Chapter 6
Kathy slept like a corpse that night. She spent the hours of darkness tossing and turning through dreamless slumber. Half-formed images and shadows of an unknown horror passed before her mind’s eye, which were too ephemeral to be called a dream, but real enough to create a latent sense of unease all through the night.
When she awoke, she found herself in the clothes she had been wearing when she had flung herself into bed. They were drenched with cold sweat and she pulled them from her body in disgust, chucking them aside like the dirty rags they were.
Her eyes glanced towards the clock beside her bed: 12:00, exactly midday. She was late for work. That, however, did not bother her. Despite her intent to return to her normal life, the disturbing events of the night before had somewhat changed her priorities.
Her first thought was to check if last night’s events had been real. Her rational mind told her that they could not be; yet her memory told her they were.
Leaping out of bed, she rushed into the living room- and there she stopped: for the wall before her remained purple. If that had been real… then what of those other things? Of Thomas, or that man who had taken his place in front of the vehicle? Of Egbert and the paintings? It was such a minor detail, the colour of a wall, and yet it was a portent of things to come- or things that had been.
She approached the wall and, like the day before, stretched out her hand to touch it. It was rough to the touch and felt like every other painted wall she had felt before. Most importantly, the texture was dry, as if it had been there for years and had not mysteriously appeared the night before without explanation or invitation.
A sudden fear shook her. She remembered how the wall had reacted in her dream state, when it had taken on the form of many other walls at the same time. Her hand involuntarily removed itself from the textured surface at that thought- yet Kathy forced her rational mind to overcome this instinctive reaction, and she forced her reluctant hand once more onto the wall before her.
It stayed put. This was reality.
With a confusing mixture of emotions stirring up inside her, she dashed out of her flat and headed down to the ground floor reception.
A young man was working there. She had seen him many times before, but had never had the need to talk to him. They often acknowledged each other with gestures but had never spoken a word to each other- yet despite this, she felt that she knew him somewhat. Over the years, she had observed him often enough to recognise his facial features and to notice when he was happy or sad, upset or excited. It was strange how two people who have never spoken could nevertheless have a relationship of some wordless intimacy.
So when he saw her approaching, his smiling visage was replaced by an expression of concern at the sight of her frenzied expression.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She didn’t respond right away. Truth be told, she didn’t know what to say. She wanted desperately to learn the fate of the accident victim the night before, or to learn that the whole thing had been a hallucination, but she did not know how to ask about it without seeming mad (if there had been no accident) or callous (if it turned out that she had abandoned a dying man in the middle of the road).
Her indecision and anxiety reflected upon her expression: she was glancing around nervously like a frightened animal. The young man, for his part, was perturbed to see her like this. Although they had never spoken, he had often seen her walking out of the block of flats on her way to work. Then, she had always seemed self-confident and strong, walking briskly towards her day’s business. Now the woman before him was a shadow of that former self: nervous, anxious, unsure of her surroundings.
Kathy presently opened her mouth to speak:
“Did… did anything happen last night?” she stammered. Her words came out rushed and her voice was almost cracked.
The young man furrowed his brow. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific. What kind of thing do you think might have happened?”
There was a pause. “An accident,” she said finally. “Just outside here. On this road.” As she said this, she pointed her shaking finger out of the lobby towards the street.
“Yes, I think something did happen,” he said thoughtfully. “It wasn’t my shift, but when I came into work this morning the night security guard informed me of an incident. Apparently someone was hit by a vehicle. An old man with no ID.”
Kathy’s heart stopped. It appeared that however much of last night’s adventure had been imagined, certain elements had been real. Her heart filled with guilt- how could she have abandoned a man to die in the road? She could try to justify it with her state of delirium at the time, but somehow that didn’t sit right within her.
She swallowed, awaiting the inevitable. She was expecting the man before her to tell her the accident victim had died, if she asked. She was expecting to see his accusing eyes uttering the unspoken question: how could you have left him there alone? Why didn’t you call for help?
She tried to tell herself that the accident had not been her fault. But perhaps the delay in calling for help had inadvertently killed him. Perhaps her inaction, her cowardice, had been the metaphorical knife that had taken his life.
She swallowed again.
“How… how is he?” she asked nervously.
The receptionist looked as if he were digging deep in his mind for some misplaced recollection.
“Not good,” came the eventual answer. “He was hurt badly. The vehicle that hit him was speeding. The collision shattered most of his bones. He’s in hospital now.”
So he was seriously injured and hospitalised. But… he was not dead. At least, the receptionist had not said he was dead. Kathy’s heart skipped a beat and she took a deep breath, so deep and so luscious that it felt as if in her terror she had forgotten to keep breathing, as if this good news had given her lungs their first taste of air since the night before.
She almost dared not say it: “But he’s alive?”
“Oh yes,” replied the young man. This time the response was immediate and almost flippant. It seemed that the young man had no inherent interest in the event and that his furrowed brows had been out of concentration, not concern. “Critical, but alive. Doctors say...” he paused for thought. “The doctors say it’ll be a long time, but he will recover.”
Kathy almost collapsed from relief. A weight had fallen from her shoulders: whatever the rights and wrongs of her actions the night before, they had not had fatal consequences. She did not have to live with a man’s death on her conscience.
Without explanation to her friend, without saying thank you or goodbye, Kathy suddenly rushed into the community room. The paintings were still there. Their subjects sat in their frames, motionless and silent. David Tennant was looking down on the room with mad eyes. George Clooney sat, arms folded with a stationary smile. Mother Theresa wore the constant tired look of a woman burdened with the care of a thousand sick people. But these expressions were, to be sure, stationary: the paintings were not moving, nor talking, nor sighing, nor breathing, nor gesturing, nor living. The nightmare of the previous night was not repeating itself.
Had she been in a calmer frame of mind, Kathy might have remarked to herself how odd the choice of paintings was. Normally one would expect to find a few watercolours and landscapes in a room such as this- especially considering this was suburban London. It would have been nice to have some view of the countryside, however inaccurate or unreal. Kathy had once visited the British gallery and seen a painting of a river and a cottage by an artist whose name she could not remember. It had been so realistic that she could have mistaken it for a photograph, or even a window.
She may also have noticed how little variety was on display in that room. It was inhabited singly by portraits, mostly by the same artist. The walls were littered with them almost to the point of cluttering up the room. Even Agnes’ Alcove was mainly portraits- it seemed that she, too, lacked the drive to paint anything that wasn’t human.
Moreover, these portraits were not in different positions or backgrounds, but all featured their subject in precisely the same position on the paper. It just seemed on reflection to be- boring, lazy, unimaginative; a waste of the creativity that should be inherent in art.
