The Life of Death by Lucy Booth

Author:Lucy Booth [Booth, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783527120
Publisher: Unbound
Published: 2019-02-11T16:00:00+00:00

16

BANGING AT THE DOOR. A BANGING THAT PAUSES to allow a bellow. ‘Tom? Tom. Mate. Open the door. It’s me.’ Alex.

We sit, side by side, backs against the door. An extra weight against the outside world in case the Chubb and the Yale and the chain all fail.

Our heads hang. Knees tuck up under our chins. Tom holds his hands flat against his ears. We wince, in unison, with every thump.

Silence. And then another voice. ‘And me.’ Higher pitched, softer. Janey. A pause. He can hear them out there, whispering to each other, deciding what tack to take next.

When Alex speaks again, it’s a whisper. The softest of murmurs. His voice is level with Tom’s ear, from his position hunkered down against the door in the outside world. ‘Mate. Please. Just open the door.’ There’s a shuffle as Alex turns, leans his own back against his side of the door. Hangs his head and draws his knees up under his chin. And so they sit, back to back, bookends on either side of a door that won’t budge.

Day after day his friends visit. Take it in turns to sit outside the door. Trying to time it so they bump into him on the way home from work, so he has no choice but to face them, to talk to them, to let them in. What they don’t know is that he doesn’t go to work, hasn’t left the house for anything other than a pint of milk in weeks. So turning up at five, four, even earlier won’t make a difference because they’ll never catch him. But they can see the light shining through the crack beneath the door, hear the muffled sound of quiz show theme tunes wending their way from the lounge, and they know he’s in there.

They adopt a daily shift of an hour or two, in pairs or alone. They call to him, cajole. Convince. Commiserate. Charm. Some sit in silence. Some relay news from their own lives. Throughout, Tom keeps quiet. He knows they’re there and he knows they know he knows. But he can’t bring himself to open the door. To see the cocked head and the look of pity. He can’t trust himself not to react like he did to Emma. To snap like he did with Kath. If he doesn’t open the door, he can’t push them further away.

Finally, day after day, they accept defeat. Tell him through the door that they’re going to go. To leave him to it. But they’re there if he needs them. He hears that every day. That people are there if he needs them. But there’s only one person he needs, and she’s dead.

After each visit, he waits for the silence. Waits for heavy footsteps thudding down carpeted stairs and the chunky thunk of the communal door to the street swinging shut. He waits for half an hour. Waits for the coast to clear. And when it does, when he can lean his head out of the front window and see no one waiting below, he runs.

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