Siobhan #2
Siobhan has started to miss the house when she’s not inhabiting it through the screen, she realises, as much as she doesn’t want to admit it.
Every second she isn’t immersed in its details, she wants to be.
She needs to be. It feels more real than her reality, a richer and more textured world than the one she now inhabits.
When had it started to pull her in again?
To sink its teeth into her, so deep that she could never hope to pull them out?
The next clip in the list is of Elly. So many of them are.
Theo and his camera seemed always to find her: Elly smiling shyly at breakfast, Elly lying on the bench in the sun like a cat, proud belly towards the sky.
After Theo showed Siobhan the first interview he’d done with Elly, it became obvious to both of them that she would be the focus of the documentary, the heart of it, the story around which everything else would revolve.
There was something so fragile about her – as if you could crush her beneath your thumb with the smallest amount of pressure – that made her compelling to watch.
She also seemed to have some kind of intimate connection with the camera, to know exactly when to look and when to look away.
So many of the other guests performed awkwardly for Theo’s gaze, but never Elly.
In this clip, she is looking at herself in the dormitory’s full-length mirror.
She smooths her dress down over her bump so that she can feel the size of it, and then turns to the side to appreciate it from different angles.
She doesn’t seem to know that Theo and his camera are there until she catches the glint of the lens in the mirror. She turns, grinning.
In the next clip, Elly is in the kitchen.
When Siobhan thinks of her, she is always in the kitchen, in the warmth, standing at the wooden countertop with dough under her fingers.
Theo zooms in on her hands, pale and fine-boned, as they sweep flour across the surface.
By this point, she isn’t wearing her wedding ring.
Keiko and Grace are in the background having a quiet conversation the camera can’t quite pick up.
Haina enters the shot, a sudden flare of orange.
She embraces each of the women in turn, dances with them around the kitchen to an old song on the radio.
She grips Elly close, laughing with an open mouth, spinning her round and round.
Whenever Haina entered a room, it seemed to bloom into technicolour.
In the clip, Haina releases Elly, who looks back at the camera with flushed cheeks and a heaving chest. She smiles at Theo in a way that makes Siobhan’s heart constrict.
The bond between Elly and Theo – when did it start?
Maybe it was that first interview, while Siobhan was stalking the gardens after their argument, trying to make sense of what had happened to Lakshmi and why her first instinct had been to commit as much of the girl’s broken body to camera as she could.
Or maybe it had started before that. It seems so obvious now, watching the clips, how they felt about each other.
But Siobhan had been less tuned in to it at the time.
Or, she simply couldn’t have cared less.
Elly had been a subject, fodder for the camera, her story nothing more than a way to add depth and dimension to the documentary.
Watching the footage now, Elly so vital and shimmering, it’s easy to forget what happened next.
Siobhan shuts the laptop again. Some unreachable place inside her is itching.
The only thing that’ll help, she knows, is a drink.
She checks the fridge but it’s empty, and so she shrugs on a denim jacket and shoves her feet into trainers, leaving the warmth of the flat for the cool Edinburgh evening.
She wanders down the Mile without really knowing where she’s going, only that she needs to move.
She finds herself down on the Cowgate, the long, dark street lurking under George IV Bridge.
It used to be the road farmers would use to bring their cows to market, a thick highway of dung and noise.
Now, it’s home to a strip of bars and basement clubs.
Everything in Edinburgh is coated in layers of existence like this: everything restless and changing and unfinished, like skin that constantly regenerates.
She walks into a nondescript bar without bothering to read the name.
The floor is dark and sticky; it smells of cheap beer and urine.
It’s only ten thirty, but it’s already getting busy.
From the floor beneath comes the thump of techno music.
At the bar, Siobhan orders a vodka tonic, drinks it quickly, then orders another.
The drinks don’t work as fast as she’d like – she’s fidgety as she sits alone with her elbows on the bar.
A skinny man with a moustache peers at her and asks to buy her a drink.
She lets him. He tries to start up a conversation about the music downstairs but Siobhan ignores him.
Still, he buys her another drink, a shot.
By this time, the alcohol has finally started to work its magic.
Siobhan feels it hit against her senses, like a hammer into metal, transforming them into a more manageable shape.
Hex House and its details fall away. Elly’s clear eyes and quiet laugh recede into the blackness.
Maybe Siobhan drinks something else, or maybe she just imagines that she does, and then she’s being led by the skinny man down a steep set of stairs into the basement club.
The music is so loud it rattles her teeth, the tangle of bodies so tight that she has to push in between them to find a space on the dance floor, every inch of her body seeming to connect with every inch of theirs.
She can barely make out anything but bass, it’s so loud.
Siobhan lets it move her bones. The skinny man tries to push himself against her but it’s easy enough to push him away, to reclaim the space he took as her own, to sway and move until her feet ache and her scar starts to throb.
