The Truth

by Naomi Joy

  ‘Beautiful,’ I hear him say from somewhere behind me, aware a few minutes have passed between us in silence, the Sunday morning city quiet beyond, just the occasional car horn and the odd motorbike sounding off in the distance. ‘There’s something so peaceful about people at rest, their bodies no longer struggling to survive.’ I feel as though he’s talking about me, though I’m not certain, and perhaps I’m being oversensitive. ‘No more pain or suffering. No more sickness. Just silence and rest and eternity.’

  As he speaks, a gust of wind ruffles the tent and giant ripples barrel across the surface. I use the opportunity, a break in the intensity to move but, as I do, I feel something lodge in the back of my neck. I move my hand to the area to loosen the tendon that feels trapped, but my body trips a circuit in response and my arm refuses to move, my neck unable to turn.

  A loud ring echoes between my ears as a surge of panic builds, trying harder to fight against myself, to raise my hand to my neck but, as I push, the noise builds to an overwhelming volume, shaking through the coils of my brain right down to the muddy ground beneath my feet. I try to call for help through the din, to reach for something to hold me in place, but my legs stutter, scuffing mud into the trench, a rock cracking against stone as it tumbles down, something brittle breaking its fall. I take a jagged breath in and try again to move. My heart is quick in my chest now, fear pumping thick around me, and I find again that I can’t.

  I am paralysed.

  With that realisation, the heat from this morning resurfaces, pricking at my skin. Beads of sweat, like hundreds of tiny magnifying glasses, bubble along my forehead and down the length of my spine. Without warning, the rest of my body turns to ice and the pain begins. It moves fast, like lightning from my chest, striking up to my head and down through my limbs. I begin to fade, dots appearing in my peripheral vision, blotting the horizon, my world about to vanish behind a thick curtain. I try again to call out for Anthony just as my knees turn weak and my insides drop to the depths of the skeleton pit, scorching pain eating me alive, a terrible weakness consuming me. I hear a series of cracks as I land awkwardly, my elbow at a strange right-angle, my chest struggling for air. I’m not sure if it’s my bones I’ve broken, or theirs.

  There is complete silence for a moment as I lie, comatose, amongst them. Then, eventually—

  ‘Darling?’ I hear, panicky, as he rushes to the lip of the grave, but I can’t see him and I can’t reply. My head is dizzy and dark – I think I might have bashed it as I fell – and my ears distort the sounds he’s making. I think he’s shouting out, shouting at me, shouting for help.

  ‘Someone! Quick!’ he bellows as I fade into the darkness once more. ‘Oh, darling,’ he repeats, frantic. The smell of mud cakes my nostrils. The ground beneath my body feels uneven, spiky. ‘We shouldn’t have come today,’ he rants, pacing. ‘I knew we shouldn’t have come today! Don’t worry, someone will be here soon, everything will be OK and then I can take you home and look after you. Your heart’s not giving out on my watch. I made a promise and I intend to keep it. Stay with me, Emelia.’

  I try to stay awake, to hold onto Anthony’s voice, but my breathing’s shallow and I can feel myself fading as I lie, helpless, at the bottom of an open grave, my body trapped amongst the skeletons and the rats. I am vermin, I am disease. I am one of them, now.

  A whisper carries on a fresh gust of wind, a snaking sound that burrows into my ears and forms a clear instruction, a terrifying warning. You don’t have long, Emelia.

  Run.

  Archived Entry

  Eight months ago – 22nd February, 1.10 p.m.

  It’s funny, you start a blog chatting about everything and nothing, gain a bit of a following (love you all!) and, before you know it, everyone’s desperate to unearth everything there is to know about your personal life. And you know what, I get it! I would too! So, for the sake of transparency, and to satisfy the curiosity of all you online curtain twitchers, I’ve decided to answer some of your questions… so, welcome to The Private Life of Emelia Thompson: the no-holds-barred Q&A.

  Q: When did you start your blog and why?

  A: I started this platform just over a year ago. I wanted to write an honest, online diary, to create a safe space online where I could talk to people about what I was going through work-wise, home-wise, love-life-wise and health-wise.

  Q: What’s the deal with your health?

