"Fred?"
He's sitting on the sofa, right in the middle as he always does, picking out notes on his guitar.
"Fred?" She's got an overflowing laundry basket under her arm. It's red plastic and it's digging into her skin. The sharp ridged lines of holes decorating its side, large as walnuts, are cutting into her fingers with the weight of all the clothes inside it. She hates the stupid thing. "Fred, do you want to come and do laundry with me?"
Fred looks round at her from the sofa. "Ok," he says. He stops picking at the guitar, stands up, places it gently back on the sofa cushions (he loves his guitar), and goes to fetch his own laundry from his room, returning with a heavy-duty shopping bag full of clothes that are 95% grey and black. On the top is his favourite Dead Man Walking pyjama shirt. That's the 5% neither. It's blue.
He follows her out of the flat without speaking, into the lift without speaking and down to the ground floor of the building without speaking, slightly defeating the point of taking along someone to make things less boring, but Scarlet will take what she can get. It's companionable, at least. Unlike Shane and Danny, she hasn't yet ticked him off. And she doesn't plan to, either. It's not like it's that hard to stay in his good books, as long as you're not dating him. Shane and Danny just seem to have a remarkable talent in the other direction.
"When did you start learning the guitar, Fred?" she asks, readjusting the basket on her hip as they walk down the incline of the grass. She's wondered this for a while. He seems very comfortable with the instrument – handling it, picking at it quietly, composing on it – but it's always softly and carefully. He's not one for showcasing his limits, and she wonders occasionally where they are: where Fred ends.
He glances at her, a mild expression on his face which, for Fred, is contentedness. Shrugs.
She doesn't know why she bothers.
"Ok, so what made you choose Bankside for uni?"
No answer.
So apparently, whilst Scarlet prides herself on not having annoyed anyone in the flat – or at least, never without a completely valid reason – Fred doesn't mind being irritating just for the sake of it.
"Do you ever talk?" she asks. He's wandered slightly ahead with his bag and he stops and waits for her to catch up.
"Yes," he says.
So much for 'getting to know Fred'. Fine. Something less prying. "Well what's your favourite sandwich?"
"Eating is nothing but a repetitive march towards death."
"Right. Mine's a BLT." Why had she even brought Fred of all people along?
They walk in silence for a few minutes along the path, Fred to Scarlet's left, apparently not noticing her becoming increasingly annoyed with him as they walk.
"Is Fred short for anything, then?"
"No."
"Right. Do you have middle names?"
"No."
"What about pets. Do you have pets?"
"I had goldfish. They died."
"Oh." Scarlet tries not to get annoyed that he's just mentioned death twice within the past five minutes, but it's hard when his neck is so exposed. "And do you have any brothers and sisters?"
"Yes."
"They must love you, then, what with this whole black, death vibe you have going on."
Fred frowns. Glances at her. "I don't have a black death vibe," he says. It's the least flat he's sounded all day and he still sounds flat.
"Well what do you think your vibe is, then, if it's not 'black death'… And I don't mean like the plague. I mean black the colour and death with the whole nihilist philosophy thing you've got going on."
Fred is still frowning at her. He shrugs.
Scarlet pauses a moment to set down her red plastic laundry basket and crack her back, then pick it up again on the other hip. It's so stupid and unwieldy. She needs to copy Fred and get a bag. They carry on walking. "What about your siblings, then? Older, younger? Brother? Sister? Both?"
"Younger sister," says Fred.
This is the most new information she's got from him since the start of term and she's intrigued. "What's her name, then?"
"Maggie."
"And how old is she?"
"Fourteen."
"Oh that's sweet. Does she look up to you then? I've got an older sister called Hannah in her twenties and I used to look up to her when I was fourteen. She's got two kids now. It's scary how fast these things happen."
