Offcomer (7 page)

She tugged a handful of carrier bags out of the kitchen drawer. She stuffed back the others which had rustled out with them, pushed the drawer shut. She bagged up the empty bottles for recycling. She emptied the kitchen bin, scrubbed it with disinfectant. She washed up, she cleaned the sink and draining board.

Five to eight.

The hoover was tangled in the under-the-stairs cupboard, its flex knotted round the ironing board, its hose twisted through wire clothes hangers and a folded chair. She fished out the dustpan and brush. She climbed three flights of dusty, gritty, hair-matted stairs, knelt down at the top and swept each step as she descended backwards on her knees. By the time she had finished she had filled a Tesco’s bag with fluff.

She cleaned the bathroom, scrubbing at the film on the bath, at the mould between the tiles. She watered the plants, dusted the shelves, plumped up the sofa cushions. Her fingers were pink and desiccated and cold. They smelt of bleach and polish. She sat down on the sofa and cried. She cried noisily, convulsively, till her stomach ached and she was left gasping. She wiped her face with her hands.

In the bathroom she blew her nose on toilet roll. The snot was black with dust. She turned the hot tap on, washed her hands, then ran a basinful of steaming water. Leaning over, she scooped the water up, held it to her face, splashed it over her skin. Her fingers felt rough against her face. Squinting, she felt around for her tube of cleanser. She flicked the cap open, squirted a slug of cream into her hand. She rubbed it between her palms, over her face, then rinsed her skin again. She got soap in her eyes. She scrubbed her face with the hand towel, looked at herself.

Eyes smarting and misted by tears and facewash, she saw only a pink smear. She blinked, and it clarified. Her eyes were thick-lidded and pink, underhung with heavy mink-brown shadows, cheeks flushed and hot-looking. She tugged out the plug, rinsed away the dirt and soap scum, ran another bowlful of water. Heron-like, she lifted her foot and immersed it in the hot water, peeling off the gummy blue plaster. Underneath, the cut was pink, wet, rubbed raw.

The bike was cool and damp after a night in the back yard. She wheeled it, ticking like a grasshopper, through the house and out the front door, bumped it down the steps. She pushed her right foot into the toeclip, swung into the saddle. Shuffling the other foot into its clip, she tacked slowly up the hill. The gears clicked into place with the certainty of a problem solved.

On Stranmillis Road the pavements were littered with last night’s grease-stained papers, chip trays and polystyrene cartons. On the zebra crossing an abandoned kebab spilled out shredded lettuce and grey scraps of meat. All the shops were
shut except for the tiny all-night newsagent’s, its purple Cadbury’s logo glowing. As Claire passed she glimpsed a yellow-lit perspective of shelves and lino, and a young woman, dark haired, who turned a page, smoothed her newspaper flat across the counter, did not look up.

The road swept her down Stranmillis Hill in a single smooth bend. Squinting into the rushing air, she flew past stolid terraces, leafy villas and a splinter of parkland. She saw just one car, a red Micra, grinding up the hill. The roundabout was clear. She coasted round it without touching her brakes. On the flat beside the river, she caught the rhythm of the pedals again. Blue-and-white, a rowing team hoisted a boat onto their shoulders. Passing the pub she caught the scent of old beer and tarpaulins. She stopped at the towpath gate and slid out of the saddle. She pushed the bike through. Kissing gates they called them at home. At home there were kissing gates, grannies’ teeth and fat man’s agonies.

The Lagan was high, dimpling through the sluicegate. The towpath curled out of sight ahead of her, shadowing the river. She slid back onto the saddle, pushed off, then stood up on the pedals. Starting in a high gear, she clicked her way further up as she gained speed, heaving the bike along until she was flying, hair blown, eyes streaming, sweat gathering under her arms and on her back. There was something necessary about this, something essential. Claire, aware only of the press, release, of her muscles, of the air that abraded her nostrils and swelled her lungs, of the sweat cooling her skin, the wind wetting her eyes, could lose, just briefly, all other sense of herself. She unbuttoned her jacket and it flapped loosely around her.

