Inglorious

RETURN

She woke again before dawn and stood by the window, staring out at the shadows. The dawn was later by the day; the year was drawing to an end. A coarse wind had ruined the trees; leaves gusted along the pavement. It was Thursday and she had wasted too many days. All through the previous day she had fleeced the clock of minutes, bartering them down. On the journey home, she had found herself thinking of the things she had to do. At Manchester she thought furniture from Liam find a place to stay get a job and as the train eased through the suburbs of Birmingham she thought explain everything to Andreas but by Luton she was thinking leave the country and that insistent thought — escape/retreat — brought her to the outskirts of London. There she watched the city seep towards her. The train ran through rising districts of concrete and steel. All around was incessant motion; she was moving against the current, heading towards the centre while the commuters were going back to the suburbs and their well-earned homes. She saw banks of glass reflecting the sunset. At King’s Cross the crowds moved beneath a giant display. Details changed, platforms were announced; the process was continuous. After she had waited in the tube, dimly aware of her reflection swimming in the darkness, she walked from Ladbroke Grove to the flat. The living room was dark and quiet.

Now she stayed in her room until Jess went out to work. She heard the assertive slam of the door and breathed more easily. When she rose and walked through the flat, she found a note on the table in Jess’s handwriting. Dear Rosa, Hope you had a good trip. Let me know if you need any help with the move. Jess. That was definitely a reminder, tactful in the circumstances, but firm enough. The day felt different. She heard a humming in the distance. It was necessary to be resolute. As she sat at the window she tried to think what to do. She crossed her legs and noted the fleeting progress of the street. As she sat there a car was revving up the scale, from gear to gear. A man stubbed his toe and hopped a step. He glanced up, his mouth rounded in a whistle. A woman walked below, holding a bag of shopping. Rosa pushed up the window and stuck her head out to breathe the air. The sky had been tousled in the night and now she saw the ragged folds of the clouds. And the street, this noisy, random street she knew so well.

She went into the bathroom and found it had been cleaned. Purged by Jess. She was an eternal swab, always dousing something, tidying something else. She opened the cabinet — its newly wiped mirror gleaming smartly — where she found a stash of painkillers. She took a couple, bending her head to the tap and scooping water into her mouth. She remembered a few cursory things, and then she remembered she had to get the furniture money from Liam. That was a certain goal, and one she was sure she could achieve. She thought it mattered for reasons beyond the fiscal — though it mattered for reasons entirely related to the fiscal too. She washed her face and blew soap bubbles at the mirror. When the bathroom was steamed over, furred up, she dried herself and walked back into the living room. In a fit of fleeting courage she dialled up Mrs Brazier, that iron bar of a woman. La Braze answered the phone in a strident voice, suggestive of self-love. That made Rosa nervous, and her hands were trembling as she said, ‘This is Rosa Lane. I came for an interview the other day.’

‘Ah yes, Rosa Lane.’ The voice was businesslike.

‘I just wondered if you had made a decision yet. Not wanting to overstep the mark,’ she said.

Fortunately Frau Braze was quick and to the point. She was sorry but she didn’t want Rosa after all. ‘I’m afraid the children didn’t like you,’ she said. ‘I thought you were fairly suitable.’ But her little darlings, the pashmina-touting infants, hadn’t wanted Rosa. Balanced in the scales, she had been judged unworthy by children!

‘Well, I understand,’ said Rosa. ‘I understand. Of course, it wouldn’t work, if the children didn’t like me. Thanks for letting me know.’ She kept her voice quite firm and relaxed. Just before she hung up she thought of saying, ‘I could try, I could try to make them like me,’ but stopped herself in time. Please ask your infant bastards to give me another chance! she thought, but instead she said, ‘Goodbye, Mrs Brazier. So nice to have met you.’

‘Yah, herum,’ said Brazier.

Then she put the phone down. She was aiming for stoicism as she snagged it on the cradle. And now the children hadn’t liked her. The mini-Brazes had seen straight through her. They knew she didn’t care a hoot about them, couldn’t care less if they lived or died so long as she got money in her hand each month. The profundity of children, she wanted to raise a glass to them, those clever kids! Anyway, they had sniffed her out. The question of money was as pertinent as ever, quite as harsh and pressing, though she had definitely had a go at solving it. She had gone along, ripped her feet to shreds, inhaled a few pints of lung death and sat there talking in a measured way. Now she took her notebook and sat down. The birds were still singing in the silver trees. The trains still shuddered on the tracks. A car stalled on the corner and was answered by a choir of horns. A cacophony of rage. Outside, the denizens of TEMP were waiting. Then the car revved up again, revved away, and the horns abated. She had to think more clearly. She had the interest to pay, she had to service her overdraft or watch as everything came crashing down on her. So she wrote a pared down list. Economy, she was thinking. The basics. These small things you can do!

Things to do, Thursday

Find a place to stay

Phone Liam and ask him to sell the furniture

Phone Kersti

Explain to Andreas

Get a job

Find the way to the truth that is concealed

Unlock the casket

Unearth the TEMP

She looked at it admiringly for a moment. It was certainly succinct, expressive mainly of the essentials. She really had to find a place to stay. She phoned Whitchurch and found she wasn’t in her office. Then she tried Jess, who was in a meeting. She was tapping her fingers and then she found she was dialling Andreas’s number. She wasn’t sure what she would say to him if he picked up the phone. Calmly and at a moderato pace, she would unfurl it all. Nothing sensational. The starting point is a place to sleep. I have options, of course. Of course I have options! And the rest, the whole rest and nothing but the rest. Much in her approach was foolish, that was plain to her. Andreas was genuinely relaxed. Of course he is. It’s only you with your tone of melodrama, trying to sweep the boy into a farce of your own devising. He doesn’t much mind! Things should be easy, if you just accept Andreas as a nice kid with a big heart and a surprisingly consistent way of being. That’s all. No need for further talk. Yet she couldn’t stop it. It was absurd to be so reticent, when the man even liked her. But he liked her because he hardly knew her. That was far from the point, she thought. Why would he care, if she was slightly in debt? Everyone was in debt. The entire world was in debt, whole countries, economies, why, the whole thing could collapse tomorrow. If she was lucky, it would. Her debt would be wiped out in an instant. Wishing for a global recession was unkind, hardly fair to those who worked so hard amassing money. But anything, thought Rosa — a lightning bolt, a fire in the vaults, the banks destroyed. A collective realisation that money was meaningless! It was a blank wall.

She thought all of this, while the phone rang into empty space and then Andreas’s voice said, ‘Hi there, leave me a message. If it’s work then call my agent on —’ She was clandestine and didn’t leave a message. She dialled another number. A few rings, and she had conjured the voice of Kersti, though it was peremptory this morning, rich in reluctance.

‘Yes,’ said Kersti. ‘Yes, Rosa, don’t you know it’s Thursday?’

‘And Thursday is?’

‘The worst day, after Monday. Full of disorganised fools who should have called me earlier in the week.’

‘But I did call you earlier.’

‘Not you, Rosa. I can never complain about you failing to call me.’

‘You sound a bit spun out.’

‘You know, Rosa, it was strange, yesterday the birds were singing, the sky was blue, I felt a great sense of joy and couldn’t work out why. And now I realise, it was because I hadn’t heard the word furniture for the whole day.’

‘I went away for a night,’ said Rosa.

‘Sounds nice,’ said Kersti.

‘Though perhaps you mean undeserved?’

‘I mean I really don’t have time to talk. Yes I’ve phoned Liam. Yes the guy’s busy. Yes he’s getting married tomorrow. He says, and I understand his point, can’t it wait? He appreciates you want to sort it out. But it’s a load of mouldy old furniture. He’s not going to sell it, so you have to come to an arrangement. He thinks a thousand is probably too much. So he says when he’s finished with the wedding chaos he’ll talk to you.’

‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten,’ said Rosa. ‘I’d forgotten the wedding was tomorrow.’ But those words sluiced down the phone, saturated with improbability.

‘OK, Rosa, I’ll call you if there’s anything to say. So you’re not going to the wedding, I assume?’

‘No, not,’ said Rosa.

‘Well, speak to you later.’

‘Sorry. Thanks for everything. Goodbye.’

Rosa put down the phone. Now she was gritting her teeth, feeling a sturdy sense of her impotence. Her moods were shifting from one extreme to another. She had returned with a sense that she must progress somehow, that she had finally plumbed the depths and formed a resolution — desperate, tenuous, but a resolution all the same — to reach, if not the surface, then a point less deep than the depths. But the waves were strong and she couldn’t break the water. She was struggling with this heaviness, weight of water, something was pulling her down even as she struggled. At the surface you’ll breathe better. She stood by the radiator and thought how fine it was to be inside on a day like this, casting a glance at the window which was slurred with rain. Bent trees beyond, a dancing row. Green and grey, the slick sky flooded with clouds. She had failed to have breakfast, so she ate a bowl of cornflakes and drank one more cup of tea. The stuff keeps you happy, she thought as she drank. She rang Liam at work. He wasn’t there. ‘He’s gone to a meeting,’ said a secretary. She was determined and so she left a message asking him to sell the furniture. The secretary said, ‘What?’ and Rosa said, ‘The furniture. F-U-R-N-I-T-U-R-E. Tell him thanks. From Rosa.’ Still she was sounding reasonable, even as she dictated the sentences. She couldn’t quite explain about her cash-flow crisis. It was definitely none of his business, and she hardly thought he would reach into his pockets. Would he? Sudden hope, and then she thought it was impossible. Call up Liam and ask for money! It would never happen. Better call up Grace and — and she wondered — could she? — but that was a poor idea. She had to come up with something much better than that.

So she called her father. She heard the phone ringing through the rooms of his large house, and she imagined him setting down a piece of work, a Spanish translation or something in the garden, or apologising to his bridge partner and rising from the table.

‘Father,’ she said, when he answered.

‘Rosa, my dear. How are you?’

‘Thanks very much for lunch the other day.’

‘That’s fine. It was good to see you.’

‘I wondered if I could ask something?’

‘Yes, of course. I’m just here with some friends, and we have to go to play tennis now. Will it take long?’

‘I’m not sure. Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On your response.’

‘I see. Well, now you’ve whetted my appetite, come on, be quick now. Bernard will be round any minute and I have to feed the dog before I go.’

‘How is the dog, Dad?’

‘The dog is very well. Is that what you wanted to ask?’

‘No. You know it isn’t.’ She laughed, but there were days — today one of them — when her father’s jocularity seemed like nerves. Keep cracking the gags, Dad, that’s just fine. That’ll steel you nicely against the inevitable.

‘The thing is’ — her father was clearing his throat impatiently and so she said, ‘I wondered’ and cleared her throat back at him. That made her think of their shared genes; she could sense them working away in her reluctance to come clean.

‘Rosa, come along, dear,’ he said, kindly but briskly.

‘OK, Dad. Well,’ she said.

Then there was a pause, while Rosa experienced a brief moment of illumination, a glowing, flushed with dawn colours realisation that there was something else stopping her tongue, something more than native cowardice. Her father was a crumbling column, succumbing to the elements; she wouldn’t rely on him any more. And finally, at the age of thirty-five, deep in the forest, profoundly lost in the thicket, you decide that your father isn’t the man with the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx or your cash-flow crisis, or any other problem. And that, she thought, with a nod to Dr Kamen, could be a step forward. She saw that it wasn’t a question of genes or any such thing, but that coming clean to her father was not part of the process. She had hardly helped him at all, this bereaved and antique father of hers, and this was one thing she could do. She could keep it all quiet, omit to tell him any of it. That was something she could do for him. This made her feel much better, though it hardly helped her. She was uncertain if this was her best conspicuous rationalisation yet, as she said, ‘I just wanted to say how good it was to see you, and how glad I am you are happy with Sarah.’

