Authors: Sharon Sant
‘Don’t worry,’ I whisper. ‘I have all the time in the world.’
When I bolt up the scream dies in my throat. I drag a sleeve across my eyes to wipe them and listen to the ragged breaths that echo in the silent room. Only my breath, no one else’s. My trembling limbs are too weak to turn the lamp on straight away and the room is lit only by the faint orange glow of the streetlamp outside. Instead, I stare at the dark, angular shapes that fill the space around me while the world comes back into focus. A warm ball of fur creeps up the bed and onto my lap. After the weird behaviour of the previous evening she seems back to normal again, at least, what I think is normal, and she purrs as she nestles against me, as if telling me everything is ok.
I dreamed of my family again. Every time it’s so real, so vivid, like stepping into a home movie. I can still smell the toast that Mum’s cooking in the kitchen, can still hear Tish singing off-key in the bathroom, a song to annoy me as she does her hair, can still see Dad pick up the car keys and the road atlas, packing his kit with methodical calm. And when we step outside onto the bright street, Dad’s newly-waxed car is always waiting to take us on our last journey together…
I fall back onto my wet pillow and cry again. It doesn’t matter how many times I have this dream, how real it is, when I wake I’m always alone.
I try to close my eyes but the images of death appear to fill the darkness every time I do. There’s nothing to get up for tomorrow, therefore nothing to go to sleep for now, so I swing myself out of bed, the cold of the night instantly biting through my damp pyjamas, grab a dressing gown and head downstairs with the cat following close behind.
‘You’re still not sleeping?’ Helen asks.
‘Is it that obvious?’
She gives me her counsellor smile. ‘How are you getting along with the journal?’
‘Ok.’ I didn’t bring the notebook with me as it contains very little, and not much that is pertinent. Somehow, I don’t think she’d be impressed with my musings on one of her other clients and I certainly can’t tell her about Karl Massey.
‘You’ve started it?’ she asks, narrowing her eyes just slightly.
‘Yes, yes I’ve started it. I didn’t bring it because I had no idea you’d want to mark it.’ Immediately, I regret my sarcasm. It’s like I have no control over it, like I’m acid burning from the inside out.
‘It will help, you know, you need to trust me on this.’
‘I know it will, and I’m doing it.’
‘You shouldn’t think of it as a chore, it’s for your benefit. Once you get started you’ll probably find you can’t stop.’
‘Maybe I could write a bestseller, zombie books are big right now.’
She makes no comment. ‘How has your week been, then?’
‘Same as last week. And the week before. And the week before that.’
‘You don’t feel there’s been any progress?’
I shrug. ‘I went to a coffee shop,’ I say.
She sits forwards. ‘That’s good.’
‘And I suppose I’ve sort of adopted a cat. I had to go and speak to all the neighbours to find out if she belongs to anyone and then I had to go and get stuff from the pet shop for her, which meant I actually had to communicate with the assistant to find out what I needed.’
‘That’s good too,’ she smiles. In fact, her smile is so big she looks genuinely thrilled, like I just presented her with the winning lottery ticket. ‘So, we can start to grow those little acorns, get the big oak tree of recovery setting down roots.’
I stare at her for a moment. I have a weird urge to laugh out loud. Did she really say that? Is that counsellor-speak or her own wonderful creation?
‘Tea?’ she asks, getting up from her chair without waiting for my reply.
In the waiting room there’s a hunched, leering old woman who smells like cough sweets; her false teeth slide around her mouth as she smiles at me. The rest of the seats are empty. Dante’s absence disappoints me more than it should. It’s not an emotion I want to encourage so I try to push it aside. The receptionist doesn’t even ask me what time I want the appointment for next week, she just scribbles on the card and hands it back to me with a bored half-smile. I cast a glance around the bare room again, as if by doing so I might conjure Dante there. There’s something about him, I just don’t know what it is yet.
Outside, my footsteps are hurried, eyes on the pavement in my urgency to get home without any sort of social interaction when I hear a voice close by.
‘Hello, little lady.’
