‘Sure.’ She smiled at him. Her teeth were small and yellow.
He waited for a few seconds but she didn’t budge. ‘Do you have a key?’
‘No.’
She stared at him, as though expecting him to have one, then turned and started off down the stairs.
He followed her. He asked, ‘Is someone staying with you? Someone who
does
have a key?’
Sylvia stopped for a moment. ‘I’ve got to go slowly. I can’t breathe and talk at the same time. Outside I have to breathe through my mouth.’
As she started to walk again he said, ‘Will the birds be a problem out in the open?’
She stopped again. ‘Not if someone else is with me. Smaller birds are naturally cautious. Pigeons …’ She frowned. ‘Well, just don’t take me to Trafalgar Square.’
They caught a bus. Sylvia breathed through her mouth for the duration. If she could have pinched her nose for the whole trip
she would have. The smells - the stink of exhaust fumes, dirt, grime, other people - were appalling.
Physically, Connor found her charming. She was chapped and scuffed, scruffy and mauled, but there was something pure and tiny and strong about her. Obviously he found her terrifying. Obviously, he thought, she’s completely mad.
On the tube, something odd happened. As they waited for a train, she put out her hand - a minute hand, dry to the touch, rough, scabby - and took hold of his. His body stiffened. He thought, Why is she doing this? He tried to catch her expression out of the corner of his eye, not turning his head, keen not to confront or embarrass her. He saw that she had her eyes closed. She swayed slightly.
‘Are you all right?’
She nodded, still breathing through her mouth.
When the tube arrived, she moved very slowly and heavily. He prayed, God, I know it’s selfish, but don’t let her die on me. That’d finish me off completely.
At last they were home. By the time they’d arrived, she was panting. He opened the door and followed her in. She walked straight into the living-room and stood in the centre of the carpet, staring around her.
He said, ‘I’ll get you a drink. I bet your throat’s dry after all that … breathing.’
‘I only want water. Do you have bottled? Not Evian, it’s too chalky.’
‘My flatmate drinks bottled stuff.’
He went into the kitchen and opened the fridge.
Sylvia remained where she was. She didn’t move, just closed her mouth and sniffed tentatively. This room, she decided, stinks of hippie oil. She didn’t like it.
Connor returned with a glass of water. He offered her the glass and she took it. He said, ‘Why are you pulling that face?’
‘This room.’ She was breathing through her mouth again. ‘It smells like perfume. I don’t like it.’
She looked around. ‘Where’s your room?’
He pointed. The door was half-open. She took several steps in
that direction and then her legs began to wobble. He noticed and moved to assist her, taking the glass from her and putting an arm about her waist.
Slowly he helped her into his bedroom and on to his bed. Once comfortably seated, she put her hand out for the glass, took it from him and drained it in several gulps. Some of the water splashed down her chin and on to her pinafore.
He squatted next to her. ‘You don’t seem very well.’
His head was only a foot or so away from hers. His face, however, was partially covered by hair. His hair looked soft. She liked the way that she could see only a fraction of his features, but also it maddened her. She put out her hand and roughly drew his hair to one side, tucking it behind his ear. His face expressed a mixture of surprise and concern.
She said, ‘Let me be honest with you.’
She continued to stare at him and thought, What shall I say? Shall I tell him the truth? Shall I ask him to just leave me alone?
Her face projected her thoughts. He could see that she felt trapped, and was about to offer to leave her for a while, to say this to her, when her stomach interrupted them both with a loud, snarling, watery gurgle.
‘How long since you ate?’
She glared at him, as though affronted. ‘I won’t eat anything.’
He rocked back on to his haunches, surveying her. Am I doing this for Sam? he wondered.
He tried to understand Sylvia, what it was that she thought she was doing. Eventually he said, ‘Why have you been breathing through your mouth all this time? Are you still upset by the smell of things? Like you were the other day, on the phone, remember?’
She avoided his gaze, focused on his drums and said, ‘Do you play those?’
‘How long since you ate anything?’
‘Recently.’ She answered too quickly.
He said, ‘I guess that’s why you seem so weak. You’ve not been eating. Punishing Sam and Brera for going away.’
She laughed. ‘I don’t care what they do. I have my own life.’