‘Well, thank you, Rosa.’ He sounded hesitant, as if he suspected something else might be coming. Then she heard a bell in the background. ‘That’s Bernard,’ he said.

That’s the bell, Sharkbreath is coming! ‘OK, Dad. But thanks again. And you know, I understand what you were saying.’

‘OK, good,’ he said, and rang off uncertainly.

Her brow was damp. She put her head down to the clammy tip of the phone. A monotone confirmed that her father had gone. Of course, she thought. He has to play tennis and prepare his body for dispersal. Really there’s no point expecting him to dole out money. He doesn’t have much, and what he has, well, he needs. Of course he does! He needs it to bribe the ferryman, all the rest. She hovered by the phone for a moment, thinking of calling him back and leaving a message. Daddy dear, the dough is all yours. You enjoy it, you old cricket. Splash out, buy Sarah a new wig. Thanks so much, Daddy. Thanks. Instead she called Kersti again, risking her thundering wrath. This time Kersti was out. ‘Would you like to leave a message?’ Tell her the guardians of the laws are angry. Tell her I have failed to unlock the secrets of TEMP. That a star is about to fall. The Kills are abroad. Tell her I still believe in the possibility of perfection and I wonder if she feels the same. ‘No, no message,’ said Rosa. ‘I’ll try again later.’

Rosa put down the phone. Again she was smiling. Her moods were shifting from one extreme to another. There was this lurking sense of despair and as if her own personal eschaton was nigh but she was trying to ignore it, quash it at least. Then the phone rang again and Rosa, hoping it was Andreas, said, ‘Jawohl?’

‘Hello, can I speak to Rosa Lane?’

‘Yes, speaking,’ she said.

‘Martin White here, from the Daily Post,’ said a happy elegant voice.

‘Hello,’ said Rosa uncertainly. Well, this is a surprise, she thought. She sat on the folding table and nearly slid off it, steadied herself and said ‘Hello’ again. Encore, she thought.

‘Good idea, your idea for the piece. Good idea. Nice sound to your style. Good enough. A little manic, perhaps you could tone it down. Just send it in, a little calmer,’ he said.

‘You really liked it?’ said Rosa.

‘Yes, yes, quite a good idea. Elective destitution. Good. A bit odd, just what the readers like,’ said Martin White. ‘Not really your largest demographic, I mean I can’t imagine there are so many of them, but I like the bit about blaming the baby boomers. Good idea. Give it a go. Send it to me whenever you can. About 600 words. Sorry not to give you more. You know, in plain English for the general reader. OK?’

‘Thanks, thanks very much,’ said Rosa.

She put the phone down and, because this was the best news she had had in ages and the first sniff of money for a long while, she cried. She wasn’t sure why she started gushing like a sap. It was an over-reaction. As she stopped crying she felt a sense of great joy, but then she wiped her eyes and realised that Martin White’s intervention, which had seemed so fortuitous just a few seconds earlier, so much like manna from heaven, didn’t really solve her immediate problem. Even if he took her article, she wouldn’t get the money for weeks. And, anyway, wasn’t it precisely her inability to write that was the problem? And now she thought she was saved, because someone had asked her to be a journalist again! ‘Shog,’ she said aloud. ‘Bloody shog!’

She started to write Dear Mrs Brazier, I wondered if you might need an interim tutor, before the real one gets started. Just for a few days? Just to get some money in my pocket … But she stopped. These letters won’t help at all, she thought. No more letters, and no more lists — she had a thousand things she thought she ought to do, but she was trying to keep herself disciplined, and she thought, You must simply make these calls. Find a solution. You’ve run out of time. Now she sat up straight. She saw the room in blurred vision, red dots danced before her eyes. She sliced the air with her arms. It was not too late; there was time. She picked up the phone and rang Whitchurch. There was no answer. She tried Jess at work. It switched to voicemail and Rosa lacked the barefaced ludicrousness to leave a message. She tried Andreas, but the man was still absent. Useless! she thought. Not there at all when you need a favour, a small spot of pedestrian salvation! She tried Kersti one more time, but Kersti had gone away. ‘She won’t be back in today,’ said Kersti’s secretary. ‘Not at all today?’ ‘Not at all.’ That was firm, and Rosa left no message. She called Whitchurch again. It was incredible; no one was at their desk. They had all bunked off, gone to walk through the dampness of the crowds and sluice themselves in rainwater. It was just downright unlucky, but today they were perpetually out to lunch, in meetings, the rest. She thought of Liam and Grace preparing for their wedding. Grace with her wedding dress stashed away somewhere. Her trousseau at the ready. Their honeymoon planned, somewhere flashy. Hoping the weather would be fine.

She walked to the fridge and looked in it for a few minutes. At the bottom of the fridge she found a bar of chocolate, which she ate. She ran her hands under the tap in the kitchen. Then she poured herself a bowl of cereal and used up the last of the milk. She imagined Jess shaking the container in fury, noting the absence of her chocolate, counting her cornflakes at midnight. That was probably why she had stopped the deal. Too many small pilferings. She was thinking again about the thousand pounds. The unceasing quandary of the furniture. As you have pilfered so others pilfer from you, she thought. Galvanised by all the sugar she had eaten, she called Liam again and found him at his desk. Of everyone, all the other shirkers, he was there. It was strange, and Liam seemed to be finding it so. He seemed stone cold and mystified. Really they hadn’t talked for months and as she spoke Rosa found her voice was trembling. Her hands were shaking; her entire body was in nervous motion. She was gripping the phone, as if that could steady her. She didn’t quite know how to start, so she said:

‘Liam, how are you?’

‘Very well, how are you?’

‘Good. Anyway. I just wanted to ask, have to rush, but can you please sell the furniture? I’m just short of liquid funds at present. I’m moving flat, it’s costing a load. Could really do with the money. If you can’t sell then perhaps you could just pay me my half?’

Liam was civil, if a little tense. His voice sounded dry. But he still had his melodic alto range. Liam had a light, soft voice. You didn’t notice how gentle it was until you heard him on the phone. He had the slightest trace of a Yorkshire accent. ‘The furniture?’ he said. ‘God, that friend of yours, Kersti.’

‘Yes?’

‘She calls me all the time about the furniture. It’s like a joke. Could you ask her to stop?’

‘I’m not responsible for Kersti’s actions,’ she said. Which was wrong, considering the hours she spent begging Kersti to call him.

‘Look, you’ll get your share when I sell the furniture. Or when I get back from the honeymoon. I said this to Kersti. I don’t know what else to suggest. I agree we should give you some money, but a grand is a lot. I haven’t been able to think about it. I’ve had a few other things to think about.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. Your guilty conscience.’

‘Rosa, I will have to go if you start on,’ said Liam. She could tell he was trying to be stern with her. It was covering up. A psychic paint job if she ever saw one.

‘No time to discuss. I just need the money. Really, Liam, it would really help. What about an advance? A payment plan. What about I rent you the furniture?’ said Rosa.

‘Hardly likely.’ She could imagine him slapping the phone cord on his desk, shrugging round at his colleagues. My ex, you know, freaking out before the wedding, quite the worst time. Then she remembered someone had told her — as if she cared! — that he had recently gained an office of his own. Well, that sounded nice. She imagined him with a framed picture of Grace on his desk, a picture of his mother, a pencil sharpener and some really good pens.

‘Come on, Liam, just a grand or so.’

‘A grand! For that bunch of junk! Get a grip!’

‘The sofa, easily, and the rest. The bed!’

‘I really can’t see it,’ he said. Now he sounded as if he was smiling.

‘Then Grace will have to buy me out.’

‘Buy your share of some old furniture she hates? Rosa, come now,’ he said. She thought he was trying to josh her, be jovial. He had recovered from his surprise, and now he was thinking the best way was fake conviviality. He wanted her to see the humour in it, but as far as Rosa was concerned there was nothing funny about it at all. Had he known how serious she was he might have pitied her, and this was the last thing she needed, Liam offering her consolation. Years and years, and you end up fighting over scraps, she thought.

Hearing his voice made her sad, and angry, and she tried to keep it back. That effort failed. She heard herself saying, ‘But don’t you think she ought to? Don’t you think it would be decent? Both of you sitting there, on the sofa I picked, the bed I even built, putting your cups on the table I found on Golborne Road, don’t you ever think — is this fair? I don’t want to have to call you at all. It’s plain humiliating, to have to call you up. For a grand! Come on, it’s nothing to you!’ And really, it wasn’t much, when she thought of what he earned. It was a figure she had once commanded herself, though now it seemed like the most decadent wad of cash, superfluous to requirements. ‘It would cost me far more to buy the furniture again. In fact, why don’t you give me the furniture? I’ll sell it and pay you your share. OK? So tell me, when will it arrive?’ She was trying to sound exasperated, but she couldn’t keep the latent whine out of her voice.

‘Arrive where, Rosa? Where is it you’re dossing this time?’ And now he sneered a little. She imagined him, tidy suit, tidy hair, sitting in a tidy box-like room, surrounded by papers. Polishing his pens. Did Grace buy his ties, she wondered? It was the sort of thing she might do. With irony of course, smirking prettily as she handed them over. But she would buy them all the same.

‘When can you bring it round? Saturday? Sunday?’

‘Rosa, could it possibly wait a couple of weeks?’ said Liam.

Now he wanted to goad her, so she said, ‘Liam, let’s be rational. You have everything you want and really I just want to get away. I just want to leave the country.’

‘Really? Going on holiday?’ He sounded amused. ‘Sorry, Rosa, I really have to go. I’ll talk to Grace. She’s busy today, as you can imagine. But we’ll discuss it when everything is calmer.’

‘It’s not the money that’s important, it’s the symbolism, the symbolism is what matters!’ she said, aware that she was now shouting, but hardly bothering to control it.

‘A symbolic thousand, or a real thousand?’

‘It’s my money, you know it is!’ she said. There was a silence on the other end, then Liam, in a voice that betrayed a hint of superiority, said, ‘Rosa, no one wants you to die in a ditch.’ She was thinking that he was spoilt. He had always been indulged. Women had always rushed to indulge him. She blamed her sex, and she blamed him for lapping it all up, all this lust-based praise. ‘Just sell the furniture,’ she said. ‘Or hand it over.’ Then she put down the phone.

And she remembered her and Liam outside a country pub on her thirtieth birthday. The day was brilliant, the air shimmered with heat. There was Liam with his hand above his eyes. The garden of the pub wound around with ivy and wisteria. She could still remember how much they had been in love. They were incessant in it, quite steeped in it. Forlorn, she thought that five — nearly six — years was a long time, but all experience was only that, experience in the end. The conversation had lacked a conclusion. He hadn’t committed himself, so she couldn’t quite tick the item off her list. She took a pen, finding her hands were oozing sweat, and wrote: Call Liam back and check whether he said yes or no.

She shrugged it off, and went to the bank one more time, to try to talk to Sharkbreath. Stepping out of the flat she moved quickly along, locked in her thoughts. She passed the billboard on her left. Yes, yes, here come the tears, she thought. At the roundabout, there were cars turning the usual slow circle, the shops were sketched in their fading paints and the air was thick with petrol. Phiz had lived here, said the sign, many years ago, and now Phiz was nowhere to be seen, and Rosa passed along Ladbroke Grove with the hammer and thump of the Westway dawning above her and the sun shining through thick trailing clouds. Skeletal trees, tops to the sky. The pile of rubble and the metal grilles. A factory to her right, industrial twine around the walls. Equal People, she saw, and the celestial stairs. TEMP.

