JL Merrow
READ TO ME,” Helen says, perched up on the kitchen counter, her stockinged legs swinging. “Read some more of that book about the girl who faked her own death to frame her husband. I like that one.”
“You would,” I say. “But I can’t. I’m cooking. See?” I hold up the knife I’ve been using to chop the courgette. It’s larger than the one I’d usually use for vegetables, but it’s beautifully curved and I like the way it feels in my hand. “Maybe after tea.”
“You’re soooo booooring,” she moans, slouching in a parody of teenage ennui. Then she smiles and sits up straight again. “If you don’t want to read, how about putting on some music? We could dance. You like dancing. I could teach you some more steps.”
I look at the knife, its surface too dull to show my reflection. It does feel good in my hand . . .
I put it down firmly. It’s only for a short while. “All right. But just a few dances.”
Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald fill the kitchen with swinging sounds, a little tinny from the small speakers of my iPod, and Helen shows me how to boogie forward. We did the boogie back already so now I can go both ways. Then she tries to teach me the jitterbug stroll and it’s so complicated, you have to move your arms as well as your feet, and clap, and there’s this bit where you have to crouch down. Helen makes it look so easy, but I’m all left feet. At the end I actually trip over myself and land on the kitchen lino and we just fall about laughing as Glenn Miller keeps on rollin’ down the track to Tennessee.
I’m too tired to cook now, so I wrap the courgette up in cling film (if you don’t look closely you can’t even see it’s been cut in two) and put it in the fridge. “Bedtime,” I tell Helen firmly. “Coming?”
“What do you think?” she says, her smile wicked with promise, and we run up the stairs and fall on top of the duvet, still laughing.
I’M STIFF AND achy when I wake up. Comes of sleeping on the bed, not in it, I guess. Helen props herself on one elbow and looks at me with sultry eyes and bed hair, her silky nightie slipping off one tattooed, ivory shoulder. “Do you have to go to work?” she says with a pout so ridiculous I laugh and feel lighter than air, my aches forgotten.
“You know I do. How else are we going to feed your iTunes habit?” I haul myself up and peel off last night’s clothes, all wrinkled and none too fresh. “I’m going to have a shower.”
Helen’s eyelashes shouldn’t be real, they’re so lush and dark as she looks up at me from under them. “I’ll just have to find something to do by myself, then,” she says, smoothing a hand down her silky front, over one breast and down, down to the junction of her legs. Her head falls back and she moans. “But I’ll be soooo lonely.”
I bite my lip. I can manage without a shower. It’s only one more day.
I’VE ONLY BEEN in half an hour when Claire calls me into her office. She worries at a rough edge on her fingernail and looks at it, not me.
I’m glad she feels awkward.
I just want to die.
“If it was just the poor timekeeping,” she says, and stops. “But it’s been going on for weeks. And it’s getting worse. I’m sorry, but I just can’t have you serving customers in this state. People have been talking, and we have an image to maintain. Why don’t you take a few days off? Come back in on Monday, and we’ll have another chat.”
I trudge home knowing that everyone’s looking at me. Teenage girls giggle on the bus, and all I can think is me, me, they’re laughing at me. I feel a bit funny when I get off the bus, and I have to sit down in the shelter for a while. A bus stops, and the driver curses me when I don’t get on.
When I get in the front door, though, Helen’s all smiles. “You’re back early! That’s wonderful. Let’s dance some more. Come on, put on the music.”
“I can’t, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I’m just too tired.” It’s like a knife in my heart, to disappoint her.
“But we have to do something. I know, we’ll play charades. Come into the front room.”
I follow her and turn on the standard lamp by the door. The curtains are closed already. I can’t remember if I opened them this morning or not.
Helen looks lovely by lamplight. Her pale skin glows, and her eyes are darker than bitter chocolate. She’s all leggy grace, dressed today in tight black trousers and an off-the-shoulder top. I don’t know where she gets her clothes.
She’s good at charades, too. I keep thinking I can trick her, but she knows all the latest films and shows. Books, now, sometimes I can stump her with a book, although I know it isn’t fair.
But then, all’s fair in love, isn’t it?
I’m too tired to go up to bed afterwards, so we settle down on the sofa for the night.
I’M NOT SURE what day it is when the knock comes on the door.
“Don’t go,” Helen says, pouting at me from the armchair where she’s curled up like a Siamese cat.
I nearly don’t. But then the knock comes again, louder this time.
It seems familiar, somehow.
“I’ll just see who it is,” I say.
Helen stands up, her hands on her hips. “I don’t want you to go.”
I stare at her.
She’s not so lovely, now. There’s another knock, and I tear my gaze from her and go to the door, bruising my shoulder on the stair rail as I stumble past.
For a moment I think the door’s locked, but then it opens under my hand, and I push it wide to see who’s standing there.
It’s Helen.
It’s Helen.
She’s in a new vintage fifties-style dress, skirt all puffed out with petticoats, and her hair up in a bun with two chopsticks. In her nose, she’s wearing the ring I bought her, and told her it meant we were engaged.
Before she left me.
Her eyes are wide. “Sal?” she says. “Oh my God, look at you. What have you done to yourself?”
I look back into the hallway.
“Helen?” I say. My voice sounds funny.
Helen isn’t in the hall, and when I run to the front room to look for her, she’s not there either. I check the kitchen, and the downstairs loo, and then I scramble up stairs that tilt crazily, sick to my stomach.
Helen’s not anywhere.
“Sal?” Helen’s voice comes from downstairs. But it’s not her.
“You made her go away,” I shout, my voice thick. “You made her go away.”
Helen-not-Helen holds me. “I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t know. We’ll make it better, ‘kay? Come and sit down. I’ll make a cup of tea, yeah?”
She opens the fridge, then shuts it again with a sound of disgust. “We can drink it black,” she says, and rinses out the kettle, fills it, and sets it to boil.
HELEN SAYS SHE’S not coming back to me.
But we clean out the fridge together, throwing everything into a bin bag, even the squashy courgette in its clingfilm wrapper, and she makes me soup, bringing the kitchen to life with the aroma of parsnips, coriander, and cumin. It tastes so good, as if it’s the first thing I’ve eaten in days.
I have a bath, not a shower, and I try to wash my hair, but it’s so tangled I get fed up and crop half of it off. I think it suits me better anyway. I find some clean clothes and put them on, and throw the rest in the machine. After I’ve had another bowl of soup, Helen holds my hand while I call Claire at work and tell her I’m really sorry and I’ll be in tomorrow.
But I still remember how good the knife felt in my hand, as if it was meant to be there, to be used by me. I don’t think Helen really understands. Not this Helen.
There’s a lot this Helen doesn’t understand about me.
After she’s gone, I dig a hole in autumn-soft earth and bury it in the garden.
Then I switch on my iPod, and let Ella Fitzgerald fill the house with warmth and sadness.
~
JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea. She writes across genres, with a preference for contemporary gay romance and mysteries, and is frequently accused of humour. Her novel Slam! won the 2013 Rainbow Award for Best LGBT Romantic Comedy, and her novel Relief Valve was a finalist in the mystery category of the 2015 EPIC Awards. Find JL Merrow online at: www.jlmerrow.com, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow