Mum smiled at me, rather sadly.
Riley came out of his bedroom, car keys at the ready, and saw the envelope in my hand. ‘Oh, are we doing that now?’ He reached into a drawer in the hall table and came over to the dining table with a pile of envelopes in his hand. He threw them down on the table, grabbed a poppadom and crushed it in his mouth. ‘Do me a favour, will you, sis? Stop ignoring your life. These were blocking my postbox up.’
At first I had been indifferent towards my life, now, after the day I’d had, I was angry at it, but then these letters being sent to my family made me even angrier. I was due to meet him the following day in Starbucks. I had insisted he didn’t visit my apartment. Edna had called to tell me we’d been given the day off work and I was glad of it this time, not just for the break from the job but because I was genuinely embarrassed about the spectacular style in which my lack of Spanish was discovered. To deliberately put me in a situation just to get me to meet him was beyond despicable. He hadn’t just jeopardised my safety but the safety of everybody in that room. Because of this anger, I was looking forward to my second appointment with Life.
The following day as I worked through intelligent nasty things to say to my life, my mobile rang. It was a number I didn’t recognise so I ignored it. But it rang again. And again. Then there was banging on the door. I rushed to open it. It was my neighbour, whose name I couldn’t remember, in a panicked state.
‘I’m so sorry to disturb you. It’s my mother. My brother called me. They told me to go to the hospital immediately.’
‘No problem.’ I grabbed my keys and closed my door behind me. She was trembling.
‘It’s okay, you need to go to her,’ I said gently.
She nodded. ‘It’s just that I’ve never left him before …’
‘It’s okay. Trust me, it’ll be fine.’
She led me into the apartment and in a jittery state brought me around it, shooting orders at me. ‘I’ve made his bottle; warm it up before you feed him. He’ll only drink it if it’s warm. He feeds at seven thirty, he likes to watch In the Night Garden before going to bed. Just press play on the DVD. Then he goes straight down. He won’t sleep without Ben. Ben is the pirate teddy over there. If he wakes up and is distressed, singing “Twinkle Twinkle” will calm him down.’ She brought me around showing me everything, teething rings, cuddly toys, the steriliser in case I dropped the bottle and needed to make a fresh one. She looked at her watch. ‘I’d really better go.’ She stalled. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t, maybe I should stay.’
‘Go. Everything is fine here.’
‘Yes, you’re right.’ She threw on her coat and opened the door. ‘Okay. I’m not expecting anybody to call around, and you won’t have friends over or anything, will you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘And you’ve got my mobile number, haven’t you?
‘In here,’ I waved my phone in the air.
‘Okay. Thank you.’ She bent over the playpen. ‘Bye, baby. Mummy will be home soon,’ she said, tears in her eyes. And she was gone.
Which left me in trouble. I called Life’s office but there was no answer, and his secretary didn’t answer either which meant she had finished for the day and he was already en route to Starbucks. I waited until it was time for us to meet before calling Starbucks.
‘Hello,’ a stressed-out guy sounding under pressure answered.
‘Hi, I’m supposed to be meeting someone there right now and I need to tell them—’
‘What’s their name?’ he interrupted.
‘Oh, em, actually I don’t know his name but he’s wearing a suit, probably looks a little stressed and tired and—’
‘Hey, someone on the phone for you,’ he shouted down my ear and he was gone. I heard the phone being passed over.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi,’ I said in my friendliest voice. ‘You’ll never believe what just happened.’
‘You’d better not be calling to cancel,’ he said immediately. ‘I seriously hope you’re just running late, which is insulting enough to be perfectly honest, but anything but cancelling.’
‘I am, but not for the reason you think.’
‘What reason do you think I think?’
‘That I’m not interested in you and that’s not true, well it kind of is true and I’m learning I have to change that, but it’s not the reason I’m cancelling. A neighbour of mine asked me to babysit. Her mother is really sick and she had to rush to the hospital.’
He was silent as he considered it. ‘That’s right up there with “my dog ate my homework”.’
‘No, it’s not, it’s not even close.’
‘What’s your neighbour’s name?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘That’s the worst lie you’ve ever come up with.’
‘Because it’s not a lie. If I was lying I would have made up a name like … Claire. Actually, I think that is her name. Claire,’ I said. ‘Her name’s Claire.’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘No. I’m babysitting.’
‘Where?’
‘In her apartment. Across the hall from mine. But you can’t come here in case that’s what you’re thinking. She specifically said no strangers allowed in.’
‘I wouldn’t be a stranger if you’d keep our appointments.’
‘Well, let’s not punish her for my mistakes, shall we.’
He ended the call in less of a rage than he began it and, I hoped, believing every word I’d said. However, I was settled on the rocking chair watching Makka Pakka on the Pinky Ponk drinking pinky ponk juice in In the Night Garden but really thinking about the events of the day before when I heard knocking on my door for the second time that night. I opened the door and saw him, standing at the door to my apartment, his back turned to me.
‘Are you checking up on me?’ I asked.
He turned.
‘You shaved,’ I said, surprised. ‘You don’t look nearly as miserable as you were.’
