The act of reading is making her both embarrassed and miserable and he doesn’t want to put her through it again. He reaches out and she hands him the journal. The second entry is even angrier.
6 April
Why the fuck does the bitch have to be vegetarian? We have a fridge that’s always packed with food and never anything to fucking well eat. I don’t buy it, this refusing to eat meat shit. She doesn’t give a fuck about animal welfare, it’s all about Felicity’s non-stop campaign to prove to the world that she’s better than the rest of us.
Oh, I’m Flawless Felicity, I don’t eat animals.
Oh, I’m Faultless Felicity, I’m passionate about animal welfare.
Hello, I’m Fabulous Felicity, and my body is a temple.
Self-righteous bitch.
A feeling of deep unease is stealing over Joe and he is more glad than he could put into words that he has bolted the loft hatch, that she is getting her locks changed. There is only one more entry in the diary.
19 April
The others have been on at me to say something nice about Felicity so, here goes – she’s kind. She found a young bird that couldn’t fly the other day and she was worried that the foxes would get it if she left it outside overnight, so she put it in a box with holes in the lid and put the box in her log store overnight. She even drove to the pet store to find some wild bird food so it wouldn’t starve. She was planning to let it out the next morning if it had recovered enough to fly away.
I waited till she was asleep and then I crept into the courtyard. I opened the log store, and then the box. The bird looked up at me with big black eyes. I think it was on the verge of hopping out of the box when I grabbed it and broke its neck.
I put the box back. She found the bird the next morning. Sentimental bitch actually cried.
Felicity is kind. I’m not.
* * *
‘Have you got to the bit about the bird?’ she asks him.
He looks up. ‘Just finished.’
‘It was a young starling. I thought it died of cold or was too weak. But what if it was me? What if I got up in the night and I broke its neck. What the hell is wrong with me?’
Her face creases into an expression of unbearable pain. She needs to cry, he realises. She needs to let out some of the tension she’s been holding back, but her fists are clenched and she’s biting down hard on her lower lip. And then, with a moan, she drops her face into her hands and begins to sob. After a few moments, he is worried that she will never stop.
He wants nothing more than to cross to her and take her in his arms. No one should have to cry like this and not be comforted. He is even on the point of easing himself off his seat when he has a sudden vision of his mother.
Delilah is standing at the foot of his hospital bed, the morning after he almost died. Her face is drained of colour and there are mascara smudges around her eyes. He knows she has been up all night, hunting down Ezzy Sheeran.
He owes something to his mother, and he knows that Delilah wouldn’t want him even to be here. He cannot go anywhere near Felicity in her distress. All he can do is wait. And be practical. In the bathroom he finds a box of tissues.
‘I’m actually going bonkers, aren’t I?’ Felicity says, when he hands it to her.
‘That term is losing favour in clinical circles.’ He doesn’t resume his seat. ‘It’s late, I should leave you in peace.’
She mutters something he doesn’t quite catch.
‘What did you say?’
‘I hear voices too,’ she tells him.
His heart sinks. Even so, he has to go.
‘We’ll talk about it next week. In the meantime, if anything happens, call me.’
Joe makes himself leave. Before switching on the ignition he turns to wave at Felicity in the window of her spare room and is surprised to find it empty. He could have sworn, for a moment there, that someone was watching him getting into his car.
So convinced is he that he waits for her to reappear. He lowers the car window so that he can hear the late birds, the distant traffic, the laughter of people at a nearby barbecue. The spare room window remains dark and empty.
He gets out of the car and walks away from it. ‘Anyone there?’ he says, in a low voice.
Silence answers him. Silence, not emptiness.
He is some distance from the park bench where he first met Ezzy Sheeran but his eyes are drawn to it all the same.
‘That won’t be possible, I’m afraid,’ he’d said to her, when she’d asked about coming home with him, and he’d walked swiftly away. She hadn’t followed him that time, and he hadn’t looked back, but the following Tuesday she’d been waiting in line for him at St Martin’s.
In a safer environment, surrounded by other people, he’d felt comfortable enough to spend time with her. He’d liked her bright mind, her independence, even her sense of fun. He’d viewed her interest in him as nothing more than healthy empathy – so often the homeless were entirely self-absorbed – and he’d been convinced he could help her.
His mother talked about boundaries, unfairly in Joe’s view. He’d tried so hard to draw them with Ezzy but she’d not so much sidestepped as bulldozed her way straight through them. Over the following weeks and months she’d become his shadow, to the point where he’d forgotten what it felt like to be alone.
He is getting that same feeling now.
More troubled than ever, Joe gets back into his car. He has made Felicity as secure as possible. He can do no more for tonight.
He is almost back in the city when something occurs to him. He should have thought of it before. The third diary entry.
The others have been on at me to say something nice about Felicity …
Who the hell are ‘the others’?
32
Felicity
‘Hello.’
Felicity’s voice cuts through the quiet of the darkened room. She is lying on her bed and it is twilight outside. Her mobile phone is in her hand, pressed to her ear. Outside, someone on roller skates glides past the house.
‘It’s Joe,’ the voice on the phone says. ‘Hope this isn’t a bad time.’
‘No, it’s fine.’ She makes no attempt to move as she flicks through pages in her recent memory. It is Saturday – she hopes to God it is still Saturday – and she remembers shopping and doing chores in the morning. She remembers going for a run at lunchtime, a little earlier than usual, because she had to get back to take a Skype call from South Georgia.
So, did she talk to the woman on South Georgia? Yes, she can picture her face on the computer screen, and behind her a window overlooking a huge and turbulent sea. The two of them talked about a blue lake on one of the glaciers that fills over the course of the summer and then suddenly, and without warning, drains until it leaves behind an empty basin on the ice. Yes, she can remember the Skype interview very clearly, but after that…?
Joe is speaking and Felicity forces herself to listen. ‘So, the results of the CAT scan are back and the good news is there’s no sign of anything out of the ordinary.’
‘I don’t have cancer,’ she says. ‘What about dementia?’
‘Nothing. And no sign of stroke damage. Your brain is perfectly healthy.’