Her downstairs neighbour
If he were to disappear, if he were to step out of his front door and never return, they’d be able to piece together his entire personality from the items on this balcony.
He was a cyclist, they’d notice, from the folded-up bike.
And from the way it slots neatly on to the mount he himself fixed into the brick wall, they would note that he was capable, and that he cared about preventing clutter.
The kitchen garden he’s been carefully cultivating, the pickling cucumbers and the radishes he uses to make his own amazuzuke, would tell them that he liked to cook.
The misting bottle sitting on the scrubbed-clean decking would mark him out as diligent, attentive.
No one would find a more dependable partner, and yet on this balcony they’d see no signs of a lover, because if there had been such a person, they moved their stuff out a matter of weekends ago.
The single whisky tumbler filled with melting ice would be enough to say that he lived alone.
‘I told you,’ comes a female voice from the balcony above. ‘I don’t have anything to do with them.’
‘But is she ill?’ a male voice responds. ‘Like, actually ill?’
‘I don’t know,’ the girl says. ‘I think so.’
‘Then you should go and see her,’ the guy replies, softly. ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t.’
What would he find, up there? From the street, he has seen the most spectacular array of plants and flowers, grown by one of the girls.
An easel, used by the other. There’d be an ashtray, he assumes, from the smell of smoke that cascades downwards like dry ice.
A small table with two beer bottles upon it.
Two chairs, and two people. The guy doesn’t live there.
Just the pair of them: the cute gardener with the fringe, and her uptight housemate.
This sounds like the uptight girl, though the way she’s speaking tonight seems less guarded.
They don’t know that anyone can hear them.
‘What happened between you?’ the guy asks.
The girl doesn’t answer.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ he says. ‘It’s rich of me to ask.’ A pause. ‘But I’m listening, if you want.’
The girl sighs. ‘I always felt like I was the only one who saw my dad for the bully he is,’ she says, finally. ‘My sister toughened herself up to it. Got out of there as fast as she could.’ A sad laugh. ‘Self-preservation, I suppose. She’s a chef now. She needs a high-stress environment.’
‘And your brother?’
‘He’s the soft one,’ she says. ‘The baby. Cee and I like picking fights, making ourselves heard. Augie isn’t like that.’ A long exhale. ‘He’s always struggled, and my parents have always ignored him for it. Dad wanted a boy, but not that kind of boy. You know?’
The neighbour imagines the guy nodding, taking a drag of his cigarette. A shakiness is creeping into the girl’s voice.
‘I should have seen the signs, even if everyone else didn’t,’ she says. ‘When Augie tried to—’ She pauses. The neighbour imagines her waving the words, the smoke, away. ‘I told my dad it was his fault. And he said—’ A deep intake of breath. ‘He said he wished it had been me.’
‘Jesus.’
‘That’s not even the worst thing,’ she says. ‘The worst thing is that my mum heard him say it, and she said nothing.’
The girl sounds tired. The neighbour pictures her partner taking her hand, kneading his thumb into her palm.
‘Will you come with me?’ she asks.
‘Of course I will.’
Some movement. A song begins to play. The Kinks. Neither of them speaks for a while. The decking creaks. Are they dancing? The neighbour stares out over a still night, the murmurs of south London muffled by the music drifting down from the balcony above.
‘I love you, too,’ the guy says, abruptly. ‘I should have said it back. I should have said it first.’
A smile creeps into his partner’s voice. ‘You’ve said it now,’ she says. ‘And I still feel the same. Luckily for you.’
A contented silence falls over them, and the conversation melts away. The neighbour sits down here, alone with their music. He doesn’t know anyone else in the building. They wouldn’t know it, if he was gone. The song plays on. Strangers on this road we are on. We are not two, we are one.
‘What was the most painful one?’ the girl upstairs is asking, now.
His thoughts had drifted. The song has changed, and the couple are sitting again. Though the conversation has moved on, its warmth still lingers.
‘Knuckles,’ says her partner. ‘Ribs. The inner thigh was a son of a bitch.’
A wincing intake of breath, then a short laugh. The guy is speaking again now.
‘You’ve never thought of getting one?’ he says.
‘I’m scared of needles,’ she replies.
‘The piercings say otherwise,’ her partner says.
‘I’m afraid of commitment, then.’ She’s only half joking. ‘A tattoo is for life.’
Two creaking chairs, two bottles sipped from.
‘What would you get?’ asks the guy. ‘If you were to get one.’
She’s thought about this before. Her answer comes too quickly for her not to have. ‘A line I like, from a book I love,’ she says. ‘Slaughterhouse-Five. It’s an illustration, really.’
A pause, which must involve her picking up her phone, showing her partner a picture of said illustration. He reads the words aloud.
‘Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.’
He doesn’t ask anything else. They sit in silence for a long while, until she breaks it. A question, framed as a statement.
‘You’ve never told me what this one means.’
Her partner shifts in his chair. ‘Which one?’
‘This one,’ she says. ‘The “E”.’
The resulting pause goes on for so long that the man below wonders if the man above will ever answer.
‘Oh,’ is all he says, when he finally speaks.
‘You don’t have to—’ his partner begins.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I want you to know.’ Still, he struggles.
‘If it’s an ex, or—’
‘I had a sister,’ the guy says, finally, abruptly. ‘She died.’
A long silence. Within it, another song begins to play.
‘What was her name?’ the girl asks, after a while.
The ice in the downstairs neighbour’s tumbler has melted entirely.
He swirls the warming water around, then looks back through the dark glass, as if willing the bottle of whisky – Japanese, small batch – to come to him.
It won’t. But it would somehow feel like a betrayal to stand up now, to scrape back his chair and open the screen door.
To let them know that someone has heard.
‘Eleanora,’ comes the voice of the guy upstairs. ‘Ellie.’