  A: I was born with a hole in my heart which wasn’t picked up on my mother’s pre-natal ultrasound. It went undetected until I was in my late teens.

  Q: Did you have lots of symptoms?

  A: I did. But doctors would listen to my run of ailments and decide that, given my symptoms had always been there, it was just the way I was. My parents were dealing with bigger problems at the time and I had to sort it out virtually by myself. Neither of them attended my surgery.

  Q: What happened next?

  A: The surgery to fix the hole involved a catheter, fed through a vein in my upper thigh and up into my heart. When in position, a tiny umbrella shaped device was put into place. This initial procedure was successful; however, my symptoms worsened, and the doctors found the device had perforated a section of my heart. The procedure had to be reversed. I endured open-heart surgery soon afterwards, and my heart was permanently damaged as a result.

  Q: On to happier things… are you in a relationship?

  A: Yes. In fact, we’re engaged, so it’s high time I introduced you. Now, I don’t use my family or friends’ real names – in order to protect their identities so I can write as honestly and openly as possible – therefore, for the sake of the blog, let’s call him Anthony. Anthony Lyon.

  Q: How did you meet? Was it love at first sight?

  A: Kind of! We met through work: I was interviewing him for a piece I was writing for the local paper – Roman remains had been found in the tiny English village I grew up in and Anthony was the team’s world-class expert.

  Let me take you back.

  *

  I arrived that day, the only woman on site, and some jobsworth fuddy-duddy marched over to me to explain why members of the public weren’t allowed behind the taped off area.

  ‘Stop,’ the man puffed through hairy nostrils. ‘Please! This is a working area.’ He drew closer, squinting through the rain. ‘I only turned my back for a second, apparently even that’s enough to kick off a bloody mother’s meeting!’

  ‘I’m not—’ I started to say.

  ‘Listen, lady, I don’t care what your excuse is, we’re working with very fragile artefacts here. Our excavation is clearly delineated by the marked perimeter. So please, if you don’t mind…’

  He invited me to scuttle away, expecting me to apologise, Sorry sir, I didn’t see the sign, my tail between my legs, neck bowed, shoulders hunched. Instead, though, something brilliant happened, I stood my ground just as a much younger man reached us, and his arm was outstretched, hand ready to meet mine.

  ‘You must be the journalist,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ I replied. ‘Emelia Thompson. Pleased to meet you.’ I shot a look at the old man, delighted to witness his mistake register in a series of off-beat facial tics.

  ‘I’m Anthony,’ the younger man confirmed, my eyes falling on the perfectly tousled moustache sitting proudly atop his broad smile, then to the dark hair pushed up off his face. He was interesting looking. Chiselled, like a well preserved sculpture. He was wearing a navy blue waterproof, gleaming in the rain; the male equivalent of the exact same jacket I had on. My broken heart skipped a beat.

  ‘I see you’ve met Gerrard,’ he said. I nodded as Gerrard continued to flounder, purple plum for a face.

  Anthony kept talking. ‘Have you been signed in? Let’s get you some proper kit so you can take a good look at everything.’

  As he continued to speak about the origins of the site and how this team came to excavate the area, I became acutely aware of the decades-old Wellington boots I was wearing, of the make-up free eyes
I was grinning at him with, of the countryside drizzle plastering my fringe to my face, but, before I could dwell on it for too long, Anthony handed me a hair net, hard hat and a high-vis jacket. After these additions, there really wasn’t any point in fretting about what I looked like.

  We walked in tandem through the light rain over the heath, towards the primary dig site and away from Gerrard’s slapped sideways expression, already deep in animated conversation about the incredible find and what it would mean for the industry, not realising it would be life altering for us, too.

  I tried not to let him put me off my stride, attempted to stop my wandering eyes from dropping to his ring finger, telling myself when I happened to notice he wasn’t wearing a wedding band, that it didn’t mean anything anyway. And even if he wasn’t married, why would that be any of my business?

  As I silently berated myself for my desperation, Anthony filled the gap. ‘I’ve been reliably informed you’re very well read on this era. You know, I don’t usually talk to journalists with such an impressive historical grounding. What’s your real passion, the history or the writing?’

