‘Wow.’
The ceiling has pretty much gone and the floor angles sharply away towards the trunk of an invading tree, the exterior wall little more than flaking paint scattered at their feet. Water stains obscure the scuffs and paint lines left by furniture, and only his memory allows him to fit their bed into the space below the bulging ceiling where shattered boards have given way to thin branches and leaves. Above them he spots the outline of the water tank, and a few other pipes poke through the gap left by the collapsing gable end.
She kicks at a small piece of plaster, listening to it roll across the floor and crash down through the branches. Neither of them hears it hit the bottom.
The roof creaks.
‘I think we’d better leave this one,’ he murmurs, moving aside to let her edge out of the door.
She nods, adjusting her goggles as she heads towards the master bedroom, allowing him to take one last look before he shuts the door and follows.
The main room is dull and humid, the old sash window clogged with vines and wallflowers, small white blooms peeking from the cracks in the sill. The facade is still crumbling; the wallpaper peels crisp and crooked in patches where it hasn’t slipped off in the rain, and plaster flakes dust one corner where the sockets had been ripped out and filled in as an afterthought.
Even small, faint strands of pastel cotton still cling to the wall, trapped under the tiny roots that cover the smoke-yellowed patch beside the window where she’d made him take that shit outside; if she’s born with asthma it’s your fault.
He cocks his head at the back wall.
‘Ladies first,’ he offers, the corners of his mouth turning upward as she scoffs and nudges his feet back with the hammer head.
She splits the ceiling with the first swing, a surprised little bark sharp in her throat.
‘We’re better at this than we thought, huh?’
It’s too much of a murmur to be directed at him. Her breath doesn’t even disturb the air or the loose flecks of wallpaper, and she smooths a hand over the crack in the wall before she begins to chip away at it, pulling the cladding away from the timber frame.
He watches the thin trickle of sweat roll down her neck, as she scoops out more insulation and clumps of broken board. She used to sweat like that during hockey practice, chaos theory playing out across her skin, pooling briefly in the dips of her vertebrae before disappearing beneath her vest. Her hair is looser now, no longer straining and curling against her bobble but still drawing thin wet lines over the back of her shirt as she moves.
He misses those days.
One knotted chunk of plaster gets stuck between the unbroken part and the frame, and as she tries to lever it out, one of the support beams cracks and groans above her head. She doesn’t notice, too absorbed in grinding the plaster down to dust, too busy to look anywhere else even when he throws his hammer down and creaks across the floor.
‘Careful,’ he calls, watching a beam inch closer to her head, but she just grunts with the effort, swearing at the way the edges of the cladding turn to dust every time she manages to grab hold.
‘Whoa, hey—’ He stumbles across to grab the splintered beam before it can fall. ‘Got it, go on.’
She gives the block another yank before it falls loose, and steps away to let him lower the lintel to the floor, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand.
‘Teamwork,’ he grins, though his voice is uncertain and small, one hand hovering dusty and awkward in front of his shoulder. She looks at it, then at him, and some of the dust has settled before she slaps her hand against his in a high-five.
‘Teamwork,’ she agrees, before striding off to the opposite wall.
His palm tingles, even after he wipes it on his jeans.
*
There’s a pharmacy receipt scrunched up behind the bathroom sink, the paper yellow and mottled with damp, the ink pale and greying just like the pair of them. It’s probably just as worthless as the rest of the crap, probably just another reminder of his many attempts to quit smoking, but something tells him to open it. He does, and he stares at the date, at the product code, at the small but clear title still visible despite the creases.
He stills, quiet.
‘What’s that?’ she asks, when she finally notices. ‘Daisy.’
She stops, the last chink of breaking cistern ringing loud off the walls.
‘What?’
He brushes his thumb over the date before handing it to her.
‘Your pregnancy test. For Daisy.’
There’s little more than a quiet thunk as she lowers her hammer, the paper not even rustling as she takes it gently, carefully, like she expects it to fall apart at her touch.
