“I know,” said Matt. “I think you need a rest.”
I fumbled with the cap of the bottle. My hands felt weak as water. Eventually I managed to open it and took out one of the little white capsules.
“You’ll need more than that,” said Matt.
I stared at him. “What do you mean?”
He smiled, a gentle, sorrowing smile. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the opaque lenses of his glasses. I thought for a second of reaching out and removing them from his face. My hand reached out to do so, but I stopped it. “I’m sorry, Matt,” I said.
He shook his head, still with the same smile on his face. “Don’t you think this has gone on long enough, Maudie?”
“What do you mean? I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before–”
He shook his head. Then he must have read my mind. He reached up and took off his glasses, folding them and putting them down on the side table. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I whispered. I felt a coldness creeping through me. “What do you mean you can’t do this anymore?”
He looked away from me. He had his hands folded on his lap, as if he were in church, his head tilted to one side, as if listening to a far-off sermon.
“It’s the end of the road, Maudie,” he said. “I’ve had enough.”
“Oh–” I said, but that was all I could say without my voice breaking.
He looked back at me then. “I can’t take it any longer.” Unmasked by glass, his eyes were beautiful. I couldn’t look away from them.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
He leant forward and put a gloved finger to my cheek. I felt the cold leather pass over my lips and move up to my hairline, tracing the ridge of my scar.
“Take them all,” said Matt, very softly.
I stared at him. I put my hand up to touch my mouth, to touch the place his finger had traced.
“What?”
He smiled at me. “Take them all, Maudie. Stop fighting it. Can’t you see this is a sign?”
I drew back. Again, I had the weird feeling, as if I were dreaming awake. I put a hand out to touch him but he drew back.
“What?” I said, again.
There was a creak of floorboards that made me look over at the door. There was no light in the hallway. From the darkness, into the dim light of the living room, came a tall, thin figure. She coalesced out of the inky air, as if her components parts were drawing themselves together. Her black coat moved around her like mist. I shrank back in my seat with a terrified moan. Not here, not in my house, my one refuge... I could feel myself gasping in air, anything to get my frozen body to start working again.
“No,” I said. “You don’t exist. You’re not really here.”
Jessica moved forward slowly, one step into the room, another step. Her face was pale. I could hear my high, terrified breathing. It was the only sound in the room. “I don’t believe in you,” I said. “You don’t exist.”
Matt looked at me. Then he turned his head to look in the direction I was staring.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
There was a moment’s silence. I turned my head towards him, creakily, moving like an old woman. I couldn’t think of how to answer him.
He said it again. “What are you doing here? I told you never to come here.”
“I–” I said, with no knowledge of what I was going to say. Then I realised he wasn’t talking to me.
Jessica moved another step forward. Her face was chalky-pale, her eyes black-shadowed. She wasn’t looking at me either. She was looking at Matt.
“I know,” she said.
It was like watching a play in a foreign language. Like listening to music underwater. I could feel myself screwing up my face and shaking my head, as if to clear my ears.
“I told you never to come here,” Matt said, again. Jessica stopped moving towards him. She hadn’t looked at me once.
I took in a gasp of air. “What’s going on? Matt – Matt – can you see her?”
He ignored me. He wasn’t looking at me either. I had a sudden, terrifying thought; Jessica and I had swapped places, perhaps even bodies – she was the one everyone could see and hear and speak to, while I had become the ghost. I grabbed at my own arms, pinching the gooseflesh.
“Matt, Matt, can you see me? Can you hear me? Tell me I’m the one you see, I am, I’m the one you see – don’t tell me it’s her, tell me you can’t see her–”
He got up from the sofa and looked at me. At last he looked at me. Something strange was happening to his face. It was lightening, gradually, undergoing a subtle transformation. He looked like himself, but different, somehow; as if he were gradually shedding a mask, or gaining one, revealing a face that looked almost the same.
“Would you, for once, just shut up?” he said. “Every time I think you can’t say something stupider than before, you continue to surprise me.”
The shock was beginning to hit me now. I didn’t understand, not everything, but my body knew. I could feel prickles of sweat breaking out all over my face, as if I was about to be sick.
Matt turned to face Jessica, the woman who said she was Jessica. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? I told you never to come here.”
“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” said Jessica. She walked a little further into the room. She pulled off her gloves as she did so. Finally, she swung her gaze towards my face, looking at me with a frown.
“Put those back on for a start,” said Matt. “You had no right to come here. I told you I’d handle it.”
Jessica – I had to call her that, what else could I call her? – stood in the middle of the room. She hadn’t taken her eyes from my face; she hadn’t looked at Matt once since he spoke. She kept frowning.
“I was worried,” she said.
“Worried?” said Matt. “I told you I’d contact you afterwards. Get out of here, you’ll fuck the whole thing up.”
Jessica didn’t reply. She brought her arms up across her body, as if she were cold. I felt the same. I was shivering so hard my body was making the sofa vibrate.
She looked at me, properly at me. Our eyes met. Her hand went up to her throat and I saw she was wearing the necklace I’d bought her.
I tried to speak but nothing came out. I cleared my throat and started again. “What thing?” I said in a thin voice.
Matt sighed sharply through his nose, his characteristic expression of annoyance. He was looking at me with such contempt that I flinched every time I met his eyes. The face belonged to a person I didn’t recognise at all.
“What – what’s going on?” I could feel my voice wobbling, as if someone had me by the shoulders and was shaking hard. Jessica took a step to the side, moving out of Matt’s shadow which fell across her like a black cloak. I could see her more clearly now. She was still holding onto the necklace.
“Stop trying to work it out, Maudie,” said Matt. Every time he said my name, his face contracted as if he were tasting something bad. “Your mind’s so fucked you don’t know what’s real and what’s not, you never have. Stop trying to make sense of it because you’re incapable of making sense of anything.”
“What?” I said.
“What? What? Is that all you can say?” said Matt. His whole face was twisted. The light was behind him but I could see the hate beaming out of him despite the shadow. Momentarily I was reminded of something; the dark figures that had stalked me through the bad time; that was the last time I’d been the target of such concentrated malice.
“You are so pathetic,” he said. “Do you even realise how pathetic you are? You do nothing, you know nothing, you’re so vapid I’m surprised you don’t disappear altogether. And you know what? I think you know how useless you are. I think you realise what a shallow, self-obsessed, neurotic, whining parasite you actually are. Why else do you drink so much?”