The Girlfriend

by Sarah Naughton

  Could the fall have done that? Or did it happen when they stripped him in the hospital?

  I pack the clothes back into the bag and stow them away in the wardrobe until I can figure out what to do with them. Then I wash my hands to get rid of the smell of stale blood and set about stripping the sheets, bundling them up with the towel from the bathroom. I stand there at a loss. There is no washing machine. José would probably have told me where the nearest launderette was if I’d given him the chance, but I can’t face another conversation peppered with I’m sorry, could you repeat thats, so I go out of the flat, cross the landing, and knock on Jody’s door.

  It rattles loosely. There’s something wrong with the lock. It looks like the wood has splintered behind it and it’s just hanging on by one screw.

  She opens the door a crack, leaving the chain on, and I glimpse a gloomy hallway the twin of Abe’s.

  “Just wondering if there’s a launderette around here?”

  “Oh, sorry. I should have said. It’s down in the basement. Wait here, and I’ll get you some powder.”

  She closes the door, and though I am glad she didn’t invite me in so I won’t have to make small talk with her, it seems uncharacteristically rude.

  After a moment, my back starts to prickle with the consciousness of that black void behind me. I stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon once and after a minute or two had to step away. The man I was with teased me, but it wasn’t vertigo. I just felt this powerful urge to jump. Did Abe feel like that as he trudged up this grim stairwell? Or was it just a moment of existential clarity? Is this really it?

  Jody returns. She has taken off the pink hoodie, and as she hands me the washing powder, I notice, in the indentations beneath each of her clavicles, round bruises, the size of pound coins.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Have you got change for the machines?”

  “I think so.”

  She smiles wanly and closes the door.

  I go back to the flat, plug in Abe’s phone, and collect the washing pile.

  The laundry room is low-ceilinged and damp, and the walls are covered with the same red linoleum as the floor, so that I feel as if I am in a horror film as I sit uneasily on the bench, trying to read Abe’s thriller while I wait for the wash cycle to end.

  A loud beep makes me jump: someone else’s load in the dryer has finished. A scarlet shirt is pressed against the glass door. I think of Abe’s shirt, torn at the shoulder.

  I close the book and place it down on the bench beside me.

  I think of Jody’s cut lip and the finger bruises on her shoulder.

  The policewoman asked me if their relationship was stormy. What if she and Abe did fight that night? They’d had a bit to drink, after all. I imagine she’s the clingy and demanding type. Maybe she was angry about him spending so more much time with his clients than her. What if he told her he wanted to be alone that night? What if he tried to finish the relationship entirely?

  What if she pushed him?

  7.

  Mira

  I stand in the shadows under the stairs, listening as the mad girl tells the sister that nobody saw him fall. That he was alone. That he jumped.

  When they have gone away, I hurry up the stairs and let myself into the flat, then lean against the door until the pounding of my heart has slowed down. I shouldn’t run, the doctor has told me, because of my high blood pressure. I need to be calm, to take lots of rest. But how can I be calm? How can I rest when I know what I know?

  Why is she lying for you, Loran?

  I go into the living room and sit down on the sofa, slipping off my shoes and lying down with my feet above my heart as the doctor has shown me. I must calm down, and I must rest. Or something might happen to the baby. And then I don’t know what you would do.

  8.

  Jody

  The card is still lying open on the floor where I dropped it, like a crocodile’s mouth waiting to snap at my ankles. I want to put it in the bin, but I can’t bring myself to touch it.

  It’s small, half the size of a normal card, as if it doesn’t want to be seen, as if it can hide behind the others. If there were any others.

  On the front is a pastel picture of a rose: more a sympathy card than a birthday card. Another year alive. Poor you.

  To dearest Jody,

  Always thinking of you and wishing you the very best on your birthday. I’ll drop your present around to the flat.

  Helen x

  It’s Helen now, not Mum.

  I can’t see her. I can’t. I can’t bear to see the pity and revulsion in her eyes. It’s guilt that brings her here, twice a year, on my birthday and at Christmas. The cards are only ever signed by her.

  I know we made a commitment to you but that was on condition that…

  If we’d known…

  We’re not capable of providing for your needs…

  Jeanie and Tom were capable. I stayed with them for two years. Jeanie taught me to knit; Tom took me fishing. They said they would have adopted me if they hadn’t been too old. I said I didn’t care how old they were. But Tabby cared. She said they might not be there for me during the most important periods of life, like leaving home, getting my first job, having my first relationship. Turns out she was right. Tom had a heart attack a few months after I left, and Jeanie’s in a home with Alzheimer’s now. You would have liked them, Abe. I can still smell the scent of Tom’s fingers as he tucked me in: soil and cigars. I used to beg him to stop smoking, but he said he was too old to change.

  Nobody’s too old to change. I changed. I was better, because of you. I didn’t need to rely on pills with you in my life. I was so happy, I threw them away.

  But now I need them. Now…this card…I can’t think straight. My blood is racing. My vision is all blotchy.

  If I think about you, about us, it will make me feel better.

