by Luiza Sauma
‘Of course.’
‘I started my period.’ She covered her face and laughed.
‘Oh my God! When?’
‘Two weeks ago.’
‘Congratulations!’ Iris reached over and hugged her, and Mona hugged back.
‘It doesn’t feel like an achievement or anything.’
‘It’s a big deal.’
Mona shook her head. ‘I kind of wish I’d never had it, that I could stay the same.’
‘Stay thirteen years old? Really?’
‘No, more like … eight. I liked being eight. Everything was easy. I remember at my eighth birthday party, playing musical chairs and thinking, I’ve always been a child and I always will be.’
‘Was I there?’
‘I don’t think so … Mum is insane, isn’t she?’
‘You only just realized?’
Mona laughed. ‘Was she weird to you, when you started your period?’
‘She was all right, but she seemed embarrassed.’
‘Exactly. What’s wrong with her? All my friends’ mums were really nice to them.’
Iris was happy to hear that phrase – ‘all my friends’. Mona was smiling, pleased with it herself. Things were changing for her. Maybe Iris didn’t have to worry any more.
Before she left, Iris went to the basement, where her mother was ironing Jack’s shirts. Eleanor hadn’t had a job in years, but she was always occupied. She rarely sat down, read a book or watched television. Iris wanted to say something.
She dug the nail of her index finger into her thumb, to distract herself with pain, and said, ‘I know it’s silly, but I thought I saw Robert the other day. On the Tube.’
‘Robert who?’ said her mother, hanging a white shirt on a rail.
‘Robert Cohen.’
‘Your father?’ Eleanor widened her eyes and took a step back from the ironing board. She lifted a shaking hand and smoothed back her bobbed hair. Her eyes were suddenly coated with tears – just a little. ‘Well, that’s impossible.’
‘Yeah, I know. It was an Orthodox Jewish guy. He just looked a bit like him. Actually, he looked a lot like him.’ She paused. ‘Why do we never talk about him?’
Eleanor took a deep breath. Her eyes were dark and focused. She took another shirt from the plastic basket, shook it out and laid it on the board. She looked upset or even angry, but at whom? Iris, Robert, the world? Iris wanted to ask, but she couldn’t.
‘Right,’ said Iris. ‘Never mind. I’ll go home now.’
She stepped forward and put a hand on her mother’s arm. Eleanor flinched slightly but managed a smile. Iris would have liked to hug her, but all her courage was gone.
‘You’ve always been so much like him,’ said Eleanor. She glanced up at Iris. ‘I can see him now, in your face.’ Her hands were shaking, but she carried on ironing, flipping the shirt over, making it neat and perfect, before hanging it on the rail. Then she paused. ‘You know, I noticed when all the medicine was gone.’
Thunk, went Iris’s heart. ‘What medicine?’
Her mother didn’t take another shirt from the basket, but kept her eyes on the ironing board.
‘When you were unwell, when you were a teenager. I noticed. I saw all the packets in the bin.’
‘And you didn’t say anything?’
Her mother looked up, with tears on her cheeks, and swallowed. ‘It was so frightening, Iris. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to make it worse. I hadn’t been able to help your father –’
‘So you did nothing?’ They stopped speaking and listened to the hum of the boiler. ‘Does Jack know?’
Eleanor shook her head, wiping away her tears. ‘No, I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone. I was completely helpless.’
Iris backed away from her, towards the door. ‘How did you get like this?’
‘You think I’m such a bad person, don’t you?’ Her eyes were flint-like. ‘I’m not the one who walked out on the family.’
‘Jesus, Mum. I’d hardly call what he did “walking out”.’
Eleanor had no answers. There was no point in waiting for one. She was too far gone, too committed to turning away from life. Before she could say anything else, Iris walked up the stairs and left the house, knowing they would never refer to this conversation again.
