Polly Courtney - The Day I Died

It occurred to Jo as she fell off the bus and tottered onto Radley Road that Jo Simmons was no longer just a temporary alias. It wasn’t just something she used in order to fit in. It was her name. Her new identity. So as long as she didn’t draw attention to herself in Radley, she could survive as Ms Simmons for…well, for ever if necessary. Jo shuddered. That was a horrible idea. She couldn’t just draw a line under the last twenty-odd years of her life. But at the same time, in a way, it appealed. There was something comforting and neat about the idea. Like wiping a virus-ridden computer: it was a drastic step, but it worked. And everything ran more smoothly afterwards.

Of course, there were benefits to starting again, cleaning the slate of her life and all that. But what about Rebecca? Effectively, Jo had killed her off. She hadn’t done so intentionally; it had just been a consequence of events. And now she had to decide whether to resurrect her old self or leave her behind and move on. She opened her second beer, her mind in a state of flux.

It was early evening when she stumbled into the shop. Mrs Phillips was on a stepladder with her back to the door, sliding packs of toilet roll onto the top shelf. Jo slipped past quietly. She didn’t have the energy for a conversation this evening–let alone one of the landlady’s interrogations.

‘Nice day?’ sang the woman without turning round.

Jo stopped in her tracks.

‘You knocked the doorstop,’ she explained.

‘Oh, right. Yeah, good.’ The words tumbled out like porridge: lumpy and stuck together.

Mrs Phillips got down from her stepladder and started packing it away. Jo took the opportunity to sneak out unnoticed. Unfortunately, she misjudged the angle at which she was standing and found herself walking into the dried foods aisle. The shelf wobbled a bit and a number of packets jumped onto the floor.

‘Shit.’ She squinted to assess the damage, hoping Mrs P hadn’t seen.

‘Drinking, were you?’

Jo turned to find the old woman standing right beside her. How she got there so fast was a complete mystery. ‘Er, yeah. A bit. Sorry–I’ll clear this up.’

‘Are you all right, Jo?’

‘Yeah, fine! Why?’

Mrs Phillips didn’t answer, exactly. She just leaned forward and extracted some crisp crumbs from Jo’s hair.

‘Oh, must’ve…fallen…’ Jo was quite surprised by the size of some of the flakes. A couple of them were whole crisps.

‘Have you eaten anything today?’ Mrs Phillips asked. ‘Apart from these?’

Jo thought for a moment. Actually, she hadn’t. No wonder the beer had gone to her head. ‘A bit, not much.’ She started to pick up the fallen packets of lentils.

Mrs Phillips looked down at her. ‘Look, Jo. I don’t want to interfere…I know it’s none of my business, but…You must look after yourself. Alcohol isn’t the answer.’

Jo shoved the packets back onto the shelf and scowled. It was true. This was none of her business. ‘The answer to what?’

Suddenly, she felt angry. This woman was her landlady, not her counsellor. She had no right to preach about ‘answers’.

‘Well, to your problems,’ said Mrs Phillips. ‘Whatever they are.’

‘I haven’t got problems!’ Jo replied, louder than she’d intended.

‘No, I didn’t mean that. Of course you haven’t.’

Jo shook her head. Now the woman was patronising her. Of course you haven’t . That was another way of saying, I know you’ve got problems . Well, that was uncalled for. This woman was stepping out of line. She had no idea what Jo was going through.

‘Don’t take the piss.’

‘No, no, I wasn’t.’ Mrs Phillips held her hands up defensively. ‘I just don’t like to see people upset.’

‘Upset?’ Jo stared at the woman, unable to stop the words pouring out. ‘I’m not fucking upset! I’m fine! Or at least, I was until you started telling me I wasn’t!’

The landlady nodded.

That did it. She didn’t have to stand here being nodded at like that by a woman who barely knew her.

Jo stormed through the back door and up the stairs. She stuffed her possessions–the few she had–into a plastic bag and marched out the way she had come.

‘Here,’ she said, stuffing some twenty-pound notes into the woman’s hand. She was quite proud to have mastered the maths. ‘That’s eight nights at fifteen quid a night. Take it. Take it’

Mrs Phillips looked shocked. Initially her fingers resisted curling round the notes, but eventually they did. Jo pushed the wallet back into her pocket and left the shop. She didn’t need this. Her life was messed up enough without some meddling old cow trying to offer advice.

She strode down the path, forming a plan as she went. At six o’clock the teashop would be shut, and she reckoned there was just enough space behind the counter for her to lie flat without being seen from the road. She was resourceful. She could look after herself–which was just as well, because yet again, she was on her own.

Jo rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. Something hard dug into her forehead. She wriggled onto her back again but the light burned through her eyelids. Her feet were cold.

Gradually, consciousness took hold. She realised why her hip was jutting into something cold, why her mouth tasted stale and why her head felt as though it had been placed in a pressure cooker. She was fully clothed, surrounded by moulding, hairy blankets and coats. The teashop blinds were set at exactly the right angle to allow the sunlight to stream into her eyes.

Jo hauled herself into a sitting position and craned her neck to look up at the clock. Strange. There appeared to be only one hand. She squinted up at it for a couple of seconds, then worked it out. The hands were diametrically opposite. It was six o’clock, she deduced.

Suddenly, a long, protracted whining noise made her jump. Jo looked up at the clock again. A wave of panic rose up inside her. It wasn’t six o’clock, it was five past seven. The noise was Trevor’s singing .

She leaped up and kicked the makeshift bed to one side. She would have to somehow get everything back into the store cupboard without him noticing. Her head was pounding so hard it felt as though the capillaries were about to burst. She couldn’t think. Her throat was crying out for water but she knew there were things that needed to be done before sorting herself out. She just couldn’t work out what.

‘Morning!’ Trevor emerged from the back of the teashop with his customary swagger.

‘Hi!’ Jo managed with more than the usual level of cheer. Oof . Her head was about to explode.

‘Late again?’ he said, approaching to embark on his opening-up ritual. Thankfully he wasn’t the type to notice details like crusty eyes or scarecrow hair.

‘No, I was…wiping the tables.’ Jo stepped backwards as he rifled through the drawer, looking for the awning key. Her foot landed on the pile of blankets.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, following Jo’s anxious downward glance.

‘What?’

Trevor bent down, brow furrowed. ‘It looks like a sock.’

Incredibly, he hadn’t actually noticed the giant mound of linen next to the bin; he was more interested in the sock that must have worked its way off her foot during the night.

‘Oh, that .’ Her brain wasn’t working quickly enough. ‘Yes, it does look like a sock.’

She swooped down to pick it up whilst yanking her trouser leg down to conceal her bare foot, thankful that she’d had the drunken foresight to sleep in her uniform.

‘What on earth…?’

‘Oh, I remember,’ she said, finally thinking of something. ‘It belongs to a customer. He took it off the other day.’