That is what Kathy would have thought had she been in a better frame of mind. However, her frenzied brain was desperate to prove to herself that these paintings were simply paintings. Hope and Dread lived side by side in her belly. They were not the best of roommates: constantly struggling against one another; when one grew in size the other shrank away, and both knew that one of them would be extinguished when Kathy finally had the courage to turn the television on to Channel Fishing.
After a short while deliberating, panting and pacing, Kathy’s resolve strengthened. She grabbed the remote, switched it on and turned to channel 536.
A bearded man appeared on screen holding what seemed to be a herring. He was boasting of his most recent catch and demonstrating just how huge it had been by gesticulating with his arms. He seemed genuinely proud of it and was beaming widely at the camera.
Yet Kathy wasn’t interested. Her eyes were peeled; her ears were pricked- she felt like an animal in a forest, terse and tense to respond to any danger. She turned the sound down on the television and heard- silence. The paintings were not talking. They were not moving. All was still.
Hope began to win out; Dread began to shrink into nothingness. She scoured the room examining each painting in turn and looking for any sign of movement. Perhaps these paintings had come alive but were hiding their true nature from her?
Yet they were not. Each painting remained as still as any image should. David Tennant showed no signs of breathing; George Clooney did not seem about to unfold his arms; Mother Theresa’s face did not break into a compassionate smile. They were, as expected, mere images on canvas with no life in them.
Kathy nearly collapsed from relief a second time. The accident victim had not died; the paintings did not talk; all was comparatively well with the world.
She found herself slumped on one of the chairs in the room. She was in view of the still open door and could see the young receptionist looking at her with a concerned expression on his face. He asked her if she was alright, to which she responded with a weary smile.
Her attention turned to the chair now. It was by no means a brilliant chair: it was the kind of chair one buys when one has a limited budget and needs to buy in bulk for a community room that one knows is never going to be used. As such, it was made from a cheap grey material which was, nevertheless, surprisingly comfortable to the touch. It was the same consistency as sponge cake and had the same airy texture.
This material was cushioned in a hard, wooden chair frame. The legs, backrest and arms of the chair were made from a cheap MDF-type material which was much more disappointing to the touch than the spongy cushioned part: it felt rough, almost to the point of splintering. The colour was not that of real timber, but rather an artificial colour designed to deceive the sitter that it was pine or some other high quality material. While this effect was undoubtedly designed to make its occupier more impressed with his/her choice of chair, in reality it merely gave the chair a fake appearance that rendered it cheap-looking and unattractive.
Kathy was fascinated by the chair. For now, it was her whole reality. Her hands clung to the arms for dear life. The tips of her fingers caressed the rough wooden texture; felt its rings and knots; sought out the coarse, sharp bits and revelled in stroking them, tempting fate as if daring the chair to give her a splinter. She absorbed the feeling from her back and her bottom of the sponge like cushion and allowed herself to sink into it. She scrunched up her eyes and blocked out any image of the world: this was real. What she could feel now was real. She had confirmed that last night had not been real. It could not have been. It must have been a temporary madness which had- she prayed- worn off by now. And now, she revelled in the world of her senses, delighting in every tiny sensation she could feel: the wood on her hands, the cushions on her body, the shoes on her feet, the shirt on her legs- she felt it all more than she ever had before in a desperate attempt to convince herself that this was reality and to cling on to it for dear life.
She must have fallen asleep in this position, because she was interrupted from this by the young man tapping her on the shoulder. When she reluctantly opened her eyes, she saw his worried face and furrowed brow staring down at her as he leaned over her. He seemed startled and embarrassed to have woken her. It seemed she had woken to find him examining her almost like an insect or an interesting specimen in a lab. He drew back, his cheeks flushed and said meekly:
“Are you alright?”
Kathy stared at him. Then she smiled. Then she laughed. She stood up, patted him on the shoulder and declared loudly, “Yes! Yes, I am perfectly fine thank you!”
All of a sudden she grabbed his shoulder and squeezed. It must have been disturbing for the poor man, but she only meant to feel his body to see that he existed. Her fingertips felt the sensation of the soft fabric of his jacket and the fine grooves that ran down its arm. She grinned at the sensation and hugged him wildly.
The poor man didn’t know how to react. Though they had never spoken, he had felt that he had some measure of this woman and knew what she would be like. Today, though, their first conversation had revealed her to be at best weird, at worst insane. He drew himself from the situation awkwardly with an excuse about paperwork and left Kathy alone in the communal room.
Kathy was not bothered. She calmly headed back to her flat in order to prepare for the day and maybe head into work.
She walked into her flat and presently remembered the problem of the purple wall. Yet that no longer bothered her: she touched it, and her senses told her it was real. And what other evidence have I of what is real? She reasoned. I suppose I must accept the evidence of my senses, for there is no other evidence available to me.
She resolved- again- to contact her landlord and get the problem fixed.
The phone rang out for several minutes before a curt voice answered on the other end.
“Hello?” the voice inquired in an estuary twang. “Who is this?”
Kathy’s landlord spoke like a character from ‘Are You Being Served?’, and dressed like one too. He was never seen without a carefully ironed suit- from the most fashionable designer of the season, naturally. He was a man with a keen sense of style and looked down on anyone who lacked such grace when it came to looking good. If you wanted to rent one of his flats, the first thing he would do is look you up and down and judge whether you were fashionable enough to be his tenant. Of course, he did give rooms to the ‘common’ unfashionable man but that was purely out of necessity- yet he was visibly ruder with those tenants and visibly less available to help out.
Of course, even if he approved of your fashion, the only approval you would receive would be a curt nod and a thin smile. His head was long and oval in shape; he had short, brown hair and very thin lips- so thin it was sometimes difficult to tell whether he had any at all. His mouth was in a constant sneer and when he talked, which was rare and which usually consisted of saying only what must be said and nothing more, one had the distinct impression that he was talking down to you rather than with you.
Kathy hesitated. Given this character of her landlord, was it likely that he had secretly commissioned a partial repainting of her room? Perhaps it wasn’t likely, but… what other possibility could there be?
“It’s Kathy Turner,” replied Kathy. “One of your tenants.”
“Oh yes, you,” replied the landlord. Even down the phone, she could hear his sneer. Evidently she was not one of the fashionable tenants. “What do you want?”
“I have a problem with my flat. One of the walls has turned… purple.”
“Purple?” replied the landlord. His voice was thick with disapproval. “You haven’t repainted without my permission have you?”
