Ignoring my very guilty conscience, I type a message:
Hey. Guess who???
I wait. The ticks go blue. He has read my message. He must be replying. My heart speeds. A bike hisses downhill, towards Highgate Tube, its light so feeble in the freezing January fog they barely register. A message appears. It’s from him: Liam Goodchild.
Is it really you? After all this time!
I can’t help smiling. Why didn’t I think of this before? Why did I even bother going on OKCupid? I recall one particular photo he sent of himself, on a boat, stripped to the waist. Oh yes, Liam Goodchild. I’m out here, and I am ready.
He messages again. I stare down, frowning.
No Jo no
I type back,
What?
He says,
I learned, Jo. I learned about you.
I tap out a reply,
Learned what? Learned something about me? I don’t get it. I only wondered if you’d like to chat …
He goes quiet. My message is read; but he says nothing. I am a statue in this freezing dark, surrounded by the frosty mist of my own breath. Has he gone?
No, wait, a reply:
It’s too late. I don’t want to talk. All that blackness and silence, then this? After everything that has happened? No.
I gaze, perplexed. What the heck is he on about? He sounds drunk. Or angry. Or something. My shivering fingers type out my next, uncertain words.
Liam, I’m sorry, what do you mean, everything that has happened? This is weird. I’m sorry I ghosted on you before, but we agreed not to message, but anyway I am single now and I was kinda wondering—
He doesn’t even bother to read this, it doesn’t even go to blue ticks. His next message is immediate and very fast and interrupts my own. As if he is scared.
You don’t understand who you are dealing with. Is it impossible for you to let something go? I will not be responsible. You never knew me. Stop messaging, leave me alone.
Otherwise somebody’s done for.
I hold the phone tight in my hand, in case I drop it. This is not the Liam I remember, he must be drunk, out of control. And now he’s deleted the messages he just sent. And when I try to respond, his ID has disappeared. He’s blocked me.
Breathing cold spiky air, I go to Facebook Messenger. Yup. I am blocked there, too. And Instagram, our other medium?
Blocked.
I have been totally unfriended, I have been barred and banished from his life, with nothing but these bizarre remarks: You don’t understand who you are dealing with. I will not be responsible. Stop messaging, leave me alone. Or somebody’s done for.
Like a threat. As if I am in some mortal danger.
I wonder if I should simply call him; we only spoke once on the phone – a few brief passionate words. But real speech was too risky, too exciting. Therefore we made it a rule: until we were sure, we’d keep it at messages.
Who cares, now, though? I find his number, and dial it: the call switches automatically to voicemail.
He’s blocked me there too. He’s run away. He is frightened.
Of what?
All that blackness, your silence, then this?
As I walk on, pocketing the phone, I really do feel the isolation, and the danger. Jackson’s Lane is always a solitary place, but this is something else; the biting cold night gives my solitude a physical quality – painful, brittle, stifling. All I can hear is my own laboured, panicky breath.
I look behind.
No one.
I look at curtained windows and blackened doorways and I see no signs of human life, and that makes it worse.
My heart flutters, dances, twirls with the urban worry. The intrinsic vulnerability. Dad running out to grab me, towards the end, trying to be kind, loving, funny, like before, like he always did, but doing it too fast, too violent, and making it scary. No. No no. I feel a need to run, to get out of here, to flee. The panic rises. Help me. Help me.
I am nearly at the end of the lane. Nearly at busy Archway Road with its traffic and people and streetlamps. Breathing slowly, I regain my sensible, logical self. I panicked, that was all, thrown by Liam’s faintly creepy remarks. No, I am not being followed; no, the Tube station is not surrounded by Romanian wolves.
Liam was just being … Liam? Probably he’s got a girl and wants me out of his life, out of his mind. So he frightens me away. Probably he was with her even as I messaged, and he panicked.
Yes.
I climb aboard a very empty carriage, and the train rattles me through Archway, Tufnell Park, Kentish Town. When I alight at Camden I walk out into relative busyness. The pub opposite the Tube, the Mother Damnable, now the World’s End, is pumping out rock music. Lads are smoking weed in the wicked cold, and laughing at lurid jokes, in this place where travellers once hid from outlaws.
The rest of my walk is short, up Parkway, past closed cafes, dirty drifts of snow, and upmarket pubs, the sense of wealth accumulating with each step. From the dry homeless hostels of Arlington Road, costing £2 a night, to the palatial sweep of the Nash Terraces – costing £20,000 a square yard – in a few minutes’ walk.
I am nearly home. At the top of Parkway, I turn – and stop. Standing on the pavement opposite my house – the house which contains Tabitha’s flat, is a knot of people. Drinkers from the local pub probably, the Edinboro Castle. They are all gazing in the direction of my flat but I can’t see why, can’t see what’s so absorbing about my flat, because the house itself is around the corner.
The nearer I get, the more confusion I read on their faces. What can they see in my home? What is happening?
As I reach the corner, I look up.
And, yes: I see. Yet I wish I didn’t.
Abruptly, all the lights in the flat flick on. They are blazing. Every single one. The blinds are up, and the windows are showing the red-painted walls, the expensive TV, Tabitha’s favourite steel sculptures. Then all the rooms go black, and the windows reflect the Delancey streetlights, the parked wet cars – and another gentle, silvery falling of snow. A moment later, it repeats. The lights go on, then off. Off, then on. Every single light and lamp.
It’s as if the flat is actually alive. Signalling to someone out there. Using Morse code. Signalling to whom? And who is in there, doing the signalling?
No one. Or no one human.
I hear a voice, my name: called out.
It’s my neighbour, from about three doors down. Deborah Welland. She’s in a dressing gown, shivering in the cold. The drinkers disperse, shaking their heads, as Deborah approaches. Debs is a nervous woman, mid-forties, divorced, dyed hair, the type of woman that complains to the council about everything: too many trees, a lack of trees, too many buses, the dearth of buses, but she also means well. Deborah would lend me the last cup of sugar in her flat, and she likes three spoonfuls in a mug.
‘Debs, what is it? What’s wrong?’
It’s