Authors: Jane Hill
I walked back to my flat with my keyring clutched in
my fist, keys sticking out between my fingers: a do-it-yourself
knuckle-duster. I made myself put my shoulders
back and walk with a confidence that I didn't feel. I
walked past the shuttered pub, past the internet cafe with
its tables and chairs folded and leaning, padlocked, against
the cafe windows, past the shadowy entrance to the
neighbouring block of flats. I counted my steps, as if that
would ward off the fear I felt. Of course, it was perfectly
logical for a woman – for anyone – to feel scared walking
in King's Cross in the early hours of the morning. But my
fear had a different tone, a different flavour. It was my
own personal, irrational fear. I knew it well. I knew the
shakes it gave me. They were familiar – not quite old
friends, not exactly old enemies either, but like someone
I'd known for years and didn't much like but had learned
to live with. I had learned how to control those shakes.
Counting was good; counting kept everything under
control. Every sixteen steps I stopped, stood still for a
moment, held my breath and listened hard – my normal
routine, but that morning my heart was thumping harder
and louder than usual.
At the end of the street the turrets of St Pancras twisted
Gothickly out of a façade of boards and scaffolding, like
Sleeping Beauty's castle emerging from the thicket of
thorns. I reached my block of flats: Edwardian red brick,
solid white stonework; charitably built for low-income
workers in the early part of the last century, now
colonised by those of us who wanted to live relatively
cheaply in central London. I pushed open the big wooden
door, turned on the light and stood for a while in the cool,
echoey white entrance hall. I looked upwards at the six
flights of stone stairs stretching dizzyingly to the top of
the building. All seemed empty. My footsteps echoed on
the white stone floor as I walked towards the lift and
pressed the button to summon it to take me to my flat on
the fifth floor. I stepped in, stood in the corner and waited
for the doors to close. I was nearly home.
I walked along the stone walkway, looking down at the
inner courtyard far below me: a few beds planted with
despondent trees and dreary shrubs, casting weird
shadows on the grey concrete. Finally I reached my front
door. My hand shook as I put the key in the lock. Inside, I
locked, double-locked and bolted the door. I checked the
rooms (force of habit). A glance to my left: the bathroom,
empty. T o my right: no one in the kitchen. The bedroom:
clear. And at last I made it to my sitting room, with its
huge window overlooking the London skyline, the Post
Office Tower a sharp grey outline against the increasingly
bright sky. There was a cheap Ikea sofa, a stereo, a few
CDs, a desk, a laptop. A small pile of books on the floor
by the settee. White walls, no pictures, no photos. A place
of safety. I put the kettle on, made a mug of tea, swallowed
a couple of extra-strength ibuprofen and sat on the sofa,
shaking.
It was ridiculous. Most women I knew who got
frightened travelling home alone at night were scared of
rapists and muggers. I was scared of the ghost of a man
called Rivers Carillo. And I didn't even believe in ghosts.
I sat there early on that Sunday morning and thought
about the state my life was in. I thought about the man I
had run away from, the man who wasn't a ghost. I thought
about my sister, and how I had walked away from a
happy, warm, family weekend. I thought about my life,
and about how much fear and how little joy was in it. And
I told myself this:
I can't live my life like this any more. This
has got to stop. It's time to let go.
The sound of a package being pushed through my
letter box and dropping onto the doormat woke
me up with a start. I looked at my alarm clock.
Ten o'clock. I panicked for a moment, worried that I had
overslept, and then I remembered that it was Sunday. I sat
up in bed and moved my head slightly from side to side to
test my headache. It felt okay, not much worse than a mild
hangover. Not too bad. It would pass. I pulled on my
dressing gown and padded down the hallway in bare feet.
There, on the doormat, was a small white box.
