‘Does Julia like it out here?’
‘She loves it,’ said Jamie, his back turned, fixing something in the kitchen. ‘She was the one who encouraged me to get it. Did all the painting herself – she loves that sort of thing. Decorating. Fixing things up. She’s thinking of retraining as an interior stylist. Are you hungry?’
Jamie made dinner.
He fed her a rich, brutal stew of devilled kidneys – so old-fashioned, deeply savoury, simmered in some sort of dark wine. There were crushed potatoes oozing with butter, and more wine to go with them, and winter vegetables simmered until they sighed and gave up their juices.
Then, some sort of decadent chocolate treachery made in tiny fancy individual pots. Normally she wouldn’t dare, but he’d been to some trouble. She couldn’t refuse, it would be rude, even though she was imagining every teaspoonful on her hips the next day.
‘You need to try this,’ said Jamie. ‘I made it for you. Go on. You don’t eat enough. I’m going to feed you up, girl.’
He dug a spoon into the smooth surface of the dessert and lifted it to her lips. It tasted of everything she’d ever wanted to get away with.
He tucked a finger of hair behind her ear, and again, Jamie was the only person she knew who could make such a cliched move feel thrilling. His fingertips brushed the down on her cheek so lightly, summoning something in between loss and wanting.
After that, things escalated rather quickly. All she had to do was let it happen. In fact, it was better if she let it happen.
He tugged his shirt over his head and showed the full miracle of what five years of clean living could do to a previously etiolated human body.
It was all she could do to remember to hold back, to be shy, to let him lift her hands to his chest, and then lower, to look down, to stay still, to let him lead.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘everything’s all right.’ And it was, she supposed. It was perfectly all right.
From somewhere outside her body, Grace watched Jamie fuck her, and wondered how she’d been hung up on this for so long. Really, he’d never been all that good, had he? He did the things that girls were supposed to like in a perfunctory way. Then he got down to it, filling her up thoroughly and hurriedly, as if she were a non-disclosure form.
He came quickly, whimpering and falling forward onto her.
Grace got up to take a piss, because no amount of post-coital cuddling is worth a bladder infection once you’ve had one. She padded into the dark kitchen for water, not a snack, she wasn’t going to eat, she was full, had been filled, she was going to ignore the leftovers on the side and the thick fresh bread, and just be in the moment, the stone tiles leaving cold kisses on her feet, the hiss of the tap and the dead girl standing right outside the kitchen window.
The glass dropped out of her hands. It didn’t break. She saw it rolling away over the stone with a drowning sound.
When she looked up, the dead girl was still there, and of course, this time Grace recognised her, and of course. Of course.
The dead girl was mouthing something, saying something without sound.
Let me in.
Fuck, she looked so cold and hungry out there.
Grace looked down and noticed that her hand was already halfway to the lock on the window.
She screamed then, really screamed, and Jamie came running.
If she had had time to think, she might have expected the dead girl to vanish, to have to explain what she’d seen, why she had screamed, over and over, sounding like a crazy person while Jamie did his concerned nodding thing – you’ve always been mental, can you stop it with the attention-seeking for just a few days, you’re an embarrassment, this is why I can never tell my friends about you.
But when Jamie skidded to a halt, she was still there, glaring silently at the two of them.
‘What the fuck!’ said Grace. ‘What the fuck, Jamie, what the fuck is that?’ And then she was just saying fuck over and over, under her breath, like some sort of nightmare porno.
‘Can you please stop overreacting?’ he said, his face a twist of panic, not looking at the window, where the dead girl’s face, that horrible, familiar face, was pressed in longing.
There was no breath to mist the glass.
‘Fuck that, it’s me,’ she said.
Because that’s who the dead girl was.
‘When you called me, the first time,’ she said. ‘You thought I might be dead.’
‘Yes,’ he said simply.
‘But I’m not dead,’ she said.
‘I think we’ve established that by now,’ said Jamie, drawing her close, tender, shivering. She smacked his hands away.