If only she could always feel like this, this far away and detached from everything real.
She’d be okay, then, she thinks. She’d really be okay.
When she can barely breathe for the closeness of the club, she stumbles back out into the main bar, and then out onto the Cowgate.
It’s busier now, clouds of smokers standing outside the clubs, spitting and shouting and shoving each other.
She makes her way back to the Mile, looking for a reason not to have to go straight home.
She can’t bear to be alone in the flat again.
That’s why Sylvie seems almost god-sent when she appears, walking quickly from the direction of the Parliament.
She’s so tall that she stands out wherever she is, legs long and graceful, back slender.
Tonight, she walks quickly and with purpose.
Siobhan has rarely seen her outside of the Showroom, and realises just how stylish she is, how put-together in her fitted black coat and silk dress the colour of red wine.
Sylvie hasn’t seen Siobhan yet. She wonders what she must look like, sweat-slicked from the club, drinks spilled down her old hoodie.
She falls back a little into the crowd and follows Sylvie from a short distance away as she takes a shortcut down Fleshmarket Close.
Siobhan wills herself invisible as she sticks to the shadows twenty steps behind, but Sylvie is wearing large headphones, and she doesn’t turn around.
You should be more careful, Sylvie, Siobhan thinks. Pretty girl like you. You never know who might be following you.
Sylvie crosses onto Princes Street. It’s easier to hide here, the crowds thicker and more fast-moving.
She keeps on walking through town to George Street, with its wide pavements and upscale restaurants.
Of course, this is where Sylvie would come.
Of course, this would be her natural habitat.
Siobhan hangs back and watches Sylvie go inside Melody Blossom, a sleek cocktail bar with an elaborate floral arch curling around the door.
It has large windows, so Siobhan has a good view inside.
She watches as Sylvie removes her headphones and greets someone at the bar, a young woman wearing a pristine camel blazer and high boots.
She wonders what cocktails they might order, what obscure ingredients they’ll contain, how much they might cost.
Siobhan stays outside the window for a long moment, watching, and then pulls out her phone. Her scar is throbbing – she should sit, she should go home – but instead, she fires off a text to Owen.
Did you have your tutorial with Sylvie?
He replies after a couple of minutes. Hey. Yeah. It was quite useful for her actually – she’s got some great ideas. Cheers for suggesting it. Still on for dinner tomorrow night?
It’s strange, the feeling that spreads out in the bottom of her stomach. She feels caught out, punished, but at the same time, it’s intoxicating. She feels like a wife who’s caught her husband watching porn – there’s a betrayal to it, but a fascination, too.
She types, Good. I’m at Melody Blossom on George Street. Come and meet me?
Wouldn’t have thought that was your kind of place? She waits until he texts again. Okay, sure. On my way.
Hurry up.
Siobhan calculates that it’ll take him about fifteen minutes to walk from his flat to the bar, but he turns up in a taxi barely five minutes later.
She has to duck behind a phone box so that he doesn’t see her.
She watches as he shuts the taxi door and makes his way inside.
Only when she’s confident he won’t see her does she look back through the window.
Owen is standing at the bar, scanning the room for her.
Sylvie stands on the opposite side of the room with her friend.
Her phone pings. Here. Where are you?
She doesn’t answer. She feels heady, unpredictable, light on her feet. After a minute, she texts back, I’m not there, but Sylvie is.
She watches as he opens the message. He frowns. She wants him to look around, but he doesn’t, he just keeps looking down at his phone. How do you know that? Why aren’t you here?
Siobhan watches as Sylvie’s friend leaves the bar in the direction of the toilet.
Go and talk to her, she types quickly, fingers shaking on the keys. Go and say hi.
Owen looks up from his phone again, searches the bar.
There’s something more desperate about him now.
He seems upset. She sees him notice Sylvie, her perfect skin, the red sheen of her expensive dress, the careful way she’s done her make-up.
What kind of man is he, if he doesn’t want that for himself?
He looks down again at his phone. His text is a simple word.
Why?
Siobhan’s fingers hover over the keys. Because I want you to. Then, she adds, Because you told me I was in control.
Owen rubs a weary hand over his face. What will he do?
Will he come out here and find her? He sends her one last text, This isn’t fun, Siobhan, and then heads down the bar in Sylvie’s direction.
He touches a hand to the small of her back, and Sylvie turns.
She’s holding a martini glass. Siobhan squints to better see her reaction.
Is she pleased? Is she creeped out? Owen leans in close to whisper something in her ear and she doesn’t pull away.
She looks up at him, laughing, one hand half-covering her mouth.
Siobhan turns away from the window and sets off down the street, trying to understand why she feels so electric, why she feels like her every nerve ending is burning.