On Her Way Somewhere New

Ripples move out from a pebble dropped into the stillness of a pond. A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo and somewhere in San Francisco someone’s vase falls from the window sill. What would happen if he came and she wasn’t there? In the theory of waves, even in the theory of butterflies, there would be some effect.

But really, what would happen if he were to come to the door now, if he were to knock, or ring the bell, and there was no answer? Would he use his key to let himself in? Would he turn around, leave, and never return, thinking she had changed her mind? Would he ring her to find out where she was?

She stroked the heat from the scar on her wrist where a piece of rose thorn had once embedded itself in her skin. It still hadn’t worked its way out, months and years later, and every so often the scar would turn pink and glow with warmth. She stroked that heat now, absently wondering what would happen if she were to disappear.

The breeze outside picked up and blew the muslin curtain back into the room. She could hear traffic on the street outside, the sound of sirens. This could be anywhere. It was their old flat in Blackheath, currently vacant of tenants, its walls freshly coated in a new skin of cream, replacing the life-weary sheen left behind by its last occupants. It was suburban London, but it could have been Stockport or Stockholm.

The ceilings in these old converted houses were high, the cornices and ceiling roses painted white, bright against the cream. The carpet was hard, knobbly seagrass. The blandness of the colour scheme was soothing.

She lifted her arm and rubbed her lips against the scar, breathing in the mix of sunshine and soap that scented her skin.

There was a bang downstairs, the door to the house closing, then the sound of someone coming up the stairs. She tensed herself, then toyed with the idea of pretending she wasn’t there when he knocked. If he knocked. Of course, he might not. They owned this flat together, he was still living round here, acting as the landlord to their tenants, he surely would come straight in.

The person carried on up the next flight of stairs, and she heard a key slide into a lock, a door open and then close again, a radio turned on. She let out the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.

Waiting for him like this was almost torture. She wished he would appear, wished he had been waiting outside when she arrived. She didn’t know why he couldn’t have sent the papers up to her to sign, why he couldn’t have done what everyone else did and sorted all this out through their respective solicitors.

Her mobile phone was on the table before her. She watched the grey bar with the time in it slip down the screen, notch by notch. He was late. Later than even he usually managed to be. She told herself that worrying was permitted on this occasion. The time bar slipped down and returned to the top of the screen and she willed the screen to light up, bringing a message from him, or a phone call. She remembered how it had been like this all the time at the start, when she would wait impatiently for his communication.

She had arrived. She hadn’t rung or knocked, but had used her key and let herself in. He hadn’t been here, but then she hadn’t expected him to be. Maybe this was the beat of a different butterfly’s wing. Maybe a wave of effect was rippling its way towards her from some other cause.

The screen on her phone lit up and the phone began to ring. “No Number” appeared in brackets on the screen. She stared at the phone. Something in her gut told her not to accept the call. She didn’t even pick the phone up to press reject. She just sat on her mum’s old sofa and stared at the phone as it rang and rang and rang.

The breeze blew the curtain, catching her attention, and she turned her head away from the phone. The sound of its ring began to mix with the sounds from outside. Somewhere a car door slammed. There were voices. A man and a woman. Children were yelling and laughing at each other. And all the time her phone kept ringing.

It was like that moment at the end of The Ring, the Japanese version. For some reason she knew that if she picked up the phone she would die, or some other catastrophe would happen.

She looked back at her phone, and it stopped ringing. Instantly she wished she had answered it. It might have been something important. It might have been him, ringing from a payphone, telling her of some flat tyre emergency he’d had on his way, and how he would be later than even he could normally justify.

Except he wouldn’t have used a payphone.

The screen on the phone had returned to telling her the time. He was now an hour late. She stood up and walked over to the window. She pulled back the muslin, intending to close the window in preparation for leaving. Before she pulled the window closed, though, she looked out and down into the street. His car was parked outside the house. Or a car very much like it. A man, short haired and nicely turned out, was sitting in the driver’s seat, head bowed. A man who looked, from this distance, a lot like him.

Her phone started to ring again. She closed the window and put the curtain straight. She took the keys to the flat from the pocket of her coat. She placed them on the table, next to the still ringing phone. Then she put her coat on and picked up her bag.

She looked round at the flat one final time before she let herself out and walked down the stairs, out through the front door and onto the street.

She walked past his car (because it was his car, she knew that) and didn’t look at his partially slumped figure in the driver’s seat, didn’t think about the slow thin trickle of blood from his temple. She walked past, as though she hadn’t seen him, on her way somewhere new.

© J R Hargreaves 2006