Much was the same at the bank, the same neon flickering lights above her, and the same acrylic carpeting that gave her a mild electric shock as she entered. The walls were touting helpful mantras: ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT YOUR PENSION PLAN? DO YOU WANT A BETTER DEAL ON YOUR MORTGAGE? DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO THE CROCK OF CRAP? A quick enquiry at the desk returned the information — unfortunate, if a relief all the same — that Sharkbreath wasn’t there. Instead she got another lowly zipper-mouth, not Mandy but another one called Jude. ‘Mr Rivers isn’t here today,’ she said, and her zipper was fastened. No smile at all.

‘Where is he?’ said Rosa.

‘He’s gone to a management programme meeting,’ said Jude.

‘A what?’

Jude shrugged and tossed her hair. She had a low hairline, and her fringe cuffed her eyes. She had tucked her face into a frown.

‘I wonder, could I possibly see someone else?’ asked Rosa, reasonably enough she thought, but Jude frowned some more.

‘What’s it concerning?’ asked Jude, clicking her pen.

‘About my overdraft. I just need to talk about my debt.’

‘If you wait a while we might just about be able to get you in to see Justin.’

‘Who is Justin?’

‘He’s the deputy to our overdraft repayment advisor.’

It was a remark ripe for satire, but Rosa had lost her mettle. ‘How long will he be?’

‘Let’s have a look, well, we have Mr Brick who is due in now and then Mrs Watson and so he could see you in half an hour?’

It made her nervous, but she said, ‘Yes, thanks, half an hour.’ She took a seat and, defying anyone to question her, picked up the Financial Times and waited.

Get a job

Phone Liam and ask him to sell the furniture

Unearth the TEMP

Speak to Andreas

Article for Martin White

Find the way to the truth that is concealed

Then she found she was shaking her head. Get a job. Go to see Liam. Andreas. Simply you must act. JUST ACT! She was trembling as she waited, wondering if the bank might finally grant her a reprieve. But Justin was nothing more than a thin-bearded official, younger than her by many years. He had other appointments scheduled; he hadn’t much time. At first this made him efficient. He slammed the door behind her, shook her hand quickly, and sat her down. He had her details on the screen in an instant. He spun his chair and said, ‘And what is it you wanted to discuss?’ He was wearing a grey suit that was too short in the legs and shiny black shoes. He had lank hair, tendrils of it falling over his ears, and a faceful of compelling moles.

Frankly, without any introductory flannel, no sort of prolegomena at all, to begin with the beginning and not to exceed the bounds of your patience, well, really to start, to render the inchoate accessible and splendid, well, Justin, if I may call you by your first name? I come in fear and trembling to ask you in your munificence if you could help me. She swallowed hard and said, ‘I’m trying hard to get a job, to pay off my debts, but this mounting interest saps my resolve. I realise it really ought to have the opposite effect, it should really give me a sense of urgency, but I find it makes me feel the whole thing is impossible.’

Justin stared at her for a moment, then said, ‘What exactly can I help you with?’

Lucidity! she thought. The Grail, the crock of celestial energy! The human divine! ‘Justin,’ she said, leaning forward. ‘I’ve banked here for years. Most of that time I wasn’t in debt. It’s only in the last few months that I’ve been racking it upwards. The credit card was the first thing — the credit card I couldn’t pay off, and the interest on that is pretty dirty, and then there is the overdraft. Initially Mr Shark — Mr Rivers — was quite happy about the overdraft, because I have been such a solvent customer for so many years, but then I racked that up too. Now there’s no more overdraft, and this haemorrhaging credit card. I have work, but I won’t earn enough to pay off the debt for a while. So I wondered if we could come to an agreement. If we could stop the interest from rising at such a startling level each month. I don’t want more debt to wallow in, not much more anyway, just for the interest to stop going up.’

Justin shrugged. ‘We have to service the debt. You know the rules when you take a credit card.’ He looked at the screen again. She wondered, did it have a special note to bank staff? This woman has been cast out. Do not give her mercy. Ignore everything she says. Sharkbreath will deal with her. Of course he saw it all on the computer, her history of former solvency and recent fraud. She had been promising she would soon have a job for months. She imagined it looked bad on his side of the screen. Still she pressed on.

‘Yes, but do you think you could possibly reduce the interest on one or the other, or just stop the interest altogether? Or extend my overdraft so I could pay off my credit card? You know, I’ve been with this bank for years, and while I understand the rules, I wondered if you could possibly cut me some slack?’

‘I can’t authorise anything,’ said Justin, who had clearly not been listening to much of what she said. ‘I see that Mr Rivers has been corresponding with you about this. I suggest you talk to him.’ He was friendly enough, but he raised his hands towards his sparsely bearded chin and said, ‘There’s nothing I can do.’

‘I’ve tried to talk to Mr Rivers. He’s simply never here! It’s quite impossible,’ said Rosa. She was gripping the table, holding on as if that would help.

‘Mr Rivers is of course here regularly; he just happens not to be here today. But I can make you an appointment with him,’ said Justin. ‘Perhaps next Monday?’

We can do you a stripping of the self on Tuesday, a moment of epiphany on Wednesday, a spot of time on Thursday, but Monday — Monday we have to see Sharkbreath.

‘Well, fine, next Monday. Fine,’ she said, weakly. ‘Good, count me in for Monday.

Justin rustled through his papers and gave her a piece of card.

‘These are the contact details for our debt management counsellor,’ he said. ‘I suggest you talk to her. Or to Mr Rivers. Try him first thing on Monday.’ He nodded her away, and started typing on his computer as she said goodbye.

She grabbed her coat and a scarf and left the building. When she was on the street she ran along panting like a hound. The bus passed as Rosa ran up to the stop, and she saw the road behind was clogged, so she clenched her fists and carried on. LYLA, said the sign. A STAR REALLY WILL FALL. And soon. THE KILLS were still celebrating the launch of their single. Looking up at the sky, she walked along the street where everything moved too slowly and the cars got wedged in queues, and the buses shambled through it all, creaking and groaning. She was passing a herd of diggers breaking up the road, and a grey house with a view of the shattered street. She was passing the late-night shop and the funeral parlour and the cars were queuing at the lights but now there was a sense of elegy to it all because she knew she was leaving soon. The departure made her mark time. Nearly three months since she had come here. She shook her head. Celestial Stairs. Equal People. Pink and blue houses. Sketchy cab company. Handsome trees. Demoralised fast food restaurant. Crumbling high rise. Factory wasteland. Metal grilles. Pile of rubble. And the billboard and HERE COME THE TEARS. Her head ached, and she wondered why she was going back to Jess’s flat. To do what? she thought. She stopped on the street, uncertain, panic making her guts churn. If she went back, what would she do? Make calls, stare at the street, commit resolutions to paper. It was better to stay outside, she thought. And she thought she should go to see Andreas. No conceivable reason why not, she thought. He told you not to go away. He could be pleased to see you. Go and ask him. She gritted her teeth, clenched her fists. It was of course necessary. A simple question, and then she would earn, she hoped, a reprieve. She was bold and if not resolute then at least she was moving again, cutting away from Ladbroke Grove, turning onto quieter streets. How well she knew these shadow-brushed streets, her refuge in the evenings. She told them off, one by one — Chesterton Road, Oxford Gardens, Cambridge Gardens. On a corner she passed two lovers, kissing and holding hands. Then she saw a woman standing at her front door, waving at a friend who was walking away. A man parked a car, laboriously, tugging it backwards and forwards. It had been raining and there were still puddles on the roads. The cars splashed through them, dispersing water. Rosa said, ‘You’ve really been handling things badly,’ quietly, keeping her face behind her scarf. Then she said, ‘No more fooling around. You have to find a place to stay. You have to get a job. In the short term, you have to get that money from Liam. You don’t want it? Of course you don’t. You don’t want anything! But I insist you go and get it. You’ll have to be very calm and quite purposeful, and there’s no point trying to scuff your shoes like that, dragging them along in such a childish way, because that won’t make any difference at all. You’re just slowing yourself down — of course you want to miss out again! I insist you turn up there, prepared to give it your all. Otherwise, what will you do? Do you have a plan B? There’s no fairy godmother preparing to save you. No one will help you! You have exceeded the proper bounds of debt. That’s the brutal truth of it …’ and now she dropped her voice, because she was passing a woman and some children. They all walked up the steps of a house, and disappeared inside. ‘They won’t help you either,’ she said. ‘No point staring over at them. You understand the situation, don’t you?’ A taxi went past her, and to her left was a large church. Her limbs were heavy. If she could just sit down, if there was just a bench she could sit on, she thought. A quick rest and then she would go and sort everything out. She would do everything she had to, happily, after a pause on a bench. ‘No way,’ she said. ‘Come on, no tricks. It’s too late. Remember?’

She moved slowly, looking everyone up and down. At the corner she saw a preacher with his hands full of papers. But she didn’t want to listen to him and she kept on walking. She turned onto Blagrove Road and walked under the Westway. A STAR IS GOING TO FALL. Of course, the shudder of trains, the rumble of cars. She heard the skaters in their fenced-off compound. A sign said MUGGERS BEWARE. She wondered at that and moved on. Opposite were the yellow bricks of a complex of flats. The skate kids had helmets on, and when they fell they laughed. Where the Westway seemed to curve above her, spinning its sides like a bowl on a potter’s wheel, she crossed the bridge. The underside of the Westway was still eloquent. She saw TEMP and something next to it, something she hadn’t seen before, SOPH. SOPH, marvellous, she thought. She had failed to understand the TEMP and now they had slung her another clue. That made her shiver.SOPH. SOPH. SOPH? Sophisticated. Sophistry. Sophos. It might be wisdom. Of course, she was lacking in it. They all were, wasn’t that the point? TEMP for SOPHOS — it was certainly time for wisdom. Sometime soon, she hoped. She simply couldn’t carry on in this state of foolishness for ever. And now she wondered why she was thinking about these words that some drunken man had scrawled and perhaps fallen to his death before finishing them. Abbreviated, that was all. Perhaps they meant very little in the end.

TEMP and SOPH she thought, moving on. Now a woman passed by holding an umbrella. She heard the clatter of the trains, the staccato thud of wheels on the track. She saw the rusted underbellies of the carriages and watched as they swung past her, moving out of sight. The motion soothed her; she thought of boarding a train and sleeping until she arrived — wherever, at the terminus, somewhere far away, waking to a still sky. As she walked she remembered a journey she had once made on a night train through France, and how she had seen the moon obscured by clouds, and listened to the breath of a stranger in the bunk beneath her, a polite woman who had asked her which bunk she preferred. Through the night the train accelerated and slowed again, the scream of the brakes disturbed the woman below, and her breathing changed. There was a clash of wheels on metal, and a sound of low speech and laughter, and Rosa had thought the voices sounded like people she knew. Some of them were English travellers. She remembered lying on her side so she could stare through the window. Waiting at the stations for the grinding of the wheels to start again. She saw lights in rows whipped backwards as the train moved faster. The train roaring at the oncoming blackness, emitting a low groan as it sank into a tunnel.

