Two Metres From You

by Heidi Stephens

  Gemma had no idea how she made it down the steps and hauled Mabel back to the house. Halfway up the path she looked back and saw Matthew watching her from the balcony, so she focussed on walking the rest of the way in a straight line. Her final thoughts before closing the kitchen door were that tomorrow really could not come soon enough, and right now a cold shower might not be a bad idea.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Saturday, 11 April

  To Do

  Feel like shit

  Sulk

  Gemma

  After you left last night I had a call from my friend Paul, he’s the one who runs the homeless shelter in Bristol. He had a break-in yesterday and a load of damage has been done to their external door and food/ supplies room; they don’t have the funds to pay for tradesmen to fix it so he’s asked for my help. I would have gone last night but I couldn’t drive (!!!), so I’m going first thing this morning instead.

  I wanted to come over last night and say goodbye, but we both know where that would have ended up. I meant what I said about wanting to do things properly, but it’s going to have to wait a few days. I’m sorry about today, but not at all sorry about last night, I had a great time.

  I’ll stay in touch and let you know when I’ll be back – I’ll be sleeping on a camp bed in the shelter until everything’s fixed, so I get to be a security guard as well as the handyman.

  I’ve left a key to my place on the hook by your back door, help yourself to any more books.

  Mx

  Gemma found Matthew’s note when she came down at 7.30 a.m. to let Mabel out – he had slid it under the door, and left Gemma’s salad bowl and meat tray on the low wall outside, all clean and tidily stacked, with the skewers lined up like little soldiers.

  She sat on the bench outside the back door, still wearing her pyjamas. The goose bumps on her arms gradually turned purple with cold, but she continued to sit, feeling hungover and miserable, looking at the space to the left of the barn where Matthew’s van should have been. Gemma had gone to sleep with the fizz of wine and anticipation in her belly, but now she felt like a deflated balloon. Even in her head this sounded childish and petulant, but right now she didn’t care. This was supposed to be a special day, something to take her mind off the mess her life was in, never mind the fact that the entire planet was a virus-riddled shitshow.

  She felt like stamping her feet and throwing things.

  For the rest of the morning Gemma wallowed in a big sulk, dragging her feet around the woods with Mabel, whose head hung low in solidarity with whatever had upset her owner. By lunch-time she had exhausted her personal brand of woe-is-me anguish and was thoroughly bored of being miserable, so she lay on a towel in the garden in her bikini, taking the opportunity to transform the bits of her body that currently looked like uncooked pastry into something a little more sun-kissed. The hot and sunny weather was due to break on Monday, so hopefully she could achieve a mottled pink without burning by the time Matthew got back, as long as she kept to the dappled shade of the apple trees. Mabel stayed close, pricking up her ears expectantly every time she heard a male voice walking by. He’s not here, Mabes. What a sad pair of lonely bitches we are.

  After a couple of hours of turning every thirty minutes like a rotisserie chicken, Gemma had finished the Zadie Smith book and needed something new. She padded back to the house to use the bathroom and threw on a stripy T-shirt dress, then unhooked the key to Matthew’s place before heading back down the garden and up the wooden steps. Mabel followed, her nose staying close to the ground on the off-chance that Matthew was hiding inside, waiting to give her bits of cheese and extended belly rubs.

  The apartment felt entirely different in the afternoon sunlight – it was bright and airy, with shafts of warmth stretching across the sofas. Mabel immediately jumped up and bagged the best sun patch, turning a few circles before settling down with a huge yawn. Gemma had no idea how Matthew might feel about dogs on his furniture, but frankly he wasn’t here and she didn’t have the energy to move Mabel. Right now she felt scratchy and tired, a combination of too much sun and the poisonous residue of last night’s boozing. She ignored the bookshelves for the moment, lying down on the other sofa with her feet in the sun near Mabel’s head. It was cool and comfortable and blissfully tranquil, and Gemma felt herself drifting as she listened to the birds in the apple trees and the clip-clopping of horses in the lane.