I look up to find a man walking alongside me. A quick scan of his features – patchy stubble, short, wispy hair, beaky-looking – tells me that I don’t know him. I never heard him approach and I have no idea how long he’s been tailing me. There’s a sourness about him, like old body odour and gone-off milk. I hate these situations; you never know how they’re going to play. Am I courteous yet distant so that he isn’t offended but gets the message to leave me alone? Do I ignore him? Or simply tell him to bog off? There’s an abandonment in his eyes, a sense of unpredictability that frightens me. He speaks again.
‘You’re pretty. Where are you going?’
‘To meet my friend.’
‘Is she as pretty as you?’
Even as he says this, from the corner of my eye I see his hand move to his crotch and it makes me want to retch. My step quickens but he increases his pace almost immediately to match. I don’t reply, but keep my eyes fixed on the way ahead.
‘I like you,’ he says, this time more forcefully. ‘You’re pretty. I like your hair. It’s red. I like red hair.’
He reaches up and takes a stray lock between his fingers. I shake him off, feeling sick to my stomach, and quicken my stride but he keeps up.
‘Beautiful hair,’ he mumbles. I can feel him stare at me. ‘Can I have some?’ he asks.
‘What?’
‘Can I have some of your hair? I want to take it home and smell it and think of you, pretty with your pretty red hair.’
My mouth opens and closes again. I’m half tempted to agree, wondering if it will be enough to get rid of him. Dismissing the idea as the stupidest one I’ve ever had, however, I dig in my coat pocket for Karl’s card. It’s not there. I can’t remember taking it out but I must have done. A feeling of helplessness washes over me. There’s no friend, no one to help me. He could follow me all the way home, wait and watch, find a way in, there’d be no one to hear me screaming…
That’s when I see Dante, walking towards us but on the opposite side of the road.
‘Hey, where have you been?’ I shout, running out into the road, a car swerving and blasting its horn as I just miss it.
He looks across at me, confusion clouding his features, as though I’ve just interrupted him from pondering some intense philosophical theory.
‘You’re late, I was just about to phone you,’ I say, loudly enough for perv guy to hear me. He throws a look like thunder at Dante before turning down a side street.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper as I reach him. ‘He wouldn’t leave me alone, I didn’t know what to do, I…’
Before I can stop it, I’m trembling, like, visibly shaking. Dante glances around.
‘Are you ok?’ he asks, more with embarrassment than concern. ‘Do you want to go somewhere to sit down?’
I rub at my eyes, biting back the tidal wave of emotion that threatens to engulf me. ‘I’m not sure my legs will take me anywhere at the moment,’ I say, trying to make light of things, more for his benefit than mine. ‘You must think I’m an idiot.’
‘Of course not,’ he says, the relief that I haven’t started crying now obvious in his face. ‘You were scared. We all do weird stuff when we’re scared.’
For a moment I wonder what scares him. Is that what he goes to see Helen about?
‘I’m Dante, by the way,’ he says. ‘And before you ask, it is after the painter and not the
Inferno
Dante.’
‘I know.’ He throws me a puzzled look. ‘I mean, I heard you being called in the waiting room at the clinic,’ I add quickly. He seems satisfied by this information. ‘And I thought painter too.’
‘You’re into art?’
My mind goes back to my empty house. ‘We have Pre-Raphaelites on our walls at home. They’re my mum’s. I know a little.’
He frowns, as though he’s dragging some long-forgotten information from a dusty corner of his brain. ‘You were in the paper,’ he says. ‘Cassie, right?’
‘It seems neither of us needs introductions then,’ I observe. He gives me a wry smile.
‘MacDonald’s is just there,’ he says, gesturing towards a street corner graced by colourful windows. ‘I’ll come with you and get a drink; we can sit till you’re feeling better.’
As much as I feel like I’ve made myself look a complete nut job, I don’t think I could make it home in my current state; and the thought that Mr Perv is still hanging around close by and now really hacked off makes me grateful for Dante’s offer.
‘Thanks,’ I say and follow as he turns in the direction of the restaurant.
There’s too much life in here but, weirdly, it’s ok, almost like there’s so much that I can slip under the radar. Dante looks over his cup at me.
‘So, why are you seeing Helen? Because of the stuff that was in the paper? Not that I read it… I mean, I meant to but –’
I nod. ‘Don’t worry, I wouldn’t be offended if you told me you hadn’t read it. I’m glad you didn’t. You think I’m a freak, right?’
