Eight. Simon is too nice to remind me that my MA committee has warned that if I don’t make any progress in my thesis, then I am out. Out, out, out. Forever. He is too nice, and also I haven’t told him about that yet. I would have gotten round to it, but I hadn’t yet. So he couldn’t have reminded me even if he had wanted to.
Nine. You’ve probably already noticed this one, it’s quite glaring. I’m sure you spotted it right away. I’m the small brown nut. My sister Rose is the princess, tall, beautiful, fair, her skin bathing in permanent blossoms. So, in that little sketch we re-enacted on the park bench, of course Rose is Princess Multan, who weighs as much as a flower, whose every word pours out of her like birdsong, whose beauty is shielded by groves so dense that no one but the most daring prince could get through. Beautiful and kind, soulful and lyrical, that’s my sister. I am Rup Singh, her suitor, a walnut, hoping that my skill in making garlands will help her overlook the fact that I am ugly and that I am a girl. In the play we enacted as children, Rose was the princess, I was the suitor. I changed this around in that scene on the park bench.
Ten. Rose of course wasn’t at the wedding at all or on the park bench. The last time I saw her was seventeen years ago. Still, that doesn’t mean that she isn’t the one person in the world who knows me best. And that she wouldn’t have said and done exactly those things if she had been there.
The next morning, I wake up from a dream that I can’t remember. I panic because I don’t know where I am. I stare all around me blindly, then things in my room slowly start to come into focus. The thick wooden beams that divide the attic room into bedroom and bathroom solidify, and the fairy lights, strung up on the wall above my bed, draw into focus. A blue Massive Attack poster that reads ‘Unfinished Symphony’ stares down at the bed, and next to it a dog finds a ladder to the moon in a Miro print. Through the large window on the opposite wall, I see the park lined with trees, two children playing hopscotch in the playground, a man blowing leaves around and a Joker sitting on a bench, beer bottle in hand, his exaggerated red lips smudged and his purple coat a little the worse for wear. He is leering into the distance, seemingly straight at me.
I spring out of bed and pull the blackout curtains shut, not letting a single file of light into the room. My head pressed hard on my fisted hands, I keep a firm hold on the curtains, just in case they spring open again. I turn around, keeping my eyes half closed.
What else is waiting to attack me? On the slouchy sofa-chair with red stripes that I dragged home from a car boot some weeks ago and that Simon and I pushed and pulled up three flights of stairs lies my discarded wedding dress. It looks like it’s never been worn, like it has quickly got rid of any memory of me. Not a billow or a crease, not a broken button to remind me of how it might have been if Simon had slipped it off me last night.
I shove it under the bed, but now the sofa-chair is staring at me accusingly. It seems to murmur, Why did you do it, Rilla, why did you do it? I run to my bed, drag my duvet off it and fling it on the sofa-chair, but I can still see its shape. I fling myself face down on the bed. I am safer now, now that I can’t see the things in my room, but the dream starts to come back in threads and there’s that choking feeling in my throat again. There is Simon in my dream wearing an orange t-shirt that says ‘Go Bahamas’. I’m wearing pretty much what I’m wearing now, a tank top and floral pyjama bottoms. I don’t know what I have said to the dream-Simon, or what I have done, but he looks stubborn. He has that look on his face that he gets when we argue, the jaw clenched, the ocean-blue eyes remote and unreachable. He will never forgive me. He should never forgive me. My mother is standing behind him, her arms crossed over her chest. You always do this, she says, you always push people away. I told you. I told you! And then it comes back to me. There had been someone else in my dream, standing behind my mother, looking at me with sad eyes. A dog. Mine and Rose’s dog, Gus-Gus. I gasp for breath as the memory of the dream hits me. Gus-Gus, when was the last time I dreamed of Gus-Gus?
The dream-memory threatens to choke me so I jump off the bed, push my hair to the top of my head, stick a hairclip into it and start cleaning. I have to clean. I have to do something with my hands or I’ll go mad. There is stuff everywhere. There should be boxes, ready to go to the flat Simon and I are – were – moving into, in Crystal Palace. But there aren’t because I hadn’t got that far yet. I had only got to the point of pulling things out of closets and drawers and staring at them. I start folding. Picking up, folding, placing in drawers. This is a good task to do, I can do it for hours. I can do it for the rest of my life.
I’m halfway through the first drawer when my phone rings. It is my mother. I close my eyes, willing her to go away. My parents are possibly the last people I want to talk to right now, but she keeps ringing. After the seventh missed call, I tap the green button.
‘Rilla,’ my mother says without so much as a hello, ‘what are you doing?’ She doesn’t mean right now, in my room at this particular moment, but generally, with my life. ‘Why do you have to ruin everything?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I mutter. I stab viciously at strands of my hair that are trying to escape the hairclip.
‘What are you trying to do, show Simon that you’re thoughtless, selfish? Rilla, he’ll find out what you’re really like, don’t you see, and then what will happen?’ Her voice has a panicky note in it, a twang of desperation. ‘You’re twenty-five. When are you going to grow up? Are you there? Are you listening? You can’t treat people like they’re nothing, you just can’t!’
‘Really?’ I grind my teeth. ‘You’ve always said I’m really good at it.’ I whack at a t-shirt to get it into shape and fling it into a drawer, holding the phone between my ear and shoulder.
‘Do you think Simon will take you back after what you did? How will we face him again?’
We?
‘Did I say I want him to take me back?’ I mime thwacking the phone on the floor a few times. ‘Did I say that?’
‘We just want you to be happy. What is wrong with that? Tell me, what is wrong with that?’
‘You want me to be happy?’ I say slowly. ‘Now that’s too much, Mum. I would have said that’s the one thing you’ve never wanted me to be.’
My mother is breathing hard now, I can hear her. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut but the familiar guilt is starting to creep up. My father takes the phone, and in the background I hear my mother say, ‘I don’t know what he sees in her, Manoj, I really don’t!’
‘Rilla, why have you upset your mother? Can you have one conversation that doesn’t end like that?’ Dad says. He doesn’t sound annoyed, he just sounds like my dad – tired and resigned. I picture him sticking a finger and thumb in his eyes and rubbing wearily.
‘Well, Dad, why don’t you tell me?’
‘Rilla, beta—’
‘Sorry,’ I mutter. ‘I’m going now. Sorry, okay? Just – don’t call