"Sometimes I feel really imaginary," she says, finally unmoving on the picnic blanket, staring up into the sky sewn with stars. They hang like sequined diamonds in the night. There's peace. It seems to seep into her a little, because for once she speaks in a whisper and doesn't break it.
"Imagination is a blessing," I say, and run my fingertips across the plaid fibers of the blanket.
"No. Like I'm not real. Like nothing is. Like I'm sleepwalking through my entire life and everything's just a dream. Just pretend. Do you ever feel like that?"
I feel a chuckle bubbling in my throat, but my smile dies on my lips soon after it appears. I stare up into the sky at the perfect star covering, down towards the blurry night-shape of my hands. Beautifully formed, just the right amount of lines, nails that never grow.
"Oh, sweetheart," I get out, with a slightly tightened grip on the blanket. "I think you're asking the wrong person."
I'm filing a new batch of notes one evening – the product of her afternoon out with friends – and wiping the ink stains off my hands when I come across something shiny at the back of my filing cabinet. Odd. My office is sparse and never contains anything unnecessarily, unless she's been playing with the desk again. There shouldn't be anything but files in there.
I reach down through mounds, years, of paperwork and my hand closes around something metallic and cold. I hold it up to the light still streaming through the window. It's a watch; thin silver band, simple white face and with a single tiny heart pendant dangling off the chain. Well, she does know me well. I wonder why she never mentioned it. It's rather unlike her to leave surprises.
I clip the watch onto my left wrist and admire it under the desk lamp. Hmmm. That's curious. I didn't know it was possible for watches to run backwards.
I clean my glasses on my shirt and take another look.
The date is wrong. It says zero years, 1 month and 12 days. I've been seeing her longer than that, if it's trying to count. It's a year too late.
I wrap my hands around my tea cup. Eternally steaming, eternally full. No wonder I'm an insomniac, though that was a particularly cruel twist on her behalf.
Maybe it's counting backwards.
1 month, 10 days. She's prodding the mattress on my floor with the toe of her right foot. Probably testing how much bouncing it can take. Why she doesn't just get us a proper bed for these purposes escapes me, but perhaps it's less serious if we have a naked mattress instead of actual furniture.
"Why would you have a bed in an office?" she asks, and sounds theatrically offended as usual.
"Why do we have a mattress in my office?"
"Something has to absorb the shock."
That's true. It probably wouldn't work if it was off the ground.
"Is anything important happening in forty days?"
Her eyes swivel toward me like a hawk, disconnected from the rest of her body. "Nothing I can think of. Does it matter?"
"It might," I say. "Will you tell me if you hear anything?"
Her eyebrows knit. She nods. She perches on the arm of the chair. Suddenly my shirt is undone, buttons scattering over the luxurious cream carpet. I've forgotten the colour of my bra. She hasn't. It's beige with black highlights.
I raise an eyebrow at her. "Won't stop me from asking questions when I want to."
"I wouldn't want it to."
"When did this become a game to you?"
She pauses halfway to making another smart remark, and then closes her mouth. Her face falls. Her demeanor changes completely, closes, compresses into the padded floral chair which smells of my perfume and white chocolate and lingering mothballs.
"Things have just been stressful lately." Probably the closest to an apology I'll get out of her.
"You don't have to take it out like this."
"You'd hardly expect me to inflict it on anyone else."
That's a little harsh. "You could trust me," I say.
"I do trust you. That's why I'm here."
"You could trust me enough to relax."
I watch her muscles tense even at the word.
She wraps her fingers around the closest linen flower on the padding. "I am relaxed."
"You could let me help you."
Silence. I have her full attention now. I shrug off the remnants of yet another ruined shirt, tossing it into the void under my desk and pulling out two wine glasses instead. I pour a white. I hand it to her. Her fingers uncoil from their death grip around the flowers.
I cover her with an old brown blanket I find in the bottom of my filing cabinet. Tuck it in under her arms. Watch her stare at me increasingly sleepily as the wine disappears. She's always been a lightweight.
She's smiling.
She's asleep.
An entire day on my watch just clicked by.
There are no photo frames in my office. Not because I couldn't get one if I wanted; simply because I have nothing to put in them. I have vague, still images in my mind that resemble photographs, but they seem more like dreams than memories. Perhaps that's why I'm not allowed to sleep.
I have – or had, I amend, glancing more at the heart charm than at the watch itself – an awful lot of time to think. I don't think about me. There's not much to think about in that regard. A couple of freeze frames of a handsome man and a small boy sitting on a park table, smiling at the camera. It looks like spring. The leaves are fresh and green and he's wearing a blue shirt and a gold ring on his fourth finger.
I don't feel anything.
A dog – a large border collie with bright eyes and lolling tongue – reclining in the shade of a white parasol.
A fire. I dig my nails into the flesh of my other hand, far enough to break the skin, far enough to draw lines of blood.
I don't feel anything.
I think, maybe, this is why we never talk about me.
I think about her instead.
29 days. The sun is high in the sky and she's perched on the edge of my desk beside the vase of flowers. Her head's in her hands, she's talking about the latest thorn in her foot, Robert McKenzie. He's thwarted her plans for the budget. She's out of pocket and itchy and her high heels are murdering the mechanisms of her feet.
"Let's go outside," I say, standing far away so that we're not touching but so she can feel my body heat.
"What's outside?" she asks.
"Something different."
I take her arm and guide her to the window, pointing out the dew sparkling on blades of grass, the reflection of the clouds on the sea, the parrots preening themselves with colourful beaks on the branches nearby.
We relocate to the lawn. She's sitting up against a tree trunk, prying her heels off and flexing her toes in the summer air. I'm standing beside her, enjoying the breeze playing in my hair and my shirt sleeves. There's a single boat bobbing on the horizon. I close my eyes.