“No, of course not,” replied Kathy ea
rnestly. “I just wondered if you had… erm… well, I woke up one morning and it was purple. Overnight it had changed colour. And I have no idea why, or how.”
A pause. Clearly, the landlord was having trouble believing this story. “It just… changed colour?” he said incredulously.
“Yes.”
Another pause. “And what do you want me to do about it?”
“Well come on over, have a look at it, fix it I guess.”
“Do you not like purple?” asked the landlord puzzlingly.
“Personally, no. But that’s not the issue. I didn’t repaint it but clearly somebody did, and I don’t know who or how but it must have been in the middle of the night. I don’t feel safe in my home anymore, and I need to, especially considering…”
Arnold flashed through her mind again, for the first time that day. She shuddered at the memory.
“Considering what?” asked the landlord impatiently.
“Nothing, nothing,” muttered Kathy hurriedly. She was not prepared to discuss those events now, and especially not with her landlord.
The landlord sighed. “I’ll be there this afternoon,” he said finally. With that, the conversation was over and the phone line went dead.
Kathy sighed, almost happily. “I’ll be there this afternoon” he had said; by the afternoon, everything would be sorted.
She decided to phone work and explain the situation. She told them that she had recovered and felt better now; that she was unable to come into work, but that she was willing to work from home if there was anything that needed doing.
Upon hearing this news, Harcroft returned to her old ways. Gone were the kind words and sympathetic noises; they were replaced by the standard harsh, strict business ethic. Her voice became as cold as ever as she ordered Kathy,
“Good. I want you to write me an opinion piece about how the government’s new budget will affect women in particular, and I want it done by 9 a.m. tomorrow.”
And that was that. Once the necessary formalities of polite society had been done with, the conversation was over and the phone was down. Kathy smiled. Her life was back to normal.
She settled down at her table with her laptop in front of her and a cup of coffee by her side. A copy of the government’s new budget had been emailed to her, and it was her job to read through the details and comment on it.
The document was dreary to say the least. It comprised of 57 pages in the smallest font imaginable and most of it was about tax. Kathy hated tax. She hated paying it and she hated reading about it. And given the recent recession and cuts in government spending, most of it wasn’t good news: some taxes were going up- although, surprise surprise, the wealthy were getting off lightly with what was, in effect, a tax break- and many areas of the public sector were being cut. It all added up to one simple idea: more money for fewer services. It made depressing reading.
Still, it was Kathy’s job to tell it to the public and to make it interesting. She tried to find an interesting slant on it to make her research less dull. To be fair, it wasn’t hard: tax may be a boring subject, but it’s quite infuriating when it’s bad news. And anger is good fuel. Anger makes for good articles and good motivation. Kathy had lost the idealist within her a long time ago, but at times such as this a small spark of it returned and grappled onto the hope that a few angry words by her in a national newspaper might make the government reconsider- or at least, make sure someone else gets a go in power when the next election comes around.
She tried to concentrate on her work, but she was sitting in her front room with the purple wall. She had deliberately positioned herself so that her back was to the wall and she did not have to look at it. Despite having decided it could all be explained rationally, she couldn’t shake a niggling feeling within her. She would often turn her head suddenly to check it out of some paranoid fear. She even got up occasionally to touch it and make sure it was real, physical. Each time it was. And yet… there was something in the corner of her eye that she could not get a detailed look at but which unnerved her all the same. Perhaps it was her mind imagining things, but sometimes our imaginings can consume our whole world and put a new slant on reality.
At one point, she had to stop work and do breathing exercises to calm down. She had pinned all her hopes on the landlord fixing the wall, explaining the problem, finding the solution. The landlord will fix it: this is the mantra she used whenever an unnamed worry entered her mind, whenever she felt the urge to turn her head and gaze at… honestly, she didn’t know what she was gazing at. Perhaps simply keeping the wall in her sight reassured her that it was still there; that it had not changed colour again or even disappeared. Perhaps this was an existential crisis.
Presently the doorbell rang and she nearly jumped out of her skin. By this point her earlier happy-ish mood had diminished and she had become entirely preoccupied by the wall. Her work was unfinished; in fact, it had barely started. She had written only two paragraphs before her anxiety had gotten the better of her and she was now staring fixedly at the wall, just waiting, tensed and ready, her body full of flight-or-fight adrenaline. She was looking at the door, too, and the windows; her mind was enveloped by the idea that somebody had gotten into her house in the middle of the night and repainted. The sheer absurdity of the idea surrounded her mind like a thick blanket. The complete incomprehensibility of a wall simply changing colour was now at the forefront of her mind.
She had been sitting there in that state for half an hour. It would be a mistake to say she was thinking about the wall, because she was not thinking at all; where normally a voice would be chatting away within her head there was now merely tension, with barely a whisper of thought in the back of her mind, not fully formed enough to be called thought. It may have belonged merely to the realm of instinct or emotion; yet this instinct or emotion was fully understood by her, even without thought or words.
So when the doorbell rang, it shook her out of her inner world. She leapt like a snake from her chair and hovered hesitantly on the floor before approaching the door and opening it.
Her landlord stood before her. She was ready to breathe a sigh of relief, but then saw that he had arrived with a young couple and, when he saw Kathy standing before him, had a look of shock and outrage on his face.
“Who are YOU?” he exclaimed ferociously.
This shocked Kathy to the core of her being. Such speech was completely out of character for her landlord. He was normally a demure, reserved man whose anger was expressed subtly and, for that, all the more terrifyingly. She did not understand what would provoke such an explosive reaction within him.
“I’m Kathy, your tenant,” she replied meekly. “We spoke on the phone earlier today.”
The landlord looked at her with a cruel smirk on his face. His eyes betrayed a rage barely hidden as he said, coolly and simply, “I have no tenant here. This is an empty flat.”
“Then why did you ring the doorbell?” asked Kathy.
“I was expecting my agent to answer. He should be here getting the flat ready for viewing.”
Kathy was unsure how to react to this situation. It all seemed rather surreal and Kathy was ready to laugh at it, were it not for the events of last night and the look of sincere confusion upon the faces of the couple accompanying the landlord. Everything was consistent with them coming to view a property they intended to buy- except the fact that Kathy already rented it.
The silence was broken when the landlord gazed inside the room.
“The wall in purple,” he said simply.
“Yes, that’s why I asked you to come,” replied Kathy.
“The wall should not be purple,” he stated, ignoring Kathy and gazing down at her with complete disdain. He pressed one of his long, thin fingers against the wall. “It is dry, too. Evidently it was painted a long time ago- long enough to dry.”
He paused.
“Did you break into my flat and decide to start repainting?” asked the landlord to Kathy, contempt dripping from
every word he uttered.