  ‘Ah,’ I began, glad to keep things professional, thankful he’d kept to a safe topic. I could talk about history for hours and though Anthony was incredibly knowledgeable, I wasn’t intimidated. Anthony knows his stuff, certainly, but guess what… so do I.

  I looked at him, his face tanned from a summer of outdoor digging and, without fully engaging my brain, spoke.

  ‘Passion is my history.’

  Anthony stifled a laugh and then I heard my words back, reverberating off the walls, magnifying their stupidity.

  Let me get this straight, I thought to myself. I’ve just told the venerated Anthony Lyon, right at the beginning of a professional engagement, that ‘passion’ is my ‘history’ and I’m standing here with rain dripping off the end of my nose, mud and dog shit flicked up the back of my jeans, my cheeks burning scarlet like I’ve just confessed to my side-line as a sex worker, and still have the not-so-small-matter of interviewing him in about thirty seconds’ time.

  ‘Another interest! Lived a colourful young life have you, Miss Thompson?’ he joked.

  I rolled my eyes at him, then looked down, a flutter in my chest, grateful his grin had stretched wider across his face, kind dimples appearing on both cheeks.

  We had a moment, then. We both felt it, the tone between us altered somehow, something tectonic shifting into place.

  ‘Let me show you something,’ he said, as if he was about to let me in on a secret he hadn’t planned on sharing.

  A few butterflies, up until now happily fluttering in my stomach, combusted in mid-flight, the excitement too much for their delicate bodies, and he led me out of the clammy tent. We turned left, back out into the drizzle, and headed for the main pit, down the ladder into the depths, passing archaeologists scrubbing dirt from the treasure they’d found.

  The dig was a bit of a rabbit warren – lots of long passages and narrow walkways – and, just when I started to wonder where we were going, he turned towards a quieter area devoid of people, red tape across the entrance and a laminated sign on the wall that said it was closed. Anthony ignored it, put a finger to his lips and ducked underneath, pulling me behind, the smell of recently dug earth thicker at this newer end of the site. A short flight of stone stairs later and I realised I was standing somewhere incredibly special. My jaw hit the dirt underfoot as I gawked. Roman ruins. Right here, in the town I grew up in, of an ancient temple – complete with pillars and flagstones and plaques, two long stone benches where the worshippers would sit, shards of gold and bronze sticking up through the mud, itching to be discovered. It felt as though I’d entered another world and the daylight, obscured largely by the tarpaulin overhead, lit the scene in a dull glow.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ I breathed.

  ‘Our current theory is that it was an outpost of the Cult of Mithras.’

  As I marvelled at my surroundings, I started to feel queasy, overcome with it all, and my head spun. I took a couple of staggered steps sideways and my hand contacted with the muddy wall, sinking into it, dirt forced beneath my nails. Anthony hurried over, sat me down and pressed my head low, blood thumping back to my brain as he gripped my shoulders.

  Once recovered, I told him I suffered with cardiac problems and that the symptoms occasionally resurfaced. He seemed interested and, probably thanks to some combination of the underground temple we were sitting in and the kind look in his eyes, I let him in. I lowered my guard and told him that, when I should have been preoccupied with exams and teenage crushes, doctors had been fighting to save my heart from failing. They’d drip fed the bad news to me as my friends enjoyed their summer holidays: my heart was frail and decrepit and likely to falter; the surgery might not be enough and I could require a transplant in the future; I’d have to seriously consider whether I wanted to put my body through the stress of childbirth; it would be remarkable if I made it to sixty-five; I’d be on a concoction of pills for the rest of my life.

  Anthony stared at me, a little bewildered, but, after a while he smiled, took my hand in his and squeezed it tight. He hadn’t backed off, his eyes darting sideways, desperate to escape, like every other potential suitor before him the moment they found out how fragile I was. No, Anthony’s reaction was different, it hadn’t seemed to bother him at all.

  ‘You’re a remarkable woman.’

  At that moment, he bent to the floor and picked up a gold chain, teasing it from the shallow dirt.

  ‘I found this yesterday,’ he said, handing it to me with bare hands.

