Chapter Ten Still Walls
Chapter Ten
Still Walls
Stare at a blank computer screen.
That’s what he does.
For several minutes, until he gets a headache.
Because I have nothing else to do.
I have absolutely no work. Not a single new email sits in my account.
Not one. It’s empty – save for Ocado telling me I desperately need to start ordering my online shopping from them again, and someone in Delhi pretending to be B&Q, telling me I’ve won a lawnmower.
I just have to give them my address, bank details, inner thigh measurements and hopes and dreams about the future to claim it.
Other than those very important emails, though, there’s nothing. No work emails at all. All my existing contracts have come to their conclusion, and there’s nothing else. I’m done. I’m bereft.
I am unemployed.
This makes me want to throw up.
Which is unfortunate, as it’s lunchtime, and I really should eat something. I don’t remember having anything for breakfast. So I probably should be hungry. But I’m not really.
Because my business email account is empty, and I watched a man die in a car crash.
I continue to stare at the computer screen a little while longer, until my brain makes a demand of me, in a desperate attempt to get me off my arse and back out into the real world.
‘Coffee,’ I say out loud to my lounge.
My lounge, being a room of approximately two hundred square feet, and not blessed with a mouth or sentience, does not respond.
‘I will drink coffee,’ I tell it anyway, just in case.
Coffee will do me some good. I’m sure of it. It might wake me up a little, if nothing else.
Rising from my office chair, my legs shake a little. I really have been sat staring at that computer screen for far too long.
The blood is pumping back around them okay by the time I go out to my kitchen, and spend a few minutes staring at the coffee machine.
This does not have any work emails on it, either.
I make one of the worst coffees I have ever produced (though still not nearly as bad as Jack’s best attempt) with my rather lovely bean-to-cup machine, and drink the foul concoction while I stare out of the window.
There are no work emails out there, that’s for sure.
‘What the hell am I going to do?’ I ask my kitchen, which is no more sentient than my lounge, unfortunately.
Ring ring.
I look down, my heart racing at the sudden noise. My iPhone is in my hand. I don’t remember picking it up.
It’s an unknown number. I should probably answer it. Could be work. Could be someone wanting my services. Could be—
I press the red button to cancel the call, and throw the phone onto the counter, next to the coffee machine. I instantly feel relief as I do this.
Back to staring out of the window, I think.
That’s probably the best thing for me.
I don’t know how long I continue to do this.
What I do know is that by the time I hear my phone ring again, my legs have gone numb, and a dull ache has settled into my lower back.
I still don’t want to answer it, but when I see Annie’s name pop up on the screen, I know I have to.
‘Hi Annie,’ I say to my girlfriend.
‘Hi Charlie. Are you busy?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Okay. Could you . . . Could you come over to my place? I . . . I think we need to talk.’
I close my eyes and stop thinking about emails for the first time today.
Annie wants to talk.
Of course she does.
I should never have picked up the phone.
I should have just carried on staring out of the window.
I walk over to Annie’s instead of driving. It takes half an hour, but that’s an extra thirty minutes I can put off the confrontation for.
But this is an inevitable conversation. One that’s been coming for some time now, and one I truly do not want to have.
Once I’m in Annie’s flat and sat down, I am – at least to start with – the one who listens. Annie has things she wants to get off her chest. Which is more than fair enough.
And none of it is stuff I couldn’t have predicted.
She’s worried about me. She’s worried about our relationship.
I sit at Annie’s kitchen table while she remonstrates with me about the current state of affairs, nodding along and agreeing to everything she says, more or less. At least to begin with. She has every right to be saying all of these things to me – and many more besides.
And I want to give her some sort of response. I want to make her feel better.
But I can’t because my email account is empty, and I saw a man die.
I only really come out of my enforced stupor when she says the following:
‘You won’t accept any help, Charlie. You just ignore everything I say.’
‘I don’t ignore everything you say,’ I tell her, my voice now somewhat petulant.
She affects a mock look of surprise. ‘Oh! Oh really, Charlie? You don’t?’ Her eyes narrow. ‘What’s the one thing I’ve been asking you to do for months now, including on bloody stage in front of hundreds of people, that you just completely ignore?’
‘I don’t ignore you!’
‘You ignore my advice, though, don’t you? You ignore my feelings. You ignore anything that inconveniences you.’
‘That’s not true, Annie,’ I counter. ‘I’ve explained how I feel about going to the doctor.’
