Chapter Fourteen
Giles
Time is ticking and I should be done already.
I need to get out of here in ten minutes and I’ve still got to mop this floor one more time.
I don’t want to be late for Marcello’s meeting with this guy who will potentially sell him a bike for him to race on in the triathlon. I said I’d be there, and I will be.
I just also need to clean the kitchen floor for a third and final time.
Three. Threes. Thirds. Three.
I can remember the exact moment three became my so-called lucky number.
It was when I was reading one of my mum’s magazines.
God, they were awful magazines. Flimsy pages, saturated colours, and terrible names like Catch Up, Coffee Break, Me Time.
They were as far from intellectually stimulating as you can imagine and yet these well-read, dog-eared magazines were almost all I had left of my mum.
Dad had gotten rid of her clothes and packed away most of her belongings long before my childhood memories began and yet there was always this stack of terrible women’s magazines on a corner coffee table next to the sofa in the 1960s semi-detached house I grew up in in a sleepy suburb of Reading.
It was apparently the one part of my mother he couldn’t get rid of.
I know my dad didn’t read them, and I knew well enough that they weren’t left for me, and yet they stayed there until the day I cleared out my parents' house after Dad died.
It was a silly little one-page article in one of those magazines that offered a formula for figuring out your lucky number.
And I did it. When I was about seven or eight, and Dad was busy in the garden outside, I sat on the sofa and flicked through those magazines wondering what my mum was like.
If she liked reading about mothers going off with their daughter’s husband or about package holidays to Costa del Sol.
But that article caught my eye and I followed the steps and worked out my lucky number was three, apparently.
It made sense. We were supposed to be a three, my family. Me, Mum and Dad. A trio.
It wasn’t immediate. I didn’t obsess about the number three from that moment onwards.
It took time. It was almost lazy how slowly it buried itself in my subconscious, but it was deliberate and it had roots.
Thick roots that wrapped their way around my brain matter.
Sometimes it’s like I can almost feel them inside my head, taking up space and growing stronger and vaster all the time.
At first it was just what I did to light switches.
I turned them on and then off and then on again.
Or vice-versa. And then I started to do other things three times.
I was never satisfied with a double bow in my shoes, I always pulled my laces tight enough so that they were long enough for a triple bow.
And I started wearing three layers of clothes – a vest, a T-shirt and a jumper – even in the middle of summer.
I didn’t know I had a problem with pulling my leg hair out until my friend Josh pointed it out when we were sitting next to each other in our rugby kit.
He asked why there were patches of my hair missing.
I realised then that I’d been pulling them out, three at a time, or six or nine or twelve or many more, so compulsively I didn’t even know I was doing it until it was done.
As I grew older, things changed. I got a Saturday job in a hardware store and I started to organise things in threes.
I would also do my best to ensure every customer bought a number of items that was divisible by three.
That is where my obsession with numbers divisible by three started.
I told myself it would make me seem more normal.
That I can’t make everything three so I should instead focus on the three times table.
That was good enough to keep at bay all the worst-case scenarios that filled my mind without invitation.
If I didn’t click the pen on, off and on again before I used it, I wouldn’t pass the exam I was sitting.
If I didn’t pat Josh three times on the shoulder when we said goodbye after school, something bad would happen to him.
If I didn’t check all three mirrors every time I did a manoeuvre in my driving lessons, I wouldn’t pass my test.
The cleaning wasn’t a problem until the counting was a problem.
My father was a clean man, and he made a big deal of us both tidying and cleaning the house every Sunday morning, before I could then go to rugby training.
He did the kitchen and living room. I did the bathroom and stripped both our beds.
After training, I made the beds again while Dad finished the laundry.
I liked the routine and the results. And I always slept really well on Sunday nights.
After my dad died, it got worse. I was convinced he died because I had left him.
If I hadn’t gone to university, he would still be alive.
If I’d been at home, I would have found him and I could have taken him to the hospital in time.
If I’d still been home in our same routine, he would still be alive.
By then, I was already doing things in threes when it came to cleaning.
Three wipes of the cloth to clean a surface, three sprays of antibacterial spray, three folds in a cloth I used to clean the kitchen table.
But I wasn’t obsessed with cleaning. I definitely was cleaner than the average university student but I wasn’t as invested, as involved with cleaning as I was until after my dad died.
That was an immediate change. The day he died, while I waited for my train to take me home, I cleaned my room in halls from top to bottom.
Counting up to three with each effort so that whenever I stopped, it was a number divisible by three.
When I still had an hour to kill, I moved to the communal bathroom and kitchen.
That was the first time I mopped a floor three consecutive times.
I’ve never mopped a floor just once since that day.
Now when I clean in threes, I do it for many different reasons.
Lots of catastrophes run through my mind as I clean – my business will fail, something will happen to Radia, I imagine fires and explosions and other disasters – but the most pressing one is that I am the third part of my triangle with my parents.
If I don’t do things in threes, then I will be the third.
I will complete the triangle. Or rather, my death will.
I know it’s a problem. I know what it’s called.
But I don’t want to name it. I don’t want a label.
I live alone. I don’t have a partner. I don’t have many good friends and those I am still in contact with aren’t in London.
I have it under control at work. It isn’t stopping me from living a full life.
But it is going to make me late for meeting Marcello if I’m not careful.
I rush to the bathroom with the bucket and pour the dirty water down the toilet.
I then run back to the kitchen and tip toe my way to the sink.
I fill the bucket with hot water and add in the detergent.
The water splashes on the already wet floor but I don’t stop, I pick up the mop and get straight to work.
I’m thorough but I’m panicked with it. I know it’s not a perfect job and I tell myself that I can do it properly later tonight when I’m home again.
I don’t have any other plans besides ironing my shirts for the working week.
Not that I usually have plans on Sundays other than gym and exactly what I’m doing, cleaning my flat.
I glance at my wristwatch again, the scuffed face and faded silver catching my attention. Not for the first time I think about how I need to get it restored, give it a little TLC, but I don’t want to take it off my wrist. I haven’t been without this watch for over twenty-five years.
But now is not the time to worry about that.
I have to empty this bucket, grab my phone, wallet and keys and get on my way.
I do it all as quickly as I can, turning the lock in my door the three times it needs to be fully locked.
It took me a while to find a lock that had to be turned three times but every time I turn the key and count to three in my head, I feel a little bit of peace settle over me.
Or maybe I just feel the tension that’s normally there ease off a little, just for a second. It’s hard to tell what’s the reality.
I hurry down the corridor and take the stairs two at a time until I’m on the ground floor and finally pushing through my building’s front door. Just as I start to walk quickly towards Belsize Park Tube station, I pull my phone out of my jeans’ back pocket and shoot Marcello a quick message.
His reply is instant.
I smile at his message. I’m still smiling as I quickly check our previous messages for the exact address I’m going to and I memorise it by saying it to myself three times.
And then I put my phone away and with it any silly smiles I may have for Marcello.
*****
“Congratulations!” I pat Marcello on the back as he pushes the bike down the pavement.
“Huh?”
“On buying your first race bike! Possibly the first of many?”
“Ha, I doubt it. I’ll be lucky if this doesn’t break on my first ride.”
“Why would it break?”
“I’m clumsy,” he shrugs, “I don’t normally let myself have nice things.”