He stood up. ‘I’m going to make you something to eat, and if you don’t eat it, I’m going to throw you out.’
He’d decided that firmness was best. She seemed far too manipulative to tolerate subtlety.
She stared at him coolly. ‘I don’t mind. I’ll go.’ She tried to push herself up, but couldn’t stand.
‘How long since you ate?’
She turned her mind back. ‘Thursday morning …’ then thought some more. Thursday morning she hadn’t eaten either. She found it hard to remember her last meal: maybe a sandwich on Wednesday night.
Connor stood up. ‘I’ll get you something.’
She wanted to stop him. ‘Wait a second.’
He paused on the threshold of the room. ‘Now what?’
She said, ‘I’m the sort of person who likes … discomfort. If I feel ill, I feel stronger. Do you understand what I mean?’
She knew this was a ludicrous question, so before he answered she said, ‘I could go home.’
‘Well, don’t expect me to help you. You don’t even have any money. How far do you think you’ll get in your condition? Be sensible.’
She considered this. She thought, What if I collapse outside and someone calls the police? Maybe they’ll have my picture, my description, on their files. Maybe they’ll know all about the girl in the park and the geese. Or else … Now her mind was speeding. Or else I might collapse and get taken to hospital. They’ll call Brera and she’ll come back. They’d never forgive me. She and Sam. It’ll justify everything they’ve both said.
She looked up at Connor. ‘All right. Get me something.’
She flopped back on to the bed. Connor remained in the doorway long enough to notice that she didn’t put her knees together when she lay down, but luckily the fabric of her dress fell between her legs.
She is like a man, he thought, remembering Sarah’s comment.
Sylvia stared up at the ceiling. This bed, she decided, smells strange. She could smell Sam on the sheets - a scent of vanilla -
but it was mixed with something else. Sex, she decided. His smell.
She found him physically interesting. He was slight and thin, but also tall and in no way gawky. He had sensitive hands. His skin was healthy and smooth. His face wasn’t actually handsome, but it was the sort of face a small mammal might have - not a rodent’s face - a natural face. Clear and uncomplicated.
Her reverie was spoiled by the smell of real coffee. She felt physical alarm. She sensed her pulse rate quickening. She sniffed the air, inhaled it, digested it. Moments later she differentiated the aroma of bacon - a sweet, spicy smell - and the bland but startling fragrance of an egg frying.
She was cold. She touched her arms, which, she discovered, were rough with goose-pimples. She rubbed these vigorously until they melted away and then pushed herself up into a sitting position. Every sense, every pore, every orifice felt aroused.
Connor piled the coffee, juice and fried breakfast on to a tray and picked it up. He hoped that this combination of food wouldn’t be too fatty and rich for someone who hadn’t eaten in a while. Porridge would probably have been better for her, he thought, and weak tea. He carried the tray into his bedroom.
Sylvia was no longer on the bed. She was standing behind his drum-kit, staring out of the window.
He put the tray down. ‘Come on. Eat it while it’s still hot.’
She turned and faced him. Her eyes were wild and round. ‘Don’t make me.’
He didn’t want her mood to infect him. He couldn’t help thinking what an affecting person she was. He picked up a knife and sliced into some bacon, into the egg, and scooped these and a couple of slices of mushroom on to a fork. He stepped around his drum-kit and carried this small offering over to her. She pushed herself up against the window, her mouth tightly shut.
‘Open up.’
She shook her head, but he noticed her nostrils twitching. The food was inches from her face. Her eyes began to turn back in her skull, rolling, white, like the eyes of a frightened pony. For a second she looked as though she might topple into the window.
He put out an arm to support her, curling it around her back. Her mouth opened, and a small moan, a tiny groan, escaped from her lips. He took this opportunity to slip the forkful of food into her mouth, afterwards closing her lips with his fingers.
She tried to swallow and to spit at the same time, staggering sideways, away from him. She put her hands over her ears, as though taste were sound and sound was too, too full of flavour. Something exploded within her, like an engine firing in her mouth, starting up, revving itself, gathering energy, a sensation so violent, so total, so acute, that she could only close her eyes and shake her head and think about screaming, but not scream because her mouth was too full, her head was too full. Again she tried to spit and swallow. Fragments of food choked her, while other pieces flew from her mouth and into the air. She threw out a hand to push them away, further away, then, at the same time, pulled in her hands as if to catch them. Everything was moving so slowly now, so brightly, that she almost felt able to do so.
