Signs of Life (14 page)

There – you see? You will still be with me.

I did not sleep with the outline of Carl’s body. The night I drew around him it seemed like a fine thing to do (anything to get him away to Switzerland and give me a few
days off ) but the next morning, after I kissed him goodbye at my door, I went straight into the bedroom and stripped the bed and put the sheet in the washing machine on a very hot cycle. The
outline of his body was too spooky, like one of those chalk outlines of bodies you see where there has been a death; someone has been knocked down, or jumped, or fallen.

I thought Carl was sensitive to the balance between us but he can’t have been, otherwise he would surely have noticed the false notes I played. I feel bad about this
episode now because it amounts to a lie. Perhaps Carl did notice the disharmony and ignored it, preferring to believe I was genuine in my affection for him, or hoping that my affection would, in
time, become genuine.

Molly went on my bed all the time. She didn’t use the wicker basket once – I ended up keeping shoes in it. I would come home from work and find her fast asleep in a
square of sunlight on the new white duvet, bright specks of dust floating above her warm, compact little body, a sunbeam shining down on her like a spotlight. Quietly, I would take off my shoes,
lie down next to Molly, close my eyes, and rest.

At my flat one morning, alone, I was about to spread my two slices of toast when I noticed something odd about the butter. All the edges had been blunted. And there was an
imprint, as though a nail file had been pressed into the smooth yellow surface. Then I understood: this was no nail file; this was the work of a raspy cat tongue.

Molly did other things Carl had told her not to. She jumped up onto the bathroom shelf, the one that Johnny made, and knocked things off, including the perfume that Carl gave me, which I was
still wearing at that point. She sharpened her claws on the legs of my sofa. She pestered me for bits of whatever I was eating. She walked, purring, along the length of the kitchen counter,
shedding hair. She dribbled on my clothes and dug her claws into my thighs before settling on my lap. But I could forgive her anything for those late afternoon naps in a sunbeam, her peaceful
slumber an invitation to another world.

There was something staged about the mother’s room. She had been dead for years. The room was arranged to look ‘exactly as she left it’. And yet the wastepaper bin was empty,
the hairbrush had no stray hairs on it, there was no dust anywhere, and on the bedside table there was a thick paperback with a bookmark sticking out of it about three quarters of the way through.
The room was constructed, like a film set, to tell a story and it certainly conjured up a presence: you felt that at any minute she could walk in. Maybe if it had been my dead mother, I too would
have built her a shrine. When we went out, Carl closed the door softly so as not to disturb the spirit of the room, but the spirit of the room – or something wider – had already
disturbed me.

The unfinished book puzzles me: If it was no good then why had she read so much of it, and, having got so far with it, wouldn’t she want to finish it first?

When I discovered Molly was gone, I worried about how to tell Carl that she had escaped through an open window. If I was responsible for losing his cat, I would owe him and he
would have power over me. I imagined him hissing, I
told
you about the window, and what would he do then? I had seen his anger ignite over much smaller matters, like being barred from the
stately home or not being invited to meet my friends, so what would he do if I lost his beloved cat? But then Molly slipped in through the kitchen window with the grace of an otter dipping through
water, and my relief was huge.

I’m ending all of it, said Carl, standing on the edge of the roof of the office, six floors above the empty car park. It was early evening; most of the staff had already
left. I had been waiting all day to tell him, again. It was no use telling him at my flat because then I had to get him to leave, and that would be difficult. I thought a public place was out of
the question because he would probably cry, or shout, as he had done when I tried to break up with him before. My mistake was to think this mattered. I should have dumped him in a crowd and
disowned his reaction. But I decided to tell him after work, on the roof. I lured him up there with the offer of a cigarette break. I knew I had to say the words quickly, and then leave. I lit a
cigarette and thought: By the time I finish smoking this, I will be rid of him.

Breaking up with Carl had taken weeks because I tried to do it gently. Carl argued, protested, cried, sulked, pleaded, bought gifts, made apologies. I said things like: I need to be on my own
for a while, I can’t settle into another relationship straight away, It’s not you, it’s me. These clichés seemed true enough, and it was easier than saying: It’s you.
I was using clichés as a way of distancing myself from him, but it didn’t work. I said they were true enough, but they were not, they didn’t hold enough truth and so they were
not believable. I had to tell Carl: It’s you: I don’t want to be with you: I don’t love you. And that’s when he threatened to jump off the roof.

While we were at their mother’s house, Carl tried to take Our Kid in hand. He decided they needed a clear out. My role was to witness this. Carl climbed into the loft and
handed down dusty bags to Our Kid who lined them up along the landing. There were tied up black bin liners, small plastic bags, boxes, a couple of empty suitcases, a sewing machine, an artificial
Christmas tree and a fold-up exercise bike. Our Kid passed the vacuum cleaner up to Carl and we heard Carl and the vacuum going back and forth across the small floor. While we waited on the landing
for Carl to finish, Our Kid did not open any of the bags or look in any of the boxes; he did not look at the line of stuff at all. He leaned against the wall and smoked. Carl and the vacuum came
down the ladder. Right! said Carl. We’re going to the tip.