‘No. But I go to Helen too, don’t forget. If you are then I suppose that makes me one as well.’
‘You want to talk about it?’
He shakes his head. ‘Not right now.’
‘I’m at a disadvantage, then. As you know my story but I don’t know yours.’
He smiles – a brooding thing, not a trace of humour. ‘If you knew you might consider ignorance an advantage.’
‘Is that where you were going?’ I ask.
He checks his watch. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I was running late anyway. I suppose I’ve missed my appointment now.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Helen gets paid whether we turn up or not. I don’t think she’s bothered either way.’
‘She cares about helping us, though.’
‘She can’t help me, not really. I go because I’m told by everyone that talking about it will cure me, but it doesn’t. Things are just as weird as when I started. Do you think she’s helped you?’
I shrug. ‘I don’t suppose, ultimately, she can do much for me either. But I think that she cares enough about it to keep trying.’
‘She’s doing her job,’ he replies shortly.
I want to argue that I think it’s more than that but something stops me. Instead I pull my cardboard cup towards me and his gaze drops to his own drink. Silence
descends between us; the rise and fall of myriad conversations around us filling the void.
‘You’re a long way from home,’ I say, something to plug the gap.
‘Belfast,’ he says looking up. ‘We moved here for Dad’s job.’
‘I suppose you miss it.’
He tugs a hand through his thick hair. ‘I do. There’s an amazing kind of vibrancy there… I can’t explain it.’
‘Catholic or Protestant?’ I ask.
He smiles, now something genuine. ‘Neither. Healthy agnostic, as John Fowles would say.’
‘Ugh, I hated that book.’
His smile widens still. ‘
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
? Me too. I had to read it at school. We just sniggered at the dirty bits.’
‘It must have made some impression, though.’
‘Just that bit. Because it sounded like me and it’s a rare state to be in where I come from.’ He’s thoughtful for a moment and illumination crosses his features as he speaks again. ‘But you must already know all about that,’ he says in a low voice. ‘You’ve been to the other side and come back, so you must know what’s there.’
‘I thought you hadn’t read the newspaper.’
His smile is guilty. ‘I heard my mum talking to my dad about it. She was kinda fascinated.’
‘It’s ok. I suppose she would be. I’d probably be fascinated if I was anyone else.’
He looks as though he’s fighting with the next question before he asks it. ‘What’s it like?’
I don’t have to ask what he means. ‘Like being asleep, the deepest sleep you’ve ever had – no dreams, no fidgeting, just oblivion. But I don’t even know if what I experienced
was
death. Because nobody else comes back, do they? It’s not like I can compare notes with anyone. Maybe I was in some really rare sort of coma that’s never been seen before?’
‘Is that what the doctors said?’
‘They said as little as they could. I couldn’t be explained and nobody liked that.’
‘What do you think happened?’
I shrug and peel the plastic lid from my cup. ‘No idea.’
‘It’s just that…’ he stops, his words disappearing.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘How are you feeling now that we’ve lost your stalker?’
‘Better,’ I say. ‘At least I can coordinate my limbs now.’
‘I don’t suppose you want to stick around for another one?’ he asks, gesturing to my now empty cup.
His dark eyes meet mine, that portal to another world waiting to drag me in. For the first time in a long time there is a spark of life somewhere deep inside me, not just the biological processes of interconnected cells that I have become, but desire and emotion.
‘Yes,’ I reply, never moving my gaze from his. ‘I think I could do that.’
I was rescued by a boy from Belfast today. His name is Dante, like the painter. We went to get a drink and talked for two hours until he walked me home. He’s an only child. His dad moved the family over to England two years ago for a job but Dante misses Ireland. His mum used to be a model. His dad designs cars. When he was four he jumped off a wardrobe in a sheet pretending to be Superman and cut his chin open. He reads fantasy and sci-fi novels and he loves live music. He has never drunk a cup of coffee in his life but he likes tea. I know all these things about him but I don’t know him. There’s something massive, something he’s not telling me. I don’t think that he’s keeping his secret out of spite; I feel like it’s something so terrifying that he can’t talk about it. I think that’s what he goes to Helen for. He gave me his number. But do I want to get involved with him? This secret of his, is it something that will suck me in too?