13

Several months after the fever breaks, you are walking from your house in Bellingham to your friend Imogen’s place in Gipsy Hill. It’s May now. You see an extension cord trailing in the grass like a loose thought as a woman slices a blade through overgrown hedges. A man walking past, coming downhill, carrying his daughter. Tiny gold hoops in her ears. She grips on his shoulder, straddling either side of his torso; his arms around her waist. Sunlight chasing them down the hill. You walk on.

In her garden, you sit with the family. Two brothers, her father, Imogen. Her older brother fetches you a beer, the neck perspiring. You unpluck a button on your shirt, feeling a few beads of sweat release themselves from where they were trapped between material and skin. You all sit, basking in the first hints of summer sunshine, the lazier heat which rests and doesn’t shift. Time slurs. You’re holding an empty beer and Imogen is slurping at the dredges in her glass.

‘Let’s take refuge,’ she says.

Indoors, you and your oldest friend share a sofa. Imogen tucks herself close and it’s not unfamiliar. When you were at school, it would be she, waiting, patient, legs crossed, neck boughed over her phone display, when you emerged from basketball training in the evening. She would catch sight of you with her kind, attentive gaze and already be in motion.

‘Good session?’

Murmured, breathless answer, growing into something coherent, finding form. Walking towards the enormity of the fields. Covering the circumference with a slow, measured trudge, once, twice. Time losing shape, dragged back by your parents wondering where you are. Departing from one another, tucking her tiny frame into your chest; declining the lift, wanting to walk, to carve out something coherent, to find a form.

On the sofa, she studies you with the same attentive gaze.

‘What’s going on in there?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know if I should go meet my friend.’

‘Why?’

‘I just have a bad feeling.’

‘Then don’t go.’

‘But I want to see her. She’s only back from Dublin for a few days.’

‘Just go with your instincts.’

You’re not a prophet but you should trust yourself more often.

You leave Imogen, take the number 3 bus snaking down to Brixton, where you meet her and the poet. It’s like the fever had never broken, it’s like you have returned to that evening where you shared a table at dinner, the three of you. As before, when you’re departing, the poet who sees you and her, saw the ripple and the sinking stone, tells both of you to stay out of trouble.

From Brixton Nando’s to the Ritzy Cinema. To the bar. You order a whisky and she pulls a face. She, a sweet cider. There’s a balcony, where you sit at a wobbly table and drink quickly, lest they spill. You’re set back from the edge so it’s screaming you hear first, followed by the smashing of glass, accusations being thrown, an anger, a hysteria. Feelings are heightened in these moments. You peer over the balcony, joining in with the rest of Brixton to view too many policemen for one woman. A knee on the woman’s back. The small crowd on the balcony weigh in with their own heavy conclusions or, in one case, despair at their own hopelessness.

‘I just wish there was something I could do.’

A stranger consoles another stranger. ‘You can’t. People like that, people who have been in Brixton for years, they’re a lost cause.’

And you feel anger, a hysteria, feelings heightened in these moments, but your vision is clear, an unfrosted window, you see the woman with the policeman’s knee on her back not being seen.

‘Are you OK?’ she asks. You shake your head.

‘Finish your drink, let’s go.’

You walk through Brixton, passing a Caribbean fete. Eyes follow her loose languid figure. When she gets into stride and a smile cracks open her features, you wonder if what people see matches what is. You suspect it does. You had that drink too quickly, you realize, but you don’t think as you both walk into a Sainsbury’s, and buy a bottle to split, both drinking too quickly, both drunk too quickly. Spillages. Spillages on the bus. Spillages on the path to her flat, where you both pause to question each other, but gloss over. It’s easier this way, for now.

‘I heard you bumped into Samuel.’

You hesitate. ‘Who did you hear that from?’

‘Samuel. I saw him yesterday, both got off at the same station.’

‘Oh.’

‘He asked me if anything was going on with us. I couldn’t give him a straight answer.’

