‘Nonsense.’ He pulled a chair back from the table. ‘And it’s not my house, it’s our house.’
Sinead smiled softly. ‘I just wanted to say thanks, you know, for looking after me.’
He flicked his wrist like he was batting away a fly. ‘Any friend would do the same under the circumstances.’
‘Well it’s more than my friends would ever do. So… anyway, I just hope I can repay you somehow.’ She smiled at him again with real warmth. His expression remained neutral; she worried that she hadn’t sounded sincere. Sinead looked down at the dish and sliced two portions; she could feel Elliot’s eyes on her. She plated up and passed it to him.
***
After lunch, Sinead stacked the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and wiped down the table with a J-cloth. It was a conscious effort to clean up after herself; despite what he’d said about this being her house too, she couldn’t afford to give Elliot any more reasons to evict her. He was clearly just being polite. From now on she had to play the part of the perfect lodger. The thought of having to find somewhere else to live, with this bloody plaster cast on her leg and no money in the bank filled her with anxiety. She realised she was now completely reliant on Elliot’s goodwill; being a moody cow and chucking up on the man’s floor wouldn’t win her any brownie points.
A pungent, acrid smell wafted into the kitchen from the living room. Sinead wrinkled her nose and moved to the doorway. Elliot was sitting on the sofa; she saw the back of his balding head and heavy black smoke rising up around him.
‘Is that hash or something?’
Elliot lifted up his arm: a short, stubby cigar was protruding from his fingers.
‘Oh, it’s a cigar.’ Sinead was about to comment on how badly it stank, but instantly reconsidered. That might irritate him. She hobbled over to the sofa and saw Elliot’s profile as he puffed away, making smoke circles as he exhaled. He looked kind of smug.
‘Does the smell bother you?’ he said.
‘No, not really. I just didn’t know what it was.’
His gaze was fixed on the window, which was open two inches. ‘I would have gone outside, but it started to rain.’
‘Hey – it’s your house, right?’
‘Our house, Sinead.’ He turned his head towards her then, just fractionally. ‘Did you want to sit down?’
Sinead leant back on her crutches. The fracture was killing her; she needed to take some painkillers. ‘No, that’s okay. I’ll go and hang out in my room.’
‘So it does bother you.’
Sinead laughed and shook her head. He was watching her now, the cherry-red tip of the cigar pointing in her direction. ‘It doesn’t bother me. But it’s sort of… funny, I guess.’
‘What’s funny?’
‘That Gumtree advert you posted. The first thing it said was, Smokers need not apply.’
Elliot exhaled slowly. He reached towards the table, picked up a saucer and positioned it underneath the cigar. ‘Of course. Well, you see, this is just an occasional indulgence. I allow myself one cigar when I’m in a particularly good mood.’ He tapped ash onto the saucer. ‘I didn’t want to be lumbered with some horrible chav, sitting here with their feet up on the table, chain-smoking filthy Rothmans day and night.’
Sinead thought that was a snobby thing to say. ‘I never really liked smoking anything. I’d pretend to have the odd puff on a spliff, just because everyone else was doing it, but, yeah, honestly it doesn’t bother me.’ She was about to go off to her bedroom when he said something that stopped her.
‘My wife wasn’t too keen, either.’
Sinead turned round as best she could. ‘I didn’t know you were married.’
Elliot’s lips puckered as he savoured the smoke. A good twenty seconds went by before he replied. Sinead waited, feeling awkward. Maybe this wasn’t something he wanted to discuss.
‘Technically, I suppose I’m still married. But in my mind I’m already a widower.’ He closed his eyes, a hand resting on his lap, the cigar between his fingers. Smoke was filling the air.
Sinead coughed. She tried making sense of that, but it was just too damn weird. ‘You mean your wife is no longer… um… she’s… I don’t quite understand what you mean.’
Elliot’s eyes remained shut. The cigar was now gradually slipping between his fingers, but he was unaware of its progress; moving like a clock hand from twelve to four, the burning tip was heading for the sofa seat.
Sinead was becoming concerned. ‘Elliot…’
He opened his eyes. ‘I suppose that does sound somewhat confusing. But no, my wife is still with us.’ He turned to Sinead. ‘She exists, but you wouldn’t exactly say that she’s living. She’s not well, you see. Not well at all.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Sinead moved her eyes down to the sofa cushion. ‘Elliot, your cigar!’ He followed her look and saw the embers burning into the upholstery. Without urgency, Elliot moved the cigar away and brushed off the ash with his other hand. A two-pound coin-sized blackened hole was revealed. The sofa padding had been seconds away from catching fire. But Elliot’s expression didn’t alter; he seemed completely unfazed by the accident. Sinead was actually relieved – at least now she wasn’t the only one who’d caused damage to his property.
‘What’s her name?’
He tilted his head and stared at her. His eyes were cold and threatening; it was the first time he’d looked at her that way. Sinead sensed she’d overstepped some invisible line. ‘Sorry, I just thought that maybe you wanted to talk about her.’ She shifted her weight, ready to move away.
‘She couldn’t even tell you her own name,’ Elliot said. He put his thumb over the burnt hole and rubbed the material. ‘Vas-cu-lar de-men-tia.’ He enunciated each syllable of the disease with a peculiar precision.
‘Oh.’ Sinead was way out of her comfort zone. Dementia? How old was this woman? ‘I’m sorry. That’s awful. It must be… really difficult.’ There was nothing else she could say; she’d mistakenly strayed into the man’s personal life. It was none of her business.
Elliot stubbed the cigar tip into the saucer and held it there, sizzling. ‘That’s a shame. I was quite enjoying that…’ He studied the dying tobacco embers turning to ash on the saucer. ‘…until you started bothering me with personal questions.’ He turned and fixed Sinead with a malignant stare. His expression was seriously unnerving and she immediately looked away. It was time to go. Without another word, she went down the hall and into her room.
***
The laptop screen went black just as the Japanese girl with the insanely straight hair was demonstrating for her audience how to apply perfect, smear-free lipstick every time. Sinead chuckled, relieved that her computer’s battery had made an executive decision, rescuing her from the teenage vlogger’s bizarrely hypnotic banality.
Sinead had disappeared down a gaping YouTube hole for the past three hours, sitting through the latest X Factor music videos, a funny Theresa May mash-up song, various dogs on trampolines, a surreal Czechoslovakian animation, some scary public safety films from the 1970s, a grainy VHS upload of a Marilyn Monroe documentary and countless other clips that she’d already forgotten. The low battery icon had popped up during footage of a spoilt American brat being hilariously obnoxious on her sweet sixteen, but Sinead had been so transfixed by the screen that she didn’t get up to fetch the power cord.
It was nine thirty; she had been in her room for most of the afternoon and evening. Elliot had brought her a cheese and tomato sandwich for supper, but otherwise he had stayed in the living room, listening to nineties rock music. He was in a strange mood, almost as though he was on drugs: excitable and jittery. Except he really didn’t seem the type to do coke or MDMA; he was clearly someone who needed to be in control.