Nicola Barker - Reversed Forecast

‘So?’

‘I was just saying. Why did you ring?’

Sylvia felt silly. She hated taking the initiative.

‘I want you to come and pick me up.’

‘What?’

She repeated what she had said, shaping the consonants and vowels slowly and carefully as though speaking to a child: ‘I said, I want you to come around here and pick me up.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to visit your flat. Sam told me all about it. She told me how nice it was.’

‘She did?’ Connor was incredulous.

Sylvia grimaced to herself. She thought men must be very stupid.

‘Will you come?’

He hesitated and then acquiesced: ‘Maybe I could just visit you. How would that be?’

She scowled. ‘Come now,’ and cut him off.

She stood up. Her head felt too light. The walls slipped slightly and the carpet wavered. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to focus herself.

Forty minutes later Sylvia stood damp and naked in Brera’s room, staring into the dressing-table mirror. She’d had a bath and had washed her hair, which was wrapped up in a towelling turban.

Her naked body looked awful. Her hip and rib bones jutted out under her yellowy skin, the bones far too clear, too evident. Her breasts were small but droopy, like tiny bread rolls in two translucent plastic bags.

She inspected the stretch marks on her breasts, belly and buttocks, the small clusters of eczema on her arms and chest, on her hands and neck and on the arches of her feet. She wasn’t particularly self-conscious, didn’t care what people thought. She rarely tried to see herself as others saw her. She continued to stare at herself, her expression blank and uncritical. The air was warm.

She left the room for a while, then reappeared, minutes later, fully dressed. She wore one of Sam’s dresses: a slightly old-fashioned, loose-fitting brown pinafore dress, which reached to well below her calves. Underneath it she wore a pea-green T-shirt. Her legs were bare, and on her feet were her old brown sandals.

She threw her head forward — an action which occasioned a wave of dizzy nausea — pulled off the towel, using it to rub dry the ends of her hair, then opened the top drawer of Brera’s dressing-table. The sweet aroma of perfume and make-up which rose from the drawer forced her to step back for a moment. These smells shot straight up her nose and made it run. She sniffed and stepped determinedly closer again, holding her nose between finger and thumb this time and breathing through her mouth. She looked for make-up and creams which were unperfumed, and applied these products to her face with caution.

When she’d finished, she stepped back, pushed her hands through her hair, pulling down her wiry curls into some semblance of order, and inspected herself in the mirror. Her face still looked gaunt, thin, strangely moonish. She smiled. Her teeth were yellow. Over the past few days she’d been unable to put toothpaste — that sweet, awful, pungent stuff — into her mouth.

She closed the drawer, dusted down her pinafore and then walked into the hallway, pausing for a moment to listen to the scuffling, snorting sounds that the dog was making in the kitchen. She walked to her bedroom door, waited, held her breath, but could hear nothing. No sounds at all.

‘I bet that bitch closed my window.’

The smell , though! It was still there. It made her head feel like her brain was stewing in vinegar. Of course she was able to smell it everywhere in the house, but here it was concentrated, heady and undiluted.

She returned to the living-room. She was nervous. She walked over to the television, switched it on and turned the volume down. Instead of sitting on the sofa, she primly tucked in her dress and sat down in a small armchair.

As she watched the screen she hummed to herself: snatches of a tune she’d been composing over the past few days. She listened to her own voice, pushed it out and pulled it in. She listened in amazement as the cords in her throat held a note, didn’t waver, simply held on to it and expelled it with an alarming purity.

What did this mean? What had changed? She curtailed her thoughts, refusing to contemplate options, choices, possibilities. She didn’t need choice. She stopped humming. She listened.

Someone was climbing the stairs outside. Connor. She recognized the sounds he made. He knocked at the door. She stood up and steadied herself by holding on to the arm of the chair.

How many days now since I ate? she wondered, and then, Will I answer or will I just let him knock and knock?

When she felt steady enough, she walked to the door and opened it.

An ambulance was parked on Wardour Street, blocking the one-way system. Its two attendants were uptight. They had struggled along the market with a stretcher, negotiating the stalls, the fruit, the rubbish. Ruby followed them into the shop.

Jason was pointing towards the men’s toilets: ‘There’s a needle about a foot long blocking the cistern in there and blood sprayed all over the wall.’

To Ruby he said, ‘Toro found him.’

‘Who? Is he dead?’

‘Looks like he swallowed his tongue. Toro’s in the staff kitchen out back. I said he could make himself some coffee.’

Dawn was holding the toilet door open. Ruby walked over. She had to look. She glanced in. The white urinals. The blue tiles. Her gut turned. He was right. Blood. A bad smell. They were lifting the body. It wasn’t even stiff yet. His head rolled back, his face, set, grey, his neck like a slack rope.

‘Christ!’

She was sick on to her hand. Out it came, swish , on to her hand. Nothing substantial. Only water, saliva.

What had she done? And Vincent. What had he done? She was sick again. Bile and water. Someone would be punished. But who would it be? And how?

When the police came, later on, Dawn spoke to them. She said, ‘Yeah, I’d seen him before. Last Saturday, a week ago, I chucked him out of here. He always had a bad habit.’

Connor was dumbfounded when Sylvia opened the door and he saw her for the first time. Like Sam, she was tiny. Bird-like, he thought, smiling. But she was white, not black like Sam, not beautiful. Nevertheless, he enjoyed her expressions. Her face, he decided, was like a security camera, projecting everything internal externally, for immediate perusal.

When she opened the door she peered at him suspiciously. He said, ‘I’m Connor.’

‘I know.’

Instead of welcoming him inside, she stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind her. He was irritated by this. ‘Couldn’t we go in for a while?’

‘Sure.’ She smiled at him. Her teeth were small and yellow.

He waited for a few seconds but she didn’t budge. ‘Do you have a key?’

‘No.’

She stared at him, as though expecting him to have one, then turned and started off down the stairs.

He followed her. He asked, ‘Is someone staying with you? Someone who does have a key?’

Sylvia stopped for a moment. ‘I’ve got to go slowly. I can’t breathe and talk at the same time. Outside I have to breathe through my mouth.’

As she started to walk again he said, ‘Will the birds be a problem out in the open?’

She stopped again. ‘Not if someone else is with me. Smaller birds are naturally cautious. Pigeons …’ She frowned. ‘Well, just don’t take me to Trafalgar Square.’

They caught a bus. Sylvia breathed through her mouth for the duration. If she could have pinched her nose for the whole trip she would have. The smells — the stink of exhaust fumes, dirt, grime, other people — were appalling.

Physically, Connor found her charming. She was chapped and scuffed, scruffy and mauled, but there was something pure and tiny and strong about her. Obviously he found her terrifying. Obviously, he thought, she’s completely mad.