By the time we wrapped up the evening, I’d lost the feeling in my legs. I only realised how much I’d had when pulling on my coat seemed more difficult than escaping a straitjacket. When I tried to stand up, I managed to knock over the empties with the swing of a padded sleeve. Strike.
As ever, despite her tiny frame, Rosa managed to hold herself together with the most decorum. I’ve never understood the biology behind that. Maybe it’s nothing to do with size, and Rosa had just been born with the innate ability to fight toxins with efficiency and finesse. Easton Grove would have liked that.
Rosa cajoled us into our taxis, before calling her current boyfriend to pick her up. I hadn’t yet met Mike, but then I rarely ever met any of Rosa’s boyfriends. You almost didn’t need to, they were always the same – poetic, usually bulky, and a little on the sullen and protective side. Not the best sense of humour. It’s like she was deliberately seeking her opposite, to balance herself out.
By the time the taxi reached Dukesberry Terrace I was starting to feel sick. Even I could hardly make out the incoherent vowels I gurgled to the driver, so I signalled for him to stop at the end of the street by gesticulating – pointing at the floor and then to me. He seemed to get it without even needing to turn his head, and when he pulled to a stop I quickly flashed my plastic over the card reader and scrambled out onto the pavement.
The nausea subsiding, I felt more alive than I had in months. The sound of my breath felt obscenely loud in the metallic drum of sky. I’d lived here with Art heading for a year exactly, and I still wasn’t used to the taste. I leapt over the cracks between paving slabs as if they were gullies, ravines, canyons. I’d never moved so fast, so ferally.
The street was silent, lit only by a few orange street-lamps, and above, the purple sludge of space hung low, almost close enough to touch. How long had it been since I thought I’d seen stars? Mum would watch from the kitchen window, binoculars glued to her face, and even when I pulled at her elbow she wouldn’t look down. I thought I’d seen them with Luke once, through the observatory roof, but I don’t know. Maybe it was just rain on the glass. But still… The smoky canopy above the street was like the velvet in the lid of a precious box, so I swung my bag around me like a moon in orbit – stretching out my arms into the soft space above, the thick, warm hug of it. Like water. Freedom. The aching in my feet was gone, my whole body full and whole. I felt like a god, like the world was full of possibility, blessed with time, and it was mine to seize while everyone else slept. I thought back to Mum telling me that she used to ask the clouds for a sign and they’d tell you the future. Even when I was no taller than her elbow I’d shaken my head and rolled my eyes. But here I stood, in what felt like a fallen cloud, all damp and magical lilac, and what could be more fortuitous? I looked up into the sludge and didn’t ask for a future – I thought of Art and commanded it. But what image came into my head instead? Nut. I shook off the rush of feeling and twirled, owning the street, the world – all on my own. Here, loneliness was a virtue, not a drain. I could be the god of loneliness.
Too soon I reached our purple front door, and I leant against it with both palms to centre myself before going inside. I had my key in my hand for some time before I stuck it in the lock. Beside the front door, the living room curtains were drawn, but around them cracks of light shone gold. Had I left the lights on since morning? No, I don’t think I’d even gone in there. I imagined Nut turning on the lights for herself, and settling down on the chintz chair with a cup of tea and a flapjack. I chuckled at the front door and turned the key.
But it wasn’t Nut. It was Art, stretched out on the sofa with a pizza box across his belly, a beer in his hand, and a car chase on TV. Out from the dim light of his study, I was seeing him for the first time in weeks. He was so thin that his shirt collar hung down in front of his chest, and his one visible hand looked practically blue. All white-knuckled and flaking skin. His eyes were sunken, the whites dull.
But still, the worst of it – how many nights had I waited for him to come out of his study? How many nights did I ask him to join me, how many nights did I sit alone while he lost himself within himself upstairs, like a glutton? And here he was, taking the first opportunity when I wasn’t there to sit in our living room like it was an absolutely normal thing to do. He’d even ordered food.
He lifted himself up on his elbows and looked at me up and down, smiling wryly.
“Well hello there, wifey. Good time?”
“What the fuck, Art?”
I needed him to think I wasn’t drunk so I leant backwards on the wall. Art flicked his head from me to the TV and back to me. “What? It’s not
