Liz Jensen - The Rapture

It makes sense, the kind of obvious sense a 3-D puzzle makes when you slot the last piece into the right configuration, having wrestled with it for hours.

I am not a real woman any more, and I was wrong to think I was. My mistake was to assume there were no other women in his life. Women with elegance and slim, fully functioning legs, Melina or someone else, someone who has every right to take a sexual interest, and is worth losing weight for. Women who can stand up, and turn on their heel, as she is now doing, and wander across the room to look at the books on the shelves, as though she is contemplating moving in, and wondering where hers will fit. Can you die from jealousy? It feels like you can, and that I will.

I am about to start the car and make my getaway. But suddenly, appallingly, I can’t — because the physicist has jumped to his feet and is heading directly for the window.

Terrified that he’ll spot me, I duck. Not easy. My heart’s thumping. Bent double like an ignoble paperclip, I’m having trouble breathing. I am absurd. I am raging. My chest is tight, my upper spine hurts, I am still shuddering. I force myself to stay with my head tucked down by the steering wheel, not daring to look up in case I reveal myself. The blood rushes to my head. My hands and my mouth and breasts are not enough for him, however alive they are, however greedy for his touch, however responsive. Because when the physicist and I make love, below the waist I am as lifeless as a blow-up doll. And nothing can change that. Ever.

When I finally dare to look up again, there’s an almost sick relief in seeing my worst fears confirmed.

I am free to drive home now, because the physicist has done what couples do when they require privacy.

He has closed the blinds and blocked out the world.

What I have learned about psychological survival is that the plan you have for yourself might not be shared by others. That your personal notion of justice is an artificial construct, a luxury and an irrelevance in a world built of cells, minerals, wind, sea, flame, synapses. That the size of a defeat is always in proportion to the size of the ego knocked down. And that all knowledge comes at a price.

Today I am paying it.

Hangovers are a vivid form of vengeance. Last night my apartment became the venue for a small, introverted chardonnay festival. A melancholy choir of Bulgarians provided the entertainment, via a set of headphones which ended up irredeemably tangled beneath the bed. Part of me just watched. The other part was in charge.

Today, pig-sick and fallen from life’s untrustworthy grace, I will be indulgent towards myself. I will arrange for a mushroom pizza with extra cheese to be delivered to my door by a wordless bike-helmeted Kosovan. I will watch home makeover pro-grammes on daytime television. I will drown in unabashed moi. I will be my own worst enemy pretending to be my own best friend, tending to my self-inflicted wounds with all the patience and compassion of a committed narcissist. I will recognise passion, sexual fulfilment and romantic love as mirages that may have fooled me once, but never will again. And I will forget that Bethany Krall is being transferred to a maximum security hospital which will feed her heavy doses of narcotics until the end of what will probably be a short life.

Tomorrow, another story: the sequel. In which I hand in my notice at work, inform my landlady, Mrs Zarnac, that I’m moving out of her vinegary domain, ask Lily if I can stay with her in London despite the tricky logistics of a second-floor apartment with no lift, stop caring about the fate of Child By banish Armageddon, and brainwash myself into erasing the fickle, freckled physicist from my psyche. That, at least, is the agenda I have mapped out for myself before I settle down with a towel to dry my hair and check my phone messages.

Upon which the plan changes.

Not as a result of the first message, an emotional outpouring from Lily — whose predicament bears uncanny parallels to my own. She and Joshua have officially split up, and she’s moved out. She thinks she’s glad about it. Probably. Lily’s a vodka aficionado, and the slurring tells me she’s had a festival of her own. She sounds seven shots gone. I feel a wave of affection for her as she apologises and self-deprecates, but it’s followed swiftly by a selfish honk of alarm: does this mean I can’t sleep on her red velvet sofa? My head aches sullenly. More paracetamol, it urges, as though it’s someone else’s head, and I’m its slave. Swallow some. You know you want to.

‘Wheels. Wheels. Pick up the fucking phone! ’ As soon as I hear the hoarse baby-croak, I stop towelling my hair to concentrate. She is calling from an anonymous number which I assume to be St Swithin’s hospital. ‘I need you here. You’ve got to come and get me out. It’s happening. It stinks of rotten eggs. We’re all going to drown. You, me, everyone!’ How did she get my number? There is a noise in the background. Bethany says ‘oh Jesus’ and hangs up abruptly. Two psychiatric nurses will be supervising her round the clock. The rules allow her one phone call. I suppose I should feel flattered she has designated me her buddy.

The next message kicks in before I have time to absorb Bethany’s call. But in the split second before the physicist speaks, I know it’s him. I flinch. Then flare. Flight-fight. I’ll opt for fight, every time — but only after a lurch.

‘We have to talk. Something’s come up. We’ll need to rethink things. Just call me right away, can you.’

His voice is low, apologetic, but with a delicate catch, an undercurrent of excitement. So the physicist has had some proper sex, with a woman who can wrap her legs round his back. Whose sudden presence in his life has led to a need to ‘rethink’ things. Good for him. Water deltas down my neck and pools in the hollows of my collarbones. For a moment I am convinced I can’t move, that the paraplegia has spread, that my body has calcified, that I am now a tetraplegic, a floating brain and no more. In the silence that follows his voice, the physicist’s absence throbs in the air, as florid as pain. I press delete.

There’s another message, but I can’t cope with the possibility of further torture just now, so I call the hospital. The process of getting through to the right department is labyrinthine. When I finally speak to the nurse on duty, she tells me Bethany’s condition is stable. She will be kept in for a few more days and then transferred to Kiddup Manor. The paperwork is underway. No, they have no knowledge of her having made any phone calls last night. Yes, she has two Oxsmith nurses with her. She’s heavily sedated and on painkillers. She has second-degree burns on her hands and arms from the electrocution. She has got hold of my phone number, and tried to electrocute herself — but the situation is at least stable, I decide. And she isn’t going anywhere for now. I finish drying my hair and laboriously dress. Twice I speed-dial the physicist’s number, but flip my mobile shut before it starts to ring.

‘Wake up and smell the coffee, Gabrielle Fox,’ I tell the mirror. I’m applying waterproof mascara and a 24-hour lipstick called Cinnamon Kiss, which like a ship’s hull requires a phased application of paint and varnish. ‘Breathe in deep and inhale the bitter aroma of reality.’ I stop and consider my reflection, and the daily waste of time that is the application of cosmetics, especially those which demand a minute’s drying-time between layers, and Bethany’s astute comment when we first met: why bother with make-up when no one’s going to look at you, unless they’re some kind of perv? ‘Then go for a swim. And if you drown, don’t say Bethany didn’t warn you.’