She had always had a passion for travel, for the steady progress of a train along a track, or better still the dream-stupor of a long-haul flight, the dimness of the cabin lights as the plane surfed on the air and blackness stretched away, the hum of the engines as the plane descended, moving towards land portioned into patterns of fields, sliced by roads. She was thinking that she must really get away, travel somewhere and start again, take a trip to mark her resolution, draw a line under this period of her life. You must get out of this square mile, she thought, you must change your mode. That was surely a good thing to do. As soon as she got her hands on a bit of money, that bit of money Liam owed her, she would take a trip elsewhere, try to start again. She walked onto the footbridge. She saw the pale sun. It looked like a theatre prop, it was so plain and perfect. Everything was still and yet as she walked she — who wandered around London all the time — felt afraid. She began to pick her feet up faster, slapping them down and trying to hurry. Her hair was blown about by the wind and she heard footsteps behind her; they rang out clearly. Rosa kept her eyes firmly on the street beyond the bridge and thought it wasn’t far now, just twenty metres or so and she would be on the other side. She kept looking up at the sun, like a beacon beckoning her on. The noise of footsteps coming closer made her heart beat faster. There was someone behind her, someone she couldn’t quite turn round to look at because she felt something might happen. Someone was right behind her, snuffling and grunting. She was almost at the end of the bridge, she could see Tavistock Crescent in front of her, and the snuffling was getting louder and now she thought she could hear words, a low murmur. She became quite rigid and superstitious, thinking she couldn’t turn round, so she quickened her step, and the steps behind her seemed to follow. She could hear them, ringing out on the bridge. And in the background, distant now, she could hear cars and trains, rattling and grumbling, and now on the arches she saw TEMP in the guttering, sprayed uncertainly, this TEMP had almost faded. A wrong turn? she thought. She saw houses silhouetted against the sky. She heard her breath quicken, and found her hands were drenched in sweat. Her skin was prickling with fear. She was trying to walk faster but her legs were stiff and heavy. She said ‘Hello?’ in a tentative voice. She turned suddenly, saw a man dragging his heels in the leaves. He was walking towards her. It startled her, and for a moment she couldn’t get her breath. When she looked at his face she saw a bloated jaw, eyes set close together. A toad-face, certainly, she thought. The same one as before? Or another one? The bridge was empty and beyond that was the quiet road. He was staring straight ahead, not seeing her at all, intent on following a straight line across the bridge. Feeling foolish she quickened her step and walked on. Behind he was still grunting to himself, muttering words she couldn’t hear. She craned her head round again and saw him staring at her, nodding his head. That was enough for her, and she turned on her heels and started to run.

A train slammed under the bridge and for a few steps she could hear nothing but the thud of wheels on tracks. She half expected to feel a hand on her shoulder, and that made her shiver and pick up speed. She kept running, determined to get to the end of the bridge. She had an idea that she would be safe then, optimistic and plainly irrelevant though it was. She was so convinced about this that when she came to the end of the bridge she breathed more easily. But she was still afraid and she kept walking until she had rounded a corner and stepped into a broad and populated street. Then she turned her head and saw there was no sign of him behind her. She only saw the trees bowing in the wind and the pale sun.

*

She knocked on Andreas’s door, preparing for an awkward pause, but he wasn’t there at all. As she waited she saw a mother and child in the playground behind her. ‘Good, darling! Good!’ She smiled at the mother, but the mother was busy with her child. As Andreas was nowhere to be found, she felt in her pockets for a pen and paper and left him a note.

Dear Andreas, Hope you’ve had a good couple of days. Me, it’s been bliss. The gyre, whirled in the gyre, something like that. Anyway, psychological onanism aside, may I have a bed for a few nights? I promise not to linger. All was black and entombed but now — but now …? Speak to you soon, Rosa.

She tore that up.

Andreas, hope you’re well. Just dropped round. You’re rehearsing, most likely; give me a call when you can. Wanted to ask you something. Love, Rosa.

She stuffed that through the door, as a compromise solution, and then she decided to go to Kensington Gardens and sit there until she came up with a plan. And if she failed then Kensington Gardens was a better place than most to abandon hope. Keeping an eye on the crowds, she walked slowly. Hordes of people were drifting in and out of organic food shops, designer boutiques. She darted round a family group, the mother with her hand on the shoulders of her children, staring into the window of a health food shop. She was walking towards Bayswater, muttering into her collar, saying, ‘These are the things you have to do. They’re all extremely simple. A fool could do them. This means you are worse than a fool. Your phobia of the telephone, your inability to ask for help, are quite pitiful. As if you can afford to be so reluctant! It’s quite simple, what you must do, and do now, today, before another night falls. Ask Andreas for a place to stay. Ask Liam to sell the furniture. Now!’ Muttering along Bayswater she turned into Palace Green and stared like a child at the high houses with their electronic gates. A few were embassies, flying flags, and the rest were the anonymous homes of the wealthy. ‘But don’t start on that theme again,’ she said. ‘No point in craving luxury. Merely desire something better than debt.’

At Kensington Gardens the light was trickling through the branches of the trees, and even the dullest objects, benches, bits of bollard, had a halo around them. She crossed a wide lawn with the palace at her back. She walked around the perimeter of the lake, eyeing the white water. She was walking towards the sculpture of a man leaning backwards on a horse. When she came closer she saw it was called Physical Energy, and someone had written above that, Human Imagination. She heard the slurred whisper of wind in the grass. It really was an ending, she thought, with Liam walking down the aisle and her overdraft so seriously gone. There was a definite sense of culmination to the day. A phase was passing, in her own unique and miniscule life. She stared across the park, at the lines of oaks and trees with their branches pruned into stumps. The solid trunks, matted with moss, made her happy for no reason at all, except that they were old and grained with age. It’s the irregularity of the trees that makes the park so beautiful, she thought. If they were standing in rows it wouldn’t be as fine. That decided, she walked along a thin path, and found herself at a crossroads. The signs said: Peter Pan. Italian Fountains. Serpentine Gallery. Queen’s Temple. Flower Walk. The signpost made her smile, with its careful options for pleasure, and she crossed the road and stood above the river, looking over a pavilion with white columns and the slung ring of the memorial fountain. In the background, above the buildings of the centre, she could see the London Eye. There was a Labrador running along the path, and behind it ran — more slowly — a batch of aged joggers. They went past her on sinewy legs. She heard distant sirens and the background hum of traffic, planes whining in the clouds.

It was getting late already, and she couldn’t think where the day had gone. Her panic had propelled it forward, this sense of culmination. The park was almost empty. She passed a flock of geese, and some grebes — the word came to her, though she wasn’t sure what they were — with white faces. For quite some time she sat on a bench, staring at a blank page, pen in hand. The ducks were dipping their heads in the water, spinning slowly around. Temp for Soph, she thought again, and wondered if that was what it meant. Or was it TEMP of SOPH? Then TEMP wasn’t time, it was temple. TEMPLE OF SOPHOS, she thought. TEMPLE OF WISDOM? All this running around and it was under the bridge, in the folds of the Westway, all along! The entrance to the meaning of things — she only had to find it. She only had to furnish herself with a few of the basics, and then the sign was there. Displayed vividly, hardly a cryptic clue at all! She was trying to convince herself, but something didn’t work. She couldn’t think clearly at all; her thoughts couldn’t alight on a single theme. Always there was the sense of the day drawing on. While you wait for Andreas to get home, write this article for Martin White. At least do that, do that now. So she stayed there with her pen and paper and after an hour she had made the startling discovery that she couldn’t write the article. The same old problem. She sat there, livid with frustration and then she wrote: I suppose I thought I should understand things better. I spent my time explaining things to other people. It seemed ridiculous, to trot out other people’s ideas while having none of my own, no sense of things at all. And I was concerned with strings of life, she wrote. In the universe, there is dark matter, they have little idea what it is. Imagine! No idea at all! This substance, quite beyond us all. That troubled me and I wanted to find out more. But I’ve realised that if you really want to do this — really want to strip yourself down and plunge into the depths — you have to be prepared to be Diogenes, or worse. Worse than him, even! You have to be prepared to become a real old tramp on a bridge. And she wondered if the toad-face was Diogenes; she wondered that while she tore up the piece of paper and scattered the pieces on the floor.

TEMP is the TEMP that means nothing at all, she thought. SOPH means the SOPH that is Stop Oh Please Help! Stop now! Temple of Wisdom. Something on the stones. There was a burst of music from inside a car, and she heard the sound of hooves on the riding track. Now is definitely the time, she thought. Surely now, you can think of something? She sat for a while longer, and then she wrote: Really, it’s the furniture that will save you. The rest you can try — Jess, Andreas, your father, but that furniture money is the only actual claim you have. It’s a just claim, and Liam has been inexplicably reluctant. It’s not as if the man lacks money! Just go and see him. Be very calm. Present a coherent petition. But the thought of that made her palms sweat and she lost her grip on the pen. Still it was a fine day. She looked across at the taut shapes of the trees and the water glinting like hammered steel. In the distance she saw the Albert memorial, newly repainted, bright with gilt. A man stood and stretched. He had been slumped on a bench, reading a paper. Now he shook out his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. He had a small face, his features packed close together. He looked happy enough. Really it was impossible to tell. Blurred and in the distance she saw a woman coming along the path. As she approached, Rosa heard her shoes. She was tapping along like a bird. The sun was shining on the windows of the houses and she stared up at the patterned blue and white of the sky, clouds moving slowly. When she looked again the woman was still tapping towards her. The sound stopped Rosa’s thoughts. All she could hear was this rhythmic tapping and she noticed the woman was drawing a dog along with her, a small black and white mongrel which was snuffling into piles of leaves and litter. The dog snuffled under a rubbish bin, and the woman yanked it away. Then they came along again, each with their own sound, the dog panting and the woman murmuring to it in a low voice.

Hunched over her notebook, Rosa wrote: there’s a tendency — we all share it — to invent a false image of ourselves as an exceptional phenomenon in the world, not guilty as others are, but somehow justified in sinning because one is inherently good. Everyone else is damned and fallen but one — me, myself — is good. This is quite self-righteous, it leads to misunderstanding, not only of oneself but also of the nature of man and the cosmos. The goal is to disperse the need for such life ignorance, by reconciling the individual consciousness with the universal will. This is effected through a realisation of the true relationship of the passing phenomena of time — you, this woman, her dog — to the imperishable life that lives and dies in us all.

Then she wrote, Dear Rosa, This won’t help you at all. Stop writing immediately, close your notebook and go and get some money. She saw a flock of geese honking on the path, aware of the approach of the dog. The dog was moving towards them, and though the woman tugged him backwards, the geese, honking violently, vituperative with panic, lifted themselves into the air and flew across the water. They settled on the other side. Governed by instinct alone, she thought. Their own imperative. Doing precisely what is expected, acting in accordance with their conditioning. When Tolstoy watched the peasants, and found faith, it was something like that he saw. He understood it as faith, but it was an assessment of the real bounds of life, of life lived without comforts, or illusions, rather than in the pampered reality-denying rooms of St Petersburg society. Because these peasants lived this life lacking in artifice, or the degree of artifice enjoyed by a Russian aristocrat, Tolstoy assumed that faith must be a natural condition of life. She saw his logic, though she couldn’t follow it. She felt there must be a way of living that was germane and inevitable, some natural mode she and the rest of the toads had forgotten. The woman walked past, tapping her heels along the concrete and dragging her dog behind her. ‘Come now,’ she said to her dog. ‘Come immediately, now.’