‘No, you haven’t. You’ve told me you’re not going to do it – but have offered no real reason why.’ Annie folds her arms, leans back in the chair and looks at me. ‘Would you like to have a go at it now?’
I regard her for a moment, my lips pursed. I could continue to escalate this, but where would that get me?
‘I’ve told you,’ I say, in as calm a voice as possible. ‘I don’t think it would do any good, and I’d find the whole experience very embarrassing.’
‘As opposed to running down the road in your underpants?’
I knew she’d counter with that the second the excuse was out of my lips. ‘It wouldn’t do me any good,’ I repeat sullenly.
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘No, Charlie, you don’t!’
‘Yes, I—’
Oh, what’s the point? This has turned into a dreadful adaptation of that old Monty Python sketch, where Michael Palin goes in to ask for an argument. Annie should produce a dead parrot and the Holy Grail. The scene would then be complete.
The Holy Grail of my life right now would be a decent night’s sleep, and a work email or two.
‘Just please leave it,’ I say in a weary tone, and rub my eyes.
Annie sees that I don’t have much of a fight in me, and her own body language relaxes. ‘I can’t, Charlie,’ she says, in a far gentler tone. ‘I need to know what’s going on with you. I need to understand why you’ve changed so much. Why this is—’
We both jump as my bloody phone starts to ring again.
You bastard. You absolute bastard. I don’t want to hear you! Especially now! I don’t care about whoever is on the other end!
I jump to my feet, pull the phone out of my pocket, stab the cancel button and throw the damn thing down onto Annie’s kitchen counter – in an unpleasant echo of the same thing I did earlier in my own kitchen. How I haven’t broken the thing again yet is beyond me.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘It’s okay . . .’ Annie says, sighing.
‘I know you only want to help me,’ I tell her, trying to get back to that more conciliatory tone to the conversation. ‘But I honestly don’t think it’s by laying bare all of my problems to a stranger.’
Annie shakes her head. ‘Then what, Charlie? What do we do about you? Because I don’t think I can . . . I can take much more of this.’
And there it is. The last thing I want to hear in the world, and the one thing that I could have predicted I would hear in this conversation more than any other.
‘I know,’ I reply, my voice dull. ‘I get how you feel. I totally understand. I don’t want this to go on any more than—’
The phone rings again.
‘Just answer it, Charlie,’ Annie tells me.
No.
‘No, I want to talk to you,’ I say, and once again hit the cancel button.
‘Okay. You were saying?’
I clear my throat. ‘I was saying that I don’t want this to continue any more than you do. And I honestly don’t know why seeing someone about it fills me with such dread. I’ve tried to handle it. I’ve tried to find solutions.’
‘You’re not the one who can solve it, Charlie.’ Annie’s voice is laced with sympathy. ‘And you can’t solve your friends’ problems, either.’
I don’t know how to respond to that.
‘But you can solve my problem,’ she goes on. ‘You can do what I ask . . . even if you don’t think it’ll do you any good.’ Her eyes fill with tears. ‘For me?’
‘It’s not that simple, Annie. It’s not that easy to jus—’
Ring ring.
Oh, for the love of fucking Christ!
‘Answer your phone, Charlie.’
‘No! I don’t want to!’ The sudden, inexplicable rage seizes me in a vice-like grip.
I grab the phone, and throw it against the kitchen wall as hard as I possibly can.
The violence and energy I impart is high enough for the phone to actually shatter, showering Annie in tiny pieces of broken plastic and metal.
The main body of the phone ricochets off the wall and narrowly misses my girlfriend’s head.
It instead flies back past her and clatters into the sink.
‘Bloody hell!’ Annie screams in terror.
The look on her face.
The look on her sweet, gorgeous, wonderful face.
‘Annie,’ I wail, taking one step forward.
She pushes herself back in her chair, hitting the wall. Annie has never pushed herself away from me. And she’s certainly never looked at me with that kind of fear in her eyes.
Oh God. Oh Christ.
I do not know my own mind.
Am I . . .
Am I . . . dangerous?
‘I’m so, so sorry,’ I babble. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
‘What the hell is wrong with you, Charlie?’ Annie cries, one arm held up to ward me off.
‘I don’t know!’ I wail. ‘I don’t bloody know!’ I go over to the sink and pick up my battered phone. ‘It’s this bloody thing! Why does it have to keep bloody ringing when I’m trying to do something?!’
Annie looks at me, utterly dumbfounded. And no wonder. I’ve almost killed her with a ballistic phone, just because it was doing its job. ‘You just answer the stupid thing, Charlie!’