  When she woke up an hour or so later, the feeling of peace and serenity lingered. She stayed stretched out on the sofa for a while, listening to her own breaths and Mabel’s feathery snores. Right now there was nowhere she needed to be, and nobody was demanding anything of her. She was free of pandering to Fraser’s moods, free from the tension of spending Easter with her parents, and even free from the anxiety and heartache of visiting Aunt Laura in her care home.

  It seemed like a betrayal to even think it, but Gemma didn’t miss those visits. Even though it was a fancy private facility that specialised in dementia care, the corridors still had that institutional feel, and no quantity of beautiful flowers in tall vases could hide the smell of boiled vegetables and industrial cleaning fluids and people who were decaying from the inside out. She hated the way the staff talked to Aunt Laura in that singsong voice, like she was a child rather than a woman who had graced the stage as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and transformed a decrepit theatre through sheer force of personality. In the early months Gemma would get a bus or a taxi from her parents’ house with a knot in her stomach, not knowing whether she’d find her aunt lucid and chatty, or frightened and abusive. In the end Aunt Laura had become a shell, her eyes fixed on the birds outside the window, but unseeing and unknowing.

  For the first time Gemma put aside her grief and let herself feel relieved that Aunt Laura was gone. She had been taken far too soon, but she had lived with her illness for less than five years. Some people’s decline was agonisingly slow, like watching the foundations of a house crumbling by degrees over decades, with no means to even plaster the cracks. Gemma didn’t need to worry about her any more, and instead could channel her energy into living her life in a way that would make her aunt proud.

  The feeling of steadfast resolve brought Gemma back to the room, and an awareness that dozing on Matthew’s sofa without permission was probably not on the Things To Be Proud Of list. It was just so warm and quiet and comfortable, like one of those cosy dens children build under the dining table out of sheets and blankets. She stayed a few minutes longer, rubbing Mabel’s back with her foot as she stretched out her limbs one by one like a cat.

  For a few delicious minutes she revisited the touch of Matthew’s fingers on her skin last night. It felt unreal, like something from a romantic film – of course the sequel was supposed to be an afternoon of wanton fornication, but apparently it had been cancelled due to lack of availability of the lead actor. Gemma could feel the edge of her mood darkening again, so she forced herself to snap out of it – it wasn’t like Matthew had gone to Bristol for an orgy; he was donating his time to a homeless shelter. Have a word with yourself, you spoilt cow.

  She stood up and stretched a bit more, shaking off the final remnants of her afternoon slumber. Before she completed the book-finding task she came up here for in the first place, she quietly opened the door to Matthew’s bedroom and slipped inside. She was curious to see where he slept but was careful not to touch anything; she obviously didn’t want him to think she’d been nosing around, so it was important to leave no evidence whatsoever.

  It was a lovely room, with another big skylight in the ceiling and a double bed with a pale grey duvet cover. There was an old, heavy chest of drawers which Gemma didn’t open, but she did lean over to peer at the three framed photos arranged on the top. One was an old photo of Matthew and his family in a delicate oak frame, taken in the mid-nineties if the baggy striped T-shirt and hair curtains were anything to go by. He looked like an awkward child of seven or eight, uncomfortable in his ill-fitting limbs but not yet
hamstrung by the crippling self-awareness of puberty. He was perched on a stone wall with his parents, against a backdrop of turquoise water under the bluest of skies – Greece or Majorca, perhaps. All of their smiles were broad and open, like they’d all obliged when the photographer had told them to ‘say cheese’. Matthew favoured his father; he had the same nose and chin and thatch of unruly hair. His mother was a beautiful woman, probably no older in this photo than Gemma was now. It was clearly a special holiday that Matthew had fond memories of.

  The second photo was Matthew’s parents together, taken in more recent years judging by their appearance and the elegant cut of his mother’s dress – perhaps a 50th birthday or a 25th wedding anniversary. The photographer had captured them toasting each other with delicate flutes of champagne rather than looking at the camera, and their glance was one of undying devotion and mutual understanding. Gemma could see why Matthew would love that photo; in thirty-two years she’d never seen her parents look at each other that way.

