If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

And everyone else keeps talking, compulsively, talking across each other, talking about the tunes they heard and the people they saw and the next place they want to go. The boy with the white shirt and the tie keeps saying it was definitely a girl, and then he stuffs a pipe full of fresh green herb and the room quietens in anticipation, the conversation dropping, each of them suddenly feeling their minds too frantic, their bodies too tense, and they suck on the sweet smoke in turn, holding the pillow of it in their lungs, closing their eyes, stilling their voices.

And they think about daytime things for a moment, about rolling hills, or beaches, or playing football, or whatever it is they’ve learnt to think about at these times, and they breathe slowly and move for a moment into a kind of waking sleep. And if someone were to look through the window now, to walk into the backyard and press their face against the glass, cupping their hands around their eyes like a pair of binoculars, that person would see what looked like a roomful of people gathered together in silent prayer, and they would wonder who such a vigil might be for.

Outside, a taxi drives slowly down the street, the driver peering from the window, checking house numbers. He gets as far as number twenty-eight, and then there are no more numbers. He hesitates a moment before driving away, the sound of the car fading behind him like a trail of dust.

And now they are quiet, the girl with the army trousers trying to find a picture on the television, the boy with the pierced eyebrow holding a lighter beneath the plastic lid of a tube of crisps, a look of concentration in his eyes, waiting, watching the plastic soften.

The girl with the boots says I’m going home, I want to go home now.

Do you want to come with me she says to the boy with the wide trousers, walk me home she says, and her voice is thin and tired.

The boy with the shirt and tie is lying down on the floor, draping one arm across the tall girl who is still chewing gum and staring at the ceiling, dragging a duvet halfway across them both.

The short girl is curled up in a ball in the middle of the bed, waiting for the girl with the army trousers to come and keep her warm.

The boy with the pierced eyebrow lifts the lid to his mouth and blows, and a bubble of hot plastic shoots halfway across the room, flashing into place like a miracle, holding its long airship shape for a fraction of a second and then floating gently down towards the floor.

The girl with the boots offers her hand to the boy with the wide trousers, pulls him to his feet and kisses his forehead. Take me home she says and they drift slowly through the door.

The girl with the army trousers closes her eyes and collapses into the bed, adjusting herself gradually against the outline of the other girl’s body, wrapping around her like a nutshell.

In the first-floor flat of number eighteen, a young man sits up in bed, it’s early but he feels very awake, he looks around at the mess of his room and he thinks of all the things he wants to do today, needs to do. Sorting, packing, tidying, arranging. He rubs at his dry eyes with the tips of his fingers, he gets out of bed and walks across to the window. He sees two people in the middle of the road, he recognises the girl from number twenty-seven, he doesn’t recognise the boy and he wonders who he is. He picks up a camera and takes photographs of the morning, the two people in the street, the sunlight, the closed curtains of the windows opposite, he puts down the camera and makes notes in a small book, he writes the date, he details the things he has just photographed.

The young couple in the street, dancing, their arms curled gracefully around one another, the music from the restaurant carpark still in their heads, disappearing into her house, leaving the front door open, the street empty and quiet.

A cat, waiting on a doorstep.

Pigeons, dropping onto chimneytops.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_a2e854fd-9017-5e62-ade3-3814ce187ae9)

I’d been thinking about it when I called Sarah, the girl sitting next to me that day, I realised it had been a while since we’d spoken and it was probably my turn to call.

I said hi I just fancied a chat I wondered what you were up to and she said oh hi it’s been ages hasn’t it.

All our conversations seem to start like this now.

Once a month, maybe less, one of us will call the other and we’ll say oh hi it’s been ages we should try and meet up, and a plan will be made, and cancelled, or not quite made at all.

We’re not that far apart, maybe half an hour on the tube, but it’s been months since we’ve seen each other and every month it seems to matter less.

And so I sat in my room, that evening, and we talked about the usual things, about new jobs and plans for new jobs, about people we both knew and people we were meeting, about dates and possible dates.

I looked out of my open window, across the endless city, and I imagined her sitting by her window, looking in this direction, the telephone a shortcut through all those streets.

I wondered what her room looked like, what she could see from it.

She said so who have you spoken to lately, have you heard from Simon, and I said no not for a long time.

I thought about all the time we spent together, the three of us, the long days of that last summer in the house and I wondered how it had become so hard to keep in touch.

I remembered the promises we’d made to each other, me and Sarah and Simon, and I wondered if I’d been naive to think we could keep them.

I remembered how easily we used to talk, endlessly, making plans, deciding where we’d be in one and two and three years’ time, and I don’t remember mentioning this.

I had the appointment card on the table, the letter with the confirmation of results, and all I wanted to do was tell her about it, talk it over, like we would have done before.

I wanted to talk about why it was making me so scared, why there was a breathless panic fluttering up into my throat.

Sarah you’re not going to believe this, I wanted to say, or Sarah can I tell you something?

I wanted her to say oh calm down why don’t you, the way she did when I used to get worked up about deadlines and exams.

To say look no one’s dying here, we’re not talking about open-heart surgery, it’s normal, it’s a thing that happens.

I wanted her to give me some perspective, to say things out loud and make them seem a little more ordinary.

But I didn’t say anything, I just said oh I had a postcard from Peru, from someone called Rob, I said I couldn’t remember who he was.

She said you must do, he was that guy from over the road, he tried skating down that hill in the park, don’t you remember?

I smiled and said oh yes, and she said remember how no one went to help him because we were all laughing so much, and I laughed and held my hand to my mouth because it still seemed unfair to find it so funny, the way he went sprawling to the floor, arms flung out for balance, bellyflopping across the tarmac.

I said and remember how he had no skin on his arms for the rest of the summer, just those long grey scabs?

And she said I know I know, laughing, she said I can’t believe you’d forgotten, and I could picture the way she screwed her eyes up when she laughed.

We talked about other people, saying do you remember when, and how funny was that, and I wonder what happened to.

We talked about the medicine girl next door, the boy in Rob’s house who thought he could play the guitar, the good-looking boy down the road with the sketchpad.

We talked about the people at number seventeen, Alison who got her tongue pierced, and Chris, and the boy with the ring in his eyebrow but we couldn’t remember his name.

I tried to remember what it was like to be near so many people who knew me.

She said what’s Rob doing in Peru anyway, and I said I don’t know I think he’s saving the children or something.

Do you think he’s taken his skateboard she said, and I laughed and then remembered the way his hair got in his eyes when he was trying to pull off tricks.

The way his jeans always got scuffed under the heels of his trainers.

I thought about him being all those thousands of miles away, and I wondered how long the postcard had taken to reach me.

I read it again, looking at the long looping letters, trying to imagine the slow slur of his voice.

Things are going massively here it said, I’m having an ace time.

It said I’m not really homesick, but I’m missing decent cups of tea, it said you could write to me sometime.