Kathy was aghast. She did not understand what was happening and was at a loss as to what to say.
The landlord’s hand suddenly enclosed around her arm. “Get out,” he ordered her. His voice was calm and quiet but betrayed a clear rage which was impossible to disguise.
Kathy began to protest, but with unexpected strength the landlord pulled her through the doorway and into the corridor and, in the same move, stepped into her flat with the couple. She was now outside her flat while he was inside.
“If I ever catch you trespassing on my property again, I’ll call the police.”
With that, he slammed the door shut.
Yet just before it closed on her, she caught a glimpse of the woman’s face. She was standing with the man- her husband, partner, boyfriend, brother; it had never been explained- behind the landlord. Her expression, like that of her husband, had been one of utter confusion throughout the incident; yet at the door was closing, her thin face transformed itself into an ugly smile and she said, barely audibly,
“Admiror, O paries…”
Kathy took a step back. She never heard the woman complete her sentence, but she could guess what the complete phrase would be: that Latin phrase from the terrible night before, when reality had confused itself or else she’d gone mad. Suddenly, somehow, her salvation- the arrival of the landlord who would fix everything- had instead plunged her back into her nightmare.
She stood there, outside her front door. Her front door of her flat. The flat in which she had lived for two years now. A feeling of indignity and rage grew up inside her at the rude way in which her landlord had treated her. Sure, it was rare that she contacted him- this had been the second time in all her tenancy- but he must remember that she was his tenant. At any rate, he must have remembered that he at least already had a tenant, who always paid the rent- and quite a considerable amount of rent, she thought to add, for the size of her flat.
Filled with a resolute determination, she barged forwards and attempted to get back in. The door was, however, locked; she ended up bumping into the door in a most undignified manner. Knocked back, and holding her nose (for she had banged it, and it hurt considerably), she began banging on the door and asserting- quite loudly- her right to enter her flat.
Her cries were to no avail, however. She could hear the landlord and the couple inside her flat discussing details of the accommodation. Presently the landlord was describing the kitchen as “cosy and convenient for modern living”. His voice was interesting to listen to: evidently he considered the young couple accompanying him as suitably stylish and fashionable, for his voice was empty of the disdain with which he spoke to Kathy. And yet an irritation was growing in his voice. He had decided to ignore Kathy’s pleas, but the unceasing relentless banging was clearly beginning to make him rather irate.
Nevertheless, it must have been five minutes before his patience wore thin. Through the door, listening to his sales spiel and his footsteps, Kathy could tell that the trio of intruders were in her bedroom discussing the interior décor. A complaint from the man in the couple about the “mad lady at the front door” prompted the landlord to leave his prospective tenants and march towards the entrance in order to give Kathy a good telling off.
His footsteps grew closer. It is remarkable how much one can discern from mere footsteps: the pace of his step informed Kathy of the landlord’s sense of urgency; despite this, the timbre and the rhythm maintained the landlord’s never-ending class and sense of style. Kathy could imagine him walking briskly through her living room-kitchen area: his brogue shoes treading purposefully on the carpet; his thin lips curled into a grimace of disdain.
The door opened: not fully, but just enough for the landlord’s head to peer out into the corridor.
“Stop this at once or I’ll call the police.”
With that, he shut the door and returned, just as briskly, to the couple.
At least, he thought he had shut the door; for Kathy had, unknown to him, stuck her foot in the doorway and now had a way back into her flat. She silently yet forcefully pushed the door open and marched back into what was rightfully hers, to take it back from her strange intruders.
As she stepped through the threshold, she was filled with silent, latent anger. The situation of the past few days had left her feeling weak, feeble, and afraid- yet this was not reality breaking its own rules; rather, this was a dodgy landlord seeking to steal back his flat unlawfully. This was too much. Rage spilled over a dam in Kathy’s mind, as if it had been building up for a long time and now, this intrusion represented a thunderstorm which had filled the dam to overflowing. She was angry at her landlord. She was angry at the couple. She was angry at the paintings and the wall and the man with the changing face from the night before. And all that anger was ready to be unleashed…
…until she stepped through the doorway, when she was instantly returned to the terrified status of a helpless child. For before her lay an immaculate, show-home flat: she was standing by the doorway in a room she had once known intimately. She had lived here for two years. She had had boyfriends over here and had cuddles on the sofa; she had been here with friends, eating ice-cream and watching films; she had sobbed into that cushion on the end of her sofa when she had been dumped, or when someone had died in a film, or simply when she had become emotional for no discernible reason. This flat was her home, and it contained many memories; it was like an extension of herself.
But the flat before her was a show-flat. The cream carpet was brand new: gone were the familiar red wine or ice cream stains. The table, on which she did all her work and ate all her food, lacked the worn, used feel she had grown to love. She walked over to it and felt its surface: smooth, brand new. Gone was the solidified glue from when she was trying to do some DIY and had accidentally pointed the glue gun at her table.
In short, the flat looked as if nobody lived in it. It looked immaculate, brand-new, sparkling: there was no indication that it was her home.
So much so that all the personal touches she had added were gone, too. The paintings on the wall she had so carefully chosen and put up…
…painting…
She turned on the spot and gazed at the purple wall. Only it was no longer purple: it had returned to the colour of all the other walls, and looked completely right and in place. There was no longer anything about that wall which made it stand out at all.
She ran up to it and pressed her hand against it. It was as she had feared: it was dry, rough and felt as though the paint job had been done months before. There was no possibility that the landlord could have done all this in the five minutes he had been in her flat.
A sickening thought struck her. She turned on her heel once more and stared, thunderstruck, at the table. It was empty. Her laptop, with which she had been working only ten minutes ago, was gone. All her work, all the memories and photos it contained, were gone.
The flat showed no evidence that she, or indeed anyone, had ever lived there. It was as if in her five minute absence, all trace of her having lived there had vanished and it had reverted to the form it had been in when she had moved in: clean, pristine, devoid of personality.
Unsure what to do, she stood there, in the corner of her front room, transfixed on the spot. She was not lost in thought; rather, she was lost in nothingness. No words or images passed through her mind. There was simply silence and numbness.
She was only vaguely aware of the three trespassers still being present in her flat. They were still in the bedroom. Kathy could hear them, muffled as if through glass, discussing the interior décor. Absent-mindedly she grasped onto their conversation. The man was talking with enthusiasm about his vision for the bedroom. Apparently, he was a designer by trade and was imagining elaborate schemes for decoration, including a rhino’s head on the wall and leopard-skin wallpaper. The landlord’s tone of voice had become irritated when talking with the man: he was always a man of few words, but Kathy could tell that the man’s pla
ns did not go with his idea of how the flat should look. His earlier friendliness towards the couple, based on their stylish dress sense, had waned and now he was explaining curtly that he would not allow certain changes to the flat. Upon hearing this, the man seemed downtrodden and stopped talking.