A rite, she thought. A culminating rite! And Rosa stood and walked away. She swung from optimism to foreboding as she walked, oscillating like a pendulum. Her gait was uneven as she went towards Bayswater. She passed the long lawn and saw it was scattered with a few people. They were walking on the paths, not saying much. At the road she emerged into a lingering cloud of car fumes. A bus rattled past her. A cyclist dashed past, almost hit a lorry, swerved around a car, and turned right suddenly. All the cars honked. She had hurt her back carrying her bag the previous day, and she found she was limping slightly. But the thought that Jess was eagerly awaiting her departure, that her father was worrying about her, even as he played a lento game of tennis, that Andreas was puzzling over her note, made her pick up speed. Rocking a little from side to side, hardly graceful but still going forwards. She trod steadily, engrossed in her thoughts. At Notting Hill station she found another payphone. She spent a while in the phone box, fending off all comers, the tourist with a map, the backpacker wanting a hotel, but gone were the days when countless dozens bawled each other out of phone boxes. She called Whitchurch and Kersti, but they weren’t answering their phones. She called Andreas a few times, and every time it switched to his cheerful message, optimism coursing along the line.He’ll think you’re mad if you call him again, she thought. One side of her brain was trying to persuade her to desist, but she was bi-cameral with desperation, and when she had been standing there in the phone box for a good few minutes thinking about pressing the numbers again she realised she was being a fool. Now she wanted to bawl, stand in the phone box weeping like a child. She gripped the phone and dialled half of Andreas’s number. She slapped down the receiver, then picked it up and dialled half of his number again. Then she stopped. She prised herself away, and walked onto the street.

She thought of a few dozen unrelated things, but through them all the idea kept coming back to her, so she walked quickly past the tube and found herself outside the block of flats she once lived in with Liam. It felt strange as she pushed through the doors. She buzzed, she slapped her hand on the buzzer, but there was no reply. In the foyer, she had a lucky break with the concierge. She had known him when she lived there, bought him a few bottles of wine. She had always stopped and talked to him. She put him in the paper once, as a vox pop. He found it hilarious. So today he smiled broadly at her, a thick-necked man, his eyes shrouded in fat. ‘Sorry to hear about you and him upstairs,’ he said. He gestured upwards. For a moment she thought he meant God, and she span round thinking, What does he know? But then she realised he meant Liam. That was kindly, so she smiled and said, ‘Thanks. All completely amicable.’ She smiled through the lie.

‘What have you been doing? Writing stories? The usual stuff?’ he said. ‘Any exclusives recently?’

She laughed uproariously. ‘No no, none at all,’ she said. At least that was honest. He had a shining bald head and an expression of tranquillity. You’ll be less tranquil later, she thought, and she smiled and laughed and went off to the lift. She pressed the button to the eleventh floor, waited while she was carried upwards. Seeing her reflection in the metal walls she wiped a smudge from her nose.

In the silence of the corridor it wasn’t clear why she had come. The place wasn’t as she remembered it at all. Even the corridor seemed indistinct and unknowable. With a patched carpet beneath her, a smell of dust and chemicals around her, she waited. She took out her notebook and wrote: Tomorrow they will be married and this particular small epoch will be over. But the trials will continue thereafter. Yim yam yum. Shantih Shakti Sha sha. She wondered briefly if she might be a prophet, and no one had noticed. She might be the emissary of a banished god. I come to deliver unto you the true divinity, Shakti Yam. They wouldn’t entrust such a thing to a fool like you, she thought. She stood there for a while, counting minutes, feeling really sick at heart and then she heard the grind of the lift. She saw Liam before he noticed her. She stood up, and was about to say something when she saw he was looking at her, suddenly dismayed. His expression was unstudied, quite transparent. After all these months, she could read his furrowed brow, the action of his hands, his unsmiling mouth.

‘Rosa. What are you doing here? How did you get in?’ said Liam, walking towards her. He was certainly horrified. Of course it was the worst time. Anyway it looked as if she had come to beg him. Retract! She suddenly thought that tonight must be the rehearsal dinner, but he hadn’t dressed himself up yet and must therefore be running late. The whole thing was beginning any minute! And here he was, in jeans and a jacket, looking as if he had just come in from the shops.

He wiped his arm across his face and said, urgently, ‘Rosa, what’s up? What are you doing here? My God, I have to get going. What can I do for you? Come on, quickly. What is this?’

He wasn’t sure what to do, no one was sure, but he was weighted down with bags and in a hurry so with a brisk sigh he opened the door. Uncertain, Rosa followed him in. He turned and said, ‘God, Rosa, come on. Christ, can you go? Can we talk when all this is over? Why now? I haven’t seen you for so long? What is it that can’t wait? Come on, because I really haven’t time.’ Really, he seemed quite agitated, and that surprised her. On the phone he was always so buttoned-up, almost laconic. He wasn’t looking at her; he was unpacking the bags, hurling things into cupboards, hanging his suit on the back of the door. His gestures were automatic. Clearly he was trying to work out what to do. Meanwhile, she was struck silent by the flat. The place had been transformed; the hand of Grace was on it all. The white walls had been softened to a pale red. It oozed taste, but the shade was somehow sanctimonious. There were paintings on the walls, proper art, bought from a gallery, contemporary daubs and the rest. The West Country prints had gone. The furniture was still there, all her and Liam’s mismatched articles, but now there was a lot of rustic pine and oak as well. Everything was tidy, though the place was full of colour. The flat had been recast, and now it stood in crisp antithesis to the place as she left it. This seemed significant, almost as if Grace — despite her claims to the contrary — wanted to wipe away all trace of Rosa, obliterate the past, smash it to pieces. In the kitchen, which had been painted too, the surfaces were covered with wine glasses, left over from a pre-wedding party. A half-eaten cheese stood on the hob. It looked like a flat where people had fun.

Liam took off his jacket and put it over the back of a chair.

‘What are you doing here?’ he said, turning to Rosa. She could see he was angry. He never liked being put under pressure. It was his controlling instinct; he felt it as an assault. ‘Come on, Rosa, what is it? What do you want?’

‘I apologise for intruding,’ said Rosa, getting her breath back at last. ‘I’m aware of course, momentous things are happening. Love and the celebration of love. Marriage. A culminating rite! In honour of the profound shift, I have one last request. Then I won’t bother you at all. I’m quite spun out. Really, as I said to you on the phone, I’d like to go away. Try harder, fail better next time, the rest. So, I just want the money for the furniture. It’s not much. Just a token. Look at it all, arraigned around you.’ And she waved an arm at it, though seeing it now in the sallow light of a dying day she nearly saw what he meant. The sofa was wrecked, and the table was stained with grease. The bed she imagined in a similar state. They had bought it years ago. It had lasted longer than their love, of course, and she briefly considered the nature of transience, though she knew that was hardly the point. The point was how much money she could get. It was her last chance to salvage something. That sent her muttering about the need for a gesture, to close things between them. ‘A final act,’ she said. ‘A denouement.’ Meanwhile, Liam was positively pacing around, really focused on his interrupted evening and the ticking of the clock. He was thinking of Grace, of course. Perhaps he expected her any minute, and Rosa thought that would be a shame because the scene would shift and gain a different theme. Grace would add her own variety of needless talk, and then Rosa would have to leave. Even now, Liam was trying to shunt her out. ‘Rosa, you can imagine that now is not the best time,’ he was saying. ‘But I promise we’ll sort this out soon. Not today, obviously. Or tomorrow. But I’m aware it’s a question you want to discuss.’ He wanted to sound strict. ‘I’m going to call you a taxi. It’s either that or I call the police.’ He was trying to look imperious, drumming his fingers on the back of a chair.

‘The police?’ said Rosa. ‘What the hell would the police do? Put you in prison for stealing my furniture! Call them!’ But that fell flat. Liam looked her up and down and said, ‘Now, Rosa, don’t get upset.’ On further scrutiny, he looked careworn. She thought he might have put on weight. Apart from all that, his presence was quite superb. He was lovely to observe, with his careful gestures, his delicate eyes. He was standing there, uncertain amid all this elegance, but still he was a coward, that hadn’t changed. He was so thin-skinned and sedentary. The man was a tent, letting just anyone pitch him and set up camp in him. Tent-like, he said, ‘There’s no need for a fight. We will get you your share of the furniture money. It’s no big deal.’

There was a flicker in Liam’s eyes which Rosa couldn’t understand. For a minute or so, she waited. She eyed the bouquets on the windowsill. Deep red carnations, very fine, a bucolic cluster of them. She wondered what Grace was wearing for the wedding. She thought the bedroom must have changed too. She imagined Grace’s shoes on the floor, her clothes in the wardrobe and her books by the bed. The complete diaries of Virginia Woolf — of course she would have those, and an edifying biography or two, something about Amelia Earhart or Rebecca West. Books that said she was a strong and forthright woman. The flat was familiar and yet disconcerting, like a dream. Everything had been displaced. She turned towards the sofa and said, ‘Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?’

Before Liam came she had been frightened, but now she was quite calm. Liam, however, was looking incensed, even stricken with rage.

‘Rosa, it’s so ludicrous, you being here. It’s so sad and strange. Can’t you understand?’ He hissed that; he couldn’t restrain himself. Was it excitement or fury? It was hard to tell. ‘You must get out,’ he said. ‘I can’t even think about this now. Whatever you want. I’ll give you some money. What do you need? Come on, they’ll be arriving soon.’

‘That’s right, I must get out! GET ME OUT!’ said Rosa, but now she was talking too loudly. She wondered who were ‘they’ and when were they coming? What did they want? Liam observed a silence, looking uncomfortable. He had his hands clasped together, and he was hunched over at the breakfast bar. More than uncomfortable, he looked agitated, as if her presence was disturbing to him. She paced towards the bookshelf, looked out over a stack of books, the combined collections of Grace and Liam, lovingly merged together. That made her fret, and so she said, lying, ‘It’s not a question of need. It’s a question of justice.’ The phrase meant nothing, and Liam shrugged. Of course he knew her well enough. He could spot her empty rhetoric as soon as she spilled it out. He said, with his hands outstretched, as if he was trying to stop her, or at least slow her down, ‘Rosa, come on, let’s try to get through this. Tell me what you want?’

She wasn’t relaxed; there was so much to see, and she kept glancing around at the exhibits, finding a shocking display on the kitchen wall, photos of Liam and Grace together in a series of places, on European holidays, in New York, standing on the Staten Island ferry with their arms around each other, in a desert, their faces oiled with sweat. There was something appalling about it, now she confronted it. Really it was tacky, quite disgraceful! It meant nothing to them, the past. They were mutable, in love with mutability, they accepted that things moved on. The essence of time is flux, the dissolution of the momentarily existent, and the essence of life is time. Absolutely, she thought, that doesn’t help at all. Now she felt tired and she sat down on the sofa. She stared up at the ceiling, wondering if they had painted that too. She picked up a book and tried to read the title. Nothing registered, and she set it down again.

‘Come on, Rosa,’ said Liam. He wasn’t relaxed at all. He was holding himself very straight, preparing to act. He walked towards her, lingering above her. Really he was quite fixed on his theme, determined that Rosa should leave. He was always monologic. ‘I just want a token payment. It’s not much,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing at all. Closure, you know.’ And she grimaced. She could see his nerves and rage. It meant little to her, that she had the power to worry him. It was a pyrrhic victory, to turn up and convince Liam just how much he dreaded her. She saw another picture of them on the mantelpiece, Grace supreme in a little red dress and Liam in cords and a blue shirt. On that one she was wearing a sparkling ring. They were a beautiful couple, of course. They were setting such store by this small thing their wedding. It was touching how much it meant to them. And for this reason, and for many others, they must be happy together, thought Rosa.

Suddenly Liam turned towards her, trying to look friendly. He had gained an air of slyness. He had always been cunning, but now it was sketched on his brow. ‘Rosa, please cut me some slack here,’ he said softly. He was leaning towards her. ‘I know you don’t want to wreck my wedding. I understand. It should never have dragged on like this. I just thought what you were asking was too much, and then I didn’t think the furniture was actually worth anything. But today — well, it’s a good day to come! Quite the best day to get me to agree to a deal! So why don’t we say I’ll send you a cheque? I’ll have a look at the stuff again and work it out. I’ll do it before I go away on the honeymoon. OK?’ He was speaking through gritted teeth. Really he wanted to bawl her out, but he was trying to coax her. He was furious, she could see just how furious he was. She wished she could have been more magnanimous. For a moment she wanted to say that she was sorry, make a pact, resolve it all. She longed to do that, to forget every slight and say she was sorry for everything. She would have blamed herself, if she could just get the words out. Still she couldn’t do it. What was it, defiance or a petty sort of pride that had such a grip on her?

