Effie & Simon

I love him.

I hate him.

I love him.

This is how I feel about all the men in my life. Daddy. Simon. Lonnie. How am I only just seeing this now? It's the same pattern time after time.

Raindrops thrumming on the taxi window in tune to this stark realisation. Love. Hate. Love. Hate. Love. Hate.

I'm a wilted daisy, mutilating myself with mean, pinching fingers.

Love him hate him love him hate him love hate love hate love hate.

Women are easier. I can love them in a way that is uncomplicated, or cut them out of my life. But the men... my father, brother, boyfriends, fiance... They have a hold over me. This I admit to myself as I swallow down the vomit and let the empty vodka bottle under the seat.

It's a £50 fine if you soil the cab, love.

His voice seems to swim into my earholes from a great distance.

Fuck you, I think.

The truest love a woman can feel is for her own daughter. Simon thinks I didn't love her, but he's wrong. Lorelai was so much a part of me, I took her for granted. Like my elbow. Do you love your elbow? You'd sure miss it if it was gone, though wouldn't you? If someone ripped it away from you. It'd hurt. If you couldn't see it anymore.

Perhaps she's dead after all, although Lonnie assures me she's not. He might be lying. She might as well be.

The taxi rolls to a halt outside Simon's little house, and the handbrake creaks. It sounds like my bones feel. I'm an old, old woman now. I stepped into a time machine the day she went, aged a century in a single year. The wind will blow me away like dust.

He hasn't cut the engine. It takes a moment to realise the drumming in my skull is his impatient fingers on the steering wheel.

Slumped against the window, glass warming under my cheek, I reflect what a perfect metaphor this is for my life. This glass, here. Between me and... everything else. Everything good. I can't feel anything. Nothing gets through.

I wonder vaguely if he said something again and I missed it. This time, his words got lost on their way to my eardum, little fishes that took a wrong turn. A glance at the mirror shows me his scowl, and I haul myself upright.

It takes a couple of goes to get the door open and half-fall out. I'm pretty sure I wasn't sick in his car, but I shove a few twenties at him anyway.

Fuck you, I think again. At least I think I think. Maybe it tumbled out. Who knows? Who cares? He just got a 300% tip. That buys several fuck yous. Or it should.

Simon would say no, you can't pay to abuse someone. You can't replace cash for manners. He's so... uptight.

It's gone, now. The taxi. Thought he might wait until the lady was safely inside, but no. He drove off before I could change my mind about the tip.

The path keeps weaving around. I should stop wearing heels. Every time the path wobbles away, a heel sinks into the wet grass.

He's probably looking out of the window. Wincing every time I pierce his precious lawn. Will there ever be a day he doesn't judge me? Will I ever get used to it?

I can't remember if I knocked, or if I tried and missed, but the door opens anyway and I sway through it like a ghost.

He doesn't ask me why I'm here. Am I here? Am I ever really here?

He doesn't ask things like, did he hit you again, Effie? when are you going to leave him? when are you going to realise you're too good for him?

He just sighs.

He's saying something though. I have to concentrate.

You can sleep in the bed. I haven't changed the sheets, but I don't suppose it matters. I'll have to do it in the morning.

Yes, after his sister has smeared her makeup across the pillow slips and got the smell of sick and stale perfume all over it, I suppose he will.

I stop swaying a moment and look him full in the face. The world comes into focus. The question I've never asked thunders in the front of my skull so loud, I'm sure he must hear it. I bite my lip hard so nothing can escape.

Will you look for her again tonight?

I look at the lines around his eyes, his hairline stampeding upwards, the way he's shaking his fussy little head. He's aged, too, and he was ancient to start with. He was born an old man.

How must it feel to love someone who is missing, and to believe you are the only person in all the worlds who is looking for her?

I lurch forward to hug him, but he steps aside and only puts out a hand to steady me. I clutch at the counter top and squeeze my eyes and lips tight, tight enough to bruise. So that sorry can't escape.

He doesn't brew me a coffee, or urge me to wash my face. Doesn't leave a glass of water and some paracetemol. He used to, and I didn't notice, and now they've shrivelled away. Just when I needed them. Needed something. To remind my heart to keep beating.

I use the toilet, kick my shoes off, and crawl into bed.

~

When I wake, the place is empty. Blankets are folded on the sofa, small thin cushion on top. He's left for work. There's no note, but where else would he go? Simon doesn't have a life.

I pull out his laptop. It's always in the same place. I don't need the notes Lonnie wrote for me anymore, about booting it up differently, which keys you have to press before it finishes switching on...

I've done this so many times now. I know what to do. Even with my head throbbing. None of it means anything. Just lines and lines of stupid letters and numbers. I learned the steps by rote, that's all. I'm like a parrot pecking keys. Or a dog chasing a car. A geriatric dog, mind you. Going through the motions, but I don't know how to drive.

There's something Lonnie calls a breadcrumb trail that was built in to the interdimensional portal device. More specifically, it's designed to leave one, somehow, so Gretel (me) could go ferreting about for this information. The right person can look at all this... this gobbledygook... and it will mean something to them.

It means fuck-all to me, but I plug in the memory stick, and tap some more keys to copy the gobbledygook to it.

I put the laptop away, precisely as I found it. I tuck the memory stick into my handbag, which I pat softly, as if that will keep the contents safe somehow. When I scoop my shoes off the bedroom floor, I turn my eyes away from the rumpled bed. For a half-second, I see myself stripping it and putting the sheets in the washer... The thought is exhausting, so I ignore it.

I lock up, leave the key under the loose slab by the flowerbed, and walk down the road to where Lonnie's car is waiting. He'll be sitting at the wheel, beaming, waiting for that precious stick. His test data for the portal device.

I hate him.

I love him.

I hate him.

Thank you for reading!

If you'd like to read any of the others, here they are in order:

One,

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Have you seen my dollar challenge?