He look past me in into the apartment. ‘So, where’s the baby?’
‘You can’t come in. This is not my home, I can’t just let you in.’
‘Fine, but at least you can show me the baby. For all I know you could have just broken into this apartment in order to get away from me. And don’t look at me like that, that’s exactly the kind of thing you’d do.’
I sighed. ‘I can’t show you the baby.’
‘Just bring it to the door. I won’t touch it or anything.’
‘I can’t show you the baby.’
‘Show me the baby,’ he repeated in turn. ‘Show me the baby, show me the baby.’
‘Shut up,’ I hissed. ‘There is no baby.’
‘I knew it.’
‘No, you don’t know anything.’ Then I whispered, ‘She thinks there’s a baby, but there is no baby. There was a baby but he died, and she thinks or she pretends, or I don’t know what she does, but she acts like there’s a baby. There is no baby.’
He looked uncertain, looked past me in the hall. ‘I see a lot of baby things lying around.’
‘There are. She takes the buggy out for a walk but it’s always empty, she thinks he’s teething and crying all night but I don’t hear anything. There’s no baby here. I’ve been looking at the photos and he’s the oldest in this. I think he was at least one when he died. Here.’
I took a photo from the hall table and passed it to him.
‘Who’s the man?’
‘I think he’s her husband but I haven’t seen him for at least a year. I don’t think he could cope with her like this.’
‘Well, that’s depressing.’ He handed the photo back to me and we sat in silence for a moment, both sobered by the situation. Life broke the minute’s silence. ‘So you have to stay in there even though there’s no baby?’
‘If I leave and she comes back, I can’t tell her that it’s because she has no baby, that would be cruel.’
‘So you can’t come out and I can’t go in,’ he said. ??
?Oh, the irony.’ He smiled and for the briefest moment he was attractive. ‘We can talk here,’ he said.
‘We already are.’
He slithered down the door and sat on the ground in the hallway. I followed him and sat across from him in the hallway of the apartment. A neighbour got out of the elevator, took a look at us and walked through the middle. We stared at one another in silence.
‘People can see you, can’t they?’ I asked.
‘What do you think I am, a ghost?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I may be completely invisible to you but other people in this world pay plenty of attention to me. Other people actually want to know about me.’
‘Okay, okay, touchy,’ I said.
‘Are you ready to talk?’
‘I’m angry at you,’ I said almost immediately, suddenly remembering all that I’d rehearsed in my head.
‘Why?’
‘Because of what you did to all those people yesterday.’
‘What I did?’
‘Yes, they didn’t deserve to get involved in your … your curveball or whatever you called it.’
‘Hold on, you think I manipulated those people into doing what happened yesterday?’
‘Well … didn’t you?’
‘No!’ he said emphatically. ‘What do you think I am? Actually, don’t answer that. All I did was synchronise the Augusto Fernández thing, I had nothing to do with whatever his name is.’
‘Steve,’ I said firmly. ‘Steve Roberts.’
He looked amused. ‘Ah, now there’s a loyalty I didn’t see last week. What was it you called him? Sausage?’
I looked away.
‘I didn’t organise that. You are responsible for your own life and what happens in it, so are the other people. Your life had nothing to do with what happened there. You were feeling guilty,’ he said, and because it wasn’t a question I didn’t answer.
I put my head in my hands. ‘I have a headache.’
‘Thinking about things will do that, you haven’t done it for a while.’
‘But you said you planned the Fernández thing. You meddled with his life.’
‘I didn’t meddle. I synchronised your lives. Made your paths cross in order to help both of you.’
‘How did that help him? The poor man had a gun to his head and it didn’t need to happen.’
‘The poor man had a water pistol to his head and I think you’ll find he’ll be better off after all this.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know. We’ll have to watch this space.’
‘Didn’t matter at the time that it was a water pistol,’ I grumbled.
‘I’m sure it didn’t. Are you okay?’
I was silent.
‘Hey.’ He stretched out his leg and tapped my foot with his, playfully.
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’
‘Ah, Lucy,’ he sighed. He came across the hall and hugged me. I pushed away at first but he held on tighter and eventually I gave in and hugged him back, my cheek against the fabric of his cheap suit, breathing in his musty smell. We pulled away and he tenderly wiped imaginary tears away with this fingers. His kindness made him look moderately more attractive. He handed me a tissue and I gave my nose a loud, wet blow.
‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘You’ll wake the baby.’
We both laughed, guiltily.
‘I’m pathetic, aren’t I?’
‘I’m leaning towards saying yes but I should ask you first, in what way?’
‘Here I am after being held at gunpoint with a water pistol, babysitting a baby that doesn’t exist.’
‘Sitting with your life,’ he added.
‘Good point. Sitting with my life, that is a person. It doesn’t get any weirder than this.’
‘It might. We haven’t even started yet.’
‘Why doesn’t she have her life following her around? How sad is this?’ I referred to the toy-littered floor behind me.
He shrugged, ‘I don’t get involved in other people’s lives. You are my sole concern.’
‘Her life must be in denial,’ I said. ‘You should take a leaf out of her life’s book.’