Carl loaded the bags, boxes, suitcases and Christmas tree into the back of the van. He had a lot of energy that day, in contrast to Our Kid, who was floppy and had none. Carl started the
ignition, put some loud music on and leant forward on the steering wheel while we climbed in; Our Kid in the middle, near the gear stick, me next. I noticed that Our Kid wasn’t wearing his
seat belt but I didn’t say anything about that. At the tip, Our Kid dematerialized so I helped Carl throw everything into the gaping yellow container. It didn’t take long. Our Kid was
back in his place in the van, with the Christmas tree on the floor between his feet. Carl leant into the van and reached for it. Our Kid picked it up quickly – the quickest I’d seen him
move – and gripped it in his two hands like a staff, all the while looking straight ahead. Sensing trouble, I walked round to the back of the van and lit a cigarette.

While I was trying to break up with him nicely, Carl used to find excuses to talk to me all the time; invent reasons for meetings; call me on the internal phone and entreat me
to have lunch with him; smoke cigarettes on the fire escape by my desk and chat to me as I was trying to work. But his emotions changed direction after he threatened to commit suicide. He switched
from pleading with me to get back together with him to raging because I wouldn’t. He stopped talking to me and if he did have to talk to me, he wouldn’t look at me. We were barely
speaking to each other even though his desk was near mine and we worked on the same floor. This was when he started leaving threatening phone messages. At first I was relieved that I didn’t
have to listen to his whining any more, but after a week of coming home to poison on my answerphone I was anxious. His anger was so great; the phone alone surely couldn’t contain it. I
didn’t see how he could continue to force his anger down the puny plastic line without some damage.

One morning Carl asked if he could talk to me for a minute. It was the first time in two weeks he had addressed me directly without venom. He pulled his chair over to my desk and confided this:
on his way home the night before, he was coming up an escalator and there were two men standing just below him. One of the men said something offensive to Carl and when Carl challenged him he
didn’t retract it so Carl punched this man in the face and the man fell all the way down to the bottom of the escalator. I don’t remember what I said to him in response, but whatever it
was, it didn’t make any difference: within two days he started leaving horrible messages again.

The artificial Christmas tree had a star at the top. You could see that the tree once had shine and sparkle and thick tinsel boughs, but now the star was crumpled, the silver
had faded to a greyish-white, some of the branches were bent, and there was dust in the rivulets that stood for wood grain in the brown plastic base. Still, I hoped to hear the engine start and
that we would return to the mother’s house with Our Kid clutching that tree, pathetic though it was. But as I stubbed out the cigarette, I saw Carl emerge from the cab with the Christmas tree
in his fist and a grim look on his face and hurl the thing after all the other stinking rubbish into the depths of the black hole.

Attempts to hang on are inelegant – I see this, I do – it’s just that making Our Kid let go of that tree was an act of violence and, even though she was Carl’s mother
too, it seemed sacrilegious. At the house Our Kid trickled into his room. I barely saw him after that, except at Carl’s funeral.

Maybe Carl’s mother wasn’t even reading that book. Maybe Our Kid or Carl placed it there and placed the bookmark inside as part of the film set of her room; a relic
– like the skinny Christmas tree, and Johnny’s records, and the photograph of Carl that I kept hidden. Relics are markers of loss: first there is the day and then the day is over and
you have a photograph, a T-shirt, a memory. Years go by and you misplace the photograph, throw out the faded shirt and your memory falters. More years pass and the memory fades too. Losing memories
is fitting. Loss follows loss. We build histories with surviving memories – whole civilizations constructed from lost days.

Carl went into his brother’s room and came out with dirty laundry including the pale blue pyjamas Our Kid had been wearing since we arrived. Our Kid emerged in jeans and
a sweatshirt. Later, in Carl’s mother’s kitchen, I emptied the wash into a white plastic basket, took it outside and started pegging out the clothes. Normally there is something
peaceful about hanging out a wash, like the mood I sometimes slip into when I’m writing; an idea comes to mind, presenting itself as a kind of line; I peg words onto it, take some off, change
things around, repeat this process until the words describe, as closely as they can, the idea that I am trying to communicate. But on this occasion I remember a growing sense of apprehension. I
hung up the pale blue pyjamas, aware of the absence of their mother. I didn’t want to keep going as Carl’s perfect woman. Yet here I was, hanging out his brother’s socks, vests
and underwear, and I felt I was intruding on the sorrow of the household because I was wrongfully occupying a role I didn’t even want, and so hanging out this particular wash on the line
became a form of trespass.

Carl punching the man to the bottom of the escalator was on my mind all day. I decided to go to the station where the punch had taken place. There might be one of those big
yellow crime signs asking for information about the violent incident on the escalator. I didn’t know what I would do if I found such a sign. Would I have called the police and given them
Carl? Yes, I think I would, but that isn’t why I went. I wanted to verify the story for myself, to see what I was dealing with in Carl.

There was no escalator. I was sure I had the right station. But there was no escalator anywhere in the station. Did Carl mean stairs? If there was no escalator did that mean there was no punch?
Was he making the whole thing up? Punching a man to the bottom of an escalator is exactly the kind of thing Carl was capable of and what’s more he said he did it. Ultimately I am not
convinced it matters, for as I see it Carl could easily have punched a man down an escalator, might as well have punched this man, did punch him.

Might as well have; could have; did. The movement from possibility to certainty in the sentence is exactly how it works in the head; this is how imagination merges with memory, how dreams get
confused with facts; why reality sometimes feels so unreal. The extract is from Joan Didion’s
On Keeping a Notebook
. It unlocked my own imagination; something in me resonated strongly
and I wanted to use that, the feeling of recognition, almost of ownership, when you read something and think, that’s exactly the way
I
feel! And a feeling of entitlement slips in. I
started with her line, took some words off, pegged others on – I wanted to absorb the sentence fully, make my own version.