The launderette is just up ahead: a grey, flat building from the 1960s with thin-framed, large windows and a shop-front style door with a keycard slider next to it. Lint dust-bunnies, chocolate wrappers torn open like banana skins and shredded dead leaf detritus have gathered in the corners of the doorway and rush to flutter around in their little eddies with the picking up of the breeze. Fred's hunched up into his jacket at the sudden cold wind and he looks disgruntled. Scarlet tries not to grin.
When they reach the door, she sets her basket down in the entryway and digs her ID card out of her coat to swipe it through the card reader. A buzz, a click, five seconds to yank open the heavy metal door before it automatically locks again making sure not to accidentally knock over her laundry whilst doing it, and they're in. Into the relative warm of yellow lino flooring and whitewashed brick walls.
They find two machines next to each other that are empty – not hard, as the place is deserted – and fill up the drums. Scarlet has to borrow Fred's detergent since she's forgotten her own.
"Is Maggie a bit like you, then?"
"No."
"So she's a bit like me then?"
"No."
"Right. Well, what's she like, then?"
Another shrug. He slams the washing machine door and feeds coins into the slot at the top, sitting down on one of the plastic flap-seats behind them as it rumbles to a start.
Scarlet huffs, coming to sit down next to him once her machine is on as well. "Talking to you, Fred, is like talking to a mildly interested brick wall that doesn't know the meaning of the word 'two-way-conversation'. I don't know why I bother."
"That's three words," says Fred.
"I might as well talk to myself in a monologue. That's basically what I'm already doing, except you're here with me to hear it. What do your girlfriends even see in you, Fred? Because it can't be your personality."
Fred frowns at her. It's almost, to Scarlet's delight, a glare. "I've been told I'm a considerate lover," he says, like that isn't completely anachronistic. Scarlet can't imagine Fred smiling, let alone generating enough excitement to get an erection and go on to make passionate love to somebody. And now she's picturing Fred naked. This doesn't help the situation.
"Yeah, but that can't be what makes them ask you out."
The glare is not going away, it seems. It's actually quite cathartic for Scarlet to see literally any emotion on Fred's face. "I'm a musician," he says.
This makes a little more sense.
"So I've heard," says Scarlet. "And what age did you start learning the guitar, Fred, out of interest?"
"…seven," says Fred, now glaring slash frowning at the floor instead of at her.
Finally he was actually talking.
"Oh, that's cool," says Scarlet, trying to disguise her triumph with mild-interest. "I started learning the violin when I was seven. What about other instruments? Do you know any?"
"Yes," says Fred. He hunches to rest his chin on his fists and starts to stare a little too intently to be comfortable at the spinning drum of the washing machine.
Scarlet takes her phone out of her coat pocket and scrolls through it to check her texts. There's nothing that could distract her. She puts the phone back. "What instruments?" she asks. If Fred actually does all the television interviews he says he does, she hopes for the sake of the show producers that his fellow band members can actually talk, because otherwise they would be uninviting him left, right and centre.
"Multiple instruments," says Fred. Scarlet has a sneaking suspicion that he's now actively trying to wind her up. Well, two can play at that game.
"Let me guess, the recorder? Or perhaps you can play a mean rhythm on the spoons. You strike me as a spoons player."
"No."
"Well what, then? The ocarina? The pan pipes? The xylophone."
A long pause from Fred. Scarlet glances over at him to make sure he's heard and she can't even tell because he's still looking at the washing machine. After a while, he says, "Piano."
Scarlet waits. He said 'multiple', after all, and she's not above making the silence a little uncomfortable. Not that this needs to be an interrogation… Just that she's done letting Fred get away with his ridiculous stoicism. He's not shy: that's obvious, so there should really be no issue. Scarlet thinks he's just trying to be mysterious, and she's not about to let him think himself 'cool' just because he can occasionally successfully be mysterious.
"…and violin," he says, eventually. "And clarinet. And I can sing." He doesn't even look apologetic for taking so long. He's just continuing to stare pensively at the washing machine drum and its tumbling, bubbling mix of water and clothes.