  For days and days, I kept wearing the rain dress, in case I saw you, but eventually, it got too smelly under the arms. I realized then that all my clothes were dull and ugly. This is a good sign. In depression questionnaires, they always ask if you have lost interest in your appearance, and I had. But now, because of you, I wanted to look pretty.

  That Saturday morning, I pulled on my jeans and anorak and went down to the thrift shop. I had to wait for it to open, stamping my feet in the cold because the sun was still down behind the buildings.

  Eventually, the fat lady who runs it came waddling up, and we went in together, and she let me look around while she set everything up. She trusted me, even when she was in the back room, which was nice. I was tempted by a cocktail dress in iridescent navy taffeta. Perhaps if I wore it with a sweater and boots, it wouldn’t look too over-the-top.

  While I was deliberating, the old lady from the first floor came in, and she started oohing and aahing over it, so I put it back and went to the blouses section. I was lucky: there was a lacy white top in my size, from a shop I would never have been able to afford normally. I tried it on in the tiny cubicle. The curtain didn’t fit properly, and the old lady peered in and announced that it really suited me. I tried to smile, but she was making me nervous. I wanted to bolt from the shop, but I didn’t want to leave without the blouse, so I forced myself to take some deep breaths and calm down.

  I could feel her eyes on my body as I slipped the blouse off, and I yanked the curtain across and held it while I got dressed one-handed. I thought about saying something about people deserving some privacy and had wound myself up so much that my heart was hammering when I came out, the blouse balled in my fist. But she was at the back of the shop now, picking through a basket of cheap-looking beads. Under the heavy pancake makeup, she was ancient, and her gnarled hand gripped a walking stick, so I changed my mind.

  “Ooh, lovely,” said the lady at the till. “Wish I could get into something like that. You’re so lovely
and slim!”

  I forced myself to say thank you even though my face was burning. Then I pointed to the label and added, “I like that shop, but it’s so expensive.”

  “We do get stuff from them sometimes—the people in the big houses by the station bring them in,” she said. Her name label read Marion. “If I see anything in your size—a six, is it?—I’ll keep them for you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “That would be really nice.”

  After I left the shop, swinging the bag by my side, I felt sort of electrified. Avoiding contact with people is another sign of depression, and there I was, making conversation with a complete stranger. See what you had done for me already?

  The sun was shining, and the flat was as warm as toast. I put the blouse on and some lipstick and tied up my hair, and then I got my new book, which I’d dried out on the windowsill, and went outside. I sat on the bench by the playground and waited.

  I didn’t know what you did for a living, but I knew you didn’t work on Saturdays. I had seen you coming back from the main street with a newspaper and a bag from the local bakery. Once, I had seen you eating a croissant from the bag, so I knew you weren’t having breakfast with anyone, which meant you might be single.

  The children came out and wanted me to time them as they tried to do the mini assault course, and we were all laughing our heads off because one of the big boys got stuck in the baby swings when a voice said, “Aren’t you cold?”

  I was glad you had found me like this, laughing with the children, my cheeks pink from the wind. Out of the sun, it was freezing, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could have lasted.

  You looked terrible, tired and hollow-eyed, with a rash around your mouth. I wanted to put my arms around you and look after you.

  “Oh, I don’t feel the cold,” I said, trying not to shiver.

  “Lucky you! I was going to get a paper, but I don’t think I can face it.”

  “I’ll get it for you,” I said. “I was heading that way anyway. I need to get milk. The Guardian, is it?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “I can push it under the door.”

  “No, no, no.” You were shivering under your thin jacket. “Don’t. Borrow some of my milk.”

  It was so tempting to share the same carton you had used, but I wanted to do this thing for you.

  I smiled. “It would be a pleasure.”

  “You’re an angel,” you said, closing your eyes and letting your long, dark eyelashes rest on your cheek. “If you really don’t mind, then I think I’ll go back to bed.”

  I watched you jog back to the door, hunched against the cold, but you didn’t turn back.

  “Time me now!” one of the little boys cried, but I was already halfway to Gordon Terrace.

  After I’d pushed the paper under your door, which I had to do in sections because there was so much of it, I waited for a while outside my flat with my key poised, so that if you came out to thank me, it would look as if I was just on my way back in. But you didn’t come out. I imagined you curled up in your bed, all warm and musty smelling from sleep. I imagined myself curled up behind you, my arm around your waist, my face in your hair.

  Later on, I found a folded piece of paper pushed under my door. It was a pen drawing of an angel with a little heart over its head.

  For the rest of the weekend, I couldn’t stop smiling.

  After that day, I never took another pill. I never needed to. I woke up with a song in my heart, literally. All the songs I’d learned when I was little came flooding back to me. Songs about love and trust, perfect days and endless nights. Just cheesy pop songs really, but suddenly, every word meant something.

  I still feel the same, Abe. Even now. Even in the hospital, watching you struggle to breathe, watching the machine pump air into your lungs.

  It’s a perfect day because I’m spending it with you.

  9.

  Mags

  Flat 11 is silent. As silent as flat 12, though I know that Jody’s in there. What’s she doing? Listening, like me?