  The final picture was Matthew with a group of two men and two women in a pub, holding a silver cup and cheering at the camera, their fists pumped. Presumably this was his winning pub quiz team, and from the picture Gemma could see that Matthew was the youngest by some years. Gemma’s usefulness in quizzes was limited to literature and popular culture, but perhaps Matthew had a host of random specialist subjects that made him a pub quiz assassin – rivers of the world, military history, Strictly Come Dancing contestants. The frame was an ugly white plastic that jarred with the delicate wood of the others; Gemma guessed that the team captain had printed a copy of the picture for each of them, and bought identical frames for a few pounds each. Gemma could imagine Matthew putting it on the side and hating it, then wondering if he could switch it into a better frame, but in the end deciding that would be impolite and settling for it grating on his nerves every time he looked at it. The only other item in the room was an old wooden chair in the corner, which currently had yesterday’s shorts and T-shirt draped over it. She bent down and surreptitiously sniffed the T-shirt, it smelled of barbecue smoke and something indefinably manly.

  On the far side a door led to the bathroom; Gemma flicked the light switch and discovered a space that was monochrome and masculine. She scanned the toiletries on the shelf above the sink, and was surprised at how comprehensive his grooming regime was. He clearly preferred the Kiehl’s men’s range, and the containers of face wash and moisturiser were half empty, alongside a glass spray bottle of a natural sage deodorant and a bottle of Chanel Pour Monsieur that didn’t look like it had ever been opened. There was no bath, but there was a huge walk-in shower with a waterfall head and a tiled alcove that held a single giant bottle of hair and body wash. The space felt clean and minimalist and un-cluttered without being sterile, and when Gemma used the toilet she found it spotlessly clean. Perhaps he’d also wondered how yesterday’s barbecue might pan out, and scrubbed his loo just in case. The thought made her smile.

  On the way back to the lounge she sat briefly on the bed and gave a light bounce – it was rock hard and entirely unforgiving. She lifted a corner of the duvet and found the mattress was barely more than a futon, resting directly on a solid wood frame. That’s going to completely fuck up my back, she thought, as she carefully straightened the duvet and made sure everything was left exactly as she found it.

  Back in the lounge, Gemma drifted along the bookshelves, looking for something new to read. They liked a lot of similar authors, but there were a huge number of books here that she’d never read. A travel biography might be fun, some kind of uplifting yarn about someone crossing the Channel in a rubber dinghy or skateboarding across Africa or something. She looked on the shelf below the travel guide books, and a narrow spine labelled ‘Europe 2014/2015’ caught her eye. She carefully levered it out from the shelf – it was a hardback photo journal, about 20 centimetres square, the kind you designed yourself online and had printed.

  Gemma opened the front cover and found a handwritten note written on the flyleaf.

  Matthew,

  A few memories from the best year ever. Can’t think of anyone I would have wanted to share it with more than you. Love you, Claire xx

  Gemma froze, desperately wanting to turn the page but knowing she’d instantly regret it. She took the book to the arm of the sofa and flicked the first page over – Matthew astride a green moped in shorts, T-shirt and flipflops. A little younger, a little harder-bodied and a lot more tanned – if he was thirty-one now, he’d have been twenty-five in 2014. The caption said ‘Skiathos hot wheels!’ Gemma flipped to the next page, Matthew standing beside the same moped with his arm round a woman, a girl really – she couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty. Claire was slim and beautiful, with a tumbling mass of beachy blond waves and a smile that would stop traffic from half a mile. Gemma’s mouth felt dry and acidic, but she flipped again. This time Matthew and Claire outside a small church on the top of a hill, the azure sea in the background – Gemma knew it as the church in Skopelos where they’d filmed the wedding sequence at the end of Mamma Mia, she’d been there herself with Joe a couple of years later.