It was a cardboard package, flat and square, about the
same size as a CD. It lay on the doormat, passive yet
threatening. I stood and looked at it for a while, and then
I picked it up gingerly, weighing it in my hand. It was
quite light and it didn't rattle. There was no stamp, no
address. I turned it over and what I saw on the other side
made me go cold. I had to put one hand against the wall to
steady myself. I was expecting an address label, or maybe
a handwritten address. But instead there were words and
letters torn out from newspapers and magazines, stuck
onto the cardboard. They looked jagged and dangerous
against the white of the package. It was Sunday. It must
have been hand-delivered. Someone had just pushed this
through my letter box. Someone had been at my door, just
a few feet away from me, to deliver this. I felt sick. I made
myself read the words: ' T o the mysterious brunette in Flat
519. Belated Happy Birthday.'
I could feel my heart beating hard. There were goose
pimples forming on my forearms and the backs of my
hands. Holding the small container by one corner, I took
it into the living room. I sat on the settee and looked at it,
as if it was an unexploded bomb and I had to work out
how to defuse it. And then, all of a sudden, I realised. It
wasn't just a CD-sized box, it actually
was
a C D . I opened
the box, fingers shaking, and sure enough that was what it
was: a C D , a home-recorded compilation with a white
inlay card full of words, no pictures. A compilation CD: a
mix tape, as we used to call them in the days before digital
technology. Nothing but a harmless CD. Therefore it
could only be from Danny, my musical neighbour. He did
this a lot. He was forever making me CDs and giving
them to me, and then waiting eagerly for feedback. There
was already a small pile of them next to my stereo. There
was nothing odd or unusual about Danny making me a
mix tape, except for the fact that he normally just handed
them to me. He'd never pushed one through my door
before. He'd never sent me one anonymously. And there
was one other thing that didn't make sense.
'How did you know about my birthday?'
I was standing at Danny's front door with my
hands on my hips, wearing yesterday's clothes that I had
just pulled on. Danny leaned against his door-frame,
dressed in a scraggy T-shirt and jeans. 'Oh my God,' he
said, a look of mock horror on his face. 'Have I inadvertently
breached the protocol of your witness protection
scheme?'
I blushed and stammered an apology. The witness
protection scheme was Danny's little joke, his way of
explaining my oddities. 'I don't do relationships,' I had
told him soon after we'd first met, when he'd kissed me
goodnight after an evening in the pub with slightly too
much enthusiasm, not to mention tongue. And another
time, when he had looked around my flat, one of the few
times I had ever let him in, and he'd mentioned how
spare and empty it was, I'd said, 'I don't really do
possessions.'
'Blimey,' Danny had said then (and I thought, 'Blimey
– I love that word'). 'No relationships, no possessions.
What are you, on the run from the police? The mob? In
some kind of witness protection scheme?'
I'd blushed then, too; deeply. And then I had laughed
loudly, as if it had been the funniest thing I had ever heard.
Danny Fairburn was an intense, clever, socially
awkward guy with the makings of good looks,
almost handsomeness. He was about my age. He was tall
and quite slim, a bit gangly. He had dark brown eyes and
thinning dark hair that he wore shaved close to his skull.
He had good bone structure and a very gentle way of
talking. And in spite of myself, I had become very fond of
him. Not in a relationship way, of course. But he was a
good neighbour and a good friend. I didn't want to upset
him. Now he looked at me with those dark eyes, and said,
'So, did you like your present?'
'Yes. Thank you. I did. I haven't listened to it yet, but
thank you. It was very kind of you. Sorry, that sounded
rude earlier. I was just confused. Not many people know
when my birthday is.'
'The postman knows.'
'What do you mean?'
'I saw the postman at your door on Thursday. He was
giving you parcels. And at least one card in a pink
envelope. Ergo, I guessed it was your birthday. Sorry. I
didn't mean to creep you out or anything.'
Birthdays had never been a big deal in my family. The
parcels and card that Danny was referring to consisted of
a cheque for thirty-five pounds from my parents, tucked
inside a card in the pink envelope, a couple of chick-fic
paperbacks with pink covers from Sarah (she always
liked to send me something to arrive on the day itself,
even if she was going to see me the next day) and a D VD
of some Japanese animated film from my kid sister. I
hated cartoons, but at twenty-eight Jem was still the
baby of the family and we cut her a lot of slack. If she
asked about her present I would humour her and tell her
how much I had enjoyed it. It hadn't been a bad set of
birthday presents, all things considered. And now there
was Danny's CD.