"I mean with a vocal range like you constantly display, it's no wonder you can sing."
He's frowning again. The washing goes round in the machine, once, twice, three times. He shifts positions. Audibly breathes.
"Fred," says Scarlet, turning to him, "has anyone ever told you you're a terrible conversationalist?"
"No," says Fred.
"Can't you even try to make an effort to talk back?"
No answer.
"Does Maggie have this much trouble talking to you?"
"Maggie talks a lot," says Fred.
"And what about your parents?"
"My parents talk a lot."
"So you're the odd one out."
"Yes."
Scarlet slumps over onto her hands and sighs. "Are you as bored by this conversation as I am? Look, Fred, what do you even like to talk about anyway? Or, like, what subjects can you actually bear to string together more than two words for voluntarily, not just in response to a question?"
Fred shrugs.
"Have you ever seen a therapist? Because it might be a good idea."
"Yes. I said everything felt meaningless and empty and I didn't find enjoyment in anything and they said I had depression."
Scarlet pauses. "…right," she says. "And… what do you think?"
"I don't," says Fred.
"Right," says Scarlet. She joins him in staring at the washing machines, clothes falling and falling and falling in damp bundles; rivulets of soapy water trickling down the inside face of the drums. The rushing tumbling rumble and the constant low hum is rather soothing after a while.
"Did they give you medicine for it?"
"Yes."
"Did you take it?"
"Illusory happiness is a fleeting comfort to the rat-race, holding no objective worth."
"Fred, you could at least try."
No answer.
They sit in silence looking at the washing machines.
"You're a ray of sunshine, you know that?"
"No."
More silence. Not really uncomfortable anymore, as Scarlet has already aired her grievances and Fred knows how she feels… although it is annoying that her only distinguisher from the flat's resident morons – that she hadn't ticked off Fred – is now gone. Not that she hasn't got other distinguishers to set her apart from those idiots. Watching the washing machines is almost hypnotic at this point, with their constant low rumbling and the swish of the water and the bubbles.
"Fred, do you even know what happiness actually is?"
Fred glances at her. "Who can ever know happiness? Emotions are just hormonal imbalances resulting from an artificial stimulation of the electric mess of meat that is the human brain. Ergo, happiness is a lie."
Scarlet slumps further into her hands. "Joy," she says.
They sit like this for a while, both slumped: Fred because that is his general posture; Scarlet because that is also Fred's general attitude to life and she is catching the brunt of it. She finds herself wishing for something – anything – to perk up the mood and comes up with nothing. Nothing, at least, that does not involve copious amounts of alcohol, raucous singing, and getting Fred stupidly drunk for her own amusement… although, knowing him, he would probably still be miserable when drunk. Fred could be miserable on ecstasy whilst at a pyjama party. Fred could be miserable to the point at which miserable became just a synonym for Fred.
"What do you like to sing?" she asks.
"I hate singing," says Fred.
More rumbling of the washing machines and silence. He really is the worst entertainment she could have brought along.
"But if you had to sing?"
No answer.
"If you had to sing, what would you pick?"
"Something short," says Fred, in typical Fred fashion. Completely missing the point.
"Something short like…"
Nothing. It was like trying to extract water from a brick wall with a sponge.
"Is there anything you could tolerate?"
"I've written songs. One of them."
Christ. How could she have forgotten. The dirges.
"Not them. Something else."
"I don't like to sing."
More waiting and watching the washing machines. Scarlet tries so hard not to hate Fred, fails, and then justifies herself by arguing that Fred has brought it upon himself in any case. The washing machine still has twenty minutes left.
"Why did you choose to study Chemistry anyway?"
A shrug.
"Well, what do you like about Chemistry then?"
"It gives humans the power to change their perceived reality and lessens the feeling of crushing powerlessness possessed by the sane."
"For God's sake, Fred!"
