Through the Wall

by Caroline Corcoran

  I picture Naomi’s soft cheek, I hear her telling me to leave the house. I think of her, sitting the tea down in front of me. I picture her in the photo from her friend’s wedding framed on the shelf, smiling, no worries.

  ‘Was it me?’ I ask out loud.

  I did that to her; she ended her life. How can anyone but me be to blame?

  On Monday, at the time Tom usually comes home, I stumble downstairs and I hover, checking my post, checking my phone, checking the menu outside the restaurant next to our flats, checking with the porter to see if any parcels have come for me. Check, check, check, check. I need something to take me away from Naomi, something to shift the focus.

  I don’t see Tom. But three days later, going through the same routine, check, check, check, I do.

  ‘Hey!’ I shout, run-walking across the courtyard, past the bench and the shared garden that everyone who lives here feels too self-conscious to use.

  Instead, we pay the service charge to have access to it and then walk half a mile to a park. The water feature sounds beaten down, drip dripping despite no interest or admiration from the hoards of residents who hurry past it to the tube every day.

  Tom turns, his bag falling off his shoulder.

  ‘Oh, hey,’ he says, shrugging it back on.

  ‘I’ll jump in the elevator with you, if that’s all right?’ I say, heart pounding. ‘Sorry, I know everyone hates getting in with someone else.’

  He laughs.

  ‘It’s all right; we know each other now so it’s less awkward. It’s the ones where you have to stand facing forwards and not acknowledging each other’s existence that I struggle with.’

  The elevator cranks into action.

  ‘Actually, while I have you, I had an industry book I thought might be useful, if you were still thinking about a musical theatre documentary,’ I say, as I have planned to say.

  Confidence comes in the form of rum, drunk before dinnertime.

  Tom looks embarrassed that he never followed up.

  Whatever. I just need to get him inside. Bury Luke under a layer of Tom newness. Get these thoughts about Naomi out of my head. Move on.

  ‘But you probably decided it wouldn’t work or you need to get home or …’ I ramble.

  ‘No, no, it’s still a potential, just on the backburner,’ he smiles. ‘I’ll pop round now, shall I? The book would be great. Hey, also, I meant to ask ages ago – did you ever have any issues with post? We’ve had a couple of bits go missing. Hospital stuff. I mentioned it to the porter in case someone was stealing it for identity theft or anything.’

  I avoid eye contact.

  ‘Huh, weird. No, nothing from my end.’

  The elevator opens and Tom and I head into my flat. Tom, Luke, Tom, Luke. Blaming me for Naomi’s death. Tom, Luke, Tom, Luke. Getting on with your lives. Leaving me behind. Tom, Luke, Tom, Luke.

  ‘It’s Lexie’s, mostly,’ he says, carrying on the conversation as we walk into the flat. ‘Her post seems to go AWOL the most.’

  Bloody Lexie, here again. Stop interfering, Lexie, leave us the hell alone.

  I head into the kitchen and faff around with teabags, sending snippets of conversation over my shoulder into the living room. Tom is in there, studiously examining the spines of the handful of books on the bookshelves to give himself something to do.

  I take a breath and pour Tom’s tea. The one in the G mug – sure, my name doesn’t begin with G, but a colleague bought it for me for a Secret Santa once and told me it stood for ‘Great’. It was clearly the only one M&S had; this is the effort I inspire in people.

  My own drink is alcoholic, of course.

  ‘There you go,’ I say, handing the mug to him. ‘Milk, no sugar.’

  I glance at the suspicious white dots floating on the surface; the milk almost certainly off. It’s certainly been a while since I made it to a shop. Tom doesn’t notice.

  He holds his drink in two hands but looks too distracted to consume it and I can tell he’s building up to something.

  He sits down and puts his cup on the table next to him. I sit down on the other side of him, too close.

  He looks around.

  ‘I could have sworn this was the place I came to that party,’ he says, shifting ever so slightly to put extra millimetres between us.

  This tortures him, evidently.

