LITMIR.BIZ

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the previous night, reached for her phone to check for messages, and then swallowed and gripped her hands into fists. She wasn’t going to. She felt nothing, nothing at all, and she closed her eyes again, and sank back into an exhausted, defeated sleep.

      When Laura woke up again, it was later in the afternoon and she realised she was starving. She pulled on her jeans and, zombie-like, went downstairs to go to the shops round the corner. She was stumbling back, clutching in her arms a paper, some crisps, some wine and some chocolate, when she felt dizzy and thought she was going to collapse. When she reached home, she leant against the wall of the communal hallway, unsure how she was going to get up the stairs again, feeling so totally alone and sad she didn’t even know how to respond to her own feelings. Should she cry? Scream? Yell? Smile bravely? She didn’t know, she was simply sick of the treadmill in her head going round with the same old thoughts over and over again. What was she going to do now?

      What she really wanted to do, Laura realised, was curl up under the pigeonholes and go to sleep for a year. Would anyone notice, would they care? No. And she deserved it. More than anything, she realised helplessly, she wanted a shoulder to cry on, and the reason she had no one was entirely her own fault.

      Laura gritted her teeth. She would go upstairs. She would.

      Back on the fifth floor at last, she fumbled for her keys, and the door behind her opened. It was Mr Kenzo, who lived in the flat opposite.

      ‘Laura!’ he cried at her back, as Laura held her haul from the shops in one scooping motion and tried to turn the key in the lock. The paper and can of coke slid out of her hand, and the sections of newspaper feathered across the floor.

      Laura stared at them, and tried not to cry. She bent down, as Mr Kenzo also bent down, tut-tutting, and folded them deftly up.

      ‘My dear, my dear,’ he said, handing them and the can back to her. ‘Are you OK? You look not well, let me tell you.’

      ‘Thanks,’ said Laura blankly. ‘I’m going in now,’ and she turned away and tried to unlock the door.

      ‘Do you need some help?’ said Mr Kenzo, unfazed by her rudeness. He stepped forward, and took the key from her. As he turned it in the lock, it was pulled open from inside, and Mr Kenzo half-fell forward into Paddy’s arms. Paddy had opened the door and was watching them both with bemusement, his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown. Laura just stood there, numbly holding her things, not wanting to go in or stay out, not really caring. Paddy looked at her and gave a grimace of concern. He pulled his hands out of his dressing gown and scratched his long, thin nose, then set Mr Kenzo back down on the ground and said heartily,

      ‘Sorry, Mr Kenzo! How are you? Helping Laura out there, are you?’

      ‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Kenzo, clasping his hands rather nervously – he found Paddy rather hard to read, clearly being from the school of thought that said men should work with their hands and sit around in cafés waving those hands and yelling at their friends, rather than opening the door in the early evening in a dressing gown and jeans, unshaven, with long, messy hair.

      Mr Kenzo gave Paddy a packet of crisps. ‘She dropped these, take them please.’

      A voice on the stairs said cautiously, ‘Er – James? Laura?’

      Not really caring who it was, Laura turned for the door again, but the expression on Paddy’s face stopped her. He was smiling in a dazed, stupid fashion, and running his hands through his hair.

      ‘Becky!’ he said. ‘Hi! Hi-ya!’

      Becky-from-downstairs, who was still very much the object of Paddy’s affections, appeared on the landing. ‘Hello, Mr Kenzo,’ she said, not at all ruffled by the strangeness of the scene in front of her. She shifted her bag on her shoulder. ‘Hi, James – er, someone’s signed for this recorded delivery, and they pushed it through my door, and I think it’s for you.’ She held out an envelope bearing the legend ‘Ticketmaster’ on it.

      ‘Oh, yeah!’ said Paddy, leaping forward and taking the tickets from Becky. Laura watched as he gave her a super-enthusiastic smile. ‘Thanks. Thanks Becky! Yeah, that’s great. Just my…er…it’s my, er, Snow Patrol tickets. Yeah!’

      ‘It’s your tickets for We Will Rock You, isn’t it?’ said Laura, with an interested expression.

      ‘Queen?’ said Mr Kenzo. ‘Ah, fabulous.’

      Paddy kicked her in the shin, and Laura took this as her cue to leave. ‘Thanks again, Mr Kenzo. Bye, Becky.’

      ‘Er, bye Laura,’ said Becky.

      She pushed past Paddy into her own corridor, turned and said again, ‘Sorry, Mr Kenzo.’

      Mr Kenzo’s creased face smiled kindly at her. ‘Why you saying sorry? You are having bad day. Go in. And look after her,’ he said confidentially to Paddy, as Laura stared blankly at him, wondering if perhaps he were the Angel of Death.

      ‘Thanks again,’ Paddy said to Becky. He swivelled from her to Laura, standing in their hallway. ‘Er…’ he said.

      Becky smiled at him expectantly. Laura cleared her throat.

      ‘I’ll – see you around, Becky,’ said Paddy. ‘I’d better go in. That’s really kind of you. Great, thanks again.’

      As the door slammed behind him, Paddy turned to his flatmate in the corridor with an exasperated expression. ‘You’re awake. At last! I didn’t know where you’d gone. You’ve been asleep all day, you know?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Laura, walking towards her room. She stood in the doorway. ‘I’m going back to bed. I don’t know when I’m coming out again. Go after Becky, Pads. Ask her out. And when you get back, if anyone calls, tell them I’m not here.’

      ‘Laura –’ Paddy was looking after her, a plaintive expression on his face.

      ‘Sorry, Pads,’ she said.

      ‘But –’

      ‘Leave me alone,’ said Laura, a sob rising in her throat, batting her hand at Paddy, who was standing incredulously in the corridor watching her as she walked away. ‘I’m so tired.’ She said it almost to herself. ‘I just want to sleep. Just leave me alone.’

      Laura went back to bed. She ate the food she could eat without leaving the bed. The wine she left – it wasn’t a screw-top and she couldn’t face getting the corkscrew from the kitchen. She ate a Crunchie bar in two mouthfuls. She was too tired to read the paper. She picked it up, scanned it, but the story about a school of orphans in Zimbabwe made her cry again, so she threw the paper on the floor and turned over, facing the wall, tears rolling across her face. The salty, MSG flavour of the crisps was around her mouth, and she licked her lips, sniffing. She closed her eyes.

      About an hour later there was a knock at the door.

      ‘Laura?’ came a voice tentatively.

      Laura opened her eyes, but said nothing.

      ‘It’s me,’ said Paddy. ‘Look. Are you OK?’

      Laura chewed her lip, praying he wouldn’t come in, banking on a bloke’s natural aversion to crying women. This was particularly strong in Paddy, sweet though he was in other ways.

      ‘What’s wrong, Laura? I’m…I’m worried about you!’

      Laura pulled the duvet over her head as tears filled her eyes again.

      ‘Look,’ said the voice again. ‘I’m going out now. I don’t want to bother you. I’m not going to come in. Will you just say “Yes” now to let me know you’re alive and you haven’t been attacked or anything?’

      It was a good tactic. Laura patted the duvet away feebly with her hands, and said quietly, ‘Yes.’

      ‘Right,’ came Paddy’s voice, sounding relieved. ‘Look, darling. I’m sorry about whatever’s happened. Is it Dan?’

      ‘Yes,’

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