‘Good to see you, so set up,’ she said. That was the best she could do, and it sounded hollow as she said it.

‘Doing fine,’ said Liam, in an embarrassed way. He clenched his fist. ‘So that’s everything settled then. I’ll put a cheque in the post. I’m sorry not to have sorted it out. Things just got hectic.’ He looked at the door. That was too prompt and final, and it made her remember that the last time she was here he had been lying fluently, preparing to sling her out. Now he was doing it again, saying anything he could think of to make her leave. It was his fixed and constant aim, and this shattered her good mood, stopped her feeling contrite. He looked at the door again. ‘Liam, no,’ she said, and suddenly she felt a sense of aversion, a rich coursing sense of disgust about the whole furniture debate, continued conversation between Liam and her, any reference to their former flat, the rest. She understood it was undignified. Kersti had been quite right. Odd, really, that Kersti had even called him up. She thought, suddenly, that Kersti must have made a joke of her. ‘Hi, Liam, had another call from poor old Rosa. Yep, still nattering about the furniture. I can’t stop her. What can you do? Can you help her?’ A collective conspiracy, they had been working together all along. It made her feel ashamed. And so you should be, she thought. More than anything she wanted to leave, but leave with an assurance, some sort of quid pro quo, rather than being pushed out again by Liam triumphant. It was childish, but she minded losing every time. It got her in the guts, made her want to spit and cry. ‘I don’t care, I’ll take whatever you want to give me. I don’t care. It has enraged me, that you’ve made such a fuss about this. But I’m sick of feeling so angry. Anything, a couple of quid, fifty, a hundred, anything. It’s better if I never speak to you again. Really, now I don’t care about the money. Just give me something, and I’ll go. Anything, a token, just to demonstrate you haven’t lost your sense of —’ She stopped. She couldn’t think what she wanted to say. Everything sounded overblown. She let the sentence drop.

It surprised her, how weary she was feeling. And Liam was standing there, uncomprehending and distracted. Of course, the wedding! He was looking creased; he had dragon skin around his mouth. His skin was worn. Had she grown used to him when they lived together, stopped really seeing him? She had never noticed how close together his eyes were. He seemed birdlike, afraid.

Then the buzzer went.

‘Fuck,’ said Liam. ‘Fuck, that’s the others. Rosa, come on, let’s go. Definitely time for you to go. We’ll talk more as we go.’ Suddenly, he dragged her off the sofa. Then he started pulling her through the door. At first she shook him off, quite lightly, though she was confused. His touch was strange to her, redolent, of course, of long ago, but different again, like the flat. Something in the atmosphere had changed. It was the sternness of his touch that made her uneasy. All the time they had lived together, he had never touched her like that, even when everything started to slide. It felt so curious; she couldn’t quite absorb it. I am finding this a fundamentally alienating experience, she thought, with a nod to Freud. That was the sort of cant he liked. I feel I cannot integrate myself into this moment. I suspect I am emotionally arrested. Was that it? And what about you, Liam, she thought? She caught a glimpse of his eyes, staring ahead. He had her arm in his hand again, and they were moving through the door. She shook him off, but he grabbed her again. ‘Come on, Rosa,’ he said. ‘Time to go.’ Now he was pulling her along the corridor. Though she was reluctant, he was stronger and of course he had the stark motivation of his wedding, the people in the lift, his best man, his brother perhaps, all of them in smart suits, preparing their speeches. He moved her quickly along the hall. His grip was firm and quite detached. As they went she said, ‘Liam, there’s no need to be so smug. I was being quite reasonable. That was what I said. Pay me a token. A bit of cash, that’s all. Something that makes me hate you less. Otherwise, think of me festering away, cursing you. It can’t be what you want on your wedding day!’ She raised her voice. She was shouting randomly as she was pulled along and every so often she would say, ‘Come on, Liam, what about the money!’ ‘The damn money! The fucking ducats!’

‘Rosa, that’s enough,’ he was saying. Already he was out of breath. ‘Really, you need help.’ They passed the lift, and because his friends were in there he dragged her further to the stairs and banged open the doors.

Rosa was pushing at his arms. ‘Gold!’ she was shouting. ‘The fucking gold!’ For a moment she was in a blind fury; not just about the money and her sense of panic but about their wasted life together, his betrayal of her, this rage she had been trying to convert into something else but which had sapped her energy and made her hopeless, a whole host of things she had failed to manage. She was stumbling under the weight of her anger, quite reeling with it, and that gave him a chance to bump her down a few more steps while she shouted words, though she was hardly noticing what she said.

‘Rosa, stop being crazy,’ he gasped. ‘I don’t have time, surely you understand? It will have to wait!’ And he was shouting now, in his frustration. He was frantic about the time. Always he was thinking about himself. It was surely unmeasured but she wanted to bite him. All that violence she had thought of and never had a chance to enact, really she wanted to head-butt and pummel him. He was dragging her faster along, trying to draw her down the stairs. He had ten flights to go; it was looking bad. She could see that in his fixed stare and the lonely curve of his mouth. That made her think of this discarded period of her life; she felt him as he drew her along and was transported, though the present was jarring, and this motion was making her feel giddy again. She remembered the way he smelt in the morning, the dry taste of his mouth and the warmth of his body. Though she had hated him in recent months, she recognised that. It came over her suddenly how familiar he was, and that was despite everything, the acts he had perpetrated and his all round treachery. Now she stopped struggling. Reluctantly she understood. It was all quite pointless, and besides it was the wrong time. She felt suddenly disgusted, with Liam for refusing to pay the money, and with herself for begging for it. He was scoring a last, emphatic point, even though he had smashed her to bits already. It enraged her that she couldn’t just retreat, remain aloof. So she said, quietly, ‘Fine, you’re right. I’ll walk. I’ll go.’ He dropped his arms, hopeful, and she began to walk down the stairs. He was still behind her. ‘I feel sorry for you. I really do,’ he said. ‘I feel partly responsible, of course.’

She didn’t bother to respond.

‘I know you were unhappy with me, but now — now you seem much worse,’ he said wiping his face. His skin was shining with sweat.

‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Really, you have to be less of a prig.’

On the sixth floor, with a nervous glance at his watch, he said she was walking too slowly, and put his arm on hers again. She got free and walked away. Then, because she was preoccupied, she tripped and fell, hitting her jaw on the banisters. He grabbed her and steadied her again. ‘Rosa, are you OK?’ She pressed her hand to her mouth. Now his hand shook when he touched her. He was shaking his head at her, looking sad. ‘Rosa, I’m sorry about the way things worked out,’ he said. ‘And now you’ve hurt yourself.’

‘That’s fine, it’s nothing,’ she said. She could taste blood in her mouth, and she swallowed. She really wanted to cry, but it was pure self-pity. She was standing now, dabbing at her mouth, and he was holding her arms. His face close to hers. It was an intimate moment, redolent of course. Then she found she was saying something, it quite surprised her, because it wasn’t really what she had meant to say, really it hadn’t been her intention to say it at all. ‘Liam,’ she was saying, in a choked, wheedling voice that did her no favours, ‘do you have to? Maybe you don’t have to after all? Of course, she’s a great woman. A marvellous friend. But do you have to? It just seems unnecessary somehow. It’s a step too far. You know, I’m smashed already, there’s no need for another blow. I’m out for the count! On the floor, really, I’m down there, right down there, scrabbling to rise but finding this fucking wedding, this whole ritual, love-celebration, whatever you’re calling it, is too much. It’s only a particle, of course, a piece of chaff in the wind, and if I add it in with the meaning of things and the point, the perfect point, and my need for cash and all the TEMP and the rest, of course it means almost nothing. But anyway it’s too much, do you understand? Tasteless, too soon, prohibitively tasteless. Just outrageous! Staggering! Like felling someone with a ton of bricks then blowing them up as well! Don’t you see? Can’t you see how it feels if you’re quite pulverised already and then someone says, “Oh God YAH we’re getting married in a big stupid wedding with white bows everywhere and cascading arrangements of flora and the bastard crazy rest?”’ The whole thing was out in seconds, her drooling petition. Now she saw him so vaporised, so insubstantial and preposterous, preparing for his luxurious wedding — it should have meant nothing to her, yet somehow it unnerved her, and she was spilling garbage in a trembling voice. ‘What the hell has happened to you?’ she was saying. ‘What the hell happened?’ It was futile and she dried up with a sense that she might — any moment, and clearly ridiculous — start to cry. Too too solid flesh, she thought, and then she thought, Who the hell are you kidding? The time has long gone when you could have left here amicably, with a conciliatory wave. Now you just have to sidle out of here as soon as you can. Liam had his arms round her, as she stood there gulping and flushed with shame, and she remembered their former passion, or former conspiracy, a conspiracy of concern for each other, and now she was trying to pull herself away. She shouldn’t have come, of course. She had only been appalled by the discord between them, and the sense that Liam believed he was right, about the money and everything else. ‘I’ll go right away,’ she said, rubbing her mouth, which hurt. The atmosphere had certainly declined. It was the most awkward place she had been for a long time. She was trying not to look him in the eye. He would think she was mourning the loss of him, the death of love, but now she understood — some knot had been untied, and here they were, separate, entirely distinct, hardly understanding each other.

She was emitting some bizarre sounds, trying to say, ‘Well, let’s talk about the money soon,’ while Liam was saying, ‘Rosa, please don’t come back again.’ His cheeks creased. His eyes looked rheumy. She realised he was moved. That surprised her, because she knew he had other things to think about, his romance of the present and his special day. ‘I will sort out the money for you, I promise. I understand you should have some. Things have gone badly, I know. I’m sorry about it.’ He thought he was making a beautiful speech. That made her angry all over again, and she turned to go, shaking with mingled fury and humiliation.

As she stepped away from him she felt she should have been more serious about everything, about her lack of discipline and the bank and her job prospects and her father. Clearly her coping strategy had failed. ‘Do you need a tissue?’ he said, politely. She shook her head.

‘I’ve been out of sorts,’ she said. ‘Seeing you just brought a few things back. It’s not important. I’m glad you’re happy.’ All of that came out in a rush, and now she thought of his friends upstairs with their top hats and carnations, waiting for him. ‘Rosa, promise me you will take action,’ said Liam. ‘And I promise I’ll send you a cheque. I’m aware I’ve been remiss.’ That nearly made her smile. Action! She was already busy, trying to salvage her pride.

‘Even the money,’ she said, aware that her voice was unreliable, her overall demeanour was letting her down. ‘You’re right. The money really doesn’t matter,’ she lied. ‘If it’s so important to you not to pay it, though I really don’t know why, then don’t pay it. You know, forget it. Forget the furniture. Take it as a wedding present. Apply whatever significance you want to it. I’ve other things to think about, frankly. Have a great wedding, you know, good luck.’ He didn’t reply. He raised a hand to her, awkwardly, as she turned away.

Things to do, Thursday — this day you have redefined the definition of a fool, scaled new heights of foolery previously unimaginable.

Get a job

Find a place to stay

Explain to Andreas

Write the article for Martin White

Plough a field with bulls of flaming breath

Slay the armed men who spring into being when you sow the field. Throw a stone in their midst, to cause them to turn face to face and attack each other.

Take the treasure and run. Legend dictates you should kill a man at this point, and throw him out. But try to escape without slaughter!

Unlock the TEMP and unearth WHAT?

