Amy Bird - Yours Is Mine

Finished, flushing the chain and washing her hands with the twee hand soap that Kate had clearly put out for having a guest, she made her way back into the living room. She continued her exploration. There was a further double room. Rather drab. A couple of foam armchairs with flannel covers, an old divan covered with a brown bedspread and a brown blanket. Must be the dead man’s room. Dull. Anna tried to open the wardrobes. Locked. She pursed her lips – that was hardly the ‘access all areas’ they had agreed. She would have to jimmy them open later. Anna went back to the living room to explore it more thoroughly. She had noticed a desk in the corner of the room. She advanced towards it and tried the drawers. Again, locked. She tutted. Clearly finding a crowbar or similar implement was going to have to be high up on her to-do list.

She stretched and yawned. It could wait though. She wanted to relax first in her new home. She unpacked her very favourite sweatshirt – that sweatshirt – and put it on. Then she retrieved Neil’s photo from the bedroom and reclined on the sofa, using the television remote control to select what seemed to be a film version of Jane Eyre . Not thrilling, but it would do until children’s TV came on later. Some of their dramas were quite good. She plumped up a cushion and placed Neil’s photo on it, so that they could all sit down and watch the film together. Anna provided a running commentary on the film. Photo Neil did not respond. Perhaps he liked to watch films in silence. She stopped talking and snuggled up closer to him. She didn’t want to annoy him. Companionable silence would do just as well. All Anna needed now was some popcorn – she had everything else she wanted. Or very soon would do.

- Kate-

Kate’s black cab pulled up outside the apartment block. She thanked the driver, let him keep the change (after they’d had such a nice chat it seemed a shame not to) and assembled all her luggage on the pavement. Once inside the building, she began the slow task of taking the bags upstairs in shifts, along with a big brown envelope addressed to Anna that was on the mat. She hoped it might be the first of the proofs that she would have to read, and by claiming the post she felt as though she was committing her first proper act as ‘Anna’. She wondered idly if the police would see it like that, or whether she would still technically have committed a crime by opening somebody else’s post. Deciding that you would substitute yourself for the addressee temporarily probably wasn’t enough to satisfy the law that you had the right to open their letters. But she had consent; they would accept that. She could open the mail without qualms or risk of being struck off the register of solicitors. Kate slid her finger under the lip of the envelope, neatly tore it open and took a peek inside. It did indeed look like proofs. Resisting the urge to sit down on the staircase and commence work at once, Kate put the package under her arm and continued with the luggage.

Finally having brought all of her baggage upstairs, a somewhat breathless Kate fumbled with the key and let herself into the flat and deposited the luggage with a sigh. Closing the door behind her, noticing that the intercom was still cloaked in bubble-wrap (and therefore presumably still channelling the outside world), she walked through the flat, sticking her head into each of the rooms as she did so. The bathroom was clean and tidy, as was the bedroom she had been shown on her visit. She walked with an ‘Aha!’ into the spare room that had previously been out of bounds.

Kate surveyed the room quickly. Not very exciting, she thought to herself, vaguely disappointed that it was not the sort of secret room that would be worthy of Captain Bluebeard but just an ordinary spare room. The walls were the same neutral colour as the others, but had flakes of paint missing, as if blue-tacked pictures had been taken down. There was a single divan pushed into the corner of the room, with drawers underneath it, and a plain white bedspread. A low bedside table stood next to the bed, and a pine writing desk on the adjacent wall. A blue roller-blind came halfway down the window. It was a fairly uninspiring, identikit spare room – clearly Anna had not put the design effort into this room that she had with the others.

Leaving the room, Kate walked through into the main living area, flicking on the light switch. It was as airy and bright as she had remembered, and she flopped down onto the sofa and kicked off her shoes. Tilting her head back and resting it on the back of the sofa, she blew her cheeks out and emitted in the air in a loud puff. Bringing her head back to its normal level, she laughed to herself.

“Well! Here I am!” she said aloud. She sat on the sofa for some time longer, partly recovering from her journey and partly thinking out how the next few days would go. She had the first drama class to go to in a couple of days’ time, and she wanted to go to the big university bookshop on Gower Street to get a couple of audition speeches. She had no idea what they would be doing in the first class and thought she should try to find a couple of soliloquies that she could present if necessary. More immediately, once she had done the modicum of unpacking and perhaps had a quick shower, she fancied a glass of wine and a nice meal in some candlelit bistro looking out onto the street. Perhaps Angel might have something to offer. She felt a slight pang as she thought how nice it would be for Neil to be there with her, then shook herself – these next few months were about her, not about her and Neil. There was a whole lifetime of dinners ahead of them. The whole point of this exercise was to get her back to her old happy self, to make her a more enjoyable dinner companion than the red-eyed wretch silently toying with a plate of microwaved baked beans on toast that had sat opposite Neil last time he was home. Grimacing at the thought of how she had felt so recently up in the isolated cottage, she pulled herself off the sofa and out of the negativity of her thoughts. An hour later, washed and made up and dressed in what she hoped was a sophisticated yet understated outfit of black trousers and aubergine silk halter-neck top, she stepped into the energy of the London evening, new bank card and Anna’s ID in her bag and a spring in her step.

Despite her years of practice of eating dinner in restaurants alone and her determination to regard it as a perfectly acceptable thing to do, Kate still hadn’t quite mastered it. She had developed a particular brand of steely glare reserved for waiters who dared to repeat the ‘Table for one’ back at her in a questioning, pitying tone. She had perfected the knack of eating with perfect insouciance, looking like she was concentrating on her food and enjoying it. She had even managed to get over the conviction that everyone was staring at her and wondering what had provoked her to eat by herself. What she had not quite yet managed to do, however, was maintain this poise in the gaps between eating if she did not have a prop. This may be an evening newspaper, a book or a mobile phone, but she liked to have something to keep her occupied in the time between the order being placed and the food arriving, and then disappearing again, that saved her from having just to think to herself, stare vaguely at the other diners or be plain bored. All the while she would be repeating in her head the mantra that she was a grown mature woman and that if she wanted to treat herself to a nice meal, whilst just so happening to be alone, that was totally acceptable and that in any event she didn’t care what they thought. Sadly the fact that she couldn’t get by without thinking this evidently meant that she did care. It was fine if there was someone else sitting alone – suddenly her unaccompanied eating became more socially acceptable. It didn’t do to stare at the other lone diner too much though, particularly if they were a man, in case they thought you were attempting to open a flirtation, in some fantasy world in which single diners in restaurants do actually saunter up to each other and ask if they can join the other for dessert.