The path lost the river, clung to the hedge. On the left, the ground swept away into parkland, hazy, pooled with the shade
of massive oak trees. A herd of cream-and-coffee-coloured cattle stood motionless, knee-deep in the long grass. The river swept back towards the towpath. The parkland shrank, disappeared. The river was running just beneath her. Above, the bank was knotted with rhododendrons, dry earth showing through the low tangle of branches. She rounded a bend and the far bank loomed up steep and close. Trees dappled the path with shadow.

Round the next bend, a tight right-hander onto a steep wooden bridge. Keeping up as much speed as possible for the climb, Claire slewed round the corner, slid quickly down the gears.

There was a bench, usually empty, just before the bridge. That morning, someone was sitting on it. She was past almost before she saw him. For a second she thought he was just a jogger catching his breath, but in the same moment knew that he couldn’t be. Too dark, too crushed. She pushed her way up the bridge’s smooth arc, stopped at its apex, leaned one foot on a low rung of the wooden rail. She turned in the saddle to look back.

Zipped up to the chin in his parka, shoulders hunched against some imaginary or pathological chill. A sparse beard, tucked, with his chin, into the nylon fur of his collar, staring down towards the stone-troubled water, or perhaps just at his feet. Battered, blackened trainers. Claire, havering on the bridge’s curve, was just turning away, just resettling herself on the saddle, when he looked up, and she almost caught his eye and the start of a smile. But she was already turning, already pressing down on a pedal, the bike already rolling forward, caught by the slope’s pull. It was too late to smile back, because smiling back would now mean wrenching on the brakes and heaving herself round in the saddle to look at him. Claire ducked beneath the overhanging willows, flinched inwardly.

And when she cycled back that way, half an hour later, the young man had gone.

The phone was ringing. She could hear it from the front door. Faint, insistent. Her stomach twisted into a knot. She dumped the bike in the hall, grazing the wallpaper, and pushed through the door into the dining room, crossing it in three paces. She reached the phone, stopped dead, her hand hovering over the receiver. The ansaphone had clicked into gear. Grainne’s recorded voice, solemn and precise.

Sorry, there’s no one here to take your call right now …

Claire felt her stomach twist again, curling up like a salted slug.

… 
so leave your name and number after the tone, and we’ll get back to you
.

An electronic beep. A pause. Claire imagined him on the other end of the line, receiver held to lips, ear; caught, hesitating, just like her. Except that he had picked up the phone, dialled the number.

The line went dead. The ansaphone clicked itself automatically off.

Claire’s hand still hovered over the phone. Slowly, as if afraid of breaking whatever thread still connected it with Paul, she lifted the receiver. Slowly she dialled 1-4-7-1. An artificial English voice, in distant emptiness. The caller had withheld his number.

She stepped into the bath. She had run it hot, filling the bathroom with steam, clouding the mirror and the window. The water was scalding; at first her nerves misfired, and she was
puzzled by the brief sensation that she was climbing into cold water. She slid down and the heat soaked through, bringing her skin out watermelon pink, beading her nose and upper lip with sweat. Her cut stung and pulsed, she could feel the blood pushing through her. Her hair stuck to her face, damp with steam and sweat. She closed her eyes. She ducked her head under.

Guilt so bad it made her curl up small and wrap her arms around herself in the water. Memories of last night buckling and twisting with images of Grainne in Paul’s arms, her pale naked skin slipping in, displacing Claire’s yellowish flesh. Which is how it should be, how it was. Grainne’s smooth slim arms round his neck, Paul pressing his face into her hair. Claire in bed, in the spare bedroom, awake, aware. Which was jealousy, not guilt, Claire realised, pressing her eyes shut tighter, feeling sick. His touch still haunted her breast; she could almost taste him still. At least, she thought, surfacing, sucking in air, I didn’t say anything.

On the corner of the bath, by Claire’s red and wrinkled left big toe, was Grainne’s soapbox. Neat, pale green,
Clinique
embossed on the top. She had forgotten it. She would be annoyed, and anxious, Claire knew. Her skin was sensitive, prone to break out in rashes of tiny pale unobtrusive spots. She hated going into work with spots, however unnoticeable. Claire smiled at the memory of Grainne’s morning gloom over a slight bump on her chin. Spots undermined the pupil-teacher relationship, she had announced, and Claire had done her best not to crack up.

“What, what?” Grainne had asked, and Claire had been unable to explain why she was laughing.

“What?”

