by Emma Cooper
I’m going to see her next week. The few conversations we’ve had since the night of the pornstar martinis have been brief and formulaic: I ask how the kids are, she asks how my pregnancy is going, I mention the weather, she agrees it is too wet or too windy. Neither of us mention her phone call; I wonder now if she even remembers it.
I get up and make the tea. I’m just adding the milk when a loud bang slams against the front door, making me clatter the teaspoon on to the counter. My body reacts, adrenaline spiking as it explodes from my core, that prickly feeling that scurries over your skin like sunburn.
Rational thoughts take over. It’s just the wind: it’s not a pack of wolves scraping at my door, it’s not a masked criminal with a machete. It’s just the wind. I take a few deep breaths and glance down to where my hand is lying protectively over my stomach.
‘It’s OK, Bean. It’s just the wind.’ I take careful steps towards the door and peer out of the peephole. My heart is banging, the sound of it loud in my ears. ‘Cover your ears, Bean,’ I say. The Book says Bean can open and close those tiny fingers this week; I imagine little hands covering perfectly formed ears, a cute little face looking up towards me for reassurance. I squint my left eye and look through. The night is surprisingly bright, the wind’s howl and rage sending any stray clouds scampering apologetically on their way, but this image is distorted. The image of my car, headlights catching the reflection of the moon, seems far away and enclosed by the circle of darkness impairing my view. I can make out part of the skip to the right of my car, but that is all I can see. No matter how hard I try to change the angle of my head, the image remains confined, as though it is inside a tunnel.
I pull my head away and rub my stomach. Bean’s worried face plays on my conscience. My boots stand next to the door; I stare at them. I look back outside through the tunnel: my car still sits; the skip hasn’t moved. The boots are eager to go outside. I jump as the noise ricochets around the house; Bean’s bottom lip quivers. I eye the boots with trepidation, then slip my feet into them and pull open the door latch, but the door swings away from my grasp, slamming against the frame. The wind pulls at my hair, slaps my face, yanks my clothes; the smell is deep and rich with earth and cut grass but the sea air lifts it, adds salt, sprinkles sea mist. An old terracotta plant pot – the culprit of all this disruption – is entangled in some twine and has latched itself to the trellis around the door; the wind is rolling it back and forth like a rolling pin as it flattens the patch of grass outside my front door.
My feet stomp forwards, sinking into the moist ground, while my hair lashes against my face, into my mouth, into my eyes. I push the strands away, bend down and pull the pot free, standing it upright. I glance around for something to fill it with, to keep it in its place, and notice some rubble sticking out of the skip. Battling my way against the wind and spray of sea mist, I dip my head into my chest and tread towards the skip. There is a rectangle of light cast on to the inky grass outside Charlie’s house, and I stop my progress and look up. I can see the upper half of his bare torso; he must be sitting on a bed. The curtains are open, hanging limply either side of the frame, but he seems oblivious to the chaos outside. My feet stay rooted, my view obscured for a moment by a cloud fighting against the gusts of wind as it covers the moon. I’m intruding by standing here watching him, and yet I can’t move. I’ve never seen so much pain on a man’s face. He is staring forward, but his face is crumpled in anguish; his whole body is crying, his shoulders juddering under the force of it, and his chest heaves up and down as though each breath is a struggle.
I take a step back; this moment is so intimate, so raw, that my intrusion prickles under my skin. I begin to move back towards my house, looking down at the green wellies, urging them forward, choosing my steps carefully, mindful that a fall could injure Bean. A flicker in the corner of my eyes distracts me and I squint back up at the window. The cloud is pushed away from the moon, a silver spotlight shining on my silhouette as he stands in front of the window looking down at me. Embarrassment floods through my body, heat pulsing through my veins as our eyes meet. We stand there opposite each other: me, Bean and the Welsh wind, a trio of chaos facing him; but he, I now understand, is very much alone. We stand there, mesmerised, as he opens his arms as if welcoming me – or perhaps sacrificing himself – but then he is gone; the curtains are drawn, and his agony is hidden.