  I breathe as quietly as possible, though my lungs are burning from the long climb carrying the load of folded laundry, still hot from the dryer. I thought about dropping it back at the flat but changed my mind. If I speak to them with it tucked under my arm, my questions will seem more casual. I was just passing and thought I’d introduce myself…

  I haven’t hit any of the light switches on the way up, and the floor and walls are crazy-paved with color from the stained-glass window. The brass latches of the doors gleam red from Jesus’s cloak. The stairwell is a yawning chasm behind me. Again, I feel its pull: a dark pool I can dive into and lose myself forever.

  Did Abe feel the same? Was he incapable of resisting? Or did something else happen? I try to imagine his slim fingers digging into Jody’s collarbone. It seems so out of character from the boy I knew, who was so self-contained, so restrained. I never knew him to express any emotion, barely ever saw him smile. But I suppose he was as fucked up as I was, pushing everything down to stop himself from getting hurt. Who knows what his personality was really like under there? Once that lid, so tightly wedged on, was allowed to come off, did he become a monster?

  I think of the handwriting on the Christmas card and the security panel downstairs. Small and neat but pleasantly looping; surely not the handwriting of a bully. But what do I know? I know nothing about him. Only that we have the same taste in shoes and coffee.

  The light on the first floor goes on, and I hear one of the flat doors close. Then a rhythmic tapping begins, like bones clacking together. My brain throws up an image of a skeleton shuffling across the concrete, and I can’t stop myself looking over the banister. A woman with a stick is making her painful way across the foyer to the door.

  And then it’s as if she feels me looking. She stops, and her head tips back.

  When our eyes meet, she starts, and her stick clatters to the floor.

  Her reaction so unnerves me that I shrink back from the banister, breathing heavily.

  Agonizingly long minutes later, the tapping resumes, then the outer door closes and silence falls.

  The light ticks off, and I stand in the dim puddles of color, my heart pounding.

  The place is playing tricks with my mind, bringing back all those fight-or-flight impulses from my childhood.

  I force myself to calm down, employing the techniques I had to use when I was first called to the bar. Jackson would laugh if he could see me now, sweating and trembling in the dark like a child after a nightmare. My clients would be panic-stricken, and my opponents in court would rub their hands with glee: the iron bitch finally brought low.

  Eventually, my heartbeat is back to its normal rhythm, and I tap on the door of flat 11.

  Minutes pass, and then I hear a soft rustling behind the door. Someone is there. I tap again, and the rustling stops sharply.

  “Hello?” I say as quietly as possible. “I’m your new neighbor. Just come to say hello.”

  I glance at Jody’s door with its black spyhole. Is she standing behind it also? A church full of whispering and listening, everyone watching everyone else for signs of sin.

  The door opens.

  It’s the Muslim woman I saw earlier.

  “Hi,” I say and stretch out my free hand. “I’m Mags, Abe’s sister. From number ten.”

  We shake, stiffly. Her eyes are alert, darting around nervously, seeing if anyone’s behind me. It makes the hair at the back of my neck bristle.

  “I am sorry for what happened to your brother,” she says. “He was a good man.”

  I don’t pick up on the past tense.

  “Could I come in?”

  Her face blanks. “I am sorry but…”

  “Just for a moment,” and before she can stop me, I step over the threshold.

  She holds up her
hands. “But…”

  I press on, and as if fearful of my touch, she backs up against the wall.

  The inner door is open, and I walk briskly up the corridor and into the flat, where Jody is less likely to be able to hear us.

  A vivid blue line slashes across the carpet. It’s caused by the afternoon sun shining through the robe of the woman in the stained-glass window that rises up from the floor. Around her head is a yellow disk, and it takes me a moment to realize that the smaller disk, at her shoulder, must belong to the Baby Jesus, separated from his mother by the ceiling of the flat below.

  This flat is at the back of the church, and directly below the window is a small, empty parking lot. The place has the damp, heavy smell of boiled vegetables.

  A naked lightbulb dangling from the center of the ceiling goes on. The woman stands in the doorway, her eyes wide with alarm. I should not have done this to her. She’s clearly new to this country, and though she knows what I’ve done isn’t right, she doesn’t know how to go about making me leave.

  I smile, partly to reassure her that I mean no harm, partly to make her think this is all perfectly normal.

  A pair of furry slippers and some cement-encrusted work boots are lined up neatly by the door. I wonder why she doesn’t put the slippers on since the flat is so cold.

  The place is spotlessly clean and tidy, but all that does is emphasize its bleakness. They don’t seem to have added anything to the original cheap furniture provided by the housing association, aside from a paisley throw on the back of the burgundy velour sofa and a couple of mountain scenes on the wall.

  “Sorry, what was your name?” I ask.

  “Mira.”

  “Mira. Hi.” I try to think of a compliment, but there is nothing positive to say about her home. Even the view is dreadful. Above the parking lot, the sky is a flat November gray. The wind whines through a cracked windowpane.

  She watches me warily, as if afraid I will make some sudden movement. I may as well get to the point.