‘Unfinished business,’ said Jamie, ‘isn’t that it?’
‘Right. So you thought – what? If you were kind to me, if you fucked me – it – would go away?’
She was still staring at the dead girl, the twisted version of the kid she’d been ten years ago, and for the smallest fraction of a second she could have sworn they shared a look of understanding. I know, right?
‘You do know your dick doesn’t have magic powers, don’t you?’ she said.
Jamie shook his head. ‘There’s no need to get dramatic about this.’
‘There’s every fucking reason to get dramatic,’ she said, half shouting.
‘Calm down. It’s all right. Come here.’ Jamie put his arms around her, but she wriggled away, staring over his shoulder to where the dead girl, dead Grace girl, was raising a pair of oozing wrists in accusation.
There was so much she had made herself forget.
She had wanted more, once, hadn’t she, until it got too much, and it was better to crush all the wanting away. To waste away. All that wasted time.
She shoved Jamie away, and went to sleep on the sofa.
In the morning, Grace went for a walk by herself.
She was positive the dead girl, the Grace-girl, wouldn’t be there in the daytime, if only because in her mind there seemed to exist some sort of vague code of conduct for creatures who come from wherever it is this one did. Just in case, Grace didn’t look to right or left of her as she headed down the track to the village. Fixed her eyes on a random point in the middle distance, a tree, a signpost, switching the focus whenever the object got too close, like her father had taught her to do whenever she would get carsick on long journeys. Grace couldn’t remember if it had helped, but it had kept her quiet.
Grace went through the village, stopped at the single shop to pick up a few important things, and to post a letter that, given the circumstances, absolutely couldn’t wait. She walked for an hour until she reached the outer limits of her own boredom. Grace had really never seen the point of just walking. Whatever it was that other people find inspiring about nature just didn’t seem to do it for her. Grace smoked two cigarettes outside the closed-up pub, sucking down the dirty smoke and longing for the city.
Then she went back to the cottage to warm up.
Jamie was still sleeping it off. Grace opened the windows to let a breeze in, then went from room to room turning up every radiator. The place was beautiful, Jamie was right – cosy and tasteful without being too pretentious. It felt safe here. Bright and dry and safe.
She had bought fish fingers and chicken nuggets from the corner shop – the sort of meat so processed it forgets it’s dead. Grace shoved the whole lot in the enormous oven, which still smelled vaguely of yesterday’s feast.
She had also bought cheap ketchup, and milk that was not organic, and real bargain-bin tea, full of tannin dust, the ancient price sticker peeling off the packet. The proper stuff, she thought, mentally supplying the punchline: proper tea is theft.
She made herself a cup of strong tea with two sugars. She made herself go out to the front garden and sip it while it was still sweet and scalding. And she made a plan.
Her stomach yawned, and she decided to feed herself. She went through Jamie’s cupboards and found some crackers and jam, ate them over the bin, not even bother
ing with a plate.
Then she went through every room in the house, lighting the scented candles, dimming the main lights, fluffing the throws and pillows just so. She put on music – the gentle pop of fifteen years ago that she had never had the cash to go out and dance to, the sort of music people with more comfortable lives listened to on rooftops in the cleaner parts of town, surrounded by hothouse plants, with well-cut clothes, and cold drinks in their hands. Kissing. Appreciating each other. Stupid, simple things to want.
She turned the music up. It woke Jamie, who came padding in on long, bare feet. He narrowed his eyes in that studied way, seemed to consider commenting on the music, and then groaned and threw himself across one of the sofas. A man hogging a life-raft.
‘My head. Jesus. That was a lot, last night. Sorry for sleeping so long.’
‘Seemed like you needed it.’
‘Yeah.’ Jamie winced. ‘Yeah. Hadn’t been getting a lot of sleep, what with—’ he waved vaguely at the window.
She put a cup of black coffee in his hands, just brewed, and took one for herself. She wanted to tell him it was fine, but it wasn’t fine.
