Her Fearful Symmetry

coffee the twins were at his door.

“Do you want to go to the Cabinet War Rooms with us?” Valentina asked.

“Erm-I do, but I had better do some work. I’ve got horribly behind on my thesis. Jessica’s insinuating that I’ve given it up.”

“Oh, come anyway.” Julia spent a few minutes trying to persuade him, perfectly aware that she sounded insincere. Valentina looked beseeching. Robert gently urged them on their way, and they finally left without him. Robert watched through his front window as they angled their immense tartan golfing umbrella through the gate.

He waited until he thought they must be safely on the tube. Then he gathered pencil and paper and retrieved Elspeth’s key from a little drawer in his desk. He went upstairs and let himself into the flat.

He stood in the hall and wondered how best to proceed. He decided that the dining-room table would be most comfortable and sat down with the Ouija board, plastic circle and his pad of paper before him.

“Elspeth?” He spoke softly. Perhaps she’s sleeping. Do dead people sleep? “Elspeth, I thought we might try automatic writing because it seems like a lot of work for you to push a planchette around a Ouija board. Do you want to try?”

He sat for what seemed to him a very long time, hand poised over the paper in silence, waiting.

He fell into a reverie that featured the many soft-boiled eggs he had eaten whilst sitting in this very chair at this very table. The first morning he had breakfasted with Elspeth she had asked, “How’d you like your eggs?” and he’d replied, “Soft-boiled.” He showed her how to cook them; Elspeth ate her eggs scrambled. And every breakfast thereafter she had presented him with a perfectly soft-boiled egg in a little blue egg cup. He wondered where the egg cup was. Robert was thinking about getting up to look for it when his hand went cold and jerked sideways. He looked around, saw nothing. He picked up the pencil and repositioned himself.

This time he let the tip of the pencil touch the paper. The cold came gradually into his hand. The pencil began to move over the paper.

Circles, loops, spiky lines that looked like seismographs filled the page. Robert sometimes felt his fingers gripping the pencil without his willing them to do it. Sometimes it seemed to be the pencil itself that moved with unseen volition. He leaned over the paper, watching. The meaningless lines became smaller, tighter. Robert remembered his infant school days, practising the alphabet with a thick pencil on coarse paper. His fingers ached from the cold.

WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?

He let go of the pencil and it dropped on the table, inert.

“Soft-boiled eggs,” said Robert quietly.

The pencil spun around a few times, as though it was amused, or perhaps upset at being abandoned. Robert picked it up with his left hand, to give his right hand a chance to warm.

LOL I MISS YOU.

“Likewise. Understatement. I just-this is bollocks, Elspeth. I didn’t understand. I’ve been having all these dreams about you, where you’re alive and I’ve been ignoring you-there was one a week ago where I was looking for you in Sainsbury’s and you had turned into a lettuce and I had no idea…and now it turns out that that is essentially the case…I mean, not that you are a lettuce, but that you are here and I didn’t realise.”

NOT YOUR FAULT.

“I keep thinking I’ve let you down.”

I DIED. NOT YOUR FAULT.

“In my head I know that…”

The twins sat on the kitchen floor listening, ears pressed to the dining-room door. Julia glanced at the trail of muddy water they’d tracked across the linoleum. I hope he won’t come in here, cause there’snowhere to hide. Valentina wished they had really gone to the museum. She didn’t want to listen to whatever Robert had to say to Elspeth. She looked at Julia, who was sprawled in an uncomfortable posture so as to get her ear in the best possible spot. Julia was rapt; she loved spying on people.

Elspeth sat on the table, watching Robert’s face as he spoke to her. It was as though he’d gone blind; he’d no idea where she was, so he sat gazing upward as he talked.

“…so I can’t seem to get on, things are a bit meaningless. And now here you are, but not exactly.” Robert paused, waiting to see if Elspeth would reply. When she didn’t, he said, “Maybe I could come to you. If I died…”

No.

“Why not?”

WHAT IF YOU ENDED UP STUCK IN YOUR FLAT?

“Ah.”

I COULDN’T BEAR IT IF YOU DIED.

Robert nodded. “Let’s talk about something else.”

They both became aware of the breathing at the same moment. Elspeth wrote, KEEP TALKING, and Robert began to tell her about something Jessica had said to him the day before, an anecdote about her law-school days. Elspeth went to the kitchen door and stuck her head through it. At first she didn’t see anything. Then she looked down and saw the twins. Elspeth laughed and flew back to Robert. SPIES, she wrote. COME BACK ANOTHER DAY.

HOW WILL I KNOW WHEN TO COME? Robert wrote back.

I’M ALWAYS HERE, Elspeth replied.

“I’ve got to go, sweet. It’s almost noon, I told Jessica I’d help with the newsletter.”

I LOVE YOU.

He opened his mouth to say it, then wrote it instead. I LOVE YOU TOO. ALWAYS.

Elspeth ran her finger over the writing. She wished she could have the paper, then thought, No, it’s just a thing. Robert gathered up the notebook and put the chair back where it had been. He stood in the front hall, not wanting to leave her. A wave of cold passed through him. It made him feel nauseous. He waited for the feeling to pass, and left.

Elspeth went back to the kitchen expecting to find the twins. There were only thin trails of mud on the floor. Elspeth went to the back-door window and was able to see Valentina and Julia creeping down the fire escape, soundlessly. When they got to the bottom they ran across the moss and disappeared into the side garden. They’re cleverer than they look. She wasn’t sure if that was a problem; she was aware of mixed emotions-pride and wariness, nostalgia and exasperation. I wish I could stow them away somewhere while I frolic with Robert. She sighed. What a bad mother I would have been.

What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing. Robert gave himself over to it. He and Elspeth spent hours each day-whenever the twins were out of the flat-engrossed in each other, reliving with paper and pencil fragments of days that had once seemed ordinary but were now precious and in need of lapidary acts of shared memory.

“Do you remember the day you broke your toe?”

IN GREEN PARK.

“I’d never seen you cry.”

IT HURT. YOU WOULD’VE, TOO.

“I imagine so.”

THAT NICE TAXI DRIVER.

“Yes. And we ate all that ice cream, later.”

AND GOT DRUNK. THE HANGOVER WAS WORSE THAN THE TOE.

“Lord, I’d forgotten that.”

And:

“What do you miss most?”

TOUCHING. BODIES. DRINKING, THAT HEAT IN THE THROAT. SUBSTANCE-

HAVING TO ACTUALLY LIFT MY HAND OR LEG, TURN MY HEAD. SMELLS. I CAN’T REMEMBER HOW YOU SMELL.