“Valid,” she agrees warmly behind me, and I hear a loud kiss. My stomach suddenly hurts a bit. It’s funny how living in a house with other people in it feels infinitely lonelier than living completely alone.
Slipping off my shoes and leaving them lined up on the rack in the hallway—they’re the only shoes on there, the rest are piled on the floor, which leaves me questioning why we even have a rack—I make my way up the stairs to my room, unzipping as I go. As soon as the door is closed, I rip the blue dress off and lob it violently across the room, then pull on my yellow dressing gown and feel immediately calmer. It smells like me. It feels like me. Softness settles on my skin and I can see Mum: fluffing the duvet on top of me while I lie rigidly on the bed, giggling with my eyes closed. It was so delicious and made me so happy, she did it every single night, even though I’m now realizing her arms must have ached with the weight of it.
I still miss it, so much. I’ve tried to fluff my own duvet and dive under it at the last moment, but honestly, it just doesn’t have the same impact.
Smiling slightly, I glance around the room. Every cell in my body is slowly unfurling, as if I’m covered in leaves: as if I’m a plant taken out of a pot and put back in the ground.
My bedroom is back to normal again. Will ran out so quickly after both our breakups—aka this morning, aka yesterday morning, aka four months in the future—and I was too distressed to make the bed and open the curtains or remove his one dirty sock from my wastepaper basket.
Now time has done it for me, like an invisible Mary Poppins.
My bed is smooth, perfect, made with the specific soft, fresh white bedding I stock up on and keep stored in the cupboard. The curtains are billowing gently and the sun is lighting up the eyes on my little blue owl toy. My soft green blanket is folded perfectly, and my books are arranged in size, then color, then in order of how much I like them. My beautiful—mainly vintage—clothes are all arranged chromatically, like a rainbow, and my shelves have all my ornaments on them, strategically arranged and carefully dusted every Sunday evening: a bust of Athena, a tiny gold miniature of Medusa, an Aphrodite pendant, a little jeweled peacock that is Hera’s favorite.
Honestly, I think I can take changing the universe in my stride as long as nobody screws with my bedroom.
Feeling peaceful now, I turn my music to a looped piano track and feel every note: running along my shoulder blades, down my vertebrae, across my thighs and into my feet, a moving wave of bliss. The wrong noises hurt me—pinching, punching, scraping—but the opposite is true too: a shifting kind of sweetness in every organ. I don’t think I could give up one if it meant losing the other; not—in fairness—that anyone is giving me the option.
Smiling, I light a candle—feel the crackle in my ears and the glow in the small of my back—then wander around my bedroom, touching everything with my fingers and making a list of whatever time has erased. A specific book about Medea. A rare pair of thin gold hoop earrings that don’t tug at my earlobes. An extraordinary green silk jacket that feels like a nectarine and makes me think of a specific oak tree at the bottom of the garden where I grew up.
Satisfied, I fill my watering can from my sink and wander round to check how time travel has affected all my plants. They’re a little smaller—as is to be expected—but they seem content. Happy. There’s Melpomene—a philodendron—which thrives in the dark just like the goddess of tragedy, as does my bird of paradise, Urania (the Muse of astronomy). Terpsichore (the goddess of dance) is a fern that rustles when the window is open, and Aphrodite is the string of hearts hanging by my bed. My snake plant is obviously called Medusa, my pothos is called Pothos (son of Eros), and I’d go on, but at this point people normally ask me not to.
“Arachne?” I lean toward my spider plant. “What’s up? You’re looking a little sad. Hot? Cold? Too much sun? Tell me what you need. You’re not thirsty, so don’t give me that—you get watered on Tuesdays.”
“Hey, Cassie?” A soft knock on my door. “Are you on the phone?”
“Umm.” The alternative is a conversation with vegetation, so... “Yes. Hang on. Let me just say goodbye. Yup. Yup. Uh-huh. Sure. That’s so interesting. Speak to you later. Bye.”