When I wake, the sun is streaming through the curtains and the destruction of last night seems hard to believe.
‘Good Morning, Bean.’ I yawn as my tummy rumbles, almost in response. I wander downstairs and open the roman blind in the kitchen, filling the room with melted-butter light, then I toast two crumpets. Tentatively, I place a decaf coffee capsule in the coffee machine and eye it with an anxious frown. It clicks into action, the surge of steam filling the room with its heady scent as I grin and stroke Bean in thanks. The cup sits inside my hands as I enjoy the aroma and watch the sun peeking over the trees. I eat my breakfast, trying to swallow down my excitement that today I get to see Bean properly.
Has it really only been six weeks since I last saw it? Bean was barely visible, a tiny circle in a blob of black, but what I now see on the screen is a baby. My baby. Bean is tall, the technician tells me as she measures a femur. My due date is correct. She smiles and goes on to talk about heart rates and measurements, but I’m mesmerised by this baby moving around . . . She laughs and points to the screen where Bean is scratching its bottom. She pushes down harder on my abdomen and I watch Bean wriggle and try to move away. I’m hungry for every second of this glimpse at my baby. Bean begins to hiccup. Real hiccups. I watch the screen in awe as this little being moves; I watch Bean’s heart working away; I follow to where the technician’s finger shows me that my baby has had a drink. But the moment is over too soon. I want to stay watching the screen, but the screen is blank, and my stomach is being wiped with blue paper towel.
Week Twelve
Samuel
‘That’s good, your temperature is back to normal, you’re healing nicely.’ The doctor, medium build, medium brown hair, medium enthusiasm, smiles at me. ‘I can’t see any reason why you can’t fly back to Ireland, Samuel.’ Thank the Lord, I want to shout. My hands reach for the wheels of the wheelchair and I manoeuvre myself forward.
‘That’s great news, thanks,’ I say.
Sarah smiles. In contrast to the medium-sized doctor, Sarah fills the room. We are almost the same height, but she rarely wears flats, preferring instead to add another couple of inches to her already impressive height. ‘Are you sure he’ll be OK? What about—’
‘For the love of God, Sarah, the man says I’m good to go.’
‘I know that, but—’ She pushes a chunk of hair behind her ear.
‘Anyone would think you don’t want me home.’
‘Oh, shush your mouth now. Mam has been on the phone to half of Derry giving them orders to stock the kitchen with your favourite dinners; I’m just worried about you being stuck on the plane if something were to go wrong.’
‘Sam will be well supported with the brace, so you shouldn’t worry. It’s going to be uncomfortable, though, no doubt about that. How long is your flight?’
‘Seven hours, give or take . . . I’ll be grand. I’ll pop a few of those sleeping tablets and I’ll be home before I know it,’ I say. In truth I’m dreading it. I mean, the pain is bad enough sitting here – it will be excruciating on the plane. But it’ll be worth it. I just want to go home. I need to find Sophie.
‘And how are you finding the glasses?’
I have been prescribed some ‘prism’ glasses. They supposedly help me see parts of my blind spots but, I’ll be honest with you, they just make me feel ill. Parts of my vision are replaced but then it’s kind of blurred, and the new bits of sight sort of jumble up with what I actually can see, plus I look ridiculous. I’d rather just get used to the restrictions.
‘Ah, not so good, Doc, they just make a mess of what I already can see.’<
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‘You may appreciate the benefits of them when you’ve left the hospital. You might find you bump into people, and walking through busy places will be a very different experience from what you’re used to.’
‘Honestly, I’ll be grand.’
This is a lie. I can already tell that the fist is squeezing harder. I can’t see above me, I can’t see below me. The world is closing in, but for the moment I can still see most of the room, even if it is being suffocated by darkness. Things will be better once I’m out of this brace. At least I’ll be able to turn my head easily. I’ll be able to lean it back; I’ll be able to lean it forward.