  The rest of the book was more of the same – a smiling Matthew and Claire looking blissfully happy together. Their trip had started in autumn of 2014, which they spent touring the Greek islands. Around November they moved to Austria and worked in a pizzeria called ‘Barga’ for the ski season, then headed to the Adriatic coast in late March, travelling south through Croatia to Montenegro. Summer was spent in Italy and Spain, Claire picking fruit and Matthew doing odd jobs, and their trip finished in the South of France in late August 2015. The final picture was a selfie of the two of them at Marseille airport, both with dark tans and huge backpacks, their arms round each other as they pulled exaggerated sad faces.

  Gemma closed the book, a sour taste in her mouth. It was ridiculous to be jealous of a former girlfriend of a man who wasn’t in any way her boyfriend, but she couldn’t help it. She assumed Claire was no longer on the scene; it felt bad enough to see her in five-year-old photos without considering the possibility that she might still spend time in his bed. Even taking into account the years that had passed, it was impossible not to compare herself to Claire; if this was Crufts, Claire would be the glossy pedigree that won best in show, while Gemma was very much the over-enthusiastic mutt who took a consolation rosette for Dog with the Waggiest Tail. Gemma was clearly a million miles from being Matthew’s type; and it was hard not to think that the attraction for him right now was that she was a) conveniently next door and b) very obviously up for it. The thought made her feel sick.

  She carefully returned the photo album to the shelf and forced herself to complete the book-choosing mission she had come here for in the first place. She needed comfort reading that would stop her having bleak thoughts, so definitely nothing about jealousy – now was not the time for Tess of the D’Urbervilles. She took a chance on Ordinary People by Diana Evans, which she hadn’t read but had heard good things about, and The Shadow of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, which was another one of her favourite books that she hadn’t read in years.

  There were two new things beyond Gemma’s control today – Matthew was away, and the beautiful Claire now existed. There was nothing she could do about either of these situations, so for now she would do what she had always done in dark times, and lose herself in a book.

  Hey Gemma, hope you’ve had an OK day. Hot working in here but made good progress. Getting supplies the biggest issue, might have to wait until Tues for some of it as usual suppliers closed for Easter. Pot noodle for dinner, all time low. Mx

  Hey yourself, did some sunbathing and read some books, so not a bad day. More of the same tomorrow, high danger of dying of boredom or lack of human contact. Gx

  Please don’t die of boredom, I will be back soon for as much human contact as you like. Mx

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Monday, 13 April

  To Do

  Buy food
r />   Stop feeling like shit

  By Monday, Gemma had achieved her goal of turning most of her body from pure brilliant white to a mottled pink, like a wall that had been ragged on a nineties episode of Changing Rooms. Gaining any kind of natural tan took an entire summer, so this was the best she could hope for.

  The weather had changed dramatically this morning – she woke up to a cold, biting wind that rattled through the window frames and matched her cranky mood. Her limbs felt heavy and sore after a forty-five-minute run yesterday, and even showering and dressing felt like too much effort. If she hadn’t been required to meet Mabel’s basic needs, she probably would have stayed in bed all day.

  Gemma had heard nothing from Matthew all day yesterday, although he had sent a Hey, you OK? before bed. She’d replied with All good, bit too much sun today so having an early night, Gx and received OK sleep well Mx in response. It felt overly polite and somehow deficient, but to be fair she wasn’t giving him much to work with. She felt like everything was hanging until she could look him in the eyes and truly understand what a man who had dated a woman like Claire wanted from a woman like her. Right now, casual, no-strings sex felt like it might leave her feeling worse, but equally Gemma wasn’t sure she wanted the strings either – she didn’t know where they led, and that felt knotty and complicated. Mostly she just wanted Matthew to be there, so this weird sense of limbo would end.

  Matthew wasn’t the only thing in limbo – the initial lockdown period was supposed to be ending today, but everyone was saying at least three more weeks, even though the government weren’t confirming either way. Gemma felt like she needed to make some decisions; she couldn’t stay here indefinitely, and being so far from her normal life was making her feel twitchy and directionless. She was feeling stifled by this sleepy village – right now the highlight of her day was a walk to the shop, which felt a bit pathetic even by quarantine standards.