Chapter 5
I have that leaden feeling: a darkness sitting, dank and heavy, in your chest. Like the ten seconds of overwhelm before you burst into tears, except those ten seconds have been going on all fucking day long.
These days, I’m sleeping all day and watching cable TV all night, keeping even-keeled thanks to the soporific sounds of Deal or No Deal, My Kitchen Rules and Cash in the Attic.
America’s Next Top Model, watching beautiful young women with all the potential in the world being cut down to size with the cruel medicine of reality, is another horrible, guilty salve.
Thin, beautiful girls, the most popular beings in their high school and on course for the gilded life that this promises, being told to go home as though it’s the worst thing to ever happen to them. They cry, and I cry along with them.
‘Come out for a walk in Vicky Park,’ Carrie texts one afternoon. ‘Just a really, really short one. Like to the first tree we see and back.’
I’d rather nail my thigh to a fire. ‘The thing is, there’s this episode of Come Dine With Me, and I’ve been following it all week,’ I reply. And then, a minute later, as if to hammer home the point, I add: ‘It’s in Scunthorpe.’
A small part of me shamefully wants her, or anyone, to come over and bang the door down with boomingly stern knocks, the way they do in movies, and scoop me up in a hug. Instead, she replies, ‘If that’s what you want x.’
A few days later, the blue of the box on the side locker is the first thing I notice. Johnny is on the bed, reading but checking me subtly for a reaction.
‘Jesus, I’ve not seen these in a long time,’ I say, picking up the box of condoms: ‘Extra safe’.
‘God, we didn’t even use the extra-safe ones when we started going out.’ I smile weakly.
We have spent so long trying to get his … guys up there, and here we are, back using condoms like those first few months. The distance between then and now makes my skull feel heavy.
I start to cry when I think of why they are there.
‘I know.’ Johnny is off the bed, hugging me. ‘But it will be OK.’
As I heave and leave globs of snot on Johnny’s shoulder, I’m trying to chase the feeling, make some sense of it. What am I crying for? Is it for us? For Ricey? For the future?
‘They’re not all that bad, are they?’ Johnny says, gesturing towards the box.
‘If memory serves,’ I tell him. ‘Why, what about for you?’
‘Well, they’re a bit like taking a shower with your socks on, I guess.’ At this, I laugh.
‘We could road test them?’ Johnny offers. I want to tell him that I’d rather drink goat piss in this exact moment, but I’m too tired to argue. I shrug in acquiescence. The sound of the plastic film being ripped off enthusiastically only seems to break my heart.
In the main, I have done almost too impressive a job at convincing Johnny that I am pretty good, actually.
I’ve stopped going on at him about turning the flat into a non-staffroom.
He went back to his tech job with little in the way of prompting, leaving me to stew uninterrupted in closed-curtain afternoons where I occasionally sniff my armpits, which smell as sour as I feel, and wonder how it ever came the hell to this.
A few weeks ago, when we arrived home from the hospital, I could hear Johnny on the phone to his mother through the gossamer-thin walls of the flat.
He has a particularly gentle way of talking with her, but this was something on another level.
He was monosyllabic. Muted. The absolute sadness of it.
Even more sad than when he was telling her about all those single lines on the other pregnancy tests.
‘It’s what she wanted,’ he then tells her over and over again, through half-choked sobs, ‘No funeral.’
I hate that my fingers still feel the phantom smoothness of brand-new baby skin: skin that I never even got to touch.
An ad for fabric softener involving a mother and her infant – the gurgles, the smiles, the silly twinkly music that seems to somehow convey human completeness – threatens to send me skidding right over the precipice of sanity.
Daytime is hard, and night-time is only a little less so.
I walk up and down Church Street, trying to look into cars at the faces of drivers who are totally oblivious to me.
You’re so lucky I didn’t walk out in front of you just there, I think more than once.
I hurry past the coffee shops, averting my head so I don’t even see so much as a buggy wheel.
Soon, the thoughts of rebuilding myself, like an architect armed with a blueprint, consume me.
And it’s easier than I thought. I create a new Facebook profile with my middle name.
Essie Marie might have no friends yet, but Essie Marie is the me in a parallel universe, the person who is still unmarried and whisking her way around Soho.
She doesn’t have the same friends as me, nor will she ever.
