name, but she didn’t feel the buzz that she usually got from the workout. Tonight it had been an effort. Unable to concentrate solely on the music, she’d made some mistakes and slipped into the wrong moves at the wrong time. Not that the women had noticed; it was only three weeks into the course and they’d not yet mastered the choreography that accompanied each song.
Michelle shoved the towel into her sports bag and searched in the pocket for her mobile. Three days and still she’d heard nothing from Nick. She looked at the screen in frustration. Every time she received a text message she opened it expecting it to be from him. The last time they’d spoken everything was fine. She was sure that nothing had happened between them that might have led to this. There had been no argument, no cross words, which made his silence simply incomprehensible. She’d tried calling him again before she began the class. The phone had rung out and she’d left a message saying that she hoped that everything was okay.
Throwing on a fleece, Michelle zipped up her sports bag and prepared to go home. She turned off the lights in the sports hall, said goodnight to the security man at the front desk and walked out of the community centre into the dark rain-filled streets. Already damp with perspiration, her hair clung to her forehead. She pushed it out of her eyes and hurried down the street. Outside the car park a homeless man sat, paper cup in hand, the hood of his jumper pulled up ineffectively against the rain. Michelle dug a few coins out of her pocket and dropped them in giving the man a brief smile. He mumbled words of thanks and wished her a good night as she walked inside. She knew his face. She’d talked to him once, some months before when she’d begun volunteering on the soup run with the Simon Community. He’d told her about being made redundant, and about a messy divorce in which his wife had got everything. He swore he didn’t touch drugs or alcohol, but most of them said that – it wasn’t her job to believe or to judge them. She hadn’t seen him in a while, had hoped that maybe his luck had changed, but the same faces always returned to the streets. Some of them she knew by name now – the ones who were glad to chat. This man had stood out because he sounded educated. He’d once, he said, held a senior position in a logistics company, and she wondered again about the circumstances that had led to him being in the street that night.
In the car park, she took the stairs two steps at a time until she’d reached the fifth floor. She hated these places at night – eerily lit by florescent lights – cars packed together, a predator could easily lie undetected waiting on a lone female to return to her car. Keys in hand, she unlocked the car from several metres away, and walked briskly, head held high until hurriedly she pulled open the driver’s door and climbed inside. When she turned the key in the ignition the radio came on and the gravellish tones of Tom Waits sang ‘Closing Time’ into the night.
Nick. She couldn’t get him out of her mind. It had been like that from the beginning, but whereas then her thoughts were pleasant and giddy, now they brought fear and uncertainty. She tried to reassure herself. Nick was crazy about her, he’d told her that. Only two weeks before he’d invited her out for dinner to meet his sister and her husband – a step that she believed he hadn’t taken with anyone else since divorcing his wife. Afterwards, he’d told her that his sister had been mad about her, and that Rowdy the dog was too, so he reckoned he’d have to keep her. And now a whole weekend had passed without so much as a call.
Michelle spiralled down the ramps and exited the car park. The rain had started to come down heavier, and she turned the wipers on to clear the windscreen. The homeless man had gone – she hoped he’d managed to find shelter for the night. The city streets were almost deserted. A woman struggled with an umbrella blown inside out in the wind and driving rain. Tom Waits’s melancholic tones were replaced by the unmistakable sound of Pearl Jam as Michelle found herself turning in the opposite direction of home and driving instead towards Nick’s house. She had to find out what had happened to prevent him from calling her. Perhaps he was ill, or worse still had had an accident. Whatever the reason, her fears would not abate until she’d satisfied herself that he was all right – that there was a reasonable explanation for, what felt by now, his interminable silence.
Michelle felt her heart quicken as she turned onto Nick’s road. She slowed as she approached the house, terrified that she might see Nick’s ex-wife’s car in the driveway – or worse. Surrounded by trees, it wasn’t possible to see the house until she’d pulled up at the gate. Outside the front door the light was on. It shone onto the wet tarmac revealing the absence of Nick’s car. Michelle looked at the clock that showed it was after nine. It was unusual for Nick to be out on a Monday evening. He’d normally have just finished walking Rowdy round the block. She’d learned his routine in the time they’d been together. Though she figured he wouldn’t have even ventured out with the dog on a night like this. She was sitting there wondering what to do when her phone blipped. She opened the text, immediately saw Nick’s name and read the brief message:
Call you tomorrow. N x.
At least she knew that he was all right. She read the short message several times as though the words might change or give her some clue as to what was going on in his mind. She wondered briefly why he’d signed off with his initial. It wasn’t something he normally did. Nor was the single kiss characteristic of his usual effusive messages, punctuated with kisses after almost every sentence. But then the message itself was a mere one line.
Michelle closed the message, put the phone on the seat next to her and started the engine. Wherever Nick was and whatever he was doing he clearly couldn’t or didn’t want to speak to her. His message had been of little consolation, save the fact that it confirmed he was alive, but that came with its own anxieties – namely that his feelings for her might have changed.
Michelle took a deep breath and tried to still the chaotic thoughts that raced and circled in her mind. She would go home, take a shower and try to concentrate on a book or a movie, anything that might distract her from the negative feelings that Nick’s absence had caused her. She knew that to dwell too long on a fear was to fulfil the prophecy – whatever was going on with Nick right now, she told herself it probably had nothing to do with her. He would talk to her when he was ready. The last thing she wanted to do was to push him into anything he wasn’t ready for. She had to prove that she was the antithesis of everything his ex-wife had been.
Nick woke in the night to the sound of a woman’s voice in his ear. He flailed blindly for the lamp and knocked over a glass of water on the bedside locker. When he finally found the switch, the light dispelled the auditory apparition, but failed to slow his racing heart. The voice had been distinct, angry, but what bothered him most was he hadn’t caught the words that the woman had said – and yet somehow, he knew her voice: it was Rachel’s.
Sweating, he sat up and threw back the covers. Rachel, the woman from his dream; why was it that she seemed so real to him now? He got out of bed and pulled on his jeans. His hands were shaking badly, and a pulse throbbed in his left temple. Had he been dreaming before the voice had woken him? He didn’t remember. He just remembered the voice so close to his ear that he’d jumped.
Downstairs, Nick switched the kettle on. He gripped the counter wishing that he’d not poured out the half bottle of whiskey that he’d had in the press two days before. The prescription that the doctor had given him lay on the living room table. He’d been prescribed Valium and Librium, drugs whose names he was familiar with but had never anticipated having to use. The doctor had said there would be withdrawal symptoms, but he hadn’t expected to feel this bad. The drugs would have helped to ease the tremors, and now with trembling hands he made a mug of coffee, heaped in four spoons of sugar, and wished that he’d heeded the doctor’s advice to have the script filled right away.
Nick took his coffee into the living room, and rummaged in his coat pocket for his cigarettes, but then remembered he’d smoked his last in the car after his appointment – his only immediate means of self-medication gone.