She’s fishing her keys from her handbag with her shopping on the floor when I step outside and pull my door closed behind me. She looks my way and smiles, and I smile back.
And then I say it.
“Hi.”
“Hello,” she says. She pushes her key in the lock. “I’m Sarah.”
“Abigail,” I tell her.
She smiles. And then she’s gone.
It’s strange how the tiniest little actions can feel so significant. There’s a strange tickle in my chest as I head downstairs and step out onto Church Street.
Sarah. A neighbour. A neighbour with a name.
And with that my fate feels sealed – I really do live here.
I take a deep breath as I head into High Town, walking with purpose. Walking like I belong here.
Maybe for now I do.
Today the world looks a little bit different. I feel a tiny shift in the universe. It’s barely noticeable, but it’s there. A sliver of life amongst the numbness.
A ribbon of excitement.
I’d almost forgotten what excitement felt like.
There is one thing to be said for having no life but misery for months on end. My bank balance is healthy, even on a massive pay cut. My apartment is smaller than the one I left behind. My diet here has been minimal and basic, without the added cost of social dining racking up over the weeks.
Strangely enough, if I’m honest with myself, there is something to be said for a minimal existence. I miss so much, but I don’t miss things. I don’t miss my overflowing wardrobe, or the entire rainbow collection of nail varnishes displayed on a rack. I don’t miss the drawers full of old paperwork and junk mail and odds and ends. I don’t even miss the scatter cushions I’d compulsively update every season.
I arrived here with nothing but the bare bones for starting over. Right now that seems okay.
Bare bones can surely be the building blocks for something new.
I find myself walking past the homewares stores I’d have squealed over once upon a time. I skirt by a stationery shop that would have been an Aladdin’s Cave to me back in Hampshire. I don’t know where I’m going, or what I’m looking for, but I keep on walking, keep on heading somewhere.
Anywhere.
And for the first time in an age I notice the people. Walking, talking, checking their phones, oblivious to the world around them, just as I was.
I notice the smell of fresh bread drifting from the bakery on the corner.
I notice the way the sun breaks through a lazy streak of clouds.
The way the cobbles turn to tarmac under my heels as I take a left at the end of the street.
The sound of the pedestrian crossing bleeping up ahead.
The way it feels to breathe.
And I smile.
I smile because a stranger asked a simple question, and then he heard me.
I smile because someone found me in the darkness and didn’t try to switch the light on.
I smile because a man who calls himself Phoenix Burning offered me something I’ve never had.
And then my smile is all gone.
I guess it’s the way the guy’s hair blows from his eyes. The way his nose is Roman and his eyes are blue. The way he moves, so familiar. So much like Stephen.
I guess it’s the way he’s looking at her – the girl at his side. Looking at her the way I thought Stephen looked at me.
I guess it’s the pushchair – the one I’d picked out for myself.
Their baby is wearing white knitted booties. His eyes are tight shut. His fingers so small.
They pass by so closely I can smell her perfume.
It smells like everything I ever wanted.
It hits the back of my throat and then it chokes me. I’m retching in broad daylight on a crowded street, with a womb full of hurt that pains when I breathe.
And I’m alone.
Lost.
Reeling.
I back into a solid wall before my spine buckles. I close my eyes to everything around me before the light pricks my tears.
Lullabies at the top of my lungs, a hand on my belly as I drive through the night with tears running down my cheeks.
I’m battling an ocean of pain with my bare hands because of tiny toes in a pair of white booties. And I’ve been here before. So many times.
A baby-cry on the train cutting me like glass. A new-born sleep suit discarded in the wrong aisle of the supermarket. A man holding his little boy’s tiny hand as they cross the road.
The looks passing between my ex-colleagues as they try to find the words to tell me Stephen was the one to clear my desk. That he hadn’t even asked after me. Not once.
I feel like I’m bleeding out all over again, but today I fight the ocean and I win.
I open my eyes before the tears fall. I take a deep breath, push myself from the wall and force my legs to keep walking. I walk until I get to the river and I follow it for miles, through the meadows and out the other side, until the sunny afternoon turns into a warm evening and my heels are blistered. Until I notice the sky is pink and that I’ve never really listened to a duck quack, not properly. Not like now.