They spend the rest of the time waiting in silence, Scarlet poking at the red plastic rim of her laundry basket and trying not to think about death: Fred simply staring into the drum of the machine as if hypnotised. When they beep, they both startle.
Scarlet can't pull her things out of the drum fast enough. She's halfway to the door when she realises that she hasn't got a clothes rack back at the flat and is therefore going to have to use one of the tumble driers to get her clothes dry. These are all the clothes she has at the moment, except for the ones she's currently wearing, and there's no way she's sleeping naked tonight. What if there were a fire drill or something? No.
Fred is already loading his wet clothes into one of the larger drier drums behind her.
Would it be worth sleeping naked? Would it be worth the risk of Shane perving on her if the fire alarm went off and they all had to go outside and Scarlet was naked except for a dressing gown or a duvet? Would it?
Scarlet's mouth twists into a scowl and she resists the urge to kick one of the stupid, boring washing machines before walking up to the empty drier next to Fred and starting to laboriously load her wet clothes into it. She doesn't kick a washing machine. That would just be childish. She does make sure to slam the door of the tumble drier shut louder than she needs to and slot the coins in with angry little clacks. Fred doesn't notice.
"Don't you ever get bored of not talking to people?" she snaps.
Fred sits back down on one of the flap seats. "Boredom is one of the only true reflections of the void into which we'll all eventually return. I find it comforting."
"Git," mutters Scarlet.
Fred frowns. Now that the moving machines are the ones to the left of them and not directly in front, he has nothing to stare at but the floor.
"But what do you do when you're bored?"
"Think about death."
"Great. So is that what you're doing right now?"
"I'm not bored."
"Oh brilliant. So now we've got to sit in silence because one of us finds it interesting."
Fred glances at her. "We're talking," he says.
"Yeah," says Scarlet. "For now. Until you decide to go back to staring silently at the floor, which isn't creepy at all, by the way, and I have to sit here contemplating my own death because you keep constantly bringing up the subject. Thanks for that."
Fred shrugs. Looks back at the lino-covered floor, probably at his feet, since he's slumped over. He's wearing canvas lace-ups… Black ones.
"Where d'you buy them?"
"A shop."
There's no point. There's no point to even trying, is there. No point at all.
"Do you shave or are you baby-faced?"
A shrug.
"What do your parents do for a living?"
Another shrug.
"What career do you want to go into when you're older?"
No answer.
"Do you enjoy boring the pants off me?"
A tiny, miniscule twitching at the edge of his lips which then disappears off the face of the earth, no proof at all that it wasn't an illusion. Damn him. Damn him. Fifty-eight minutes left on the tumble driers.
"Please tell me you can think of a game to play that might pass the time."
A slow blink.
"Is that a yes?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"Solitaire."
She's ready to smack him in the jaw at this point.
"Anything that we could actually play?"
"No."
"I bet even Shane could think of something to do right now, if he was here. Even if it was something stupid. I kind of wish he was here, to be honest. At least he'd be entertaining."
Nothing. No response. She doesn't know what she'd expected. Possibly any reaction at all? But that was too much effort for Fred, of course. What even gave her the stupid idea he would even be a good conversation partner for two hours, she has no idea-
"Truth or dare," says Fred.
A pause. "You go first," she says.
"Truth."
"Was that the best you could come up with?"
Fred glares at her.
"Right, well, I can't think of anything else. Dare."
"Eat that," says Fred, pointing to a small wisp of lint on the floor.
Scarlet reaches forward. Picks it up. It's a small bit of grey fluff from other people's clothes-dust. Inspects it. Chews her lip.
Fred just looks at her intently.
It's not really grey candyfloss. Not really. But if she really tries hard not to think about it… Into the mouth, eyes scrunched shut; chewing it to cover it in spit so she can swallow it more easily makes it feel like she's eating cotton wool. It tastes, unsurprisingly, like dusty, gritty clothes. She swallows. Opens her eyes.
