Гейл Ханимен - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

She picked up her phone from a console table and tapped away.

‘How’s Tuesday at three?’ she said.

We were allocated twenty-five days of annual leave, and I had used three — a recovery day after painful root canal work, one of my biannual daytime social work visits, and an extra day I’d added onto a Bank Holiday weekend in order to allow me to finish a particularly lengthy but thrilling volume on the history of Ancient Rome without interruption.

‘Tuesday would be splendid,’ I said.

She shimmered off towards the kitchen, and reappeared with a tray of malodorous, warm snacks which she passed around the room. The space had filled up with people, and the overall volume level was very loud. I stood for several minutes examining the bibelots and objets which she had artfully placed around the room. More from boredom than necessity, I went to use the bathroom, a tiny cloakroom under the stairs which was also shiny and warm, gleaming white and scented, improbably, with figs — the smell, I eventually realized, emanating from a lit candle in a glass jar on the shelf below the mirror. Candles in a bathroom! I suspected that Laura was something of a sybarite.

I walked into the room at the end of the hall, which was, as I had correctly guessed, the kitchen. This room was also full of people and noise, but I could make out black marble worktops, gloss cream cabinets and lots of chrome. Her home was so … shiny. She was shiny too, her skin, her hair, her shoes, her teeth. I hadn’t even realized before; I am matte, dull and scuffed.

Feeling the need to escape the noise and heat for a moment, I opened the back door and stepped out onto a patio. The garden was small and contained little in the way of botanical life, being mostly paved with concrete slabs or covered in slippery decking. Dusk was falling, but the sky felt small here, and I felt penned in by a high fence which ran on all three sides. I breathed in, deeply, hoping for cool night air. Instead, my nasal passages were assaulted by tar, nicotine and other poisons.

‘Nice night, eh?’ said Raymond, loitering unnoticed in the shadows and, just for a change, puffing on a cigarette. I nodded.

‘I came out for some fresh air,’ he said, without a hint of irony. ‘I shouldn’t drink fizz, it knocks me for six.’ I realized that I was somewhat discombobulated myself.

‘I think I’m ready to go home now,’ I said, a little unsteady on my feet. It was, however, a lovely feeling.

‘Come and sit down for a minute,’ Raymond said, steering me towards a pair of wooden armchairs. I was glad to do so, as my new boots rendered my balance somewhat precarious at the best of times. Raymond lit another cigarette — he seemed to be becoming a chain smoker.

‘They’re a nice family, aren’t they?’ he said.

‘Laura is going to cut my hair,’ I blurted out. I’ve no idea why.

‘Is she now?’ He smiled.

‘You like her,’ I stated, nodding sagely. I was a woman of the world, after all.

He laughed.

‘She’s gorgeous, Eleanor, but she’s really not my type.’ His cigarette end glowed red in the semidarkness.

‘What is your type?’ I asked, finding to my surprise that I was actually interested.

‘I don’t know. Someone less … high maintenance, I guess. Someone … wait a minute.’

I was more than content to sit still while he walked off, returning minutes later with a bottle of wine and two garishly decorated paper cups sporting cartoon rodents on skateboards.

‘ Rastamouse ,’ I read aloud, slowly. ‘What on earth is this?’

‘Give it here,’ Raymond said, and poured us both a … cup. We tapped our vessels together. There was no clink.

‘I thought I’d found the perfect person for me,’ he said, staring at the back of the garden. ‘Didn’t work out, though.’

‘Why not?’ I said, although I could, in fact, think of many reasons why someone might not want to be with Raymond.

‘Thing is, I’m still not entirely sure. I wish I did know — it would make things easier …’

I nodded — it seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

‘Helen said it wasn’t me, it was her.’ He laughed, not an amused laugh, though. ‘I can’t believe she came out with that old chestnut. After three years … you’d think she’d have known before then that it wasn’t working for her. I don’t know what changed. I didn’t change … I don’t think I did, anyway …’

‘People can be … unfathomable,’ I said, stumbling slightly over the word. ‘I often find that I don’t understand why they do and say things.’

He nodded.

‘We had a lovely wee flat, went on some great holidays. I was … I was actually thinking about asking her to marry me. Christ …’ He stared at the paving stones and I tried and failed to picture Raymond in a morning suit, top hat and cravat, let alone a kilt.

‘It’s fine,’ he said, after a while. ‘It’s quite a laugh, sharing with the guys, and I’ve got this new job. Things are OK. It’s just … I dunno. She said I was too nice. What exactly am I meant to do with that? I mean … become more of a bastard? Should I have hit her, or cheated on her?’

I realized he wasn’t really talking to me; it was like in a play, when a character just talks out loud for no apparent reason. I knew the answer to his question, however.

‘No, Raymond,’ I said. ‘You would never have done either of those things.’ I finished my cup of wine and poured some more. ‘I lived with a man called Declan for a couple of years. He used to punch me in the kidneys, slap me — he fractured twelve bones, all in all. He stayed out some nights and then came home and told me about the women he’d been with. It was my fault, all my fault. But still, I know he shouldn’t have done that. I know it now, anyway.’

Raymond stared at me. ‘Jesus, Eleanor. When was this?’

‘Several years ago,’ I said. ‘While I was still at university. He saw me in the Botanic Gardens one day, just came up and started talking to me. I know it sounds ridiculous, looking back. By the end of the week, he’d moved in.’

‘Was he a student too?’ Raymond said.

‘No, he said reading books was a waste of time, boring. He didn’t work, either; couldn’t find a job that suited him, he said. It’s not easy to find a job that suits you, I suppose, is it?’

Raymond was looking at me with a strange expression on his face.

‘Declan wanted to help me learn how to be a better person,’ I said. Raymond lit yet another cigarette.

‘How did it end?’ he said, not looking at me, blowing smoke up into the air in a long stream, like a very unterrifying dragon.

‘Well,’ I told him, ‘he broke my arm again, and when I went to hospital, they somehow guessed that it hadn’t happened the way I’d said. He’d told me to tell them that I’d had a fall, but they didn’t believe me.’ I took another large sip. ‘Anyway, a nice nurse came and spoke to me, and explained that people who truly love you don’t hurt you, and that it wasn’t right to stay with someone who did. The way she explained it, it all made sense. I should have been able to work it out for myself, really. I asked him to leave when I got home and, when he wouldn’t, I called the police, like she’d suggested. And that was that. Oh, and I changed the locks.’

He said nothing, and stared with intense concentration at his shoes. Without looking at me, he put out his hand and touched my arm, patted it very tentatively, as one would a horse or a dog (if one were frightened of horses or dogs). He shook his head gently, for a long time, but seemed unable to articulate a response. No matter; I didn’t require one. The whole thing was ancient history now. I was happy being alone. Eleanor Oliphant, sole survivor — that’s me.