Part 6 (1/2)
As the door slammed behind him, Yorky turned to his flatmate with an exasperated expression. ”You're awake. At last! I didn't know where you'd gone. You've been asleep all day, you know?”
”Yes,” said Laura, walking toward her room. She stood in the doorway. ”I'm going back to bed. I don't know when I'm coming out again. Go after Becky, Yorks. Ask her out. And when you get back, if anyone calls, tell them I'm not here.”
”Laura-” Yorky was gazing at her with a plaintive expression.
”Sorry, Yorks,” she said.
”But-”
”Leave me alone,” said Laura, a sob rising in her throat, batting her hand at Yorky. ”I'm so tired.” She said it almost to herself. ”I just want to sleep. Just leave me alone.”
Laura went back to bed. She ate the food she could eat without leaving the bed. The wine she left-it wasn't a screw-top and she couldn't face getting the corkscrew from the kitchen. She ate a Crunchie bar in two mouthfuls. She was too tired to read the paper. She picked it up and scanned it, but the story about a school of orphans in Zimbabwe made her cry again, so she threw the paper on the floor and turned over, facing the wall, tears rolling across her face.
About an hour later, there was a knock at the door.
”Laura?” came a voice tentatively. Laura opened her eyes, but said nothing.
”It's me,” said Yorky. ”Look. Are you okay?”
Laura chewed her lip, praying he wouldn't come in, banking on a bloke's natural aversion to crying women. This was particularly strong in Yorky, sweet though he was in other ways.
”What's wrong, Laura? I'm...I'm worried about you!”
Laura pulled the duvet over her head as tears filled her eyes again.
”Look,” he said, ”I'm going out now. I don't want to bother you. I'm not going to come in. Will you just say 'Yes' to let me know you're alive and you haven't been attacked or anything?”
It was a good tactic. Laura patted the duvet away feebly with her hands, and said quietly, ”Yes.”
”Right,” came Yorky's voice, sounding relieved. ”Look, darling. I'm sorry about whatever's happened. Is it Dan?”
”Yes,” Laura said. ”Don't. Don't worry.”
She didn't know why she said it, except she really didn't want Yorky thinking she was actually dying or something. It was her problem, not his, poor man.
Yorky said cheerily, ”Oh. Well, you'll sort it out, I'm sure. I know you, Laura! You know what you want, don't you?”
Getting no answer, he said, ”Well, bye, then,” and seconds later Laura heard the front door slam. She lay there quietly for a moment, then put a pillow over her head and screamed, as hoa.r.s.ely and loudly as she could, till the urge to shout had gone out of her and she was crying quietly again, until she fell asleep.
All through Sunday, Laura slept or lay in bed, feeling sorry for herself, not moving. She didn't have anything to do, and she had absolutely no one to answer to, and all she wanted to do was hate herself a little bit more, and the solution to that seemed to be to lie festering in a hot, sweaty bed, with greasy hair and greasy fingernails and skin, feeling achy and uncomfortable. She just wanted to be alone, to feel as totally rotten as it is possible to feel, to push herself far away from the hopeful, deluded girl who ran out to see Dan every week with smooth, silky, tanned legs and clean, s.h.i.+ny hair.
She slept fitfully, and she kept dreaming. She dreamed she was running to tell Dan something, but she couldn't get to him; though her legs were long and she was running as fast as she could, she never seemed to make it any farther. She dreamed Dan was lying next to her, his arms wrapped around her, and that he was kissing her neck, her shoulders. She dreamed he had texted her to tell her it was all a mistake, but each time she woke up and checked her phone, there was nothing.
Early on Monday morning, she was awake, gazing around the room, looking at the detritus of her self-incarceration through the gray haze cast by the curtains. By this time Laura had been in her room for more than two days, and she was starting to freak herself out. But the thing about self-loathing is it stops you from taking the smallest of steps to make yourself feel better-even tying your hair back in a ponytail, or opening the window for some fresh air. She desperately wanted to get up, get out of bed, have a shower, but she couldn't. It was easier to lie here and not do anything. She couldn't go in and talk to Yorky. He'd told her all along she was stupid for carrying on with Dan! She couldn't tell her parents; the shock of the whole sorry mess would kill them. She couldn't call Jo, though she desperately wanted her wise, sanguine best friend's advice. Of course she couldn't call her-imagine what she'd say!
She thought about what she had to do now, and the enormity of it overwhelmed her. Fix things, fix things left, right, and center. And then, in the middle of it all, get over this man.
When she looked down the months to come, long Dan-less months of not sharing things with him, not telling him things, not being with him, her stomach clenched in sharp pain and her heart beat so loudly in her chest she felt it might burst. It was over. And so was that part of herself. When she thought about how she'd misjudged the situation, how she'd run ahead and fallen in love with him without stopping to look at whether he was the person she thought he was-well, she wanted to kick herself. Except this wasn't the first time, and she knew enough to recognize that she'd done it before. One thing was for sure, though: It was the last time.
