“You’re just scared of me meeting someone else.”
“You can’t do it without me,” he said. “You’ll revert.”
I knew this was true, but stubbornly I refused to accept it. Only after meeting Niall had I perfected the technique of forming or unforming the cloud, and it was only when he was present that I could do it effortlessly. When I was alone, visibility was a constant strain and it always exhausted me. I knew that this was because my cloud had become linked with his; we had become interdependent, each of us holding on to the other long after we should have parted.
“I’m going to try anyway,” I said. “If you don’t like it, you can leave.”
“Fuck you!”
Niall stood up suddenly, clouting the edge of the table and slopping the drinks that were standing on it. The two people opposite looked at me in surprise, thinking I had done it. I muttered an apology and slid one of the cardboard beer coasters across to soak up the splashes. Niall had gone, shoving through the crowd; the people made way for him, stepping back automatically as he elbowed past. None of them reacted, none of them really noticed him.
I stayed visible when he had left, proving to myself that I could do it. While the emotional charge was in me I found it fairly easy to sustain. I had never stood up to Niall like this before, and was amazed at my determination to do so. I knew there would be reprisals from him eventually, but at that moment I hardly gave them a thought. You were more important.
I considered carefully what to do, then got up from the table with my drink and moved to stand in the crowd around you. Now you had turned so your back was toward the rest of the people in the pub, and you were leaning with both elbows on the bar, turning your head to speak to your girlfriend. Hovering around, almost within touching distance of you, I felt predatory again, as if moving in on a victim. Because you were so unaware of me you seemed defenseless, and this gave me an extra edge of guilty excitement. I could sense your cloud, pale and incomplete, drifting around you without shape. Tendrils of it seemed to waver toward me.
I waited, and then one of the bartenders rang the bell for closing time. Several people moved toward the counter to buy their last drinks but you talked on to your friend, absorbed by her.
Then she said something to you, and you nodded and turned to your drink. She moved away from the bar, pushing past me and heading toward the Ladies’. I stepped forward and touched your arm.
I said, “I know you, don’t I?”
You looked at me in surprise, then smiled. “Are you still looking for change?”
“No. It’s all right. I just thought I knew you.”
You shook your head slowly, and I saw in your face an expression I had sometimes seen in men when they meet a woman for the first time. It was curiosity mixed with a wish to be found interesting. I guessed that you knew many women, were always meeting more, and you did not always stay with the same one. This simple male reaction, in which you treated me as one more chance encounter with a member of the opposite sex, gave me a thrill I had not known before: you saw me as noninvisible, a normal.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” you said.
“You’re here with someone, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever come here on your own?”
“I could do.”
“I’ll be here next week. On Wednesday evening.”
“All right,” you said, and smiled. I backed away from you, feeling embarrassed by my brazenness. I had hardly known what I said, motivated only by the urgency of getting to know you better. I couldn’t imagine what you were thinking, approached by a stranger in a pub, a straightforward pickup. I walked through the crowd to the door, still visible, wanting to run away from you because of what I had said, yet at the same time hoping fervently that enough had indeed been said, that you would want to see me, that you would, if only out of curiosity, come to the pub again next week.
I went outside and stood in the street. I expected to find Niall waiting for me, but there was no sign of him. I breathed deeply, making myself calm down, letting myself revert naturally to invisibility. I could hear the noises from the pub: conversation, music, and the clink of glasses being collected. It was warm in the open air, because it was summer, but also, because it was London, a light drizzle was falling. I was tormented by the discovery of you, thrilled that you had treated me as normal, elated and yet wincing inside at the directness of my approach to you. I wondered if this was what normal people went through when they tried to meet someone.
The pub customers were leaving, sometimes in groups, sometimes in couples. I watched carefully for you, hoping there was no back exit from the pub so that I would miss you. I wanted to see you once more before you went away, in case we never met again. At last you appeared, walking with your friend and holding her hand. I followed you closely, hoping I would hear her say your name or that I would pick up some other clue about you.
You walked to a side street, and I saw you go to your car. I noticed that you held the passenger door open for her, and closed it gently when she was seated. When you were inside you kissed her before starting the engine.
As you drove away I memorized the number on the license plate, thinking that if I lost you it might help me find you again later.
II
I was born in a suburb of Manchester in the south of the city, close to the countryside of Cheshire. My parents were Scots, originally from the west coast, but they had lived for some time in Glasgow before moving farther south to England. My father worked as a payroll clerk in a large office near our house, and my mother did part-time work as a waitress. When I and my sister Rosemary were very young, she stayed at home to bring us up.
As far as I know or can remember, my childhood was normal with no hint of what I was to become. I was always the healthy one of the two girls, but my sister, three years older, was often ill. One of my clearest memories is of being told to be quiet, to tiptoe around the house so as not to disturb my sister. Silence became a habit, because I was not a rebel. I always wanted to please, and was, or tried to be, a model daughter, every mother’s dream. My sister, between illnesses, was the opposite: she was a tomboy, a risk taker, a noisy nuisance about the house. I cringed and crept, wishing not to be noticed. With hindsight, it seems that it might be part of a pattern, but at the time it was only one aspect of my personality. I did the normal things of childhood: I went to school, I made friends, I had birthdays and parties, I fell down and grazed my legs and arms, I learned to ride a bicycle, I wanted to own a pony, I pasted up photographs of popstar idols.
The change in me came with puberty, and it developed gradually. I cannot remember exactly when I was aware I was different from the other girls at school, but by the time I was fifteen a distinct pattern had emerged. My family took no notice of what I was doing; teachers at school usually ignored any contributions I tried to make in class. They were all aware of me, but as I grew older it took increasing effort to impose myself on my surroundings. One by one, I drifted away from my earlier friendships. I always did well in class, and my marks were generally good, but the term-end reports talked of average ability, quiet working, steady progress. The only school subject in which I excelled was art, and this was partly from an innate ability, and partly because the art mistress made a special effort to encourage me out of school hours.
All this sounds as if my teenage years were quiet and meek, but the opposite was the case. I discovered I could get away with bad behavior. I became a talented troublemaker in class, emitting rude sounds at teachers or throwing things across the room or playing stupid pranks on the other kids. I was almost always undetected, and used to enjoy the reactions to my misbehavior. I started to steal at school, petty objects of no value, just for the sheer kick of getting away with it. And yet for all this I remained an averagely popular girl, never close to anyone but accepted by everyone.