Blindly, I feel for my vape. Gerald would have a fit if he discovered I vaped in the flat (another bullshit reason Marcus wanted me out, conveniently overlooking that baggy of coke he keeps in his briefcase), but I need something to occupy the witching hours. Perhaps Gerald should go live with Marcus, and I could return to my heavenly room at Stefan’s. Stefan vapes too, when Marcus isn’t around.
Just one night of eight hours’ kip would be nice, though. I swear it would help me calm the fuck down. Clear my head, make me less jittery. Make my thoughts sharper, nicer, more contemplative. Make me more likeable, less annoying. I’d have more friends. Marcus and Stefan might realise there’s an Alaric-shaped hole in the flat.
Who knows? Even Gerald might like me.
The mythical eight aren’t happening tonight, that’s for sure. As the hours bleed into each other on a never-ending loop, my new room hums with the restless energy of a mind refusing to switch off. The bed I rated as comfy several hours earlier is now too soft and too firm in all the wrong places. Often when this happens, sleeping on the floor does the trick. The freedom to be able to stretch out in any direction helps, especially if I put a couple of layers of Stefan’s soft sofa throws underneath. Gerald’s extensive set of rules didn’t say anything to trap me on the mattress. Shame I don’t have any spare bedding to pad the oak floorboards with.
My thoughts chase each other like excitable kids trapped in an impossible maze. Why was the last patient’s potassium low? Did I complete that CT request before leaving the ward yesterday? What shall I have for dinner tomorrow? Which shirt needs ironing? When is an acceptable time in Sutton Common to get up and go for a run? Will my sister’s birthday card reach her if I post it on Saturday? Will it arrive too soon if I post it on Friday?
Why do I have a sneaking feeling Gerald avoided me last night by taking a non-existent dog out for a walk?
Who, except for my brain at three a.m., gives a flying fuck?
Gerald’s definitely avoiding me. When I return on Sunday morning from an early run, he’s at the tiny table in the kitchen,eating a bowl of overnight oats (why do people go to the effort of planning misery the night before?) and listening to a programme on Radio 4 about Mongolian farming techniques. When I join him with my dish of Coco Pops, I swear he chomps faster.
But I’m nothing if not super fucking perseverant. “Great flat, Gerald.”Thanks for asking how I’m settling in.“Such a quiet area.”Like sleeping alongside the dead.
“Yeah.”
I glance up at the window. “It was trying to rain again earlier. It’s a good thing, probably. The gardens need some rain.”
Oh God, I’ve only lived in suburbia twenty-four hours, and already I sound like a 1950’s housewife. I’ll be invited to join the Neighbourhood Watch if I don’t rein it in.
According to the radio, turns out Mongolian livestock herders follow a pattern ofnomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralism. My new flat is the gift that keeps on giving.
“What are your plans for the day?”Please say robbing a bank or defacing the neighbour’s lawn.Perhaps he’s a guerrilla graffiti artist in his spare time. Perhaps Gerald’s secretly responsible for the colourfully daubedyour eyebrows look like two slugs fuckingaccompanied by an excellentsketch of two fat cartoon slugs doing exactly that, scrawled on a wall next to Embankment Tube Station.
Or perhaps not. Gerald gapes at me as if I’ve given him five seconds to calculate the cube root of 3567. His eyes are big and brown, but not in a smouldering, “pools of dark chocolate” kind of way. More judgy, like he’s slightly suspicious and wary of my nonsense, confirmed when he raises one of his thick, untamed slugbrows.
“I’ll… um…take the dog out in a minute.”
I arch one of my own, far thinner, shapelier brows. Yep, avoiding me and not giving a shit that I know it. “Uh-huh.”
“And…um.” Gerald spoons virtuous oat mush into his mouth. He’s sprinkled fucking chia seeds over it too; the whole thing is almost enough to put a man off his Coco Pops. “I have book club at eight o’clock tonight.”
“Cool.” The remote control will be mine for the evening. “Where’s that at?”
He shovels in some more oats. I nearly tell him to slow down; he’ll give himself indigestion. That stuff is heavy as fuck. “It’s online. I run it. I… um… I sometimes Airplay it to the TV in the lounge so I can have everyone on screen. So if you don’t mind…”
Yep, that’s me back in my room. “Sure, no worries. I’ve got some work admin to catch up on anyhow. I’ll be quiet as a mouse. Promise. Hey, we could eat together first,” I suggest, like a fucking masochist. “Before book club.”
Gerald jerks his head up. Both slugbrows climb his forehead again.
“Only if you want,” I amend. “Uber Eats delivers to here, I guess? And you probably already know the best takeaway places. I’m easy. I’ll eat anything as long as someone else is cooking; Thai, Indian, Chinese—pizza if you like, though I had pizza yesterday when you were out with your…um…dog. It was okay, an 8-inch Hot Hawaiian, and who doesn’t fantasise about chowing down on one of those on a Saturday night?”
Gerald, from the looks of things.
“Though not my favourite Hot Hawaiian,” I blabber on, “as they didn’t put sweetcorn on it and I forgot to ask, ‘cos the amazing pizza place near my last flat had sweetcorn as standard on the Hot Hawaiian and so?—“
“I flattened the box and put it in the recycling bin,” he interrupts. “I recycle everything, if I can.”
“God, absolutely. Yeah. Me too.” Guiltily, my gaze darts to the kitchen bin hiding last night’s empty aluminium gin and tonic can. “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle,” I add, with as muchconviction as I can muster. “Flattening that box was absolutely at the top of my to-do list this morning. Greta for the win, yeah?”
Gerald blinks. “Right.”
“So, dinner?”
“Um.”
