indifferent, enigmatic, ineffable universe, she is lucky to be here.
Without knowing how, she is already at the breakfast table. She stirs her tasteless, colourless cereal, mechanically, without joy. She is at work, staring into the depth of a computer screen, her colleagues moving around her like choreographed dancers. She is in a cafe, the fat proprietor watching the evening news on the wall- mounted TV, arms crossed over his ample belly. Summer bluebottles drone and bump against the glass. Her coffee and half-eaten of plate of food sit cold in front of her.
The temperature drops. She bows her head in despair. Here it comes. As always, she feels him approaching before she sees him. Many times she’s tried not to look. Tried closing her eyes, or reading a book. But like floating gutter leaves sucked down a drain, her gaze is helplessly pulled towards the point of his appearance. So now, against her will, she looks up, a fearful glance from half-closed lids, her breath blowing vapour into cold air that has no right to exist in this summer heat. The cafe owner shudders and rubs his arm against the sudden icy chill. She waits, heart thumping, but doesn’t have to wait long. This time it’s fast. He walks swiftly past the grimy cafe window, left to right, adjusting a jumper knotted round his neck, a bundle of newspapers held beneath his bare arm. That’s all. It’s over. The room regains its steamy warmth. That brief, tiny glimpse, she knows, was all there will be for the day. Just once. Just enough to drain her, tire her, chill her. Defeated, she heads home.
Each night, before she tumbles into scorched sleep, she tries to relive it, to work out what she did wrong, and each night she knows the answer. She turns over on the pillow, draws her knees to her chest. Face it, she thinks. Face the thing that she dreads, the error she made, the turning in life she took that led to this limbo of low- level terror that hums in the background of her life like an electric fence penning her in.
She shouldn’t have bought the photo.
She can watch that day in fast forward now. Picking it apart used to take longer. These nights it lays itself out chronologically like a storyboard. This night, it feels different. The story feels alive. She gets out of bed and walks to the darkened sitting room. Pressing back into the hard, worn sofa, a single table light burning low in the bedroom she left behind, she lets her chin fall to her chest and the playback commences.
Jill talking. You’re only forty once. Travelling. A package to Orlando, Florida. All four of them. Just the girls. A theme park birthday. Disney, Universal, Seaworld; the greatest roller-coaster rides on earth.
Forty and fat. Forty and a smoker. Forty and making drinking alone a habit. Forty and never having taken a risk, or climbed a mountain, or run a marathon. Forty and never having been properly in love. At least never loved back. Never ridden upside down in a chair on rails at forty miles an hour. Shorthand. Forty. Never really lived.
The girls gabbling. Shouting advice. Make it change. Make it happen. Turn your life around time. Do those things. Stop watching time tick by. Start living, why don’t you, gal?
Details of the holiday, now just fragments of memory in a blender. Laughing, drinking, neon lights and the faux-antique wooden booths of cheap themed restaurants. The girls cackling, ruby-red lips open in constant shrieking mirth in their tireless quest to catch the attention of incurious Americans while she cowers in embarrassment. Look at us. Look at the time we’re having. Highways crawling with slowly moving oversized cars. Outsized people, outsized food. You must feel like a super model here, laughs Jill. She laughs too, but wants to cry. “Jesus Loves You” sky-written in vapour from a tiny plane, the disintegrating words floating against an azure Floridian sky. She photographs it. Wishes it were true.
All leading towards the moment. The decision.
Her heart couldn’t beat any faster in the queue. The Hulk. The fastest, hardest ride in the park.
Libby makes them stand in line for the front row. Keeps barking statistics. World’s tallest cobra roll: 110 feet. Launch lift that shoots you from zero to forty miles per hour in under two seconds. Stop it, she thinks. Stop it, stop it, stop it. Front row seats have a bigger queue. Worth the wait, says Jill. Forty-five, maybe fifty minutes. Every one a hundred hammering heartbeats of panic. She sweats. She trembles. And then . . . the bitches! The rotten, lousy bitches see a gap for three people, two rows back, and dive for it. Squealing with delight. Waving to her as they strand her in that front-row line. Shouting and guffawing. Roaring that they’ll see her at the bottom. She’s alone. Made to wait for the next ride. Takes a thousand years to come by, arriving, clunking into place like a mechanized abattoir. A couple of sullen Americans behind push her roughly forward on to the row, the seat at the far side already filled by a young man, staring ahead, calm, like he’s waiting in a doctor’s surgery. Must have boarded from the fast-pass queue on the other side.