"Truth," says Fred. Hadn't even acknowledged the fact he'd made her swallow lint.
She wants to repay him for that. "What's the worst thing you've ever said?"
"Dare," says Fred.
"I dare you," says Scarlet, "to tell me the worst thing you've ever said."
"Pass," says Fred.
"Your forfeit is to tell me the worst thing you've ever said."
"Truth or dare?"
"Fred, it was your idea to play the game in the first place! Actually play the game!"
"No."
"For god's sake! Look, the worst thing I've ever said was when I made a disability joke and the person who I told it to had a brother with that disability. Your turn."
"No."
"Fred!"
"It was 'no'. I was six. I was at airport security with my family. Airport security asked me if my parents were related to me. I was angry that day. I said no. We were detained. My parents were taken away for questioning. I was sat in a room for nine hours with a security guard whilst my parents were questioned. Me and my sister had to stay the night in foster care. The foster carer beat us and locked us in a cupboard because we cried."
There is a horrible pause. Scarlet doesn't know what to say. She picks at a hangnail on her thumb and stares at the washing machines for a bit. The unmoving washing machines.
"Truth or dare," says Fred.
"Truth. Look, I don't care that you made me eat lint. I was out of line, so… sorry. Sorry. Just rip into me, ok? I deserve it. That was… that was really personal. I didn't mean to pester you, ok? I'm just really sorry, ok? Sorry."
"It's alright. What's your favourite colour."
He's looking at her with a bored expression when she turns to him. "Fred," she says, "can you please be more creative or I'm going to actually scream."
"Alright," says Fred. "What was it like when you first had sex?
"What…? Wait, no, don't repeat it. Fred, I haven't had sex. What made you think that I had?"
"Oh. Alright."
"Can you stop saying 'alright' please?"
"Fine."
"Look, that was just a bad question. Ask me something else."
It continues like this for a while. Fred learns that Scarlet's house was broken into when she was small leaving her with a lifelong fear of things moving around in the dark; he learns that she loves English because her mother used to read her poems at bedtime; he learns her sister is much prettier than her and she regrets the fact that she let it come between them growing up; he learns she hates strong cheeses and olives but enjoys all kinds of fruit, especially strawberries; he learns that she likes to swim. He learns that she will eat as much lint as she is dared to, despite making faces, and that she'll do handstands in launderettes, and sing Disney songs (not very confidently, but with enough volume to be called brave for it), and wave her bra out of the window (even if she pulls it back in quickly with a red face and has to go into the other deserted part of the laundry where he can't see her so that she can put it back on) and will attempt to sneeze on command (and fail at it) and that she can do a cartwheel even with her shoes on the wrong feet.
Scarlet learns that Fred is a spoilsport and that he still has an unhealthy attitude to death despite her trying to talk him out of it for several minutes. She learns he doesn't dye his hair or shave his pubes… at least, he might, but she assumes, based on the statistical chances, that the side-glance he gave her meant 'no'. She learns never to play Truth or Dare with him again.
When the tumble driers beep, she is the first up, despite hers beeping second and taking longer to unlock itself for her (probably because she's yanking at the door before it's open). Then, when it is open, she pulls the clothes out in a steamingly-hot clump - some still slightly damp but most of them dry – and then she's free. Out of the door without waiting for Fred. Practically running. She allows herself the liberty of a whoop after cresting the embankment and then, in all the excitement, she starts to run flat out, holding her stupid sharp-edged red plastic washing basket underneath her arm as best she can; it digging into her arm but her not caring. Freedom! Free as a bird! Free as the wind-
She trips.
The stupid sharp-edged red plastic washing basket slips out of her fingers and starts rolling down the incline she hadn't even realised she was still on, the warm, dry clothes catching on the grass and being pulled out to lie in intervals and muddy heaps as the basket continues, the basket disappearing over the side of the embankment. Scarlet gets to her feet. The mud in the grass is just wet enough to be scraped over her knees and streaked up the front of her shirt. She runs to the edge of the embankment to find that the red plastic laundry basket has tipped up somewhere along the way, lost the rest of the clothes to the mud of the hill and the path, and ended up in a flowerbed over the other side.