Yes, the last time she'd fall like that. Absolutely the last time. A clean slate. A smooth, glowy feeling washed through Laura, stopping the cramps in her stomach. A clean slate, a project, someone to be, a new her. She looked past the gray-blue curtains at the crack that let the sunlight in. Yes, the good feeling persisted. She would be someone new. That was the only way to be. She was going to change.
The sun was growing brighter. Laura swallowed, tasting a bitter, moldy fur on her tongue. She sat up, her hands on her knees, and was considering what to do with this newfound zeal-whether to convert it into something by taking the first of a thousand small steps and jumping in the shower, or whether to lie back and think about it some more. What should she do? The energy of the question fazed her, and she probably would have lain back down and closed her eyes again when, thank G.o.d, fate intervened.
Laura didn't know which happened first, the sight of it or the sound, but as she was sliding back down under the duvet, there was a sickening thump and the window flew into a million pieces, hitting the curtains, and a pigeon hurtled in and landed on the bed at Laura's feet. Dead. Or dying.
It took a few seconds before Laura realized the person screaming loudly was her, her first spontaneous action of the last two days. She couldn't move. She sat staring and screaming at this twitching, bloodied pigeon, its feathers scraggly and ugly, its red-pink wormlike claws convulsing on her duvet, as Yorky burst into the room.
”Stop!” shouted Laura. ”Don't come any farther! There's gla.s.s on the floor-STOP!!!”
Yorky slid to a halt, inches from a huge, dagger-shaped shard of gla.s.s. ”f.u.c.k! f.u.c.k me!” he yelled. ”What the f.u.c.k! Laura! What have you done!”
The pigeon twitched again. Laura suddenly heard her mother's voice saying, every time she wanted to feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square or Piccadilly Circus, ”They're flying rats, dear. Vermin. Crawling with fleas and G.o.d knows what else.”
”Get away from me!” she said incoherently to the pigeon. ”f.u.c.k! Off!”
Yorky calmed down before she did. He looked from the broken window, where the curtains were fluttering plaintively in the summer breeze, across the path of devastation wrought by the flying gla.s.s in a shower across the floor, to the bed where the pigeon lay a couple of feet from Laura, who was surrounded by feathers, blood, and gla.s.s, as well as crisp packets, cans, chocolate wrappers, and bits of paper. He said slowly, ”I think you should get out of there. Where are your slippers?”
”Don't know,” said Laura helplessly. ”I don't wear them in summer. They're too hot.”
”Oh, good grief,” said Yorky. ”Flip-flops?”
”I don't know,” said Laura. ”Oh-there.” She pointed at her chest of drawers below the window, which was covered in gla.s.s, and below it a collection of gla.s.s-strewn flip-flops.
”Wait there,” said Yorky, and he trotted lightly down the corridor, returning with a pair of Wellington boots that he used for fis.h.i.+ng trips (last year's Yorky craze).
”I'm going to throw them gingerly at you,” he said.
Laura looked at him. ”What does 'throw them gingerly at you' mean?” she said crossly. ”Just throw them. Don't knock me out. And don't-urgh! Oh, Yorky-urgh. Don't throw them at the pigeon. Urgh!”
Yorky had prided himself on his spin bowling at school, and indeed was reckoned to be rather good at it. He tossed each wellie in the air, and miraculously each landed, in a slow, spinning arc, in Laura's outstretched hands. She pulled them on and climbed out of bed. Stepping around the gla.s.s and rubbish by her bed, she leaped across the mound of it at the bottom, and landed next to Yorky by the door.
”Er...” she said, not knowing how to ask. ”Yorky...?”
Yorky stepped forward and gently picked up the dead pigeon. He dropped it into Laura's wastepaper basket, and picked up the bin.
”Cup of tea?” he said.
”Yes,” said Laura. She pulled her hair back and tied it into a ponytail. ”Yes, yes please.”
”Going to buy a new duvet and bin?” said Yorky as he pulled the bedroom door firmly shut behind them.
”Oh, you bet.”
It was Yorky's last week of term, so he left for work a while later, by which time they had had several cups of tea, called a glazier (Laura), deposited the pigeon in some newspaper and a bag in the rubbish bins outside (Yorky), donned rubber gloves and begun the work of-once again gingerly-collecting each piece of gla.s.s that had managed to spray itself remarkably widely around Laura's room (Laura). By the time the glazier showed up after lunch, Laura had showered and dressed and had stripped the bed and washed her sheets. She threw away the duvet; she knew it was wrong and a waste of the world's resources, but it was almost fetid and covered in dead pigeon. There was no way she'd ever sleep under it again, she knew.
The glazier was a short, squat man who looked as if he had been born in blue dungarees. He was called Jan Kowolczyk.