It’s almost difficult to look at her, how still she stands there, gathering more than the right words in the dust. He shifts his weight uncomfortably then turns away, pretending to look for more receipts behind the pipes. His fingers and eyes begin to itch as he remains crouching.
He wonders if he should confront it, if he should just swing for it like it’s another section of partition wall, if they’d be better for it crumbling between them at their feet, pressing sharp and bloody into their soles.
‘We never really—’ he starts, pushing himself up to standing.
‘None of that,’ she warns, eyes back on the crumbling wall. The receipt seems to have disappeared from her hand, and it’s not until she turns away and hefts up her hammer that he spots the neatly folded edge sticking out of her back pocket.
She carries on swinging, though her rhythm’s a little off He watches the rise and fall of her shoulders for a moment, the pull and stretch of tendons, before he hums and turns back to his own wall, listening to the awkward whine of rusted pipes under the stiff angle of her wrist, the joints and bolts not what they used to be.
‘None of that,’ he agrees, and starts to chip at the sink, pulling the panelling from the side of the bathtub to pile up in an ever-growing bonfire of oak-effect pine and broken tiles, the scrunched-up balls of mottled wallpaper scattered as kindling.
When they’re done they pause to wipe their eyes and faces, pulling their shirts up over their noses because the insides are the only clean bits left. On the landing, they ignore the one other closed door down the hall, dappled from stickers and pockmarked where Blu Tack has pulled off the paint. They find themselves looking at each other again, and hesitate.
He pushes his hair out of his eyes and she watches his hand, something cautious and concerned on her face. He thinks of the band still on his wedding finger, the lack of one on hers, and tucks it away inside a pocket, pretending to look for screws and trying not to clear his throat as he palms it off.
‘Do you want to take a break?’ he manages, twisting the elastic of his mask between two fingers.
‘We only have the garden left,’ she says, muffled by the bobble between her teeth as she gathers her hair to retie it. ‘We could push on.’
‘Surely we can take five minutes, though.’
She shakes her new ponytail experimentally, the loose curls untucking themselves from behind her ears, and shifts her weight. The floor whines beneath her, high and tired, and the sound seems to echo throughout the shell of the house, slipping past the door they’ve left unopened. Eventually she nods, resting the hammer against the remains of the wall.
‘Yeah, we can take five minutes.’
If it feels like fleeing as they head back downstairs, well, at least they flee together.
*
He takes a spade to the sapling ash and a strimmer to the lawn and hedges, razing the years of neglect to stumps and clumps of grass. Across the gravel she dismantles the shed, laying each panel and windowpane out on the decking until every flat-packed piece is accounted for; a splintered, rusting inventory of woodworm and mould on the upturned lawn. He offers to do the same for the summer house but she talks him out of it, tying bent nails together with garden twine and leaving them in his empty mug as a bouquet.
It was n
ever more than a kitchen garden, just a splash of green and some broken pebbles on which to build, and it takes them less time than he expects, the end in sight right from the beginning. He wraps the last of the strimmer’s wire around the handle and walks over to her, laying it in the truck as he passes.
She stands and stretches, tilting her head back into the sun, and he dumps his tools and stretches too, an awkward pull of limbs before he sits down, the metal frame of the chair cool on his skin through his shirt.
‘We’re done,’ he sighs, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. He opens them again to find her looking, really looking, something resigned but not unhappy in the set of her jaw, and a lightness in her eyes, a looseness in the fall of her shoulders.
‘Yeah, we’re done.’
7.43
SHARON TELFER
It’s not until some days later that I realise the woman on the bridge must be a ghost. Weeks even. I lose track.
I don’t remember seeing her before. Before I started walking, that is. I don’t know how I missed her. She doesn’t shift: same place, same position, one foot on the lower bar, elbows on the handrail, hands cupping her chin, a shadow in the first smudge of day.
