Siobhan #2
A few minutes later, Owen returns with the wine – red, French, expensive-looking – and two glasses. He pours them both a generous measure, the liquid tarry and viscous.
“Are you still teaching?” she asks. It’s disconcerting, somehow, to hear the question come out of her mouth. To remember that she is an adult capable of polite conversation.
Owen nods. “Still at Edinburgh. Programme Director now, actually.” He raises his glass then lowers it. “No way of saying that without sounding like a wanker.”
Siobhan smiles. She takes a generous glug of wine and feels it fur her teeth, staining them dark. When she puts the glass down it’s already empty.
“So,” Owen says, refilling it, “the last I heard, you and your brother had that incredible documentary commission. What was his name again? Hugo?”
“Theo.” Saying his name is like pressing a bruise.
“How is he?”
“We don’t really talk anymore.”
Owen leans back into the leather, swirling the liquid in his glass, holding it by its stem. He hasn’t taken a sip yet. “I’m sorry to hear that. You made a good team, I heard.”
Siobhan shrugs. The last time she saw him, Theo’s clothes were covered in blood and he had mud tracked up his bare calves from running through the woods. I don’t even know who you are anymore, he’d screamed at her. “Creative differences,” Siobhan says, shaking her head to rid herself of the image.
“The commission though,” Owen says, blowing air out through his lips. “I was so pleased when I heard about that. You really deserved it. What was it – six months on-location filming? A year?”
Siobhan keeps her eyes on the table, on the complex grain of the wood, its whorls and half-faces. She feels like she’s in an old silent movie, waiting prone on the tracks for the train to come.
“The cult!” Owen says loudly, slapping his free hand on his thigh. “I remember now, out in the middle of nowhere. All very top secret and mysterious. You can tell me all the gory details now though, right?”
“No,” Siobhan whispers, too quickly. Owen blinks, raised eyebrows betraying his surprise.
Under the table, she forces her fingernails into the flesh of her thigh, gasping as one of them bends all the way back.
She doesn’t know what she’d expected, inviting him out for a drink – of course he would ask about this.
“And it wasn’t a cult,” she manages to say.
“It was…” Go on, Siobhan. What was it? “It doesn’t matter.
The doc didn’t really come to anything, anyway. ”
“That’s a shame,” Owen says carefully. “I get it though. Sometimes the stars just don’t align.
I’d still love to see that footage, if you’re ever happy to share.
I don’t know if you remember, but I co-founded a production company a while back.
We’re always on the lookout for fresh ideas.
” He takes a long, deep sip of wine. “And to be honest, you always stood out to me, Siobhan. Distinctive style. Uncompromising.”
Siobhan’s stomach tightens. It always does when she receives a compliment, though it’s been a while.
There’d been a time when she’d been led to believe that she was a different sort of person, an exceptional one, even, after she graduated.
She’d won an award for her short film based in a domestic violence shelter, the same one where she’d lived with her mum and Theo for a year when she was three.
After that, professors and peers alike seemed in a rush to tell her that they’d been the ones to sense her potential early.
People can be possessive over talent, and she’d felt like a prize to be fought over.
There were job offers floated, emails constantly landing in her inbox about projects that might be a good fit for her and Theo, who’d graduated a couple of years before.
Siobhan had basked in the golden glow of things starting and gaining momentum with little effort on her part.
This, she’d thought, this is the way my life is going to be now. I’m going to be a filmmaker.
Then, of course, came the letter. How had they gotten her address?
She’s always wondered, not that it matters now.
Her name on the envelope was blotted in places, as if it had been written out slowly, the ink pooling from a proper fountain pen.
Siobhan couldn’t remember the last time she’d received a letter that wasn’t a utilities bill, and seeing the scratchy handwriting felt strangely intimate, as though the sender were standing in the room with her and looking over her shoulder, their breath on her neck.
We have a special opportunity for you, Siobhan. Here at Hex House.
Hex House. She’d laughed when she read that, thinking, fleetingly, that it must be a prank. A jealous course mate maybe; someone who hated all the positive attention she was getting. But there had been something about the letter that felt true, somehow – earnest.
We know about your work. We would like to invite you to stay with us.
The letter had seemed to throb in her hand, to demand an answer, though there was no return address. She read it over and over, sitting at her desk at home, training her eyes to focus on each word and not skip ahead.
You’re very special.
You’re exactly what we need.
How easily that simple flattery had reeled her in, spiked her curiosity. But it was the ending of the letter that had really cemented what she did next. That strange, out-of-place turn of phrase that had made her feel cold all over.
Would you like to come inside?