‘It’s been going on for weeks. Every night. Banging on the windows. Wanting to be let in. I can’t write. Can’t sleep. Can’t think of anything else.’
‘So what, you thought you’d call me up and see if fucking me and telling me I was pretty would make the – the whatever it is – make it go away?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘For what? The sex, or the dead girl with my face, or – whatever you were trying to do, inviting me here?’
‘I don’t know. Everything. I’m sorry for everything. I’m a shitty, shitty person. I’ve always been a shitty person.’
‘You’re not a shitty person, Jamie, you just do some shitty things, and you ought to stop saying you’re a shitty person and just try not to do so many shitty things.’
He looked at her. ‘Well, that was eloquent. You should write a self-help book.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘I’m—’
‘What are you going to tell Julia?’
His hands tightened around the coffee cup. ‘She’s got nothing to do with this.’
‘Maybe she should get to decide that.’
Anger flashed across his face, and he almost stood up, then, and Grace took a step back, and then Jamie’s body had a kernel panic at the sudden movement, and he seemed to deflate.
‘Telling her any of this would only hurt her. I can’t believe you’d want to do that. To another woman.’
Grace said nothing. Best to keep him wondering. He might not play along otherwise.
‘Get up now, Jamie. I’ve thought of a way to fix your problem.’
‘Now? It’s getting dark.’
She told Jamie to go and stand out under the eaves by the back door.
Then she went from room to room, getting everything in order, took the food out of the oven, and set it on the table in clean white dishes.
Chips and beans and bacon. Mayonnaise and chicken nuggets. Chocolate cake, with the thick cheap icing that always tasted of birthdays in the school holidays. A fat jug of livid orange juice, pure livid liquid sugar. Candles, napkins.
‘Is that for me?’ Jamie called in through the door.
‘No,’ she said.
‘What’s going on? It’s getting cold out here!’
She threw him an extra jacket and scarf.
Then she took the keys from the cupboard, and opened every window in the house.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Jamie hissed. ‘She’ll come. She always does. She’ll get inside.’
‘That’s the idea. I thought – I don’t know, if she wants to come in so badly, why not just let her in?’
‘This is stupid and reckless and I don’t endorse it.’ Jamie shivered.
‘Fine. We’ll go back inside and shut all the windows and have a nice quiet evening. I’ll call Julia up and tell her how nice it’s been.’
‘Bitch,’ he said quietly. ‘Selfish bitch.’
Grace smiled to herself, and waited. The night crawled up the skin of the sky like a bruise.
It didn’t take long.
The smell of butter and sugar and salt and filthy yummy fried things was hugging the house by the time the dead girl arrived. They spotted her through the hall, outside the kitchen window, in the old paddock.
She stood at the open window, shivering in and out of focus, the light inside soft and buttery and inviting.
She seemed to look about her, as if there had been some mistake. Grace was reminded of those videos of the rescue animals, the foxes and badgers that kind people took care of and then set free in the woods, opening up the carry cage, and how they’d hesitate and take scared little steps, wondering if it was too good to be true, before pelting away to freedom.
The dead girl started crawling in through the window. Her cold hands smacking wetly on the countertop, her hair hanging in hanks over her pupil-less eyes. The thin white meat of her marbled with rotten black thread-veins.
She went straight to the table and started eating, and eating, and eating.
When the feast was finished, the dead girl, her face now flushed and warm, went to the giant fridge. She tore the door off its hinges, unhooked her jaw like a snake, and started slowly, methodically pushing things inside her mouth.
‘Hey!’ yelled Jamie, and the girl’s head snapped around.
Jamie clapped a hand over his mouth.
The Grace-girl seemed fuller now, her edges more defined, as she tiptoed into the front room and started to take off her wet clothes.
