By the time she opened her front door, it was ten o’clock. She walked in, and then stood still for a moment. Loud music thickened the air inside the flat; she felt she could hardly breathe. As she reached the top of the stairs she saw Sally walking down the corridor towards her, wearing a pair of high-heeled sandals and a new black-and-white bikini. A suitcase lay in Sally’s bedroom doorway, its lid gaping.
‘What’s happening?’ Glade said.
‘I’m going on holiday,’ Sally said, ‘to Greece. I thought I told you.’
Glade shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Two weeks!’ Sally clutched her ribs. ‘I just can’t wait.’
Glade put her backpack down and stood against the wall, one hand touching her bottom lip. ‘I’ll miss you,’ she murmured.
If she had said this a week ago, she realised, it wouldn’t have been true. But suddenly it seemed as if nothing could withstand her presence. She only had to think of something and it disappeared. She felt like dynamite, but not powerful.
‘I’ll miss you,’ she said again.
But Sally wasn’t listening. Instead, she lifted her arms away from her sides and, smiling down at her bikini, placed her right leg in front of her left one, the way a model might.
‘So what do you think?’ she said.
Glade walked into her room and shut the door behind her, turning the key in the lock. There was a silence, then she heard Sally try the handle.
‘Glade?’
Glade stood halfway between the door and the window. Her hands had knotted into fists, and they were pressed against her thighs. She hadn’t switched any of the lights on yet; it just did not occur to her. The streetlamp outside the window flooded the room with a bright-orange glow.
‘No artificial additives,’ she said.
She stood in the darkness, listening. The voice was hers, and yet it seemed to come from outside her.
‘Just natural,’ she said. ‘All natural.’
That voice again. Hers.
‘What are you doing, Glade?’ Sally tried the door-handle again. ‘Is something wrong?’
Glade was still facing the window.
‘Kwench it!’ she said in a loud voice.
And then she smiled.
Perfect
On Tuesday morning she was woken by the shrill sound of the phone ringing. She waited to see if Sally answered it, but then remembered that Sally had left for Greece the day before. She stumbled out of bed on to the landing. Sitting on the floor beside the phone, she thought about the building with the corridors and the fluorescent lights. She saw a man in a brown suit hurrying towards her …
She lifted the receiver slowly towards her ear.
‘Glade? Is that you, darling?’
It was her mother, calling from Spain. Her eyes still half-closed, Glade could see her mother’s swimming-hat, white with blue-and-yellow flowers attached to it, and her mother’s toenails, their scarlet varnish slightly chipped. She supposed this must be a memory from years ago, when the family drove to Biarritz on holiday.
‘I’ve just heard about your father. Should I come over?’ Her mother’s voice was low and smoky, poised on the brink of melodrama.
‘There’s no need,’ Glade said.
‘Have you seen him? Is he all right?’
‘Yes, he’s all right. He’s comfortable.’
Her mother talked for a while about the stupidity of living in a caravan in the middle of nowhere, especially at his age. Then, abruptly, but seemingly without a join, she brought the conversation round to Gerry and the new apartment. She was beginning to wonder whether it would ever be finished. There was no end to the work that needed doing –
‘I saw him on Sunday,’ Glade said, interrupting. ‘In the hospital. He’s comfortable.’
On the other end of the phone, in Spain, there was a sudden silence, a kind of confusion, and Glade thought of the moment in cartoons when someone runs over the edge of a cliff and on into thin air.
‘Yes,’ her mother said, ‘you’ve already told me that.’
When the phone-call was over, Glade walked down the corridor and into the kitchen. The clock ticking, Sally’s dirty pans still stacked in the sink. A pale megaphone of sunlight on the floor. There was the emptiness, the astonished silence that recent frantic movement leaves behind it. Sally had slept through her wake-up call on Monday morning. She’d only just made it to the plane.
Sitting at the table, Glade pushed crumbs into a pile with her forefinger. She had dreamed about the house in Norfolk, the house where she had grown up. Her father was sitting in a downstairs room with rows of books behind him, the light tinted green by the ivy growing round the window. His clothes were drenched. She tried to persuade him to change into something dry, but he wouldn’t listen. He was too excited, he kept talking over her. His eyes shone in the gloom and, every time he gestured, drops of water flew from his hands like pieces of glass jewellery. In another dream she was buying Tom a drink in a hotel bar. She paid for the drink, which was pale-pink, a kind of fruit cup, but then she couldn’t seem to find her way back to where he was. She had so many things to do all of a sudden. Time passed, the location changed. She kept remembering that Tom was waiting for her in the bar. He would be wondering where she’d gone. She was still carrying his drink around with her, and she couldn’t help noticing that the ice was beginning to melt …
Turning in her chair, she opened the fridge and was confronted by twenty-four cans of Kwench! some stacked upright, others lying on their sides. On the inside of the door she found a half-empty tin of gourmet cat food, three squares of Galaxy milk chocolate wrapped in silver foil and a jar of gherkins. She picked up one of the cans and looked at it. They were holding a competition, closing date August 31st. You had to think of a slogan, no more than fifteen words. Then, in three sentences or less, you had to say why you liked Kwench! so much. If your entry won, you had a choice of prizes. Either you could fly first-class to Los Angeles and stay in a luxury beach house in Orange County for two weeks, with a free car and free passes to Disneyland. Or you could have a swimming-pool built in your own back garden. Based on the Kwench! exclamation mark, the pool divided into two sections: one would be long and deep, for adults; the other — the dot, as it were — would be shallow, ideal for children. The tiles would be orange, of course. Glade shook her head. She wasn’t the kind of person who could dream up slogans. She didn’t think she’d be winning any prizes, not even the Kwench! swimming costumes and beach-bags they were offering to runners-up.
She ate four gherkins and finished the chocolate, then she opened the can of Kwench!. It didn’t taste good to her. She swallowed two or three mouthfuls and poured the rest into the sink. It hissed as it went down, as though it was angry. She dropped the empty can on the floor, where it lay with several others. Her skin began to prickle, her vision seemed to melt. For a moment she thought she might be sick. She had to stand with her head lowered and her hands flat on the stainless-steel draining-board. She could feel the cool ridges against her palms.
Later when she felt better, she put the kettle on. Crossing the kitchen to the window, she caught a glimpse of herself in the small mirror above the sink, a blur of colour that was both familiar and strange. She turned back, approached the mirror cautiously, as if it were a person sleeping. The previous evening she had come home after work and dyed her hair. The directions on the packet she had bought said Leave for twenty minutes and then rinse thoroughly, but she hadn’t understood how twenty minutes could possibly be enough, so she had left it on for three and a half hours. There was some staining on her forehead, beside her left ear too, but otherwise she had done a pretty good job.