Flushing, I put the watering can down and grab the blue tulle ruffles from the floor.
Then I open the bedroom door and thrust it forward.
“Here you go. It doesn’t smell.”
“Cool.” Salini laughs and takes it out of my hands. “Cheers.”
“Actually, it might smell.” I take it off her again. “And be a bit damp. I’m really sorry. I can dry-clean it. It’s just...” The tube was crowded and a man touched me and I yelped like a stepped-on dog and everyone stared at me and I literally felt the sweat break out beneath my underwire. “I sweat profusely.”
“The best girls do.” Sal grins, carefully taking the outfit back again. “This is an amazing dress, Cassie, and it’s so generous of you. No need to apologize. You’re a strange one, sometimes.”
She says it mildly—almost affectionately—but it’s still weird how people observe things like that as if it’s news to me; as if my strangeness wasn’t one of the first things I ever learned about myself.
“Also, you forgot your dinner.” Sal hands me my steaming chili on a plate; she’s popped some garlic bread and grated cheese on top. “So I thought I’d bring it up for you. Here you go.”
I am so unbelievably moved by this gesture I’m not sure what to do with it.
“Thank you.” I take the plate, feeling abruptly weepy. “I don’t really like the garlic bread touching the chili, though. It goes soggy.”
I take the garlic bread off and hand it back, so it doesn’t get wasted.
“Noted.” Sal’s nostrils twitch again, and she shoves the bread in her mouth, then reaches into her apron pocket and pulls out an envelope. “I nearly forgot, Cassie. This arrived this morning for you. Smells of...” She sniffs it experimentally. “Roses?”
“Pomegranate,” I say flatly, taking it off her.
“I didn’t even know people still bought scented stationery.” Sal leans against the doorway, hip resting on the door frame. “Or wrote letters, for that matter. It’s so old-school. Looks like a lot of effort’s been put into it. Long-lost love?”
“Not lost enough,” I say, lobbing it on the bed. “Clearly.”
The handwritten word Cass feels like it’s pulsing in neon letters. The envelope is lying quietly but dangerously on my duvet cover as if it’s an ancient grenade still with the potential to take down a whole building. My stomach twists painfully. I keep moving house, but they always find me. This is the first of what is about to be four handwritten letters to this address and it just feels like a waste of stamps, calligraphy ink and rain-forest materials. They write apologies; I don’t read them or reply. My response is unchanging and incredibly easy to predict: you’d think they’d have worked it out by now.
When I finally turn back, Sal is still standing in my doorway—apparently waiting for something, but I don’t know what.
“Is there anything I can help you with, Salini?”
“Oh!” Sal blinks three times and finishes the soggy garlic bread. “No. I just thought we might... Never mind. Cheese to sprinkle. Lasagna to burn. Boyfriend to make live in the garden and so on.”
Sticking her hands in her apron pockets, Sal jumps back down the stairs to the kitchen two at a time—extremely dangerous with no hands, very maverick of her—and I think I may have put the emphasis of that sentence in the wrong place.
“Is there anything I can help you with?” I murmur furiously. “For fuck’s sake, Cassandra.”
Closing my door again, I cautiously pick up the envelope again and sniff it. I suddenly feel sick, woozy, light-headed, overwhelmed. A million memories are now pushing at the back of my brain all at once and I can feel myself standing rigidly with my full weight against the door so they can’t get in.
The letters always smell of pomegranates: the fruit of the dead.
As I’ve touched on before, Hades kidnapped Persephone and took her to the Underworld, then used pomegranate seeds to trick her into staying in hell for six months of the year (or four, depending on who’s telling the story, thank you, Will). It’s a very specific scent: tart and rich and immediately easy to identify. I just cannot for the life of me work out exactly what it’s supposed to mean, sprayed all over our correspondence. I suppose I could just open the letter and find out, but that’s obviously what people who write letters want: I will not be manipulated that easily.