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Siobhan

Thursday

Class went well last night. I think I’m finding my stride – well, I think we all are. I heard some really promising work. Kathy’s was fantastic. It never ceases to amaze me, how the beauty of words can grip me in the gut and pull me – she read out this piece about yearning, and loneliness, and love, and I really felt choked. She talked about candy floss as ‘tiny threads of twisted pink longing’, and the bone-chilling ache of cold sea water turning her character’s ankles numb.

It reminded me so much of my (one and only) holiday romance, when I was sixteen, with Colin the Glaswegian. We had to communicate in sign language because his accent was so thick. And body language. I wonder what happened to all his letters? I don’t think I have them anymore. Kathy’s piece brought it all back, how I felt when his mum wrote that note to say he’d died in a car accident. Life is so harsh. I often wonder if he and I would have ended up together. I know we were only kids, but I really felt something for him. I can’t picture his face anymore, just that great mop of wind-swept curly black hair, those blue, blue eyes, and the clammy feeling of spending too long in a wet swimsuit. Coming back to the hotel at the end of the day all horny and sandy – that’s what reminds me of Colin. I don’t think I’ve felt that passionate about anybody since.

It really makes me think that if love does come along, you have to seize it with both hands and not let it go.

Anyway. Back to the class. Brian didn’t turn up, which gave me a horrible feeling that maybe it was him who sent that card. Phil’s still Number One suspect – and God knows how Brian could have found out my address – but I suppose it is possible. Surely not though…

Talking of my various admirers, Alex asked me out. Maybe the card is from him? He must like me. I said no, although I did give it a moment’s thought – it’s not that he’s bad looking, or anything. It’s not even that there might not be a spark, if I let there be. But there’s just something… I don’t know what exactly… which unsettles me about him. Maybe just his own weird energy.

He seemed cool about me turning him down, though, so I’m sure he’ll just move on to his next conquest. He probably doesn’t even like me all that much; probably is just impressed that I’m a ‘faymuss awfor’. Or, rather, an ‘awfor’.

I noticed that he’s sent me a friend request on Facebook, which I hardly ever go on. Kathy sent me one too, which was nice. But I am not going to confirm Alex because there are various shots of me on there in my bikini in Malta last summer with Phil. Don’t want one of my male students perving over them, do I? Though maybe I shouldn’t have accepted Kathy either…

And bloody Phil has unfriended me on there! I know because I tried to visit his profile to see whether he was still listed as ‘in a relationship’ and I couldn’t get onto the page. Guess I must have hurt his feelings more than I thought.

Friday

Dead flowers. Phil has actually left a bunch of dead flowers on my doorstep. I can’t believe it. That’s a really horrible thing to do to somebody. I don’t blame him for feeling fed up – he’s been rejected by me and Lynn – but how could he stoop to something so cowardly and pathetic?

It must be Phil. All these weirdnesses can’t be coincidence. Has he totally lost it? It’s so unlike him. There was the graphic postcard. Then hang-ups when I answer the phone, six or seven times in the past couple of days. And now the dead flowers.

The more I think about it, the more angry it makes me. He knows I hate lilies. And these have got brown spots all over the petals, and slimy stems. They stink. What’s that sonnet where Shakespeare talks about how bad lilies smell?

Just looked it up, it’s:

“For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

That just about sums it up, Phil, you nutter. I feel like going into his office and ramming them up his –

Maybe I’ll just ring him instead. Tear him off a strip on the phone. It’s not worth the energy I’d expend in going down there myself.

I stuffed the lilies into the bin under the sink, snapping the stems in two, trying to cram them in without letting any of the woody ends rip the bin bag. All the petals immediately dropped off, and that atrociously sticky pollen fell all over my hands, the kitchen floor, the top of the bin. By the time I’d cleaned it all up (which took ages because at first my attempts just left yellow swirly smears everywhere, and I had to practically bleach all the surfaces) I was in such a rage that my best being-rude-to-estate-agents voice came completely naturally:

‘Phil Harmony, please.’

‘Sorry, he’s on holiday. Can I put you through to his secretary?’

This somehow made me even more furious. I can’t bear idiots who give you the wrong information on the telephone. Of course he wasn’t on bloody holiday, his holiday had been cancelled. That receptionist always had been dim.

‘Hello, Siobhan,’ said Diane when I got through to Phil’s office. ‘He’s not here, I’m afraid. He’s on holiday.’

Oh – well, of course, he’d have already booked the time off. I felt bad for mentally slagging off the receptionist. She wasn’t to know. She wasn’t to know I’d mentally slagged her either, so I suppose I didn’t need to feel guilty. I invited the anger back.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll try him at home,’ I said, about to hang up.