"I want to give you something," she says, "but I don't know what. I don't have anything to give."
I feel a sardonic smile curl upon my lips. She has everything to give. Perhaps it's just that none of it has any value.
"You could let me sleep for once."
She mulls this over for a second. "Soon," she promises. "Not quite yet."
I murmur agreement.
"You make me so happy," she says. "I am grateful, even if I don't always show it."
The day clicks over.
One of my eyes flickers open. "I know you are."
"It always was difficult to surprise you."
I laugh. It reaches my eyes. She bites her lip.
I'm reminded why I'm doing this in the first place.
I did go out of the garden once. I'd spent many miscellaneous early morning hours perusing books on Paris, stacked carefully on my bookshelves and ordered alphabetically. She was visiting less and less.
I packed a single suitcase, wrapped a scarf around my neck and said goodbye. She was smiling when I left. It was supposed to be permanent. Better apart than together if we could help it.
Paris was almost as good as I anticipated. I drank in the architecture, the volatile weather and the various exotic brands of tea. But it was so busy. People running around in all directions, noises outside my window at all hours and lines and lines of people existing in such small spaces without acknowledging each others' existence. I never knew it was possible to be so cramped by human beings and simultaneously feel so alone.
It was lonelier than the office. I lasted three weeks and had to come home, opening my suitcase and taking great satisfaction in hanging up my shirts again.
She only visits rarely these days, only when the rest of her world has fallen apart, when there's no-one else that can possibly fill my shoes. I am the ultimate substitute. I am the ultimate safety-net, the last barrier between sanity and breakdown.
It's insulting and nauseating and intoxicating, and there's still nowhere else that feels like home. That smells like us.
There's something powerful keeping me here. I don't think I could leave if I tried.
16 days. I'm re-organising the filing cabinets. Friends: 1682 entries. Family: 348 entries. Relationships: 4621 entries. Miscellaneous: 546. I'm under miscellaneous, but we still don't really talk about me.
On a whim, I take out the small stack of papers labeled 'Adrienne' and leaf through them by the window. Things I've figured out, like pieces to an old puzzle where the edges are wearing off and don't really fit together any more. You have to try and ignore the holes to finish half the picture.
Why I'm 35. Why that makes me so much less attainable and so much more attractive. Why this isn't about sex. Why we're not meant to be together. Why that's healthy and so fucked up at the very same time.
She appears beside me, takes my free hand and interlocks our fingers. "Come dancing with me?"
I watch her pupils dilate. She smiles as sweetly as she's ever done.
"It won't be like last time," she promises. "Trust me."
I stand for a second or two feeling her pulse beat beneath my palm, and then we're in a dance hall. My gown is long and black with pink lining. Hers is silver and blue. I'm expecting gloves but there are none; perhaps she can surprise me after all.
"Of course I trust you," I say, and don't expect a response. She wears a knowing smile, just like mine.
We dance. We dance beautifully. Our heels click in time on the marbled floor under the skylights. Not a single step out of sync, out of time. I don't need to think. I lose myself in the beat of the music and whirl of the room and the press of her skin.
We dance for a long time.
How can I not trust her? I have the power to break her, destroy her whole world in a minute. She has the power to kill me in an instant.
We dance.
We lock eyes.
"I have nothing else to say," she says, and sounds so sure my heart stops for a second.
My clock doesn't.
Her name is torn from my lips.
16 days click by.
The watch counts down the last minute far too quickly. I planned this to be quiet as ever, but there's candles lit; there's candles lit on the windowsill and I opened that damned window and now there's a gale. The wind knocked it over and now the wick's crawled all over the stack of papers and they're alight, and now everything's alight and why is it all so full of notes and paper, I don't understand because there shouldn't be that much paper for just over a year, really there shouldn't be, and why on earth didn't she give me a computer?
20 seconds.
She's standing in the middle of the room, holding my hand, watching the flowers burn charcoal black. She's shaking a little. I run my fingers over her knuckles. She can't look at me. She says, "Adrienne," and hangs onto my hand even tighter.
10 seconds.
I step forcibly into her line of vision. Her chin rises a fraction. I kiss her, desperately and tenderly and because there's no better distraction right now, nothing better to part with.
Everything seems alright.
The end of my gown catches red.
My watch stops ticking.
I pull a knot of keys out of my handbag and move to open the door, but it's already undone. The door slips back. She's already in my office, kneeling beside the kettle and bobbing the teabags up and down in steaming mugs.
"Thought I'd get here early and surprise you," she says. "You do want tea, right?"
I blink a few times and dump my handbag next to my computer. "Yes. Thank you."
She smiles and moves the teabags to the bin.
"White," I say, "very white."
"I know." She takes out the milk. "I take mine identically to yours."
"Oh. Good."
Her voice sounds vaguely familiar. I take out my to-do list for the day, stick it to the phone but the voice is strangely distracting. Who do I know that sounds like that?
I sip my tea in silence for a minute.
"Let me know if I can help you with anything," she says, and she sounds so genuine I almost spill my tea. "At any time. Really. I'm always happy to come in and help."
"Thank you," I manage to get out. I search for something on my to-do list. "You could pick up some papers from the photocopier if you want."
"I'd love to," she tells me. "Thank you."
A laugh bubbles out of my throat and into my tea. "You thank me for letting you help?"
"Yes."
She's fucking crazy.
"None of my other writers have this innate desire to tend to my whims," I say.
She just smiles at me. "Take advantage of it. What do you need?"
"Just come and keep me company sometimes."
"I can do that," she says.
She does.
Every single day.