liking hoummus as a child, and carrot juice. The cupboards contain things like herbal teas, vitamin supplements, Echinacea, honey, lentils, uncooked beans in packets (one of Julie’s greatest fears – everyone knows that if you don’t cook beans exactly right they’ll kill you), rice, tinned soup and various bags of organic oats. There are no crisps or sweets anywhere. Desperate, and feeling slightly faint, Julie cuts a piece of dense brown bread from the fridge and spreads honey on it.

  She sticks her head through the door to the sitting room. ‘Do you want bread and honey?’ she asks Charlotte.

  ‘No, I’m all right, thanks. I’ll have a cup of tea if you’re making one, though.’

  ‘Normal tea?’

  ‘No, chamomile, please. That’s what your mum was making for me.’

  ‘OK.’

  Julie puts the kettle on and replaces the lid on the honey. As she’s putting it back in the cupboard she strains somehow and the next thing she knows, she’s got the hiccups. She holds her breath. When was the last time she had the hiccups? Maybe when she was a kid. Holding her breath doesn’t work, and the next hiccup catapults from inside her with startling force. Having hiccups is to do with your diaphragm going into spasm, isn’t it? That’s actually pretty scary. Whatever is spasming inside her is bigger than her heart . . . Would a heart attack feel like this, only smaller? Oh, God. There’s a glass on the draining board. Julie fills it with water, leans over the sink and tries to do that thing where you drink the water backwards. It doesn’t work. And now she’s drunk tap water. God.

  Julie tips the rest of the water down the sink and closes her eyes. She tries pulling her tongue, but that doesn’t work either. She’s got to get rid of this before she becomes like that guy in Iowa who hiccupped for more than sixty years. If you can make yourself concentrate on something else, really hard, that can cure hiccups – that’s a theory, isn’t it? Maths. Maths can solve anything. 2 times 2 is 4; 4 times 3 is 12; 12 times 4 is 48; 48 times 5 is 240; 240 times 6 is 1,440; 1,440 times 7 is 10,080.

  The kettle boils. Julie’s hiccups have gone.

  ‘Here,’ she says to Charlotte a few minutes later. ‘Tea.’

  ‘Cheers, babe. You OK?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Julie smiles. ‘I had hiccups. Freaked me out. I’m all right now.’

  ‘Cool.’

  Charlotte’s sitting cross-legged on the big futon. Julie sits on it too.

  ‘Does your mum live here on her own?’ Charlotte asks.

  ‘Looks like it,’ Julie says.

  ‘You don’t know much about her, do you?’

  ‘Not since she moved, no.’

  ‘She left when you were in sixth form, didn’t she?’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘You told me ages ago.’

  Charlotte’s always been so into herself Julie wouldn’t expect her to remember a conversation she had with her yesterday, and certainly not one they had something like three years ago. Charlotte’s blowing on her tea and looking at Julie while she does it.

  ‘She seems OK,’ Charlotte says. ‘Nice. I like her house.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s very her.’

  ‘Why did she leave?’

  ‘My dad was having an affair.’

  ‘Oh. Why didn’t you go with her?’

  ‘She didn’t ask me.’

  ‘Would you have gone?’

  ‘I couldn’t, could I?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Luke, of course. And my exams.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Of course.’ Charlotte sounds unconvinced.

  ‘Anyway, she didn’t ask me.’

  ‘Is that why you’re all thingy with her?’

  ‘All thingy?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yeah. Totally. She looked like she was scared of you.’

  ‘No, she didn’t. Don’t be stupid.’ Julie doesn’t like this conversation. She sips her tea. ‘I hate hiccups,’ she says. ‘I had to do this weird thing with numbers to cure it. It worked. You have to start at two and multiply the next whole number by the answer to the last multiplication . . .’

  Charlotte looks blank. ‘Numbers,’ she says. ‘What is it with you and numbers?’

  ‘I just . . . I just like them. I know it’s weird.’

  ‘It’s not. It’s interesting. It’s just . . . You freaked me out in Homebase, though.’

  ‘What, when I added up the shopping?’

  ‘Yeah. To the last fucking penny.’

  ‘Addition isn’t exactly complicated,’ Julie says. ‘I told you that. It’s just a party trick. No big deal. It’s not exactly like working with imaginary numbers or anything . . .’

  ‘What is an imaginary number exactly?’

  ‘It’s pretty complicated.’

  ‘So? Explain it to me.’

  Julie sighs. ‘It’s . . . Oh, how can I explain? Um . . . you sure you want to know?’

  Charlotte sips her tea. ‘Yeah. I like the idea of imaginary numbers.’

  ‘OK. It’s like . . . All right . . . What’s the square root of 4?’

  ‘Huh? The square root of 4.’

  ‘Yeah, what number do you have to multiply by itself to get 4?’

  ‘Oh. 2. Yeah, that’s right; 2 squared is 4.’

  ‘OK, so what’s the square root of 36?’

  ‘Um . . . 6. Yeah, 6 times 6 is 36.’

  ‘Yeah. Good. So what’s the square root of 1?’

  Charlotte thinks for a second. ‘Is it 1?’

  ‘Excellent. 1 times 1 is 1. So what’s the square root of minus 1?’
<
br />   ‘Huh?’

  ‘Minus 1? What’s the square root?’

  ‘Um . . . minus 1?’

  ‘No. Minus 1 times minus 1 is 1.’

  ‘Is it?’ Charlotte frowns. ‘No, it can’t be.’

  ‘A minus number multiplied by a minus number is always a positive number. Don’t you remember that from school?’

  ‘No. Well, maybe vaguely. This is where maths loses me. That sort of thing just doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t seem logical.’

  ‘It is, though,’ Julie says. ‘A negative value multiplied with a negative value must be positive. The negative values cancel each other out. It’s like with English, if you said, “I didn’t do nothing”, you’re actually saying you did do something. The two negatives cancel each other out.’

  ‘I get how that works in English, but I don’t get it with maths. It’s too theoretical. It fucks with your head. It makes you feel stoned all the time.’ She laughs. ‘Well, maybe that’s a good thing, but still . . .’

  ‘It’s not theoretical, though,’ Julie says. ‘It’s what actually happens. Um . . . I’m trying to think of a good example . . . OK, say you smoked a pack of 20 fags every day. We’ll call that a value of minus 20, in the sense that you’re taking 20 cigarettes away each time you smoke them. You see what I mean? You had them. They’re gone. Minus 20. OK? But say you gave up smoking for 5 days, and you therefore didn’t smoke your normal packet a day for those 5 days. So if we multiply the minus 20 cigarettes by the minus 5 times you have smoked them, you get 100 cigarettes. Do you see what I mean? You haven’t smoked 20 fags a day for 5 days, so you’re left with 100 unsmoked fags. Do you see that? So minus 20 times minus 5 equals 100.’

  Charlotte looks confused. ‘I sort of get it.’

  ‘It’s like when they say you’ll save money by giving up smoking. By not spending it you’re saving it. It’s the same thing. “Not” is a negative. So is “spending”. Not spending means you have the money you haven’t spent. So you’ve saved money. A negative multiplied by a negative is always a positive.’