A week later, she was at the pond again, with Mona. The warm weather hadn’t held up. It felt like autumn proper, and not one of those magical blue-gold days. Overcast and white – a typical English sky. The trees were red and brown. There was beauty in that, though. The water was dark and cold, not glimmering. Why hadn’t they come when it was warm, when there was a heatwave? Still, it was good to be together, good to slice back and forth through the water, not talking too much. Don’t stop moving or you’ll get too cold.
This time they had come prepared, with towels, swimsuits and even suncream – Iris had been hopeful. They dried off and lay on the grass, huddled together, with one towel beneath them and another on top. Mona’s body shivered against hers. Iris rubbed her sister’s freezing arms. And then – a miracle: the white sky parted, revealing the sun, which briefly warmed them enough to throw aside the top towel. They sunbathed in silence, pretending to be on holiday, pretending their bodies weren’t covered in goosebumps.
It had been a week of misery for Iris, ever since the conversation with her mother. A week of daily drinking, of internet marathons, of sweaty presentations, of crying and puking in the toilets at work, of ringing the GP and then hanging up, of having sex so wasted, she couldn’t remember it the next morning. The pond washed it all away.
Mona leaned on Iris’s shoulder. Iris patted her curly head, as if she were a sweet little baby. But no – thirteen. Not sweet any more. Almost a woman. Her body could bear a child. Still, they could pretend.
When they woke up, an hour later, Mona’s skin had started to burn. Should’ve worn the suncream.
‘Do you want to go in again?’ said Iris.
‘Nah,’ said Mona, rubbing her eyes, stretching her skinny arms over her head. ‘Too sleepy.’
So they changed into their underwear, under the towels, and into their clothes, and walked back towards their parents’ house, where Iris would drop her sister off and then stroll blissfully to Gospel Oak Overground station and catch the train home, unaware that they would never swim together again, that they should’ve jumped in once more – even just for a minute, even if they didn’t want to.
11.
The Experiment
Kiran was going to Paris with her boyfriend, so Iris decided to embark on an experiment – to spend a week alone. She booked the same week off work, but didn’t tell Kiran. There was a limit to their closeness. They had separate bones, brains, digestive systems and skins; this was what divided them. Kiran knew about Iris’s sadness – she had noticed it over the years, though they never spoke of it – but she had no idea of its extent. She had her own secrets, too.
The experiment had six rules:
If someone contacts you, tell them you’ve gone away.
Follow your instincts.
Revel in aloneness and peace.
Do things that you would never usually do.
Live in the moment.
Don’t rush.
It would be a holiday with no destination, a break from familiarity. Interacting with strangers was fine. Iris wanted to practise disappearing, to know how it might feel to leave everyone behind.
‘I’m going to stay with some relatives in Cornwall,’ she told her colleagues.
‘I didn’t know you had family there,’ said Eddie, who had never met Iris’s family and never would.
‘Yeah, my great-aunt.’
‘Where?’
He asked too many questions. The biological trick had worn off.
‘St Ives,’ she said, because it was one of the few Cornish towns she knew of. She had never been there.
Iris saw Eddie on Saturday night, just before the experiment began at midnight. They went to a restaurant in Soho that
served delicious things on tiny plates, so they couldn’t tell if they’d eaten enough. It was fine. They mostly talked about work. They were like veterans who can only talk about the war, except their most recent battle was a three-hour brainstorm to decide the tone of voice for a black Labrador called Hector, the star of an animal charity campaign, the nadir of which was Alison screeching, ‘For God’s sake, Hector would never say that!’
Eddie offered to foot the bill – which was sweet, since he earned less than her – but Iris insisted on going halves.
‘Shall we go back to yours or mine?’ he said, after they had paid.
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Iris, ‘my train leaves really early tomorrow morning. It’s probably best if we go our separate ways.’
‘I can let myself out after you’ve gone.’
‘I haven’t even packed – I was planning to do that first thing. I’m waking up at, like, 6 a.m.’
He looked fragile, suddenly; his eyes downcast, his mouth serious. His freckles, which had been so adorable a few months earlier, made him look childish and vulnerable.
‘What’s going on?’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve been acting weird for ages.’
