Emma Unsworth - Animals

He wrinkled his nose. ‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘It’s Yeats.’

He shook his head. ‘What the fuck? Do you love me, Laura?’

I put down my glass. Looked at him.

‘Sometimes.’

I never thought I’d say it, but I missed church today.’

I took a step backwards and blew fagsmoke out too fast. My dad stuck his hands in his best-suit pockets and went on. ‘It was all over so quickly. I like a bit of decoration round the edges, a few candles and flowers, and then you need the singing to break things up. That way, you can soak it all in and really savour it.’ He leaned in. ‘It felt like a bit of a production line in that registry office. Is it symptomatic of atheism, do you think, efficiency? Is this what passes for spiritual evolution: speed?’ He pouted and released the pout. ‘God might be dead, but I tell you what, he knew how to throw a party.’

I took another drag on my fag. Blew the smoke away from my dad — even though, well, you know. ‘So what you’re saying, Dad, is you didn’t miss God today but you missed his canapés.’

‘Yes, smartarse, I missed his canapés.’ He shouted to the sky. ‘Did you hear me, you old get? I MISSED YOUR VOL-AU-VENTS.’

We laughed like laughter was the thing we were made of, like it was the only thing to do. The roof terrace of a posh hotel in a converted Victorian school. Inside: the squares of a mirrorball dappling restored oak flooring, and a fork buffet being served by over-starched emo kids. Outside: colonial wicker furniture and a hot-tub rich with the scurf and sin of premiership footballers.

February. The lace arms of my maroon dress might as well not have been there at all. I berated myself for putting my hair up instead of leaving it down for extra warmth around my neck. The heater on the roof had such a short timer that it was more irritating to keep turning it on rather than just stand there freezing.

Then.

The door of the roof terrace opened and there she was. I knew she’d been invited but hadn’t expected her to show. Another girl followed her out.

‘Hello, Tyler,’ said my dad.

She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Hey, Bill. Great news about the cancer.’

‘Thanks, yeah, few more years’ grace, eh.’

‘Ack, you’ll live for ever.’

I drank some of my drink.

‘Dunno about that,’ he said, ‘but I do have a cunning plan.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I’m going to do what every rational person should do when they find out their days on Earth are numbered.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Move to Stoke. It’ll seem like longer.’ She laughed and then my dad looked awkward, trespassing on my awkwardness. ‘In a bit, love,’ he said to me, and went inside.

She came and hugged me and the familiar smell of her almost knocked me over. ‘This is Valerie,’ she said. The girl next to her had the same jacket and the same eyes. I donated a long, kind blink. ‘Hello, Valerie.’

We shook hands. Valerie’s hand was hot. I wondered when might be acceptable to leave your own sister’s wedding. I looked to the windows, through to the room and the party. Mel and Julian were slow-dancing in the middle of the dancefloor. I’d exiled myself to the terrace when the seventh person in a row had asked me where Jim was and I heard myself reply: No fucking idea these days, and it’s a real weight off .

Tyler knew better than to ask at least. Or maybe she couldn’t care less any more, either. Who knew.

I looked across the roof terrace. There was an iron staircase on the other side, leading down to the street.

On Deansgate I hailed a cab and asked for Blackley. We drove northeast, through Ancoats and the old newspaper quarter, sullen with redundancy, past the Green Quarter where To Let signs prickled the front lawns of artless tower blocks. I got out of the cab early and as I walked along the main road I felt the old rush coming over me — you know that feeling, you know that feeling, the wind in your ears as you stand at the crossroads, elements stirring, the clouds shifting over the moon (and every time you see that, you are mine). Something waiting for me in a small, unchanged room, in the blank screen of my laptop.

I stopped at the off licence to buy some wine. Pulled the coldest bottle from the back of the over-stocked fridge. At the till I put my hand in my pocket and felt the keys there, two rows of hard little teeth ready to bite. I stroked my nails along them as I waited for my change.

I walked another five minutes and turned into a smaller road. An ice-filled drain like a moat, a privet like a portcullis. The streetlights hitting the lids of a row of wheelie bins and bringing them up gold. I stopped outside a semi-detached Victorian house and looked to the skylight in the roof, open a crack like I’d left it.

I pulled the keys out of my pocket but before I could use them the front door opened and a woman came out, dressed for town. She nodded hello and held the door ajar. I heard the rich tut of a lighter flint before the click of the rimlock.

Two sets of stairs, the motion detectors acknowledging me and flicking each bulb on in turn. Right to the top. A blue door freshly painted with no marks or scratches. I opened the door and they were all there, the edges of safe and simple things in the shadows. I took off my coat and hung it on the back of the door, turned on the light. Went into the bathroom, which I’d done up nice ( nautical, but nice— this amused me too often) but without real sentimentality. I walked out and over to the bed, took off my boots and dress and tights, loosened my hair, unpacked my bags. Zuzu came out from her box beneath the bed, yawning and blinking. She stretched her supple back-legs in turn.

I’d gone for her as soon as I got my place. Drank three margaritas and caught the bus to Belle Vue with a pair of kitchen scissors in my satchel, my heart in my ears the whole way. But when I arrived at Marie’s, a cannonball of nerves and bile, no one answered. I heard the bell sounding inside: ‘Für Elise’ by Beethoven, blasphemed by burbly electronica, sending Jim spinning in the graveyard of my heart. A boy riding sidesaddle on a mountain bike sauntered past on the road. No one there since last week, love. (Love? He was half my age.) I turned around and pushed the door. It opened, revealing disaster. The house was ransacked. Clothes and CDs and broken furniture everywhere, a scene reminiscent of poltergeist activity. I put my hand inside my satchel, fingertips finding scissor-handles. Then I heard a faint cry. I walked towards the sound, stepping through the hall, picking my way around the shit. A strangled Anglepoise lamp. An empty dog bowl, the pink plastic grained with gone biscuits. In the front room, alone on top of a crippled sideboard, was a Granny Smith apple; I started at the sight of it, it looked so precise and unlikely. Another miaow from behind the sideboard. I called her and she came.

Now she kept me company these long nights in. On the drainer by the sink was an upturned tumbler. Just the one. Guests got their wine in mugs and liked it, or soon forgot. No pictures on the wall but books on the bookshelf, a few favourites open mid-flight on the carpet by the desk to keep me going. The desk was under the window. I sat down and poured some wine. Looked up. Dark outside, the sky a great hole for falling into. I was light-headed. I was contemplating gravity. I was here and here and here, everything in its place, everything something like belonging.

Frank, Lorraine and Lucie Unsworth, Guy Garvey, Katie Popperwell, Nicola Mostyn, Maria Roberts, Sarah Tierney, Jo-anne Hargreaves, Natalie O’Hara, Clare East, Glen Duncan, Zoe Lambert, Clare Conville and all at Conville & Walsh, Jo Dingley, Francis Bickmore, Jamie Byng and all at Canongate, Sherry and Brian Ashworth, John Niven, Sally Cook, Romana Majid, Wayne Clews, Emily Powell, Caitlin Moran, Katie Potter, Rebecca Murray, Jesca Hoop, and the members of the Northern Lines Fiction Workshop.