Seb gives her a look. ‘You know who.’
Nico goes to say something, but Seb stops her.
‘It’s alright,’ he says. ‘Clara wants to fix everything. She thinks I’m floundering. She doesn’t understand—’ Seb stops himself, adjusts the cutlery in his empty bowl, lets out another sigh. ‘Sorry. You don’t need to hear about our relationship. It’s just, I don’t think she really gets it.’ He searches for the right words. ‘It’s not that I don’t want this role. I think it’s that I don’t want any role.’
Nico knows what he’s getting at. She leans back in her chair. ‘You’re done with acting.’
‘I’m not sure I was ever supposed to be an actor,’ Seb says. ‘And I’m not sure Clara is ever going to understand that.’
Once the plates are cleared and the bill is paid, Seb gives the dog a pat, and it snores itself awake. Seb and Nico leave the restaurant together, both heading for Old Street station, and they talk as they aim for the end of the road, Jasper tottering after. At some point, Seb stops talking, stops dead outside a particular building. His eyes snag on the hoarding, the boarded-up windows, the heavy padlock and the signs declaring that property guardians are operating here.
‘You know this place?’ Nico says.
‘Know it?’ He shakes his head, as if he can’t put into words how much of an understatement she’s made. ‘This used to be my home. Literally. Up there.’
He raises one tattooed hand, points from the abandoned pub on the ground floor to the windows of the flat above it. Nico remembers the place, an old grassroots music venue fallen on hard times. The kind of pub where people used to go to watch grungy bands swing guitars around in the noughties. Seb stares for what seems like forever, lost in the music of his own imagination. Then Nico chivvies him along, hugs him meekly once they reach the entrance of the station.
‘Hey,’ she says, searching for the right cliché. ‘It’ll all work out.’
Seb simply smiles. Then he scoops up Jasper and heads for the escalators, becomes nothing more than a beanie hat disappearing into a faceless crowd. All around him, movie posters. On each of them, a name that isn’t his.
a delivery driver
He spends his days being dragged back and forth across the city, arms clipped by wing mirrors, hands cramping around the handlebars of his motorbike. He delivers brown paper bags filled with overpriced burgers and veganised fried chicken to app-users in the comfort of their own homes, people who think nothing of paying the extra but always forget to leave a tip. He waits on the front step for his latest customer, sweating beneath his visor, glancing through a neighbour’s window. He sees them through the half-drawn curtain: a man and a woman, on the sofa.
The man is seated, his dark jeans around his ankles, his bronze legs splayed. The woman is on top of him, her pale, bare back exposed, the man’s tattooed hand travelling up the length of her. There’s something desperate in their movements, as if they’re clinging on to each other for dear life. She leans down, whispers something that can’t be heard. In the doorway behind them, a weekend bag sits idle on the floor. Perhaps one of them has just returned from somewhere. Perhaps one of them is going away.
Then the front door opens, and the order is complete, and the driver heads back out into the night.
a nurse
The couple had arrived separately. The man first, taking his seat in the waiting room. His eyes fixed on the built-in toy in one corner, a maze of wooden beads on a looping array of metal tracks. The woman came next, small and pale and fifteen minutes late, lost in a large woollen coat. She’d left a chair’s space between herself and her partner, had stared at the small grey square of sky through the only window until the doctor called them in.
Once the appointment is over, he tells them that they have a lot to discuss, that they can call him whenever they’re ready. Until then, he says, take as much time as you need. He closes the door quietly behind him. The nurse is left on the other side of a curtain, knowing the couple will presume they’re alone. A heartbeat. She decides to remain still, to allow them their privacy. She tries her best not to watch the two shadows that linger behind a thin boundary of clinical polyester.
‘How is this happening?’ the male shadow says, after a while. ‘How are we here?’
The female shadow is sitting on a bed, shoulders slumped. It’s a while longer before she speaks. When she does, her voice is quiet.
‘Something’s wrong with us.’
‘Don’t think like that,’ he says.
‘Why not?’ his partner replies, quickly. ‘They can’t even tell us what it is. Maybe we’re just incompatible.’
‘Clara…’
‘Other people find it easy.’ Her voice chokes. ‘This was supposed to be a good thing.’
It’s too much for the man. He walks away. He’s wearing heavy boots, and his feet squeak against the linoleum. He stops near the door, seems to be wrestling with his emotions.
‘It can still be a good thing,’ he says. ‘We just need a bit of help.’
‘How much help?’
‘We don’t need to decide now.’
A silence.
