Soho Forever

It was that blooming crushed avocado face-mask! One larger than expected dollop of the exotic fruit dancing its way into my tear duct, and that was it, arse over tit! Looking, I’d imagine, like a drunken peacock in very expensive silk kimono. Nice to be found in something beautiful, even if I was crumpled in a pile at the bottom of the stairs.

Of course I’m just piecing it together. I remember a green fog descending over one eye. My calfskin moccasin slipping on the top step, as I rushed to open the door and shout at kids on the street for screaming. A moment of flight and then tumbling, and a sickening crack that reverberated through my body like a tuning-fork.

And now I’m here. Stuck in this bloody azure dressing gown for eternity. Thankfully, the face mask didn’t stick, and blue really is my colour. Imagine smelling of avocado for the rest of human existence, or however long I’m meant to be here. The loneliness isn’t really that different from my life before the accident, if I’m honest. I did not have to beat flocks of friends off with a stick, but watching the flat I painted and cared for, loved even, rot in front of me, that’s rough. Just four rooms, but they were all I had by the end.

No-one cried while they cleaned out my things. My waspish sister looked fatter than ever as her grubby little fingers dived for anything remotely shiny. Her monstrous little children scattered crisp flakes and dandruff all over the Persian rug I splurged out on in Harvey Nicholas. The same carpet that Mathias had poured red wine on, slowly and spitefully after a particularly vicious row. Greed and wine, dandruff and Dorito dust, and then emptiness, blissful emptiness.

I quickly realised the deal, having watched enough haunted mansions films. I got with the program sharpish. I just didn’t expect a pokey little two bed in Soho to be the local. I never really cared for the outside world, far too busy and loud and filled with people, so when I tried to billow out the door and was held by a invisible force I was quite grateful. Cosmic house arrest? brilliant!

Left alone with my memories. The moment Mathias carried out the last box and stood in the doorway, all manly grace and pent up emotion, looking back at me. I raised a pale white hand out and tried to touch his face. This was long before I took my swan’s dive down the stairs, of course. Mathias being the last person who I let into the little space before I sealed up my heart and my door. I was an ex then, an ex husband that is, now I guess I’m an ex again, an ex-human.

After five years of emptiness, trying to befriend the cockroaches and the occasional lacklustre letting agents who were forced to repeat he story of my fatal crash to horrified students, I was starting to settle into my new life. Wafting between the four rooms, sleeves trailing in my wake, singing “Believe” by Cher at the top of my voice. I used to pop my head out of the window and gaze at the fresh new men on Old Compton Street. Tight jeans and cigarettes, smiles and bright eyes, the “good looking gays”. The ones that never paid me a second’s notice before, and now couldn’t see me, poetic really isn’t it? The city and the world rolled on without me, and I was pleased to not be a part of its incessant spinning.

Then the Johansens arrived. Fresh off the Ryanair flight, blonde as only true Swedes could be. You, all plump shyness and grey coats. Him, smaller and sharp, like a wolf let loose on. Not to mention that yapping Pomeranian, constantly looking up at me with its little angry black eyes.

You decide to rent the place. He’s out a lot, and you seem lonely and a little lost in the whirligig of the metropolis, London only seeming to scare you more as the weeks went on. My Swedish only consists of some very indecorous phrases, your language bubbling around me like a stream suddenly tumbling through my home.

You’re sweet, though. I watch you for hours snuggled up on the sofa, holding the puppy close to your heart, as if you are trying to mould it onto chest, watching trashy Swedish TV. Your smile breaks forth like you’re ashamed of it, but let it free in private, normally prompted by the “adorable” dog. Never at him though interestingly, although he barely talks to you. I recognise a sinking ship well enough, having been the one driving holes in the hull many times before. The frost between you two would normally make me chuckle, but this time is different, personal somehow.

Sometimes I found myself running my fingers through your sunshine hair, I would catch myself doing it and throw myself over to the patio window and shout at the pigeons. Always I was dragged back to you, that plump little freckled girl so far from your home over the cold green sea.

It never occurred to me to try and make contact. You felt so soft, so easily ripped, watching you was enough. Feeling your warmth and breath radiate out into the little space that we shared. Bringing back sensations that for me were like long dead flowers falling flat, out from some papery thin books. Emotions I had long since put away, as no longer pertaining to myself.

This obsession started with little things, as anything truly ridiculous does. Clothes. Ohh how I missed clothes! Yours were objectively desolate. I’ve never seen someone inhabit so many shades of grey. From cosy scarves like waterfalls of wool, to stone coloured jeans, your life leeched into the drabness of your wardrobe.

