Once inside, he asked for a glass of water. He sat at the kitchen table, words falling out of him, the water untouched. Two days before he’d come home and found Minna gone. The letter she’d left said that she was going away to be alone and work out what she wanted to do with her life. She didn’t want to see him over the summer, and he was not to try to find her. ‘Where is she?’ he asked again.
I was trying to grasp that Minna had left – left without a word or a sign to me. On the weekend we’d paid our last visit to the flea market. Minna was wearing sparkly socks, Doc Martens and a child’s puff-sleeved frock – she’d inserted panels of clashing fabrics into the side seams to make it fit. A long, ratty waistcoat, blue and orange bands with metal toggles, caught her eye at a stall. She slipped it on over her dress. The result was pure uglification, but she didn’t buy the waistcoat. I knew why now: it would have been one more thing to abandon when she left. Why hadn’t she confided in me? I want us to stick together, always. Wasn’t she the one who’d said that? Our winding conversations, Daring Audrey, Sardinia – they all slid into a ravine. None of it counted for her, I told myself. My mind went shimmery with self-pity and wine. There wasn’t any wine to hand – a stupid oversight.
A length of stale baguette lay on the table. Nick tore off a piece and ate it, and then he ate another. I found a wedge of brie in the fridge and placed it before him with a knife. When I asked why it had taken him two days to tell me about Minna, he said, ‘I thought she’d be back. She hadn’t taken her clothes.’ In a different tone he added, ‘Her fucking clothes!’ He crammed in great chunks of cheese and bread, and between each mouthful his voice changed. The voice would accuse Minna of selfishness and lies, and then it would speak of loss. It was a striped voice. It said, ‘She’s nothing to me/She’s everything.’ Both declarations were true.
The voice talked about a man in Lyon. Pete was making a documentary about immigrant workers there. The voice believed that Minna had gone to him. ‘I’ve seen the way she looks at Pete. He’s the still-waters kind. Runs shallow. But handsome, I’ll give him that.’
How plainly did Minna have to speak before she was believed? ‘She’s told you she wants to be alone,’ I said. ‘Why imagine she’s with someone else? She’s not a parcel to be passed around.’ Before I’d finished I was yawning, and my words slurred. Minna and Nick – I was tired of them both. But Nick at least could be put to use. There was the same faint hum that I’d heard in Jamal’s room – it was the sound of my blood coursing. ‘You’d better come with me,’ I said and pushed back my chair. ‘I’m going to bed.’