Alone and waiting.
Ahead, a mountain of rails. A metal serpent waiting to receive its sacrifice.
She hugs her knees tighter. It’s time to play the next frame again in her head. Again. Again. She plays it until she knows it by heart, because she knows this matters. Somehow it does.
She’s shaking. Nearly crying. She’s tried speaking to the American couple, her voice too high, too hysterical to sound casual. But Americans don’t make small talk. They tell you to have a nice day if you pay them to, but to those without a name badge on their shirt you might as well be invisible. The big man grunts when she giggles the truth that she’s scared. The girl stares ahead, chewing gum like it’s a chore.
The coaster car jerks up and then down, bouncing as the automatic harnesses lower, pinning her to the back of the seat. She starts to cry. Silently. More alone than she could ever remember.
She can see his face now, still clear, remembering every detail as he turns slowly to look at her, savouring the memory of his irresistibly sympathetic gaze that follows the fat tear coursing down her cheek until it lands on the restraining bar of the seat. She can see that wide, friendly face, a shadow of stubble around the jaw, round hazel eyes, and a head of thick brown hair cut tight to tame curls. Of course she looks at this face every day in the photo by her bed, but the memory, the real sweet memory, is more vivid than the picture. He was English. She thinks she knows that now. She swallows, climbs back into the moment.
He’s smiling. Comforting, gentle. He reaches out his hand, places it on the bloodless, tightly clenched claw that’s hers, and speaks, a laugh just beneath the voice, but a kind one. Not Jill or Libby’s broken-glass laugh, full of taunts. His hints of mischief and joy.
“You’re going to be fine. Just fine.”
Then nothing. A void of suffering. Screaming. Pressure. Held back, upside down, body pinned in a vice. Forces working on her, stealing her breath, twisting her gut. But somewhere in the maelstrom of pain, his hand has found hers again, a warm, kind hand, squeezing and reassuring.
And then it’s over. She’s walking, slowly, like in a dream, weaving unsteadily, sick and sore, to the air- conditioned little booth where a bored Hispanic woman is presiding over photographs of the ride. So dazed she feels she’s the only customer, though the ride was full, and the woman leans on her elbow and points with long acrylic talons up at the screens showing digital snaps of every row just disembarked.
There she is. Mouth open in a silent scream, eyes clamped shut, hair flying back, hands gripping the harness. The couple pictured on her left are stony-faced.
And then there’s him. He’s not looking ahead. He’s in profile looking directly at her. What she can see of his face is full of concern. His hand is cupping hers.
There’s no hesitation. She buys it. She buys it and now she lives with it. Day and night. On her bedside table from then until now. His face the most familiar in her universe
A man who isn’t there.
The first time she saw him after returning home was like a miracle. It was the best time. Close to joy. Stole her breath away. Oxford Street. A Saturday. His face, unmistakable in the crowd. He looked haggard, world weary, but it was him all right. Her heart in her mouth she ran, and waved, and ran again, but he’d gone. And, oh, the thrill of that moment of recognition. The excitement of that chance sighting. An opportunity to thank him. Who knows? Maybe more than that. A coffee? A reminisce? A laugh? Would he remember her? Did he buy the photo too? Is she somewhere in his life? Maybe not on his bedside table, but dare she hope perhaps on his office desk, or propped up on some shelf full of books? All over the world people cherish their roller-coaster photos taken with strangers they will never see again. Faces glimpsed once then preserved forever. Why not hers? There she would be, the stranger he rode the front row with. She had never wanted anything so much in her life than to catch up with him and put her hand on his arm. But he was gone. His curls lost in the bobbing sea of heads that flowed along the street. She stood for a long time, alone again. Then she went home.
The second time. In the cinema. Too good to be true. Another chance. It must be fate. He left before she could reach him. Then the third. He was on a boat on the Thames. She was on a bridge. When was it? The twentieth time? The fiftieth? The hundredth? When did she wake up and realize that not only can he not see her or