She peeled them off systematically, piece by piece, dropping them one by one along the corridor. She was quite naked by the time she got to the front room, thin as a bad-faith argument, her white belly extended only a little above the dark triangle of her pubis. Not fashion-thin, or sexy-thin – she just looked ill, the familiar old scars red-raw and shiny-new, slicing into layers of memory. Grace elbowed Jamie.
‘Stop staring,’ she hissed.
‘Seriously?’
‘It’s rude.’
Padding up to the low, dry heat of the fireplace, the dead girl tilted her head in time to the music, considering the couch, a little nervous – a stray animal that hasn’t been given permission, thought Grace, and then the dead girl smiled, really smiled, for the first time, and wrapped her arms around herself, and curled up on the sofa, tucking up inside the thick sheepskins.
The fire purred.
The dead girl closed her eyes and smiled.
‘What the hell is happening?’ whispered Jamie.
‘I don’t know, really,’ said Grace. ‘But whatever it is, I think it lives here now. I’m going back in.’ Grace realised as she said it that that was what she was about to do. ‘It’s cold out here.’
‘Are you mad? You can’t go in there.’
‘I think I can. There’s plenty of room on that sofa.’
‘I’m not going in.’
‘No, I think that’d probably be best. She might still be hungry.’ Grace patted his arm. ‘Call your wife. She’ll come to get you from the station.’
Jamie swore at her.
Grace grinned, and went inside to get warm.
FIVE SITES, FIVE STAGES
* * *
LISA MCINERNEY
Market stall
‘ARE YOU SURE NOW?’ Cass’s brother asked. ‘Is that the lot, like? Is that the lot?’
‘Yes, that’s the lot,’ Heidi said down the phone. ‘To my knowledge.’ She did not want it assumed that she had control over Cass, or that she might know exactly what Cass was doing and when, given a specific time or scenario, given a mood or a string of evocative words. The street was throbbing, but she looked at her fingernails, the middle one now bald of the lemonade-coloured gel they’d chosen together – Heidi had been picking at it; they were, the pair of them, fiddlers and fidgeters – she brought her fist closer to her face as
if needing to examine some new defect. ‘The second you know, let me know how she’s doing,’ she said to Cass’s brother, but he’d hung up. She wasn’t sure whether he had heard her begin to speak.
Around her there was much going on. There was a market at one end of the street, stalls selling crêpes or flat caps or posh cheese, people jammed up together, parting with their money in one way or another. There was a busker not far from her, forcing a folk version of a nightclub song. There were teenagers chirruping. It was an average day, and Heidi was chastised by it. Nothing catastrophic happened on days like this. Catastrophe would have the day bend for it, catastrophe would be insistently perceptible. The manner of catastrophe was this: it would not be trivialised by the paths walked by others or the air breathed by the oblivious. Those oblivious people would have looked to her like fiends or mutants, or at least the lines of their bodies would have shivered and warped. All objects would have seemed darker, even given that the sky was dark for July, heavy and close. Her knees would have buckled, she would have involuntarily howled.
As it was, she walked down to the market.
‘What do we have here?’ she murmured. She picked up a clunky pendant on a leather cord and was set upon by the stall-keeper.
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ the stall-keeper said. ‘That one.’
‘Aren’t they all?’ she replied – dulled derision and downcast eyes.
She was not searching for a get-well gift here. Here, there was just tat and lavish tuck, neither of which Cass appreciated, having a neat mind and a modest appetite. But she appreciated derision, especially of the subtle kind – their own language of little ironies and aversions. ‘How tacky,’ Heidi would say of people holding hands. ‘I’m in love with love.’ ‘It’s morbid,’ Heidi would say of a bright print or a carousel. ‘We’re clawing away from the grave as if we think that’s achievable.’ ‘Excruciating,’ Heidi would say of sushi and pomegranate and salted caramel. ‘Well isn’t that fucking droll,’ Heidi would say of students collecting signatures for petitions. ‘I really hope you die before me,’ Heidi would say to Cass. ‘I honestly don’t think you could cope with the separation if it was the other way around.’