Kathy grew bored of listening to their conversation and began to drift away in her mind. She imagined strange, incomprehensible images unrelated neither to each other nor to reality: a unicorn in space; a red train entering a tunnel; a buffalo, dancing on Broadway; Thomas in handcuffs being led away by police; a cat she had once owned as a child called Ben who had sadly been put down… she found her mind focussed on that terrible event and focussed on the emotions she had felt that day. She relived the experience of looking at her cat’s dead body, laid out on the table; she remembered burying him; she remembered the feeling of great betrayal that she had allowed her parents to kill, murder, slaughter her friend, her brother, the flurry, fluffy companion who had been there all her life… she remembered the terrible, terrible sadness that would not lift for weeks… she remembered…
Then she stopped remembering as she was brought back to reality and greeted by a curious scene before her. The landlord and the couple were now in the front room. The landlord was standing quite close to her, almost so close that his nose was touching hers; the couple were standing in the background, gazing worriedly at her. The door was open and two policemen, accompanied by the receptionist, were standing in the doorway. The policemen had stern, hard looks upon their faces; the receptionist looked compassionate but confused, his brow furrowed in its characteristic way.
She stayed perfectly still and moved only her eyes to discern the situation. She had retreated into her imagination to escape what reality was throwing at her: now that she was back, it had still not changed. The flat, which had borne all the hallmarks of her ownership just an hour before, was still devoid of such evidence. Her gaze fell upon the landlord’s nose. It was so close that she could make out the tiniest details: the hair in his nostrils; the pores on his skin; its various shades of pink, red and orange as it flared in barely disguisable annoyance.
“Get out,” ordered the landlord simply.
Kathy was dumbfounded. She could barely speak except for an almost inaudible and meek “No.”
“Ma’am, if you don’t vacate the premises we will have to arrest you for trespass,” came a voice behind her. It was one of the police officers. There were a male and a female police officer, and it was unclear which of them was talking: either the man had a very feminine voice, or the woman sounded quite butch. Kathy spun round on the spot to see who was speaking, but by the time she had turned enough to have them in her sights the speaker had finished speaking and she was given no clue which had addressed her.
“But this is my home,” she uttered imperceptibly. Those further away strained to hear her muttered reply; only the landlord had heard what she had said, and replied,
“This is not your home. This is my flat. Get out.”
Kathy felt a warm touch on her left arm. It was the receptionist. He looked at her in a kindly manner and said, “It’s alright. We’ll get you the help you need. Just come with us and everything will be alright.”
We’ll get you the help you need… the words flashed through Kathy’s mind and re-awoke the anger that had died on entry. They thought she was mad! They thought she had some sort of mental condition and needed psychiatric help! She felt so insulted that words practically burst out of her, loudly and crudely, bitterly and uncontrollably:
“No, this is my home. The only reason any of you are here is because I phoned you”- at this point a shaking finger was pointed at the landlord- “to come and fix my wall, because two nights or so ago it had inexplicably turned purple.”
She suddenly faltered and realised the impact of her words. To the people around her, she must have sounded ridiculous for the wall to which she was now indicating was clearly not purple, but the standard shade of yellow that every other wall in the flat exhibited. Nevertheless, she faltered only for a second before continuing:
“You said you’d come this afternoon, but you only arrived in the evening. You were late!”
It seemed her anger was ready to pick up on anything now, even the most marginal and insignificant detail.
“And… and… why did you ring the doorbell when you came? If nobody is meant to be living here, why did you ring the doorbell?”
Her audience had been struck dumb. Everyone, bar the landlord, had a completely blank expression on their faces; the landlord, being the exception, maintained a look of mere annoyance, although his nostrils were more flared than before.
“And you were only in here for five minutes! And when I come back in, all my stuff is gone!”
Presently she rushed to her table and pointed an accusing finger at the location where her laptop used to be.
“My laptop!” she shrieked. “My laptop was here just fifteen minutes ago! Where is it now? Where is it?”
She stood there, panting and breathless. Finally her words had stopped; she no longer had anything to say, and her rage died down into a sort of despair so that her panting became sobbing and she almost struggled to stand.
The receptionist came over to her and supported her. His blank expression had been replaced once more with a look of concern as his warm, kindly hands grabbed her back and arm and prevented her from falling.
“You…” she said breathlessly to the receptionist. “You! I spoke to you, this morning. You know me! I’ve lived here two years! We’ve seen each other practically every morning as I went to work! Tell me… tell me you know I’m not mad?”
The receptionist said nothing, but merely looked at her sadly.
“That man! Last night! That man who was hit by a lorry! You told me this morning that he was injured in hospital! But still alive! You told me!” she yelled shrilly.
“I… I don’t know any man, sorry,” said the receptionist mournfully.
“Then tell me,” broke Kathy’s voice through barely containable sobs, “Tell me you know me. Because I’ve lived here for two years and I’ve seen you every day and I know my landlord but nobody here seems to recognise me and my flat has disowned me and…”
Her voice broke away and she could not contain her despair any longer.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know you. And this flat has been empty all year. Nobody has lived here.”
The words cut Kathy like a knife. If this was today’s nightmare, she wanted to go back to yesterday’s; even with the talking paintings and the purple wall, it was at least preferable to this, to this nightmare of non-existence, where nobody recognises you…
Maybe she was mad. Maybe she was. She examined her mind and found that nothing corresponded to reality anymore. She was the absurd woman; or maybe reality itself had become absurd. In the past 24 hours, reality had defied all the expectations she had ever had of it from what she had learnt or what she had remembered. Maybe her mind was wrong and maybe her memories were all fake and maybe she was just a mad lady who often formed fake memories and ended up gate-crashing flats that weren’t hers and breaking down in tears. Or maybe reality itself had gone wrong, and her memories were correct but her world was not.
Either way, reality had become absurd and she hated it. She despised it. She could not understand it. The message of her senses fundamentally disagreed with everything her memory and her brain told her the world should be, and she did not know what to believe now.
“Ma’am, you have to leave now or we will have no choice but to arrest you,” declared the androgynous police voice again. This time it had an added element of both compassion and irritation, but the message was the same: she was being turned out onto the street, out of her home, with nothing but the clothes on her back. She had not even her identity anymore.