‘It’s nothing. I’m just tired.’
‘It’s not the ideal situation, us working together.’
‘No.’
‘Maybe we should think about next steps.’
‘Next steps?’ Iris laughed. ‘That sounds like something Alison would say. Let’s brainstorm our relationship, take this project to the next level.’
‘You’re so cynical.’ Eddie looked at the table. ‘Do you even like me?’
Iris reached for his hand, suddenly afraid. ‘Of course I do! I like you so much, Eddie.’
This seemed to relax him. ‘How about we both start looking for jobs? Whoever gets one first, leaves.’
‘You wouldn’t mind leaving Freedom?’
‘Not really. Who hates it more – you or me?’
‘Definitely me,’ said Iris. ‘I should be the one who leaves.’
Eddie shrugged. ‘I don’t mind leaving. It’s not like I want to be doing this for the rest of my life.’
Iris was still holding his hand, playing with his fingers. ‘Is there something else you want to do?’
Eddie shook his head. ‘No. You?’
Iris thought of Nyx and its unchanging light; its deliciously vast distance from Earth, from life, from everyone, from Eddie.
‘Not really, no.’
Afterwards he walked her to her bus stop on Oxford Street. Iris insisted, over and over again, that he didn’t need to wait with her. Finally, he left. She watched as he walked to the Tube station. As soon as he disappeared into the crowd, Iris left the stop and walked back to Soho. Thus, the experiment began. It was just after midnight.
The slim pavements of Wardour Street were packed with people looking for a good time. Among them, Iris didn’t stand out – a passer-by would have assumed that she was out on the town, on her way to a bar or a club. But she was not like the others, because she had no direction in mind. She’d only had two beers at the restaurant and felt spectacularly sober. The night-time streets sparkled with activity and light. She turned left onto another street, then right, then she walked further. She’d lived her whole life in London, but she could still get lost in Soho. All the streets were more or less the same. Nyx would be easier to navigate. She would never be lost again.
On some other busy street, people were queuing for bars and clubs, staggering, holding each other. Outside a newsagent, a girl with long dark hair and a pale round face was sitting on the pavement with her eyes wide open, catatonic, while her friends stood guard. A few metres away, a man pissed against a glossy black front door. Iris took a turn down a back street which, aside from a restaurant worker smoking a cigarette, was spookily empty – a rarity on a Saturday night in the West End. At the end of the street she turned right and heard, above her, a party; people talking over a glitchy, familiar pop song. She looked up to see a group of women in dresses and heels on a balcony, smoking cigarettes and shivering in the cold.
‘All right?’ one of them said.
‘All right,’ said Iris.
They waved as she went on her way. She had never known anyone who lived in town. Soho was for multimillionaires. In Nyx there would be no money, no divisions; everyone would be the same. She found herself back at Wardour Street, having walked in a circle. She turned left, back onto Oxford Street, and passed a homeless man in his fifties with two pretty Jack Russell terriers, their white coats gleaming in the night. Iris dropped a two-pound coin into his paper cup.
‘Bless you,’ he said, and kissed one of the dogs.
Just then, Iris saw a flash of red in the corner of her vision – her night bus was passing by. She thought of running, but then remembered the sixth rule: Don’t rush. Never mind, another one would come. She had been walking for an hour and was feeling weary.
That night, Iris lay awake in bed for several hours, wondering whether the experiment was evidence that she had lost her mind. She reasoned with herself: People do all kinds of weird things – they kill each other, start wars, keep snakes as pets. By comparison, this is nothing. Some people even abandon their children, like Robert fuckface Cohen. She never thought of him as ‘Dad’ any more, because most of the Dad-like memories had long ago decamped to an obscure, hidden part of her brain. Only tiny, nebulous glimpses remained: Robert Cohen reading her a story, tucking her into bed, the feel of his stubble against her cheek – pain and joy. That was it. The Smog wiped out the rest.
Was I already so dreadful, she thought, even at the age of five?
