The door slams shut behind him. The same way as ever. The same click of the Yale safety lock, so secure and formal amidst the anger. His shoes pound down the corrugated metal staircase, fading and fading and fading. I imagine his arm in his jacket as he struggles to pull it on over his sweater, yanking and swearing, his brow creased, his face all messed up with curses and snarls.
It begins as it always begins and somehow I take the moment of flight as the starting point, although no circle has a starting point. Round and around. I don’t remember where the circle came from but it exists and gives an unwanted structure to our days. The same week. The same tentative relationship, the too-loud laughter, the how-was-your-day, the meals and the phone calls and the texts and the television and it goes around and around like a perfect loop, each week, every week.
The circle is perfect but the events it encircles are far from idyllic. I love Max, of course. I love him more than I’ve ever loved anybody. But there are moments. Like now. Like the sudden silence in the flat, the echoing stillness after the fight; my mind racing with the ends of points he didn’t let me make; his unfinished dinner abandoned on the arm of the ripped sofa.
The room feels so still. So full of nothing. There are sounds from upstairs and from the street beyond the window; the rev of engines, the occasional blast of a horn, teenagers yelling and whooping; everything is so full of life but inside the empty flat, there’s nothing. The silence sticks.
Loneliness. The circle keeps time like it’s Swiss-engineered but the loneliness always manages to surprise me. The sudden sense of stupidity, of futility. The realisation that he’ll be gone for however many hours and it’s a cold fight and a cold night and all I have now is myself. Is there a calm after a storm? I don’t feel calm. I feel jittery.
Half of me hopes he’ll come back; he’ll have forgotten his wallet or his phone and he’ll come through the door and not look at me as he finds his things and I’ll pretend I’m sorry and put my arms around him so he won’t leave. I would do that. I wouldn’t even think about it. But he doesn’t come back.
I pick up his half-eaten dinner, the two-hours-in-the-kitchen dinner he couldn’t even be bothered to finish. I can’t blame him. It makes me feel sick just looking at it now. The kitchen floor is cold beneath my feet. The estate agent lied about the central heating working. It doesn’t work. Or rather, it’s temperamental. Scorching one minute and freezing the next. The rent is sky high of course. Nice neighbourhood, see.
Everything has begun to get at me now. Scraping. Annoying. The stupid kitchen window which won’t close. The broken extractor fan. If he hadn’t left we could’ve bitched about the letting agency together, whined and complained and had common ground and it would be us against them. But it’s not.
If only I could rewind. If only I could have kept my mouth closed about the water bill and turning off the tap when he brushes his teeth. If only. But it matters. To him, it doesn’t. “It’s not as though we can’t afford it.” He’s right. Just about. But what about the pay rise I didn’t get and the deposit we’re saving for? What about getting out of this tiny, suffocating flat with the water meter? What about living how we want to live?
There’s a sudden knock on the door. For a second, my heart leaps. Setting down the plates, I rush back through the living room but then whoever it is knocks again and I know it’s not Max because his knuckles would hit the door higher and it’s not him and nobody else is minutely important.
“Brooke?” The voice is soft, almost condescendingly so.
Colleen from next door. Colleen with her blonde hair and her PR job and her fucking Range Rover and all her fucking life experience. Colleen who lives with her fiancé Colin who proposed last month when they went to Argentina. Colleen who asked me to water her orchids while she was gone and then brought me back a Toblerone as a thank you gift even though I hate Toblerone, and if she’s such a great fucking friend she would have noticed thanks to the countless times I’ve said, “I HATE TOBLERONE.”
Colleen who told me she’s thirty-two though her director profile on Companies House says she’s thirty-eight and I must remember to never mention her age in case I make some inadvertent faux pas. Colin’s younger than her. I wonder if he knows her real age. He’s a banker. Lloyds. Drives a BMW.
“Brooke?” Colleen’s voice filters around the edges of the door, like an unwanted draft. “Were you guys fighting? Are you in there, babe?”