“We’ll get you the help you need. Don’t worry,” soothed the receptionist- only it was not a soothing sentiment, but rather one which made Kathy all the mo
re agitated.
The woman caught Kathy’s eye. Her mouth had slowly curled into that terrible, terrible smile and her mouth opened. It was like watching in slow motion and Kathy knew the words that were about to come out:
“Admiror, O paries, te non cecidisse ruinis qui tot scriptorum taedia sustineas”
Kathy screamed and immediately glanced at the wall that had been purple not so long ago. Yet it remained its disquieting shade of yellow, as if mocking her. Today was a different perversion of reality. She glanced back at the woman to find that she was still smiling that awful smile and she glanced at all the faces around the room looking intently at her: the mocking landlord; the absent-minded man; the grinning woman; the concerned receptionist; the stern police officers, who both seemed to wear exactly the same expression and act in unison.
It was all too much for Kathy. She let out one last shriek and sprinted as fast as she could out of her flat and into the corridor; from the corridor into the lift; and from the lift, through the reception and into the park that lay opposite her block of flats, where she rested against a tree exhausted, both emotionally and physically.
She lay there, slumped against the tree trunk, for what seemed like hours. It is amazing how, when reality falls apart, you cling onto the simplest of things; how, for example, when a loved one dies, or your house burns down, you suddenly notice the things that lie hidden in the background most of the time: the inherent beauty of birdsong; the way the grass dances in the wind and the contrast between its various shades of green; the tranquillity of a park on a Sunday afternoon, with families playing and couples cuddling. It is as if you return to your basest form, without any human constructs or concepts: you are simply a being, existing in the world and enjoying its rich variety.
Perhaps it is a defence mechanism. Perhaps it is the mind’s response to an information overload: it simply refuses to process it, and instead focuses on the simple things. In a way, it becomes once more a child’s mind, gazing in wonder at every little, minor detail in its vision.
Of course, such innocence is merely the disguise of a deep emotional turmoil going on inside: while Kathy’s conscious mind was suddenly in a state of numb bliss, surveying the park scene and feeling the rough bark, beneath the surface her mind was deeply troubled. Still, despite the shallowness of her newfound calm, she was grateful that the panic she had felt on fleeing the flat had subsided.
She entertained thoughts that none of it had happened, and that if she were to return to her flat now, she would find it empty, with the door open and all her things returned. It would turn out that her nightmare had been just that- a nightmare, nothing more than the frenzied hallucinations of a dreaming mind… or a mad one.
And it was entirely possible. Yet Kathy doubted it. Her gut told her that if she were to try to return home, she would find the door locked and her landlord denying any knowledge of her.
She sighed, and sank deeper into the tree-trunk, presently curling into a half-foetal position. It is strange how simply curling up into a ball shape, with legs and arms and head hidden as far as possible, can provide some, small, measure of comfort. The storm now raging beneath the surface of her mind was stilled slightly from a hurricane into a mere gale. Yet, if we are to extend this maritime metaphor, this storm was firmly beneath the surface; Kathy found herself in the position of a sailor on calm waters, yet who is aware that just five metres below the deceptively calm surface the currents are twisting and foaming and it is only a matter of time before they break through and come crashing in as waves.
So for the moment she enjoyed her relative calm. She knew she’d have to deal with whatever was happening sooner or later, but for the moment she contented herself to close her eyes and hide in unreality…
She smirked. Here she was, trying to escape reality within her own head, when she wasn’t even sure that what was happening outside her head was reality. She giggled at the thought that instead of trying to escape reality, maybe she should be trying to get back into it.
The dirt at the foot of the tree was pleasant to lie on. Sure, a mattress and a bed would have been better, but she didn’t dwell on that. Little grains of soil penetrated through the gaps in the fabric of her clothes. As she lay there longer, little legs began to crawl along her skin: beetles or spiders or millipedes, welcoming her as if she were a new piece of furniture. They were a strange comfort- a reminder that she was not entirely alone.
Presently she began to shiver. It was early evening, around seven o’clock. She opened one eye wide enough to see that the sun was in its last stage of setting and the last rays of its light were illuminating the horizon a dazzling red colour.
The thought occurred to her that she was now homeless. It reminded her of a few months back, when she had reported on the impact of public sector spending cuts on the more vulnerable members of society. The main thesis of her article was the impact they would have on the homeless, and how the number of homeless people would- and already had begun to- rise dramatically. Now, she would be one of them.
As part of her investigation, she had interviewed a woman called Martha. She had been living on the streets for five years now. Having been through the social services and charity hostels, she had always ended up back on the street due to a cocktail of various mental illnesses that most organisations were simply unable to cope with. Despite this, Martha had been a charming woman. She had described how she had been a fairly normal member of society: a good job, good marriage, two kids. Then she had decided to pack it all in and join the army. She had served in Northern Ireland and come home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The army had been unable- or unwilling- to help her. She was discharged from service. Her old job wouldn’t take her back, and she struggled to find a new one. Her regular nightmares put a strain on her marriage. In the end, she had fled terrified from her home after seeing a new, unpleasant side to her husband when he had resorted to domestic violence as a result of the marital difficulties. Her friends had put her up for a while, but that wasn’t a permanent solution and eventually they grew tired of supporting her and she ended up homeless and begging.
Begging. Is that something Kathy would have to do? The thought sent a shudder down her spine.
Martha had been an inspiration, though. She had survived five years on the streets. It made Kathy feel like she, too, could survive. Plus, Martha had done that with PTSD. She had reported still having regular nightmares: one particular event that frequently appeared in her dreams had been one time when she had been forced to kill an enemy combatant. Of course, that is what soldiers do- but even with the most rigorous training, there remains a small voice within your head saying killing is wrong. At least, that was the case for Martha. She had kept telling herself that it had been necessary, that unless she had pulled the trigger, ten others would have died- yet the image of that woman’s face had stuck in her memory: the moment when the life fled from her eyes; the thud as she crashed to the ground; even the way her blood-matted hair had moved in the breeze- these images had haunted Martha nightly since that fatal day.
Of course, she had been called a “hero” when she came home. Headlines had praised her heroism and detailed how she had taken a difficult decision to save the lives of her colleagues. But that was not how Martha had remembered it. And in the end, the papers and the public didn’t remember either. There was a stark contrast between the hero’s welcome she had received on her return from duty all those years ago and the looks of disgust and loathing she had come to receive from members of the public.
The piece, now Kathy recalled, had been called “Martha’s story: from heroism to homelessness”. It had contained a brief mention of other ways in which the cuts could affect those more vulnerable in society, but the main bulk- as the headline suggests- was about Martha’s tragic case.