Connor watched her, alarmed. What the hell is she doing?
She ran forward, straight into his drum-kit, kicking into his bass drum, clutching his cymbals, embracing them, pulling them towards her and then tossing them sideways, like a discus thrower: up, over and against the wall. She fell forward, scrambled forwards, collapsed on to her knees, crawled to the bed, put out both hands to the tray, on to the plate of food and grabbed hold of a fistful of beans.
Tomatoes! she thought. So red, so bloody red and soft and smooth and full of pips and tart.
She rubbed the beans across her cheeks and down on to her neck.
Connor stumbled over the drums, across the room, towards her. She picked up the egg he’d fried, still warm, still soft, pushed part of it into her mouth and the other part she pushed from her ankle to her thigh, feeling it kiss her skin, like a slippery vulva, like the keen, wet lips of a lover.
Connor was standing beside her now, stunned, desperate to say something, anything, but not knowing what.
Sylvia picked up the juice, fresh orange juice with bits of
orange in it, tiny fragments of fleshy, tadpole orange in it swamping the liquid. She inhaled it and squealed, throwing out a hand ecstatically, and finding, blindly, Connor’s leg, the coarse fabric of his trousers. She held firmly on to the glass and then yanked herself up, pulling at his trousers, almost toppling him over. Once up straight, she tipped the orange over him, but his clothes swallowed the juice, so she put her hand to the throat of his shirt, grasped it and ripped at it, seeing the buttons pop away like so many tiny white frogs, bouncing from the edge of a pond into thin air.
Under his shirt was his chest - hairless. She rubbed the juice on to it, into it, up his neck, on to his mouth, then pushed her mouth against his to suck it off.
‘Oranges,’ she said. ‘Oh God! Like sherbet, like toothache, like a terrible, terrible aching, like a mouse nibbling, at your lips.’
Connor stood still, his arms at his side, terrified. She’s eating me, he thought. She’s ferocious.
She turned away from him, dropped the empty juice glass and picked up the cup of coffee. He put out a warning hand. ‘Don’t throw it. It’s burning hot.’
She ignored him, inhaled the aroma, smiling widely, and then poured the coffee down her neck, chest and the front of her dress. It was scalding hot but she didn’t scream. The coffee was like a cat’s tongue, rasping at her flesh, tickling her.
The smell of it! The taste!
She licked her fingers and said, ‘I want to swallow it through my skin.’
Connor saw her clothes steaming and her skin redden. He grabbed hold of her, pulled her pinafore clumsily over her head, then her pea-green T-shirt. Underneath she was naked. She didn’t seem to care. She bent over, picked up a piece of bacon and pushed it into her mouth. He touched her chest, which was staining a bright red. She swallowed the bacon. Her tongue felt alive. Before, she thought, it was only a piece of damp muscle in my mouth. But now I must use it. I must taste everything.
She picked up the coffee cup again and drained the bitter dregs from the bottom of it, then tossed the cup on to the bed. Connor watched her breasts as she threw the cup.
This is terrible, he thought.
She turned to him. ‘Where’s the kitchen?’ but she didn’t wait for an answer. Instead she followed the trail of cooking smells, sniffing them out like a bloodhound, letting her senses lead her there.
She pulled open the fridge. Milk, cheese, butter. In the freezer compartment: vanilla ice-cream. She took out these things and went back to Connor, who was still in his bedroom, bare-chested, immobile. She opened the carton of milk, pulled at the waist-band of his trousers and poured the milk down inside. The milk was cold.
‘Stop!’ He tried to move away. ‘Stop that!’
She laughed at him. ‘I can’t!’
She threw down the empty carton and picked up the tub of ice-cream, ripped off its lid and pushed a handful of it into her mouth.
Connor’s trousers were wet and heavy. He began to unbutton them, but couldn’t help noticing as he did so how the skin on her chest and neck seemed even redder and angrier. He stopped what he was doing and instead took the carton of ice-cream from her, put in his hand and scooped some out. He applied it to her throat and her chest.