SATURDAY
11.39
CLOSE EVERY DOOR
I definitely remember dropping a bin bag half filled with rubbish into my wheelie bin on the way to my car. I remember putting my suitcase in the boot, beside my emergency box and climbing into the driver’s seat. I turned the key in the ignition – I remember that because the radio came on and they were talking about rap music so I turned it straight off – and then I pulled out of my driveway and on to the road. After driving about two hundred metres I signalled left – though nobody was behind me – and pulled over to the side of the road, stopped and applied my handbrake. This is where I have been for around three minutes now. It has started.
Did you lock the door?
The trouble is that while I’m thinking about whether I locked the door, I’m also thinking about Gemma.
I cannot stop thinking about her, which is a problem. I am certain that she would absolutely hate it if she knew what I was doing now and I do not want her to end up hating me. I just don’t know how you explain this kind of thing to someone who could never understand living this way.
It is an unfortunate fact that you have to have once loved someone to even begin to be truly capable of hating them. People often say that they hate certain comedians but they don’t really – they just don’t like their jokes or else are jealous of their success. I don’t mind someone saying they hate me when I know they don’t know who I am, but I can’t bear someone who once loved me pretending that they don’t hate me when I know they do.
But … did you lock the door?
Why does this always have to happen? It isn’t just when I drive – I can be on foot or even with other people. One of my lowest points was asking a taxi driver to return to my house halfway along our journey to the train station so that I could be sure I had locked the door. I can still hear the surprise in his voice now: ‘Go back, mate? Really?’ I told him I had forgotten my passport so that he wouldn’t think I was weird, but I felt bad anyway. Having to invent a fictional short-haul trip to France to cover the fact I had so little luggage with me was no mean feat either. Step forward the fictitious ‘sick relative’, no more questions asked. Besides, he was glad of the extra fare, I am sure.
My fear comes from years of living alone, with no one but me to take responsibility for my mistakes. If I don’t do something, it doesn’t get done – it is as simple as that. I absolutely refuse to go back this time though, no way. Things have changed. Each day I retrace my steps a number times, to check whether or not doors and windows have been locked, fridges closed, lights turned off, and each time I do so I find that I’ve always done what I thought I hadn’t. I have to accept that I am a worrier and I do not forget to do things like locking the door – that is what other people do, people who aren’t trying as hard as I am. But then again perhaps I have lulled myself into a false sense of security this time. Perhaps this time the door really is unlocked and I will be making a mistake if I don’t go back. It would be worse to have stopped and decided to carry on than not to have considered the possibility at all. Once my neighbour knocked on my door to tell me that I had left my car window down, so I am unreliable. Admittedly it was years ago now and nothing bad happened as a result, but still it sows seeds of doubt in my mind – you only have to fail once to be a failure. If I wait here any longer I will have wasted as much time as I would have by going back to check whether the door was locked after all. I have to make a decision.
I think you left it open, because you rushed down the driveway to put the bin bag in the wheelie bin and forgot to go back and lock the door.
Now, that seems plausible; I absolutely could have done that. A few net curtains twitch around me to remind me that I am disturbing the order of things, as if the houses themselves are winking at me in sly warning, like a Cockney down a dark alley, though in truth it is simply the inquisitiveness of the people behind who have nothing better to worry about than whether a stranger is in their midst.
I have lived in Swindon for five years now, and to me it is something of a Goldilocks town, in that it is just the right size for what I need. If it were any bigger, decision-making would be rendered utterly impossible by having too many options for which shop/restaurant/ post office to use. Equally, any smaller and it would make impossible the chances of disappearing into a shapeless crowd when out and about.
This is a town where you might recognise faces but never need to know names. The kind of place where you can be ‘the guy who is always in the chip shop at the same time as me on a Friday’ but need never become ‘Alan, who is married to Sarah, who used to work at the Cash and Carry but lost his job because he was caught sniffing women’s shoes in the changing rooms so now works from home but really is supported by Sarah because he’s too embarrassed to leave the house because he knows we spend most of our time talking about him and will do until something happens to someone else whose life need not affect us save for the fact we have so little else to talk about.’
People who have lived here all their lives will tell you that the traffic is bad or that crime is worse than it used to be, but those of us who have had experience of living in bigger cities will tell you that the traffic is rarely beyond manageable and, if you didn’t scour the local newspaper on a daily basis, you would barely notice the petty crime that goes on. I lived in Bristol long enough to see that Swindon is actually a fairly quiet place. I left five years ago because the people I was living with had seen too much of my weakness for them to have the respect for me I wish for. The city echoed with mistakes I had made and everywhere the memories of failures I made earlier made it difficult for anything to seem perfect ever again. I wonder if there will ever be a place I can foresee spending the rest of my life in. More likely it is me who will change; one day I will stop caring about the mistakes of the past. Hopefully.
Swindon is, I’ll grant you, an odd place to decide to build your utopia, but it seemed right at the time. House prices are as low as anywhere in the region, transport links make it an easy place to get out of and, most importantly of all, I don’t know anyone here. The door need never knock unexpectedly on a quiet Sunday and force me into a state of begrudging hospitality. I have a home phone, but no one but me knows the number. You might think this pointless, but I adore it. It makes the phone a talisman of my self-imposed isolation – I am like Willy Wonka, but I make no sweets and the closest I get to an army of Oompa Loompas is the occasional spider infestation. Oompa Loompa doopedy doo, I’ve got a Dyson hoover for you!
Most of the time I adore this solitude though I must confess that illness brings home with shocking clarity how, despite living in a large town and having neighbours on either side of me, it is possible to feel tremendously isolated by my choices. Recently a bad meat and potato pie sent me into feverish convulsions, my body going into full evacuation mode to rid itself of the pollutants inside. It was then that I became aware that there was nobody close enough to me to bring round warm soups, to mop my brow, or (in the worst-case scenario) discover my shrivelled up corpse on the bathroom floor. Twenty-eight is too young to be one of those people whose bodies lie undetected for weeks before questions are raised. ‘Here lies Jon Richardson. He died of a pie. Ashes to ashes, crust to crust. RIP.’
When I left my last home in Bristol, I thought for a long time about moving to the seaside, but I am not yet old enough to spoil that surprise. Like hearing Christmas adverts in October, nobody should live by the sea until they are old enough to appreciate it – its smells and its sounds. The sea is there to remind us what insignificant pieces of shit we all are. When you start to worry about death and how the world will cope without you, the sea roars its laughter down on the sands of your concern and tells you that it will be around long after you and was here long before you. You have to be old enough to appreciate this, having acquired the intelligence and perspective not to misinterpret this as a threat, rather than the arm across the shoulder it really is. ‘Don’t worry old friend. The sands over which you walk are made up of the very bones