She posts links to articles from Jezebel and The Atlantic.
She likes offbeat Greek comedies and shares links to obscure indie songs.
Her Facebook page is a blank enough slate, but she is a cool girl, and one I would want to be around.
More importantly, ‘Essie Marie’ on Facebook hasn’t gone through any of what Esther Green has.
After a while, Johnny stops putting up with my newfound devotion to Court TV, or, for that matter, my doctoral-level knowledge of America’s Next Top Model.
I’m supine on the sofa in front of a feast of cheap white wine, crisps and a Galaxy bar, all the cellulite heroes. Johnny surveys it from the doorway.
‘This is proper fucking depression, Esther,’ he says.
‘It’s not,’ I assure him. ‘It’s … a break. Just a few days off. I think I’m owed that.’
‘What about seeing someone about all of this?’
I pull the blanket tighter around me. Johnny knows better than to needle me.
‘We could do it together, maybe?’ he asks.
‘…’
I bite delicately into a Kettle Chip, hoping that the crunch will telegraph my absolute indifference to that.
Something boils up in him. ‘Well, suit yourself. But then you always fucking do, don’t you?’
He’s thrown a grenade right at us. I glare at him, willing him to take it back.
‘I know that this is bringing up … other stuff for you. I am trying to be extremely mindful of that. But you’re not the only fucking person who lost someone here,’ he says, turning to leave for the bedroom.
Noel Edmonds and his Deal or No Deal boxes, a sort of televisual Ambien, take me on into the night-time.
I find succour in the contestants who leave with a ￡5 box.
You and me, Barbara, I think, living right on the shitty end of the stick.
To show some manner of willing, I shower first thing the following morning until the water turns icy, watching as dirty water circles the drain.
The sense of achievement is enough to get me to leave the house.
To the first tree I see and back, I tell myself over and over.
I’ve only been inside the flat for a few weeks, give or take, but the whole world feels different, as unsettling as a lunar landscape.
As I walk into Victoria Park, I feel a small bounce of recognition as a man in an aviator jacket walks towards me.
Is he a friend of a friend? Someone’s boyfriend or brother?
One of the finance guys? I finally land on it.
He’s that actor from that thing, Mr Snuffleupagus.
He looks back at me with his beautiful sad brown eyes and for all their softness, it feels like a laser has gone through me.
Was that a Look look? My head involuntarily swivels to see who is behind me, but no, there’s no one else there.
It’s not quite a thunderbolt or anything. But it’s a definite … weather event. It’s only as I keep walking that I realize I’ve been left a little short of breath.
I look at the clock in the sitting room and it’s 3.
45 a.m. I’m savouring the quietness of the world – just me, the urban foxes and the general pallor of misery – when I type the words ‘Ted Levy’ into YouTube.
We definitely shared something on the street earlier.
Anything over three seconds long is definitely, definitely …
something. I’m glowy, just thinking of those beautiful eyes looking at me. Not just looking, but seeing.
The first thing that shows up is a god-awful TV movie from 1999: Kelly, Please Eat Something.
Absolute twenty-four-carat shite, which will do me just nicely.
In it, a beautiful teenage girl with Bjork-style twists in her hair is hiding an eating disorder from her family.
Ted Levy, with his wallet chain and bleached tips, is her gay best friend, begging her to seek help.
The hair game is always surprisingly strong in these movies.
As they lean against their high-school lockers, he looks into her eyes, holding her shoulders.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without you, but I don’t ever want it to come to that,’ he is telling her.
I laugh at the dialogue, but my stomach warms at the kind, concerned way he looks at her.
This guy is delivering his dreadful lines with his absolute all; I’ll give the dude that.
A quick google brings up a newspaper article and there he is, slightly older and more filled out.
Montreal Sentinel, 20 July 2008, by Dylan Bloom
With his days as a glorified speaking extra behind him, Ted Levy is fast gaining a reputation for portraying show-stealing characters with complex emotional depths.
In the indie sleeper hit Shock & Awe, his star turn as a young father getting over the death of his daughter has won him many admirers, yet the Toronto resident doesn’t like to overthink his work.
‘I don’t really go into it thinking about pushing the boundaries of acting, or what it means for acting overall.’ Levy shrugs. ‘The characters are just there, flying around in my head, waiting to be given a voice.’