Best British Short Stories 2020

^{NICOLA FREEMAN} HALLOWEEN

It is a gaudy display, something I might expect to see in the window of our local high street bakery, a family business seemingly unmoved by the spirit of regeneration in this area. But they look pretty: rows of biscuits shaped as witches, skeletons and pumpkins, painted with thick icing swirls and laid out on an enormous foil party tray covered with orange tissue paper. The doorbell rings. ‘Go on then,’ I say to Jamie, smiling but not able to look him directly in the eyes.

The smell of baking fills the kitchen, softening for once its steely decor. In the early stages of Jamie’s illness, the sharp lines of our new flat had provided a certain comfort. They had prompted me to clean more often than I would normally, which helped counter my belief that an unpleasant odour now flowed through our lives like a contaminated river. I would continue cleaning until I felt I was stemming its course. Still, I imagined I carried the odour on me, out into the world. Some days I was sick with worry that I must fill other spaces with it: the open-plan office, friends’ houses, darkened cinemas, even pristine white gallery spaces that you would hope might be a refuge.

But the flat today smells only of the sweet sting of sugar and when I walk through into the living room, I find that the smell has pervaded there too, making our structured sofa appear more comfortable than it is and warming the pale wood floors. It nestles among the books that line one entire wall, creating a friendlier communion between Jamie’s graphic novels and engineering manuals at one end and my photography books and contemporary fiction at the other, usually so awkwardly separated. And when I move into the bedroom to change out of my work clothes, experiencing, as always, an extra flutter of apprehension here, I discover that it has even settled between the plaintive sheets of our bed. I study the untidy folds on Jamie’s side, the impression of his body where he must have rested earlier, leading his life as he does now in small, broken periods of time. My side is carefully smoothed and tucked in to disguise my nocturnal torments. But it is here that I lie each night unable to quiet my mind while beside me Jamie falls in and out of his drugged half-life. A nebulous form lies between us – a spectral lover, rejected but undiminished. Everything had taken on its pallor. For a long time, I will lie awake, slowly tracing the cottony contours of my body until the blood thumping in my ears finally, exhausted, falls away.

Back in the kitchen, Jamie winks at me as he returns with the tray, a good number of the biscuits now missing. I pick up a piece of broken witch biscuit. It tastes good. ‘They loved them,’ he tells me. ‘They kept saying “Aw thanks, mate”.’ He imitates their callow talk. I nod, smiling with my eyes and pressing my fingers to my mouth, making exaggerated little chewing movements as if I want to clear my mouth quickly in order to respond to him. But it is an elaborated pause. I have no idea what to say, no immediate way to comprehend this unexpected turn.

I eat a skeleton biscuit, surprised by how much I enjoy its soft icing and buttery snap. Food for the two of us lately is no longer associated with pleasure. It is presented always as a remedy of some kind, our diets determined by the ebb and flow of Jamie’s optimism. He will spend hours in the kitchen, with me quiet but encouraging at his side: he has read that a high-potassium, low-sodium diet may cure advanced cancer, or he has allowed himself to believe a newspaper report that a woman in Japan prolonged her husband’s life through a shokuyo lifestyle that involves eating mostly natural grains and plants, and so we sit night after night faced not with what we desired but with the indigestible truth. Meanwhile, I have gained an extra layer of fat that I can feel now pushing at my waistband. Curiously, I am expanding at the same rate he is diminishing. I reach for another biscuit, and while Jamie rearranges the tray, I move behind him and stroke the back of his neck, plant a kiss there, in that place I love. He has been ill for so long I have started to forget about his soft places, to measure him instead in tablets and needles, and by that particular look he has when he thinks I am not looking, when he stares at the wall and allows his eyes to focus finally on the future.

I will see that look again about a week later when winter has fully set in and I return from work to an unheated flat. I will find him sitting in our bruised leather armchair, where he likes to relax, looking at the wall. Only this time I will notice that he does not blink. I will wait for a while, thinking that maybe it is not necessary to blink, that I am sure I have read an article about someone who underwent cosmetic surgery on their eyes which left them unable to blink. The trouble is I cannot remember if they were blinded by the procedure that left them permanently wide-eyed, or even if it is possible to continue living in that state. Jamie will go on not blinking for a while longer, but I will not want to disturb him in case I distract him just as he is about to blink. I will stand there for a long time not wanting to disturb him.

The doorbell rings for a second time and Jamie picks up the tray. Big laughs this time from the doorstep. Recognising the voice of a neighbour, I decide to join them. The cold hits me as I descend the stairs, so that when I reach the door, I put my arms tight around Jamie’s thin waist and press myself to him. Linda, who lives two doors down, is mid-sentence and does not acknowledge my appearance. Her full attention is on Jamie, making sure he is OK, smiling and acting up to lift his spirits in a way that would usually irritate me. My role is so all-consuming that the passing concern of others can feel like an encroachment, or in my more vulnerable moments, a criticism, as if I am not trying hard enough. But tonight, I let Linda’s words wash over me. I even allow myself to enjoy the determinedly buoyant talk. I hold Jamie close, combining our warmth against the cold, and I look over his shoulder at the tray, letting the bright colours and sweet smell take me away to simpler times, times I wonder if I will ever experience again, like trips as a kid to the bakery round the corner after swimming with my dad on a Saturday morning to buy split jam doughnuts as a treat, synthetic cream running down my chin.

‘Come in, Linda,’ I find myself saying. ‘I’ll make some tea.’ It will be the first time anyone on the street has crossed our threshold and tonight it feels like a space that would be welcoming. But Linda refuses, fusses about getting her dinner ready, though she carries on talking. I sense myself drifting from the talk but try not to stray too far, thinking about the day after we moved in when Linda came to introduce herself. She brought a pot of winter-flowering pansies, which I have placed here on the front step. It isn’t a flower I like, and the pot is not to my taste either, so I am proud that I have kept it here and taken care of it. I notice Linda’s eyes flick to it several times during the conversation.

I have tried other ways to assuage all our fears, taking Linda a cutting from a plant she had admired in our front garden and promising to contribute an honesty book stall for a charity event at the community hall. But I do not know what Linda really thinks of us, a young couple whose lives started far from here, and who have moved in with no connection to this place, except that the house prices match our circumstances. Talking to Jamie now, Linda may well be thinking of the old man who used to live in our flat, wondering what we have done with the bench he used to sit on at the front of the house or why we did not bother to trim the hedge as neatly as he had. Like other recent newcomers to the street, Jamie and I remain apart, essentially a self-contained unit, despite everyone’s efforts. How self-contained will I be without him?

A few moments later, walking back up the stairs ahead of him, I have the sense of reaching the summit of something, a giddy satisfied feeling. While wanting to cling on to this sensation, I find I cannot help myself. As Jamie sets down the half-empty tray in the kitchen and turns to face me, I look back at him and I reach behind his head for that soft place again, knowing that with this simple caress I will once again lose my grip.