Neither could you. You had met Samuel in a similar fashion the week before, alighting from a train at Elephant and Castle, meeting on a platform. It was the first time in several months you had seen each other, and he was short, sharp, curt with you, before getting to the point.

‘Are you and her together yet, then?’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t treat me like an idiot,’ Samuel said.

‘We’re not together.’

‘But you want to be?’

‘Where is this coming from?’

‘I said, don’t treat me like an idiot. I saw the way you looked at her when you first met. I saw the same look when I came over to hers that time, in December. I heard how you spoke about each other. It’s whatever, bruv. You’ll probably end up getting married. You’re both adults, but shit, be honest about it. I’m tired of people lying to me. It’s bad enough having to watch two people you care about fall for each other. But to not say anything? That’s rubbish. So tell me what the deal is?’

‘Honestly,’ you said. ‘I don’t know.’

Except you did know. To give desire a voice is to give it a body through which to breathe and live. It is to admit and submit to something which is on the outer limits of your understanding. To have admitted it to Samuel would have unfurled the folds of longing which he witnessed the beginning of. To have admitted it to Samuel would have been asking him to renounce you of your guilt. It would have let the resistance fall away and given you the freedom to act. It was easier for you to remain silent and hold the desire to yourself. Samuel waited expectantly, waited for more, and when it wouldn’t come, walked away from you.

As you walk the path to her flat, wobbly, drunk, you ask, ‘Are you mad I didn’t say anything?’

She shakes her head. ‘Not really.’

‘So you are.’

She smiles. ‘When he told me, it felt weird. Felt like you were just looking out for yourself. I know it was just a chance meeting, but still.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Just tell me next time,’ she says, winding an arm around your waist. ‘Man, I’ve missed you.’

‘Me too,’ you say. ‘Me too.’

Inside, you’re sitting across the room. You’re both talking to a young man lodging in her flat, aware that the third addition warps the dynamic. She nudges you with her eyes, and gestures at the empty spot in front of her. Why are you over there? she’s saying. Come. So you go. Perch on a bare patch of carpet where her legs are trailing and lay your hand on her bare skin. Is this OK? you ask. It is, she says, it is, and so you’re here, you’re drunk, there’s already been a spillage but you mopped it up. She runs a hand over your shorn head, tracing lines. The conversation moves, flows, swoops, boughs, but when he retires to bed, it’s evident you’ve been waiting to be alone.

‘You can’t stay today. The lodger is staying in my room, I gotta sleep with my mum.’

‘I know.’

She twists round and invites you to the sofa, invites herself to lay her head in your lap.

‘Don’t let me fall asleep here.’

Another change of position: she flips her body, so her legs are stretched across your lap, and props her head up on a pillow on the sofa.

‘I have to go to bed soon,’ she says.

And another: she sits up and curls her arms around you, kissing the material over your chest, kissing the exposed skin on your cheek, and you lean in, as does she, but she makes a diversion, and it’s lips grazing cheek once more, and again. You lean closer, brushing her nose, but it’s the same; she mirrors, and somewhere en route, a moment of resistance, or perhaps she is experiencing lucidity in her own mist. You play this game with each other, in which the stakes are far too high, on the sofa, in her kitchen, in her hallway; you wanting to make a journey, she wanting to do the same but making a diversion before the destination.

‘Hey. Are you OK?’

She nods, separating your tangled limbs. ‘I think you should go home.’

You walk home from Deptford to Bellingham. You spend the hour wondering about how you will both recollect this evening. You think about what it means to desire your best friend in this way. You think about holding onto this feeling for so long, holding it down, holding it in, because sometimes it’s easier to hide in your own darkness than to emerge, naked and vulnerable, blinking in your own light. You think about whether she has been doing the same. You think about spillage, and whether this is something that can be mopped up. You think as you walk through the night, wandering familiar streets with these unfamiliar feelings. At some point, the sun begins to break the horizon, and you find yourself in the park, prone on the ground. The grass cool against the heat of your desire, life still against the pace of your racing heart.