Always in my memory… His hand shook as he finished her letter. What questions had Amanda Bowe asked? Prodding Selina with her harrying voice and refusing to listen to the answers, her mind already forming the narrative she would create. Karl was unaware that he was crying, unaware that his tears had soaked the thin airmail paper, unaware of anything except the memory of the warm desert wind on his face as he rode his Harley to the summit of Longspur Peak and Selina was left for dead on the floor of their cabin.
He hurried from the pub and entered a late-night supermarket, brightly lit, with just a few wan-faced customers buying wine and takeaway food. After scanning bottles of water and some fruit through the self-service scanner, he returned to the old house. Anger shook him like an ague but it had a purpose that was as yet, undefined. That would come in time and, then, he would be merciless. Already, his body was craving a drink. Soon, he would lose this clarity, but the sensation of being awake after a long, nightmarish sleep filled him with a manic energy as he emptied bottles of whiskey down the sink. He laid out the bottled water, the bananas, the juicy satsumas and purple grapes. He rolled out his sleeping bag and zipped himself into it.
Time passed. He had no sense of its rhythm – an hour, an afternoon, a night. The room remained dark, only shards of light penetrating the boards across the window. As his withdrawal symptoms increased, he saw spiders the size of his fist scurrying down the walls to crawl over him. He screamed, whimpered, sweated. Beat at them with his fists as they swarmed across his skin. In lucid moments he drank water and shuddered as it settled uneasily on his stomach. He peeled bananas and sucked feverishly on satsumas. The fruit was easy to peel, yet his hands shook so much that even this simple act felt as if he was moving through viscous mud.
This was nothing compared to the last time he had been weaned slowly and with care in rehab. This was cold turkey at its rawest. Constance floated across the room in a luminous swerve. Always the same image, whether he was drunk or sober. Had she come to say goodbye to him or take him with her into the shade? She was dancing, spinning in a green pool of sunshine, dazzling him with her brilliance.
She came again. This time she touched him, her hand cool on his forehead. She spoke but he was unable to hold on to her words. When she vanished, he thought he had imagined her but knew, also, that she would return. There was something more substantial about this apparition. Something that was not Constance. A more earthed presence yet leaf-like, drifting past him in flashbacks that made no sense, or coming upon him for brief instances that settled his dizzying surroundings to rights.
Once, he imagined she was speaking to him. He was drinking something that made him shudder. Grass? Liquid grass? How could he drink grass? He used to smoke it with Dominick down by the river in the marsh. Justin found them once and punched Karl so hard he was knocked backwards into the water. Solid, reliable Justin, who did everything by the book and was rewarded for his efforts with a broken heart.
‘Drink this.’ The voice came to him faintly, yet, insistently. It penetrated the fug in his brain. A figure moved, ephemeral, a presence that would vanish if he uttered a wrong word or made a hasty movement.
‘I know it tastes vile,’ she said. ‘But it will help you recover.’
He swallowed, obediently. A wraith, but not Constance. Not Nicole, either. Nicole was refusing to take his calls. Too upsetting for Sasha, she’d insisted the last time he rang, alarmed by his aggressive demands. She sent him videos from her phone. Sasha playing with the garden hose, waving from a carousel and from the treehouse her stepfather had made for her. Snippets from a life that was slowly stealing the memory of her father from her.
He had let everything go, a quick sliding that made him wonder if it was his own will, rather than outside forces, that had collapsed his life. Had he wanted his marriage to end, to lose his daughter, his house to be repossessed? That he could even construct such a thought appalled him yet, like the edge of a broken tooth, he was unable to leave it alone. Had he sought out this punishment as an atonement for the loss of Constance? I should have fought to the death to keep what was precious to me, he thought, as the longing for another drink watered his mouth, broke sweat on his forehead. He was going to throw up again and this apparition, as if anticipating the spewing, held a basin under his chin. Why didn’t she go away? Even if she was an illusion, he didn’t want her witnessing his humiliation, or his tears, which she wiped with a damp cloth. Then she was gone, closing the door behind her, the bloated wood scraping against the floor, a juddering, familiar sound that, surely, could not be imagined.
He sank back against a pillow that had been placed under his head. This time there were no spiders, no nightmares, just a depthless sleep.
Slivers of light had forced their way through the boards when he awoke. Sandwiches wrapped in cellophane and a flask of soup had been left beside his sleeping bag. Soup, steamy and hot, the smell of beef reminding him of Sunday dinners his mother used to make. He tried to gather his thoughts as he poured the soup into the beaker and raised it to his lips. His hands shook. Hot soup dribbled down his chin but he was hardly aware of anything except the need to nourish his body.
She had left two supermarket shopping bags propped against the wall. He slathered butter on bread rolls, filled them with cheese and ham. This was real. He was filling his stomach with food he didn’t buy. She must exist. A guardian angel, not a wraith, but a flesh and blood angel, who did supermarket shopping and did not step back from the ugliness of vomit when it stained her clothes, or turn her head away when he cried.
He put on fresh clothes, brushed his hair and tied it back in a ponytail. He made his way to the portable toilet he had purchased soon after he moved into the house. The light hurt his eyes and he staggered, an invalid finding his feet after a long illness. Golden sun, not green, as he had imagined. Fighting the temptation to return to the house and cocoon himself in his sleeping bag, he approached the water barrel. The water was icy cold, silvery droplets splattering as he washed his face. The chatter of starlings drowned all other sounds but activity, inaudible yet pulsing, was all around him.