I will not open the door. Opening the door would be stupid. What would it achieve? A half-hour of false pity while she secretly gloats over her superior relationship? I’ll probably end up crying which will be self-serving and make-up ruining. What can fucking Colleen with her two-carat princess-cut diamond engagement ring with Colombian emeralds say to me that will fix anything?
“Brooke, I heard him leave. I’m here for you, okay?”
It’s Max’s fault. I never raise my voice. He’s the one who starts yelling, alerting every person within earshot of our disagreements. If I had it my way, I’d mouth arguments, the way parents do so kids can’t hear. Quiet, furious, whispering arguments. But no. He yells and I imagine Colleen and Colin raise their eyebrows (hers perfectly shaped, his shaped in a masculine-pretending-not-to-be-shaped way) as they exchange glances and settle down to know exactly what we’re fighting about.
“Hey,” Colleen’s voice is quiet but oddly soothing. “You don’t have to hide.”
Something about her gets to me. Maybe she is just trying to be nice. Her orchids were very nice. I watered them just as she asked and wandered noncommittally around their tidy flat whilst they were gallivanting around Argentina. Everything of theirs seemed more expensive than ours. The glass-topped coffee table, the Chesterfield sofa, even the photo frames. There were no paperbacks in their bookcase. Idly, I wonder if Colin leaves the tap on when he brushes his teeth. Does it matter? Does Colleen have the common sense to not bring it up? Or is he the stickler? I live right next to them and I don’t have a clue.
I hear Colleen sigh. I imagine her face; it probably has that same vaguely disappointed expression it gets when someone takes her spot in the car park. I hear her footsteps go the few metres back to her flat. I walk across the room and turn my phone to silent. Her name lights up the screen a minute later. Bullet dodged. I hear their door close, the hum of their voices. I imagine they’re talking about me. Laughing at me and Max. Betting on how long it’ll be before we break up.
I hate them and I don’t and I hate myself for assuming the worst when they’re really just lovely people.
It’s late. Almost eleven. Saturday night. All the pubs will be open. Nightclubs. Bars. He could be anywhere. I could call him but he won’t answer. I iron some clothes. Put them neatly into the assigned wardrobe places as though he won’t throw them out carelessly while hunting for some elusive item that he must wear immediately.
Nothing to do. I could call my sister. Then again, I don’t want to hear about whichever rock band she’s currently obsessed with. I could call my parents. But they’d ask questions and I’m a terrible liar even over the phone. I flick the television on an am confronted by fake sitcom laughter. The jokes are overdone, over-applauded, and some are over my head. Being alone is so hollow. Having nothing to do is okay if you’ve got someone to do nothing with but otherwise it eats at you like woodworm, leaving you hollow and insecure.
I flick off the television and silence resumes. Teeth. Shower. Bed. The sheets are cool. I can never sleep until he gets home. I retrieve my phone, pray that the WiFi will work and absorb myself in the glowing screen.
The world is a huge lake full of interesting people and I lie there, looking at the small screen and Twitter and Facebook and Instagram profiles and pictures of beautiful people and people in love and people just living. Going places. Things that I do but somehow their versions are glossier. Sparklier. They seem to have it so together. But this is what we sell. It’s what I myself sell, to everyone.
I don’t text anyone I know because they’ll want to know why I’m texting so late on a Saturday night, and where’s Max and am I not having fun with him? Am I not young and in love and happy and beautiful like I always appear to be? I sell it, they buy it.
In some ways, it’s true. Maybe fifty percent of the time. You can’t be happy all the time. Can’t be so greedy. Can’t expect too much. First world problems. I’m not hungry. I’m not dying. I should be happy.
I watch music videos. Read gossip articles. It always comes to this point. This shameless point where I can’t sleep and I can’t talk and all I can do is soak up fake stories of other peoples’ lives. Who’s dating who. Who’s pregnant. The major shade being tossed around. Supermodels and rap stars and tech entrepreneurs and actors and reality television stars.
Sometimes I wonder what their lives are really like.