Kathy thought of Martha now, lying next to that tree. For all intents and purposes, she was now homeless. She tried to remember something, anything, that Martha may have said in that interview
which could help her survive now.
Her thoughts were interrupted presently by a sound. Her ears grew alert and her eyes snapped open. In her hours lying by the tree, she had grown used to the sounds of the park: the children playing, the birds tweeting, the dogs barking. Those had been background sounds, however. Lying so close to the grass, her ears had gradually become attuned to the noise of the insect world. She had gradually become fascinated by the busying about of the ants and the spiders. Especially lately, now that the sky was growing dark and the people were going home, she had become ever more aware of the miniature world around her. Yet a new sound had arrived: a loud, hard sound, close by- not more that a metre away.
It startled her. She opened her eyes to see a boot. It was leather and dazzling, as if the owner’s chief hobby was to spend all day, every day polishing it to perfection. Someone had once told Kathy that you can tell a lot about a man from his shoes- without looking at anything else, she could guess that the man before her was a professional of some kind who took his work seriously.
Her eyes moved further up the stranger. It must be said at this point that, having been so stationary for so long, she had almost forgotten how to stand up or sit up- at any rate, her body was stiff and achy. It didn’t even occur to her at this point to move anything but her eyes, perhaps as some sort of animal instinct along the lines of playing dead in the face of danger.
The stranger wore trim, black trousers with a pinstripe pattern on them. His legs seemed too thin for his trousers- she could see them in the gap between where his socks ended and his legging began. Kathy reasoned that the stranger must be a tall fellow, for his trousers were probably the right length but far too wide.
She presently noticed a stick by his side. It was a walking stick, but more like a fashionable cane than one used by the elderly or infirm to move around. It was an ornate cane of golden colour which glimmered in the dying sunlight.
By this point, Kathy had made up her mind not to fear her curious visitor. She reasoned he was probably a city worker on his way home, who had chanced upon an unfortunate creature such as herself and wanted to be of assistance.
She looked up at his torso to see what she expected: white shirt, black jacket, crisp bow tie and bowler hat.
His look was quite eccentric, to be honest, as if he had just arrived from the 1950s. Certainly it was the first bowler hat Kathy had ever seen in London.
And yet, despite this quintessentially English dress, the man did not look like the typical Englishman his clothes would suggest- rather, his face was reminiscent of Harrison Ford or some other American action hero: his rugged skin seemed to be evidence of a life of exploration and adventure rather than office drudgery and accounts or banking.
Kathy had still not moved. She was eyeing up her visitor in a tired manner. It is true that the most tiring thing you can do is nothing; and, given that Kathy had done precisely that since fleeing her flat, she was exhausted.
She waited for her visitor to start the conversation. She was expecting him to inquire about whether she was ok, or to offer her assistance.
Instead, he remained absolutely silent. After about a minute of examining her with a look of fresh-faced curiosity, he promptly jumped in the air and landed smoothly in a seated position against the tree next to Kathy.
His movement astonished her. It was fluid and seamless, as if his office-worker uniform was merely a costume and his actual occupation was something athletic, like a dancer, long-distance jumper or actor. His face was presently obscured from Kathy’s view by his bowler hat. When he lifted his head, she could see that he was smiling weirdly at her; though it must be noted that this was not the creepy smile of someone to be avoided, but the friendly smile of an eccentric gentleman. Despite the oddity of the situation, Kathy felt utterly at ease with the situation. In fact, the stranger amused her slightly and provided a welcome distraction to the tumultuous events of the day. Her recent life had been anything but normal; it was nice, for a change, to have something nice-weird happening.
The stranger remained completely silent: yet it was not an awkward silence. Kathy met his gaze- for he was looking straight at her- and there seemed to be a sprightly spirit inside him, as if he had retained all the innocence of childhood and been unpolluted by the natural cynicism of adult life. She found herself smiling along with him, and then, almost simultaneously with him, she found herself starting to smirk; then to chuckle; then to giggle, and finally to bellow with laughter. The picture was indeed a strange one: two people, in the twilight of the day, sitting beside a tree helpless with laughter, despite having met only minutes before and despite knowing nothing of one another.
The jollity lasted for at least ten minutes. As one of them began to calm down, the other would invoke a new fit of giggles in the first, and vice versa. When finally they calmed down, Kathy was in much better spirits and had almost forgotten the events of the day.
“What’s your name?” she asked him in a friendly manner.
The stranger suddenly looked shocked, as if he had forgotten something. His face contorted in a thoughtful expression as he seemed to be searching within his head for a piece of information long forgotten. After a minute, his expression returned to the jovial one it had been earlier and he shrugged his shoulders in a nonchalant way. His manner was entirely comical, whether or not he had intended that effect, and it sparked off a new fit of giggles which incapacitated the two of them for another ten minutes.
They eventually calmed down, and resumed sitting there in silence. Kathy began to notice little things about this man: his mannerisms almost perfectly matched her own. He was identical to her in the way he would clasp his hands together when relaxed as if meditating or praying; in the way he occasionally rubbed his head against the tree for comfort; in the way he kept glancing at his shoes with interest for brief moments. Each of these habits were peculiar to Kathy, and yet this stranger was mimicking her exactly. He was not exactly copying her, in the manner that children will repeat and imitate their peers in order to annoy them; rather, he was reacting naturally to stimuli in exactly the same way that Kathy would have done. Kathy found this bizarre, but said nothing; instead of making her feel uncomfortable, it somehow served to reassure her and make her feel even more secure in the presence of the stranger.
They sat in this manner for several minutes. Kathy began to lose interest in the stranger and ceased staring at him so intently; he became a mere comforting presence, who did not need to do anything other than be there in order to somehow reassure her that everything was going to be alright. The events of the day once more resurfaced in Kathy’s mind and, after the welcome respite of the stranger and his laughter, she felt more able to deal with them rationally. She now had a philosophical attitude towards her predicament, as if looking at herself as an objective observer, outside herself.