‘He’s not at home,’ Diane said, sounding half-puzzled, and half-impatient; sort of, what part of ‘on holiday’ do you not understand? ‘He’s gone to Portugal.’

Suddenly the hand I was holding the phone with began to shake a bit. I’d been chewing gum at the time, and shock made it slide towards the back of my throat, giving me a moment’s panic. I had to suck it back into my mouth again. I grabbed it and pulled it out of my mouth, then rolled it around between my finger and thumb, feeling it change consistency, becoming harder and smoother, like a small lump of fear personified, sticking to my skin.

‘When, exactly?’ I asked, having a weird feeling that the gum was still in my throat, choking me.

‘They – I mean, he flew out yesterday morning. He rang me from the airport.’

‘They? He went with Lynn?’

There was a silence.

I sagged against the back of the sofa, nearly dropping the phone. I didn’t give a stuff that he and Lynn appeared to have got back together – let them baby-talk their way around the Algarve, Philly-willy and Lynny-winny– but my mind was racing, and even while part of me was in denial and trying to figure out why he was still ringing me and hanging up from Portugal, with Lynn there too; or how the flowers could have turned up on my doorstep today… another more cognisant part of me realised where the fear was coming from.

Because if Phil went to Portugal yesterday, he couldn’t have left the lilies. And if he didn’t leave the lilies, then he most likely didn’t send the card. Or make those silent phone calls.

But if it wasn’t Phil…

Who the hell was it?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s my hormones. I’ve got that weird, slightly unreal feeling that I sometimes get with PMT, like I’m inhabiting a parallel universe; one not dissimilar to this, but hazier, more painful. More frightening. A universe where I want to curl up and sleep and let someone look after me. I keep losing things, too. I lost my keys again, turned the place over looking for them (although ‘turned the place over’ isn’t really the right expression. ‘Picked up, looked, and replaced neatly,’ would be more apposite. Dr. Bedford said I have issues with cleanliness and tidiness. I disagree. I think it’s more to do with growing up in a big messy household that nobody could ever find anything in. I never could stand that, even as a little girl).

But the weird thing about the keys was that I’m sure the first thing I did when I realised they were missing was to check the front door, and they weren’t there. I suppose I was a bit distracted, trying to stop Biggles from running out into the street again, but I definitely checked. Went back upstairs, cleaned out the fridge, fed Biggles, checked again to make sure – and there they were, dangling from the lock. It was bizarre. And that was when I found the flowers.

I’d been thinking what a wuss Phil was, to leave the flowers and run away without telling me that my keys were sticking out of the front door – I mean, anyone could have let themselves in!

But the horrible truth is that it wasn’t Phil. Someone else must have seen those keys. Someone else. The same someone who sent me that card, telling me he wanted to fuck me? The same person who keeps calling and hanging up. When I thought it was Phil it was just irritating. But now …

Oh God. What if I’m not alone now? What if someone’s standing behind one of my doors, perhaps this one…?

I’m all out of breath. Have just run up and down the stairs with the poker, opened all the doors, looked in all the cupboards. Put on Combat Rock at full blast – The Clash make me feel brave. Biggles is disgusted with me. He was chasing up and down the stairs after me with his tail out like a brush. At first, being paranoid, I thought that he could sense something strange. Then I thought, yes of course he can: me, charging around like a maniac with a poker while listening to music loudly enough to make his fur stand on end.

Naturally there was no one here.

I still don’t understand how I didn’t notice the keys the first time I looked, but it doesn’t really surprise me. I’m getting so scatty now that by the time I’m fifty I’ll probably be completely barking. It happened to that great-aunt of my mother’s. She died in an asylum. God, that kind of thing is hereditary, isn’t it?

I suddenly really wanted to talk to someone. I rang Paula, but one of her flatmates – I never can tell the difference between them – said she’s not back from Thailand till Sunday.

Then I tried Jess, but she wasn’t in either. I didn’t leave a message. Things have been a little strained between us since she had Tom. I know I’m a crap godmother, but really, you’d think she could cut me a little slack here. She lives miles away – how am I expected to go and coo at him on a regular basis? I think she just wants a free babysitter. Anyway, we haven’t spoken for a few weeks, and I didn’t want to leave a whingeing message.

Probably just as well she’s out, on reflection. She’d only have banged on – about Tom’s chesty cough and his mustardy nappies – urgh, babies. A cat is more than enough for me.

Eventually I rang Mum, and she was out too. Dad answered, but I didn’t feel like running through the whole rude card/hang-ups/dead flowers thing with him, so I just asked him to get her to ring me later. I’m sure if I talk about it out loud then we’ll come up with some logical explanation. Or at least it might help me figure out who it is and what’s going on.

In the meantime I think I’ll do some work. Try and take my mind off it.