How did you know that I was dreadful? What were the signs?
Iris lay awake until she could see the sun peeking, bright and white, through the blinds.
At around midday, she woke to the sound of wind rustling through the tree outside her window. You could always tell the season by looking at the tree. Spring was the best, when it sprouted pale pink blossoms. Winter was the worst, when it became a stark, bare skeleton. Now, her tree was starting to shed its glowing yellow-brown leaves. Iris had always noticed these changes, but never fully acknowledged – till that moment – the feelings they inspired in her: hope, loss, admiration. These are the things I can appreciate, she thought, now that I’m alone. But then she lay back in bed, took her phone from its charger and proceeded to waste two hours looking at shit on the internet.
She spent most of the day in a funk, switching between reading things on her phone, reading things on her laptop and half watching things on television. She didn’t shower until 4 p.m., and when she did, she felt ashamed, thinking about all the people who by then had gone on ten-mile runs, had brunch with their friends and made Sunday roasts with all the trimmings. Those people, the good ones, were now kicking back and relaxing, while Iris had barely woken up. They would upload photos of their achievements to Instagram – their happy, attractive friends and relatives, having a wonderful time – and tag them: #sundayvibes, #fam, #besties.
She didn’t leave the flat all day. There wasn’t much food in the kitchen, but she made do with odds and ends. A fried egg with stale toast for lunch. Some slices of cucumber on the side, sprinkled with salt. Peanut butter on a spoon. For dinner, she made egg-fried rice. Her stomach wasn’t full, but it was OK. It was good training for Nyx. The terms and conditions said:
While we aim to provide three delicious, nutritious meals per day to all cast members, these will be somewhat limited compared to what they are accustomed to on Earth. There will be no animal products available. All meals will be vegan and organic, with most ingredients grown on our community farm.
Well, at least she would become smaller and worthier. Buddha-like. A vegan! She could never be vegan on Earth.
She turned the lights off.
Tomorrow I must buy food.
One night, she couldn’t sleep, so she decided she would walk to central London. She had
never done this before, not from Clapton. She checked her phone – Oxford Circus was just over five miles away. Doable. Follow your instincts. She put on some thick socks, an old pair of trainers and a padded jacket over her pyjamas.
The street was dark and empty, but alive with birdsong. Iris made her way towards Lower Clapton Road, where humans could already be found: driving past in cars, sitting placidly on buses, on their way to jobs that started far too early. Two people passed her in the street: a labourer in overalls and heavy boots, and a madwoman, muttering to herself. Rule 4: Do things that you would never usually do.
‘Hello,’ Iris said to the woman.
The woman stopped walking and widened her eyes, amazed that someone had willingly spoken to her. She was wearing many layers of clothes, all different colours and textures. She was sixty per cent textile, forty per cent human.
‘It’s coming, it’s coming,’ said the woman, looking straight into Iris’s eyes, though her own eyes were elsewhere, beyond the moon.
‘What is?’ said Iris.
‘You know, you know it. The end.’
‘The end of the world?’
‘Nah, mate. Don’t be silly. The end of the night.’
‘That’s true. Have a good day.’
‘You too, my love!’
Iris carried on walking down a residential road, where a fox casually crossed her path, then past Hackney Downs. She crossed through Dalston, where the shops were shut, though some still shone their neon lights. The sound of cars kept her company. Usually, whenever she walked alone, she would listen to music or a podcast, but now she just listened to the world. Each bird sang in its own particular pattern. It was amazing that they chose to live there, in the city, and not in a nice green field. They were used to it, like Iris.
She crossed from the borough of Hackney to Islington and walked down Balls Pond Road and Essex Road, where the streets were cleaner, the smell of money more palpable. Hackney smelled of money, too, but it hadn’t been completely cleansed – almost. The entrance to Angel Tube station was surprisingly busy. Bankers in exquisitely cut suits were making their way into the City. Early risers make the most money; early risers make the least money: bankers, builders, bakers and cleaners, and nothing in between, apart from Iris.
