Tonight, they had been talking about a friend with an online gambling problem so bad that there was talk of a plan to confront him for his own good. He’d just lost €2,000 in five seconds by betting online on a netball match which he wasn’t even watching. They’d also touched briefly on the Brexit debacle. Whether it would ever be sorted out or, as Phillip put it in his wiry voice, ‘the same people will be arguing the shit out of it until we all die from the temperature anyway’. In the last few minutes they’d been discussing a new exhibition at the gallery called ‘Denim World’, which featured nothing but a hundred pairs of jeans, worn by people in a hundred different countries. As with most work of this kind, Michaela wasn’t really sure whether it was interesting, or absolute horseshit, but as usual she’d written a press release which went big on the former.
It was twenty minutes after James sent the text that his former girlfriend glanced down to see the phone light up again in the bag, as it kept doing at intervals if you ignored a text – as if to say excuse me, I thought we were a team. She pulled the phone out, still only half-curious.
The sight of James’s number was a real surprise. Any interactions between them these days – minor queries about the upkeep of the flat – were conducted by email, and with no discussion of anything other than the matter in hand. She’d even officially deleted his number, because of a commitment to Phillip that this would be a fresh start for both of them. All the same, she naturally recognized those last three digits: 997. There was the satisfaction of having been thought of, and a little intrigue. Then she read the words and went cold.
‘I’ll just, I need to …’ she said, rising a little too quickly. Phillip nodded, taking a final contented sip of his beer. As she headed down the spiral staircase, he was inspecting the brickwork, etched here and there with the names of old lovers.
The toilet stalls were all taken and there was a queue, and a soundscape familiar to Michaela even though it wasn’t her language: high, urgent chatter, amped-up Friday-night emotion, over the shadow of the music from outside. She propped herself against a sink and read the message again.
I’ve decided to end my life. I’m fine. The understatement of it was so like him, in a way. But the actual sentiments couldn’t be right, couldn’t be real. He couldn’t have written this – she checked – almost half an hour ago, almost half a fucking hour. She pictured his round, earnest face, the curly fringe he was always toying with, to no real effect. She jabbed at the green icon to call his number.
The person she had called was not available. What did that mean? Where was ‘the person’, she asked herself, adrenalin hammering its way down her neural pathways. Was the phone at the bottom of a ravine with him? Was it wedged in his pocket in some hotel room as he hung from …?
No, this was stupid. Michaela was good in these situations; at least she thought she was. She might not be well organized, she might once have called the police to break her into her house when the keys were in her bra all along, but she believed in herself when real crises arrived. She was a go-to for panicky friends; she could do CPR and sometimes fantasized about becoming a hero by carrying it out, normally on the film star Tom Hanks. She’d even put ‘crisis management’ as a skill on her job application to the gallery. During the interview it had, sure enough, come up. They asked her what she’d do if fire damaged an exhibit the night before opening. ‘It’s a stupid question,’ Phillip had scoffed, ‘how often do they think that comes up? Why not ask what happens if a dinosaur gets in?’
Anyway, this was likely not a real crisis. He didn’t mean it. It was some sort of a stunt, or a drunken gesture.
Michaela’s stomach told her she didn’t believe herself. James never really got drunk, and it was hard to think of someone less likely to attempt a ‘stunt’. James was not a stuntman; he was a ponderer. He’d once caused a Monopoly game to be abandoned by deliberating so long over a hotel purchase that their guests went home.
‘Do you think we ruined Kath’s night?’ Michaela had asked as they washed up together afterwards.
‘She ruined her own night,’ said James, as they fought a tug-of-war over the tea towel. ‘How can she be married to someone who puts houses down without any sort of strategy?’
And two years later, when she marvelled over his shoulder at a spreadsheet showing that their new company had made a monthly profit for the first time, despite all her night terrors, he turned and grinned. ‘See? There’s no better way of choosing a partner than Monopoly skill. Never mind looks or being slim, or. You know. Having good one-liners at a party. No: Monopoly, clean driving licence. It’s all you need.’
It didn’t seem possible that the same person who’d spoken those words was the person making dire threats by text, threats to himself. She pressed green to call again. The recorded message repeated itself. She brought the phone down hard on the dirty-white edge of the sink. The petulance of it surprised her. It crossed Michaela’s mind that she was more pissed than she’d thought. She eyed herself uneasily in the mirror and moved aside to let a Goth girl wash her hands.
There was no point in panicking, she told herself again. Her legs felt leaden, as if the staircase was ten times as long as it had been on the way down. The reason it went to voicemail was that someone else was already talking him down. Yes. That was it; that made sense. Karl would be on it. Or Sally. Michaela gritted her teeth at the memory of the sister. Well. Someone. Someone would be dealing with this.
Phillip had ordered more beers and was already well into his. James would never have done that. He would have ordered the drinks, yes, but he would never start without someone else. He could be at a banquet in the last days of the Roman Empire and he still wouldn’t have touched so much as a dormouse until everyone was served. It was something she liked about him, one of the things she noticed first. An old-fashioned gentleman, her mum had said.
‘What’s up?’ asked Phillip.
‘Nothing.’
‘Clearly it’s not nothing.’
She hated it almost as much as she liked it, the ease with which Phillip could read her.
‘I just had … I had a weird message. From … James.’
Phillip raised his thick eyebrows. There was no reproach in the look – more a sort of quizzical amusement – and you would have to know Phillip as well as she did to realize that he was slightly hurt.
‘I thought that you didn’t …’
‘I don’t have his number. Any more. I can’t stop him having mine, can I? It wasn’t even to me. It was to … well, it looks like everyone.’
Her boyfriend’s eyes went rapidly over the text. It was easy to forget that English wasn’t his first language. She’d worked hard even to get to her passable level of German, and almost everyone at the gallery spoke English with a proficiency which made that effort seem pointless. They sprinkled English phrases into their conversation: online. Hanging out. Sometimes when Michaela was around, they spoke in English to each other, as if it was such a minor adjustment it wasn’t even worth mentioning. Last week her boss Anneka had used the English phrase cognitive dissonance in a meeting, and nobody flinched; Michaela had had to google it in the toilet later.
Phillip looked up from the phone with an expression whose rancour was a nasty surprise to her. It was such a handsome face, though, that even scowling suited him. He looked like a king disappointed with his dinner.
‘That