The doctor leaves, his medium-ness disappearing into the fog before the door is closed behind him.
Sarah decides to push me through the hospital and takes me outside where there is a garden of sorts, an oval lawn and borders around it. She finds a bench, parks me to the side of her, and sits down. I know that she has positioned me so we can talk; she won’t be aware that the darkness has claimed the garden from my sight. I manoeuvre the wheels so I can have a little segment of the garden flourishing in my field of vision. It suddenly seems important to me to be able to drink in bursts of colour after drowning in magnolia for so long, but the warm sun aggravates my burns so I turn the wheels again, facing away from the flowers and the sun, instead filling my vision with the towering building that has kept me hostage for so long.
‘Have you found anything on Helen Yates?’ I ask Sarah as she steps into the darkness to reach for my drink, re-emerging by my side with a can of Diet Coke and a straw.
‘Not yet. Anyway, don’t you think you’ve got enough on your plate without looking for this Sophie person?’
‘I’ve got nothing on my plate. My plate is empty.’
‘But if she left and she hasn’t been in touch, Samuel . . .’ She puts the straw in my mouth. ‘It’s, well, it’s a pretty strong message that she’s, well—’
‘Well what?’ I ask out of the corner of my mouth.
‘Not interested.’
‘Of course she’s interested,’ I say automatically, although the way that Sophie has managed to completely disappear makes me wonder how she’ll react when I find her. ‘Just look at me! What woman wouldn’t be interested?’ Sarah laughs at this and slides into the tunnel walls – segments of her red hair lick out of the tunnel like fire before she reappears holding her phone.
‘Oh, hold on, don’t forget your glasses now. Geek chic, I think it’s called.’ She slides the frame on to the bridge of my nose and steps back, taking a few shots, laughing at my expense as she does. Crouching in front of me, Sarah shows me the photo. The gauze from my burns has now been removed and what remains is a purplish red mark which looks like a giant penis-shaped birthmark across the right side of my face. My leg is still in plaster, and to top this look off, I’m sporting a pair of thick glasses that would best be suited to my Uncle Pete – and let me tell you, Uncle Pete is not an attractive man.
‘I take your point. Perhaps it would be wise to wait a bit until I declare my undying love?’
‘Undying love?’ Sarah’s amusement fades and she raises an eyebrow at me. ‘You’re not even joking, are you?’
‘No. I love her, Sarah, I need to find her.’
‘But if she’s left you twice . . .’
‘For the love of God, can you not just do as I ask?’
‘OK, calm down. So, tell me . . . why do you love her?’
So I do. I tell her about our week together, about the week she came back to DC . . . about the colour of her eyes and the way she hiccups when she laughs.
Sarah is quiet for a moment.
‘There is something that might help,’ she says eventually, and I know that she is keeping something from me.
‘What?’
‘I checked your emails . . . You know, you really should come up with a better password than “mule-means-cool”. You were using that when you were eight years old.’
‘Just get to the point.’
‘There’s one from someone called Gemma. It says that she received an invoice from a car repair firm that Sandwell uses, billing Sophie for damage done to her company car. The repairs were done in Shropshire . . . is that any help?’
‘Why are you only telling me this now?’
‘Well, we’ve had quite a lot going on, Mule, and I don’t know if chasing after some woman who has dumped you is what you need right now.’
I ignore her.
‘Shropshire, where the hell is that?’ I say. ‘It sounds familiar.’ A quick search on Google shows it is in the West Midlands . . . and then I remember.
‘I don’t see her very often . . . she lives in Shropshire.’
A slow smile creeps across my face.
Week Thirteen
Sophie
I’m startled as the knocker on the door interrupts me. I’ve been sitting at my laptop for the past hour and have begun to set up a web page for my accounting business. I haven’t googled Samuel once.
The knocker raps again, insistently, the kind of knock that means this is not an emergency and yet one shouldn’t ignore its importance. I peek through the spyhole and Charlie’s face appears at the end of the tube. The sun is fractured into thousands of beams, just the way that I used to draw a sun when I was a child: yellow rays shooting outwards in every direction. It hovers over his shoulder, stinging my eyes. I pull away from the door and try to shake the image of the last time I saw him as I open it.