She tries to breathe evenly and calmly through a tight, crushed chest. She tries to see clearly through blurred, teary eyes. Tries not to let her nose drip because anything but a dignified sniff would be failing.
Picks up her clothes, every one of them streaked with mud and grass stains and dirt.
These are all of her clothes.
"Here," says a voice, just as she's nearly got the last of her things into the stupid flipping basket and her tears scrubbed angrily away with a sleeve. Someone's handing her a dirty shirt and a muddy pair of her underwear. She looks up. Of course it's Fred, just to make the day better than it already is.
She swipes the clothes from him and stuffs them into the basket, then stands up.
"You can borrow some of my clothes," says Fred.
And she deflates.
He says nothing on the walk back. Nothing about the tear-tracks on her face, or the fact she's been crying over something so stupid, or about how clumsy she must have been, and he doesn't try to crack jokes, or use the gap in the conversation to monologue, or try to steal some of her underwear like a creep now that half of it is scattered everywhere. He just accompanies her in silence back to the flat, on the way helping her pick up her knickers.
.
They get back to the flat. Shane's messily eating a ready-meal at the table and Danny's sat with his back towards them on the kitchen floor, bouncing a probably stolen ping-pong ball off the cabinets. There's no way they're not going to notice.
Fred, of course, is already halfway across the room before she manages to gather up the courage to get past the door, and his head is high (of course – he hasn't been crying) whilst she looks down at the floor to stop them seeing her eyes. Clutches the stupid red plastic laundry basket to her chest and tries not to start crying all over again.
And Fred's stopped at his door, turned round, apparently waiting for her. Oh. The clothes he was going to lend her. Scarlet had thought he was just being nice. Not that Fred was the type to just be meaninglessly nice for no reason, so she doesn't know what she was thinking there.
She drops the basket inside the door of her room and then is about to follow Fred into his when Shane pipes up from the table, "Are you two having sex without telling me?" A sly grin on his face like he's figured something out.
Scarlet's face heats up.
"No," says Fred, his expression unchanging.
"Shane!" snaps Scarlet, "we're absolutely not and that's none of your business!"
Danny's turned round on the floor. "Scarlet, have you been crying?"
After all that's happened, Scarlet just feels like giving into her animalistic urges and kicking him in the face. She doesn't. Barely. "No," she says. "Anyway, none of your business, is it Danny?"
"Scarlet," says Fred. He's holding open his door a little wider – a little pointedly – to tell her to follow him into his room and stop wasting his time. Or possibly Scarlet's reading into it a little too much.
"I fell and dropped all my washing so Fred's kindly lending me some clothes," she says, "and we're not having sex or feeling each other up or reading each other sonnets behind closed doors, ok!? Ok, Shane!?"
Shane holds his hands up in surrender (lasagne-covered fork in one of them, some of the sheet pasta sliding down onto the handle of it) and Scarlet feels slightly mollified. She follows Fred into his bedroom. Fuming is better than being embarrassed, in any case.
She doesn't know why she expects Fred's room to have bleak grey walls but it doesn't. They're just painted the same bland cream hers are, with the same wall in exposed brick that she's covered up in her room. His duvet cover's a navy blue and his bed's neatly made; his desk is covered in wires that look fairly organised for wires and a closed laptop, and his guitar's in the corner on a stand. The room has no personality whatsoever, just like its inhabitant.
Fred folds over the edge of his duvet, pulls out one of the drawers of his bed revealing neatly folded clothes in blacks, whites and greys, and finds her a t-shirt and a pair of pyjama trousers without giving Scarlet the time to be properly nosy, and shuts the drawer again. The t-shirt is a faded grey band t-shirt and the pyjama trousers are, unsurprisingly, black.