Peter Anghelides - Another Life

He struggled into his coat, determined not to get out of the car before putting it on because he knew he’d be drenched within seconds. The maisonette was thirty metres away. Owen popped the car door, levered himself out, double locked the Boxter with a flick of his wrist. The wind and rain formed an almost physical barrier as he ran for the cover of the tree. He huddled against the trunk, his feet straddling where the tree’s roots had cracked the pavement. Then he scurried over to the L-shaped steps.

The house end offered protection from the worst of the storm, and so despite the rain he took the steps slowly, one by one. At the top, he pressed the doorbell, a button indicated by a small backlit circle. There was a ‘ding’, and then a prolonged hum as the button refused to pop back out. Owen pressed it again, to no effect. He slapped at it with his palm. He was whacking it with the heel of his clenched fist when the door opened, light spilled out all around him, and Megan stood in the doorway studying him. Appraising him.

‘No dong,’ he said to her apologetically. He pointed to the doorbell, which was still buzzing furiously.

She broke into her familiar chuckle. ‘I hope you don’t say that to all the girls.’ She flicked at the doorbell with her fingernail, and the button popped back out again.

Owen looked at her for a few seconds that lasted forever. ‘Are you going to invite me in?’ he asked.

Megan stepped aside and held the door open. ‘What are you, some kind of vampire?’

‘Don’t even joke about it,’ said Owen as she beckoned him in. ‘I mean it.’

Megan told him to remove his wet shoes and, when she saw his socks, those too. She peeled off his sopping coat to drape on a wall-hanging peg, before making him stand barefoot on the cold linoleum while she went to fetch him something to dry his hair.

He watched her disappear through the nearest doorway, her thin cardigan flapping behind her. Megan was still as slim as he remembered, accentuated by her Wrangler jeans. He discovered the raspberry yoghurt in his jacket pocket, so he set it down beside a pile of junk mail on a small table by the door.

Megan’s voice echoed from the little bathroom, telling him how he would have to take her as he found her and that she’d barely had time to tidy up her paperwork, let alone run a Hoover around the place. Owen thought about how he’d been imagining her South Wales accent all the time they’d been talking in the Second Reality game, and now that he could hear it for real it was exactly as he remembered it. He closed his eyes, and imagined himself back in their Balham flat, calling from one side to the other as they caught up on the events of their day at the university.

When he opened them again, she was waggling a green crotchet-edged hand towel at him. ‘Cleanest one I’ve got, I’m afraid.’ She watched him towel his hair for a bit. ‘I’ll put the kettle on now you’re here. Go on through. Thank you for the yoghurt.’ She waved in the opposite direction as she disappeared into an unseen kitchen on the right.

Owen half-stepped into the bedroom. Big double bed with a pink paisley-patterned duvet, matching pillows. Picture of a piano in a sunlit room on the wall above. Piles of paperwork on one bedside table, just a simple lamp on another. A square wicker laundry basket stuffed so full that its hinged lid poked up.

He padded straight out again, barefoot, and into the room she’d meant. The lounge-diner was evidently the largest room in the maisonette, but felt cramped because of the amount of stuff crammed into it. He could smell the remains of a Chinese meal, not quite disguised by floral air freshener. A paper globe shade in the centre of the ceiling was unlit, but two art deco lamps on opposite walls cast a warm glow across the room

On the outer wall, pushed up near the window, a gate-leg dining table was unfolded and covered with a cream damask tablecloth. Four fabric-covered chairs, blue with no arms, were pressed up against three sides.

A small portable with a circular aerial sat in one corner. Owen noted that it made a little ‘crack’ noise that suggested the plastic case was cooling down because it had only just been switched off. The rest of the room was dominated by a battered leather sofa that dwarfed a tiny glass-topped wicker coffee table, and a crumpled green armchair so huge that he couldn’t work out how it could originally have been brought into the room. He saw his own reflection wrinkling its nose in an octagonal mirror above the sofa.

He dropped into the green armchair. It faced the TV, and he wondered if it was Megan’s regular seat. So he got up again and walked over to the dining table. In front of one of the blue chairs were perched a dusty flat-screen monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse. The computer itself was tucked under the table. ‘This where you connect to the game?’ Owen called over his shoulder into the room, in the expectation Megan would hear him in the kitchen. He couldn’t make out her shouted reply. He flicked through a nearby magazine rack — Radio Times, Guardian , pages torn from the BMJ . ‘Can’t tell if you live here on your own or not,’ he added in his normal voice.

‘Mind your own bloody business,’ Megan retorted mildly.

While he’d been looking at the magazines, she had walked into the room behind him. She carried a circular tray that held an opened bottle and two large wine glasses. She’d removed her thin cardigan, and the ribbed cream top she wore accentuated her slender arms and the roundness of her breasts. He pretended to look at her hair instead. ‘You’ve cut it a lot shorter. Than I remember, I mean.’

‘Easier for A amp;E.’

‘And I like your necklace.’

‘Do sit down, Owen, I don’t charge people to use the furniture.’

He perched on the sofa. The leather cushion creaked. Megan set the tray down on the glass-topped table. She handed him a little white and yellow item that was also on the tray. ‘Look what I have in my kitchen,’ she said.

He examined the object. It was a fridge magnet in the shape of a fried egg, sunny side up. ‘Egg magnet,’ he grinned.

‘I thought you’d come to talk about the online game,’ Megan said. ‘But all this interest in my living arrangements… I’m starting to think you’re just after a shag for old times’ sake. Don’t get your hopes up, I changed my mind. About the tea. Thought you’d like a glass of wine, especially if you’ve had a hard day at the office. Assuming you’re at an office. Are you at an office? Oh… but you’re driving… I suppose one would be all right. I could pour you half a glass.’ She was leaning over the table in front of him, watching him smile in recognition. ‘I’m rambling on, aren’t I? Sorry.’

Just as in the game earlier, he recognised her stream of consciousness explain-while-I’m-thinking-aloud manner. ‘I haven’t come for a sympathy shag, no. You and I were over a long time ago.’

‘You count the days, I imagine.’

‘Don’t you?’ he joked, and was a little surprised when her neck flushed. He recognised that reaction, too. ‘I’ve had a very shitty day,’ he continued quickly, ‘and I’d love a glass of… whatever that is.’

She glugged out half a glass for him, more. ‘Château La Fleur Chambeau 2004.’

‘French.’

‘Well done, Clouseau. It’s a wine from Lussac Saint-Émilion. It’s very similar to what you’d get from the more illustrious Saint-Emilion and Pomerol appellations. But it’s cheaper, of course. Have you educated your palate since we…’ She paused awkwardly. Poured herself a glass, and then breathed in the aroma. ‘Are you more discriminating, or am I wasting this very fine bottle on you?’

Owen smiled. ‘I remember how you tried to convince me to become an… oenophile? Was that the word?’