The Girls Beneath. Ross Armstrong

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СКАЧАТЬ she says.

      ‘Hmm,’ comes the non-committal noise across the line.

      ‘You hid your number,’ she says.

      ‘Did I?’

      ‘You know you did,’ she says.

      ‘Yeah…’

      The caller starts to tap their knee nervously. The receiver of the call shifts her seating position, but she doesn’t feel the need to talk. Then she gets up and moves into another room, perhaps so she can speak more freely, it is the evening after all and she may not be alone. She settles down in her new position, wherever that may be. She hasn’t been wherever she currently is for very long. Then she breathes a sigh across the line.

      ‘Are you alone?’

      ‘How’ve you been?’ she says, not taking the bait.

      ‘I’ve been worse. I’ve been better.’

      ‘Do you need to talk?’ she says.

      ‘Yes, I do, I need to talk. I don’t want to, but I need to.’

      ‘What do you need to talk about?’ she says.

      ‘I just need to talk, and hearing your voice isn’t bad either. Not too bad I suppose.’

      ‘How’s your new job going?’

      ‘It’s going,’ I murmur.

      I know that she senses the tension of it. Anger or the unsaid can so easily sound like flirtation but that’s not what she wants. She doesn’t want any of it. She wants to get on with her life and to not feel bad for wanting that. She feels that as it was me who called, the onus is on me to drive beginnings, otherwise it’s like someone insisting on coming to your house in the afternoon only to lie dormant on your sofa. We both feel the silences take on different forms, which is one of the miracles that everyone has felt since the advent of the telephone call and has been repeated thousands of times all over the world since. It’s a kind of telepathy. We’ve picked up where we left off.

      ‘So what’s happened since we last spoke? Anything big?’

      ‘You could say that,’ I say.

      ‘You sound different,’ Anita says.

      ‘I am,’ I say.

      ‘What happened?’

      Amongst the many fragments of advice that Ryans has given me, talking to someone I knew well before the accident stood out. He would even like to meet with somebody who can attest to certain changes in me. ‘It’s difficult to know where you’re headed if we don’t know where you’ve been’, he says. But there is only really one who knew me before and I don’t want her talking to him about me.

      I should talk because I’m told that it will help. But it stings.

      ‘The fundamental requirements for my work. Do you remember I read them to you?’ I say.

      ‘Yes. I think so.’

      ‘Inspire confidence with your presence. Don’t jump to conclusions about what you see and hear. Win co-operation through good-humoured persuasion. Display good stamina for working on foot.’

      ‘So… how are you doing?’ Anita says

      ‘Well… my stamina for working on foot is good.’

      ‘Ha.’ She laughs her laugh.

      ‘Don’t laugh.’

      ‘I wasn’t laughing at you. Have you lost your sense of humour?’

      ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Can’t find it anywhere. Also, I’ve become impulsive. Also, you’re subtly slurring, which indicates you might soon get a migraine. I read a new study. You should take magnesium tablets.’

      ‘Seriously, none of this sounds at all like you,’ she says.

      ‘So you’ve said. I should tell you, a thing happened. There was an accident, a bad one. It happened to me. Don’t you read the paper?’

      ‘No. What accident?’ she says.

      I breathe. Quick ones. Three in and three out.

      ‘I won’t bother you with it. I needed to talk. Now I have.’

      ‘Are you okay? You seem so different.’

      ‘People change. Goodbye,’ I say.

      ‘No, I want to see you. Please. I’m worried. I still… I do love… ’

      ‘I don’t want to hear that. And no, I won’t want to see you.’

      ‘I’m going to come round. Stay there. I’m coming round now.’

      ‘Please don’t. That might make me very angry. People change. Good luck.’

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