About Last Night - Chapter 16
'I am unemployed and untethered, standing on the ledge of my life without a safety net, alone and, for the first time in my entire adult life, in love.'
Dear Gentle Readers,
I’m sorry for sharing this chapter late. This weekend was of colossal importance for my country, Romania. We’ve had presidential elections and, just like in the classic tales, it was a fight to the death between Good and Evil. We stamped our ballots and we bit our nails until the official results were released late on Sunday night. The Good won! We live to fight another day. Phew!
Catch-up on Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapters 13 and 14, Chapter 15.
Now, let’s find out what our heroine gets up to next… Enjoy this week’s chapter!
June, 2018
I sit at the kitchen table with an open notebook in front of me, my eyes fixed on the leaves trembling outside my window. Spring has come and gone, ethereal flower petals blown away by cold winds, the trees now heavy with green, but today is concrete-grey, and the wind is here to stay.
Linda wants me to write everything down. Take stock of your life, own it all, she said, while I made a great effort to keep myself from vandalising her office and strangling her with my bare hands until life left her body and she laid limp in my arms like a rag doll. I knew this was going to be hard. I just didn’t think I’d fight so hard against it. It’s as if my body remembers something left unfinished and wants to get closure. To break bones, to make blood spurt, to poke open wounds and to balloon eyelids out of eye sockets. Every time she asks me to do something new, I am so uncomfortable that I would rather think of ways to murder her than to do as she bids.
I don’t need a stupid journal, I think, as I use my pen to make deep furious scars into the paper. There, all written down for you, Linda. Cuts and bruises. That’s all there is. That’s all there ever was, I think, looking at the barely there remnants of my stitched-up wrists.
Tom came by earlier to take Lucky for a walk. He asked if I wanted to join him, but I said no. Apparently, I had to catch up on some work.
I haven’t told him yet that I’ve been fired. That Jim came into my office all concerned and said that he was devastated. He’d just found out the agency was planning a round of redundancies. I didn’t need a crystal ball to see where he was going with his teary speech. I expected something like that. They couldn’t afford to keep a loose cannon like me around after what happened with Damian at the staff party and the fuck-up with the pitch.
‘We’re not meeting our targets,’ he explained, looking suitably upset as if he was in the same boat as me. Pretending that neither of us knew the real reason.
I’m not telling Tom. I don’t want him to feel sorry for me. I could not stand being pitied by him. I tried to keep him safe from me, but the idiot keeps showing up. Bringing me soup he’s cooked with vegetables from the farmers market and rye bread from the hipster bakery down the road.
He left a moth-eaten wool jumper on my armchair when he came for Lucky. I pick it up, inhaling his smell deep into my lungs, when I am suddenly startled by the buzzer. That was a quick walk, I think, as I take a glance at myself in the mirror, and straighten a rogue lock of hair before I open the door to see the towering figure of the person I least expect to see.
‘Oh,’ I say, incapable of hiding my disappointment. ‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’
‘Can I come in?’ says Sigfrid and steps in without waiting to be invited.
‘What are you doing here?’ I repeat, scrunching Tom’s sweater into my chest like it’s a baby in need of protection.
‘I was in the area,’ he says, looking around my flat with slight disapproval.
‘How did you know where I live?’ I say, with a taste of the terror experienced by someone who’s being stalked.
‘The cleaner found an envelope under the couch the other day,’ he says. ‘Your address was on it. It must have fallen from your purse when you came round that night.’ He continues to look around my flat and picking things up and putting them back down again. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ He turns around to look at me.
‘Apart from making sure all my Ming vases are polished in honour of your visit, why would I possibly mind?’ I say, standing up, hoping he’d do the same, but he sits on the armchair that was occupied by Tom’s sweater a minute ago.
‘I came to bring you this,’ he says and pulls out Ma’s necklace from his breast pocket. ‘And this,’ he adds, bringing out a crumpled letter that looked like a bill.
My heart starts beating faster. I thought I would never see it again and having Ma’s necklace in my possession again fills me with unexplained hope. My true North. Maybe I am not lost.
‘Great, thanks,’ I say, snatching it from his claw and hiding it inside Tom’s bundled sweater like a precious pearl. ‘You can go now.’
