After You

Lily seemed to wake up a little. ‘Jewellery?’

‘Oh, no. Oh, no.’ I opened all my drawers, began dumping the contents on the floor. ‘Where is it? And where’s my emergency cash?’ I turned to her. ‘Who were they? What were their names?’

Lily had gone quiet.

‘Lily!’

‘I – I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean you don’t know? You said they were your friends.’

‘Just … clubbing friends. Mitch. And … Lise and – I can’t remember.’

I ran for the door, belted along the corridor and hurled myself down the four flights of stairs. But by the time I reached the front door the corridor and the street beyond were empty, but for the late bus to Waterloo sailing gently, illuminated, down the middle of the dark road.

I stood in the doorway, panting. Then I closed my eyes, fighting back tears, dropping my hands to my knees as I realized what I had lost: my grandmother’s ring, the fine gold chain, with the little pendant she had worn from when I was a child. I knew already I would never see it again. There were so few things to pass down in my family, and now even that was gone.

I walked slowly back up the stairs.

Lily was standing in the hallway when I opened the front door. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I didn’t know they would steal your stuff.’

‘Go away, Lily,’ I said.

‘They seemed really nice. I – I should have thought –’

‘I’ve been at work for thirteen hours. I need to find out what I’ve lost and then I want to go to sleep. Your mother is back from her holiday. Please just go home.’

‘But I –’

‘No. No more.’ I straightened up slowly, taking a moment to catch my breath. ‘You know the real difference between you and your dad? Even when he was at his unhappiest he wouldn’t have treated anyone like this.’

She looked as if I’d slapped her. I didn’t care.

‘I can’t do this any more, Lily.’ I pulled a twenty-pound note from my purse and handed it to her. ‘There. For your taxi.’

She looked at it, then at me, and swallowed. She ran a hand through her hair and walked slowly back into the living room.

I took off my jacket, and stood staring at my reflection in the little mirror above my chest of drawers. I looked pale, exhausted, defeated. ‘And leave your keys,’ I said.

There was a short silence. I heard the clatter as they were dropped on the kitchen counter, and then, with a click, the front door closed and she was gone.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I messed it all up, Will.

I hauled my knees up to my chest. I tried to imagine what he would have said if he could see me then, but I could no longer hear his voice in my head and that small fact made me even sadder.

What do I do now?

I understood I could not stay in the flat that Will’s legacy had bought me. It felt as if it were steeped in my failures, a bonus prize I had failed to earn. How could you make a home in a place that had come to you for all the wrong reasons? I would sell it and invest the money somewhere. But where would I go instead?

I thought of my job, the reflexive way my stomach now clenched when I heard Celtic pan pipes, even on television; the way Richard made me feel useless, worthless.

I thought of Lily, noting the peculiar weight of the silence that resulted when you knew without doubt that nobody but you would be in your home. I wondered where she was, and pushed the thought away.

The rain eased off, slowing and ceasing almost apologetically, as if the weather were admitting it hadn’t really known what had got into it. I pulled on some clothes, vacuumed the flat, and put out the bin-bags of party-related rubbish. I walked to the flower market, mostly to give myself something to do. Always better to get out and about, Marc said. I might feel better for being in the thick of Columbia Road, with its gaudy displays of blooms and its slow-moving crowds of shoppers. I fixed my face into a smile, frightened Samir when I bought myself an apple (‘Are you on drugs, man?’) and headed off into a sea of flowers.

I bought myself a coffee at a little coffee shop and watched the market through its steamed window, ignoring the fact that I was the only person in there on my own. I walked the length of the sodden market, breathed in the damp and heady scents of the lilies, admired the folded secrets of the peonies and roses, glass beads of rain still dotting their surfaces, and bought myself a bunch of dahlias and the whole time I felt as if I were acting, a figure in an advert: Single city girl living the London dream.

I walked home, cradling my dahlias in one arm, doing my best not to limp, all the while trying to stop the words Oh, who do you think you’re kidding? popping repeatedly into my head.

The evening stretched and sagged, as lonely evenings do. I finished cleaning the flat, having fished cigarette butts out of the toilet, watched some television, washed my uniform. I ran a bath full of bubbles and climbed out of it after five minutes, afraid to be alone with my thoughts. I couldn’t call my mother or my sister: I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up the pretence of happiness in front of them.

Finally, I reached into my bedside table, and pulled out the letter, the one Will had arranged for me to receive in Paris, back when I was still full of hope. I unfolded its well-worn creases gently. There were times, that first year, when I would read it nightly, trying to bring him to life beside me. These days I rationed myself: I told myself I didn’t need to see it – I was afraid it would lose its talismanic power, the words become meaningless. Well, I needed them now.

The computer text, as dear to me as if he had been able to handwrite it; some residual trace of his energy still in those laser-printed words.

You’re going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. It always does feel strange to be knocked out of your comfort zone … There is a hunger in you, Clark. A fearlessness. You just buried it, like most people do.

Just live well. Just live.

I read the words of a man who had once believed in me, put my head on my knees and, finally, sobbed.

The phone rang, too loud, too close to my head, sending me lurching upright. I scrabbled for it, noting the time. Two a.m. The familiar reflexive fear. ‘Lily?’

‘What? Lou?’

Nathan’s deep drawl rolled across the phone line.

‘It’s two a.m., Nathan.’

‘Aw, man. I always mess up the time difference. Sorry. Want me to hang up?’