Willow pours coffee from a large cafetière in her garden. There are five cubes of feta cheese on the green plate by the back door. ‘Have you got any sugar?’ I ask.
‘You take sugar now?’
‘How about milk?’
‘Might be some in the fridge. Do you want any food?’
‘I’m not hungry,’ I tell her, standing by the trellis while a cat tightrope walks across some wire that holds up a dead grapevine. ‘I just feel bloated, so I’ve been trying to walk a bit more. Leg’s still sore, though.’
‘Well, you did break it,’ she says. ‘How much longer are you signed off from work?’
‘I got it extended.’
She nods, unhappily.
‘Well, go easy,’ she says. ‘You don’t want to hurt it again.’
‘I don’t see what difference it would make. I don’t want to go back to work anyway.’
‘They’re paying you while you’re off, right?’ she says. ‘It was only a broken leg. You’ll be walking properly on it again pretty soon. Are you going to those therapy sessions?’
I don’t think she believes what she’s saying. Willow starts her day with The Guardian app. She sits on the toilet and reads the news. She sits on the toilet and hopes that something grey and lifeless plops out of her into the piss water.
‘I read an interesting article the other day’ she says, while I pour milk into my coffee. It turns solid, looks like lava. ‘It was about a man who had extreme anxiety and paranoia.’
‘Your milk’s off,’ I tell her, pouring my coffee away.
‘He spent his whole life convinced that he was going to do something terrible. Is black okay?’
‘Sure.’
The cat’s eating feta cheese, loudly. Apparently he won’t eat anything else, now.
‘You should see his crap,’ says Willow. ‘Anyway, he spent all his time signed off from work because he had extreme anxiety and paranoia, and possibly some schizophrenia too because there was this part of him that knew he was going to kill someone, and part of him that wanted to. He said it started off small, worrying he’d accidentally spill a drink over somebody in a pub. Then it grew and he knew it wasn’t about accidents, it was about potential. Rape somebody. Castrate somebody. Post nude photos of somebody on the internet. Push a buggy into a canal.’
‘So what?’
‘He couldn’t sleep.’
‘Let me guess,’ I say, ‘a strange figure standing by the edge of his bed with–’
‘Yes.’
‘–hands pressing down on his chest?’
‘So you’ve read it too?’ she says.
Is he terrified of himself? Does his fear cripple him? Sofa paralysis. Lying prostrate for days. Heavy breathing in strictly regulated bags. Inhalers with large volume spacers that look like penis enlargement pumps and only increase his anxiety. An old friend tries to take him out on late morning walks, but he feels too conspicuous and the attempts are destroyed by the presence of children on swing sets and micro scooters. Police sirens in the distance seem to be waiting for him. Always were. Families dragging dogs. Dogs dragging sticks. Mothers pushing perambulators along tow paths are easy targets. An accidental nudge and the baby has had it.
‘Have you heard from Stephanie?’ says Willow.
‘No.’ Pausing. ‘She hates me.’
‘No she doesn’t.’
‘She’ll tell their children to avoid me.’
‘No she won’t.’
‘It’ll be like I never existed.’
‘You’re not listening,’ says Willow.
‘Sorry.’
She sips a little coffee. ‘You should call her,’ she says. ‘She’s family, remember?’
I cough.
Does he wake up in a sweat, having pissed himself? Does he lie the rest of the night awake, convinced that his body is rejecting him? Guts are black. Legs are broken. And if he cuts himself open his entrails won’t be red, dark red and yellow fat of cholesterol, colon brown, and bone white.
No.
They’ll be crude oil black. Immediate oxidisation. Instant rot. Colours changing behind his eyes. Instant death, much like when a doctor tells a middle-aged man he’s got a terminal illness; that it has to be removed if he wants to live longer than two months more, and even then the odds aren’t great. But if he hadn’t booked the appointment, if he hadn’t gone at all, he’d simply have a cough, or strangely enlarged testicles. Would’ve lived to become one of those ninety-two-year-olds who smokes and drinks and eats red meat and doesn’t recycle.
‘And your parents?’ says Willow. ‘Have you called either of them?’
‘This garden’s a mess, Willow.’
She rolls a cigarette. ‘It’s important to separate work and home,’ she says, touching the grapevine, shrugging off a flowerbed. ‘Well, at least you’ve got your sister.’
‘Very funny.’
‘Was she at the bar the other night?’
This joke’s been going on for too long. It’s too late to explain. And anyway, Willow wouldn’t understand that when I asked her to choke me with that belt, that as I got close to passing out, close to coming, it was my sister riding me, not her. Hands on her waist. White knuckles. Up and down. Willow looking a lot like how my sister might look if I hadn’t accidentally killed her.
‘Close your eyes, brother.’
Alive.
‘Close your eyes.’
Pulling the belt tighter as I let go inside of her.
Just a joke, right? Just that guy you met at university, who got pissed and told that story about a twin sister who died before infancy. Not your fault. Ghosts aren’t real. Good round the dinner table, though. Good with some coke and discussing how to save the world at 4am. I knew her then, didn’t believe it much myself. Can’t deny it now, though. She knows me: ‘You’ve a history of hurting others. Remember,’ said my dead little sister as she choked me, spoke dirty, ‘when you killed me?’ It was her that night. Putting pressure and pressure on until I almost died.
Willow doesn’t know about the Five Second Game. I’m too scared to tell her. And too scared to tell my brother’s wife, still alive, raising their child, soon to be children, alone.
‘What did he do,’ I ask, ‘the man in this article?’
Willow flicks her cigarette into an empty terracotta pot. ‘He got over it,’ she says. ‘He spoke to doctors. He got on meds. He quit his job and left.’
‘Left what?’
‘Everything,’ she says.
‘And that worked?’
‘He wrote the article, didn’t he?’
I finish my coffee.
‘I just don’t think I deserve to be happy, Willow.’
She raises her eyes impatiently. The cat throws up.