Emily didn’t mind working in the evenings. There was a certain serenity to having whole buildings to herself, hallways and offices and corridors without another soul to contend with, and she preferred traversing the city at night. The problem was, it wasn’t possible for her to sleep in the daylight; so she grew tired and had migraines more often and thought more frequently about the razor blade in the box under the sink.
Usually her shifts had started by five. At this time of day the council building she lived in was buzzing with sounds: of teens only slightly younger than herself crashing in and out of each other’s flats; of mothers screaming at unruly children or unreliable husbands; of music blasting too loudly and rattling the walls; and she would move quickly then, without glancing up, glad in the knowledge that when she returned at two or three in the morning, a hush would have descended. Even in those dusky hours a few darkened figures might loiter in stairwells, and sometimes there was arguing, or the bass thump of music, or furniture moving in the room next to hers, but such activity always seemed muted somehow, made appropriate for the night. And this was when Emily sank into her bed, savoured the darkness and allowed herself to be lulled to sleep by city sounds that reminded her of where she was, and where she was not.
During the day, such calm was a futile hope. Even grey skies pushed colour through the tiny window into her room, and once lit, it was impossible for Emily to rid the corners and crevices of memories that hid there, waiting for her to look. The only solution was to move, and keep moving. And so she would brave the cold of her room to dress, make herself a flask of sugary tea, and hit the pavements of the streets that weaved around her. All day she would walk the cheerless roads, careful to avoid the areas where she used to know people, the building where she used to go to college, the road where Auntie and Uncle still lived.
The town hall was a place to go. Like museums, and galleries, places one could stand in for free and observe. It was something Emily was learning - the art of being a watcher without being watched. Evening shifts made it easy, scuttling about in darkened offices after people had left them, looking at their photos and their handwriting while never being seen. But in the daytime, no matter how firmly she set her fringe with wax, how drably she dressed, nor how flat her shoes, she could not shed the sensation of difference she had felt since coming here. Even at school, when half her class had been from other countries and many of the girls didn’t bother to learn English properly so should have felt more different than she, there was an internal badge she could not take off that marked her out, made her angry and defensive, and kept her alone. It was memory, she supposed. Memory that jolted sharply through the London rain with hot, stabbing reminders of what had come before such comforting dreariness. Accusing her. Pointing at her. Making clear that she was not in fact so coolly disposed to talk calmly about the weather. To talk at all. If you keep your problems in your stomach, the dogs cannot eat them, her mother had told her once. Another proverb, etched in her head. And Emily clung hard to this wise instruction. She watched, and said as little as she could get away with, and kept her difference to herself.
Because nobody else noticed it, she was beginning to realise. It was her insecurity, her paranoia, her hard-learned lessons. Yet even in the town hall, where she sat amongst throngs of others darker and lighter and taller and shorter and thinner and fatter than she was, she needed a magazine to hide behind. She had taken this one from the doctor’s office, and peeked out at the people from under it. It was a marvel to her the way they registered themselves. For all sorts of things: births, marriages, deaths, planning permission, social care, housing. She heard them talking in their twos and threes, or loudly over desks to council workers, explaining. So flippantly. Emily had applied for housing only because she had no other choice. She had loitered in the lobby for hours before joining the queue, and they’d had to ask her name three times before she had given it. Secrets should remain in one’s stomach. She would not repeat the process to register for benefits. Still, she chose to come here sometimes when she had days free, to listen to other people’s confessions.