'Okay. Sorry. Thank you. It was really thoughtful of
you. I shall enjoy listening to it.'
I started to walk back to my flat and Danny was still
standing there, looking at me, when I opened my front
door. 'Beth,' he called.
'Yes?'
'This whole paranoia thing is getting a bit annoying,
you know? You should learn to trust people. Like me. I
like you. I like spending time with you. You're my friend.
And friends are a good thing, okay?'
'Okay,' I said doubtfully.
'Beth,' he said again, and this time he was looking
down at the ground, stubbing the toe of his trainer into the
edge of his doormat. 'Would you like to come to a gig
with me some time?'
'As friends, yeah?'
'I don't know. We could see what happens.' He looked
at me again, a hopeful look on his face.
'Oh God, Danny, I don't know.'
I pushed the door open and stepped back into my flat.
He called after me, a jokily pleading tone to his voice.
'Oh, go on, Beth. What are you scared of? What's the
worst that could happen?'
I didn't answer that.
I put Danny's CD on the stereo and went into the
kitchen to make coffee. The first song hit me with its
perky, percussive guitars. I could identify a steel guitar,
and I thought there was at least one slide guitar in there
too, and a distinctive female voice, slightly nasal and
twangy; hard as nails but vulnerable with it. Lucinda
Williams, of course. A song called 'Can't Let Go'. I
couldn't help smiling to myself.
Danny worked for a local authority in some no doubt
terribly important and worthwhile capacity to do with
housing. But when he wasn't doing that, he reviewed
albums and gigs for a music website. Earlier that year he'd
been to Austin, Texas, for a music festival called South by
South-West, and he had learned to do a dance known as
the Texas Two-step. The thought of serious, buttoned-up,
thoroughly English Danny dancing was so surprising
that I kept asking him about it. So one evening he had
tried to teach me. He played this Lucinda Williams song
as we tried to dance around his tiny living room, as he
called out instructions: 'Step. Step. Step, hold. Step, hold.'
'Danny, it's the wrong rhythm. You can't dance that to
this. Are you sure you've got it right? Maybe you've got
the wrong number of steps. That dance sounds like it
needs three beats. Or six-eight? This song is four-four.'
He stood still for a moment and I could tell that he was
mentally counting out the steps. He pulled a face. 'Oh,
what the hell. Let's dance anyway. It's a great song.'
So we bobbed around the room awkwardly and
unrhythmically, laughing like idiots, as Lucinda sang her
song of jaunty pain: a song about a relationship that was
over, a man whom she couldn't forget, couldn't let go.
I had my left arm around Danny. His right hand was
pressed reassuringly into the small of my back. Our other
hands were clasped together. Our hips started swaying
together. There was an instrumental break in the middle
of the song, as two or more guitars duelled with each
other, and Danny took the opportunity to swing me
around and dip me over his knee. Back together again,
tighter clinch as the song ended, and he picked up his
remote with one hand and clicked it to replay the song.
And I found myself remembering another clinch,
another dance: slow-dancing with Rivers Carillo in the
cabin of that tiny cramped houseboat in Sausalito as the
afternoon sun poured in through the big windows. Round
and round we danced to Bob Dylan, or whatever it was
that was playing on the stereo, repeatedly knocking our
shins on the low bed. He nuzzled his stubbly chin against
my cheek and held me close. How easy it was to let
yourself go, to fall into the warmth of a man's arms when
you were dancing with him.
'Can't let go,' Lucinda Williams sang. But that night
with Danny, as we clumsily two-stepped around his living
room, I was thinking that those words could mean
something entirely different. I said to myself:
I can't let go;
I can't let myself let go. I can't succumb.
It would be so easy
to fall in love with Danny, so lovely and warm and
comforting, but I couldn't let myself go. I couldn't let
myself fall in love. Not again. Not after what had
happened last time. Bad things happened to people I
loved. If you made sure you had no one in your life then
there was no one who could hurt you. And no one you
could hurt.
But it got so lonely. Maybe now was the time to risk it.
Maybe now was the time to change.