I can’t avoid her. I have to go past her if I want to get across.
‘Morning,’ I say. As you do. That’d be the third day. Or was it the fourth? She doesn’t reply, doesn’t even nod; eyes fixed out to sea steady as the red warning lights on the tower overhead.
There’s a tanker on the horizon. It must be massive up close. From here, I can sink it with the tip of my finger. I can’t see it move, not as such, but still it inches further along that unreachable line.
Is that what she’s glued to? That infinitesimal snail crawl?
*
It takes an age to cross the bridge on foot.
I have to set the alarm earlier to be sure I’m not late for work. The street lamps are fading, the air’s strained as weak tea.
I’m not sure how long it does take, actually. It would be seven minutes on the bike, on a good day. Quicker with a tailwind, fifteen when it’s against you. Which is pretty much every day. It’s prevailing, that headwind. I allowed twenty-five. On the bike. You need to leave a bit in reserve, a margin for error, for the worst-case scenario. I keep meaning to time it, the walk, exactly. I’d do it now but my watch has stopped. I check it, over and over, can’t break the habit. I forget, quick glance, straight away, bang, there it is: 7.43. Idiot. Not budged. I’d use my phone but I can’t find it. I’ve searched every pocket, more than once. I’ve left it at home. Again. Draining down on the kitchen top, the odd judder whenever Robin tries to get in touch.
Robin’s forever telling me off for leaving it behind.
—What if there’s an emergency? How’ll I get hold of you? You’re meant to stay connected these days. Not supposed to go off-grid. I don’t say it. I feel a freak even thinking it. Truth is, I prefer it. Disconnection. No expectations. No pressure to reply. No ties, no tethers. No satellite stalking you from one end of the bridge to the other, monitoring those two chill miles, plotting your position; a red dot slowly blinking its way over the grey depths.
*
I mumbled hello to her again the next day and the day after. The woman. Made me feel better. Still nothing back, mind. Rude, I call it. What am I? Made of mist?
Then, of course, it gets awkward after that, doesn’t it? Wish I’d never started. I’ve considered switching sides. I could use the other footpath, the one that faces upstream, inland towards the nature reserve, away from the sea and the city, from the ships and the docks and the towering aquarium biting into the sky. There are sharks there, you know, real ones, swimming over your head, over your head with their gurning great teeth close enough to part your hair. And you gaze up at those pale bellies and wonder just how thick that glass above you is; what would happen if it cracked, under the weight of the water, and the menace, everything spilling out in shards and salt and sharpness; those jagged teeth chomping you apart, limb by limb, blood swirling up in hopeless smoke signals from the deep?
I used to do it that way, on the bike. The upstream side. It’s strange, looking upriver, against the flow. Made me feel more peaceful. You’d think it would be the other way round.
But every morning, now that I’m walking, without thinking I find myself taking this path, exposed to the sea, scuttling past a silent woman with my eyes on the pavement and my crabby pincers raised.
All I want to do is get to the other side.
*
I thought I should say something to her. Something more.
*
People do jump. Every now and then.
Quite often, really.
*
7.43.
*
You do notice that much more when you’re on foot. Those dead bees, for instance. No way I’d have seen them if I’d still been on the bike. Curled brown and gold like Sugar Puffs spilt right across the pavement by the entry barrier. Then little clusters scattered here and there all along the bridge.
I got to forty-two before I gave up counting. I can’t imagine what killed them. I mean, what were they even doing up here, buzzing round all this asphalt and steel, so high above the water, so far from any green? I don’t know: they lost their way one morning and gave up, simply dropped from the sky. That’s all I can think of.
And the noises change, too. You’re going too fast on a bike to hear anything but the air whistling as you whizz along. Now it’s all those other wheels turning. Right by your head, the way the level of the footpath runs below the road. Right in your earhole. Wheesh, wheesh, wheesh. Incessant. Tyres hiss, the whine in the wires, gulls screaming, the rumble and rattle, the beat, beat, beat of your heart as it battles against the wind.