As she walked away she was trying to look graceful. She went down the stairs, a hand over her mouth, passing the concierge who waved goodbye. She didn’t try to speak.

Outside she stood for a moment under the shadow of the tower block. Briefly, she wondered if it was possible to expire with shame, to be felled by a sense of embarrassment and drop into the gutter. And then she wondered if it was embarrassment or disappointment, that she had seen Liam unmasked, grappling with her for nothing, money he didn’t even want, tussling her downstairs to sustain his sense of righteousness. Indifference would have been the best response, scorn still better, yet she had failed to produce either. Now she was free to walk slowly through the evening streets, from Notting Hill towards Ladbroke Grove, past the white mansions with their doors locked, shutters down, windows barred tight. The day felt heavy and she tried to pick up her heels. Certainly morale had slipped. It had something to do with her failure to get money, even though this time she had come pretty close. Her conversation with Liam, until it declined into a pit of emotional cess, had been the best chance she had had in a long time. In this case alone she had a leg to stand on, she really did have a claim to some cash and she could have insisted, could have forced him to pay her. But she had given up, lost her ire — and why? Because she suddenly understood how ridiculous it was, how absurd she had been to enter into this contest, to allow him to sit there dispensing or withholding favours? All she wanted to do was forget him. She wanted to stop thinking about the money, about the scraps he was refusing her. That was all foolish enough, and she bowed her head. Leaves gusted on the pavement. She stepped around a puddle and heard a clock chiming in the distance. It was 7 p.m., and everything was almost over. She walked along watching the lights in the windows of the houses, those tall bright houses with palm trees in their gardens. When she looked into the rooms and saw their vivid normality she felt calmer. Still she found she was talking as she went, struggling to make sense of recent events. ‘The whole thing! So futile. What were you thinking? That he would repent? That you would calmly discuss the wrongs you had committed, and resolve a pax?’ It made her shiver. She passed a man who was coughing on the corner. A woman walked past, arm in arm with a girl who looked like her daughter. They were genetically identifiable, both with the same sling of their hips and long blonde hair. ‘And now he’s getting into his suit, quite relieved. Putting on his cufflinks, with a steady hand.’Stay with Andreas for a day or so. Then find somewhere else to live. Write this article for Martin White. Visit Sharkbreath and beg him for compassion. Tell Yabalon you’re not afraid. Borrow from Jess — but there would be no talking to Jess now.

She arrived at the Westway with blisters and a bloody mouth. She walked quickly, scuffing her shoes on the street. The evening was cold and still. She hadn’t eaten for a while, but she wasn’t hungry at all. She felt her lip, which was slightly swollen. She wondered if one of her teeth was looser than usual; she pushed it with her tongue. At the corner of her street she sat on a crumbling wall. She was crying a little and she had sweated into her shirt. She watched the windows of the houses, imagining successive lives. Tomorrow they wouldn’t be quite the same. An imperceptible change would have occurred, some small shift in their cells. She put her hand in her bag, checked she had her papers and her passport. She turned the key in the door and walked into the darkness of the stairs.

*

She came round; it was as if she had returned from a deep trance. She found she was sitting in Jess’s flat, in the pink living room, with her face to the wall. She was confused for a moment, and she wondered whether Jess was there too. Then she remembered it was the night before Liam’s wedding and that Jess was at the rehearsal dinner. She was beside herself and didn’t know what to do. She must have been crying for a while, sobbing like a child or a fool, because her eyes were stinging and she had a thick headache. She allowed herself another bout of tears, but it hardly helped and she began to writhe at the sight of herself, sitting in a borrowed room crying about what? Her sense of time wasted? The whole thing was absurd, she thought, pressing her hands to her eyes. She was acting like a sap! The most sap-like she had been in months, and that made her shudder with shame. She was adrift in a small room, and she felt alone and despised this sense of solitude. She thought of the rehearsal dinner, everyone in a pool of light, smiling and shouting greetings to each other. But that was ignominious; she understood it was too predictable that she would sit there sobbing to herself while Liam and Grace got themselves hitched in a whirl of bows and satin. Even in her confusion, she despised the cliché, the sense that her life was playing itself out in so generic a fashion. She was fodder for a silly story, a basement piece in the middle of August, a missive from the world of nothing. And that made her stir herself. With her hands trembling, she wrote to Martin White. Thanks again for the commission. I’ll try to have the article with you by the end of the week. He hadn’t even set a deadline. That was fortunate, though she had to force herself to write. You must galvanise yourself. That’s really the thing. She called Andreas, and he picked up the phone, half asleep.

‘Yes,’ he said, his voice muffled.

‘Andreas, hi, it’s Rosa,’ she said.

‘Rosa, dear girl, it’s the middle of the night.’

‘I’m very sorry. Very sorry indeed. I forgot the time,’ said Rosa. And he was right, she saw it on the clock, 2 a.m. blinking a reproach at her.

‘Well, tomorrow. Talk then. I have to rehearse all day. Evening. Speak evening.’

He was friendly, but exhausted. He could hardly speak. Fundamentally, he was asleep.

‘OK, speak to you then,’ she said.

‘OK,’ he said, and she thought of him dropping the phone and reclining again. He would be asleep in a second, and she counted him down, thinking of him drifting into sleep, falling, and now, Andreas was unconscious, she thought. Then she kicked the phone cord out of the socket, went to her room and whined herself to sleep.

*

She was woken by the buzzer. It jolted her into consciousness. She waited for Jess to take it, thinking she should stay as still and quiet as possible. She sat hunched on the bed, her chin on her knees, then the buzzer disturbed her again. There was no sign of Jess as she walked through the living room and found the intercom in the half-light. She pressed the button.

‘Delivery for Rosa Lane,’ said a voice. It was so unexpected that she didn’t know what to do. She paused before she answered. A delivery? A book from her father? There was a danger it might be. A guide to being. Something benign and essentially unhelpful. Another of his articles, stapled in a neat folder? Or something else, some sort of punitive measure? A summons from Sharkbreath! Perhaps it was today she would be set upon by Sharkbreath’s gang, toad-faces the lot of them. Still, she pushed a button and heard the door click open. She saw the messenger’s head vanish inside. Then there were footsteps on the stairs, and after a while he hammered on the door. My God, she thought. And she felt entirely resigned, really they could take her, she didn’t care any more. It’s all become quite too much, she thought. Existentially, she had become supine. Besides she was half-asleep and her face was stiff from all her sterling efforts of the night before. She found a jumper on the sideboard and put it on. Then she switched on the light. Opening the door she was surprised to see a courier, wearing leathers. He had a slim envelope in his hand, which he held towards her.

‘What is it?’ she said.

Of course he didn’t know. ‘You’ll find out when you read it,’ he said, with a friendly nod of his head. You’ll find out later, all of it, she thought. Then he went away and she heard him thumping down the stairs.

Uncertainly, she opened the envelope. There was a piece of paper, a note in Liam’s writing. Written in haste, it said: Dear Rosa, Here it is, and that really has to be all. Sorry, and love as ever, Liam. And there was a cheque for five hundred pounds. That made her sit down suddenly on Jess’s sofa. For a while she held the cheque and couldn’t understand it at all. She kept looking at the cheque, then looking again at the note. She read love as ever again and found it was an odd thing to write. Really he had stopped loving her long ago. But he was sentimental. The cheque proved that. She hadn’t turned to look at him as she walked away, but something in that final scene made him rush for his wallet. It was his guilty conscience that made him sign, or perhaps he was paying her off, bribing her not to cause any more trouble. It was for Grace’s health; he saw it as an investment. Money was nothing, for that sort of thing. He wanted to cleanse himself, enter the holy state of matrimony absolved of his sins! He signed it in a hurry and sent it over, because he was late. While he was tying his cravat he asked his best man — who was that? Lorne? Or some friend of his from school? — to phone the courier. ‘Bit of trouble at work,’ he said, lying into his top hat. Well, it was characteristic. He wanted her tidied up, the swine. Still, he didn’t want to pay what she had asked, and he couldn’t resist a self-righteous flourish. That really has to be all. Who said so? Liam, and no doubt Grace too, if she knew about it. Both of them so reasonable, they thought, gatekeepers of the rational world. That made her angry for a while, and she thought of a dozen ways to spite him. She screwed up the cheque — but not too much — and threw it on the floor. She stood and walked to the tap, drank down a pitcher of water, dribbled most of it out because her lip was swollen and her tooth ached, said, ‘The cunning cunt’, and then she sat down on the sofa again. Then she bowed her head suddenly because she thought it might be compassion. She read Sorry, and love as ever. Sorry for what? Sorry it wasn’t more? Sorry for everything? Sorry that she had made such a fool of herself, one last time? Of course things had been bad between them. She had loved him, and now the old sense of him came coursing over her; she was quite aware of Liam as she had known him and longed for him daily, and this made her want to cry out. She understood that things had become bitter. He was so closely associated with it all, her lost mother, the blankness that descended and a lot of accompanying mental debris. She had focused it on him, weighted him down with it. They had both been imperfect, hopeless. She couldn’t know for certain. Then she thought if it was so easy for him to do it now, why had he waited so long, why had he forced her to produce a haphazard entreaty? Once she had emerged, humiliated herself, he scrawled a cheque. The note was scribbled, too; she knew his writing well enough. He had been in a frantic hurry. For a moment she thought of the heroic gesture; she had a full-bodied, fleshed-out vision of herself marching to the church, tearing the cheque up on the steps, throwing it in with the confetti, then she picked up the cheque, smoothed it out and put it in her bag.

Indifference is the thing, she thought. It hardly mattered what she had done to get this money. It was hers, and she had achieved it. It was a scabrous small triumph, and it wasn’t enough, but it was hers all the same. Liam is sorry, she thought, and then she thought, Sorry for what? Then she shook her head. As if it mattered what he was sorry for! As if it mattered at all, as he wrote the words, hardly thinking about what he was writing, and ran out of the door in his morning suit. She stood in Jess’s living room, in a valedictory mood. Now it came to it, she thought she was sad to go. She had always liked the steady drift of the familiar. As she picked up her clothes she found an interwoven pattern of coffee stains on the carpet in her bedroom. That was a further shame. Now she dressed quickly. She cleaned her teeth, checking herself in the steamed-up mirror. Her eyes were baggy and she had looked better. But that would change, she thought. She wrote: Dear Jess. Thanks again for your hospitality. I took a lettuce leaf and a bit of tea, for which my apologies. In general I have committed several crimes which will weigh against me in the final reckoning. Recently I bled liberally into your shoes. I twice used your shampoo. I ate your chocolate yesterday and I drank a glass of your orange juice. Really, I ripped through your cupboards like a locust. Yours, Rosa. Then she smiled and ripped up the note. She wrote: Jess, thanks very much indeed. Now I’ve really gone. Send me any further bills — I’ll email details. Vade in pace, Rosa. She was propelled by an urge to escape. She felt them all around her, the ambiguous hordes, bank tellers and all the rest, offering maxims, telling her what to do. She simply had to shake them off. She packed her bag — her clothes and boots and her couple of books and all her unassembled papers — in an instant, and walked through the flat. She tidied the hall, and pulled on her coat. She picked up her bag, and walked out into the daylight. She posted the keys back through the letterbox, and heard them clink onto the mat. Then she started moving along Ladbroke Grove, breathing in the fumes of the morning, dragging her bag behind her. The Westway was full of cars and the clouds were scudding above her. She raised her head to watch the cars and clouds.