  What about gloves? I wanted to say, but suppressed the thought, entranced by the necklace now in my grip, electrified by the thought I was touching something that had been crafted by this ancient cult.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I breathed, inspecting it, turning it over, cool in my hands.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ he replied, his neat features softened by the sparse light. And then I realised something: he hadn’t been looking at the necklace when he said that, but right at me.

  At least, I thought he’d been looking right at me.

  But perhaps I’d been watching too many rom-coms because, a couple of weeks later, I had a follow up interview with Anthony after a talk he was giving at the Natural History Museum. As I stepped into the cavernous space, a gigantic blue-whale skeleton overhead, my neck craned skywards, I overheard a couple of women, the topic of their conversation – Anthony – spinning my ears in their direction.

  ‘Well, we’ve only been waiting forever for you and Anthony to get on with it, all of us agree. There was never any doubt you’d end up together.’

  I angled my head back over my shoulder, and took in the proportions of a fierce looking blonde woman and a shorter, red lipped brunette by her side.

  The blonde woman blushed, then spoke. ‘It’s early, very early, but I know him inside out, it’s like being with my best friend and it’s just, you know, it’s right. It’s so right. You know when everything just click-click-clicks into place and you wonder what’s taken so long?’ She made a series of strange interlocking movements with her fingers, her brunette sidekick nodding furiously. ‘It’s like you and Richard. You knew each other at university – though you actually managed to get together, unlike Anthony and me – and no one’s come close since. You can’t compete with history, with shared experience, you just can’t.’ Her words spilled from her mouth, each tripping over the other in order to get out in front. ‘I know him. So, yes, I know to keep him on a tight leash, that’s for sure.’

  She cackled and her head flew back, voice box bobbing in her throat, her friend following suit, their laughter echoing round the lobby, somehow able to fill the enormous space, cruel giggles filling my ears.

  I was surprised by how much the revelation that Anthony was seeing someone upset me, but I didn’t want to let the disappointment linger – I had no right to feel this way – so I took a quick breath in, well versed in how to deal
with rejection (quickly, without wallowing) and followed the two women to the auditorium. The seating was raised and semi-circular, angled round a stage that featured a wooden lectern and projector screen. I hiked up the stairs behind them and took a seat a couple of rows back, my thoughts repeating even though I was desperate to change the record. I’d read into something that wasn’t there, got the wrong end of the stick, barked up the wrong tree. And that was OK, I told myself firmly. I hadn’t embarrassed myself, nothing untoward had happened, nothing inappropriate. It put tonight in a different light, too, because now I was here in nothing more than a professional capacity, it made things easier, unwound the knots from my shoulders, lifted the tension from my brow. Anthony Lyon had a girlfriend and that was absolutely fine by me.

  Until I saw him. In he strode, lean legs under well cut trousers, a kind, tanned face, with wide eyes and a full smile.

  My mouth turned woollen, palms sticky, the hairs on my forearms buzzing with static. I shrunk into my seat just as the tall blonde elongated her equine figure and sat straighter, wanting him to notice her. He stood confidently at the lectern, tidy, smart, his shirt outlining strong arms, his feet planted firmly to the spot, and then he clasped his hands together and started to speak in cool, measured tones.

  ‘Evening everyone,’ he said, then paused and, though it was just the slightest of hesitations, it made me wonder if he was nervous. I hoped not, he had nothing to be nervous about, he was going to be wonderful.

  His deep-set eyes squinted, hidden behind spectacles – short-sighted or long? I wondered – and I watched them scan the room, then hover as they landed on me. His smile flickered and he gripped the wooden lectern with both hands. Wait, was it me? Was I making him nervous? – and, just as I was about to smile back – gently reminding myself that reading into love signals that weren’t there was a worrying new habit of mine – I felt a rush of air as the fierce woman in front of me turned, her yellow hair moving like a curtain to reveal an inquisitive, perturbed look on her face. I gave myself a thorough dressing down – Just because your head has been full of him since you met, that you’ve been sure you felt something that day you met, that you believed your matching waterproof jackets amounted to actual evidence you and him were ‘meant to be’, just because you let your mind veer off track and dream about a future that was now impossible… that doesn’t mean he feels the same way.