Action must be taken. He, busy god knows where, wore much more colour and was clearly making friends out there in the big wide world. He vaulted in shades of happiness and acclimatisation, bright in oranges and reds. I don’t know what possessed me, I hadn’t actively gone out of my way to help someone for over ten years, but I felt an affinity between us. Both not quite fitting into the mechanical rustle of life.

A theoretically simple, yet highly choreographed tango of trying to lift just one of his red socks into your separate bags of laundry took almost two hours to execute. Clearly, you need a Master’s degree to be a poltergeist nowadays. Mathias always said I reminded him more of a banshee anyhow.

Tipping the sock into machine, the red spread and blushed the grey inhabitants a deep watery magenta. Just to see that concealed smile light up the kitchen was worth it, the corner of your mouth pulling that round, drawn face up into a painting of jubilation, just for a moment. You even wore one of the tops, and looked rather dainty in it, if I do say so myself. A prickling like nettle stings crept across my chest, odd but not unwelcome.

That’s when I saw it, your boyfriend, him. Kissing someone just outside of the front door one night, late, after you had gone to bed, the meatballs and brown sauce you had made cold and solidifying on the kitchen counter. Tugging some scrawny blonde up the stairs, with a south London accent that could cut glass. Both of you giggling, whispering about the dull girlfriend who never leaves the flat. I felt myself flush with rage like an avalanche and next minute all the lights fused and that put an end to the kissing. Blondie slunk back downstairs and he opened the door quietly and tiptoed over, undressing, slipping into bed, slithering like the reptile he was. I had done that, only with a man dressed like a lumberjack, in that very spot, as Mathias slept peacefully. Viewed from above it looked quite different, uglier and far less fun.

Checking on you, I glided over to your side of the bed; I saw your sad grey eyes were open just a crack. Enough to let a big wet tear fall on the grey bedspread, as you quickly pretended to be asleep. I lay with you all night, wanting you to feel me. I don’t know why, you just seem so small, like a little baby bird. I wanted you to know that you were valued by someone, even if that person was firstly, gay and secondly, dead.

That’s when my plan began to germinate, like those tomatoes I planted on the patio but hopefully more successfully. Yes, you felt alone, and trapped and yes, I had never actually heard you speak English. No job, no friends and no escape, sound familiar? Your face only ever breaking into that secret smile when you thought no-one was watching, like a spotlight picking out the prima ballerina just before her solo, your teeth like little white tutus, ready to pirouette out into the room for that fleeting moment of ecstasy. Hopeful for a second, such a fragile joy.

You needed a shove. A metaphorical red sock moment, but considerably more dramatic. After almost a year of watching your little routine, walking the dog, not working, watching the same shows on repeat (so much that I was beginning to pick up a pretty good grasp of Swedish) the opportunity presented itself. You came home with a little black book, expensive, Moleskin, I think, shiny and new. When he finally came home you darted like a praying mantis, hiding it under the bed, throwing it right through my head, as I examined my nails on the cool dusty floor.

You began journalling, only alone. My time had come, a prefect opportunity to contact you without him poking his untrustworthy little snout in. But what to write?

Then it struck me. You needed tempting, you needed independence and a taste for adventure, you needed someone to divert you from the path you were on. A path that might end in you dying alone by an avocado related tragedy, only found 3 weeks later by the a British Gas engineer, not even your hated sister squeezing out a crocodile tear in remembrance. You needed what everyone needs, and buckets of it. MONEY! And for once I could accommodate. £20000 in cool (if very crumpled) bills. Serendipitously near at hand, clumsily stuffed behind the kitchen wall by these carefully manicured hands.

I don't know what I was saving it for really. But it comforted me to have it. I certainly wasn’t going to spend it. After Mathias, I stopped going out to see people. Friends disappeared, and I wasn’t going to waste it on that slob of a sister and her feral offspring. It made me feel warmed, like a dragon sitting on a pile of gold, shoving the crumbled bills behind the wall and painting over my handy work. My life savings, rather useless now, aren’t they?

Well maybe not…. One night while you both slumbered with an ocean between you in the bed I made my move. I had spent all night scratching an X into the wall where the cash was stashed. As you slept, I tugged your black notebook out from under the bed, heavy with thwarted dreams and wrote one sentence in as good Swedish as daytime TV had furnished me with. Lastly, I used the last of my energy to pinch the canine demon awake, he yapped, and with that one set of eyes peeped open, yours, flicking onto the open page on the floor in front of you (thankfully lizard man was always a heavy sleeper):

Kök! Ensam! X markerar platsen, Venedig är härlig nu hör jag. Låt inte livet gå grått!

(Kitchen! X marks the spot, Venice is lovely now I hear. Don’t let your life go grey!)