Brian has the keys to his car. I wait for him to finish a call outside his office door. While I’m waiting, a mousy woman in her late forties or early fifties enters. She’s wearing a cheap-looking trouser suit. I don’t pay her any attention because she is not part of my plan and I am hyper-focused on making my defence against what has happened to Paula as robust as possible. That is until she introduces herself to Gavin.
‘Hi, I’m Detective Diane Gibson, I’m here to talk about an incident involving…’ and that’s all I hear before grey spots take over my vision and I fall to the floor.
30
When I come round, the first thing I see when I open my eyes is the hoover lying next to me, the grey oose and bits of hair and fluff inside it staring back at me. It makes my stomach lurch to be that close to filth, so I turn my head, wince at the office lights, take a moment to understand what is happening to the lower half of my body – my legs are being elevated by the detective. She has a friendly face; she’s probably the good cop when she does interrogations. Behind her Brian and Gavin are staring at me with differing levels of interest. Diane holds onto my ankles, places my feet gently onto the floor.
‘Have you eaten today? Usually when I see a young woman fainting it’s because their blood sugar is low.’
‘I know what this is,’ Brian interjects before I can speak. ‘She left the poke in the car from her lunch, she ate something from that bakers in Bothwell. It’s food poisoning. We got a steak pie out of there for Boxing Day one year and me and the missus were oot the game until Hogmanay.’
Diane jumps on this. ‘Aye, I went to school with the guy who runs it and he was clatty. I’ll bet that’s exactly what it is.’
They proceed to discuss the state of my health without asking me a single question. Everyone is absolutely convinced my sausage roll is why I fainted and I am bundled into a taxi with Gavin to protect me with minimal fuss. Before they shut the door on me I say to Brian, ‘I need to hoover your car.’
He doesn’t respond to me but says to Diane, ‘She’s my best worker, imagine caring about keeping the company car clean when her guts are a mess.’
As we drive away, I conclude the detective cannot be there for me otherwise she would not have allowed me to leave. The presumed certainty of my sickness means Gavin sits as far away from me in the back of the taxi as possible. The ride isn’t long, the radio station the driver has on was on an advert break when we got into the car and it remains playing commercials for a sofa warehouse when we get out.
‘You don’t need to come up with me. I can look after myself.’
Yet again my words are ignored. Gavin gets out of the car and comes into the close with me, shooing away Mrs Neilan’s yappy dog, who wanders the communal space every afternoon. In mine, they make me get changed into my pyjamas and offer to make me tea, and it’s then I realise I do, in fact, require looking after. When I am in my ugliest, comfiest, fleeciest pyjamas – a test: if they can fancy me like this their attraction is true – I lie down on the sofa and cover myself with the throw I slept under the night Gavin stayed over. I am an entirely new person compared to the woman who let them steal her bed only a month ago. I would like to dream about that version of me, remember the dull emotions of a nothing life where Paula lives… my eyes are shutting, all I can see is Paula’s face at the moment of impact, our eyes locked as we both realised we’d made a terrible mistake. I snap them open as Gavin appears with a cup of tea and places it on the ground beside me.
‘You probably don’t want that but there’s nothing else useful I could think of doing. Is there anything you actually do want from me?’
The clock on the mantlepiece behind them says it’s 3:15 pm. Gavin will need to return to work, I guess; they’ll still have tasks to do and I’m getting in the way of them. The idea of them leaving, of being alone, is repulsive. If they leave now I’ll have most of an afternoon plus a whole evening to drive myself mad. I curl my feet in so there’s clear space on the sofa for them to take.
‘You could keep me company for a bit?’
They look at their watch and then at the space beside me a few times. ‘Sure, Brian’ll understand.’ Gavin plonks themself beside me and I turn the telly on. It’s set to the channel that showsFixer Uppers Go Under the Hammerreruns in the evenings but which is currently showing an Australian programme where people decorate their homes with items they found in skips and then upcycled. ‘So, is this the type of TV you like to watch, then?’
I watch the presenter explain how they are going to transform an old Ikea wardrobe with wallpaper. ‘Only when I’m sick. Why, is there something else you’d prefer?’
‘As the patient, you get to choose.’
I move my feet so that the space between us is gone, the soles of my feet rest on the top of Gavin’s thighs. Their expression stays neutral to the extent that I think they are maybe only not making a fuss about it because I am ill. Then they hold onto my top foot, giving it a little squeeze.
‘I like you being here,’ I say.
They squeeze my foot again. ‘I’m really not doing much, but I’m glad my company is pleasing to you. I like being here, too. How you feeling?’
‘I’ve felt better. Never fainted before so that was interesting.’
‘Maybe for you. It was pretty frightening for me, to be honest.’
And despite my hesitancy to encourage this relationship, to have someone here who wants to be with me when I’m at my lowest tips me over the edge, and I don’t want to, but I start to cry. The emotion of everything that’s passed pours out of me. Gavin pulls me up to take me in their arms. Their armpits whiff of having perspired during the day; it’s the smell of intimacy, of being so comfortable with another human being you don’t mind if you stink a bit, and that makes me cry harder.
When the crying has eased I look into Gavin’s face and want to kiss them. Not because I am off-my-face horned up from the thrill of the kill, but because they are a nice, gorgeous, kind person and I want them to want me, to know they’re wanted by me. I can’t actually follow through with the kiss because they think I am on the verge of spewing from a dodgy baked good. Instead I coorie my head into their neck, they bring me in closer to them, and we sit like that long enough for Gavin to submit to staying.
‘You clearly can’t be left on your own, let me call Brian.’
I am unclear if this is Gavin’s way of understanding this switch in our relationship or if they think I am only like this because I am poisoned.
They excuse themself to make their phone call in the hallway.
‘Hi, Bri. Yeah, I don’t think Jemma should be left alone on her own. She’s really not well. I’ll come in early to sort what I’ve missed today, is that alright?’ There’s a break for Brian to speak. ‘Fuck! No? Really? What did they say? Are you alright?’ A longer break for Brian to explain what caused Gavin to swear. ‘Sure, yeah. See you in the morning. Night.’
My heart switches back into overdrive because the ‘fuck’ can only be connected to the detective, so when Gavin comes in and says, ‘You look even worse than when I left,’ I don’t take this to be a slight on their attraction to me, I know it to be true.
