Zoe met Adam at the art shop, although later they would disagree about it – he would say they didn’t meet until she came to his studio. But she remembered that Friday, a late September day when the weather was unusually warm. She could still see him taking off his jumper and the defined muscles at the top of his arms; she remembered the jolt in her stomach followed by immediate embarrassment.
She’d been offered the job at the shop the week before she moved to Litchfield Road and it had felt right somehow – enjoyable, steady, faintly bohemian, but not something that would tie her down or set her on a particular path. Laura had a friend who worked there and suggested he recommend Zoe when he left. She knew she wasn’t the obvious person for the job – it had been years since her art foundation course and she hadn’t painted anything since then – but she imagined herself saying, ‘I work in an independent art shop in a warehouse in Hackney Wick’ and thought it told the truth about her, or part of it at least. It was only later she discovered that when she said it, people would ask her if she was an artist and she would say no and the conversation would falter.
She had always liked the shop too – in the days when she and Laura did most things together and had no particular plans, Zoe would go in with her and hang around while she chose her paints. Laura told her that the shop kept going because they were specialists in a kind of resin that was difficult to get anywhere else, and that the owner, Duncan Evering, was a respected, if not famous, sculptor. There was a workshop at the back where Duncan made work to order for artists: moulds, casts and plinths.
Zoe would look around while she waited for Laura – she liked reading the names of paint colours. Certain colours – Burnt Ochre, Rose Gold Lake – gave her a kick in the stomach. But her favourite shelves were the ones that made the shop feel like a laboratory or a coven: bottles, tubs and jars filled with liquids and granules and pastes. Rabbit-skin size, Liquin Original, thixotropic alkyd primer.
She was grateful to Duncan for hiring her, particularly when she wasn’t an artist; she told him she was a writer, which was not entirely true, but it was more plausible and made her feel less fraudulent. He seemed delighted by the idea – he told her she could write in the shop when it was quiet – and she felt guilty. At first, she’d been keen to learn about their stock and she’d fantasized about buying some of the materials and making something herself; she wasn’t sure what. Duncan had even mentioned teaching her how to make casts, so she could help him in the workshop.
On her first day, alone in the front of the shop, she felt as though she could breathe more easily. She scrawled in a notebook and felt her mind stretch and loosen. It was euphoric, marvellous and then, quickly, it wasn’t. The days were long and sprawling, a waste ground of time, barely punctuated. She had craved space, now she had too much. She stopped writing and roamed around the shop, restless and bored. Some days, she wanted to stick a scalpel in her arm, just to prove she existed.
Zoe had only been working there a month when Adam came in and was still a little unsure of what she was saying as she explained the difference between resin samples to a Spanish artist. The door opened; she looked up and he smiled at her, openly, generously, gorgeously. He waited by their sculpting tools section and Zoe tried to concentrate on what she was saying and also keep looking at him.
He had dark hair that was somewhere between long and short, and a beard. He wore the uniform of all the young men that came in to the shop: a navy cable-knit jumper, narrow, faded grey jeans and workmen’s boots. He was small, maybe only five foot eight, slight and a little hunched; he didn’t seem to want to take up space, or assert himself. He waited patiently for her to finish. Zoe became even more conscious of what she was saying, pitching her voice at him, trying to sound competent and informed.
Finally, the other customer left and Zoe was able to turn her full attention on him. She smiled intently, willed him to need help or advice, to ask her something, anything, but he knew what he wanted and brought it over to the counter. She was alert and nervy as she served him; ordinary tasks – putting the figures in the till, finding a plastic bag – became charged and meaningful. He had a spot on his cheek. She wanted to squeeze it. She handed him his change and carrier bag, and he left, oblivious.
*
She didn’t think too much about it: this sort of thing had been happening a lot. It was now ten months since she’d left Rob, but the separation had destroyed her and she’d been reassembled awkwardly; she kept finding bits of herself in unexpected places. Just before the break-up, she had got so unhappy that the idea of sex didn’t disgust her exactly, but was a bit off-putting, like something rich and queasy when you’re not hungry: liver, undercooked eggs, black pudding. She’d forgotten why she ever liked it in the first place. And then as soon as they’d broken up, she’d been hit by a ferocious and peculiar sexual energy. All her senses were stirred up, vivid and overwhelming, and she could suddenly feel everything. Bizarrely creative sexual fantasies about unlikely people still came to her, fully formed, almost like dreams. That morning, she’d stopped at the lights on her bike and noticed that the cyclist in front had one leg of his jeans rolled up. She wanted to lick his ankle. Unfamiliar kinds of passion flared up all the time – she was almost getting used to it.
*
That evening, she went back to Litchfield Road and listened to Eleanor and Richard argue about Tupperware. It was so bland, she became perversely curious and then found herself taking sides: Eleanor was right, if you put it through the dishwasher at work, it would eventually get lost. The kind with flaps on the lids was expensive. The argument eventually wound down, unresolved, and she waited until everything was completely silent before going upstairs to make herself supper.
She went to bed early and woke up a few hours later, with an immense pressure on her chest. She felt disorientated and confused, unlike herself – the only thing she was certain of was that something was very, very wrong. She didn’t know where she was; then she saw the wardrobe at the end of her bed rearing up and remembered. She tried to reach her phone to call an ambulance, but couldn’t move. Her body remained stuck in the foetal position. She tried to shout for help. The pressure on her chest was getting worse; she was running out of time. She strained as hard as she could, but it was as if her body was coated in steel. Eventually, something yielded and she heard herself shout.
Almost immediately, the pain in her chest disappeared and as certain as she had been that she was dying, she suddenly knew that she wasn’t. She was still terrified, she just didn’t know what of. Her body wanted to sleep, but she forced herself up – the thought of slipping back into that frozen state was unbearable.
She paced around the room to keep herself awake. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, the forms of the furniture and indistinct piles of things on the floor seemed malleable, animistic: the carpet felt cold and unfamiliar underneath her feet. She opened the curtains, letting the concrete banks and the flower pots take shape in front of her, and wanted to wrench the bars off the window. She went to the doorway and stood at the threshold, looking up at the stairs, feeling the pressure of the unseen, unknowable rooms above her.