  ‘It feels so familiar. And you have a lot of parties here, don’t you?’

  I do a look so blank that it is hammy, to toy with him more and because this way, there is more distance between his lost keys and me.

  ‘Sure, I have a few. But I know quite a lot of the other flats on this floor have a lot, too. Maybe it was one of those?’

  I can’t make eye contact and my hands dart around like they are playing an imaginary piano. It’s a tick that helps me to remember my place in the world, remember that I have a role. Remember that I am good at something. Though right now, it’s not working well.

  I think about how unsure I was that I could rebuild a career, when I changed my surname after what happened to Naomi. About how easy it was, in the end. A new website, with the same information and an ability I could demonstrate when I turned up to interviews. Beyond that, nobody checked too much and I cried with relief. I could carry on. This part of my life – such a fundamental one – could keep going, after all.

  I look at the clock. We’ve been here ten minutes and once Tom finishes that drink, I don’t expect him to stay for much longer. I need to up the ante. Move things along.

  I touch his arm when I speak, I fling my head back and flick my hair, I open a button on my shirt, I copy all of the most clichéd flirting moves there are and I hope that he is battered over the head by my intentions.

  ‘Another drink?’ I say, moving my hand to his thigh.

  I point to my own glass. ‘We could upgrade you to an amaretto and Coke?’

  An odd look crosses his face. He shifts his leg away from my touch.

  ‘So I definitely didn’t come here to a party?’ he says, ignoring my question.

  The word ‘party’ strikes me as funny, suddenly. There are parties here, sure, but they aren’t the kind you picture when people say the word. They are the bad kind, the kind no one feels great about in the morning. The kind filled with strangers and sadness and people who want to drink away their day. They wouldn’t inspire smiles, years later, at their memory. They wouldn’t lead to in-jokes or nostalgia or true friendships, people who bonded at 2 a.m. singing loudly with their arms around each other.

  And in the mornings, when the people and the whisky bottles are gone, I can see the reality. There are no photos here and just a few books. No life, either – not a plant, not a voice from a radio, not a cut flower.

  The rooms feel as sparse as the wine rack, until I stock it again for next time. There are no framed prints, no old vinyl, no handmade card from a glitter-obsessed goddaughter. The piano is the only hint of art – at parties, I cover it with a tablecloth, because it is the only item I truly care about. Everywhere smells airless and stale.

  ‘Definitely not here,’ I say vaguely, the room rocking slightly now. ‘Maybe your next-door neighbour on the other side?’

  Tom glances towards the piano and frowns. Then he remembers my question.

  ‘I’m all right for a drink,’ he says.

  My hand, I realise, is gripped to his thigh.

  ‘I’ll just grab the book.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I say, leaning over.

  And just like that, I kiss him. Slip a hand under his T-shirt. Knowing that my iPad is recording this across the room.

  ‘Just the book,’ he says, pulling away, taking my hand firmly from under his T-shirt. ‘Then I’m going to get home. To my girlfriend.’

  I pause. Consider. Then I decide to do it.

  ‘You weren’t in such a rush to get home last time,’ I say, flatly.

  He turns from where he is about to head out of my front door.

  ‘What?’

  I
smile.

  ‘You know? When you came here, partied and then slept with me?’

  79

  Lexie

  June

  Tom isn’t home when Tom should be home and that’s making me anxious.

  I am in a yoga pose in our living room. I have one hand on my heart, one hand on my baby, and I would be in total peace if I couldn’t hear the sound of the number thirty-eight bus pulling in at the stop outside – and bloody Harriet, of course, whistling and talking to somebody next door. I exhale slowly, counting to eight.

  But then something stops me.

  Suddenly, I can’t breathe slowly any more.

  Suddenly, I am not at any sort of peace.

  Suddenly, I feel sick.

  I press my ear against the wall and I know who the other voice that’s talking to Harriet through the wall belongs to.

  He comes home twenty minutes later.

  ‘Sorry,’ Tom says, pale as he walks through the door. ‘We got delayed. I accidentally told Dan about the baby and he bought some champagne. It felt rude to leave before the bottle was finished.’

  Luckily, I have my back to him as I sit on my yoga mat. He cannot see my face. Or my now ineffectual breathing. Lies, I think. I’ve suspected them before but this time, I know that what you are telling me is a lie.

  There are no long exhales, when you are thinking the thoughts that I am thinking. Because what reason would Tom have to be at Harriet’s that he couldn’t tell me about? Other than he is having an affair with her. Or have I gone genuinely crazy?

  I stay silent then, wait for Tom to speak more to see where these lies go.

  But that’s as much as he can be bothered with.

  ‘I’m going to jump in the shower,’ he says.

  I hear the water running and the door close behind him, and I take my hands away from my hammering heart, from my oblivious baby.

  Only three more weeks until our scan and then the hope had been that we could begin the next stage of moving on. Buy weird toy sheep that keep children asleep. Book courses. Learn to be ourselves again too, without injections and denials and suspicions. But I know that voice. I wouldn’t get that voice wrong.

  And my heart, now, won’t slow down. It won’t slow down even though I am panicking about what this surge of anxiety will do to the baby; even though I am willing my body to calm.

  Lately, Tom and I have been optimistic and celebratory, giddy with the newness of all this and with our secret. We have been getting our closeness back, slowly.

  But, really, did I ever leave the other stuff behind? That feeling that someone had been in the flat, the condoms, the underwear and Tom, behaving just oddly enough to mean that niggle about his fidelity felt valid. To mean that I think about those emails from Rachel sometimes and I can’t quite file them away as nothing. Ask yourself, she said, and I do, all the time. Especially when I hear my boyfriend’s voice next door speaking to our pretty neighbour, at the same time that he tells me that he is in the pub with a friend celebrating my pregnancy.

  As Tom gets out of the shower, we hear the sound of glass hitting the wall on Harriet’s side. It’s loud. We both look at the wall, but neither of us acknowledges what has happened. What is going on here, Tom? What the hell is going on here?

  80

  Harriet

  June

  I throw an impromptu party. As usual, the subtext is this: come if you’re heartbroken, come if you’re lonely, come if you want to drink until you cannot remember who you are. Come if you don’t want to be with people close to you, come if the people close to you have hurt you, come if there is no one who is close to you at all. Come if all you can think about is a dead girl named Naomi.

  I welcome the misfits and the broken, the drunk and the debauched. I want no surnames and no platitudes. I don’t get token texts the next day about what a great time they had because they barely know where they have been. The whisky bottles are as empty as we are and we like it that way.

  I do it deliberately, to get under Tom’s skin and cause him to itch. To punish him for turning me down, when I had needed him to fuck me. When I had needed him to fuck me to bury the thoughts of Naomi and Luke and what had really happened next running laps around my mind.

  The door’s open, Tom, feel free to come in. That should help you to figure out what happened last time.

  But he won’t, I know.

  I had thought that there was a spark. I knew Tom and Lexie’s relationship was rocky. But he didn’t kiss me back and he couldn’t wait to leave my flat. I look at my too-tall, clunky shape in the mirror. Was that it? No physical attraction? Would he have liked me more if I had, say, Naomi’s body? A wave of nausea comes over me again. I think of Naomi, bodiless now. Is there a percentage, perhaps? A percentage of her death for which I am responsible? And will I ever know what it was? Is there a number I could live with, and one that would cross the line to too much to bear?

  Perhaps Tom’s rejection was nothing to do with physical attraction. Maybe some men are just more loyal than Luke, with his multiple affairs, ever was? I kick the mirror, putting a small crack in the bottom.

  I should have known: from the second Tom arrived at my flat, he had the aura of a man who had turned up for a job interview but known straight away that this wasn’t a place he wanted to work. He kept his jacket on, nervously turning the bottom of his sleeves up and down, over and over. He didn’t kiss me back, even for half a second.