Grainne. She could almost see the unlocked door swing
open and Grainne come in, as she often did, unbuttoning her trousers.

“If you didn’t take so long in the bath …”

Claire, her back towards the toilet, almost thought she heard the slap of naked thigh against plastic, the hiss and splash of Grainne’s piss. Claire splashed her hands in the foamy bathwater.

“Listen, Grainne,” she muttered.

The toilet roll would rattle on its holder.

“I have to tell you something.”

Soft scuffling noises.

“I fucked your boyfriend.”

Trousers being pulled up, buttoned. “Ah, right.”

A pause, then the rush and gurgle of the toilet flush.

“So what did you think? He’s good isn’t he?”

“He was fucking great.”

Claire closed her eyes, breathed out sharply, wiped her face with her hands. She didn’t know his phone number, or even his address. She had no fucking clue how to get in touch, and even if she had, she realised, lifting her bent knee to inspect the pulsing cut on her ankle, there was no way she would have the balls to phone. But, when he had reached out for her last night, his face cut and hurt, he had looked at her, and had seemed to see someone he recognised. Someone he knew, and wanted. Claire, suddenly caught up by the dizzying knowledge that she was
there
, had been unable to speak. But what she had wanted to know more than anything else, and had wished that she could ask him, and was now glad that she hadn’t, was what he’d seen.

She jumped. The phone had burst out ringing. Down the
stairs, dripping, towel clutched round her, leaving heavy dark footprints on the stair carpet.

“Hello?”

“Claire?”

“Yes—”

“Paul.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

A pause.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“Fine. What about you?”

“Fine.”

“How’s the cut?”

“It’s okay. Listen.”

She felt her stomach twist tighter.

“Mm?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve been feeling terrible. It wasn’t fair of me. You’re not over Alan yet—and Grainne, you know—”

“Yes.”

“I’d hate to upset her. It’d be terrible if she got hurt.”

“Yes.”

“I mean, it’s not like it was anything serious. It’s not like we’ve had an affair or anything. It wasn’t, like, well … When you think about it, she doesn’t really need to know, does she? It would be kinder, really. Don’t you think?”

“Right.”

“So you won’t tell her?”

“No—”

“Well, listen, you’re alright then?” She could hear the relief in his voice.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“And this is just between the two of us? No one else needs to know?”

“Right.”

“Well, listen, thanks. I’ll see you soon.”

“Right.”

She put down the phone, stood looking at the receiver’s smooth white plastic back. A breath, held.

The white tiles were granular. Flecks danced like static on a TV screen, bright pixels blinking on and off.

It was dizzying. She closed her eyes. Behind her eyelids, the same. Little dancing squares of light and dark. Her picture breaking up. Underneath her, the floor seemed to shift. She slid her feet away, planted her hands on the tiles, leaned her head back against the cold ceramic rim of the bath.

Windy dark outside. The screen fizzing. Dad crouched, twisting the plastic dial, and the
Doctor Who
theme tune wailing from the TV set
.

She opened her eyes. The light and dark specks still jostling, dancing. She narrowed her vision, stared at her wineglass, trying to grip it with her attention. A tiny pool of liquid red resting in the deepest pit. A bubble caught in the thick greenish glass, near the lip. Her hand lying near the rippled base. Pale skin, tiny lines crossing and recrossing like a map. Tendons and blue vessels pushing against the surface. Creased swellings round each joint. Two silver rings, the smaller holding the larger one in place. Scarred, abraded, old-looking.

The flash of silver from his hand when he skimmed a stone across the flat of the reservoir. The stone flickering into the distance. Always uncountable, unbeatable
.

The thumb was bent, pressed down against the index finger, a tiny mole in the crook. Blood had crept underneath the nail, dried into a brownish-red half-moon. The blade lay beside her hand, one corner moist, red.

Soft black fabric pulled up in folds. Dips and curls and invaginations, dark shadows. Pale skin, puckered with goosepimples, pale hair bristling. The left knee bent. Ankle resting on the right knee. Profiled foot, the reddened pachyderm hide of a heel, the bulge of a calf muscle laced with old pale scars, dripping with new blood, cut.

She had drawn a spiral round a mole, traced a five-pointed star into her skin, she had shaded and cross-hatched a tiny parallelogram. She bled onto the bathroom floor.