It’s been 15 years since we broke up, but I left things in his house and I have to collect them. I don’t want to go.
I enter through the back door, as usual, and he’s there, standing on the stairs. He asks if I am here to have sex with him. I answer, “No,” abruptly, assertively, because I am 35 years old. But I make a beeline for the toilet and lock myself in because my heart is beating like a drum and I’m afraid he’ll hear it. The stairs are on the other side of the wall.
I sit on the lid of the toilet in the small space and breathe. I don’t remember these shiny black skirting tiles. Stuck to them are clumps of dust and strands of long hair. My hair?
I know I have to face the music so I open the door. I see him in the living room, standing with his back to me watching TV. I bolt up the stairs, two at a time, and enter the bedroom.
There is so much of my stuff in this room that I don’t know where to start. It covers every surface and every inch of carpet. I put my fingers to my temples, groan. How did I not realise there would be so much stuff? It’s mostly clothes, and I begin to stuff them into black bin liners. No point trying to organise them now.
I hear him coming up the stairs and I pack faster, ramming skirts and jumpers that I don’t remember buying into plastic that is ripping at the seams. He’s in the room now, standing behind me, and he’s talking to me but I’m not listening. It’s getting late. I’ve got to get this done. And it’s then that I look up at a huge square window that I’ve never seen before. Was it always there? Maybe I wasn’t tall enough to see out before. I go to it. I gasp when I see the sea. I’d always thought the city was landlocked.
The bedroom is dark but the outside scene is so implausibly vibrant – functional families playing on the beach and surfers riding perfect waves in Hockney colours. What time is it out there?
The sun warms my face through the glass and fills my body up with light.