Animals (29 page)

Two sets of stairs, the motion detectors acknowledging me and flicking each bulb on in turn. Right to the top. A blue door freshly painted with no marks or scratches. I opened the door and they were all there, the edges of safe and simple things in the shadows. I took off my coat and hung it on the back of the door, turned on the light. Went into the bathroom, which I’d done up nice (
nautical, but nice
– this amused me too often) but without real sentimentality. I walked out and over to the bed, took off my boots and dress and tights, loosened my hair, unpacked my bags. Zuzu came out from her box beneath the bed, yawning and blinking. She stretched her supple back-legs in turn.

I’d gone for her as soon as I got my place. Drank three margaritas and caught the bus to Belle Vue with a pair of kitchen scissors in my satchel, my heart in my ears the whole way. But when I arrived at Marie’s, a cannonball of nerves and bile, no one answered. I heard the bell sounding inside: ‘Für Elise’ by Beethoven, blasphemed by burbly electronica, sending Jim spinning in the graveyard of my heart. A boy riding sidesaddle on a mountain bike sauntered past on the road.
No one there since last week, love.
(Love? He was half my age.) I turned around and pushed the door. It opened, revealing disaster. The house was ransacked. Clothes and CDs and broken furniture everywhere, a scene reminiscent of poltergeist activity. I put my hand inside my satchel, fingertips finding scissor-handles. Then I heard a faint cry. I walked towards the sound, stepping through the hall, picking my way around the shit. A strangled Anglepoise lamp. An empty dog bowl, the pink plastic grained with gone biscuits. In the front room, alone on top of a crippled sideboard, was a Granny Smith apple; I started at the sight of it, it looked so precise and unlikely. Another miaow from behind the sideboard. I called her and she came.

Now she kept me company these long nights in. On the drainer by the sink was an upturned tumbler. Just the one. Guests got their wine in mugs and liked it, or soon forgot. No pictures on the wall but books on the bookshelf, a few favourites open mid-flight on the carpet by the desk to keep me going. The desk was under the window. I sat down and poured some wine. Looked up. Dark outside, the sky a great hole for falling into. I was light-headed. I was contemplating gravity. I was here and here and here, everything in its place, everything something like belonging.

Frank, Lorraine and Lucie Unsworth, Guy Garvey, Katie Popperwell, Nicola Mostyn, Maria Roberts, Sarah Tierney, Jo-anne Hargreaves, Natalie O’Hara, Clare East, Glen Duncan, Zoe Lambert, Clare Conville and all at Conville & Walsh, Jo Dingley, Francis Bickmore, Jamie Byng and all at Canongate, Sherry and Brian Ashworth, John Niven, Sally Cook, Romana Majid, Wayne Clews, Emily Powell, Caitlin Moran, Katie Potter, Rebecca Murray, Jesca Hoop, and the members of the Northern Lines Fiction Workshop.