Sigfrid straightens his tie and gets up from the chair. He traces a thumb over my mouth and pushes the flesh down, exposing the inside of my lower lip. I stand still and hold my breath, just as I would if I were ambushed by a bear in the forest with only a holed woolen jumper and a necklace for protection.
‘Such a shame,’ he whispers, and I feel his hot breath in my ear. ‘Such a shame you went all cold on me, just as we were getting warmed up.’
‘Yeah, well,’ I say and swallow hard. ‘I’m sure you’ll get over it.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to get over it,’ he says and pushes me against the wall and forces my lips open with his mouth. His beard scratches my skin, and I fight to push him away, but he’s stronger, so much stronger. A sudden flash or remembrance enters my brain, and the fight left unfought that my body has desperately been trying to start makes me tremble with anger.
He could snap me like a twig, but Sigfrid lets go of me and smiles. Behind him, I see a mop of red hair and Tom’s chalk-white face. He coughs.
‘I didn’t mean to interrupt,’ he says coldly.
‘Tom,’ I say, still reeling from the avalanche of feelings that have just invaded my body.
‘It’s fine,’ says Sigfrid and runs a hand through his sleek Scandinavian hair. ‘We were quite finished.’
‘Tom,’ I say again, desperate to tell him everything, to beg his forgiveness for all the things I didn’t say. I should have gone with him to walk Lucky. None of this would have happened.
‘It’s okay,’ he says, appearing unperturbed as he removes the collar from around Lucky’s neck. ‘I just got off the phone with my agent. A producer saw me in the play and wants to give me a role in a TV series. I’ll be going away for a while. Filming starts the day after tomorrow in Belfast.’
‘Congratulations,’ says the tower of Sigfrid and pushes past Tom, who’s commanding the hallway with his broad shoulders. Tom grunts in resentful acknowledgement and lets go of Lucky but doesn’t look up.
‘See you around, Miss Sharp,’ says Sigfrid and leaves without closing the door behind him.
‘Or not,’ I shout behind him, but it’s too late for him to hear me. Sigfrid’s steps are disappearing, and now there’s only silence.
‘Tom,’ I say again as if by saying his name, I might be able to convey the storm of feelings I am still not closer to decrypting inside of me.
‘I’ll be away for a couple of months,’ he says, not looking at me. ‘Possibly longer.’
‘Tom,’ I say again because it’s the only thing I can say.
‘You’ll be okay to look after Lucky yourself?’ he says, finally granting me a glance. I know how disheveled I look, and I’ve never felt more pathetic in my entire life. Not even when I was more pathetic. ‘With you working long hours and all?’
I make a feeble nod for a yes. Lying is not the answer.
‘My flatmate said he will take Lucky out for a couple of days a week. He works shifts,’ he says.
‘Tom,’ I plead again as I realise how much I ache at the thought of him leaving.
‘Helena,’ he says and takes a step closer but doesn’t touch me. ‘You know I want you. I want all of you. But you’re giving me less than nothing and I deserve better than that.’
I want you too, I think, but only unintelligible sounds come out of my throat like I’m a dying beast. He’ll be better off without me. I slid down on the floor against the wall, still clutching the necklace and his sweater.
‘Shh,’ he says and finally takes me into his strong arms and buries his face in my hair. I feel a hot tear melting into my scalp as he talks. ‘You don’t have to say anything. It’s okay. I got the message,’ he whispers. ‘I’m going to leave you alone.’
‘Tom,’ I say again, mouth full of solidifying glue, as I struggle with myself to tell him this is the last thing I want him to do.
‘You’ve got what you wanted, H,’ he murmurs, getting up all of a sudden and putting a hand on the door handle with a bitter-sweet smile. ‘You’ve managed to push me away.’
He gives me a painful, heart-wrenching look. ‘Funny thing is,’ he says. ‘I was considering saying no to the role, up until I walked into your flat and saw you with this guy. I hope you get whatever it is you need, H. I really do wish you well.’
He softly closed the door behind him. I hear his steps echoing on the staircase like a lingering goodbye. I feel the deepest hole forming inside my soul as I grasp the reality of my situation. I am unemployed and untethered, standing on the ledge of my life without a safety net, alone and, for the first time in my entire adult life, in love.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s chapter! Stand-by to find out what happens next.
Love,
Iulia
xxx
