Joss Stirling - The Silence

‘Ambulance – police – both.’ Her scream still drilled in his ear even though she was silent. He’d only thought to shut her up. ‘I think I’ve hurt someone.’

There was a microscopic pause before training kicked in. ‘Address, please?’

His mind went blank. Despite living here for two years, he couldn’t remember the postcode. ‘Gallant House. Blackheath. Off the Hare and Billet Road. Postcode? Can’t think …’ He scrabbled among the papers on the console table, shaking petals from the arrangement of lilacs, until he found a letter and was able to read it off.

‘And your name?’

He was in so much trouble. ‘Jonah Brigson. But don’t waste time! I need someone here right now!’

‘I’ve already dispatched an ambulance, Jonah. Please try to stay calm. I’m going to ask you about the casualty. Are they breathing?’

‘I don’t know – can’t see from here.’ She was lying on the cold tiles, a little on her side, one arm across her stomach, the other out as if reaching for something.

‘Can you keep on the line and check at the same time?’

‘Yes.’ The landlady’s reluctance to update anything in the house resulted in the phone base and vase of lilacs crashing to the floor as Jonah dragged the attached receiver with him. Water chased him over the tiles. He touched the slim throat his fingers had squeezed.

‘Are you still with me, Jonah?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are they breathing?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t know.’

‘Do you know CPR?’

‘Yes.’ Stupid, so stupid! He’d done this enough times. He should’ve realised what to do.

‘What’s the patient’s name?’

‘I’m putting the phone down on the ground.’ Jonah gently rearranged her on to her back so he could tip her chin slightly into the required position. This felt so wrong – he the one to have hurt her now the one who would try to save her.

The voice on the line babbled away but Jonah ignored it. He began to breathe for her.

She couldn’t stand it any longer. Jenny staggered back, hand over mouth as bile rose. Someone had thrown up in the bathroom and not cleaned after themselves. Not for the first time. But today some joker had dropped a rubber duck in the middle of it. Really, she shouldn’t have to face this; no one should.

Jenny slammed the door on the mess and ran down to the small toilet on the ground floor, which was fitted at an awkward angle under the stairs. Thankfully, it was vacant, as none of the house’s other inhabitants were up yet after last night’s party.

A party that had included all but her. That hurt. When had she become Jenny-No-Mates? Jenny rested her aching head in her hands. She’d let this happen, hadn’t she? When her last relationship broke down, she’d let her ex carry off their friends into his new Jenny-free circle. Shannon, Tilly, Gina – when had they last messaged her – or for that matter, she contacted them? Maybe their loyalty had always been to him? It was stating the obvious to say that he was much easier-going. Any communication with her was so bloody frustrating – she could hardly blame them. But she’d have to try harder, find people who would understand her need to withdraw into herself at times and not take it personally, but be there for her when she felt like mixing. Did people like that exist in London? And how did you find them?

Jenny flushed the loo and washed her hands in the tiny basin, splashing the floor as everyone did. She air-dried her fingers, having noticed that the towel was a scrunched-up biohazard. She’d been working last night but her housemates probably wouldn’t have invited her anyway. The party had still been going strong when she returned from her late shift. She’d been majorly pissed off to find people grazing on each other on the stairs, cans sprouting like cylindrical mushrooms on every ledge, raucous mating calls in the lounge – all signs of the weird party wildlife of the urban jungle. She had to chuck two rutting lovers off her futon and secure the sliding door with the flimsy lock. Then she had to rip the sheets off the bed, put on clean ones, and set the room to rights, frantic that her safe space had been violated. Only then had she been able to go to bed.

To sleep? That was a joke. With the noise she hadn’t managed that till three, barricaded inside her room.

She steeled herself to face the carnage that would be the kitchen. Some letting company was running a campaign on the Underground about the annoyance of passive-aggressive notes from aggrieved flatmates, suggesting all you need do was find a new place to stop the nagging. As if it were that easy to move. In her case, she didn’t know how far she’d have to go to get through to her flatmates. She’d need at least a passive-aggressive billboard to get the attention of the people that shared the same space with her. Three Billboards Outside Ebbisham Drive. She could see them clearly: black words on red on the approach from the Underground. Clean Up! Do Not Leave Your Sick For Others To Find! Put Out Your Rubbish! They probably wouldn’t notice. The place was beyond saving. The landlord kept packing in more tenants, subdividing rooms with flimsy partitions. Her garden view window now had a plasterboard wall down the middle, leaving her just half to look out on the wheelie bins and broken paving slabs. No one complained as it was that or have the rent increased. Yet the more people moved in, the greater the pressure on Jenny, like the person crushed at the front against a barrier as the crowd surged behind her. Hard now to remember that it had started out so well as a flat share – just three of them, Harry, Luke and Jenny, friends from the orchestra; but the centre of gravity had shifted as Harry and Luke brought in more people to satisfy the landlord’s rampant greed. Now there were six, five men and her, and personal responsibility for the house had become so diluted it no longer had any meaning.

Jenny would no longer count herself a friend of Harry, or Luke for that matter.

I’m going to find a new place today. It’s that or throw myself in the Thames. And that’s not a joke.

So what was the damage? She opened the kitchen door. It was worse than she feared. She couldn’t eat breakfast in there.

‘Morning, sunshine,’ said Harry, coming out of the front room, his good mood an insult. Adjusting waistband elastic, he shuffled past in the music notation boxers that she’d given him that first Christmas in a Secret Santa.

She gave him now a single finger. He was usually the one to invite the guests to his famous impromptu parties and there were probably several left with him on the couch in various states of undress. He was proud of being adventurous in his love-making. Horn players had to live up to the jokes, he claimed.

‘Now, now, Jenny. No need to be jealous.’ He folded his six-foot plus frame into the too-small toilet and locked the door. At least she’d got in there first before he stank the place out.

This is making me into a horrid person, thought Jenny, turning her back on the kitchen. She couldn’t cope with that. I used to be happy, fun-loving, now I’m cast as the household Grinch. She plodded upstairs.

Hearing more retching from the main bathroom, the urge to escape reached boiling point. She grabbed a set of clean clothes, toiletries and her violin from her room. Life in the flat had devolved to the stage where she didn’t dare leave her instrument, fearing someone would throw up on it or use it as a cricket bat in one of their ‘hilarious’ drunken games. It was worth more than a year’s rent in London. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, the instrument case over the other, she hurried out of the house, and headed by bus for the sanctuary of the Brixton Recreation Centre.