‘Or out of yours.’
I sighed. ‘You really are that unhappy?’
He nodded, and he looked away from me. He worked his jaw as he took a moment to compose himself.
‘But I don’t understand how things are so bad for you. I feel fine.’
‘You don’t feel fine.’ He shook his head.
‘I don’t wake up every day singing “Good Morning”, but I’m not,’ I lowered my voice, ‘pretending that things are there when they’re not.’
‘Aren’t you?’ He looked amused. ‘It’s like this. If you fall and break a leg you feel pain and you go to the doctor, they take an X-ray and you hold it up to the light and everybody can see the broken bone. Yeah?’
I nodded.
‘You have a sore tooth, you can feel the pain, so you go to the dentist and he sticks a camera in your mouth, sees the problem, you need a root canal or something, yeah?’
I nodded again.
‘These are all very acceptable things in modern society. You’re sick; you go to the doctor, you get antibiotics. You’re depressed; you talk to a therapist, they might give you anti-depressants. Your greys show; you get your colour done. But with your life you make a few bad decisions, get unlucky a few times, whatever, but you have to keep going, right? Nobody can see the underneath part of who you are, and if you can’t see it – if an X-ray and a camera can’t take a picture of it for you – in this day and age the belief is, it’s not there. But I am here. I’m the other part of you. The X-ray to your life. A mirror is held up to your face and I’m the reflection, I show how you’re hurting, how you’re unhappy. It’s all reflected on me. Make sense?’
Which made sense about the bad breath, the clammy skin and the bad haircut. I mulled it over. ‘Yes, but that’s rather unfair to you.’
‘That’s the card I was dealt. Now it’s up to me to make myself happy. So you see, this is as much about me as it is about you. The more you live your life, the happier I feel, the more satisfied you are, the healthier I am.’
‘So your happiness depends on me.’
‘I prefer to see us as a team. You’re the Lois Lane to my Superman. The Pinky to my Brain.’
‘The X-ray to my broken leg,’ I said and we smiled and I felt a kind of a truce being called.
‘Did you talk to your family about what happened? I bet they were worried about you.’
‘You know I did.’
‘I think it’s better that we both treat our conversations as if I don’t know anything.’
‘Don’t worry, I do. I saw my mum and Riley yesterday. I went to Riley’s. We had Pakistani takeaway and Mum insisted on making me hot chocolate like she did after I’d fallen when I was little,’ I laughed.
‘That sounds nice.’
‘It was.’
‘Did you talk about yesterday?’
‘I told them I was in another office, running an errand, and that I missed the entire thing.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘I don’t know. So I wouldn’t worry them.’
‘Well, aren’t you the thoughtful one,’ he said sarcastically. ‘It wasn’t to protect them; it was to protect you. So you wouldn’t have to talk about it, so you wouldn’t have to admit feeling anything. That weird word you don’t like.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. All the things you say sound very complicated and I don’t think in that way.’
‘Want to know my theory?’
‘Go on.’ I rested my chin on my hand.
‘A couple of years ago when Blake …’ he stalled, ‘was dumped by you.’
I smiled.
‘You started lying to other people, and because you lied to them you made it a lot easier to lie to yourself.’
‘That’s an interesting theory but I have no idea if it’s true or not.’
‘Well, we’ll put it to the test. Soo
n you’ll have to stop lying to others – which will be harder than you think, by the way – and then you’ll start learning the truth about yourself, which will also be harder than you think.’
I rubbed my aching head, wishing I hadn’t got myself into this mess. ‘So how does it happen?’
‘You let me spend time with you.’
‘Sure, weekly appointments?’
‘No, I mean, I come to work with you, meet your friends, that kind of thing.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t just bring you to the dinner table at my parents’ house or out with friends. They’ll think I’m a freak.’
‘You’re afraid they’ll know things about you.’
‘If my life – you – sits down at the table they’ll pretty much know everything.’
‘Why is that so terrifying?’
‘Because it’s private. You’re private. No one brings along their life to a dinner party.’
‘I think you’ll find that most people that you love do exactly that. But it’s not the point, the point is we need to start doing more things together.’
‘That’s fine with me, just let’s not you and me do things with friends and family. Let’s keep it separate.’
‘But you’re doing that already. None of them know anything about you.’
‘It’s not going to happen,’ I said.
He was silent.
‘You’re going to turn up anyway, aren’t you?’ I asked.
He nodded.
I sighed. ‘I don’t lie to everyone, you know.’
‘I know. The wrong number.’
‘See? Another weird thing.’
‘Not really. Sometimes wrong numbers are the right numbers,’ he smiled.
CHAPTER TWELVE
He wanted to begin our journey together by seeing where I lived. I think he felt seeing it would unlock all the great mysteries about me to him. I didn’t agree, I felt it would merely unlock a door to an unkempt studio flat and send putrid fish smell blasting in his face. Metaphor understanding was merely the beginning of our differences. We were debating it when Claire returned from the hospital and looked anxiously at the stranger and me sitting on the floor outside her apartment. I stood immediately.