One of you had to be better than three or four.
‘Is that alright? You’re absolutely sure?’
You gained and double-checked my consent. It was a technique you would use again and again on me when I didn’t understand what I was agreeing to. One of your many gifts.
‘Sure.’
I obediently slid over to the far seat to make room for you. You bent low to get in, your head suddenly so close to mine I could smell you’d just washed your hair. It was still wet at the roots, cooling the blood in your scalp. I was about to tell the cabbie where to go, but your youthful scent made me falter.
‘Borough, please. I’d avoid Old Street if I were you. Dalston then Gracechurch?’ you said. Smiling, you waved your phone in my direction. ‘Good for you? I’ve just seen there’s a burst water main near City Road. I mean, if you’d rather go your way?’
I saw your screen was blank.
I looked to the driver for some response, but was distracted by the faint reflection on the glass screen in front of me: a decidedly middle-aged woman, short ink-black hair framing a smudgy face. I was struggling to recognise myself again. I hadn’t admitted to Iain yet, but in the build-up to that day, I could feel my illness creeping back with its full force, exactly how it had when the last crash happened fifteen months ago.
An extended Christmas break, followed by six weeks pockmarked by regular sick days, followed by my GP signing me off work as a beige cloud surrounded me, washing the colour out of everything. Recently, that familiar filter of dread which had only recently lifted felt like it was on the descent again. If I went back to my GP, I suspected he’d want to put me back on my antidepressants again. But Citalopram had given me weeks of terrible side effects so that I suddenly needed help to achieve even the basic requirements of life: eating, concentrating, remembering both what had happened that day and things I’d done years ago. I felt sleepy constantly, primally drawn to dark rooms, my bed or under a blanket on my sofa, like an old animal looking for a quiet place to die. Eventually, getting to work became impossible and the pills made all of it worse, with a mouth like cotton wool and a supressed sex drive to boot. My GP said I’d only need to take it for a few months to ‘jump start myself again’. My former masters at work were understanding, and anyway, they were too distracted by finding a buyer for the struggling business at that point. I doubted whether the new owners would be so sympathetic, or their attentions as diverted.
When Christmas rolled around again last year, I’d been off for nearly ten months. I knew I had to bed myself back in before the new team took over. I had to persuade them and anyone else who was looking that I was back to ‘normal’. By January I’d come off my pills and was back at work, but in my heart, I knew I hadn’t been ‘fixed’. The beige cloud was lying in wait to blow in again; I could see the faint shape of it growing larger on the horizon the day I met you.
Lily, when you came along you were like a flash of hot pink, cleaving through the paper bag tone threatening to take over my world again. I think this is why it was so easy for you to do what you did. If you ever flattered yourself by thinking for one moment you’d sent me to rock bottom all by yourself, you really have no idea what state my life was already in.
I knew the route to Borough you’d suggested would add at least ten minutes to my journey to work, meaning I had no chance of making my first meeting with the new publisher, Gemma Lunt, on time. She’d know I was missing in action for the greater part of last year and why. I was sure she’d be looking for signs of weakness.
‘We’ll go your way.’
When these words left my mouth, it was my very first act of knowing submission to your will. This was the precise moment my life, such as it was, started to end.
We didn’t talk at first. I looked out of the window on your side and waited for you to thank me, as you had to, surely. You couldn’t have failed to notice the banks of increasingly forlorn faces on the 141’s route up to De Beauvoir. But you were silent, holding your laptop case on your legs in what I’d soon recognise as the buttoned-up, butter-wouldn’t-melt way you choose to hold yourself. I said nothing, waiting for you to speak. But my curiosity finally got the better of me. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you at the bus stop before,’ I said. ‘You just moved here?’
‘Yeah, but with any luck, I’ll just be passing through.’
You must have seen the flicker of offence on my face, ‘Not that Manor House isn’t awesome. I mean, it’s so super-easy to get everywhere. I cycle mostly.’ You turned your head away again to watch the world from your window as we crawled up Kingsland Road.
‘Well, if you’re not wild about Manor House now, you should have seen it round here twenty-odd years ago. The whole place was a red-light area. Hard to imagine now.’
‘That sounds pretty dark.’ You didn’t seem to think very much of my corner of the capital. It seemed that just like the constantly-changing bus stop crew, you’d use Manor House as a stepping stone; once you started earning more than me, as you all seemed destined to, you too would be off to a more desirable postcode than mine.
It struck me that your poise and your choice of words added to the sense that you were some kind of chimera; stilted mannerisms that tried to convey control and maturity, but then you’d defaulted to a childish Americanism: ‘awesome’. Young and old at the same time, just as I’d guessed by looking at you. Your accent was unanchored too, a southern clip with northern vowels.
‘Are you a native Londoner?’
‘So, I was born here, but I grew up all over the show. Some time here, on and off. Right now, my mum has a little bolthole and she wanted me to move in with her, but I told her it’s time I took responsibility for myself, because that’s important, isn’t it? You should take ownership of your life, don’t you think?’
‘I think that is important.’ I was thrown by the sudden panorama of your sentence, but I liked how you now seemed to want to share your thoughts with me.
‘Well, anyway, for now I’m on my own in one of those vile, gentrifying Woodberry Downs high-rises – right behind the bus stop – you probably totally hate.’ You turned to look me up and down. ‘You look like you’ve probably got a beautiful Victorian house, tonnes of character, lots of beautiful things. My place is kind of a nowhere place.’
I was taken aback by your flattery. It was the nicest thing anyone had said about me for a long time, besides Iain, of course. An unexpected compliment. How good that had felt. As your eyes moved urgently over my face to assess my reaction, I suddenly got the notion you were lonely in that newbuild tower of yours. Maybe you needed a friendly neighbour. I wanted to think this because, Lily, I was so lonely too.
I considered admitting I had a Victorian flat, not a house, but you didn’t need to know the limits of my success. Not yet. I wanted more from you before I let you go at Borough. I pointed to the dirty stripe on your face, ‘I think you’ve got oil on your—’
‘Oh god – puncture. Trust that for a Monday.’ You lifted the back of your hand to the opposite side of your forehead to the smudge.
‘Other side. Here.’ My fingertips reached the skin on your face.
I didn’t mean to touch you, but it happened. My blood seemed to surge towards the surface and I know I felt yours too, coming forward to meet mine, like iron filings to a magnet. You blinked and pushed yourself back into your seat, saying, ‘Thanks, I think I’ve got it.’
The