‘Hello,’ I smile brightly.
‘Your car is in the way,’ he answers. My smile fades.
‘In the way of what?’ I ask and fold my arms over my chest. I picture Bean copying my actions, a scowl furrowing on a tiny brow.
‘The van. I’m having a delivery.’ He has washed his hair, I notice, as he turns and nods towards where a large white truck is growling behind the gate.
‘Right, I’ll just grab my keys.’ He nods his thanks before I turn my back on him, stride into the kitchen and delve inside my handbag, which I’m alarmed to see contains an obscene number of empty crisp packets. ‘Bean . . . we’re going to have to cut back on the salt and vinegar.’ The keys dangle from my mouth, clattering coldly against my chin as I push my feet into my boots, closing the door behind me.
Charlie is walking towards the delivery truck, his hair bouncing up and down like it used to at school, that same eager walk that I’ve seen so many times. He stops at the gate and climbs over it easily as I open the car door and sit inside. My jeans are uncomfortable, so I undo the zip and smooth down my loose white shirt, then I start the engine and manoeuvre my car so that the gate can be opened, and the van can get past. I climb out, lock the door and watch as Charlie follows it. Two burly men jump down from the truck and begin to unload. Charlie issues instructions as he pushes his front door open. His voice is soft but authoritative, a voice that is used to handling people, making them feel valued but getting the best out of them.
‘Are you having something nice?’ I ask, making my way towards him, determined to get at least a small piece of civilised conversation from my new neighbour.
His eyebrows shoot up in alarm as if I’ve appeared from nowhere.
‘Just some old furniture,’ he replies. I stand next to him and watch as the delivery men go back inside the van, this time pulling out a sofa.
‘Mind yourself,’ he says, shifting himself backwards to let the men past. Bean and I shuffle backwards too.
‘Have you moved far, or did you stay locally?’ I ask, as he turns his head towards me, again as if he had forgotten I was standing there. The mild Welsh wind blows his hair into his eyes and he flicks his head and runs his fingers agitatedly through it, a glint from his ring finger surprising me.
‘Manchester.’
‘Didn’t like the city life?’
‘Something like that.’ He glances down and then looks away.
‘I’m fresh from the city, too – London.’ Charlie glances back with an expression that tell
s me he wouldn’t care if I had just said I’ve moved from Pluto. He looks down again and then climbs into the van, dragging what looks like a computer desk towards the end as the two men return and lift it down, carrying it back into the house. I put my hands in my pockets, unsure of whether to stay or go.
‘So why did you leave London?’ he asks as he leans forward and pulls on a rolled-up rug. He slings it on his shoulder, jumps down and carries it back into the house, leaving me pondering his question.
‘Why did you leave Manchester?’ I counter when he reappears.
‘Long story,’ he mumbles, looking away from me.
I watch as he carefully climbs back into the van, lifts a duck-egg blue glass picture frame and passes it to one of the re-emerging men.
‘That’s a beautiful frame,’ I say. ‘Really unusual to see glass tinted that colour.’
‘My wife made it; it’s Perspex, actually,’ he replies, and I see a glimmer of light behind his preoccupied eyes.
‘Wow! She is a very talented lady.’
‘Was.’
The word slams against my chest. The air which felt light a moment ago, air which had been filling and expanding my lungs without me even noticing, now feels heavy, dusty. How is he able to breathe with all this weight in the air?
‘I’m so sorry. How did she—’
‘Car crash.’
He looks down again. I follow his gaze to see what it is that is so interesting on the ground that he feels he must keep looking at it, but instead of seeing something nestling in the grass, I see a bright red polka dotted pair of Minnie Mouse pants staring out of a triangle of open jeans, my white shirt flapping away, oblivious to the embarrassment it is causing me. The heat in my cheeks is instantaneous.
