‘I’m sure he does think about you. I’m sure he really does care about you, as he cares for all the people in this building. And in your case, he remembers how it was, before… well, before you developed these feelings for him, when the two of you could just be friends. He wishes things could be like that again.’
‘He puts it all onto me, does he? How very convenient.’
‘He’d like to see you. He told me so himself. In fact he said he’d love to see you if—’
‘That’s enough! That’s more than enough. You promised me – you promised me, David – that you wouldn’t pass on a single word he said.’
She cocks her head, pulls back her wisp of hair, listening once more with all her might. Then, apparently hearing nothing new, she stands up straight.
‘He had a visitor yesterday evening. I couldn’t tell who it was.’
She takes another long draw on her cigarette, looking over at me all the while in a sideways, sneaky sort of way.
‘And you are certainly not going to tell me, are you, David? That would be quite against all those high principles of yours.’
Getting no reply from me, she cocks her head again, and listens to the floor for a few seconds more before giving an irritated shrug and stubbing out the cigarette. I don’t know anyone who can consume a cigarette as fast as my aunt Angelica.
‘Typical of him, really. “I know what I’ll do,” he says to himself, “I’ll invite a mystery guest. That will arouse Angelica’s interest! That will get her going!” Well, let me tell you this, David, I’m not the slightest bit interested. Not the slightest. Some floozy no doubt, some little tart. What concern is that of mine? In fact, even if you did try to tell me who the visitor was, I wouldn’t listen. Certainly not. I’d block my ears and make a sound like this.’
She sticks her fingers in her ears, and chants ‘Na na na na na!’
Angelica is angry.
‘Why didn’t you say he was about to go?’
She is pacing around her room, smoking furiously. Her face is pale and taut.
‘When was it anyway? Last night? Oh I knew it! I just knew it! I heard the door as he crept out. He tried to do it quietly of course, the coward, but he’s always been a clumsy oaf. And then I heard a car starting up, down towards the end of the street. I suppose he thought I wouldn’t know it was him if he parked right down there at the bottom, but I knew alright. I knew it was his car. I heard it pause at the turning and then move off again. And then afterwards I heard the silence. No thoughts down there any more from beneath my floor. No mumbling and muttering and thumping about. Just silence once again.’
She glares at me.
‘Don’t smirk at me in that knowing way, David. You look just like your mother. I heard all of that, all of it, whether you believe me or not. But you hadn’t told me, had you? You’d let me down yet again. You’d absolutely promised you’d tell me, and yet you said nothing. And so naturally I doubted myself.’
She turns and hurries through to the little kitchen at the back of the flat, running, almost, in her eagerness. Pulling back the curtain, she presses her face against the window to peer down at the tiny back yard, with its empty washing line and its concrete slabs and its five metal dustbins in a row, with the flat numbers marked in yellow paint: 27 A, 27 B, 27 C, 27 D, 27 E.
She turns back into the room.
‘All night I listened to the car. I heard it going through the streets, and then up the motorway. Birmingham, the North, Scotland, up and up and up. All those lonely places in the night. All those cold orange lights shining down… I knew he’d gone but you hadn’t told me so I thought perhaps I was going mad. You – should–-have – told – me!’
‘He had to leave earlier than he thought. He’ll probably be back again next year, but—’
‘It’s entirely up to him, David. Why should I care? What difference does it make to me?’
She turns once again to the kitchen window, looks down at the bins. Those blue roofs wind unnoticed over the hill.
‘I expect he’s left all kinds of rubbish down there.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought so. He’s only been here a day. What sort of rubbish did you have in mind?’
Angelica snorts.
‘All kinds of rubbish,’ she repeats firmly. ‘He always does, the great lout. He leaves a trail of the stuff wherever he goes.’
When I go back later in the day, I find Angelica outside.
She almost never ventures down the stairs – a van delivers her shopping and the man carries the bags up to her – but now she’s come down, and out through the front door, and into the great terrifying space under the sky. As I arrive, she’s making her way round the back of the house, using her left hand to maintain contact with the building’s reassuring wall, and keeping up a constant muttered monologue to hold the world at bay. She hasn’t noticed that I’m here.
‘All kinds of rubbish,’ she says to herself, with that haughty little snort of a laugh and, though she herself lives in Flat E, she heads straight for the bin marked 27D.
‘Aha!’ she mutters as she lifts the lid. ‘I knew it.’
At the bottom of the bin she’s seen a small plastic bag, such as might line a wastepaper basket. She still hasn’t noticed me as she reaches in, with a grunt of effort and pulls out the bag, emptying its contents onto the ground. There’s an apple core, a free newspaper, a box that once contained a ready-cooked beef lasagne, and the soiled metal tray in which the lasagne was cooked. But what interests her is a little scrumpled ball of blue paper. It looks like a discarded letter, or a draft found wanting and thrown away. One corner is stained brown by the lasagne.
Angelica kneels on the ground to smooth it out against the concrete. Yesterday’s date is scrawled at the top and after that…
But I can’t watch this in silence any more.
‘Aunty Angelica?’ I murmur.
Still on her knees, she wheels round like some small cornered animal.
‘What are you doing here?’ she hisses, clutching the crumpled paper against herself as she clambers hastily to her feet. ‘I really can’t stand the way you keep creeping and snooping round me. So like your mother. I’m a grown-up woman, for goodness sake, David. Do you really think I can’t look after myself?’
‘Well, sometimes you do need a bit of help, Aunty, and you did seem very upset earlier. I was just calling by to make sure you were alright, and then I noticed you down here by the bins.’
‘So you thought you’d have a bit of a laugh at old Angelica, did you? Have a bit of a laugh, eh, and then get in your mother’s good books by telling her the whole story? Go away, David. I don’t want you. Just go, go, go!’
But a few hours later, she calls me in tears, begging me to come back over.
I let myself into the flat with my own key and find her sobbing on the floor beside her dresser. She’s still clinging to that little piece of paper, though she’s scrumpled it back up into a sodden ball. Gently I remove it from her hand and set it down.
Some time later, when I’ve poured her a brandy and tucked her up for the night, I have a look at it, but there’s almost nothing to see. All that’s written there, apart from the date, is the single word which most letters begin with.