She had once had a friend back in her university days called Jasmine. It was a sad fact that they had lost touch since- while Kathy had gone on to pursue her high-powered career in national journalism, Jasmine had joined a commune in India which, due to the peculiarities of their sect, forbade any technology within the community (and thus communication via phone or internet was impossible)- but she had fond memories of the times spent with her. They had often helped each other with revision during exam time, and through this process each of them had picked up elements of the other’s course by osmosis. Jasmine had been a student of psychology: Kathy suddenly remembered one of their revision sessions where Jasmine had been stressing over her memory module. The exam had been only a few days away, and Jasmine had still been feeling completely underprepared. She had asked Kathy to test her on what she knew, and Kathy had been fascinated that memory was not what it seemed; if you knew how, it was worryingly easy to manipulate. Hypnosis, for example, often distorted or created old memories rather than tapping into hidden ones, as hypnotists often claim. The memory of this session had floated back into Kathy’s consciousness, and she began to wonder whether
she was the victim of false memories. She had heard that many people’s memories of childhood were pure fabrications; that, when the adult discussed it with parents of siblings, the latter would correct the memory by reporting that the incident, recollected with complete clarity by the grown-up, had merely been something she had seen on TV at the age of five, or something her brother had done instead. This was plausible for little incidents, such as a day playing in the park, or a painting a child had done- but surely the mind could not fabricate an entire life- a home, friends, acquaintances- out of nothing?
Kathy had by now been staring into space for some time, and as she reminisced and thought her expression had become increasingly concerned: her forehead had contorted into thoughtful wrinkles, and her eyes betrayed a sullen heart. The stranger, who had also become engrossed in his own thoughts and who had seemed perfectly content to sit beside the tree mimicking Kathy’s quirks exactly, was now staring attentively at his companion. She noticed, and was quickly drawn out of her world of thought. A solitary tear had appeared from her eye: evidence of the heartache of a mind trying to fathom whether her identity was fiction or fact. The stranger had been a comfort beforehand, but now his stare was penetrating and deep. It felt as if he were peering into the depths of her soul and understanding every thought and emotion going through her head. It unnerved her. She backed away slightly, unsure of what to say or do. In the end, the moment fell to him:
“It is real. It is all real,” he said suddenly. His hand reached out to touch her shoulder; she flinched. “It’s okay. I understand. I know everything that has happened to you today, and yesterday, and in the past few weeks…”
The stranger glanced around nervously. This was a shocking change from his previous comic eccentricity. His voice, which had a thick texture like good wine, took on a tone of urgency. Kathy was surprised at his voice: it was not at all the typical posh city worker accent she had been expecting. Even more surprising was the expression which now occupied his face, for he seemed to be as surprised by his own voice as she was; moreover, his ‘surprised’ expression was the absolute mirror of Kathy’s ‘surprised expression’, right down to the subtleties of the muscle movements and the extent to which the eyebrows had risen. It was as if Katy was looking at her own face on another person’s head. This exact mimicking, which had once comforted her and made her feel at ease, was now seriously unnerving to her so that she wanted sincerely to run away from this man- but something stopped her. It was as if she was frozen to the spot, but not by fear: it was a strange mix of feelings which held her there, chief of which was curiosity, but which was followed closely by something she had never felt before for which she had no name. It was like apprehension, but different enough that the word “apprehension” could not encapsulate its true expression. Whatever it was, she felt intrigued by this man who seemed to understand her so well- and at the same time this very same fact was beginning to scare her.
“…and I can’t tell you how I know. You’ll have to trust me, and I know that’s difficult coming from a stranger who is only just now speaking to you for the first time, but this is important.”
He glanced around once more, and started at the sight of two men in suits. They glanced back at him with an air of indifferent curiosity before continuing through the park. Apparently satisfied- for the moment- that they were safe, the man continued.
“I don’t know how long I have left. They could be monitoring our - sorry, my - every move.” His slip of the tongue provoked a nervous smile from him which was difficult to read, even though this was a man who seemed to act and speak with exactly the same mannerisms as Kathy.
He glanced around again. The two suited figures were once more the subject of his attentions. One was talking on his mobile phone, while the other was standing beside him nonchalantly. To Kathy, they seemed completely innocent; yet the stranger was made nervous by their presence.
“Go to Oxford Street. Find 16 Oxford Street, and be there at precisely thirteen minutes past nine tonight. It is vitally important.”
The stranger bit his lip, as if contemplating. He seemed more wary with every word he said, like a child who is nervous about breaking the rules.
“Actually, I…. I don’t know if that’s…”
At this point he became distracted again by the suited figures. The first figure remained on the phone; the second was now looking their way. The stranger became at the same time more nervous and yet more resolved, and turned back to Kathy. A new, authoritative look had entered his eyes: it was difficult to look into them, and yet difficult to look away. He had the appearance of a martyr.
“No, go. You must. We- sorry, you- have no choice.”
His eyes darted towards the two suits again. The second figure was now on the phone. Though he was far away, it was clear that his conversation was urgent and serious.
“We can’t avoid it, anyway…” muttered the stranger under his breath, thinking aloud and forgetting he had an audience. Kathy was puzzled by this behaviour; yet it was momentary. He met Kathy’s gaze once more and declared, “Sixteen Oxford Street, 9:13 p.m. Go.”
He looked away briefly. When he looked back, tears were visible in his eyes and his face was quivering with the apparent effort of holding back emotion. He formed his mouth into a sad smile and gazed at Kathy with a look so full of longing and loss that she felt compelled to reach out to this poor individual.
“Well, goodbye…” he said, before falling into a string of incoherent mutterings: “I’ll miss… no, you wouldn’t… if only…”
Then, with a final, deep sigh, as if gasping for his last breath of fresh air on this Earth, his head drooped and he gazed at the ground.
Kathy was worried: was he ill? Or dead? Yet when she moved to grab him, he slowly raised his head; the emotion of the previous second had vanished and been replaced by his normal eccentric happiness. Although his episode seemed to have ended, a trance-like state was present in his expression as if he were no longer aware of what was happening in the world.
“What’s your name?” asked Kathy with concerned sympathy.
The stranger glanced at her as if he had forgotten she was there. “I… I don’t know,” he said, and shrugged his shoulders gaily. He began laughing once more, but this time Kathy didn’t join in.
She glanced over at the suited figures and saw that the first had finished talking on the phone. The second gave him a subtle nod, and the first took out a small handheld device from his pocket. The stranger was looking at the scene, too; although he seemed to be in some sort of mindless trance, where the whole event- which had worried him mere moments before- struck him as hilarious. It was as if he had overdosed on laughing gas.
Kathy was staring intently at the two men. The first slammed his finger onto the device resolutely, and Kathy heard a shuffling beside her. She glanced around to see that the stranger was now standing up, looking down at her- although he seemed an entirely different person. The mannerisms and speech he had copied from Kathy were gone now: he was once more his own man, and one who seemingly neither remembered nor cared for Kathy. The previous eccentric was now gazing down at her with a look of patronising, pitiful judgement.
After a rude grunt, the stranger departed. Yet he left behind an impression on our young heroine, and an instruction: go to 16 Oxford Street at precisely 9:13 p.m.