  It’s why I grasped at something else. Did he believe me that we had slept together? Did he believe he could have been drunk enough to even forget that?

  He left my flat and I drank and drank and crashed down to the floor.

  Because: after all of that. After all of my hard work. I slung a wine glass against their wall and hoped he’d hear. I didn’t bother picking up the glass, because who am I protecting from being hurt? It’s a bit late for me. Why, when I do this much for these men in my life, do I never get rewarded?

  I sit in the corner of my party, alone, with a large amaretto and Coke. If Tom thinks that rejecting me means that I will bow out of his life, I think, he is wrong.

  It’s addictive, bitterness.

  It multiplies inside you so you begin by resenting the people who have it all, life’s lucky ones. And then you go further. You resent the guy in the shop who smiled and seemed okay. You feel hostile towards the people in the pub buying a bottle of wine to share slowly, not down alone. You detest your neighbour, who has a life you want and hears somebody say I love you.

  And all of these people, they are characters in your mental play. The play in which you make them pay, and punish them, for having parents they speak to, and brothers who visit, and partners who stay with them. For not having an image of sweet Naomi who stumbled into this, unknowing, sitting in their mind. For not having to think about her orange toenails.

  And sometimes, the play crosses over and you find that it’s not enough. And that you want to punish them for real.

  If Tom thinks I will sit and listen to what I could have won through the wall, he is wrong.

  If he thinks that I will leave them alone and let them be happy, he is wrong.

  If he thinks that once again, I will work and work for something, only to be dropped, he is wrong.

  If I learnt anything from what happened with Luke, it is that even if I can’t have him, I can still reach into the insides of his life and pull at its bones and tear it to shreds. I can still destroy them, even if they think I am no one.

  At midnight, Chantal walks in.

  ‘Harriet!’ she says, kissing me on the cheek. ‘How are you?’

  She has brought a man with her. She seems somewhere approaching moderate. I am disgusted.

  ‘You’re so sober!’ I shout at her, grimacing. ‘Have some shots. Do some dancing.’

  She smiles at me.

  ‘I’ll definitely do some dancing,’ she says, calm, happy eyes, red hair loose and wavy around her face. ‘But I’m all right for shots. I’m act
ually trying to cut down.’

  Then she glances at this man, who is looking around the room and taking in the fact that he is ten times more sober than any of us. He pushes his hair out of his eyes.

  When I walk away I see him whisper to her and frown.

  Half an hour later, she mimes ‘we’re leaving now’ across the room to me and heads off with her new boyfriend, holding hands and feeling loved. Even Chantal. I want her lying on the sofa weeping, clinging to my parties as the only bit of fun in her life. I can see the appeal of being a drug dealer sometimes: what a feeling, all that control.

  81

  Lexie

  June

  There is a large black nurse who works at the hospital and calls me pet. She has a slight Caribbean lilt, but the pet reminds me of a friend I had from the north-east at university and I think it has a nod to Geordie.

  I’ve never asked her why, whether it came from a Geordie partner in her life, or a flatmate, or a brief stay, or is nothing to do with geography and just feels like the right word when you’re looking after crumbling women every day?

  I have never asked her because we speak about my egg count and when my period came and the girth of the speculum and whether or not I’m comfortable. I answer my mobile to her on train platforms and dial her number on the bus. Once, I sat on the floor on the pavement outside a chicken shop in King’s Cross and sobbed down the phone at her because my appointment had been moved back.

  ‘I can’t take one more thing,’ I cried, and she stayed patiently on the phone to me while I emitted all of my frustrations. She did that though she had back-to-back appointments, an already-long day, and though she wasn’t my friend, or my partner. She did that because she is good at her job and because she is kind. Life is a lesson. Be more Norma.

  Now, when Norma puts her hand on my arm and talks to me gently, it’s a massage. When I hear her calm exhale as I brush past her on the way to our three-month scan, I am reminded that I have forgotten to breathe myself and take a huge gasp of air.