Even if you block all that out, even if you could, that shiver’s inescapable. Along every bone, through every cavity. Yes, of course, I know, it’s the weight of the traffic, the lorries and the buses and the cars full of people, going about their business. It’s not going to collapse, the bridge. But it feels as if it’s you, each step, setting it trembling like a tightrope, all those tonnes of concrete and metal, every careful step threatening to bring it all down.
Maybe that’s what makes it take so much longer. The noticing.
*
It was the dead bees made me think of it, the ghost thing. I should have clocked it earlier. Stupid of me. I mean, it’s obvious, really.
Because she seems the same, the woman. Sort of desiccated. Dropped. It’s the wind in my eyes, maybe, watering, but I can see through her. She’s not all there. Only the veins of her, the skeleton of a leaf.
*
Your mind wanders, when you’re walking.
*
The next morning I stop. She doesn’t turn, doesn’t seem to notice. I rest on the handrail beside her. Metal’s all cold and gritty from years of easterlies hurling onshore. We stand side by side, me and her, that same vibration chording between us. Beneath us, the currents swell and pull like the belly of a snake.
*
I did see something, now I think. Yes, it’s coming back to me. When I was cycling. About halfway across, round about here, where we’re stood, me and the woman.
I’d had to get off, adjust my helmet. Something’s wrong with it. Don’t know what. Dodgy clip, Robin says, it’s not safe, I should buy a new one. When I get the chance, I say. That’s when I spotted the roses, the fancy, fraudulent kind, forced heads drooping the very next day. Garage carnations, too. Loads of those. And a toy rabbit, lashed to the railing, a tiny pink witch strapped to the stake.
I don’t remember seeing her then. The woman. The ghost. Perhaps she was there. Perhaps not. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you.
Anyway, I had to get on. I had a meeting at ten. Another heart-numbing session. Beige hours in a beige room making beige decisions that mysteriously unravel only to reappear unmade, as if by magic, a few days later. I’d rehearsed my list of bullet points all night, for all the good it wou
ld do, the street light striping the ceiling through a slit in the curtains, Robin snoring on the opposite side of the bed. Long, deep breaths in out, in out, in out; the soft waves of a sleeper who doesn’t fear waking.
*
Not a cool name, you have to admit. Robin makes a joke of it. Bob, bob, bobbing. Riding through the glen. Holy Cliff-hangers, Batman! Holy Fate Worse than Death!
Sounds pathetic, when you say it out loud. Out of context. But it makes us laugh. Some things you can’t explain to other people. Private jokes, dreams, nightmares. Doesn’t mean they don’t matter. You have to be there. You have to be there to really get it.
*
I couldn’t shake it off, that rabbit, the image of it – popping up all the time during that endless meeting – pink fur stiff and spiky – popping into my head in some mental game – whack, whack a, whack a – no, that’s moles, isn’t it? – a rabbit, a creepy rabbit version of that – the slides flicked by and we broke for dry sandwiches and the talk droned on and on and on and the hands of the clock on the wall barely moved at all.
*
7.43.
*
I should jog really, while my bike’s off the road. Be quicker, better for me. I’d lose some weight, feel fitter. I’ll start tomorrow. After I’ve found the right trainers. I’ll do it then. No one else seems to cross on foot. Runners and cyclists blur past, the suck of them picking at my clothes.
I must have had that energy once, to spin the wheels so fast. Keep them spinning. I must have done. My head’s full of ache I can’t shake off Sea fret. It clings. The trudge of it.
*
They’re still there, the flowers. Crinkly brown and shuddering. There’s these notes taped to each bunch, handwritten mostly, a few typed – why would you do that, though? Type a remembrance note? – all wrinkled, already disintegrating. Some’ve had the sense to wrap their card in cling film, but that hasn’t kept the damp out. The messages weep like streaked marble.
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