She often wishes she could go back to that moment. Scream No, no, no. Rip up the letter. Throw it away, forget about it. Become a different person entirely.
“Siobhan?” Owen prompts.
The door to the pub opens and lets in a gasp of cold air, bringing her back into herself.
She doesn’t want to talk about any of it anymore.
She wants to be here, now, in a dark room with expensive wine and a man who may or may not want her.
She’s flush with alcohol, lazy in a bold sort of way.
Each movement feels predestined and out of her control.
She puts down her wine glass and places one hand on either side of Owen’s face.
He flinches only slightly. His skin is warm, the suggestion of stubble breaking through.
His eyes widen for a half-second, then glaze over with something else and Siobhan recognises it instantly for what it is: the first flickering of desire.
She knows now, and so does he, what they have the potential to be to each other.
She might as well have said it out loud.
She might as well have carved it into the table with a knife.
“Stop talking,” she says instead, barely loud enough for him to hear, and she sees that desire grow brighter.
This is another one of those moments, she knows, when one thing slides into another; a moment she’ll look back on as one she should have handled differently.
Her life seems full of them. “Go and get me another drink,” she says, and takes her hands away.
* * *
Later, Siobhan wanders alone through Edinburgh’s knotted streets. She hadn’t let Owen walk her home, wanting him nowhere near the flat, so had led him in the opposite direction instead until she was too tired to make conversation anymore.
“This is me,” she lied, when they got to the top of Leith Walk. “My flat’s just round the corner.”
Owen swayed a little, looking past her. “You’re sure? You’ll be alright? I can come with you the rest of the way.”
She shook her head but did let him take her number, watching his clumsy fingers as he keyed in her name, the way he had to concentrate hard through his semi-drunken haze.
Then she strode away from him down Leith Walk, knowing she’d have to retrace her steps once she was confident he’d gone.
When she turned around, he was watching her walk away.
He raised a single hand in a wave she didn’t return.
Now, she crosses North Bridge, stumbling only slightly.
The sky is cobalt, blistered with stars straining through the city smog.
Trains departing Waverley roar beneath her feet and the gothic tenements of the Mile rise up to her right, their windows like a thousand eyes peering from their stone sockets.
Edinburgh Castle looms above it all, quiet and dark.
Sometimes she wonders how it’s possible to stay sane with a city like this looking back at you, never letting you out of its sight.
She wonders if she ever felt this way before Hex House, like everything was a barely veiled threat, like there were ghosts living inside her – tangled in her hair, wrapped around each sinew – teeming at her edges to get out.
She lives in a tiny one-bedroom in a tall, narrow building off the Mile.
The arched entrance and cobbled court yard give it a faded sense of elegance, but the light in the stairwell hasn’t worked in months and it perpetually smells of piss, of stale smoke.
Edinburgh is a grand old dame, but she’s got rotted teeth and her bones are fit to snap.
Her flat is at the very top of the building, stuffed into a misshapen corner.
It’s all awkward angles that won’t fit any furniture and windows that barely open, but it’s what she can afford.
Siobhan turns the lights on in the order she prefers – overhead living room light, lonely kitchen bulb, then the bedside lamp.
The flat simmers in the gloom. She has the sense, as she often does, that someone has been here while she was out, wearing her dirty clothes and wiping their tongue around the top of the milk.
She wonders what Owen would have made of all this had she brought him back here: the one sofa sagging under unwashed laundry, the empty bottles lined up on the windowsill and around the bin like trophies.
Maybe he wouldn’t have cared, and they’d be in the bedroom already.
In the bedroom, where there is a small desk with a drawer that locks.
In that drawer is a laptop, and on that laptop is a folder called ‘Hex House’.
Siobhan is always aware of that folder, as if it’s a siren, singing softly to her, but she won’t give into it. Not tonight.
Instead, she pours herself a measure of tequila and drinks it quickly.
She wrestles her dark, coarse hair into a bun on the top of her head.
While she’s changing for bed, she pauses to check, as she always does, the scar that sits between her belly button and pubic bone.
It’s a furious red-pink against her olive skin, even all these years later.
She drags one fingernail over the shape of it, across its ridges and furrows, just deep enough to hurt.
She’s falling asleep when it starts to rain.
The rain is always loud up here, the building’s pointed roof just a few metres above her head.
It’s soft at first, a pitter-patter that soaks the tiles.
In the early hours it turns thunderous, raindrops the size of pellets hammering the roof like they’re trying to get into her skin, to make their way inside her.
In the space between wakefulness and dreams, Siobhan imagines they’re the bodies of birds.
One by one, they fall dead and heavy from the sky, skeletons smashing against the houses.