Page 32 of Pictures of Him

The party began to get wilder. Alexa put on some music and most of us started dancing. I was a little drunk by now, and when you came up behind me, wrapping your arms around my waist and kissing my neck, I thought I’d never felt happier. I turned around and whispered into your ear, the words that were permanently in my head but I hadn’t yet been brave enough to say.

‘I. Love. You.’

You looked at me with such delight, your whole face transformed by pleased surprise.

‘Me too,’ you said, whispering back into my ear. ‘Catherine Elliot, me too.’

Now

They have brought proper clothes for me to wear, which means someone other than Sam and the children must be coming to visit. Normally it’s a tracksuit, elasticated waist, trousers pulled up, slippers pushed on, a look I would have hated in a different lifetime. But not here. Anything goes here. Today it’s a shirt, one I recognise, with white and grey stripes and tiny black dots; the pattern, harshly geometric, dances before my eyes.

‘Let me help you with those buttons, darling,’ says Alison, who often breaks the rules, brushing my hair or moisturising my skin when I am meant to be doing these things for myself now. ‘Let’s brighten you up a bit today,’ she says, unzipping a little red leather cosmetics bag that used to belong to me. I suppose it still does, but I feel no connection to it, this dead girl’s purse.

Alison dabs moisturiser onto my face in four places – forehead, both cheeks and chin – and smoothes it in with wide north-to-south circles. My mother used to do that.

‘What about a bit of this foundation? It would look lovely on you.’

More squeezing, more cream, more dabs. A soft brushpaints stripes on my cheekbones. Not the apples, which are lower down, not like they tell you in the magazines.

‘Last thing, beauty. Lip gloss. There. Pretty as a picture, aren’t you?’

The hiss of a zip being done up, rubber soles on lino walking away from me, then silence for a while. I turn my made-up face to the window and examine the tree, my stalwart friend, now in springtime bloom. I am thinking of you, of course, and that time we had, so precious, so short, an unexpected little burst of rewritten history. Did we treasure it, did we? I know I tried to stay awake in the nights just to hear your breathing or to press myself against your warm skin. I tried to keep my thoughts narrow and focused, on you, on the now, not worrying about our future, not fretting about our past. I didn’t manage very well at that, did I?

Alison’s shoes are squeaking towards me, and just behind them, something louder, clumpier. Clogs with wooden soles. I know who will be wearing them.

‘Here she is, my darling, here’s your friend come to see you.’

And then a voice I’ve always loved.

‘I gave her that shirt, Alison! Thank you for putting her in it.’

‘I know how it upsets you when she’s in her tracksuit. She used to care about how she looked, didn’t she? We’ll get there again, darling. Little by little.’

When Alison has gone, I feel Liv sitting down in the chair next to me. She takes my right hand and holds it in hers; she squeezes my fingers against her rings. It hurts a little.

‘Hey,’ she says, after a while. ‘I’ve brought some things to show you. Things you can touch. And smell. Things you might remember.’

This is not a new tactic but it is one Liv hasn’t tried before. I’ve held Daisy’s Eeyore and Joe’s Man U football shirt, and an old cashmere scarf of my mother’s that used to live under my pillow. And I’ve expressed nothing each time because nothing is what I crave. The trouble is, my nothing is running out. They keep telling me so.

‘Sooner or later, Catherine, we’re going to discharge you and you’ll be back at home. And we won’t be there to help you.’

I’m aware of this deadline – it looms, it looms – just as I’m aware of the need to start communicating with my family. If I was able to speak, I’d tell them so. I’d tell them I love them, that deep down inside somewhere I know I’m a mother and I guess I’m still a wife and I’m working my way back to that. But I can’t speak; there are no words, just my dreams and the interruption of others.

Liv turns my hand over and sprays something onto my arm, cool and wet. I don’t like it. She holds my wrist against my nose, strong, floral, foresty. I want to move my face away but I endure it, eyes ahead, nostrils flared against the assault.

‘You must remember that smell, Catherine? It’s Chanel No. 5. I wore it at university and you always stole it and it drove me mad. In the end I bought you a bottle for your birthday. You wore it every day until it ran out. That bottle lasted for years.’

We sit together, me doused in perfume, saying nothing, until the silence breaks.

‘Won’t you talk to me, Catherine? Please. Won’t you do it for me, for us?’

Not speaking to Liv, the person I’ve probably said the most words to in my life, is hardest of all. Sam leaves his anger in the room whenever he visits, but with Liv, every time, I feel her sorrow.

Time passes, I’m not sure how long, and then Liv places something between my hands, a sheet of paper, larger and thicker than a standard piece of A4.

‘It’s a drawing of you. I know that you can see it, Catherine. And I’m sorry if it hurts. But I want you to look.’

I don’t need to look to know what it is; I can tell by the weight and thickness and the swirls of darkness, charcoal grey. I’d like to be left alone now. I am ready to disappear, sinking into the warmth behind my eyelids, sucked into the whirlpool of dreams. What can I see? A bright, light room that is made of glass on three sides. A workbench littered with brushes and paints and pencils. And you. I can see you, brow furrowed, that hard, cold stare as you examine me, your slim, tanned hand streaking across the paper, the rapid back-and-forth movement as you shade my hair. And I am happy here, in the light, where no words are ever needed. If I could speak, I’d ask Liv for two things. Could I keep the drawing, could I hold it here against my heart? And could she leave, please, right now, before the light disappears and you are gone again.

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