Owen Sheers - I Saw a Man

“Seems we’re neighbours,” he said, raising his eyebrows. His accent was American, tempered by Europe.

Michael stood, hitching the boxes in his arms. “Almost,” he said.

Josh looked at him blankly, as if seeing him for the first time. He wasn’t as tall as Michael, but he was broader. His dark hair was stitched with grey, a fringe falling in a tight crest above a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

“Well,” Michael said. “Good night.”

He went to move towards the flat.

“Lemme give you a hand.” The thought seemed to come to Josh suddenly, stirring him with its arrival.

“No, really, it’s—”

But Josh had already pocketed his keys and was swinging Michael’s fencing bag over his shoulder. Hooking his briefcase over his wrist, he bent to the last box on the pavement.

“Guitar?” he asked, shifting the bag on his back as he stood.

“No,” Michael replied, leading the way into the flat. “Fencing kit.”

“Fencing?” Josh said from behind Michael as he pressed the timer switch for the hallway light with his elbow. “Never tried it myself.”

Something in Josh’s voice suggested he never wanted to, either.

“Gave mine away,” he continued, as they took the first flight of stairs. “Guitar. Gave it away. Can’t remember why now.”

As they climbed the stairs up to Peter’s flat Josh carried on talking, telling Michael how much he’d like the street, how the other neighbours were “okay, you know, no trouble,” and how much his two girls loved the Heath.

“Like having London’s biggest garden on your doorstep. I mean, the Queen, she’s got nothing on this, right?”

At the turn of the third floor Josh’s conversation gave way to a laboured breathing. Michael was grateful. As they’d ascended he’d felt himself growing tense in anticipation of the question he didn’t want to answer. But it never came, and Josh fell silent with the exertion instead.

Inside the flat, Michael added his boxes to the pile already in the living area. “Just here’s fine,” he said, as Josh entered behind him.

Josh lowered the box and swung the kitbag off his shoulder. As he straightened he kneaded at his lower back with his knuckles. He wore a wedding ring, a gold Rolex, silver cuff links. He was breathing heavily.

“I’d offer you a drink, but—” Michael gestured at the empty room by way of finishing his sentence; the ghosts of hung pictures faded the walls in a series of squares and rectangles. The shelves were empty, the kitchen bare. It smelt of packing tape and old tea.

Josh waved a hand, dismissing his aborted offer. Taking off his glasses, he cleaned them on his shirt as he walked over to the windows, the same ones Michael had seen in the first email Peter had sent him, two long frames taking up most of the wall looking over the Heath.

“You know,” Josh said, turning to Michael, “five years I’ve lived on this street, and this is the first time I’ve ever been in this building.”

He tapped the glass, as if trying to touch the night. “You see this view?”

“Not yet. I mean, not here.”

“Great view,” Josh said, ignoring Michael’s qualification. “Great view.”

He turned back to the window and looked into the darkness. A single lamp on the Heath burned orange through a gauze of mist, illuminating the edges of the turning trees. “Seven years and still not tired of it,” he said, speaking to the window.

But when he looked back at Michael he did look tired, as if the climb up the stairs had brought a painful memory to the surface of his skin. Josh nodded, as if in agreement with his own observation.

“Well, thanks again,” Michael said.

Josh looked up at him, as if trying to decipher who his new neighbour might be. For a moment Michael returned his gaze, unsure as to what to do.

“Don’t mention it,” Josh said eventually, crossing the room and picking up his coat and briefcase. “Josh,” he said, holding out his hand. “Joshua Nelson.”

“Michael,” Michael answered. They shook, a short, businesslike chop. Josh, Michael felt, shook hands a great deal. Now that he was closer to him he could smell the drink and smoke on him, lacing his breath. “Good to meet you,” he said. “And really, thanks for the help.”

“You should come round,” Josh said, as he went into the hallway, putting on his coat. “My wife, she’s always having drinks, parties, you know. She likes meeting people. New people. You should come.”

“Thanks, I will.”

Raising a hand in farewell, Josh walked out the door.

“See you around, Mike,” he called from the stairwell. “Happy home.”

―

Michael closed the door and went back into the living room, its drift of boxes and bags abandoned on the carpet. He turned towards the windows and saw himself, the lamp on the Heath burning in his chest. Slowly, he approached his reflection. As he did, the lamp’s sodium glow slipped into his stomach, and then his groin. He stopped short of the window, as if facing down the man staring back at him. A tall man in a blue sweater and jeans, his long arms hanging at his sides, his blond hair receding.

This is where they would start again, he and this man in the window. In this flat with its view of the Heath, its stained carpet and its forgotten yet remembered pictures on the walls. This is where he would have to make peace with his past, and with the man in the window who’d let it happen.

His phone began ringing and both men reached into their pockets to check the screen. It was Peter. He’d already called Michael twice that day. Both times Michael had let the phone ring out in his hand, as he did again now. He took another step towards the window and put the phone on the sill. A single print, from where Josh had poked the glass, was smudged over the dark pond below. Michael rested his head against the pane and allowed the night to cool his brow.

Below him his phone vibrated with a message, lighting up and turning on the sill like a dying fly. Michael glanced at it but left it alone. There was nothing else to say. Caroline was dead and he’d been left holding the shell of that truth, bereft not only of her, but also of the man she’d been making him.

―

Caroline never told Michael she’d chosen Peter. A week before she’d left they’d picked her “proof of life” questions together, but that was all.

What was the name of her cat in Adelaide Road?

What was the colour of her neighbour’s truck in Melbourne?

What gift did she take her host when she last visited Cape Town?

These were the questions someone from Sightline, probably Peter, would have asked her captors down the line. Their answers, should she have been kidnapped, would have proved she was still alive.

MISTY

ORANGE

MARMITE

They’d made a game of choosing the questions, sitting outside the French windows at Coed y Bryn in front of the opened C of daffodils, a bottle of a wine and an Indian takeaway at their feet. Together, they’d gone hunting for stories she still hadn’t told him from her life. Anecdotes from her childhood or student days in Boston. Family fables that still left her creased with laughter from across the years.

It was standard procedure, that’s what she’d told him. Nothing to worry about. Which was when Michael had wanted to ask her. Because he knew what else would be standard procedure. He’d had friends in New York who did jobs like hers. So which colleague or friend had she chosen? Who had she decided should be the person to come and tell him? But he hadn’t asked her and she hadn’t offered. As if in superstition of some jealous god, they’d left it unspoken as they’d picked up the glasses and cartons and, with a chill edging the evening air, headed inside to bed.