A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

He’d also wanted to drink out of the toilets.

Meg had no idea why dogs always loved drinking from toilets — as if they aspired to something more grandiose than a bowl left on the lino.

Plus, they’re obsessed by the shit of others.

And Hector particularly can’t be in the ladies’ because here’s Laura, rinsing her sinuses, which would upset any animal with a past. Or anyone who’d like a future free from an image like that.

‘It’s very healthy.’ Water poured from Laura’s left nostril in a thin and not entirely clear stream. ‘Washes your cilia.’

‘I don’t have dirty cilia.’ Meg stepped rapidly past the unfolding spectacle which she knew was intended as an advertisement as well as a purging of toxins. At least you could suppose Laura wasn’t on cocaine.

Or else she likes to rinse the slate clean before she takes it.

Of course, she’s not on cocaine. She doesn’t ‘use’ caffeine, even. She brings her own tea bags in a rat-piss-smelling container. She thinks aspirin is a sin.

Then again, she smokes. She lights up and inhales dirty, nasty, addictive, unethical tobacco — not even organic tobacco — and lets its vapours pimp up and down her lungs, calling out new business for tumours.

No use expecting addictions to be sane, naturally.

Meg advanced determinedly towards the emergency-towel cupboard and hooked one out without making any explanation. She then headed for one of the shower stalls as if she did this every day.

‘Of course you have dirty cilia.’ Laura also belonged to the group of people who wouldn’t think to pause a conversation while whoever else was talking pulled a curtain across — I’m not that fond of curtains today — and closed themselves up in a shower stall.

‘Meg, if you live in London your cilia are besieged by toxins.’

Meg felt besieged, but not by toxins. She had wanted to undress quietly and at her own speed and then to make herself clean, very clean, very fucking clean.

‘The levels of some chemicals are illegal in the centre of town. Breathing, Meg. You just shouldn’t breathe in some areas. I don’t go in any more. I haven’t for years.’

She calls people by name. I never do that. That’s because I forget names, which is because I don’t pay attention when I’m introduced. I intend to do better.

The stall was clean and felt recreational rather than medical. Meg had hung all her clothes up on a line of hooks which had been painted mauve at some time in an effort to make them cheery.

Hooks are useful. I take no offence to hooks. Mauve is not cheery — it is insane, but I take no offence at it.

The water rolled along her limbs and was, quite quickly, warm. It was good, clear, gentle. Even Laura outside with her nostrils couldn’t break the moment — the long moment of washing and using the fruit-scented scrub and washing, washing, washing.

‘It’s like showering, Meg. You cleanse outside the body and cleansing is important inside, too. Meg?’

People appreciate it when you know their name. Unless it creates paranoia and makes them feel they’re at a disadvantage. By which I mean, unless they’re like me. I’d rather be anonymous.

Meg gave up and answered through the wreaths of steam — steam scented with watermelon soap — that were an indulgence and costing her employer money, but such things are sometimes necessary. ‘My cilia are not a big concern.’

There’s no point disliking Laura — that will only harm me and leave her completely unscathed. I have to be careful about negativity. So I’m told. I have my instructions and they are detailed and numerous — I am to breathe in faith and breathe out fear and not overthink and … Fuck it — the list’s too long. It’s too long for today. I don’t like today. This has been a rubbish twenty-four hours so far and I would like a new lot.

‘And I don’t really go into town. I mean I will today, sort of. But I don’t need to, not often.’ The water tumbled and purled and was a blessing — this must, in fact, feel like successful blessing: comfort and sweetness and clean warmth.

I’ve been advised that I should be tolerant of others and respect their needs. I also have to be tolerant of myself and respect mine.

‘When you start to understand your own body, Meg …’

Meg knew she shouldn’t snap at someone, just because she found them ridiculous and they seemed determined to press her, niggle, attract loathing. Meg suspected that Laura wanted to make a reason for some kind of fight, in order to then arrange — it wasn’t clear — a workplace mediation, or meditation, or some bonding ceremony: something with levels of manufactured honesty, exposure, unease.

Meg let the shower kiss down, ease out the last of the shiver she’d had in her spine since the hospital. ‘My cilia — they don’t worry me.’ Feeling cold wasn’t always about being cold — sometimes it was shock. Meg had never considered that before. Perhaps because she had always been slightly more cold than she ought, always mildly outraged.

I will use her name — she did it to me. There might as well be some type of benefit in being able to actually recall the names of faces I’d like to slap.

‘I worry about other things, Laura, but not my cilia.’

‘You worry?’This was free-range organic meat and antioxidant drink to Laura. ‘Worry’s really bad for the skin. And for your immune system. Poor you.’ Her tone — a blend of aggression and superiority, concealed by a hippy drawl — suggested Meg shouldn’t be out and about without a carer.

And I agree. But only I have the right to think that. She doesn’t.

If I pray for her, this will allegedly remove the burden of picturing her being run over by a van. Or the effort of pushing her under the van. But if I do pray for her, I’d only be able to ask God, or the angels, or whoever’s supposed to be listening, to grant that Laura ends up — who cares how — underneath a fucking van.

This is uncharitable. And counterproductive, surely.

But then Laura had been overwhelmed by a passionate fit of sneezing. And that had given Meg her chance to finish with the water, dry herself, dress as if her day was starting and had not offended and then emerge. Naturally, she was then subjected to the sight of a chubby, squeezable irrigation bottle being snuggled into Laura’s left nostril and compressed until — there was a slight wait, possibly while the solution spurted up and around her brain — more suspicious water flowed forth, this time from Laura’s right nostril.

‘It’s simple as anything,’ Laura told her, still irrigating into the sink.

That had to be excessive — it couldn’t take ten minutes to sluice one nostril. She had to have waited until Meg had come out and could watch …

People have to wash their hands in that sink.

‘I’ll think about it.’ And Meg had returned — perhaps overswiftly — to Hector, who had been pacing, huffing and groaning in a small way, out in the corridor. He’d wanted her to hear him and to be sure he was still there.

Hector was currently a handsome creature: long-waisted, primarily white with dots and patches of black. He had a rather narrow white face with black markings — thumbprints and speckles — and black, bewildered ears. Grooming didn’t calm Hector’s ears. They always made him look as if he’d recently heard dreadful news and still hadn’t adjusted.

Hector had perhaps especially taken to Meg — she liked to think so — but he had also made very sure he was generally loved. He had established himself as a permanent feature in the administration building, where he greeted everyone familiar with a desperate wagging of his lower torso, his tail having been docked almost out of existence by some maniac and therefore giving limited scope for self-expression.