At the bank they wanted the money to be deposited, used to sop up some of her debt, but she talked them into doling out cash. With the posters behind her ARE YOU MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR MONEY? ARE YOU PILING IT UP AND COUNTING IT DAILY? DO YOU DREAM OF PILES OF GOLD? she explained that she would be working again soon, and this money was required ‘to supplement my business wardrobe,’ she said, smirking and biting her nails. The kid sniffed, a new kid called Dave, and slapped the notes down. This meant her wallet bulged attractively, giving her a powerful if fleeting sense of security. She was leaving Sharkbreath far behind, but one day she would go and see him. She would walk in and announce triumphantly to the sceptical zipper-priestess Mandy that she had a deposit to make. She would clasp the toad-faces by the hand. Not now, but some time soon, and if not soon — Well, then she would consider it later, she thought.

In the Underground she thought of herself a few months ago, going in the opposite direction, having walked out of her job. It was nine months since the death of her mother. She marked that blankly, trying not to think beyond the facts. The months coursed on; she had lost a lot of time. The train was looping round towards Waterloo. She had missed the rush hour and the carriage was half full. A sign above her said LET US HELP YOU TO HELP YOURSELF and there was a picture of a woman smiling broadly. She wasn’t sure if she was running away or regaining something. She had in mind what she wanted to do, to return to a state she had previously accepted as ordinary, a state in which she could think quietly about things. It was a long way back, she thought, recalling her desperation of the night before, her drooling incontinence and plain despair. Then, she had certainly been incapable of moderation. She had failed entirely to set aside the concerns of the self. There had been that period of blankness, when she couldn’t remember what she had done at all. That frightened her a little, and she turned to stare at the man to her left, a shiny-faced man of fifty or so, wearing a shabby mac; his shoes dirty. He flicked a glance towards her, cold-eyed and indifferent, and she dropped her gaze.

Everything was going well enough, until at Waterloo she suffered a moment of indecision. She stood under the clock, watching the lines of people moving across the forecourt and she thought of going home to her father, and then she thought of leaving the country. Andreas was in her mind, too. She saw these choices like paths in a forest, and she was unsteady for a while, not sure which way to turn. She had her bag behind her, her pared-down possessions, and she felt suddenly tired and as if she could hardly stand. She wanted to lie down and sleep. She was being scuffed and buffeted by the crowds, people moving past her, constant motion, and each person who pushed past glanced back at her, as if her stasis was a crime. The condition of everything is flux, she thought, and then she shook her head. She thought of calling Andreas but then she remembered she had woken him, left obscure messages, hoping he would supply her with something, a bed for a few nights, another temporary solution. Anyway, it was too much to ask; he was a kind, loving man, but he wanted to act and he wanted to enjoy himself, be young, live well. She couldn’t go back and lean on Andreas, assuming he even wanted to serve as a crutch. She was banged hard in the shoulder as a man rushed past her, hurrying to catch a train. He was late and he didn’t turn back. She was a rock in the current, she thought. You couldn’t stay here for ever. Eventually they probably winched you out, or poked you with a cattle prod. She was standing there, martyring herself to the ebb and flow, still nervous and undecided, when she saw a billboard high above her saying TEMPERANCE. That made her crane her neck and stare. It summoned something, another strand she had failed to develop. It was noon and Rosa was thinking of Liam and Grace and the whispering church. TEMPERANCE, she thought. Was that the meaning of TEMP? TEMP means Temperance, that was what the taggers had been saying. And then what about SOPH? And she thought of the vicar and the church and ‘Do you?’ ‘I do.’ ‘Do you?’ ‘I do.’ Well, that was it, rings exchanged, a kiss, the rest. They would be delighted, of course. Everyone, and she thought of Liam’s mother wiping tears from her frosty cheeks. Flowers — of course there would be a lot of flowers. The altar would be decked. Garlanded the pews. She could imagine a fine bucolic row of them, chosen by Grace’s mother. It would all be sublimely tasteful. Beautiful, if you liked that sort of thing. She wondered at it all, and then she stopped and thought, But perhaps that’s it. Perhaps, she thought, TEMP could be Temperance. SOPH would mean Sophrosyne which meant temperance, or moderation. Wisdom in moderation. The right way to live — moderately, temperately — she remembered it now — it was Socratic, and came from ‘Charmides’, she thought. She was standing in Waterloo station as the crowd swelled around her, realising she had forgotten about Zalmoxis. How could you have banished Zalmoxis from your mind? she thought, Zalmoxis who said that temperance is a great good, and if you truly have it, you are blessed. She gripped her bag and with her swollen mouth she said, ‘Sophrosyne’ loudly to the air around her. ‘And to you too,’ said a commuter with a flushed face, as he pushed past her and descended into the scrum. That gave her another jolt, and she tried to remember what she had been thinking. Temperance, she thought again, but she wasn’t sure. Was that it, she thought? It was impossible to know for certain. Well, she thought, if it was SOPH or something else altogether, how the hell was she to know? She had been worrying away at those signs, the TEMP and the SOPH, and now she thought she would take Sophrosyne as the meaning, or decide that was what it meant today. She didn’t have to know it objectively; she only had to reach a compromise, a solution that meant something to her. The debate had only ever been hers anyway; there was no one begging her to give them an answer. Civilisations were not hanging by a thread, awaiting Rosa’s pronouncement on the definitive meaning of TEMP. She looked up at the sign again. Still she was tired, and if there had been a bed for her somewhere, she would have retreated back to it. TEMP meaning temperance or something else altogether. SOPH meaning Sophrosyne or nothing at all. Something to her alone. A small signal. Be moderate. Well, it was a mantra she needed well enough. Of course she should be more moderate, and she thought of the people around her colliding and smashing a way past each other, going somewhere, she didn’t know where. For a brief moment as she looked across this seething tide of people going to work, wearing their smart clothes, abandoned to the immutable system of money and the city, it seemed to make a sort of sense. Moderation, of course, she thought. The world kept on going and she only had a small part to play. She saw the Ferris wheel turning slow circles beyond the hangar of the station and the crowds flowing towards a train and she stepped onto an escalator, her heart thumping in her breast. And she thought to herself, TEMP means you are going to take the train. SOPH means you are going to leave the city. There wasn’t really anything else to do.

With a low feeling of relief, she bought a ticket for the first train that was leaving the country, and that train was going to Paris. She would have gone to Brussels or Ghent, or wherever they sent her. She didn’t mind. Now her heart was thumping; her nerves were on edge. Her tooth was definitely loose, but she would see to that later. She filed along the platform, finding her seat, arranging her bag in the luggage compartment. She was so tired she hardly noticed her surroundings, and when the train pulled out she turned to the wall and slept. She slept deeply, until she was woken as the train began to pick up speed. Stirring in her seat, she turned to the window and saw the sky was wreathed in clouds. There was a plane moving through the sky, weaving a trail of smoke that coiled and floated and then disintegrated slowly. The day had been dull earlier, but now the sun was shining faintly. Trees were moving gently in a low wind, swaying towards the tracks. It was almost winter and the hedgerows were bare. The train was moving towards the outskirts of the country, where the land met the sea. Swiftly, it was passing steel containers. She saw the shapes of hills, grey-toned, shadowed by clouds. They passed a railway junkyard full of bits of track, rubbish, piles of concrete, and a ruined engine. There was a mound of rubble by the side of the track, moss at its tip. The automated voice was telling them all that smoking was not allowed on the train. She saw lines of cars and steel fences. She had left her notebook and pen on the table, a table she was sharing with a man who was reading Le Monde. She took her pen in her hand. Now she saw the sea ahead, glinting in the sunshine.

With a low moan the train went into the tunnel, and the lights in the carriage became thin streams of reflected colour. There were only a few people around her. The man opposite, with his newspaper, his head buried. A family, eating sandwiches. A few lone travellers, occupied with papers and books. It was very quiet, just the low grumble of wheels on tracks, and the fizz of the air conditioning. She took her pen and wrote:

Dear Father, I have gone to France. Sorry I have been so useless in recent months. It just got too much and I couldn’t shift my thoughts. You were right. I’ll find somewhere to live and work and write to you soon. I might stay in France or go further away. I might stand in a grape press, working the grapes with my juice-stained feet, or I might find something else to do. I promise I will come and see you soon. Sophrosyne. All my love, my dear last parent.

Dear Liam and Grace, There is much I am sorry about. I never appreciated either of you, while I had you around. I thought that the two worlds, divine and human, could be pictured only as distinct from one another — different as death and life, as day and night. Really, it’s clear that the two kingdoms are actually one, the realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. Best of luck sorting it out for yourselves. Yours ever, Rosa Lane.

Dear Martin White, she wrote. Now I really will write the article. I can feel it coming on. I’m certain I’ll have it with you soon. All best wishes, Rosa Lane.

As the train rumbled through the tunnel under the sea, she stared out of the window and thought she would call Andreas when she got to France. Dear Andreas. She would explain that she couldn’t come to see his play. She hoped they would meet again, when she had more money and a firmer grip on herself. Dear Andreas, she wrote. Sorry I woke you. Thanks for everything. I have gone away for a short while. But I will see you soon. Love, Rosa. Now she looked out of the window again, but in the darkness all she could see was her face, hovering, neither inside nor outside the carriage. Dear Whitchurch, she wrote. Thanks so much, and goodbye. It was 3 p.m. and the service would be over. They would be at a reception in some flower-draped parlour, everyone with a glass in hand. The couple illuminated by the flash of cameras. Holding each other tightly. Well, that was done. She nodded and thought at least it was over. Her father would be in his garden, talking Spanish to Sarah. Jess would be plainly relieved, sipping champagne with the rest — Whitchurch, Lorne in an oversized suit. Liam and Grace receiving compliments. Kersti would be smiling and patting them on the back. Perhaps Liam would give her a conspiratorial nod — ‘Yes, we settled it.’ But she thought he would keep quiet about it all. It would hardly be his main concern. Later they would all go back to their lighted rooms, with their views of brick walls and incessant motion. Andreas would be rehearsing his play somewhere in the south, shouting lines, his face flushed in concentration. Along the Westway the cars would be moving in slow files, and the trains would be snorting into Paddington and the city would be supplying dreams to the hopeful, pace and purpose to the uncertain.

To my dear mother, she thought. I know that you wouldn’t have wanted me to get so crazy about it all. I don’t yet understand, nor do I accept it. I don’t accept any of it. But I am trying to find a way to resume. She didn’t want to go back to her previous lack of thought, her blitheness. She had lost that, she hoped. If she could just get back some of her tranquillity, then she would try not to slide into blitheness again. Aware of the abyss, but not staring straight down into it, that must be the best way to be. Es muss sein, she thought, and she grimaced and wanted to pound her fists on the window. She shuddered and thought it was a long way down, and a long way up, and all she had done was board a train. Another train, and even last time she had thought that would prove the catalyst. I don’t want this to become normality, my dear mother. It must surely be a transient state. She was crying slightly but she thought she could keep it measured. I really will try this time, she wrote, though she didn’t know if that meant anything. She shut her eyes again, and listened to the sounds of the carriage, the rustling of papers, the rise and fall of voices. They were all drifting in darkness, fumbling around. Perhaps that was it, after all. That was moderation, anyway. And then she thought how damn ironic that was, that you should seek obscurity and positively embrace ignorance. That you should fashion your philosophy from the acceptance of unknowability. Still she gripped her pen and wrote: Your loving daughter. She made a surreptitious attempt to wipe her eyes. Resolution, she thought. She had to keep herself dry and quiet. The lights beyond were blurred and she saw grey tracks through the smoked glass. She heard the sweep of automatic doors behind her. Bienvenue en France said a metallic voice. A cold sun was shining. Things to do, Friday this day you are leaving the city, she thought. Things to do. When the train emerged from the tunnel she saw broad fields stretching away. Now Rosa set down her notebook and stared out at the sky.