January 14th
It’s almost impossible to get to Rhiannon in this new world of white. I take the tube as far as I can, then walk the final stretch. Lampposts emerge from the snow, fallen leaves peer from under dirty white covers. Barely any sound but the crunch of my boots.
A maintenance dose, Rhiannon calls it. Enough to keep me steady but not fix anything new, an appointment every month or so. Soon it’ll be coming up to my ten-year anniversary with Rhiannon. Is that the kind of thing a client celebrates with her therapist?
I stretch my gloved hand into the space beside me and thread my fingers through the air. You would like this weather, forcing the big city to a standstill. Snow in London is like rain in the desert; they both make everything stop. You’d say this was nature triumphing once again. I imagine you here, drawing pictures with the tips of your boots, making arcs and loops in the whiteness. You’d colour the patterns with winter berries, holly leaves and ivy stolen from parks.
As I walk, I think how small London is compared to the land you took me to. If a scale map of London were placed inside a scale map of your desert, and my regular routes traced across yours, how little my life would seem, must always have seemed.
My phone pings.
More snow coming! This really is the most beautiful country—we are so lucky! Xxx
But I don’t see a country. I see white smothered buildings, and a veiled message in my mother’s words—England is better than Australia, why would I ever want to go back there?
On the next corner is a man begging for change. He is you, of course. But when I get close, I see he is old; too old to be you, and too old to be on the streets in the snow. I give him the few coins I have. He shivers on the wet pavement as he holds the money in his bare, blueish palms.
‘My gloves?’ I say, pulling them off and placing them in his lap.
‘Bless you, lady.’
I imagine taking him home, bathing him and keeping him warm. I could cut his hair and dress him in new, dry clothes: a shirt and boots. Perhaps I could call him Ty. And then he could report me to the police too.
I am crazy, like Nick said.
Longing for warmth, I pull my coat around me as snow slips down the back of the collar. We’re not as lucky as Mum says. Perth has 3,212 hours of sunshine each year; London has only 1,481. How many hours of Perth sunshine have you seen where you are?
Rhiannon asks about my dreams, and then, as usual, if I would like to bring you into the room.
‘You could draw him, or talk about him?’
I don’t tell her that I see you everywhere now; that it is getting worse; that on this journey to her, you were the bus-driver, thepot-washer I saw through a window, a dog-walker, the homeless man. I don’t tell her you were Nick. I don’t talk about Nick at all. I don’t say I’ve been stockpiling Mum’s pills, either. I should say all of it—it’s what Mum pays for. I used to say those things.
‘Well, if you can’t bring Ty in, what about expelling him completely?’ she suggests. ‘This in-between space doesn’t seem comfortable for you.’
‘I should expel him,’ I say.
She waits and watches, endlessly patient. ‘And how might you do that?’
With a knife.
With a car swerving across the street.
With a blow to the head.
Outside her window are the dark tips of bare trees, snowflakes drifting down; whiteness smothering, quietening everything. I’m not strong enough for this. It’s been useless coming today. I’m useless. I clench my fists inside my coat sleeves. I want to be Rose, the dying woman who emailed me, planning a final trip to somewhere beautiful and far away. Then nobody could tell me I was wrong for wanting to go to Australia, not if it was my dying wish.
On my way back, I look for the homeless man, but he’s moved on. Sipping the coffee I’d bought for him, I hover at the spot where he’d been. The words from Rhiannon’s session are like an axe in my head:expel him.As if it were as simple as letting out breath.
I take a detour. It’s not far from Rhiannon’s office to Prince’s Park, where you used to live; sometimes I think it might be the reason I picked Rhiannon as a therapist in the first place. Today, in the snow, your park looks like a picture. I sit onthe bench near your rhododendrons, where you once made your bed. Although cut back for winter, they still have green leaves. In the early years, after I returned from you, I sat here a lot. Sometimes people took photos of me, or left trinkets for you in your rhododendrons. Sometimes I hid and watched.
I shut my eyes and dig my nails hard into my hands, suddenly furious at myself. Will I spend my whole life trying to let go of you? Will there never be a time that’s free from you? I bend down and gather sticks, leaves and berries, shaping them into a wreath in the snow, imagining it glowing with candles. I write your name in the centre.
Ty.
A berry for a full stop, red as blood.
Even when it starts snowing again, your name remains. I dig my nails harder into my palms as I realise what I’ve done. A shrine, a fucking shrine! So much for expelling you. I stand up, scattering the berries with my boots, trampling the leaves into the snow. You do not deserve a shine. I kick until the snow turns dirty, the cuffs of my jeans sodden, and my fingers numb.