Page 62 of You Can't Hurt Me

Nate is looking at me intently, waiting for answers.

“There’s not that much to tell really. I was meant to be going out that evening but in the end I didn’t. I went upstairs to change and when I came down, all I remember is that he’d collapsed. His inhaler ran out. We called an ambulance but it was too late. It was tough. Really tough,” I manage.

“God, I’m sorry, Anna. You let me talk so much about my loss and all the time—” He shakes his head, features creasing in sympathy.

“Well, ghostwriters aren’t hired to talk about themselves, are they?” I say, crisply. “Anyway, my parents died a long time ago. Before I knew it, I was at uni... Now I’m more or less fine about it all. I feel sorry for my friends when I know what they’ll have to go through. I can see the fear in their eyes and I know it’s behind me. People assume it’s been so terrible for me but really it hasn’t.”

Nate looks at me doubtfully, clearly not buying my plucky survivor performance. “I perfected a similar speech about Eva too. You probably remember. Most people swallowed it and moved on, except you. You were the first one to ask how I’d really felt when we first sat down to write the book. You told me that rehearsing a speech about how well I was managing was a sign that possibly I wasn’t doing that well, and you were right.”

“It’s a coping mechanism, isn’t it? I guess it’s that thing of people feeling sorry for you, seeing you as this tragic figure to tiptoe around. Don’t you hate that look in their eyes?”

He nods. “When they tell you you’re brave.”

“Brave’s a killer,” I agree and we grimace. “I know, pity is the worst, isn’t it? I can remember bumping into a neighbor in the park after my dad died, asking all about me and saying something like,you poor, poor children, with this strange little smile on her face. I hated her. She made me feel like a Victorian orphan.”

We both fall silent for a moment, hurled into our separate wounds. I tilt my head back and shoot a trail of blue smoke into the air. I thought I’d drunk myself sober over lunch but now I realize I’m struggling to hold myself straight. I glance around mournfully at the garden. Somehow it has never looked lusher or greener. I inhale the earthy tang that comes with heavy rain, aware that it looks all the more perfect because it’s about to end.

“You know it would be such a shame to lose this place.” My tone is a little more wistful than I intended.

“Selling up Algos House? I’m not sure I have any choice.”

“I understand. You said yourself it feels wrong being here for so long, that it’s like a mausoleum.” The word makes me shudder and I can’t help picturing Eva’s bedroom, all that teal, frosted and frozen, a boudoir fit for an ice queen.

He sighs and lights another cigarette and I watch the amber singe glow as he inhales. “You know there’s so much I hadn’t really realized about myself until this book, talking it through with you day after day. I guess I realize how much I’ve struggled bearing it all alone.”

“I think the memoir has been cathartic for you.”

“Not just the memoir,” he muses. A gust of wind sweeps leaves up into the air and it starts to pour again.

“We should go.” I turn away sharply and an acute wave of pain shoots across one eye, a piece of grit must have slipped behind my contact lens. I rub it reflexively, which only exacerbates it. “Bloody contact lens,” I gasp, cupping my eye. “Excuse me, I’ll just be a moment.”

Nate waves me in and I dart straight into the downstairs cloakroom. Pinching the lens off my pupil, I study the tiny dark speck at its edge, marvel how something so infinitesimally small can create such obliterating agony. I’m still tending to my inflamed eye when I see him behind me, leaning in the doorway.

“Your eyes, they’re different colors,” he says as I hold up my fingertip, one lens balanced on it, catching eyes with him in the mirror, as if I’ve been caught in a weirdly intimate act.

“Green contacts, yes. They’re my spares, a freebie I was sent at work. Not my first choice but I lost my glasses recently.” I overexplain but he’s not really listening. I thought maybe they made me look more attractive, perhaps even a bit inspired by Eva, with her gray-green eyes.

“Sometimes I wonder if there’s anything real about you at all,” he says. His words land as an accusation, but he is smiling, as if he’s seduced by his own idea of me.

We’ve shared our vulnerabilities, but in the grander picture, it’s as if the less he knows, the more he desires me. I think of everything I’ve learned about Nate, and wonder if maybe it’s the same for me too. He watches me adjust my lens, blinking to regain my vision.

“I could ask the same thing,” I reply. “What is remotely real about you?”

He catches my reflection in the mirror and we lock eyes.

“What is remotely real at this moment is how Ifeel—” he smiles, lingering on that word “—about you. That’s what’s real.”

I say nothing, turn around to face him, watch the outline of his collarbone under his open shirt, the curve of his skin there. My eyes travel up to meet his, and we look at one another for a brief moment, holding our breath. “You know that, Anna, don’t you?” he whispers and I nod.

I don’t say a thing and he reaches out, gently, lifts my hair from my neck and kisses me there. I tilt back my head, close my eyes as his mouth moves over mine. His hands move up my back as he presses me against the wall, lifting my legs around his waist. I register this from a distance until I register nothing at all, dissolving into the moment, all sensible thought melting away.

Eva’s Self-Reflection Journal

Patient X: “Eva?”

I hear them ask during our session, more insistent than before.

Me: “It’s nothing,” I hear myself stammer. “I admit this is new to me, this feeling of shared grief. I wish I could make it better for you, with everything that happened to you and your younger sister—”

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