Monica and I were standing on her balcony, drinking beer and watching the setting sun carve deep canyons into the clouds. From the stereo in the living-room I caught snatches of Callas singing of love and betrayal, her voice like a promise so vast it could only be broken.
Monica went inside to get more drinks. As I turned to watch her go I found myself looking straight into her bedroom. On other occasions when we’d been on the balcony the curtains had been drawn and I’d not noticed the room behind us. This evening the curtains were wide open and the light was on. Clothes and jeans were piled on the bed. A dress was hanging on the back of a door. Odd shoes were scattered over the floor. Magazines, cassette tapes and books. On her bedside table were a full roll of pink toilet paper and an old clanger-style alarm clock. Two pillows. A stack of LPs and her old music centre. No posters on the walls. The door of her wardrobe hung open, revealing coloured dresses on hangers, the silver rectangle of a mirror. In the window was a well-tended pot plant. The window was very clean and because of the darkness of the balcony the room looked exceptionally bright. There was a stillness about the interior that made it look like one of those installations in museums showing rooms and furniture from different periods of history. It was easy to imagine a small discreetly printed placard just below the window-sill: ‘Young Woman’s Bedroom, Council Flat, South London: Late Twentieth Century’.
What will survive of us?
Monica came back on to the balcony carrying two more cans of beer and a small grass joint that gave off a thin drift of smoke. She had put on a red and blue turtleneck sweater. Over the blocks of flats in the distance, thick crimson light welled up behind the last dark rags of cloud.