I run.
When I glance back, you’re staring after me with your mouth in a perfect O (not your most attractive look). But what did you expect? Did you think I’d give it all to you so easily, sosoon? I tilt my head towards the stairs, give a little smile. And that’s all it takes. You are running now, too. We slide through the bowels of the underground, dodging revellers and tourists. I hear your laugh behind me as I speed up, though it’s different from the laugh I remember. It’s freer now, lighter. Perhaps prison hasn’t been so bad, after all.
I just make the change. You don’t. I see you staring after me again as the Central Line train to Woodford pulls away. I keep your gaze, daring you to think you’ve lost. But you will be after me, I know. You will be on the tube just behind and coming for me. I’m smiling so hard I have to bury my face in my gloves. I’m marvelling: me, smiling so wide when I didn’t think I could anymore. Maybe this—you like this—is an answer.
In the time it takes to get to Barkingside, I drink more of the vodka and the doubts swagger in. Perhaps I should see Rhiannon sooner rather than later, like Mum said. Maybe I am drunker than I think. Maybe what I’m doing right now is the first sign of being crazy.
I turn right when I come out of the tube station and buy another half-bottle at the mini mart for later. Mum slipped twenty pounds into my pocket as I left: what else am I going to spend it on?Do what I want and you get this,that money said.Be a good girl.
No sign of you. But of course, there isn’t. It’s a dream, all this. A dangerous fantasy.
I take the short cut, through the alley between the park and the supermarket. It feels different tonight, darker and quieter than usual, much colder too. I’m shivering. But I can smell fox scent, fresh and strong, and that calms me. I check around an abandoned shopping trolley for any of the local homelesspeople, who all know me. I’ll give up my vodka if they’re here, and maybe the rest of the twenty. When I first saw you, when I was a child, you were homeless too, living in the rhododendrons in Prince’s Park near my house. You came looking for your mum, all the way from Australia, isn’t that what you told me? She sent you a letter, said you should live with her. And you came. Only you could never find her, and by the time you heard she had died, you had no money left. Did anyone ever stop to give you vodka and coins then? Did anyone apart from me even notice you? Would it have been any different if someone else had?
I watch the trees, winter-spindly and creaking, but no one stares back. I take a swig and almost cough at the liquor’s sudden heat against my cold lips. I keep walking.
‘You shouldn’t be out here alone.’
I jump, skitter off the path, then look behind.
You?
You.
You’ve followed me, after all.
In the streetlight, I see the shirt is a little bright, a little too cowboy, but you are almost perfect.
‘I said, you shouldn’t be out here alone. It’s dark, and late.’
Your voice is not quite deep enough.
You come towards me. Something isn’t quite right about your half-smile, but…almost. I step backwards all the same. You could still hurt me. Maybe I was stupid to think this version of you would work. But then I smell the aftershave on your neck. You’ve made an effort. For me. I let you come up close. I can hit you over the head with the bottle if I need to, spit fire in your eyes. I’m always ready. Many of the men I waswith early on required push-back, too.
You frown. You think you’re doing it wrong.
‘Grab me,’ I growl.
I have to say it again, more forcefully, before you take my right arm behind my back and lean your body over mine. I hear your breath in my ear, feel its heat on my neck.
‘Come on,’ I say.
Still, you don’t do anything.
‘Take me home,’ I insist. ‘Now.’
I twist out from your grip, and you let me. You let me!
‘Come on!’ I shout, shoving you. ‘You know where I live. Take me!’
Your eyes are wide, but after a moment you pin my arms and push me off the path, so hard I stumble against one of the spindly trees. I reach out and catch a branch, catch my breath.
When you frown again, I pull you to me and kiss you hard, angry and desperate. And you kiss back roughly, too. And then you are pushing me down the path, towards my flat, towards my life as it is now and everything I want you to see. This is good. This is…
‘Wait.’
I grab the hair at the base of your skull and push you away from me, gripping your neck and peering into your eyes. Staring back in the weak light, these eyes are paler than I remember. There is no scar on this cheek. It must have faded over the ten years. I blink. It isn’t you. I know it. I don’t want to know it.
‘Is this…?’ you start to say. ‘Is this what you—?’
‘Just do it! Try.’
I’m surprised at how firm I am, at this power I have. The release date in my handbag doesn’t matter now, my anxiety hasvanished. This is all there is. It has to be.
‘Take me back,’ I say, smiling. ‘Do it!’
And you do. You push and I pull, and it feels good. Bright somehow. As if you are shining beneath the streetlight, making the alley glow. As if we are both golden. Because this time, you saw me waiting: you found me. And I saw you, too.