Chapter 25
I left The Curtyard in a rush. Just slipped out the door while no one was watching. It was easy to do. Everyone there was gathered in one crowd around the bar, listening intently while my neighbour enacted some fascinating story from her life.
My heart pounded. It was her. She was alive.
I pressed both palms to my chest.
Thank fuck! I hadn’t killed her! I was free! No one would hunt me down and lock me up. I could live my life. My new life.
I should have been relieved.
Why wasn’t I relieved?
I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d seen in the basement last night, her appearance today, the scar on her forehead. My mind obsessively picked away at the scab of it all. None of it made sense.
The bridge and the road out of Carlinsrest were quiet, thank God. No one to see me scuttling home. No one to see me muttering to myself. No one to see me picking at my skin until the small spots on the outer edge of my arms bled.
She’d looked so… different.
The hair, the expression, the voice. The way she’d moved her hands. So confident. So at ease. Where was the nervy, strange woman from the other night? The lank hair. The staring, watery eyes. Maybe I had caught her on an off day. Maybe she’d always had that scar.
The afternoon sky stretched long and high above my lonely walk back.
I thought of the way everyone had gathered round her at The Curtyard.
How they’d watched her, intently, genuinely.
How they’d laughed at her jokes. For a brief moment I remembered when I’d felt like the confident one, looking on at her shyness, her awkwardness, as if she were a problem to solve, or a contagion to avoid.
Now we’d switched places.
Or the world had righted itself back to its true order.
That certainly makes more sense.
As I walked back along the empty road, I thought of all the parties I’d slipped out of over the years.
The family get-togethers, the school reunions, the work dos.
It had always felt better to remove myself before I grew tired of pretending to be normal, before I gave myself away, before people sussed me out.
But even with all that history against me, I had tried to be different back at my last company. I’d really tried.
After shrugging off the first pub invitation from Issy, I was very careful to make the next one.
But finding out about the next one had been more difficult than the first. I kept coming in on Monday to tales of what the team had got up to the Friday before.
Stories of shots, of hook-ups, of bouncing between bars until folk ended up at the casino or the jazz bar or whatever was still open in the early hours of Saturday.
I’d make an effort to listen in, to join in the conversations about those nights, to remark—positively, I’d thought—on the ‘crazy’ adventures everyone had been up to without me.
And I’d ask, each Monday morning, that they let me know next time they were going out, even though doing so made my heart beat loud in my ribcage and my palms turn slick with sweat.
But still the Fridays brought no invites and still the Monday mornings brought plenty of stories.
Maybe people aren’t so keen to extend invites when they feel the first one’s been snubbed.
Then one Friday, I just watched the team carefully.
Waited until I saw the flurry of shared looks, and the messages on phones and the not-so-secret chat group I was not invited to and everyone pretended didn’t exist. I waited at my desk when end of play hit, to see when people would get their coats, to see if the others came down from the other floors and asked, ‘Where to tonight?’
I could have just asked them. I sat there in my shame, knowing I could have just asked them. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Maybe you deserved to be left out if you insist on going about things in such a hidden, sneaky way.
If I was honest, it was because I didn’t expect them to tell me.
I should have paid attention to that feeling.
I should have listened to that part of myself.
Taken the hint. Stopped engaging in what was clearly some social version of self-harm.
But it’s hard to have a spine when the people you’re stuck with eight hours a day are your only socialization, even if they don’t want anything to do with you.
Or when loneliness is not a good enough reason to leave a well-paying job.
Or when part of you believes no one in their right mind would want to include you anyway. Not once they know what you’re really like.
But anyway, I waited. And it paid off. One of the devs came down and asked, “Are we off then?”
“Where to?” I’d asked, coat already on, ready to go.
I’d noticed a small look flash between some of my team.
“Just for a drink. Probably only one.”
“Cool, I’ll come with,” I’d said.
As they let me follow along, I actually felt good. Like I was finally doing it, getting over whatever this thing was that separated me from everyone else. Maybe I just needed to give people a chance. Maybe I just needed to open up a little. Maybe they would help me find my better self.
I followed them to a pub set in an old whisky bond, all glass and hammered copper set against old beams and time-blackened stone. They talked among themselves as I followed them up to the bar.
I ordered a glass of wine. It was the second least expensive one on the list, even though I’d been told that was the one bars and restaurants made the biggest mark-up on, knowing that everyone buys it.
I was already breaking one set of difficult social conditioning; challenging the order of wine prices would have to wait.
I found a seat at the table, making sure to sit in the middle so that I could have my choice of conversations to join.
Unfortunately, both sides quickly turned away from me, lost in talk at their own ends, leaving me like Moses parting the middle.
I tried a couple of times, leaning in, making those active listening nods and ‘ah’s’ and ‘yeah’s’.
But even if I had been included, I could barely make out a word anyone was actually saying. Everything was so loud.
So, I drank my wine to give my hands something to do.
And then I got up to order another glass, to give myself something to do, to fit into the surroundings, to be part of the machinery of the place and not the one dead cog stuck on the outside.
And then I drank that glass, too fast.
And then I got up to go to the bar again.
I offered a round out to the table, but everyone was still halfway through drinks.
Somewhere along the way, pinballing through people back to the bar, I decided to buy some fizz for the table.
I bought a bottle of the second least expensive prosecco.
I tottered back with it and a handful of glasses.
My arrival won a small sound of surprise, raised eyebrows, a few ‘oh’s’.
Some eagerly reached for a glass, while others thanked me politely but refused.
I drank two glasses, again too quickly. It was a little warm and sweet. Not the best. But I was drunk enough to slug it down anyway.
And then there was a tray of shots.
And then I remembered talking to someone. They were watching me talk, but even in my drunken state I could tell it was in that humouring way.
Nod and listen to the monologue and hope you can catch eyes with someone else and pass the role of listener on.
And then I remembered stumbling home.
And then I remembered waking up on my bed and vomiting over the side.
And then I remembered remembering and I curled around myself wishing I could sleep forever.
I was full of dread on the walk to work the next Monday. What would they think of me? What had I said to them?
I needn’t have worried. No one said anything about me. They were too busy talking about the club they’d gone to after I’d left. I sat at my computer, not even bothering to try and join in this time.
The girl I’d drunkenly talked the ear off of caught me in the kitchen later. She asked about my father and whether I’d spoken to him about all that stuff I’d mentioned on Friday. I pretended I didn’t hear her and went back to my desk, leaving my tea unfinished on the kitchen counter.
A few months later, another new girl started with the agency. She was invited immediately to Friday drinks. I see photos of her hanging out with my old colleagues all the time on social media. She was confident and happy, too. Just like my new neighbour.
Or my new new neighbour.
I thought again about how effortlessly she’d held everyone’s attention in The Curtyard. Her hair. Her clothes. Her confidence. It seemed to come to her so…
Naturally.
I halted in the middle of the road. The sparrows in the hedgerow stopped their bickering. The breeze died and silence descended as the realisation hit me.
All those different people I’d imagined myself being.
The stoic gardener. The talkative librarian.
The magical florist. It was the same thing I’d always done.
The new outfit for my first day at work.
All the different ways I’d tried to engage my colleagues at the pub.
How I’d tried to impress the director with my work. All the false smiles.
I’d moved here to become a better person, but I’ve spent my life trying to be better.
And it never worked.
So why did I think things would be any different this time?
My whole plan for this escape into the countryside, my new life, my new me, it was doomed from the start.